Page 13 of Moth to a Flame

She let out a small gasp and peered back up at me. I knew she could feel that I was admiring her, but that only made her more turned on, the red spreading faster under her adorable freckles, which led to me⁠—

Gertrude let out a loud cough.

We both took a step back, and that rising heat quickly shifted to embarrassment. We turned to the old woman.

Gertrude looked at me for a long moment. Then she looked at Lucia. Then, very carefully, back at me.

“Very interesting… Okay, both of you, to the parlor now.”

Gertrude waved her hand, and we followed her as if she were the one who lived here.

I walked into the parlor through a molded archway. If the foyer was Victorian Gothic, the parlor was mystic fortune-teller chic. Heavy burnt-velvet curtains were drawn across the windows, a celestial pattern peeking out in thinner sections of fabric by the porchlight outside. Two reupholstered couches sat around a small round table that held a tarot deck and a crystal ball.

Slightly more disturbing were the numerous corkboards surrounding the couches. Each was covered in pictures, hand-written notes and drawings, and various graphs and horticultural charts. Red thread connected various pieces, and Post-it notes in every color covered the entire thing like confetti. At the center of this massive web was a Daguerreotype photo of a massive white flower, labeled Moon Queen.

Man, I really fucked up tonight.

I was about to sit when I caught sight of the various bell jars filled with skulls and preserved insects lining the mantel. A shiver of fear lanced up my spine, and Lucia straightened near me. Her gaze followed mine. More embarrassment and also…empathy flowed through the bond.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, pulling a few shawls from a drawer to cover them as Gertrude made herself at home at the table.

She spread Lucia’s notes across the one clear patch of table, shoving crystals aside. The pages were a mix of Lucia’s looping handwriting and photographs of something much older, made up of glyphs and unfamiliar symbols. She withdrew a pair of reading glasses from her breast pocket as Snowflake made himself at home on Lucia’s velvet chaise.

“Yucatec Maya, mostly,” Gertrude remarked, answering my unasked question as she traced a line of the mysterious glyphs. “Luckily, a language I’ve spent a good deal of time studying. All of this is from your great-grandmother’s expedition, right?”

She peered over her glasses at Lucia, who nodded.

“Hawk, read this portion to me.” She pointed at some notes Lucia had written.

I wanted to grumble at the old woman to read them herself, but a spark of hope cut through the sadness inside Lucia’s chest, and I couldn’t resist that any more than the light in her greenhouse.

“It says, ‘Working hypothesis, revised: The Moon Queen pollen functions as a binding agent. Historical accounts describe a single dyadic connection producing full emotional transparency between participants.

“‘Dilution of the pollen may be the solution. If the essence can be attenuated and dispersed across many weak connections rather than concentrated in one potent dose, the effect should remain. Not true emotional connection, but enough to act as a counter-curse across a wide audience.’

“Then there’s a bunch of ingredients and, like…scientific magic stuff I don’t understand beneath that.”

Lucia looked at Gertrude expectantly, and that spark of hope in her chest grew until I couldn’t look away.

Gertrude blinked at me once. Twice. “I’m going to assume that Lucia’s notes are actually some sort of useful observation and not the string of curses I just heard come out of your mouth.”

That hope in Lucia’s chest shriveled up, replaced by a sadness so deep and cold it had me wincing.

“This is good and tells us several things.”

Lucia and I snapped our heads toward her, confusion rising in both of us.

“One, you and this young man, Hawk, have been bonded by the Moon Queen flower. That much is obvious. This bond circumvents your curse, and he hears you clearly. However, he could not read your written words aloud without the curse taking effect, but he could tell me the events of tonight. This means that as long as Hawk speaks from his own heart and mind, he can still be understood. But if he simply repeats your words, the curse will still take effect.”

Her eyes dropped to the glyphs on the page.

“Here’s what I can give you tonight. This is old magic, and old magic is unruly, but it never does anything by accident.” She gave Lucia a pointed look. “I know you think that magic is all equations and alchemy, but this old bird has seen some things in her day. Magic has a will of its own.”

Lucia didn’t do it, but I could feel her deep, deep desire to roll her eyes.

“And it does not easily give back what it has claimed,” Gertrude continued. “Every day this bond goes unbroken, it roots a little deeper, until eventually, it likely can’t be undone at all.”

Lucia’s dread went cold in my chest. I felt her want to speak, and felt her not, and I was starting to understand how much of her life had existed in that space between.