Page 5 of In the Light of the Moon

When I’d told her I was moving back, I saw her shock, and it made me feel even smaller. Though I had a few extended cousins through my father and a distant aunt I communicated with sporadically, Granna felt like my true family. Who I could exhale with.

The passage of time, the years I saw etched into her elegant wrinkles, worried me. They signaled the time I’d let slip through my fingers like dry sand on the beach. Warm and fleeting.

I closed my eyes again, felt a drop of sweat bead and slide down my chest. The summer heat had just crested, and I felt its descent in the air. As I prepared for the semester to start, for me to finally finish my degree, I’d also committed to learning from Granna.

Which was why I was sitting out here, sweating my ass off, but weirdly contented to keep doing it.

“As much as I enjoy this,” my voice broke the spell the nature was lulling us into, “what am I supposed to be listening for, again?”

Without opening her eyes at all, Granna waved a delicate hand in the air, “Listening for any and everything that speaks to you. Between working at that awful place and sitting crumpledon the couch on your laptop, you were in desperate need of some sun.”

I passed a hand over the bandage on my arm, trying not to think about the weird tan I’d have when I finally removed it. “Vinny’s isn’t that bad, Granna,” but it felt futile to try and convince her. “And I help you in the garden almost every morning!” Yeah, the spell was definitely interrupted now.

I stretched my arms over my head, and some of my joints gave a resounding crackle. I swung my legs off the boulder, feeling the soft, wild grass between my toes. My lungs filled greedily with the scent of the forest. They said that scent and taste connected most strongly in our memories, and I couldn’t help recognizing the pleasant humming I’d been settling into since moving to Antler Pointe. It spoke of hours exploring the land, mixing up potions with no direction but my own imagination, and listening to the whispers.

“Well, as we’ve established, you’re absolutely hopeless when it comes to anything but basic upkeep of the garden,” she drawled.

“Hey!” I yelled, but it had no bite, just like her rather blunt assessment was more teasing than anything. Granna basically had a whole jungle of houseplants inside her home, and even more impressive than that was her sprawling garden that remained healthy and growing during all parts of the year. Though she trusted me to water and prune, she just made me sit back and watch while she touched on the flowers to make them unfurl or while she used her powers to rehabilitate anything that needed extra caring.

I very evidently didn’t have growing magic.That’s okay, I reassured myself. After I killed one of her rose bushes, Granna had redirected my studies to trying out recipes from The Book and exploring other types of magic.

I went over and sat beside her on the blanket, even though the sun felt like it was biting my skin. What I wouldn’t give for the crisp breeze of fall.

It wasn’t like I didn’t appreciate summer and all that came with it, necessarily. The buzzy, sociable energy was nice. The extra daylight hours made me feel productive. But the reprieve of autumn, where the air had a softer bite, made me feel right. The stress of the impending semester would feel a bit lighter once it started getting cooler.

I looked down at Granna, taking in her darkening brown skin and topknot of gray hair. Even though her eyes were still closed, she asked, “What happened to your arm?” The cut had healed substantially while I slept, but I was still weary of exposing it to the sun while we were out here.

“Scratched myself. Just didn’t want to get a sunburn while it’s still healing.” I tried to inject as much nonchalance into my voice as possible.

But Granna, even with her slips, was frighteningly perceptive. She looked up at me from her lounged position. Her deep brown eyes, like the bark of the forest around us, echoed my own. “You scratched yourself. With what, a switchblade? Your fingernails are long, but not that deadly.” She gestured to the bandage, and I felt increased heat flood my face.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I blurted. Though I already knew the answer, it felt like as good a distraction as any.

She scoffed and started to sit up, “Of course, sweetheart. Witches, shifters, fae, vampires—all of them are a given. Ghosts are a bit more common, though. See them periodically. You know this.” I put all the supernatural beings aside and directed my attention to the part about ghosts. It used to scare me as a child, when she would stop in the middle of a shopping trip or stroll in the forest and speak of spirits that she saw.

I busied myself with righting my bikini top, tightening the straps at the back of my neck, “What… do they look like?”

“You don’t remember?” When I didn’t answer, she sighed and leaned back on her palms.

She was truly a daughter of summer. Her skin seemed to glow underneath the harsh sunlight, and I felt a gnawing regret at not pushing to visit her more often before moving to Antler Pointe this past May. It felt like there wasn’t enough time, now.

“For me,” she said with her eyes still closed, preening toward the sun, “they look almost as tangible as you and I. But they are also transparent, when you try to look at them square on. You’d probably be able to see them better than me if you open up to it.”

And without explaining further, she closed her book, tucking it under her arm, and stood. “What do you mean I’d be able to see them?” A lump was bubbling up in my throat. With her abilities, I’d considered the man from last night being a ghost a possibility… but I realized in that moment that I wanted so desperately for him to be real—alive. Even if I never saw him again.

Granna shrugged, and if I wasn’t so experienced in feigning and schooling my expression, I wouldn’t have caught her doing that very thing, now. “It’s in your blood, after all. You’ve been closed off to it for a while, but you used to see them all the time as a child.”

Another breeze coursed through the forest that would soon be a spectacle of yellows, oranges, and reds.

“Your mother did, too,” she continued. “She used to talk to them.” I could hear the smile in her voice, and I felt my own lips curl upwards in a grin.

My mother had long ago died in a car accident, so I had very few of my own memories of her. But Granna softened when she spoke of her only child, and I relished the moments where she’d fill in more pieces of my incomplete picture of the woman thatgave me life. I wondered if one of the reasons Granna refused to move was because she’d given birth to my mother in her house. It was where she’d raised and taught her about the earth and how to harness its energy.

“Are you ready to head back inside?”

I followed her lead and stood, “Yeah.” A cool glass of lemonade was indeed needed after our morning in the heat.

“Well, let’s have a snack, and perhaps we can tackle another section of The Book.”

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