Rogelia's House of Magic (18 page)

Tristán shifted his feet uncertainly. “Fern, I can’t thank you enough for helping protect Bolsa Chica wetlands. My ancestors are buried there, you know. My family means a lot to me.”

Suddenly, Fern felt really foolish. Of course it wasn’t
her
he believed in, as much as he believed in the cause.
Why can’t I ever keep my mouth shut?
She smiled faintly at him. “So did you want something?”

“I just came by to see, um…” Tristán fumbled over his words. “…if you got the posters, and you have.”

“Yeah, we should put them up soon,” Fern said.

“I’m ready to go right now. But before we go anywhere, I need to tell you something. See this bear claw?” Tristán held up his necklace. “It’s soapstone from Catalina Island. This carving has been passed down for so many generations, we’ve lost track. This land and my family are like one, and they are everything to me.”

“I’m sorry I just thought it was my dream you were supporting,” Fern replied glumly. “Of course it was your family’s dream first.” She stared at the huge pepper tree in her front yard. She couldn’t bring herself to look Tristán in the eye.

Tristán reached for Fern’s hand. “Fernanda, I also believe in you, if you would just let me show you.” He touched one of Fern’s ringlets. “I think you are really incredible.”

Fern bit her lip and stared down at her pink toenails. She wanted to believe that Tristán cared for her this much and that it was safe to lend her heart to him. Impetuous though she was, something held her back from simply giving it away. As she glanced up, she saw a band of dark green light float over his body. The ring of light around him pulsated rapidly, like it was agitated. And the intense way Tristán was looking at her scared her; he was standing way too close.

“Let’s go hang up some posters,” Fern blurted out suddenly. She backed toward the door and picked up the posters.

Tristán looked hesitantly at Fern, as if he wondered whether or not she had understood him.

“We’ve got work to do,” Fern insisted, forcing herself to sound light and cheery. “Where should we start?”

“All right,” Tristán said. “Well, it’s got to be places a lot of people visit.”

“The malls,” Fern said quickly. “Probably the ones closest to Bolsa Chica. That way it’ll make it easier for them to get to our, I mean,
the
event. So, um, how are we going to get there?”

“I’ll drive,” Tristán offered.

“Okay,” Fern said. “I’ll go get some tape and stuff to hang them.” Fern sprinted into the house.
Shake it off, girl,
she told herself. That was easier said than done, though.

Tristán was waiting for Fern with his passenger door open. She slid into the seat and squeezed the packet of posters to her chest. His car smelled like cherries. She wondered if she should scoot over the bench seat to be closer to him or just stay where she was. As he was opening his car door, Fern put the posters in the wheel well, and when she sat back up she scooted a little closer to Tristán. It might have passed for a smooth move, or maybe not.

It was market day at the Huntington Beach pier. Tristán parked on a side street, away from traffic jamming up Pacific Coast Highway. He plunked a few quarters in the meter and turned expectantly to Fern. “Where to?”

“Let’s go to the Surf Museum,” Fern suggested. “They’ll want to keep the coastline pure.”

“Good idea,” Tristán agreed.

As they walked down Main Street through the swarms of people, Tristán’s shoulder bumped into Fern, giving her the shivers. Emotions bubbled in her stomach, causing her to feel woozy. She started to feel warm all over. Fern tried to tell herself it was the heat of the blazing sun. But she knew it was because of the hot guy walking next to her.

The museum manager was happy to promote their cause and offered to send some people to their event. Inspired after such a great start, Fern and Tristán ran from beach shop to surf shop to sandwich shop along the downtown Huntington Beach scene. At lunchtime, they decided to take a break and check out the marketplace at the pier. More than twenty white pop-up tents shaded the artisans, fruit mongers, bakers, jewelers, and other vendors as they sold their wares. Throngs of beachwear-clad people moved lazily through the warm July weather. While Tristán bought them a bag of kettle corn, Fern shaded her eyes to look down the sandy beach and out at the vast Pacific Ocean. A group of skaters were ripping up the cement stairs that led to the boardwalk. At the end of the wooden-plank pier, sunshine glinted off the red roof of Ruby’s restaurant. Tristán offered Fern the bag of kettle corn.

