Page 70 of Truly Madly Magically

He stops at the passenger side of his truck. “Now that we’ve gone through the fucking emotional gauntlet, what other wounds should we poke at?”

He’s joking, I think, but I suddenly see clearly exactly what we have to do. Not only because it’s what I want to do.

Something inside of me insists upon it. “Let’s take a walk down by the confluence.”

I feel him stiffen, because that’s what his mother used to do. “El—”

I ignore his resistance, squeeze his hand, and begin to walk. Down the hill the big house on stilts is settled on, along the pathway Zelda took every morning before she got sick.

Zander isn’t happy about it. He’s grumbling as we go, but I know this is right.

We walk, closer and closer to the confluence, and then I see her. Just where she should be. Standing, looking out toward the confluence. “Don’t you see her?”

“Who?” he mutters irritably.

I grab his hand and squeeze it tight as we walk toward her. I don’t think, don’t plan. I pour some of my magic into him so he can see as she turns, as she begins to walk toward us.

I feel his whole body go rigid. Instantly.

Then the breath goes out of him on an exhale that forms the word “Mom.”

He stops walking, and I can’t pull him along. He’s too big. But it doesn’t matter because Zelda is floating across the ground to meet us.

Her smile is wide. Her eyes glisten. She’s not like Elizabeth and Zachariah—not as fully formed as they are, but she moves for Zander and wraps her ghostly arms around him. I can tell he feels it. That the touch of her spirit shudders through him almost as if she’s really here. Body and soul, instead of soul alone.

“You don’t know the work it takes to make this spirit body thing,” she says to him, pulling back and placing a hand on his cheek. She struggles to do all this, I can see it in her face, though it’s easier here, close to the confluence and its magic.

“They say I’ll get better at it. Stronger. And I will.” She looks from Zander to me and then back again. “You know I’m right here. Whether you see me or not. You know.”

There’s a kind of arrested look on his face, like he’s shocked to see her. Hear her.

Then Zelda turns her silver gaze to me. “She’ll know me too.” She reaches out, that ghostly hand moving against my stomach. I feel it like a breeze, not an actual touch, but it’s enough. It’s more than enough.

Then she lifts her fading hand up to the necklace that was once hers around my neck, and she smiles at me. “As it should be.”

She’s getting quieter, disappearing right in front of us. I grip Zander’s hand, knowing he’ll feel it like another loss no matter how much he believes she’s here, just out of sight.

“You did the imperative,” she whispers into the wind. “Take care of each other.”

Then she’s gone, but I realize in her wake that her insistence I tell Zander wasn’t only about wanting her son to know. It was about all this. He had to know, my coven had to know, for us to make the choices that have brought us, slowly and carefully, here.

Where we might win. It’s imperative that we do.

Zander sits down, heavily, on a bench that looks over the confluence, St. Cyprian, and where we won our Litha head-to-head with the Joywood on the other side. His whole body is shaking, so I magic us a blanket and wrap it around him. Around the both of us, because I’m still here, holding on to him the way he held on to me.

“Ellowyn.”

He doesn’t say anything else. Just my name, ragged and pained.

“She’s trying so hard,” I assure him. “She’ll get there.”

“I know. I could tell. I just...why?”

“So you’d know. Really know. No doubts.” I understand why he might have had doubts about Zelda visiting him. He was worried she would blame him. Worried that he’d been wrong.

Even though he doesn’t cry, it’s my turn to stroke his hair. To press a kiss to his temple. To comfort him. While the stars and moon shine above us, like they’re watching out for us too.

I can hear the sound of birds roosting, likely an eagle and an owl. Maybe even a raven. When I lift my head, I see the glowing eyes of a huge buck I can feel is Jacob’s familiar, Murphy.

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