A Dark Root Christmas_Merry's Gift Read online

  “Ruth Anne, let’s go,” Merry said. “We can run the shop today.” She straightened her sweater and adjusted her knee socks. “Maggie, you take Eve to Aunt Dora’s.”

  “I don’t want to,” Maggie said, flipping through the TV, trying to find something that resembled cartoons. She was met by static more often than pictures.

  “Fine. Then stay here and watch Mama.”

  Maggie glanced at their mother, who was now talking in her sleep, babbling on about bad spells and worse men. “We’ll go with you. We’ll just play in the back.”

  “Good.” Merry kissed Maggie on the cheek. “But Aunt Dora got a new TV. And I hear she’s making pies today.”

  “Pies?” Eve trotted down the staircase, dressed in sequins and taffeta, her hair pulled into two braids that nearly reached her waist.

  “All the pies in the world won’t make me go there right now,” Maggie said, crossing her arms. “All she does is complain about Mother. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “I know,” Merry said, glancing at the couch. “Their feud has to end soon. It just has to.”

  Merry covered her mother with a crocheted blanket and took the key from her purse, and the four girls set out. The air was brisk, but invigorating––a sign that the day would be a good one. Maggie jogged ahead, running back now and again to report her findings: squirrels, black birds, a possum squashed flat by an unseen vehicle.

  Downtown Dark Root was fairly quiet, with only a handful of pedestrians wandering Main Street. Most were carrying Styrofoam coffee cups from Delilah’s Deli. Their cheeks were rosy and flushed with the excitement of holiday shopping. Fortunately, there were no lines in from of Miss Sasha’s Magick Shoppe and Merry unlocked the door and turned on the light while Ruth Anne flipped the sign to OPEN.

  Once inside, Merry looked around, somewhat confused.

  Mama had been talking about their Holiday Sale the entire evening before, with more vim and enthusiasm than she had expressed about anything in a long while, but as far as Merry could tell, there was nothing special about the displays, nothing to indicate there was a holiday sale at all.

  “Figures,” Ruth Anne said, throwing herself into a beanbag chair in the corner of the store. She gave the shop one perfunctory glance before producing a small book from coat pocket. It was one she had been reading at their Uncle Joe’s.

  Ruth Anne must have borrowed it.

  Merry gave her a disapproving frown, which Ruth Anne dismissed with a wave. “What? I’ll return it. Or is that face because you don’t think I’m going to help?”

  She swiveled her head slowly to the right and then the left, exaggerating the action to demonstrate the futility of doing anything more than was absolutely necessary.

  “No one’s coming,” Ruth Anne said. “We’re it.”

  “Take your sister to the back,” Merry said to Maggie.

  Eve stuck her tongue out and raced to the supply room, with Maggie running behind her.

  “You never know, Ruth Anne. And wouldn’t it be awful if a bunch of people came to the shop and it was just like this?” Merry said as she wiped down the glass counter and refilled the tray of mints.

  “This is how it always looks, nowadays.”

  “True, but maybe we should give it some Christmas spirit.” With that, Merry found out a vial of peppermint oil and began dabbing it around the shelves and various knick-knacks that Sasha had collected during her younger days, of which she possessed a seemingly endless supply.

  She sniffed the air. The shop smelled better, but it still lacked visual ambiance.

  “Eve!” she called to the back room. Almost instantly, Eve appeared, a glass teacup in her hand. “This shop needs something to make it look more festive.”

  Eve scrunched her perfect mouth to the side and blinked her eyes in thought. Finally, she nodded. “Roses are red, violets are blue, Christmas is everywhere...bring it to this store, too!”

  It was a child’s spell, simple and made up on the spot, but the magick was not in the words. It was in the intention behind them. Incantations, like candles and incense, were focus items, meant as a place to direct power. And when it came to making something beautiful, Eve’s intentions packed a lot of punch.

  Indeed, the store seemed brighter now, and warmer.

  There was a faint tinkling of bells, though Merry could not discern if they were real or illusory. And along the walls, titles from various books glowed in subtle hues of red and gold and green. They were small changes, all of them, but effective ones, and the whole store seemed to breathe and expand as Eve’s fingers fluttered into the air, then down again gracefully, never spilling a drop from her teacup.

  “There,” Eve said, nodding to herself satisfied. “Now, my dolls are waiting for their tea.” With that, she ran back into the supply room, her braids flying behind her.

  “She does good work,” Merry said, noticing a new scent in the room. Pine.