Fern dipped her hand in the bag. “I love this stuff,” she mumbled through a mouthful.

Tristán laughed at Fern’s childlike enthusiasm.

“It’s good stuff, man,” Fern said.

Tristán smiled at Fern. He took her hand. She really liked it when he did that. She smiled back, but Tristán continued to stare without saying anything for the longest time. It made her feel self-conscious. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore.

“What?” she asked. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

“Do you want to go out sometime?” Tristán asked.

“We are out,” Fern laughed, throwing a piece of popcorn at him.

“No, I meant on a date,” Tristán murmured, moving closer to Fern.

Fern gawked at Tristán without saying anything. His aura was a thick rosy pink that floated softly around him, like fluffy clouds. She was really beginning to dig that color. Yes, she wanted to go on a date. But she wasn’t sure how she felt about him yet. She knew she liked him—she
really
liked him. That was what had her so confused. She had the weirdest feeling in her gut about that first aura she’d seen, and she just couldn’t erase it no matter how hard she tried. The question hung in the air, unanswered for an awkward moment.

Just then, a pair of towheaded boys raced up at breakneck speed on their Heelys. “Watch out,” one of the boys called as they broke Fern and Tristán apart.

The bag of popcorn flew high in the air and rained down on them. Fern giggled as she tried to catch the falling popcorn in her mouth. Tristán joined her fun and began throwing the few remaining pieces of popcorn in the air and trying to catch as many as he could. With the tension broken, Fern didn’t have to answer the question, and Tristán didn’t push for a response. Fern wasn’t sure if she was relieved or annoyed with herself.

Afterward, they canvassed the small shopping centers in Sunset Beach, Newport Beach, and Laguna Beach. Fern laughed as she watched Tristán use all kinds of tactics to gain permission from the store managers to plaster their windows with the posters. He seemed to quickly figure out whatever the manager needed to hear, whether that was information about how the wetlands affected tourism or just the environmental angle.

Wherever they went, Fern tried to catch a glimpse of Tristán’s aura. She saw lots of colors. When it was just the two of them, his aura shone that romantic pink color. When he was talking to the store owners, the colors of light around his body shifted to green, blue, or even orange. But not once all day did she see anything like the gray aura she had seen before.

“We’ve got about a hundred posters left,” Tristán said, looking at the stack of posters, which had dwindled since the beginning of their trek three hours earlier.

“Let’s hit our hometown,” Fern suggested. “There are some really forward-thinking businesses in the Santa Ana artists village. I bet we won’t have any problem putting posters up there.”

“Another great idea,” Tristán said with a smile. “Your chariot awaits.”

Fern hopped into Tristán’s car. He roared off, and Fern shivered with delight as they sped down the freeway back home. She rolled down the window and put her head outside to feel the wind blowing on her face. The sun was nearing the horizon, but it was still warm out when they got back into Santa Ana.

After taping posters up in several of the stores, they decided to staple the remaining posters to community bulletin boards.

“My arms are getting so tired,” Fern said as she held a poster above some postcards on the community board in the funky coffee shop the Gypsy Den.

“I’ll hold it while you tape it,” Tristán offered.

Tristán held up the poster and Fern ducked under his outstretched arms to tape it down.

“Fern,” Tristán said softly.

She turned and found herself nose to nose with Tristán, who leaned in and kissed her.

It took Fern a couple of seconds to realize what was happening, but she lost herself in their kiss soon enough. Tristán’s bottom lip was so soft, but his top lip pressed against her with just the right pressure. The kiss was sweet and lingering. She could smell the warmth of the sun and even some salty sea air lingering around him. He threaded his fingers through her hair at the nape of her neck.

Fern pulled away and looked dreamily at Tristán. To her shock, she saw that his aura pulsed bloodred with a very clear and very ominous border of steel gray pressing down like a vise. Tristán leaned forward to kiss her again. She pushed against him and backed up.

