Page 11 of Wallflower Witch

“Come on,” I whisper, straining just. A. Little. Farther… A face pops through the tree opposite me with a giggle, a small child staring up at me through wide, innocent eyes. “Aah!” My eyes open wide as I scream, my feet swinging up as my body pitches into the hollow core. Windmilling my arms, I manage to catch myself before I get stuck face-first in the tree and I lift myself up, a couple inches away from the ghost’s face.

The child reaches out, sending a shiver through me as he tries to touch me but fails. His hand just passes through me. He frowns down at his hand, waving it back and forth a few times before he focuses on the gem below me. “Shiny?” he asks, looking back up at me.

“Yes, yes! I need to get the shiny,” I say with forced cheer, working to keep the tremble out of it. I don’t want to freak out on this little boy.

He tilts his head, reminding me of Quoth when he’s trying to figure out how to trick me into giving him more treats. Then the boy reaches down and closes his fist around the object. As soon as his skin connects with it, it glows, a bright green beam that instantly makes me feel refreshed, erasing my exhaustion. The boy lifts it, then holds it out for me to take.

“What? How are you doing that?” I whisper, thinking back to all the ghosts who haven’t been able to touch anything.

He grins widely, releasing the small turquoise gem into my palm. He begins to fade away. “Look deep inside of yourself, Morrigan. You’re an O’Byrne. The magic flows through you like all of us before you. Open your mind. Trust it to guide you. Trust yourself and save us before the evil wins.” The voice feels ancient, full of pain and suffering and not at all like when the child spoke before. It resonates through my soul; wrapping around me like a mother’s hug before it fades off as the boy disappears completely, leaving me dangling awkwardly from the dead tree with a glowing gem in my hand.

“Morrigan!” Patrick’s shout is shaky and high-pitched, the sound strained like he’s struggling to form words.

It’s the first time I’ve heard him be anything aside from calm, and I nearly face-plant into the tree from the second heart-attack inducing surprise in thirty minutes. With my amazing gymnastic skills, also known as How-to-Capture-a-Troublemaker-Bird 101, I shimmy around until I can hop out of the tree, taking off at a sprint for the crypt.

My feet slow as I reach the corner of the small wooden building that houses the crypt entrance, my palms sweating the nearer I get to where Patrick’s shout came. An oppressive, dark cloud hangs over the ground, thick and choking, and for the first time I understand what Patrick meant about the feeling of not belonging. I fight to step forward—closer to where Patrick needs me—while every instinct screams at me to run far, far away.

My stomach in my throat I creep closer, my shoulders hunching more with every step I take. “Patrick?” I hiss quietly. “Where did you go?”

“Morrigan! Over here!” he calls from my right, and I spin and dart in that direction with an eep. “Watch out for those vines!” Patrick shouts just as I trip over the tangle of brown strands covering the ground in a five-foot section out from the crypt and land on my ass. “I think they’re cursed. They’re trying to bury me in the crypt.”

“They’re trying to WHAT!?” I screech, crawling back from the apparently evil things. “I didn’t sign up for some fucked-up plants-versus-humans game.”

Patrick chuckles, his voice closer now. “Just come help me out of here, please. They seem to be avoiding you. Must be that special O’Byrne blood.”

I get to my feet and turn to find him, trying to see through the clouds surrounding me. Finally, it clears for a moment and I can make out a mass of vines writhing against one of the walls of the crypt. Patrick’s head becomes visible through the chaos for just a moment, then disappears again. His body sinks lower and lower into the ground with every pass of the vines. I sprint over and shove my hands into the vines without thinking, grabbing the ones holding him hostage and ripping them from his body. The vines shiver and writhe away underneath the wooden building, leaving Patrick muddy and half-buried in the ground.

“Oh my gosh! Are you okay?” I gasp, brushing dirt and dead leaves off his face. “Let me get you out of there.” I glance around. What can I use to free him? I spot a black backpack sitting on the ground a few feet away, a foldable shovel tied to the side. I’m not sure how a backpack would get all the way out here and be in such great shape, but I’m not about to complain. With a triumphant shout, I grab it, setting the gem from the tree at the doorway to the crypt so I won’t lose it, and get to digging.

“Not to rush you or anything, but I can’t move my hands,” Patrick teases me, his voice once again back to the calm tone I’ve become accustomed to. “The vines came out of nowhere once I approached the crypt. I’m not sure if it’s a protection spell gone wrong or some side effect of the dark magic attack.”

“Well, I’m glad they didn’t bury you completely. I’m sorry I didn’t get here before you were in the ground. I got a little stuck in the tree.” I sink the shovel into the ground. The earth is harder than I expect after how easily Partick was buried. It takes a bit of effort, but soon I’ve dug out enough to pull him free. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he pants, lying back with a laugh as he stares up at me. “You sure know how to make a person feel out of shape. I haven’t run this much since I was a kid!” After a moment, he sits up, turning to me excitedly. “Oh yeah, the tree! Did you find anything?”

I glance around, remembering that I set the gem by the crypt. It’s not glowing anymore, and now that I have a second to study it, I can see that it was a necklace at one point in time, the chain gone with time but the rest of it is still in one piece.

“Yeah, this gem was in the middle of the tree. I was struggling to reach it, then a ghost boy handed it to me.” I frown as I recall how it began to glow when the boy touched it, then bend to pick it up.

My fingers close around the gem as a burst of wind hits me in the cheek and I lose my balance. Quoth, a couple of vines proudly dangling from his talons, narrowly avoids whacking into me as he dive-bombs Patrick and I. I catch myself on the crypt’s door right before I fall face first into a pile of dead leaves. “Whew! That was close. Good work with the vines, Quoth.” I giggle, righting myself and pushing away thoughts of how Patrick almost ended up inside there. “Here’s what I—”

A rumble interrupts my sentence. Teal-colored beams of light explode from my body, hitting the door of the crypt, then rushing across the outside of the building. At first it seems like nothing changes, but then…

The dead leaves turn to dust, and in their place, sprouts of green grass appear, filling a small circle around where we stand. The crypt itself changes, too. The rotting wood and centuries of dirt and grim fade away until it looks brand new, with fresh pine plank carefully fitted together and gentle green vines dance playfully up the sides.

“Are you seeing this?” I whisper to Patrick, backing away from the crypt with wide eyes. “What happened?”

“I think you did this,” he says in awe. The teal light dances up his legs, swirling around his body before it disperses completely, leaving him healed and the small circle of earth around us green and bursting with life. “I think you tapped into the gem and used it to jumpstart your powers.”

“That’s not possible.” I shake my head, overwhelmed by everything. “I’m just somebody who sees ghosts and likes history. Not some cool person with superpowers.”

Patrick chuckles. “Well, I thought you were cool even when you just saw ghosts, so it’s not a surprise to me.” He holds out a hand with a wink. “Now let’s check out the dead people, my heroine.”

We walk to the entrance and slowly push open the door.

“Hi! I didn’t think anyone would find me in here!”

Ijerk back, bumping into Patrick. His wide eyes meet mine.

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