  “Yep,” Ruth Anne agreed, hardly looking up from her book. “When she conjures up a real candy cane, let me know.”

  “Now we just need customers,” Merry said, standing near the picture window that graced the front of the store. There were more people out, bundled up in beanies and scarves, but they were visiting the diner, the book store, and the pie stand––everywhere but Miss Sasha’s Magick Shoppe. “We should bring them in.”

  “If you say so,” Ruth Anne said, yawning.

  Merry sighed. It was a shame that none of her sisters had any interest in the shop, except as a way to pass the time or to keep their mother happy. And, because of their feud, Aunt Dora was less inclined than ever to help out. But it was their family business and Merry wouldn’t let it fall apart. Not on her watch. If she could help revive it, even for a day, maybe her mother would be back to her old self.

  She opened her jacket and removed the white owl nested in the crest beneath her arm. “Wake up, little Starlight,” she said, placing the bird gently on the counter. Starlight yawned into a smile as he blinked against the overhead lighting.

  “Hoo,” he said, and to Merry it sounded almost like a question.

  He flapped his way across the glass counter, inspecting his new surroundings. His gaze finally settled on an ugly glass owl resting on a high shelf across the way. The figurine had probably been there since the store’s inception and was not going anywhere any time soon.

  “I’m sure there’s a spell in Mama’s book,” Merry said, pushing a stool to the shelf where the compendium was stored.

  “Your problem is that you care too much, Merry,” Ruth Anne said. “And caring leads to disappointment. It’s not like Miss Sasha cares. If she did, she would be here. Why should we?”

  There was validity in her sister’s words, but Merry brushed them off before they could settle over her like a cold fog. She could bear her mother’s melancholy, but she couldn’t take Ruth Anne’s, too.

  “You know as well as I do that Mama’s sick. I don’t know what she’s sick with, but she is. And until she gets better we need to do our part.”

  “If you say so.”

  Merry climbed atop the stool and felt a pang of guilt as her fingers curled around the spell book. Miss Sasha didn’t like anyone touching it––not even her daughters. Overwhelmed by guilt, she released the book and there was a sharp whistling sound behind her. She turned to see Starlight hopping towards the edge of the counter, his eyes fixed on her.

  “You think it’s okay, Starlight?” she asked, sensing Ruth Anne’s eye roll rather than seeing it. Starlight hooted again, lifting his head upwards, like a trumpeter. “Okay then. But if I get into trouble, it’s your fault.”

  With that, Merry took her mother’s Book of Shadows.

  The book was warm, and purred with electricity. By the time she placed it on the counter it was nearly hot. She blew on her fingers, still wondering if she should use it. Miss Sasha had warned them that all spells must be thoroughly demonstrated first, then practiced under strict supervision many times before being cast
alone.

  But Miss Sasha wasn’t here, and there was no one with sufficient knowledge nearby to coach her. She thought briefly of asking Maggie to assist. Maggie was a wilder––a witch with innate, untamed magic. Spells came easy to her, when she chose to cast them, but so did her propensity for mayhem. That was the nature of wilders––powerful, unbridled magicians with the power to create, and to destroy.

  And if Maggie accidentally set the shop on fire, well… Merry couldn’t risk that.

  No. She’d have to do this one on her own.

  She cleared her mind, and without looking, opened the spell book to a random page.

  “Minor Prosperity Spell?” she asked aloud.

  In response, Starlight flapped his wings. He leapt from the counter and flew to the top of the stool, making a short loop around the room. With a loud hoot, he landed, just inches from Merry and the book.

  “You want me to cast it?” she asked.

  Starlight scratched at the glass counter, bobbing his head.

  Ruth Anne was now lying down on her back on the beanbag, her book held high above her, her brown ponytail cascading down to the floor. “The old woman’s not going to be happy you’re playing with her things.”

  “I thought you didn’t care,” Merry said, trying to ignore her. “Besides, I’m not playing with her book.” She said the words as much to convince herself as her sister. “I’m doing something for our business. You know Mama always says we should help out more.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think she meant using her hocus-pocus when she’s not around.”

  Merry paid her sister no heed as she went about collecting the ingredients listed on the page. When she had found them all, she went into the supply room and retrieved her mother’s silver mixing bowl, spoon, and measuring cups. She carefully portioned out each component as the owl watched, hooting at her whenever she spilled or added in too much.

