Page 6 of In the Light of the Moon

We walked silently back to the house, and try as I did to catch the whispers I sometimes heard in my dreams, there was nothing but the crunching of our footsteps and the normal rustling of the brush and wildlife.

When we emerged from the forest and crossed the short grassy distance between it and the small white house, we entered from the side door that led into the kitchen. I immediately sighed at the first blast of air conditioning. How Granna survived without it when she first bought the house, I had no idea. Though the small New England town had fairly mild summers considering, I wouldn’t be able to stand sitting in a hot, stuffy house through the entirety of the season.

She stood at the kitchen island and expertly worked a knife over a pineapple, cutting it into perfect chunks for us to snack on. I sat with my feet up on the small bench under the bay window and fanned myself with my hand. Granna sat opposite me, and soon, the two of us were eating fruit and sipping cool lemonade.

Beside the spread was an old, leather tome that was thicker than it had any right to be. Granna just called it The Book, a record and text of spells, recipes, and the members of our family. When she first showed it to me, after I reached adolescence and my father’s influence on my outlook of the world lessened substantially, she’d introduced me to the near-ancient text.

She rolled her eyes every time I called it a grimoire, but that’s what it was. Spearing a piece of pineapple with a fork, I flipped open the cover of The Book, and traced a finger over the list of names that trailed down the first page.

The women in our family who studied and learned from The Book, who were able to read and possess it. When I was sixteen, Granna used a special dagger, one that was as old as The Book, and pricked my finger with it. I stifled a giggle when she’d handed me an honest-to-goddess quill and instructed me to write my name. Signing under my dead mother’s name, however, sobered me immediately.

I traced over her name, now, and wondered how much she’d learned before she was killed. She didn’t take The Book with her when she moved away with my father, and his trepidation for the subject of witchcraft as a whole made me sad for her. I loved my father, but he wasn’t nearly as openminded as myself or Granna.

“This salve seems to be working well for my cut,” I said through a full mouth after landing on the page I’d gotten the recipe from. Granna had sat at the table with me while I tried my hand at making the salve from some of the dried and fresh herbs she had on hand. It made me feel like a child, but I wasn’t too proud to acknowledge that I was rusty at this.

Granna grunted and took a long drink of her lemonade. Her eyes were fixed on something behind me, “Well, considering your propensity for bumping into corners and scratching yourself, it will come to good use.”

I chuckled and flipped toward the end of the book. The spells and incantations increased in difficulty the further you went, and, I squinted, this was a page I hadn’t read before.

My head tilted as I considered. “Have you done this one?” I pointed down to the title,Summoning an Elemental Sprit. That seemed like a large jump from making her garden flourish orsurvive the harsh winters. But if it was in here, I had to imagine that at least someone in our line had tried it.

She didn’t answer me for a long time, which I didn’t immediately realize since I was focused on reading the strange directions. I couldn’t see myself ever feeling the need to… call on some otherworldly entity. I flipped back to the section that held more simple potions and settled in on one that supposedly calmed the nerves.For a Worried Mind,it read.

“Oh this is in here for me,” I snorted to myself and finally looked up at my grandmother. Her silver brow was furrowed, as if she was figuring out what to say to me. I squirmed a bit under her steady, imposing gaze, but didn’t look away. “Uh… is this one okay to focus on today?” We still had a good amount of time before my shift at Vinny’s, and with classes starting next week, it would be perfect timing to have an anti-anxiety tonic to help me get my bearings.

Granna passed a strong, slender hand over her chest, trailing it up to her neck and back down. Her skin was a deep brown now after our morning in the sun. “Yes, sweetheart, of course.”

My head ducked back down in a nod, and I shoved another piece of pineapple into my mouth. I read through the short list of ingredients and made note of what I needed to grab from the cupboard and what I needed to harvest from the garden.

“And then, maybe you can teach me how to talk to ghosts.” I lifted my glass of lemonade and thought of green, sour apples.

CHAPTER THREE

Sylvie

Ihurried up the hallway, flats practically slapping on the tiled floor that could’ve used a good polishing. But the Department of English and Literature was an old building with fixtures predating me and probably every other student that was walking past.

The cord from my over-ear headphones jostled and bumped against my front, but I ignored it. I was still getting used to figuring out how much time I had between each of my new classes, and I had checked my phone after a pleasant lunch on the grassy area in front of the library to discover that I was most certainly going to be late. But the calming shade of the tree I’d sat beneath made me feel better after a morning stuck inside. My excitement to be back in school made it bearable, but the hour outdoors was a reprieve I got a little too lost in.

Though I’d generally found college courses to be more lax than the ear-shattering bells and detentions of high school, I still felt a gnawing in my chest at the thought of being late, running into the classroom and collapsing into my desk withunderarm stains visible for all to see. Or worse, being chastised in front of people that were a good five or six years my junior, at least. I thought about the mind-calming tonic I made. It truly was perfect timing for me to stumble upon that recipe, though I would likely need to increase my dosage.

At least, I’d found after the first week I’d been attending Antler Pointe College that I rather enjoyed my courses and professors. When I’d taken a break from college the first time, Dad had been diagnosed with cancer, and since it was just the two of us, I left to make sure he had someone to take him to his chemotherapy appointments and take care of him at home.

Before his body took a sharp downturn, I got to return for a semester to ultimately have to drop out all together. It was a hard few years watching him become weaker and weaker. We had never been particularly close, but it was still heartbreaking to see him descend to a state in which he could no longer take care of his basic needs.

The cord on my headphones bumped against my chest again, sliding along the slippery fabric of my sundress as I ran up the steps to the fourth floor. I was fiddling with it, somehow having gotten twisted between the grassy quad area and here, when my shoulder bumped that of the person I’d been unsuccessful in skirting around.

My fingers were working at the tangle, trying to get my mind to focus on anything besides my father’s sunken face on those last days, so I absently spun to walk backwards and mutter a hasty, “Sorry!”

And I collided back-to-front with someone else.

Hard hands grasped my elbows to steady us both, and I sank into the touch before jerking away and spinning around again.

My arms fell, and the cord, still knotted, dangled in front of me. I knew that I was staring and that my mouth was agape, but my brain felt like it was short-circuiting.

It was him.

Ofcourseit was. That night had seemed so strange, almost like a dream, so why wouldn’t he be standing right in front of me?

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