Magic in the Mix

  “I know who you mean,” said Miri angrily. “How?”

  Molly’s gaze returned to the floor. “I can keep her from meeting my dad,” she said softly.

  “Got it,” said Miri with a curt nod. “You keep Maudie from meeting your father, they don’t get married, you don’t get born, and she doesn’t die. Is that the plan?”

  “Yeah,” mumbled Molly.

  “Great plan,” said Miri. She glared at Molly. “You don’t get born. That’s just great.”

  “No one will know,” said Molly miserably. “Think about what happened when I came here. We erased the other past. No one remembers when I wasn’t here.”

  “Except for us!” Miri was yelling now. “You and me—we remember! So it’s fine with you if I have to be lonely and miss you, right? Think of what your grandma said—she said when you came here, that you were setting things right. And now you want to go back and mess everything up! You think I won’t know you’re gone?” She stamped her foot. “I will!”

  Molly’s gray eyes filled with tears. “Maybe not. Maybe I’ll be erased from your memory. I hope.”

  “You hope? Don’t you care? About me and Mom and Dad and the kids?” Miri couldn’t stop shouting. “Why, all of a sudden, do you care more about Maudie than about us? Is it like she’s your real mom and our mom’s just fake?”

  There was a shocked silence. “Is that what you think I’m thinking?” asked Molly incredulously. She shook her head. “No. Maudie seems like—a really nice girl, that’s all. I mean, sure, she’s going to be my mother, but I don’t even know her. She’s not my mom; Mom’s my mom.” Molly frowned. “You don’t think I want to do this, do you? I don’t want to. I have to.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You don’t have to.”

  “Yes, I do.” Molly sighed. “We’ve said it a million times. If the magic happens again, it’ll mean that we’re supposed to do something. It won’t just be for fun; it won’t be playing around. There’s something we’re supposed to do.” She looked toward Miri. “Come on—haven’t we always said that?” Miri nodded uneasily. They had said it, and Grandma May had confirmed it—magic was given for a reason. Magic didn’t waste itself sending people through time for nothing. “So,” Molly pressed, “what does it want me to do? Why did it send us back to 1918? Why did it let us meet Maudie?”

  “I don’t know,” Miri admitted. “But,” she added quickly, “it doesn’t mean you’re supposed to keep yourself from being born.” It couldn’t mean that, she argued inside herself. It wouldn’t.

  “What else can it mean?” demanded Molly. “We met Maudie. And she was great, right? She doesn’t deserve to die, and she sure doesn’t deserve to die because of me. Right?”

  “No!” said Miri. “Or yes! I don’t know!”

  Molly went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “All this time, I wondered why I could remember both lives. It seemed wrong; it seemed like it meant I was detachable, like I had to keep remembering 1935 so I could go back to it. That’s what I was scared of, and I was right.”

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “Yeah, I do.” Molly smiled bitterly. “I have to be returned, like clothes that don’t fit. I know what’s going to happen, and I can stop it, so I have to go back and stop it. Don’t I?”

  “No, you don’t. That’s not what it means, it can’t be. …” Miri struggled to find another explanation, another argument, another anything.

  Molly went on, almost talking to herself now. “I’m the only one who could do it. Nobody else could make the choice for me. Why else would I have been sent to see Maudie?” she asked again, her forehead furrowed. “There’s only one reason I can think of. I’m supposed to keep her alive. And I can do that. So I should.”

  An idea flashed into Miri’s mind. “Wait!”

  Molly looked up, hopeful. “What?”

  “It’s too late! They’ve already met! They must’ve! I mean, they almost had to! He was inside and she was in the yard, but that’s, what? Thirty feet apart? They must’ve met! So it’s too late, nothing you can do—”

  The glint of hope disappeared. “They didn’t meet,” said Molly.

  “You don’t know that—”

  “Yes, I do,” Molly said. “Because I know what she was wearing the first time he saw her, and it wasn’t a nightgown. She was wearing a yellow dress. It was almost sunset, and he thought she was light, shining through the clouds.”

  “Wow.” In spite of herself, Miri was impressed. “He told you that?”

  “Yeah. Lots of times.”

