Page 14 of Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Book
And ask yourself if you really want to interfere with another’s free will.
Dammit! If deciding what you wanted was this hard, no wonder people ended up summoning Satan. Crystal would just have to figure it out later. There was no time to lose. Russell may have been gone that morning, but he would be back at some point, and Crystal wanted to be ready. She returned to the love spell and jotted down a list of ingredients. Matches, an ironpot, fresh water from an unsullied spring, DNA of the beloved (preferably blood), honey, hot sauce, chocolate, the pollen of a wildflower, and a lock of her own hair.
Crystal loaded a tote with all the ingredients she had on hand—including a Band-Aid that Russell had left in the bathroom wastebasket—and hurried through her back door to find the others. For twenty-five years, she’d washed dishes at a kitchen window that looked out at the edge of a forest. Only a handful of times had she bothered to cross the moat of mulch and petunias that separated her tidy world from the one beyond. When they were little, her kids would disappear into the wilderness for hours at a time. They’d return for dinner filthy as pigs and happy as clams. She’d heard them talk about a spring somewhere out there—and the trail they’d forged to reach it. When Crystal looked, there it was. Her kids had been out of the house for a while now, but somehow the path remained clear. It was almost as if it had been waiting for her to find it. She set off into the forest, relieved to be taking matters into her own hands.
Once Crystal was well on her way, her mind returned to the question she hadn’t been able to answer.What is it you want?What she really wanted more than anything, Crystal realized to her surprise, was to scream. She’d never thought of herself as an angry person. In fact, she’d spent two decades teaching seven-year-olds how to cope with their feelings. But she hadn’t bothered to deal with her own. She’d been stuffing her rage down deep inside of her until every cell in her body was smoldering. It seemed safer to keep it there. The last thing she wanted to do was offend someone. But in the woods, there were no neighbors to frighten. No church ladies to scandalize. No children to hear—and later repeat—all the terrible things she desperately needed to say. Crystal stopped on the path and let it all out in a great gushing torrent of profanity and heartbreak and rage.
“Fuuuuuuuck! Fuck you, Russell, for breaking your vows. And fuck you, Janelle, and your fucking cleavage. Fuck me for believing in happily ever after. And fuck you, Mama, for not telling me how things really are. And fuck Lula Dean and her book banning posse! Fuck that fucking Nazi! FuckMr. Pig! Fuck my kids for not calling every week after I worked my ass off to raise them! Fuck all you fucking fuckity fuckers!!!”
The moment it was all out of her, the wind swept it away. The trees whispered their reassurances, their voices the soothing sound of rustling leaves. A hawk screeched its support and a dove cooed in sympathy. The smell of rich earth and green chlorophyll surrounded and sedated her. The dappled sun danced on the leaves. Emptied of her rage and resentment, Crystal kept going, feeling lighter than she had in years.
The path disappeared at points and reappeared later. She couldn’t tell how far she’d traveled and it never occurred to her to check the GPS on her phone. The sun was directly overhead when she found the spring—its crystal-clear waters collected inside a bowl it had carved into a boulder. She stood in shock at the edge of the water. A magical fairy-tale oasis had been out here all along and she’d never even suspected.What do you want?The question popped back into her head, and this time she had a different answer. She wanted a fucking swim. Without a second thought, Crystal stripped out of her clothing and jumped in buck naked. How many years had it been since she had gone swimming? How many hours had she wasted worrying about stretch marks and cellulite? The only thing that mattered now was that the water was cold and the sun hot anddamn,her boobs felt amazing now that they were out of that bra.
When she emerged, she lay naked on the boulder until the sun dried her off. She thought, perhaps, she should get to work on the spell. But she didn’t want to. She ate the chocolate bar and opened the book she’d brought.
There is no need tomakemagic. There is magic all around us. We need only to recognize it and make use of what is already there.
Crystal’s old self would have rolled her eyes. Now she could see it. The seeds with their perfectly formed wings twirling down from above. The oak sapling rising in the last spot of sunlight. A tree trunk, which had stood for hundreds of years, carved and carbonized by a bolt of lightning. The pollen that sprinkled the boulder like fairy dust. Every patch of groundwas a world of its own. Every life-form inside it was thriving, dying, or transforming. And all these years, she’d been trying so hard to keep things the same.
