The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root) (14 page)

“Yeah, me too,” I said.
 

Aunt Dora had been in such a hurry to get the herb after our earlier encounter with Larinda that she slathered my hands in oils and then called my sisters before we could object.

“Now how do I dance?” Eve asked, a hand on her hip.
 

“Aunt Dora says to move around the outer circle, feeling the wind, whatever that means,” I answered. “Just pretend you’re doing interpretive dance in one of those artsy theater's you used to perform at.”
 

“Funny,” she said, lifting her stick in a threatening manner. “I’ve got a wand, and I know how to use it.”

“Hey, if you want to trade,” I said, raising my glowing blue hands. “I’m more than happy to let you take over the Chernobyl portion of this adventure.”

“It’s okay,” Eve responded as she looked at my hands.
 

I inhaled, letting it out slowly. Billows of steam rolled from my mouth. “Everyone got their earplugs?”
 

We had been instructed that everyone except me needed to cover their ears to ward against the sounds the mandrake would emit once plucked from his spot.
 

“It’s terrible,” Aunt Dora explained, “like a dozen children screaming for their mothers.”
 

I wished that I had ear plugs, too, but Aunt Dora said I needed to hear its cries in order for it to work. “Real magic comes with sacrifice, and there is no greater sacrifice than a small piece of your soul.”

My sisters inserted their plugs as I made my way towards the center of the innermost circle. With each ring I passed, the air grew damper, stiller, and colder. I nodded to Eve and she took her wand, waved it overhead, and flitted about the outer rings. She dipped and swayed, asking the moon to look down on us with love.
 

I watched, transfixed as the moon kissed the tips of Eve’s blue-black hair, sending star shards to the ground. Her delicate features were more pronounced in the night, her round chin and small nose lifted to the sky. She cast her wand into the Heavens, asking the Universe to pour down its love. If Merry was an angel, Eve was an elf. Eternal, ethereal, yet of this earth.

Ruth Anne coughed, breaking me from my sister’s spell.
 

I stooped to the ground, plunging a spade into the compact dirt around the mandrake.

“I’m sorry to take you from your home,” I said, as I chipped away the dirt. When the top of the root was fully uncovered I held my breath, my hands wrapping around the thick round clump.
 

“Pull, Maggie, pull,” Merry’s whispered, as she and Ruth Anne watched from the safety outside the circles. Eve continued her dance, lost in her salute to the moon.
 

I tugged, my hands slippery from the ointments, fighting the plant that desperately wanted to stay. I was about to give up when I felt it release its tethers.
 

It screamed its unearthly sorrows into the night.
 

I almost let it go as it let out the horrendous yowl, but I tightened my grip and continued to pull, toppling backwards with my trophy. As I stood up, I felt it squirm in my hands. Aunt Dora had warned me not to gaze upon it once it had been pulled, but something with a cry so horrible and human could not be ignored.
 

The root divided itself, growing in five directions in the shape of a starfish. The top was rounded like an oblong head and the remaining four divisions were long and twisted, like the broken arms and legs of a person. I looked closer. The node at the top seemed to wriggle, a small gape intermittently screaming then opening and shutting like the mouth of a newborn looking to suckle.

Dear God, what is this?

I clamped my hand around it, squeezing the breath from the root until the screaming ceased.

When it was quiet, I dropped to my knees.
 

Ruth Anne and Merry removed their earplugs and rushed towards me while Eve continued her dance. I opened my hand and gazed again at the mandrake.

“No, Maggie!” Merry called, putting out an arm to stop me.
 

But it was too late. The thing that had been screaming with pain moments before lay lifeless in my palms. I studied it, remembering where I had seen the face before.
 

The morning I had my vision on the front porch of Harvest Home.

I handed it over to Ruth Anne who waited with an open box.

“My baby,” I said, crying.

I sat in the backseat of Merry’s sedan, wiping the blue goo off of my hands on one of Eve’s scarves when she wasn’t looking, trying to erase not only the blue ointment, but the memory of the event as well.

Merry peered over the steering wheel, trying to make out the road ahead of us while Eve hung her head out the window, navigating from the back seat next to me.
 

“Squirrel!” Eve called out. Merry twisted the wheel, avoiding the animal. “Deer!”

“Darn it, Eve. That wasn’t a deer. It was a tree. And it wasn’t in the middle of the road.”

“Well, it’s dark. What do you expect?”

Ruth Anne lounged in the front passenger seat, her bare feet resting on the dashboard. She wore her ever-amused smile as she watched the scene but said nothing.

