Page 57 of Crossroads Magic
I couldn’t slam the kitchen door to warn them I was coming, so I cleared my throat and stepped out, then walked toward them, to where the stairs began.
Benedict sucked in a breath with a sound that I thought might be a hiss of impatience. I couldn’t tell for sure.
Harper crossed her arms, watching me approach, her hands tight fists under her elbows. She radiated the never-ending anger that seemed to be her default mood.
I nodded at them both. “Good night.”
Benedict murmured what I thought was “good evening.”
I turned and hurried up the stairs, leaving them alone.
I would sort through all the paperwork I’d re-stuffed into the hidden cupboards, I decided. I had to find my mother’s will.
But instead, I found myself reading through her journals. I grew steadily more frustrated and uncomfortable, to the point where I realized I was squirming on the sofa, for the journals were full of talk of spells and magic, and my mother’s ongoing search for meaning, for more power, for spells that would actually work….
Had it been some type of dementia that had made her live this fantasy life?
But people believed in gods. Wiccans believed in magic. Pagans danced around standing stones on the solstice and believed in even more ancient powers. My mother believed in magic. So what? It made her happy in a low key way, this search of hers for meaning and power. She had been contented, here in the Crossing. Who was I to be disappointed in that?
I shut the notebooks with a slap, and put them away, then turned out all but one light so that Ghaliya could find her way to her bedroom, then settled back on the sofa to sleep.
Tomorrow, I would find the will, and phone the Sheriff’s office for the coroner’s verdict, and then Ghaliya and I could leave. Finally. I was starting to feel that the sooner we got out of here, the better.
Chapter Seventeen
After breakfast, I took the scraps out to the greenway and was astonished to find that the day was bright and sunny. The clouds had departed, leaving blue sky above the trees.
I didn’t know if that meant it was warmer. It certainly didn’t feel like it. I wore my mother’s poncho and paused at the bottom of the back stairs to put on the gloves, too. Then I walked slowly, enjoying the sunlight, to the place where the scraps were left.
Animals had been eating what I’d last left behind, which pleased me. I dropped the fresh scraps and gave the tub a good thump or two on the frozen ground to make the clinging bits drop.
I looked up when I heard soft voices from further up the greenway, then straightened up, astonishment pushing a gasp out of me, making the air in front of my face steam.
A group of people walked along the greenway toward me and the crossroads. There was perhaps a dozen of them, both men and women. But they seemed barely human. They wore clothing that seemed to be made from put-together fragments of cloth, mostly browns, greys and greens. Even their shoes seemed to be made of scraps of cloth.
Their skin was differing shades of brown, from deep chocolate to ochre. But each of them had the same roughness in their skin that I’d seen in Wim’s, when I got close to him. I’d thought it was a type of psoriasis, or some other skin rash that raised the skin and made it bumpy. Yet these people had it all over their faces and necks.
All of them had long hair, including those I thought were men. Into their hair were twined leaves and twigs and flowers. Some of the men had long beards that also were also decorated.
The group drew close to where I stood on the side of the road with a dirty tub in my hand and my mouth hanging open. None of them looked at me. It was as if I was invisible to them. But as the front of the group came level with me, one of the men in the front turned his head and looked at me.
He nodded.
I have no idea what prompted me to do it. Perhaps it was the surrealism of watching this strangely clad group of people travel along the greenway. I bent my head. Then bent from the waist, so that I was bowing.
When I straightened up, the front of the group, including the man who had nodded at me, had moved past me. The group walked steadily onward. Trailing at the end of the group was a woman with white flowers in her long, pale brown hair. She turned her head and smiled at me.
Then she skipped ahead to catch up with the group.
I stared at the road where they had passed, for the road was moving.
No, not the road. As I watched, grass and other plants began to grow. It was as if I was watching a time exposure video speeded up a hundred times faster than normal. The grass shoots rose up into the air, grew fatter and greener. Plants reached upwards, their stems extending, branching, growing leaves, then flower buds that swelled and opened up into pretty blooms.
I slapped my hand over my mouth to hold in whatever reaction might have spilled out of me. My heart was slamming against my chest. I heard the tub hit the ground. It had slipped out of my hand.
I watched the grass and the flowers nodding in the sunlight, everywhere the strange group had trod.
Impossible!The silent voice in my mind was strident. Shrill.
