“Will. Come lie down.” She patted the red cloth beside her.
I obeyed. The floor of the barn was flat enough. Not super comfortable. Mab leaned over me, positioning my hands at my sides, palms down. She’d taken off her cardigan, and her hair was loose. It spilled all around her, falling onto my shoulders and face. I closed my eyes. The fire crackled. Wind blew through the rafters. But there was no other sound. My lungs squeezed. I was supposed to be calm, but the silence was making me crazy.
“Mab,” I said into her hair. It tickled my mouth, sent a buzz down my whole body.
“Oh, sorry.” She gathered it in one hand and tossed it over her shoulder.
“No, it isn’t that.”
“Yes?”
With her face tipped down, it was hidden in shadows. “It’s just so quiet. I relax better with noise.”
Mab sat back onto her heels and folded her hands in her lap. Her hair was like a thick yellow cape. “I’ll hum, and sing a little. Will that be all right?”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
She put her hand on my chest. It was cool compared to me. “Will?”
I took a deep breath, expanding my lungs all the way, and let it out slowly. Mab shifted her hand so it was directly over my heart. “Why don’t you tell me about the quiet, Will.” She kept saying my name, like it would make things better. “You can relax into it a little? And letting it go will be part of the cleansing.”
I curled my hand around hers. Hadn’t ever told anybody about this. It wasn’t the kind of thing Matt would ask. But with the warm fire, the weight on my chest, and Mab’s hand, I realized I wanted to tell her. “It’s just that the quiet makes me think of the night we found out my brother was dead.”
We’d been at dinner. Dad was grilling me on the hours I was working. Mom put in a few words every once in a while, keeping the mood light. I cleared my throat. Squeezed my eyes shut. “He—Aaron—had been on his road trip for five days and called every night just before our dinnertime, which was precisely nineteen hundred hours. He was late, though, and when the phone finally rang, I just remember wanting to give him a hard time. But Mom shushed me back into my chair, saying I didn’t get to escape so easily. She picked up the phone, and I leaned over my plate, trying to hear. Dad wanted to know how it was going, too, so he didn’t bother talking. It was really quiet.” Except for the ticking ship clock.
“She said, ‘Sanger residence’ like always, and then ‘Yes, this is Mrs. Sanger,’ and ‘Yes, Aaron is my son.’ ” I opened my eyes. Mab was there, bent over me. She didn’t move and kept her gaze on mine. Not making any expression, just witnessing.
I said, “Then the phone fell. It was this incredibly loud plastic crack on the kitchen floor. Dad and I were up and squeezed through the kitchen door at the same time. He went for the phone, and I went for Mom. She’d sunk down onto a chair at the breakfast bar, staring out the window. Dad said some things, while I held Mom’s hands. His voice was low, and I don’t know how long it lasted. All I could hear was Mom’s breath, panting out of her open mouth. Nothing else in the whole world. Like there wouldn’t be noise ever again. Then suddenly Mom stood up, walked to the TV, and turned it on. She put the volume all the way up. I went with her from room to room, turning on all the TVs and the stereo, opening all the windows to let in noise from outside. It was almost enough.”
Tears stuck Mab’s lashes together. She wiped her finger under her eyes, and put it against my chest again. She drew a simple rune, and it should have been a little gross to have a girl drawing on my skin with her tears. Instead it made me feel better.
She whispered, “I am so sorry about your brother.”
“It was a car accident.” I sighed loudly. “Stupid luck, they said. He hadn’t been drinking or anything. No rain, no bad conditions. Aaron just lost control, and we don’t know why. There were skid marks, so maybe he was avoiding a deer, but …” My throat clogged. I gasped, remembering my dreams of choking on roses.
Mab leaned down and kissed my forehead. Her lips were cool against my fever. She said, “Put your head on my lap, and I’ll sing your curse away, Will Sanger.”
