Page 4 of Muddled Magic

Marten immediately backed a step away from me, the knuckles of his fingers gripping the wine glass blanching.

Grandmother clasped her hands in front of her like she was about to deliver a lecture on Celtic folklore, and how it was often more correct than one usually thought. “Lilac, please refill Marten’s glass. Marten, when your glass is full, you will not speak to, or of, your sister again today, much less look in her direction. You may be a robed elder now, but you have much to learn in humility and empathy. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Grandmother,” he mumbled, giving me one final glare from under lowered eyelashes.

“Rose,” she continued, “get Meadow another glass, then keep a civil tongue in your head. And Meadow.”

I finally looked at her. Grandmother was the epitome of regal elegance, even in her advanced age. She wore her wrinkles—which weren’t many, thanks to Aunt Peony’s homemade skincare products—proudly, and her posture was always impeccable. Her steel-colored hair, once as lush a brown as mine, was shot with white in the temples and swept up into a bun to perch on the top of her head like the most artfully crafted bird’s nest. Her ivy-green eyes, jewel bright, rarely emoting anything other than sternness, had a subdued compassion in them today.

“You will smile, Meadow,” she told me, “and celebrate that your family is healthy and whole, and that the Circle of Nine remains unbroken.”

“Be obedient.” Dahlia murmured Grandmother’s subtext aloud in a soft voice, using her pinky finger to smudge and shade a portion of her charcoal drawing. “And grateful.” Then she lifted her notebook for us all to see—me sad and holding the spent head of a dandelion, the little seeds floating away on the breeze of a wish I didn’t make. She turned a smile up at Grandmother, seeking approval for her sketch.

Grandmother swept a hand over Dahlia’s light brown hair, the only natural-born Hawthorne without the customary deep brown coloring—a gentle stroke along a favorite pet’s fur. Then Grandmother turned her attention back to me.

Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes, but I managed a nod and a quick upturn of my lips. She had a point, though my pride and confusion made it difficult to see. Grandmother always has a reason, whether she shares it or not. “Y-yes, Grandmother.”

“And I’ll take a glass of that wine too, Lilac.”

“Yes, Grandmother,” she said hastily, pouring and standing to hand over the glass with a grace I’d never possess.

Grandmother nodded her thanks, gave each of us another warning look, and then stalked off to join her brother Hare and his wife Tulip.

As Marten huffed and sauntered away to find more sympathetic ears he could gloat to, I downed half the glass of wine.

“Thatta girl,” Rose chuckled. She snapped her fingers at Lilac. “Fill ’er up.”

“We’re not getting her drunk,” Lilac protested. “We’re not at one of your camping weekends in the northern hills.”

Rose stuck her tongue out at her sister.

“I don’t want to get drunk,” I coughed, finishing the last of the wine and pushing my glass towards Lilac anyway. “That was to take the edge off. Now I just want to enjoy the taste.”

Rose bumped my shoulder. “You’re too sensible, Meadow. Just let it out, girl. Otherwise one of these days you’re gonna snap. Better do it with us and this peach wine in a controlled environment.”

Thistle thorns, I would let it out if I could understand what I was feeling. Right now my head was swirling. I wanted to be alone to think and feel without another family member’s voice intruding on my thoughts. But no, I was expected to sit at this table and be happy and enjoy lunch with my family as if nothing had happened, as if the dreams they’d cultivated for me hadn’t just been dashed.

Be obedient. Yep, that was Meadow Hawthorne summed up in one little word. Always doing, and accepting, whatever was best for the family, even if it wasn’t what I wanted. I felt like the clover Aunt Hyacinth planted in her vegetable garden—a cover crop to be sacrificed to let something else thrive in the soil I had nurtured and enriched.

And on top of all that, was I even right to feel this way? I should be happy, as Grandmother had said. The Circle of Nine was unbroken, we were strong, we were prosperous, so why did it matter that it wasn’t me who had an active hand in doing that?

Because I feel like I’m wasting my potential! I wanted to scream. That’s all I’d ever been told. That I had great potential, that I was smart and talented and was destined for great things. But if that was the case, why had this great thing been taken away from me?

“I think I need another drink,” I mumbled.

“Yasss, girl,” Rose said, reaching for the wine.

“Stop goading her, Rose. And this is not a controlled environment,” Lilac whisper-hissed as our family meandered closer to the trestle table, summoned by the scent of roasted chicken now heralding its way to the garden from the kitchen. “There are children present.”

Rose leaned across me to prod at her sister, “At least when I cut loose I can do it in front of the kids. They love it when their Cousin Rosie dances around a firepit in her underwear while making the best s’mores ever. You’re the one who has to sneak out the side gate to meet up with your boy toys for your ‘extracurricular activities’ so the kids don’t see.”

In a very unladylike manner, Lilac lurched forward, forcing me to take my wine glass and lean back in my seat so the two bickering sisters could argue without me getting in the way. “No one’s going to want to marry a forest spirit with burs in her bushes, Rose.”

“Can’t imagine many want to marry a slut, either, Lilac.”

“Lunchtime,” Aunt Peony sang, emerging under the wisteria arbor with a massive platter of roasted chickens. Following dutifully behind her came Otter with a wooden bowl of crispy potatoes drenched in herbed butter in one hand and a field green salad in the other. Boar brought up the rear with a platter of glazed carrots balanced on his shoulder and a wicker basket of steaming rolls braced against his hip like he was hauling laundry. Mom and Dad emerged from the arbor a moment later, Mom with a literal pitcher of gravy and the butter crock, Dad with two even larger pitchers of lemonade.

There was a sudden flurry of jostling as everyone took their seats and rearranged Aunt Hyacinth’s table decorations to make room for the food. The robed elders all sat nearest to the head of the table, as was their right, and when Marten started to smirk at his new position at the table, Uncle Stag clamped a hand on his shoulder and whispered something inaudible in his ear, wiping that smirk right off his face. The rest of us filled in the remaining seats all hodge-podgy. Elbows bumped, place settings shifted, toes were trod on, arms were pinched to encourage someone else to scoot down already, and finally we were settled.

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