What do you want?The sun was heading west, and she still couldn’t answer the question. She found it much easier to list all the things shedidn’twant. Arguments seemed pointless. Accusations the same. But going back to the way things had been simply wasn’t an option. She realized there were no rules for her to follow now, and that was totally fine. Crystal no longer believed in them anyway. And if she ever saw another plate of chicken parmesan, she planned to fling the fucking thing at the nearest wall.
The ping of a text message brought her back to the world. She rooted through her discarded clothing until she found the phone. Russell was announcing he’d be home for dinner. The clock informed Crystal it was almost four-thirty. She needed to get going if she planned to have dinner on the table by six. Crystal picked up a nearby rock and smashed the phone. That was what she wanted to do. She had no desire to go back yet.
She lay by the edge of the pool and watched the sun set and the moon rise. The light made her flesh appear to glow. She slept and woke in the morning to the sound of birds chattering in the trees all around her. When she opened her eyes, she knew her marriage was over—that it had been for years. It surprised her to realize she had no desire to blame Russell. He’d been an excellent husband and father. Perhaps things hadn’t ended as neatly as Crystal would have liked. And Russell could do a lot better than Janelle freaking Hopkins. But Crystal cherished the memory of their first decade together, and she did not want to resent the man who had made her so happy—even if he no longer could.
At dusk a hunting dog bounded out from between the trees and practically pounced on her. Crystal was wearing a shirt at that point, but little else. A camo-clad man in his mid-twenties soon emerged. A dirty blondbeard covered most of his face. The little that was left was obscured by a baseball cap or concealed behind sunglasses. He held a rifle to his chest, which was dressed in a hunting vest with orange safety patches.
When the man reached the clearing, he froze, as though he’d stumbled upon an exotic beast—and he was trying to determine whether to shoot it or run.
“You Crystal Moore?” He hadn’t let down his guard. He still had the rifle in a ready-carry hold, as though he might have to use it.
“Yes,” she told him. She kept her voice neutral—her answer merely a statement of fact. She was alone in the woods with a man holding a gun. His dog was stationed three feet away from her, awaiting its owner’s command. She kept her eyes on the man, sensing what might happen if she dared look away.
Finally, he pulled a walkie-talkie out of a holster and held it up to his mouth. “Got ’er.” Then he let it drop. “You get lost out here? Your husband’s got the whole county looking for you.”
If he was looking for her, why bring a gun? “I’m not lost,” Crystal said. “I just needed some time to myself.”
She saw the man’s head turn toward the book she’d been reading. She’d left the dust jacket back at the house, and the gold-embossed title on the cover shone in the sun. When the man returned his attention to her, she could sense his hatred and fear. There was no telling what he might have done if he hadn’t already radioed the search party.
“You know what the Bible says about witches, don’t you?”
Crystal smiled. He wanted to scare her back into submission. That’s how men like him kept women in their place.
Who the fuck cares what he thinks? Crystal asked herself. What doyouwant? A hot bath and a sandwich, she thought. “I haven’t eaten in ages. Would you mind calling Russell and asking him to make me a PB&J?”
“You want yourhusbandto makeyoua sandwich?” the man sneered.
“He won’t mind,” Crystal said. “He’s a better man than most.”
Russell was in the backyard, waiting to greet her with a PB&J when she and the hunter emerged from the woods.
“She’s fine. But if I were you, I’d keep a better eye on her in the future,” the man told Russell. He handed her husband the book, as though it could explain the whole episode.
“If he wereyou,every woman he met would run away screaming,” Crystal said with a mouth full of peanut butter.
The hunter took a step in her direction and Russell rushed to smooth things over.
“My wife gets cranky when she’s hungry,” he explained, putting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “We’re both real grateful for all your help, Logan.” Once the hunter moved on, Russell glanced down at the book, then made sure no one else was in earshot. “Everyone’s going to say you’re a witch now,” he whispered, sounding relieved and amused.