I let her direct my head to her thigh. A great open feeling settled in my stomach. One hand of hers rested on my chest. I tilted my chin back as far as it would go to see her use barbecue tongs to grab one of the hot rocks and set it onto the barn floor. She lined up three of them. Then scooped water out of a bowl and poured it over them. It vaporized with a hiss.
She pinched brownish powder from one of the tiny bowls and sprinkled it over the rocks, too. The steam instantly smelled sharper and burned my nose.
“This will only hurt a very little,” she said as she showed me a small silver knife. When she cut my chest right at the center of the bruise, it was more of a relief than pain. A quick burn, and the weight lifted just a little.
Mab said, “I’m only adding the other herbs to the fire next, and then a little blood. You don’t have to do anything but try to relax.”
I focused my gaze on her face, on the triangle of shadow under her chin, on the single long curl falling over her shoulder. With that as my last sight, I shut my eyes.
Into the darkness came a soft sound. Humming. Mab was humming. The vibration of it traveled down into her leg and brushed my neck. I didn’t know the song, and maybe she was making it up, but it turned around and around on itself as though she was singing a chorus only, over and over. I heard her rustle, heard the hiss of steam, felt her shift occasionally under my head. Her finger smeared something onto my chest again. I began to sweat, and Mab’s humming sped up. She put her hand on my forehead, stroking in a spiral.
My bones turned to hot water and my muscles loosened. My skin vanished, became mist. All I knew was her touch on my forehead, her voice in my ear.
MAB
I bled onto the stones.
My blood became fog and hung in the air. I diffused it with water, and gave it power with my song. I traced runes of wellness and purity into Will’s slick skin, pushing all my hopes into the music and into the runes. With the crow-feather fan, I blew the steam against him, into his face, across his chest. I brought in the rest of the rocks, swaying in rhythm with my heartbeat and Will’s. I poured water; I breathed thick, hot air laced with sage and dandelion, garlic and milk thistle. Also lavender for peace and skullcap for relaxation. Sweat poured down my face, and my hair bounced up into tangles of chaos.
I was light and tethered to the earth only by Will’s heavy head on my thigh. I breathed. I drew in long strings of air and let them out with music.
Magic rushed from my center, spilling out over Will with a burn. He winced, and I brought my singing ever so slightly louder as my power burned his curse away.
A tiny breeze moved into the barn, gathering up stray wisps of steam and carrying them out.
Bending down to peer at Will’s chest, I saw that the branches of angry blood had faded, and there was no yellow rose. I sighed, relieved, and tickled his cheek with the tips of my hair.
As his eyes opened, I took his face in my hands and tilted it this way and that, inspecting his eyes. Flecks of red held on to the brown irises, but I wasn’t worried. They, too, would fade as the bruise had.
“Mab?” he whispered.
I was all curled around him, smiling down. “I pronounce you cleansed.”
FORTY-TWO
Gabriel came home early that summer. You went to pick him up at the station, and when the two of you climbed out of the Pontiac in front of the house, all smiles, I threw my arms around him, glad to smell that sunny aftershave lotion again and not even minding the stiff hold of his hair. He returned my embrace and said, “More enthusiasm than I expected,” with a low chuckle. I took his hand and led him inside, where there was a pie from the last of our winter preserves and roast duck just for him. Do you remember how excited we were? How we’d looked forward to him being there, the long summer evenings by the fire, him reading to us like he’d always done, telling funny stories from hi
s time away. How I’d spent the week cleaning the house, fluffing out my garden, and you painted the trim around the windows and the whole porch? How we planned the exact moment you’d tell him you’d asked me to marry you?
There were a few moments of awkwardness, because you and I had lived alone for almost a year, and we knew exactly what space we had, how we moved inside it, when to slide past and steal a little kiss or brief touch of fingers. And here was Gabriel again, a lost piece of the puzzle, so we all needed to rearrange. I remembered vividly how it had felt to be the odd one, and went out of my way to stand so he was as close to you as to me, and to hold myself as if I didn’t constantly think about slipping my hands inside your jacket. We ate that duck and laughed and Gabriel regaled us with tales of Washington rallies, snotty wives, and elegant parties. I told him about my soaps and how popular they’d become, and you said you had started a project where the Child and Mighty Creeks came together to enspell the ground so that it was always protected for permanent magic. We ate nearly that whole pie, and as we lolled like cats in the parlor, you took my hand and Gabriel’s, and with your fingers twining with mine, said, “Gabriel, Evelyn has promised to be my wife.”
