Page 130 of Scars Like Wings

While Maisie was rolling her eyes at Simone’s joke, I said “I can’t believe you were sitting on this! I have no idea how you were able to do it.”

“Well, you, for one, can’t keep a secret to save your life, so we can start there,” Maisie said to me.

“Wow.”

“I mean, you couldn’t hold a secret if it was water in a bucket, Byrd,” Simone conceded with a shrug.

“Wow. Y’all are some haters. I thought we were friends.” I shook my head as they both laughed. “Okay, so what now?”

After we finished eating and drinking, we paid and headed back to my house. The three of us immediately went to my room, where I plucked the grimoire from where I had placed it in my bed. I had been cuddling it every night since the story about my mom, taking comfort in the scents of home. I passed it over to Maisie.

As soon as she took the tome, she opened it to the back, where the Archaic still weaved elaborate symbols across the pages. I got a strange sense of déjà vu as her hand hovered over the complex runes. For a brief moment, her bleeding on the floor flashed into my brain. How did we know this would work this time? Had she been physically practicing her magic or just working on it in theory? Shouldn’t I have asked that before we tried this? What kind of friend was I that I didn’t?

I didn’t have to fret for long. Unlike last time, Maisie’s eyes remained open. The dark-brown-almost-black color turned into a glowing neon purple with sparks and stars overflowing from her eyes as she stared at the book. Once her eyes changed, Maisie lifted her hand above the book. The lines, dots, geometric shapes, and runes inside runes lit up from the inside out until the entire Archaic was aglow. Maisie’s magical eyes lifted from the brilliant pages to the air above the book, examining something Simone and I couldn’t see.

“What are you looking at, Maisie?” Simone asked, looking between the glowing book in Maisie’s arm and Maisie’s also lit-up eyes staring above it.

“You know how in theIron Manmovies, Tony could create holograms of stuff and move things around. Yeah, that’s basically what I just did with the Archaic. I’m looking at a massive, magical hologram of it right now that I can edit.”

“Is it safe?” I asked.

Maisie glanced at me and smiled. “I’m in control now. The weird black blood is going to stay in the scary movies and won’t make an appearance today. Trust me.”

“Fantastic,” I sighed in relief. “Then please proceed.”

Maisie nodded and returned to the hologram that only she could see. She lifted her hand up. Then she started quickly moving it through the air. It was like her hand was dancing as it shoved things away, zoomed in on things, weaved and tied things together, and typed new characters in. It was graceful like a ballet, and I was mesmerized.

All too soon, it was over as Maisie moved one last piece into place. Suddenly, the lights from the grimoire brightened until a bright purple flat plane appeared above. Simone and I came to stand on either side of Maisie, just as a map of Georgia and Alabama appeared. A twinkling star marked where Blackbell was in southern Georgia. Then as if someone had put coordinates into a magical GPS, a white line formed and made its way through the map toward the Alabama side. It didn’t take long for it to come to a stop in southern Alabama with another star marking a location. Cursive script appeared to describe the destination: 677 Helena Way Morgaine, Alabama 36804.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and searched for the address. It was a little over an hour away. I raised my eyebrows.

“Well, do y’all have any plans next weekend?”

The following Saturday morning, Simone, Maisie, and I all got in my car and headed to the address Maisie found. We drank our coffee, listened to our road trip playlist, played catch-up like we would at our Sunday Brunches, andchatted generally in our usual way of jumping from topic to topic and back again. It felt so regular and normal, as if we were just going to Atlanta or something for fun. But my anxiety reminded me that we certainly weren’t doing that as it clawed at a door in my mind, like a cat wanting to come into a room. I knew if I opened that door, even a crack, I would drown in the unknown and my worry about our actual destination. Ever still, some slipped through as my brain wandered.

Who was this fitch? What should I expect from them? What were they like? Would they be willing to talk? How did they know my mom? Would they be the sign I had given up hope of finding by now?

What if this was going to be like when we met Maisie’s father?

Or worse?

What if this was dangerous? I mean, it would take a lot to take the three of us down with Maisie’s magic, Simone’s water powers, and my… Well, it would be a lot to lift me up, at least, to kidnap me. Besides, Mom had told me to follow my instincts. I had a feeling that we were okay. None of this gave me bad vibes outside of the general anxiety of being a black woman headed into bumfuck nowhere, Alabama.

According to my cursory lookup of the address on Google, I found out there were more livestock in this town than people—if you could call it a town with that kind of population. The address had been on Zillow for years before someone bought it several years ago, a year or two after Pops and Aunt Max had died, to be exact. Now, the house had been remodeled, the farmland cared for, and the lot thriving, if the satellite views were to be believed. It was almost unrecognizable compared to the images of what it used to look like. Anyone who just wanted a homestead life couldn’t be all bad, right?

Right?

Turn left and arrive at your destination: 677 Helena Way Morgaine, Alabama 36804.

Seeing a bright red mailbox next to a dirt driveway, I turned off the gravel road that we had been on for some time—forever grateful that I had an SUV that could survive off-roading. Ahead of us stood a beautiful farmhouse and barn straight from the mind of Joanna Gaines. It was quaint and cozy, a nice little farmer’s getaway from the city life. I parked in the front of the house next to a large GMC truck covered in similar dirt to what was on my 4Runner now after the drive, and the three of us got out.

The house was unassuming, especially up close. It was a wholesome white A-frame build, with a gray tin roof and a bright red carriage door. The many, many windows were open, allowing for the cool autumn wind to flow into the house and the sweet smell of baking to flow outside. The porch was massive, with rocking chairs and an adorable pot of flowers on a table between them. Bushes of rosemary, lemongrass, and lavender made the front smell like delicious herbs, while hydrangeas, peonies, azaleas, and roses added an insane amount of curb appeal to the house. It was everything that any Southern hospitality magazine dreamed of. It also really reminded me of my house growing up, where Mom loved peonies so much that she had them in our front yard and Pops would bring them home just because he loved her. Mom used rosemary in the front, too, to keep bugs away and make the house smell delicious before you even set foot in the house. We lived in a barn-style house as well. My heart ached with the nostalgia of it all, but it was enough to ease some of my concerns.

Before the three of us could start climbing the stairs of the porch, a female voice boomed through the open windows. “Hiya! You can come around back!”

“Wow, we didn’t even have to ring the doorbell,” Simone noticed as we started to make our way around the house.

“She probably has a magical shield to let her know when guests have arrived. I made one for my mom’s house when I was a kid. If she is the witch-fae, I’m sure that shield prevents those with bad intentions from coming in so she can trust anyone she’s notified about,” Maisie explained.

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