In the trunk, entombed in an old shoebox, the mandrake root slept. I strained my ears to hear if it still cried, but all was silent except for the constant chatter of my sisters.
 

“It really didn’t move,” Merry said, trying once again to reassure me once we reached an area where the forest opened up and the moon could guide us. “It was a figment of your imagination. The madness of the root must have gotten through all the protection we had on you. That’s good. It means the root is potent.”

I cracked my window, not wanting to argue. I had felt it wriggle in my hands, floundering as it took its last breath, and no amount of rationale would change that.
 

“It occurs to me,” Ruth Anne said, twisting her head to see us all. “That I’ve never had a beer with my sisters. What do you think?”

“I’m down,” Eve said, as we hit the outskirts of Dark Root proper.
 

“You are?” I asked. “You mean you aren’t going to see Paul now?”
 

All Eve’s free time was spent with him lately. But now that I thought about it, she hadn’t mentioned him all evening.

“Yes. I’d really like a beer. Or two.”

“Want to call Paul?” I asked. “Let him know where you are?”

“Not really.”

“Oh?”

Merry’s eyes flickered in the rear view mirror. Ruth Anne removed a small notebook from her T-shirt pocket and gave Eve her full attention.

“Details,” said Ruth Anne. “I need some conflict for my next book.”

“Fine,” Eve said, putting lotion on her hands. “I found several texts from a woman on his phone today. A woman he used to date.”

“Ooh, that’s good.” Ruth Anne scribbled in her pad.

“I’m glad it’s helpful. Maybe you could follow us around with a video camera and capture all the details.”

“Sorry. Just have the pen and paper. Continue.”

“I think you’re worked up over nothing,” I said. “So what if Paul texted his ex? He’s smitten with
you
.”

“Maggie,” Eve said, turning her dark eyes on me. “What would you do if you found Shane texting a woman?”

“She’d lose her frickin mind,” Merry said and Ruth Anne laughed.

“Maybe,” I admitted, feeling a stab of jealousy at just the thought.

 
“You’d probably burn down his restaurant.” Eve lowered her lashes, her face pensive. “I’m just trying to play it cool for now.”

“Good luck with that,” I said. With the exception of our mother, Eve was the most dramatic person I’d ever known. Playing it cool was not her style.

“So,” Ruth Anne broke in. “That’s two of us for a beer. Merry?”

Merry shrugged. “I suppose I can leave June Bug with Mama for awhile longer. They’re probably both asleep, anyways. God knows I could use a bit of me time right now.” She looked at me in the mirror. “Maybe I can ask Shane to look in on them in a bit. If that’s okay with you?”
 

“Why would I care?” I asked, trying to play it cool myself.
 

“Well, maybe you’d want him to join us, instead.”
 

“Let’s make it a girl’s night,” I said, so that I wouldn't have to explain once again why I was avoiding Shane––especially when Ruth Anne was taking notes. “Even if I can’t drink, it will be fun.”

“Then it’s unanimous,” Ruth Anne put on her Birkenstocks as the sedan rumbled into the rocky parking lot of the only bar in Dark Root. “Ladies, let’s have ourselves a little fun.”

The bar sat on the far edge of town, out past the row of boarded-up, one-room shacks where lumberjacks and trappers had kept house in Dark Root’s pioneering days. The bar itself had once served as an old saloon, and it was rumored that a shootout had even taken place there, when two drunken miners, acting on a hunch that they might find gold in this part of the world––and subsequently being disappointed––drew pistols at each other and fired several rounds.
 

Luckily, both missed, but it helped fuel the bar’s reputation as a
historical site
and it was never torn down thereafter.

In the 1950s, a man from Los Angeles purchased it, and while he kept the original frame of the building, he had redone the interior, adding in a jukebox and a secret casino in the back room. The place had been revamped several times since by several different owners, who all learned there wasn’t a ton of money to be made in this neck of the woods, even in alcohol.
 

It stood like a time machine now, incorporating every generation it had devoured in its decor.
 

Ruth Anne told us the bar’s history as Merry parked the car.

“Do you know everything?” Eve asked, yawning.

“I make it a point to know where my beer comes from,” Ruth Anne said, running her fingers through her chin-length brown hair.

“The Watering Hole?” Merry read the sign, scratching her head.
 

In our teenage years it was called
The Screaming Sasquatch,
a ploy to draw in tourists when it was rumored that Big Foot had been spotted several miles outside of town.