An Unlikely Witch (14 page)

Moira looked up from her knitting as a pile of books landed with a thud on the coffee table.  “Oh, goodness, child.  You startled me.”  Mostly because an old witch’s head had been off in the clouds, wandering in circles through half-forgotten herbal lore.

Trying to find a tidbit they might have missed.

If the books in the pile were any indication, Ginia had been trying the same thing with rather more fortitude.  “You’ve been doing some research, have you?” 

Ginia looked awfully sober.  “A lot of babies used to die.”

“Aye.”  Not a truth they had hidden from her, but a much younger Moira Doonan well remembered her first reading of some of those books.  Midwife journals, mostly.  Seeing all the weights and genders, knowing the names of the mothers who cried for the loss of their babes—that made it far more real.  “It was a fine day of work back then when a healer could leave a healthy mama and her wee one.”

It was still a fine day of work.

“Maybe the problem was what they used to try to help the mamas get pregnant.”  Ginia picked up one of the dustier tomes, her nose wrinkling in disgust.  “This one says to make a bowl of goat’s blood and raw eggs and drink that every month on the full moon.  And some other yucky stuff if that didn’t work.”

Moira smiled.  It was exactly that kind of brew that had given witches a bad name—the potion had likely tasted foul and smelled worse.  “I’d imagine that was quite a fine remedy for infertility in those days.”

Her student looked entirely flummoxed.

“Ah, sweetling.”  It was so easy to sit here by a comfortable fire, with a full belly, and forget what most of history had been like.  “Back in my great-gran’s day, many women wanted to be having a dozen babies or more.  What do you think happened when they did that?”

Big eyes tried to wrap around such a crazy notion.  “I bet they were really tired!”

Tired in ways most modern women never had to contemplate—although they’d done a fine job of creating new forms of exhaustion.  “Indeed.  And some of them found it difficult to have the fourth or fifth babe.  Their bodies had decided to take a rest.”

An entirely cute nose was back to wrinkling.  “I don’t see how goat’s blood helped with that.”

“It’s full of iron and minerals.”  Moira picked up her needles, thinking back.  In those days, maternal nutrition had been a fierce battle.  “My gran often prescribed an egg a day for a woman who had taken to feeling poorly.”

“I bet she said to cook them.”  Ginia wasn’t giving in on this one easily.  “And I bet she didn’t say anything about adding bug parts or seeds from the maidenhair tree.”

The latter made Moira blink.  “Who said that?”  The herb they knew as ginko biloba grew in her garden, but she hadn’t planted it herself, and didn’t know of any back in Ireland who had, either.  It was one of Sophie’s additions, spurred by her interest in Chinese medicinals.

Ginia frowned, doing the job of every healer trainee and trying to pull up the details of what she’d read.  “It was from the book written by the traveling healer.  She heard a minstrel sing a song about the very luckiest women being the ones who ate the seeds of a maidenhair tree, and they would have babies with fat cheeks and good dispositions.”

Moira snorted.  An aphrodisiac would do nothing of the sort, but Irish bards hadn’t been the first or the last to try to propagate such nonsense on the female population.  “I expect the writer was curious about the herb.”  Songs often carried the hints of truth, even if they blew the rest of things all out of proportion.

“Maybe.”  Blue eyes looked into the fire, lost and a little glum.

Ah.  Done with traipsing through old fertility recipes, then.  “What’s on your mind, my dear?”

“I wanted to help Nat.”  Ginia sighed.  “I read until my eyes hurt, but I don’t think I found anything useful at all.”

She wasn’t the only witch feeling that way.  And perhaps it would help her to know it.  “Sophie’s done scan after scan, and she’s not finding things yet either.  The way of the healer isn’t always quick.” 

A blonde head nodded, not overly convinced.

The hazards of having more talent than the average ten witches.  Moira leaned in for a quick hug—and felt a seed she’d been nurturing for weeks suddenly explode into full bloom.  Something old, indeed.  “Sit here for a moment, my sweet girl.  I think that now might be the perfect time for your Solstice gift.”

Moira made her way over to the small glass-fronted bookcase and took out a tattered box that held one of her most prized possessions.  She turned back to her student, feeling the deep rightness—and the sharp, sweet memory of the moment in time when this gift had been handed to her.

Ginia’s eyes had stretched into big blue platters.