He grew as still as a hunted rabbit, then his eyes flicked to mine. I smiled, making my whole face and body as happy-seeming as I could. I squeezed your hand and added, “But Arthur insisted on waiting until you came home.”
At that, Gabriel relaxed, sinking into the wingback chair with a laugh. “Well then,” he said, glancing at the ceiling in relief. “And here I’d been worried about you two finding more than three words to say to each other.”
“Talking isn’t much of what we do,” I said impishly, and you blinked in astonishment while Gabriel crowed. He tore into the larder and brought out a dusty bottle of brandy. That night we got drunk, all three of us, dancing and laughing and singing—even you. I remember imagining years ahead of us, many celebrations, children shrieking, Christmases and birthdays and merry fires.
Gabriel was in all of those dreams. Always with us, our brother and friend, uncle to our children. We should have been so happy.
FORTY-THREE
WILL
Mab helped me sit, and ordered me to stay still while she picked things up. “You need to rest, let your body adjust.”
I watched her put out the fire. My head swam, but not in a sick way. More like after shooting a winning goal. Looking down, I saw that my chest was slightly discolored, but the red infection lines had all pulled back. I touched it. The skin there wasn’t any hotter than the rest of me. I smiled. It had worked. Even my headache was gone. I smelled smoke and those sharp herbs. Fresh wind from the wide-open barn doors. Laughter shoved my smile wider.
Mab knelt beside me with a platter of cookies and sliced meat and cheese. Also a big cup of water. “Go slowly,” she said.
I concentrated on sipping the water she handed me. My stomach growled, and I dug in. Mab only touched my hand to slow me down once or twice. She ate, too, and together we decimated the picnic. I couldn’t wait to show my mom I was fine. To prove it to Ben. But first thing when I got home, I’d go out with a peanut-butter bone and say hi to my girls again.
With food and water, I felt completely myself, and completely revived. I leaned onto my hands. Breathed deep. Mab pulled her knees up to her chest and watched me. When she didn’t glance away, for lack of anything better, I grinned. She smiled back and said, “I want to show you something.”
Getting up, she went to the row of crowded shelves against one wall. She brought back a basket of what looked like toys. “Pick one.”
“What for?”
Her smile was mysterious. “Just pick.”
Blowing breath up my face, I leaned over and carefully rummaged through. They were wooden carvings and glitter-encrusted ornaments. Little figurines, metal shapes, origami flowers. I pulled out a small plastic statue of a running horse with a jockey stooped over his back. A little ring came out of the horse’s head. Mab tied a red string through it.
“Great,” she said. With the horse in one hand, she offered me her other.
Mab took me around the west side of the hill, through a meadow. We were both barefoot, and carefully avoided blackberry vines hidden in the knee-high grasses. She pointed out different plants with names like dogbane and compass leaf. The sun shone down, prickling my bare shoulders. Wind blew gently.
I told Mab that knock-knock joke where it’s always “banana” until you break it up with “orange you glad I didn’t say banana,” and even though Mab laughed so brightly it drowned out the singing birds, I realized magic had made me stupid giddy. But I didn’t care. Just held on to her hand and let my head be a hot-air balloon sailing off to the clouds.
At the south side, we were confronted by a field of waist-high stalks with big leaves. I asked if it was corn, but Mab gave me a funny look and said, “Sunflowers!” before diving between two rows. I ran after her, and the leaves slapped my stomach and sides. It was like hurrying past the other team at the end of the game, shaking and slapping hands without really looking at any of their faces. I slowed to my favorite jogging pace, barely noticing the uneven ground. Ahead was an old silo that glared orange in the light. Mab made straight for it, crossing a field of very short purple flowers. She didn’t even try to step around them.