“Fern?” Tristán said.

“I gotta go,” she mumbled.

Then she turned and ran all the way home.

Nineteen

A
week later, Xochitl sat on her bed, watching the little alarm clock on her dresser tick closer and closer to three o’clock. How had she allowed herself to get roped into another
curanderismo
lesson with Fern and Marina? She could disappear, but her nana would just sniff her out like last time.

“Xochitl!” Nana called.

Reluctantly, Xochitl got out of her bed. She trudged down the hall to the kitchen. Marina and Fern stood there waiting for her. Both of them wore expensive-looking hiking boots and carried plastic bottles filled with ice water.

“Look, Mom bought these for me at REI,” Marina said, stretching her legs to show off her new shoes.

Xochitl couldn’t speak. She had told them to wear sensible shoes, but she hadn’t meant for them to go out and buy something expensive. Fern laughed at the look of incredulity on Xochitl’s face.

“What?” Marina asked Xochitl. “You said to wear good shoes.”

“I didn’t mean you had to buy new ones,” Xochitl said.

Both Fern and Nana laughed.

“I think they’re cute,” Marina said defensively, twisting her feet to admire her shoes from another angle.

“Fern, did you bring the journal?” Rogelia asked.

Fern held up the feather-covered book. “Here it is.”

“Please give it to Marina,” Rogelia instructed.

Fern handed the journal over to Marina with a little hesitation.

“It’s okay,” Rogelia said. “Remember, we’re learning to trust and depend on each other. This journal is intended to bring you closer together.”

Xochitl turned her head so Nana wouldn’t see her look of disbelief. She wasn’t sure that Nana’s plan to use the journal as a way to get her to bond with Fern and Marina was really working on her.

The sun was directly overhead by the time they arrived at Silverado Canyon, a nature preserve that lay behind a funky little town of the same name. It was also located between two small mountain ranges of the Cleveland National Forest. Their goal was the hike to a waterfall called Holy Jim Falls, about one and a half miles inland. The pungent scent of pine filled the air as Xochitl plodded behind Fern, Marina, and Nana.

A raptor’s high-pitched squeal resonated through the still air as a red-tailed hawk dove into the tall grass. The predator plucked a gray squirrel off a sprawling live oak’s branch and with a second swoop pinned his prey to the ground a mere twenty paces in front of Rogelia. The hawk turned his cold marauder’s stare on her and her apprentices.

“What a wonderful hunter you are,” Rogelia complimented him. The hawk picked up his prey and flew into the air. Rogelia turned to the girls. “There are fewer predators than prey in nature. It is a perfect balance. One hawk eats hundreds of rodents a year. One bat will devour three thousand mosquitoes in a night. Each system supports the next. It’s important to remember how connected we all are.”

“That’s like our work at Bolsa Chica,” Fern piped up. Rogelia waved her hand in encouragement, so Fern continued. “Ranchers planted tons of grass all over the wetlands a long time ago, but it doesn’t feed the animals who live there. We’ve been ripping out the grass and replacing it with native plants. The cool part is, we only need to clear a five-foot space for the native plants to thrive. The native plants reach for each other under the root system of the nonnative plants, push out the intruders, and grow stronger through their connection.”

The wind picked up and blew through the trees, sounding like the rushing of a train. “And yet,” Rogelia began, “these connections constantly change their relationships and how they appear. Life is change. The wind that blows around us right now is continually shaping the earth. Nothing stays the same.”

Xochitl dragged behind everyone as they crossed a small creek. The changes she was going through were too much for her. She watched Fern, Marina, and Nana with growing frustration. Graciela should have been with her and Nana, learning the lesson about how nature serves as a guide for life. Then they could break into family gossip afterward like they used to.

Rogelia plucked a few pine needles off a branch. “The first people of this land wove their baskets from these needles.”

“Tristán’s aunt teaches basket-weaving classes,” Fern said. “He said the Native Americans from here used baskets in cooking and to store all their goods.”

“Ooooh, Tristán.” Marina laughed and poked Fern in the ribs.