Carefully, Moira settled the simple box in the lap of the girl who would one day be the finest healer an old Irish witch would ever know.  “It is right that you have this, lovey.  My great-gran gave it to me when I was just a little older than you are.”

A soft, awed exhale as trembling fingers touched the top of the box.

Moira smiled at the reverence.  Great-gran would be very pleased.  “The pages are tattered and torn and you’ll need to treat them with care, but there’s such wisdom in here.”

Ginia cuddled the box like it held treasure.  “Maybe there will be something in here to help Nat.”

Perhaps.  Gran had been a fine midwife, and a more accurate source of information than most.  “Come sit with me on the couch, and we can look at some of the pages together.”  It would be pure delight, even if all they did was touch the words of history.  “You’ve a good instinct for clues.  You never know what we might find.”

And it might well be more fruitful than an old witch swimming around in the lost memories of her mind.

-o0o-

Lauren looked up, surprised.  Trinity wasn’t entirely a stranger at Berkeley Realty these days, but she usually crept through the doors in the evening, not at the crack of dawn.

“Hey.”  The vibe of the streets still clung hard to the young woman who now ran Lizard’s castle with a firm hand and really squishy heart.  Especially when she was out in public.  “I need a favor.”

Those were big words in the realtor world—and even bigger words in the concrete shadows Trinity came from.  And Lauren totally owed her one after the whole sending-Missy-to-yoga deal.  She set down her paperwork.  “Okay, shoot.”

“You know that house you guys sold over on Jefferson?”

Lauren slurped more of her coffee and ran back through their recent deals.  Only one on Jefferson.  “You mean the cottage Lizard sold to Helga?”

“Yeah.”  Leather-clad shoulders tensed.  “Do you still have a key?”

Lauren felt her eyebrows fly up—and then caffeine connected the right neurons.  Trinity had been given Helga’s name for the holidays.  An act that had caused a tantrum heard for blocks and smiles on the faces of the three girls who had emerged from the castle victorious.

Trinity was part of Witch Central whether she liked it or not. 

And not by a flicker was Lauren going to suggest anything different.  “I don’t, but I bet Lizard has one.” 

“I can’t ask her.”  Trinity was almost squirming now.  “She’s all mushy and happy with Josh and every time I bang on their door, I figure they’re upstairs knocking boots.”

Lauren snickered.  “Oh, thanks.  Just the mental image I needed this morning.”

The woman newly off the streets grinned.  “I hear you got a pretty hot guy yourself—what are you doing in here so early?”

Coffee nearly splattered all over the room.  Devin had woken up before the fishes.  And that was as far down that track as she was going with an audience watching.  “I’ll get you a key.”  There was probably one hanging around the office somewhere.  Or, knowing Helga, one under the welcome mat. 

“Thanks.”  Trinity got up to leave, mind still holding the edgy discomfort it always carried when she showed up.

The urge to give it a friendly poke was unavoidable.  “Be careful before you let yourself in—I hear there’s a fair amount of boot knocking going on in there, too.”

Something that almost resembled embarrassment slid into Trinity’s mind.  “Yeah.  I heard.  I’ll make sure they’re scarce.”

The I-don’t-belong-here vibe was easing.  Lauren gave it another prod.  “I don’t suppose I can talk you into telling me what you’re up to.”  Nobody in Witch Central was spilling anything good these days—the place was lousy with secrets.

“Nah.”  A saucy grin and another step toward the door.

The body language said she was leaving.  The barest whisper from her mind said something different.  Carefully, Lauren tiptoed in.  “You sure?  I have brownies.  With candy-cane icing.”

“That stuff will kill you.”  A look of disdain—and the unspoken wish, breathing a little louder.

All was fair in love and making friends.  Lauren pulled out her best weapon.  “I have enough for the whole castle.”

“You’re evil.”  Glares and capitulation and a wish daring to exhale.  Trinity stared at a stretch of teal-blue wall.  “I hear Helga pretends that place is some Paris garret.  Thought maybe I’d go shine it up some.”

Helga would love whatever happened, but Lauren was openly curious now.  She pulled the container of brownies out of her bottom drawer.  “Shine it up how?”

“Paint.”  Her visitor’s mind was a tangled mess of tortured cautiousness and a need to tell.  She touched the teal blue on Lauren’s wall.  “This is a good color.”

“You’re going to paint her walls?”  Being a mind witch wasn’t making this any clearer.

