Page 6 of Big Little Spells
But for the first time, I almost feel like I’m home.
When everyone turns to stare at me—including Emerson right beside me, still gripping my hand—I smile like I planned this whole thing all along. Fake it ’til you make it, or something, because that’s always been my philosophy and I’m still here.
“Well,” I say, drawling out the single syllable because it’s that or sob into the strange quiet that descends over us, here in the weird, fraught aftermath of the Joywood. And that whole saving our hometown thing we did earlier. And the mess that lies ahead of us, like it or not. “I guess we’re having a high school reunion after all.”
Around me, no one says anything, maybe lost in the horror of high school. Or possibly contemplating Nicholas’s dramatic exit.
So I keep going. “I guess I need to collect my things if I’ll be home through Litha,” I say brightly. And maybe inside I’m tense like a fist, but to my sister and my old friends I’m going to keep on looking as cheerful as a daisy. My heart stutters over the home part, but I ignore it, along with the tears that threaten to sting my eyes. I will not let the Joywood steal my peace. And I will not show my soft underbelly in a field on a farm in Missouri, surrounded on all sides by my apparently as-yet-unburied past. Deep inside, I feel an old spark ignite. “Smudge won’t care for being left alone in the wilds of Sedona.”
Emerson’s gaze flickers, a slight frown tugging the corners of her lips downward. “You still have Smudge?” She turns that frown at Jacob, who for some reason looks apologetic.
I remind myself that I’m a freaking daisy and smile. “Of course I still have her. Was I supposed to leave her behind?”
“The exiled and mind wiped aren’t supposed to keep their familiars,” Jacob says. Like he’s reciting a rule book. Clearly perfect for Emerson in every way, and I’m suddenly remembering what it was like to go to school with all this perfectionism and overachievement.
Be a daisy, not a dick, I order myself. “Smudge is just your average house cat, Emerson.” And thank the moon she isn’t around to hear me say that.
Emerson blinks once but doesn’t belabor the point before she smiles broadly. “You’re cold. We’re all tired. We’ll all go home and regroup tomorrow.”
As if I don’t have a million complicated feelings about home. As if she’s naturally in charge of all of us.
Emerson squeezes my hand, but she looks at Jacob. Where Emerson once only had room for St. Cyprian and leadership roles and community service and helping Grandma at Confluence Books, that ring on her finger suggests she now has space for an entire man she’s going to share her life with.
If that’s not evidence of change, I don’t know what is.
But I also notice Jacob’s subtle nod. There’s a slight fidget of Emerson’s hand, then the ring disappears.
Is it a secret? That doesn’t make sense, but then again, the two of them are clearly having some kind of telepathic conversation the rest of us aren’t in on.
Emerson reaches out for Georgie then, and Georgie for Ellowyn. Ellowyn clasps my hand tighter and smiles at me. I feel that smile like a key in a lock I didn’t know was there. It’s the same smile I remember from when we were little. Ellowyn smiling at me on the playground, just like this.
It feels like even if everything isn’t going to be okay here, always a possibility with witches all over the place, we’re okay again.
I’m more than a little shocked at how much it seems I need to know that.
We shoot up into the sky as if we’re heading straight for the moon. Then we move over the river, and I catch my breath.
I used to be able to do this whenever I wanted. I assume I still can, though I haven’t tried. Even the weakest witch can fly through a dark St. Cyprian night on their own. But I haven’t flown in a decade.
Maybe there was a part of me that told myself I was making all this up. Or misremembering it. Maybe I had no choice but to tell myself that losing this wasn’t torture.
Because flying again is sheer joy.
High in the sky, I can see Jacob’s farm and the old cemetery where too many Wildes are buried, including my grandmother, who I can’t bear to think about right now. I can see the two rivers that even humans agree cut through this part of Missouri and Illinois, but I can also see the third river that human maps claim never comes near enough to the other two for all three to mix.
But they do.
Our ancestors hid the real confluence when we settled here after Salem, because a confluence of three rivers means power, even to humans. Better to keep the real power to the witches who know how to use it well and let the occult-loving humans flock to places like Pittsburgh, where three rivers might meet but any power was drained long ago.
I haven’t seen the three rivers that marked the first part of my life in a long time. Not from this angle. Not from up so high I feel like we’re made of stars and the rivers underneath us are liquid silver.
Down below, St. Cyprian is spread out, a carpet of lights set against the hills, the rivers, the marshland in the distance. Up here, I can’t see the details of my hometown, though all its landmarks seem embedded deep inside me. From Nicholas Frost’s falling-down house high on the bluff at one end, down along the cobbled streets past the brick buildings like my grandmother’s bookstore, winding around to the house my ancestors built back when this was the great frontier.
Up here, in the dark, with the moon making tracks across the sky, I can admit that it’s beautiful, my forgotten river town. And that part of it lives in me still.
Always, something in me whispers.
I find myself repeating the words my grandmother taught me long ago. Time is mine until time takes me home. It feels different now.