Fern rolled her eyes.

“We’re going to pick sage, also known as
chamiso,
for our next blessing ceremony,” Rogelia continued. “Sage bushes can be large or small, depending on their age. I want you to look for a plant with oval, silver-green leaves.”

Xochitl knew exactly what sage looked like, but she didn’t feel like helping if no one was going to bother talking to her. Fern and Marina seemed so involved with her nana that Xochitl wondered why she was even there. She tried to distract herself by watching Baird’s swallowtails, black butterflies with yellow-tipped wings, darting in and out of the trees, careful to avoid the cobwebs clinging to the branches. Iridescent violet, emerald green, and fuchsia flashed from the strands waving slightly in the breeze. It was enough to make Xochitl forget about her troubles.

“What are we going to do with the sage?” Marina asked.

“After we cut off some branches, we’ll bind several sprigs together with string and then hang the sage upside down by the woody end. After three or four days, the sage will dry and we can burn the bundles, or smudge sticks, to cleanse just about anything of bad energy and seal in the white light of protection,” Rogelia explained.

“Is that what you did the first night in your room?” Fern asked.

“Yes,” Rogelia said.

“Is this sage?” Fern asked bending down to inspect a plant.

“No, that’s mugwort,” Rogelia said.

Xochitl looked over at Fern, Marina, and her nana. They sat huddled over a mugwort plant, examining the five-pointed dark green leaves. Xochitl hid behind the thick trunk of a pine tree. She ran her fingers along the grooves of the chunky bark and aimlessly picked at the amber sap leaking out of the tree. She was thinking of vanishing and going someplace to be alone. It wasn’t like her nana and “friends” would notice she was gone.

“You must develop a relationship with the creations of Mother Earth,” Nana was saying. “Often mugwort is thrown on top of fires. The smoke of the herb brings on visions.”

Jimsonweed also brought on visions. Halfheartedly, Xochitl looked around for the hallucinogenic weed. She thought if she could have a vision of Graciela or hear her voice, she could make sense of everything that had happened. But jimsonweed was only used in very sacred ceremonies by trained shamans and healers because of its highly toxic nature. It could kill you if you took too much, or worse, could paralyze you or put you into a coma. Nana had warned Xochitl about the dangers of jimsonweed when she had pointed the plant out in her garden. If you even brushed against it, you could get a horrible rash. Xochitl did want to see Graciela again, but was it worth that kind of risk?

“Is this sage?” Marina asked, reaching out to touch a spearlike leaf.

“Yes, that’s it,” Rogelia said.

“It’s sticky.” Marina brought her fingertips up to her nose. “And smells strong.” She coughed.

“Bring out your water bottle, Fern,” Rogelia said. “Please water the plant while I sing. Then, asking permission first, you can take some sage.”

Rogelia began a chant. Fern poured water on the plant, and Marina began to trim sprigs. Rogelia’s chanting grew stronger, and the feeling of magic draped itself like a cloak over everyone. Xochitl swayed with the repetitive, hypnotic singing. The more Xochitl allowed the music to carry and move her body, the more she felt a welcome trancelike feeling wash over her. Xochitl looked hazily at the sway of Saddleback Mountain. It reminded her of the mountain range that surrounded her home in Mexico and the times she and Graciela spent together.

Xochitl did not realize that as she thought of these things, she began to drift away. Her body began to grow pale and faint. Without even consciously trying, she became transparent, invisible.

“This reminds me of when we would harvest sage in Mexico.” Rogelia turned around to look for her granddaughter. “Xochitl, where are you?”

Xochitl glared at her.
I’m right here,
she fumed silently.
About time Nana thought to include me in this lesson
.

Nana looked directly through Xochitl, who sulked about ten paces from her. “Xochitl!” Nana shouted. “Where are you?”

Xochitl was stunned. She looked incredulously at her hands and realized she had become invisible without intending it. She was overcome by a creepy, tingly sensation. Xochitl had spent months learning to suck in her energy to create the illusion of invisibility. She had always controlled her disappearing, and Nana could always sense her presence. This absolute disappearance from her nana was new.