“Raven’s gonna do that part.”  Trinity hung her head and pulled some scruffy pages out of her pocket.  “Marco took me to the library and we found some of those old painter dudes.  Streetscapes, he called them.”  Her eyes fired a warning.  “We made copies.  And paid for them and everything.”

“Of course you did.”  Lauren was lost at sea, but she recognized the top picture.  Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
.  “That’s one of my favorite paintings.”

Trinity suddenly looked twelve.  “You think Helga will like it?”

She would—and even cheap prints of it were going to put a serious dent in Trinity’s food budget.  Damn.  Lauren’s negotiator brain cast around for a way to make this work without denting anyone’s pride.

Fingers curled around crumpled art.  “I wanted to maybe get inside for a bit today so I could figure out which paintings would look best on each wall.”

Lauren caught an edge of a thought—just enough to blow her mind.  “You’re going to paint these?” 

A face that said nothing.  “Yeah.”

The image in Trinity’s mind was crystal clear now.  Murals, great glorious swaths of them.  Paris, as done by some of the greatest painters of all time.

And copied by a girl from the streets with a talent none of them had so much as sniffed.

Lauren grabbed her bag and put on her best poker face.  “Let’s go.  Pretty sure I know where Helga hides a key.”

And right after that, she would be making an unscheduled visit to Spirit Yoga.

Trinity had just dropped buckets of awesomeness in her lap.  Some for Helga—and a great big juicy distraction for Nat.

A dream.

-o0o-

Nat jogged down the street, trying to stay warm.  The day was way icier than it had looked from her breakfast nook.  She ran in place for a moment, trying to decide if she needed to go home for gloves and a hat or if she’d survive the three blocks to the studio.

And then she saw her best friend coming around the corner, looking like she’d just kissed Santa.

Nat grinned and gave her a hug.  Today was starting out on a good note.

“Where’s your hat?”  Lauren rolled her eyes and pulled off a long, fuzzy scarf.  “Here, wrap this around you so your ears don’t freeze.  Race you to the diner.  I need bacon.”

Nat fell in beside her friend, winding the scarf around her head as instructed.  Her ears immediately de-iced in gratitude.  “You look happy this morning.”

“Yeah.  You’ve been trying to figure out what to do for Trinity, right?”  Lauren was nearly bouncing.  “But it’s hard, because she’s like Lizard used to be.  She’s just getting rolling on figuring out what her dreams are.”

Nat was well used to having her mind read by her best friend.  “Something like that.”

Lauren stood still for a moment, face bright with precious knowledge.  “She can paint, Nat.  Like really magical, talented stuff.  She’s going to copy a Van Gogh onto Helga’s wall.”

Sometimes the universe was utterly awesome.  “Seriously?”  Nat smiled, feeling possibilities open up.  Not something she’d felt nearly often enough lately.

“I’m not sure she can do it.”  The possibility had clearly just occurred to Lauren.  “I mean, I’ve never seen her paint.  She thinks she can, though.”

And in the world of Nat Sullivan—and Helga, for that matter—belief was more than enough.  “She’s an artist.  Under all the other stuff.”  Just like Lizard, which was somehow so very fitting.

“I think so.”  Lauren shrugged and pulled her collar up around her neck.  “I caught a few flashes.  Something that looked like art school.  And someone she loved who could paint.  I don’t know.  But this matters to her.  A lot.”

And it would have pained her mind-witch friend deeply to have invaded that much.   Nat soaked in the little bits of gleaned knowledge.  “She’s trying to touch it again.  Something she loved once.”

“Yeah.”  Lauren looked a whole lot like her favorite triplet nieces.  “I figured you’d know what to do with that.”

“Not yet.”  Nat picked up their pace, figuring her coffee-addicted friend would keep up.  They needed greasy fuel, and then she’d want some time to think.  History had squashed an artist.  Nat had a chance to help her get up again.  “But I will.”

-o0o-

Moira walked the lonely path up through the rocks, reading the signs as she went.  Unfriendly weeds, bunches of them.  Freshly bloomed and already withering in the harsh Nova Scotia wind.

Earth-witch magic on the rampage.

Her flowers had whispered of the disturbance.  She pulled her cloak tighter against the elements and looked around, seeking the unhappy witch who had left a trail of dying weeds behind her.

Sophie sat on a rock, looking entirely miserable.