  “Romantic.”

  “I guess.” Molly’s eyes dropped to the floor. After a moment’s silence, she said, “I think I’ve figured out a way. You know, to keep them apart.”

  The resignation in her voice made Miri’s heart hurt. “This isn’t what you’re supposed to do,” she whispered. “It can’t be.” She swallowed, hard. “Please don’t leave.”

  Molly cleared her throat and turned back to the door. “I tried to find the stairs from the yard a few days ago. I must’ve looked like a loon, trying to climb invisible stairs, but no one saw. Anyway, I couldn’t do it, so I figured I have to go from inside the house. We know that works, right?”

  “Why didn’t you do it before now?” asked Miri. If she could just keep her talking …

  “Ollie the Rot King,” said Molly. “That guy’s always around. But he told Mom he had to take the weekend off because of the reenactment. That’s why I said I was sick.” Abruptly, she lifted the hammer and slammed it against the top board. With a chalky squeal, the nail came loose.

  Miri watched as the wall fell, board by board, until, with a final dry squawk, the last piece toppled away from the doorframe to the ground below.

  Molly placed the hammer carefully on a nearby counter and turned to Miri. For a moment, they looked at each other in silence.

  “Don’t go!” begged Miri. “We’re supposed to be sisters.”

  “I know. But we got magic,” Molly said softly. “We have to deserve it.” She turned to step over the threshold.

  Miri’s hand shot out to hold her back. But it was too late.

  Chapter 7

  “Are you all right?” called Miri, peering over the rim of the doorway. Inside her ribs, her heart was galloping.

  “Yeah,” said Molly uncertainly from the dirt below. When the new porch was built, it would be the dirt under the porch. Right now, it was the dirt you fell in if you stepped out the back door thinking that you were going to be held up by an invisible floor. “It didn’t work, did it?” she asked, a little dazed.

  Miri shook her head and jumped down beside Molly, trying to mask her roaring happiness. Not gone! Still here!

  “Why not, though?” Molly stretched out her hand.

  Miri pulled her sister to her feet. Still here! With me! Together, they scanned the construction zone. Twenty thick posts marked out a perimeter, an outline of the porch to come. It was only a suggestion of the future, but it was, apparently, enough to obliterate the past. “See that?” said Miri, waving at the posts. “I think that’s enough to lock out the past.”

  “But it’s not finished. It’s not a porch. It’s just a border.”

  Miri nodded. “I know, but I think that’s all it takes. The past is covered up by the present.” She explained her ideas about the house and time to Molly.

  “That’s pretty much the same thing I came up with.” Molly nodded. She lifted her eyes to Miri’s. “Am I safe?” she whispered. “Is the hole in time closed?”

  “Closed,” Miri said, trying to suppress a smile. “Locked. You can’t go back.”

  “I can’t go back,” Molly repeated obediently.

  Miri shook her head. She couldn’t help grinning.

  “So it’s probably okay that I got born,” Molly continued, her eyes fixed on Miri’s.

  “Right,” Miri said. “It’s out of your control. So the magic must want you to stay here, with us.” Saved!

  Molly’s face smoothed with rel
ief, and she let out a long breath. “I’ve been freaking out all week,” she confided.

  “I know. I could tell.”

  “I didn’t want to, you know,” Molly said, watching Miri.

  Miri nodded. “I know. It’s okay.” Here forever!

  Molly’s smile was like light breaking through clouds. She gave a little bounce on her toes and stretched out her arms, just to feel the air. “Boy, am I starving! I couldn’t eat anything this morning—too busy freaking out. Let’s go eat. Let’s have toast and cereal and eggs!”

  Miri reached out and flapped her sister’s braid. “Race you!”

  The two girls swerved around Ollie’s stack of pink boards and hurtled along the side of the house to the front stairs, laughing about nothing as they went.

  “I win!” called Miri, bounding in the door.

  “Only because I’m weak from not eating,” said Molly, banging the door behind her. “We could make cheese omelets—”

  Suddenly, she broke off.

  Miri, halfway down the hall, stopped. “Molly?”

  Molly stood, frozen, in the doorway of the living room.

  “What?”

