“No clue, but I’m curious.”
She lifts one finger. “I ignored the warning.”
My stomach knots. “What warning?”
“The warning that told me the spell could lead to disaster. I thought, what does a little book know? I’m smarter than it. So I worked the magic. And guess what?”
My shoulders feel heavy just asking. “What?”
“The damn thing worked. The tomatoes grew big and fast. The cantaloupe ripened quickly. It was all perfect the next day. I thought it was great.” She scoffs. “But I was wrong. Because even though the tomatoes were big, if they weren’t picked right away, they continued to grow. One got as big as a basketball.” She seems to contemplate this before adding, “And that’s when the whispers started.”
Dot’s eyes dim. “People talked about witchcraft. They gossiped about evil arriving in town. They wanted to root it out and destroy it. The things they said about me, not knowing it was me who’d caused it—and these were my friends—well, it would have scared even the strongest man. And don’t think I hadn’t heard the stories about what they did in the past—people disappearing and all that. So I was scared. But worse, what I did affected the ley lines.”
My lungs still. “The ley lines?”
Dot nods as if this is more important than the threat of being chopped into little pieces and scattered in the ocean. “You think magicexists in a vacuum? That you do one spell and nothing notices? Well, you’re wrong.”
Uh-oh. This isn’t good.
“You wanna know what happened to the ley lines after I cast that spell?”
“Not really,” I murmur, but she doesn’t hear.
“They bent. Warped like a bra strap on a hot day—trying to hold too much for too long. The power in this land, ittriedto do what I asked. Itwantedto please me. Just like I always did for everybody else.
“And it broke itself to do it. See, that’s what magic does when it isn’t used right. It doesn’t explode—not always. Itcompensates.Stretches itself thin until one day, it snaps.
“The ley lines started rerouting themselves around people. Skipping over them like stones in a river. Because they could feel the fear, the judgment, the small-town poison people whispered behind their teeth. Magic didn’t want to beseen. And neither did I. So it disappeared, vanished, felt that it wasn’t loved or wanted. Well, so did I.”
Dot’s hands tremble as she picks up her crochet hook and begins to slowly work on the afghan again.
I frown. “But I thought the magic vanished because of its relationship with starfizz berries.”
That’s what we were told, that the small berries known as starfizz berries were the reason why magic left Mystic Meadows years ago. They weren’t being grown anymore.
It was Rowe Maddox who began cultivating them again, and once she reestablished the bushes at her property, magic returned. The biggest sign of that was when the piggycorns ate the berries and soon after received their power to create electricity.
Dot cocks her chin left and right. “Look who thinks she knows so much. Does one spell in an ancient book and can solve all the universe’s problems.”
“I never said that,” I push back gently.
“For your information,” she informs me, “the starfizz berries may have helped the magic return, but that isn’t why it disappeared in the first place.”
My head tingles as I realize exactly what she’s saying. “You mean the magic died in the land because you cast a little spell to make tomatoes grow?”
“Not a little spell. A big spell—a spell so big people turned their backs on the magic, and the magic noticed and began disappearing. So I disappeared, too. Why not? No one would accept me the way I was, so why should I show up with gusto?
“I sat in meetings, took notes on shitters, grinned at my coworker while he handed me every crap job in the county. And nobody ever guessed what I’d done. Nobodysawme. Which, back then, felt safer than being burned at the stake with a tomato vine wrapped around my ankles. But let me tell you something, cupcake. If you think for one second you can keep doing what I did—tamping down that shine of yours, pretending you’re not blazing from the inside out—you’re gonna end up just like me. Angry. Invisible. Crocheting rainbow afghans to keep your hands busy so you don’t punch your own reflection. So either let the damn land see you, or prepare for it to start skippingyou, too.”
I try to wrap my head around what she’s saying. It seems impossible. But yet, it also seems like what she’s saying has a large kernel of truth to it.
“You’re telling me it’s because of a spell you performed that the unicorns lost their power. It’s because of you that Mystic Meadows dimmed, because the spell caused people to reject magic?”
“Bingo! We have a Plinko winner onThe Price Is Right. That’s what I’m saying, and what I’m telling you is, the spell you cast, the one you’re trying to act like isn’t a big deal, is.”
It feels like I’m standing in the very center of a teeter-totter, trying to keep my balance while both feet threaten to fall out from under me.
It can’t be. I can’t be responsible for the magic dying—again. “That’s why I’m here. There’s a flower I need to reverse the spell, but I can’t find anything about it.”