Xochitl waited for Nana to look past her to the cattails on the side of the trail. She dug her heels into the dirt to drive the earth energy into her feet. She visualized waves of pulsating sensations race up her legs and arms, drawing the form back to her body. “Here I am.”

“Oh, there you are,” Nana said with a sigh of relief. “Don’t do that again. You scared me.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Xochitl said, pulling on her shirt.

Nana gazed inquisitively at Xochitl, as if she wasn’t sure what to believe.

“Rogelia,” Marina said, wavering back and forth, “I’m feeling funny.”

“Stomp your feet, Marina. It will help you ground your energy,” Rogelia said firmly. “You need to get your head out of the clouds. We don’t want you to faint.”

“I can’t,” Marina mumbled.

“We’ve picked enough sage,” Rogelia said, taking Marina’s hand and looking concernedly into her apprentice’s face. “
Dios,
your hands are cold. You girls are really open to the spirits today.”

Xochitl stared at her fingers and hands. Maybe that was why she had she disappeared without intending to. Could she stay this close to the Spirit World long enough to make contact with her sister? If so, she wanted to be away from everyone else. Xochitl forged ahead of the others through a green, grottolike tunnel made of low-hanging branches. The air smelled cool and earthy. When she made the last bend in the trail, she gasped at the beauty before her. They had reached the thirty-five-foot cascade of water known as Holy Jim Falls. Lush ferns grew out of the granite rock on either side of the waterfall. The water rushed hard and fast into a deep pool.

Rogelia held on to a wobbly Marina and guided her to where Xochitl stood before the waterfall. The
curandera
turned to Fern. “Practice more of what we did the other day.”

Fern stared at the nearest plant until her eyes shifted out of focus.

“I can see the plant’s aura.” Fern beamed.

“Now slowly look around,” Nana suggested.

“Oh wow! It’s like a sparkling horizon hugging the tops of all the trees,” Fern said.

“What can you see around us?” Nana asked.

“Your aura is green and wavy, Doña Rogelia. Marina’s is orange and shooting out of the top of her head. That’s pretty weird-looking. But ooh—Xochitl’s aura is all zigzaggy. Like shards of light.”

“What does that mean?” Xochitl asked while tugging on her wishing bracelet. Perhaps it represented her proximity to the spirits! If that was so, where was Graciela? Xochitl looked around but didn’t see her sister. Angrily she pulled again at the bracelet that was supposed to represent the dream, the connection, she shared with Graciela. Graciela had left her. So why should she be holding on to this piece of her twin? She should just rip the bracelet off and leave it here.

Suddenly, a shocked expression appeared on Marina’s face and she staggered away from Rogelia.

“What is it?” Rogelia asked.

Marina stared at Xochitl with her mouth gaping. Her big brown eyes were round with dread and anxiety.

“¿Qué tal?”
Rogelia asked again.

Marina’s hands went to her throat, then fluttered quickly over her lips, like she was trying to keep a tidal wave of words from pouring out of her mouth. “Oh, Xochitl.”

“What?” Xochitl asked, her finger still curled between the bracelet and her wrist.

“She says, ‘No, don’t do it. Not yet,’” Marina whispered.

For no apparent reason, a bone-chilling cold flooded Xochitl. Why did she suddenly feel so scared?

“Who?” Fern asked.

“Graciela,” Marina whispered. “I just heard Graciela tell me to stop Xochitl.”

This is not happening,
Xochitl thought.
Graciela would not talk to Marina before she spoke with me. She wouldn’t let someone come between us.

“I don’t believe it,” Xochitl replied tersely.

“Graciela spoke to me, I swear,” Marina protested.

“Maybe it was one of the other voices in your head,” Xochitl persisted.

“No, Xochitl, it was Graciela.” Marina maintained her stance. “She called you
‘mi hermana,’
and I know that means ‘sister.’” Marina looked over at Rogelia for support, but even she seemed stunned. “Graciela said to tell you something about oranges, but I couldn’t understand all of it. Do you know what that means?”