At the silo, Mab grasped the rickety-looking ladder. “Afraid of heights?”
“Not that I know of,” I said.
She started up and I went right after. Made the mistake of looking up. Her skirt was flowy enough around her knees, thank God. I paused, gripping the ladder, and waited until she was to the top before continuing. The ladder shook with my weight, but not terribly. Several of the rungs had been reinforced recently. The rust wasn’t too bad.
Up top, I rolled over the rim and onto thin grass, surprised it wasn’t a built-up roof. A tree grew out of it, too, shading most everything. It dripped with ribbons and ornaments like some crazy summer Christmas tree. Mab waited with a smile, her hip pressed to the lip of the silo “Welcome to my tower,” she said, throwing out her arms.
“It’s great.” I angled my head back to look up through the tree branches.
She asked me to pull a branch lower so she could tie the ornament onto it. When she released it, the snap made all the little silver bells ring out. Wind picked up the crazy song, and Mab dragged me back to the edge.
We were at least four stories high, and from here could see out over miles and miles to the east. The hill was to the left, with no sign of the house visible through the leaves. I could make out the country road only by the break in the trees. Everything else was rolling prairie and forest, all green and dazzling. I walked along to the south, where the view was mostly the same, with more cultivated farm fields, a checkerboard of green and gold grass.
“Our land goes to the end of that meadow there, where the line of poplars is.” Mab pointed with her left hand, and her front angled against my arm. I wanted to move it out of the way, so she’d lean into my chest. “We have it mowed for hay every other year,” she continued, “and trade out with the west field, which you can’t see because of the tree and the Mighty Creek back there.”
I shifted my arm. Mab moved in naturally, head tilted up for my reaction.
“It’s incredible,” I said. Her hand rested on my side. And her hair prickled my skin. I basically never wanted to move again.
Mab pushed gently away from me and walked back to the tree. The spot where her hand had been was cold. I didn’t follow.
From the shadows, Mab said quietly, “I haven’t brought anyone up here before.” She sounded surprised.
I winced. “I can go, we can do something else, or—”
“No, no,” she took one stilted step back toward me. “I didn’t mean …” Mab sighed. “I was only realizing it, not regretting it.”
I smiled. She smiled.
To break the moment, before I started feeling too awkward again, I pointed at the meadow. “Could I bring my dog
s out here sometime? They’d love it.” Thinking about Havoc barking happily, and Val bouncing all around, made my smile expand until I thought my face might break. I couldn’t wait to see them again.
Mab made a serious face. “If they promise not to charge at any of my spells again.”
“Hey, now,” I picked my way closer, and returned her look. “That wasn’t their fault. And besides”—I paused, standing just out of reach of her. I felt soft, suddenly—“all things considered, I’m pretty glad it happened.”
“Me too,” she said, a smile cracking through.
MAB
Having someone else atop my tower should have made it smaller, but instead it felt expansive and new again. I sat back against the trunk of the redbud, hugging my knees, while Will stretched out in the sun with his arms folded under his head. The crows joined us, settling into the tree and causing the bells to ring and the leaf shadows to shake. The patterns dappled across Will’s face and chest. I could see the shadow of the yellow-rose bruise, but it was nearly vanished.
Relief seeped down my body, relaxing me. Now that the curse I’d released from the roses was cleansed away, any rampant strands of magic should fade. I’d have time to fully remove Lukas’s black candle rune, safely and certainly. Everything was falling into place.
I leaned my cheek onto my knee and watched his eyelids flutter as his eyes moved under them. “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to climb back down,” he said softly, surprising me.
“How come?” My words sounded skewed because my cheek was pressed into my knee.
“Too comfortable.” He stretched, arching his neck and reaching with his arms back toward me. His fingers splayed and so did his toes, like a big dog just waking up.
I curled my toes into the grass. That was how I always felt up here, too. “A little sleep would probably be good, after how hard we worked.”