  Molly turned, and when Miri saw her face, her stomach flopped. “What?”

  “The hole in time. It’s not closed,” said Molly. “It’s just in a different place.” She pointed at the tarp-covered space where the window had been and took a shaky breath. “I guess I have to”—she licked her lips—“you know.”

  Miri nodded. Magic had defeated them. “We’ll do it together.” She drew up next to her sister, facing the hateful plastic that covered the hateful emptiness that held the hateful past.

  “You’d go with me?” Molly’s voice rose. “Really?”

  “We’re a team, right?” answered Miri. She couldn’t change what the magic seemed to want. She couldn’t argue with it. The only thing she could do was stay with Molly until the last possible moment—but she didn’t want to think about the last possible moment. “We’re a team.” She grabbed a handful of tarp and pushed it aside.

  Together, the girls settled themselves on the rough edge of the wall and looked out at the side yard, at the straggly flowers and that wide expanse of grass ending in the faraway blackberry tangle. Molly glanced down to the ground beneath the window, where rhododendron bushes would be when they landed. “This is going to hurt,” she said gloomily.

  Miri nodded. It was. “Maybe the magic will throw us over the bushes. Just to be nice.”

  Molly made a face. “Don’t count on it.”

  “Ready?” said Miri.

  “Set,” they said together.

  “Go.” They jumped.

  They stood, brushing the dirt from their hands.

  “I wonder what happened to the rhododendrons,” said Molly, looking around. “They were here last week.”

  Miri didn’t answer. The bushes had disappeared, replaced by stubbly grass that ran from the barn in the distance right up to the side of the house. She shifted nervously, pressing herself against the wood behind her. Though there was no one in sight, she had a strong urge to hide.

  “Okay,” said Molly. “The first thing we have to do is find him. Pat Gardner.”

  “Find him,” echoed Miri, glancing around. Something was strange. Off.

  “He’s in Paxton,” Molly said. “He’s staying with his friend Sam. I guess we’ll just look around until we see him. Paxton’s pretty small and …” She trailed off, watching Miri’s eyes dart back and forth. “What?”

  Miri shook her head. She didn’t know. “Something’s weird. I can’t put my finger on it, but—it’s awful quiet.”

  It was awful quiet. Not a sound in the whole world around them, only a waiting silence. No birds, no animal sounds at all. Miri looked toward the barn—why weren’t the chickens making a racket? Chickens always made a racket. And what about the pigs? There should at least be a snort or two from the pigs. Even the sky was empty, a flat gray expanse like dull metal. She shivered a little and flattened herself even more against the house.

  But Molly was focusing with grim determination on the task in front of her, not the eerie silence. “When we find him, I’m going to say Flo has the influenza. It was a big deal in 1918, the flu. I looked it up. He for sure won’t come to the house if she’s got it.”

  Miri nodded and took a step away from the house. The sense of something wrong was almost overpowering. She edged closer to her sister and scanned the scene again. “Mols?”

  “Hm?”

  “Nothing.”

  They moved slowly toward the front yard. Miri looked down the sloping yard toward the road. The hedge that marked the bottom of the yard in the twenty-first century had not yet been dreamed of, and the white fence that stood in its place ran only a little ways and then broke off abruptly in a shattered heap of boards. Beyond it, Miri could see a bare dirt road curving away into a dry, gray distance.

  “Wait.” Miri stopped short, her eyes darting over the wide downhill swath of grass. “Where’s the tree?” The enormous elm tree was nowhere to be seen. Absurdly, she turned in a circle, as though it might have picked itself up and moved to another part of the yard in her absence.

  And then she saw something that caused her to forget the tree altogether: the house. It had shrunk. It was missing most of its second story, all of its turret, and half the front porch. The half-porch that remained came to a jagged end, its broken floor slanting precariously over the yard as if it had been chewed off, its railing dangling in empty space. The stained glass around the door was gone, and the door itself hung slightly open. Beside her, Molly was seeing the same thing. They turned to each other in disbelief. “This isn’t—” Molly began, her eyes wide.

  “1918,” Miri finished.

  They stared blankly at each other. “But when?” asked Molly in a whisper.

  “But why?” asked Miri.

