Mulberry Wands (33 page)

She heard him approach, felt the slight
warmth as he came to stand by her. He held a spear, a fire-hardened
piece of wood about the length of a barbecue skewer.

He placed the point of the skewer on her
chest. “Garaant is still dead.”

“You know what? Fuck you.” She grabbed his
ankle and released the pain spell she’d seen last night while doing
research on the computer.

Yoonu jumped back, cursing.

She snatched his spear and leapt to her feet.
He tried to grab it from her, but she stabbed at him with it, just
narrowly missing.

“Give me my spear, woman,” he said.

“Come and take it.” She bared her teeth.

He lunged forward. Bastard was fast. He was
almost fast enough to grab it from her, but she stabbed at him and
managed to ward him off. He lunged again, and she stabbed, but he’d
been feinting, and he reached around and clasped the butt end of
the spear. She pulled back, but he was twice as strong as her and
jerked it from her grasp.

She jumped forward, trying to hit him with
another pain spell, but the asshole sidled past the diameter of her
tether. He grinned.

“You want this?” He raised it over his
head.

She didn’t say anything, just panted, glaring
at him.

“Here, you should have a weapon.” He threw it
at her, hard, point first.

If he hadn’t warned her with his trash talk,
it would have gone straight through her chest. As it was, she had
just enough reaction time to dodge, causing the spear to skim her
shoulder. It hit the dead grass behind her, bouncing to land point
down in the earth. She ran to it, hoping to reach it before he did.
It was just barely within reach, if she stretched as far as she
could with her tethered ankle behind her. She closed her hand
around the point and pulled it free.

“Ha!” she crowed, but her gloating was short
lived as something struck her in the head.

He’d flung a pebble at her. It was about the
size of an almond. She touched her head and felt blood. The
headache started by Sphinx smacking her into the ground now
doubled. He flung another stone, striking her in the nose.

She held up the spear to protect her. The
asshole was searching for another stone. Not finding one, he threw
a twig. She batted it aside.

A shadow passed over her. She looked up to
see what it was, and another stone struck her in the leg. This one
was sharp, and cut as much as it bruised.

He threw two more, in quick succession.

She swung, but couldn’t decide which one to
block and missed both. One hit her in the neck, the other on the
shin. It had been too many years since softball, and pitches in
softball don’t aim at your head or knees. A trickle of liquid fell
into her mouth, and when she licked her lip, she tasted blood. Her
nose. Had he broken it? She couldn’t feel the pain of her nose over
the other, louder pains.

Yoonu circled around her, looking for more
stones. He was smiling as though stoning a woman were a lot of fun.
That, more than the pain, more than the injustice of the whole
trial, made her want to cry. That someone would want to hurt her,
that someone would find hurting her fun.

A man shouted something in the translator
language. He sounded angry.

“Tuusit?” she called out.

Another stone struck her in the back of the
head, hard. She pitched forward, barely catching herself on her
arms.

But another stone didn’t come. Yoonu was
fighting with someone. She looked back to see.

It was Tuusit. She heard him curse and grunt,
struggling with Yoonu. He’d come to save her. She looked up. They
grappled, then broke free. Tuusit had a short spear, and it looked
like he’d gotten Yoonu with it. Yoonu reached down like he was
going for a stone, but when he came up he instead flung dust into
Tuusit’s eyes. Tuusit backed up, but he didn’t falter, he held the
spear in front of him thrusting to ward the asshole off while he
recovered.

Susan was watching, enrapt, so she didn’t see
the shadow pass over her again, nor hear as the owl settled behind
her.

“Hooo,” it said, quietly. It leaned over,
snapping. It was huge, and its beak was so sharp it had snipped
through the sinews easily. It leaned over her, its shadow large
enough to block out the sun.

It must have been a Sunward, if it was out
during the day. And was it going to eat her when it realized she
couldn’t speak owl? She cringed.

The owl grasped her in its talons and leapt
into the air. She hadn’t thought she could be any more afraid. She
was wrong. The ground plunged away from her, impossibly far. She
screamed, her bowels loosened and she clung to the owls claw as
tightly as she could.

