Page 159 of Magical Moonbeam
The vines curled like fingers, not gripping but guiding. They whispered in old tongues I didn’t know but felt in my bones.
Magic lived here, and it gave me strength, replenishing my cells like a good night’s sleep.
It wasn’t the polished kind of energy in neat spellbooks, but raw magic that was feral and wild, like me.
And I finally recognized that about myself.
I crouched near the mirror tree’s roots, where the cracks bled thin strands of starlight. I pressed my hands into the cold earth, let the Hedge creep into my skin, my blood, my breath.
“Please,” I whispered. “Help me help them.”
A pulse shivered through me. It wasn’t pain or power.
I didn’t call it. It just… arrived.
The Hedge was generous with those who asked without pride.
So I stood, gathered the shimmer rising from my fingertips, like mist and firefly light, and cupped it in my hands. It flickered gold, then green, then something in between.
I pushed it gently toward the roots of the mirror tree.
It floated down like dandelion fluff, resting on the bark’s cracked sheen.
At first, nothing.
Then Celeste’s voice broke through.
“Mom,” she said. “ I-I think it helped.”
I blinked and stepped back into the Ward proper. Celeste was crouched near the tree, her hand just inches from one of the deeper cracks. Keegan stood beside her, eyes on me like he was trying to memorize every inch.
“There,” she said, pointing. “This line… it’s faded a little.”
I exhaled, shaky but steady.
“Then let’s try again.”
I turned back toward the Hedge’s edge, let it brush my skin again, and focused deeper. This time, I reached with everything inside me, every laugh Twobble gave me when I didn’t think I could smile again, every time Nova had pulled me out of a spiral with a reading of hope, every ache of missing my dad, and every breath I took beside Keegan when the world felt like it might end.
Ipouredthat into the Hedge.
Then I gathered it again. Smaller this time. Tighter.
A glimmer of magic, raw and unfinished, spread around me, and I sprinkled it like sugar across the broken roots.
And again… a shift.
The crack was sealed by another inch. I could hear their hollers of joy.
Celeste let out a breathless laugh. “You’re doing it. It’s working.”
Not enough.
But something.
I sagged to my knees, my hands braced in the soil. The Hedge whispered,Rest. Come again when you’re stronger.
But there wasn’t time.