  The stillness cracked like an egg.

  A thundering blast exploded from the road, and suddenly the empty air was peppered with hollow cracks, louder and louder—so loud, so close, that Miri instinctively threw her hands over her face and dropped to her knees.

  “No!” Molly shrieked, and Miri felt herself yanked upward. With a flying leap, Molly ran, pulling Miri behind her as the air filled with smoke, and fire blazed in thin, knifelike streaks through the thick white clouds.

  “What, what, what,” Miri chattered, her legs stumbling forward, collapsing, wobbling up again. She couldn’t, she couldn’t—she was made of jelly, her legs wouldn’t hold her, and she fell again, dragging Molly down with her. “Wha, wha, wha—” she babbled, before she was interrupted by an unearthly screech like a hundred beasts—

  “Shh!” Molly pushed her flat in the weeds and flung herself alongside. “Head down,” she whispered in Miri’s ear, and Miri obeyed, burrowing gladly into the solid dirt. Flat as she was, she was also at the top of the sloping yard, and between the dry brown stalks, she could see everything that was happening on the road. She saw shapes appear in the smoke; she saw them fumble forward, smash together, drop apart, disappear. She saw a man topple backward from his saddle, his mouth open in a cry lost in the noise; she saw a horse, massive and black, reel sideways. Then she looked upward, and there, above the mayhem, the empty circle of sky whirled.

  “Close your eyes,” whispered Molly as something whined through the air over their heads and chunked into the side of the barn nearby.

  Miri tried but she couldn’t remember how. She couldn’t even blink. She could only stare wide-eyed as fire flickered through white smoke and thunderous cracks filled the air. “Wha, wha, wha—” she gasped, and Molly’s hand, clammy but reassuringly alive, came around and covered her mouth.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I know what it is. We’ll be okay.”

  Miri grunted in helpless fear until the hand closed more tightly over her mouth.

  Again and again, the whining spirals came over their heads and thudded into the barn. Hoofbeats made the earth shudder
. Yowls and shrieks rose through the smoke. And then, above it all, there was a long, high squeal. Through the haze, Miri watched a horse rising, rising, rising, until it was nearly vertical, and the boy astride it slid to the ground and disappeared.

  The horse flopped sideways, hooves up and then down.

  Suddenly, as though a switch had been flipped, the thundering cracks stopped and voices rose from all around: shouting and cries, dozens of them, all at once: “Remount!” “Stand down!” “Sir?” “Stand down, I say!” “Sir—” “Full retreat—” “Upperville—” “No, sir—”

  A huge man loomed out of the smoke, gun in hand. Bizarrely, he was laughing, laughing hard as though he’d heard the funniest joke in the world. As Miri watched, he turned and fired his gun carelessly into the throng of men and smoke behind him.

  “Hold fire!” someone screamed, and the man laughed harder and shot again.

  “Run!”

  There was a tiny, frozen second of silence, and then a ringing clatter, an earth-shaking thunder of hooves, and a wall of dust rose from the road.

  Miri felt Molly go limp against her back. “It’s over.”

  Miri panted like a dog. Her mouth wouldn’t make words.

  “Don’t move,” Molly breathed.

  Miri blinked in answer. She couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. Before her, a ghost on horseback rose out of the weeds. No, not a ghost. It was a man, a man in a gray coat covered with white dust. He wheeled his equally dusty horse around, and she saw that he was grinning. “Hern!” he whooped.

  “Yessir!” A short man with a drooping mustache and a dirty gray uniform scrambled into view.

  “Hern and Carter! Tie up the horses and tend to those who’re still alive. We’re gonna trail the others!”

  A big man, the same one who had fired so casually into the crowd, appeared alongside the ghostly horse and rider. He was still laughing. “Colonel! Let me come along and give ’em some hell. I’ll pick ’em clean!”

  The Colonel pulled up on his horse and glared down at him. “You’ll follow orders, Carter. And you, Hern. We’ll come back for you.” He glanced over his shoulder at the men scattered over the road. “I want those Yankees tended to, you hear? I don’t want ’em dead.” He turned to give Carter a piercing look. “You hear me, Carter?”