She kept her eyes shut, even when she felt
the owl bank and descend. It wasn’t until the owl hooted again and
released its claws that she looked around to see where she was.

Maggie’s trailer.

“Paul?” she asked, looking up at the owl.

The owl nodded, and hooted louder.

“Where’s Susan?” Maggie said. The trailer
door banged. Maggie came closer, slapping her sandals against the
ground. “You said you’d bring her, so where is she?”

“I’m here!” Susan shouted up to her mom.

“Susie? What happened to you?” Maggie scooped
her up, cradling her close to her chest like a precious doll. “Oh,
my baby, you’re hurt. I’ll get you fixed up.”

Susan tried to look at Paul but her mom’s
back blocked the view. By the time Maggie carried her into the
trailer, Paul had vanished.

“I’m big,” Susan said, looking at her hands.
She was lying in her mom’s bed, naked except for a fuzzy raspberry
colored afghan flung over her. It was warm in the trailer, warm and
stuffy, overlaid with the smell of incense, pot, and cigarette
smoke. “I kind of wanted to see how you did the dissolution.”

“I waited till you were asleep. Ruby said
that spell hurts a lot,” Maggie said. She had a cigarette in her
mouth, as usual, but it wasn’t lit. “You slept like the dead. You
musta been tired.”

“Was it hard?” Susan asked. She felt a lot
heavier now, and not as strong. It sure was good to be big
though.

“Nah. The owl told me the Encanto mage did
it, and then it just took a phone call and an afternoon’s work. Me
and Andrea go way back. I knew her back when she was still
Andrew.”

“Thanks.” Susan sat up. It had grown dark
outside. She felt stiff, like she’d been sleeping for days, though
according to the clock it was only eight thirty. She leaned forward
over her legs, stretching. The cut on her calf was gone.

“You healed me.”

Maggie stuck her leg out, lifting the hem of
her dress. She pointed at the tiny pinprick, a cut no larger than
one made by a bamboo skewer. “Non-proportional wound exchange. You
and Jess developed that spell, remember? When the nest fell out of
the palm tree during the monsoon and you guys were all sad about
the hurt birds?”

Susan rotated her neck. She should have been
stiff there too, from the whiplash that Sphinx gave her, but she
felt fine. “Wow. Great job. I was really hurt.”

“Yeah, well, you’re still my little girl.
Gotta take care of my baby.” Maggie had a string of beads around
her neck, and she was playing with them. “Hey, Susie, I’m
sorry.”

“Susan,” she corrected. “For what?”

“For, you know, not helping you. Ruby got on
my case about not noticing that you were gone.”

“It’s okay,” Susan said. She wished she could
have seen the conversation between Maggie and Ruby. Ruby must have
really lit into her if Maggie felt guilty enough to apologize.

“I can’t make wands no more. Me and the owls
had a talk.”

“Yeah,” she said, not like she cared, but
because Maggie seemed a little upset. She pulled the afghan closer
around her, putting her fingers through the yarn loops. “That’s too
bad.”

“Well, too much work anyway, even if the
money was nice.” Maggie let the beads drop. “You know what you
need? A vacation. We could both use one. How ‘bout we drive down to
Rocky Point for a few days, hmm? Get some seafood, spend some time
on the beach, have a few margaritas.”

Susan had to admit it sounded like a
fantastic idea. “I can’t. I owe Zoë a couple months’ rent, and I
gotta see if I can get my job back.”

Maggie tsked. “Why do you always gotta be so
responsible? C’mon, ceviche and Coronas on the beach. Why can’t you
loosen up, live a little?”

Because someone had to be the grown up. That
was the obvious answer, the one she’d given before, but Susan
didn’t feel like fighting. She leaned forward and hugged her mom,
then kissed her on the cheek.

“Can I borrow some clothes?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Maggie picked up a green
dress, sniffed it, then tossed it aside. She picked up a tie-dyed
sundress. It passed the sniff test, so she tossed it at Susan.

Susan slipped it over her head. It was huge
on her, and the spaghetti straps threatened to slide off the
shoulders. She never wore dresses like this. She was really too
busty to go without a bra, and it was hard to find strapless bras
in her size.

