Page 33 of Crossroads Magic
The answer was obvious.
That would be me.
I rubbed my arms through the inadequate cotton jacket, and shivered.
Then shivered again.
It was more than just cold that was inflicting me. I became aware, finally, of a sensation of pulling. As if the air around me had grown hands and was trying to tug me sideways.
I looked to my left, where the sensation seemed to be trying to direct me. There was nothing there but the long sofa and a wall full of photos and other mementos, in their regal frames.
I moved toward the sofa and the sensation became even stronger. I was reminded of magnet experiments in high school, when we’d played with iron filings in bottles, sliding them up and down the glass. I’d been more interested in the polarization, how two magnets could repel each other or attract each other, depending on which pole was presented to the other. I would bring one magnet closer and closer to the other, trying to find the point where the attraction was strongest, but not quite strong enough to make the other magnet leap across the space and make contact.
Thatwas what it felt like now. The closer I got to the sofa, the stronger the sensation of invisible tugging became. Did I have a magnet inside me?
I edged over to the sofa, so that my shin bones were pressing up against the front of the frame.
The tugging still pulled at me. “Okay,” I told it, and steppedontothe sofa. My mother, had she been here, would have been appalled at my damp boots being on the velvet cushion.
I paused to sample the sensation once more. Still there, still tugging. Strong enough that I swayed toward the wall, and put my hand up against it to stop myself from falling against the pictures.
On the other side of the wall, then? I considered the wall, only a foot away from my nose. Directly on the other side was the room Ghaliya had used last night. But the floor of the room was several feet higher than this one.
Underthe floor of that room? Was that where this whatever-it-was was trying to direct me?
But that would put the floor of the room at over six feet higher than this one, which it wasn’t. There were only a few steps up to the room. So there was nothing on the other side of the wall but air.
I stared at nothing, thinking hard. Then I refocused on what was right in front of my nose.
A two-foot-high picture frame, with my son Oscar in his college graduation cap and gown.
I slid my fingers under the bottom of the frame and tried to lever it up. On the right, there was no give at all, but the left corner of the frame shifted.
I pulled at the left corner and the frame swung aside like a shutter, revealing a flat chipboard panel set into the wall. A thumbhole on the left said it opened the same way the picture had swung aside.
I took a deep breath then slid the tip of my finger into the hole, just enough to get a grip on the smoothed edge of the chipboard, and pull it out. The panel swung open to reveal a rectangular space with a shelf in it. On the shelf, and the bottom of the cupboard, underneath, sat piles of well-thumbed books, notebooks, and manila folders stuffed with documents.
The urge to get closer faded as I put my hand into the cupboard and picked up the book lying on the top of the pile on the shelf. The pile was high. I had to ease the book out under the top edge of the opening.
It was a plain, cheap notebook, the kind you can buy at the grocery store for a dollar or two, with cheap paper and a brown speckled cardstock cover. The pages did not lay flat and solidly together as they would have when the notebook had been new. Instead, they stood away from each other. The book tried to fan open as I held it and I spotted spidery handwriting on the pages.
It was my mother’s handwriting.
I opened the cover. There was no blank page at the front, bearing the owner’s name and address and phone number, the way I usually marked up a new notebook. Instead, my mother had begun right there on the first page.
September 29, 1996
First snowfall today. The greenway allowed itself to be covered, which surprised everyone—
I closed the book and took in the dozens of other volumes in the cupboard, and the bulging manila folders.
I’d found my mother’s life.
Chapter Eleven
I’m narrowing down my choices, finally. I have three recipes. One of them, I’m pretty sure, was used for the original ward-raising. It’s been such a long haul to find these. I’ll probably have hay fever for a month with all the dust I’ve inhaled this week. But I’m sure that one of the three isthespell. Mother didn’t mark anything, but she did keep pages in interesting…collections. These three were among a bunch of pages clipped together that all had something to do with the greenway.
If I can renew the wards, the Crossing and greenway travelers won’t be in danger anymore. Not for another nine years.