“You want to borrow some underwear?” Maggie
offered, holding up a pair of white granny-panties.

“Um, no thanks.” Going commando was way
better than wearing your mom’s slightly-clean underwear. “Can you
give me a ride home?”

“Can’t. Car’s busted,” Maggie said. “Mechanic
said it’s gonna cost six hundred bucks. I don’t suppose you can
help me out?”

“I’ll see if I have anything over after I pay
the rent,” Susan said. “Don’t worry, Zoë can give me a ride.”

Zoë could, and did. Zoë was happy to see her,
though her quiet hug was nothing compared to the way Darius greeted
her when she walked in the door.

“SUUUUUSAN!” She thought he was going to leap
over the banister, but he settled for running downstairs and
scooping her into a hug, swinging her around. “Girl, you oughta
wear that dress more often.”

“I was gonna go upstairs and change.”

Zoë and Darius both followed her upstairs,
like they didn’t trust her to vanish again if she left their sight.
The new guy came out of his room, probably to see what the racket
was.

“Hey, man, look who’s back!” Darius shouted.
“And big now!”

“Hi, I’m Griff,” he said, offering a
handshake. “Glad you’re okay, Susan.”

“Me too.” She shook his hand.

Zoë, Darius, Griff, and Susan stood together
in the upstairs hallway. Susan wanted to change out of the dress
and into her own clothes, but she sensed that it would be rude to
cut this reunion short. Zoë was staring at her quietly.

“I’m sorry to make you guys worry about me,”
Susan said, looking at Zoë. Susan never knew what was going on in
her head. Zoë kept things close. “I tried to get a message that I
was okay.”

“It’s okay,” Zoë said quietly. “That guy told
us some of what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”

Someone knocked on the door, and Griff pushed
past them to answer it.

“I guess I lost my job, but I have some money
in savings so I can pay you for the back rent.”

Zoë nodded.

“I like what you did to my room. Thanks.”

Zoë hugged her quickly, once, then stepped
back. She wasn’t the hugging type, so even that much surprised
Susan. “I worried about you.”

“I worried about me too,” Susan said.

“Hey, Susan? Some guy’s here to see you,”
Griff called up. He opened the door wider so she could see who it
was.

Paul was wearing a leather jacket whose
shoulders were dotted with holes. Under that he wore a white
t-shirt tight enough to show off his lean frame. He looked like
he’d just had a haircut, and his face was clean shaven. He held
something half hidden behind him, as though he weren’t sure if he
should be holding it or not.

“Paul!” She waved him up.

Paul dashed upstairs. The thing he’d been
holding was a bouquet of yellow daisies. He hugged her, crushing
the flowers against her back. He smelled fantastic, clean and manly
with just a hint of aftershave. He felt nice too, strong and lean.
She really needed to get him somewhere private. She’d really missed
having a boyfriend.

“It’s good to see you too,” she said when he
let her go.

“I was hoping we could go out for sushi, if
you’re up to it.” He handed her the daisies, not looking at them,
like he didn’t really want to be seen holding flowers any
longer.

“Sushi?” She took his hand and pulled him
into her room, shutting the door behind him.

“Yeah, it’s raw fish, and rice.” He looked at
the closed door, then back at her face. “You’re not mad, are
you?”

“For what?”

He shrugged. “You seemed pretty scared.”

“Terrified,” she said. She slid the straps
off her shoulders so the dress fell to the floor.

Griff had an amulet from Maggie that she said
would make him invisible to owls, but just when his entrepreneurial
spirit picked up, she also said that it wouldn’t last more than a
couple of days. He’d been having nightmares about Fallon, so he
came back early to get a new one.

He looked in the sky and trees and rooftops
as he approached the trailer, but there weren’t any owls around. He
knocked on the screen door with the carton of cigarettes he’d
brought her.

Maggie opened the door, glancing at him, then
the cigarettes “Hey, cool.” She opened the door just long enough to
take the carton, then turned back inside.

He thought that might have been an
invitation, so he followed her into the trailer. The place was a
mess, with the usual assortment of dirty dishes and splayed spell
components. The bed in the back looked like a laundry heap of
mismatched linens, mostly purple and paisley.