  “Hush, hush,” Merry cooed reassuringly, even as her fingers trembled. She wasn’t sure what would happen if the spell went awry, but she had to believe that her focus was what mattered, not the mistakes made in its preparation. When she had finished measuring––a sprig of this, a pinch of that––and just before she began her final stir, Starlight hopped in place several times, voicing his disapproval.

  “Now what?” Merry asked, impatiently.

  The owl flew towards the wall above the bean bag, opening his wings as he glided towards a high ledge. With hooked talons, he walked along the narrow shelf, inspecting the contents of several large vials and bottles before settling on a slim corked vase. He pecked at it with its curved beak, knocking it onto Ruth Anne’s lap.

  “Hey!” Ruth Anne shouted, sitting up. She picked up the bottle and tossed it to Merry. “Please tell your pet to stop knocking stuff over on me.”

  “He was trying to help, Ruth Anne,” Merry said, reading the label on the vial aloud. “Ginger? Starlight, that’s not on the list. Ginger is used for love spells,” she said, disappointed. She wanted customers, not love. Not yet, anyway.

  Ruth Anne closed her book and stood, stretching into a wide yawn. “Correction. Ginger is used in love spells, but it’s also used to attract money and success. Not that I believe in that, mind you, but I’m a sucker for technicalities.”

  Merry gave her a wry look. “I will never understand why you scoff at magick, even though you continue to study it.”

  “It is because I study it, that I scoff at it.” Ruth Anne tapped the side of her head to demonstrate her brilliance, a brilliance that was lost on Merry.

  Merry peeked in at Maggie and Eve in the backroom. Eve was pulling out her play dishes and Maggie was smacking at a ball attached to a paddle. Satisfied that her younger sisters were not getting into trouble, she inspected the bottle closely.

  “I’ll add it,” she said doubtfully. “But we may have to start all over again.”

  She opened the vial and added three small pinches into the mixture. The scent coming off the bowl was bitter and she wrinkled her nose against it. Ruth Anne joined her, ready with her tasting finger. But just before she dipped into the concoction, a strong stream of vapor rose up from the bowl, followed by a deafening popping sound. The two girls stepped back, their eyes large as the smoke billowed then expanded, curling its way across the entire room. Soon, it was so thick that she and Ruth Anne dashed for the front door, yelling for Maggie and Eve to join them.

  “Fire?” Eve asked, covering her nose as raced out the door. Maggie tromped behind, waving the smoke out of her face as if she were fighting a swarm of bees.

  “I don’t know,” Merry admitted, using the glass door as a fan to disperse the smoke. It was so dense within the store that she could hardly see.

  The scent caught the attention of nearby pedestrians, who raised their noses and closed their eyes as the mist settled around them. Soon the cloud dispersed and the pedestrians marched towards the shop.

  “What’s happening?” Maggie asked, jumping out of the way as a dozen people filed in.

  “The spell,” Merry said, exchanging wide-eyed glances with Ruth Anne. “It worked!”

  And then she remembered Starlight. She had left without her owl! She ran in, surprised to find the shop smelling of vanilla and gingerbread, without a trace of the earlier pungency. Starlight stood on the counter, seemingly no worse for the wear. In fact, if owls could grin, he was doing just that.

  “Starlight? Did you did this?” she asked in a whisper.

  He turned his head slowly, deliberately, in her direction, one eye closing in a wink.

  An unknown lady in her middle years noticed the bird. “Oh, you even have an owl! This really is a quaint shop!”

  The others shoppers noticed too and gathered around as Merry pulled him back into her hands. They gossiped and spoke about how they would tell all of their friends.

  “You really are my familiar,” she whispered, petting the bird.

  THE MADDOCK GIRLS spent the remainder of the day assisting the steady stream of customers pouring inside the shop––the most Merry had seen in ages.

  But one figure in particular struck her: a tall, lithe woman with dark hair that hung in long, tight coils around her sharp shoulders. She wore a red cape. Her thin, serpentine lips were shellacked in the same crimson hue. She didn’t come in. Instead, she stood just outside the door. Her milky blue eyes flickered as they met Merry’s, then narrowed as she took in the owl standing on the counter beside her. Smiling with only the right side of her mouth, the woman waved at Starlight with her pinky finger.

  There was something about the woman’s energy that was unsettling. Something dark and dangerous. Then it dawned on her who the woman was.

  “Larinda!” Merry finally gasped in recognition.

  She had seen pictures of her mother’s cousin several years earlier, before all images of the witch disappeared from their home. Merry raced to the glass door and shut it, locking the woman out. Even so, she felt Larinda’s dark energy seep inside, like the bone-chilling cold on a graveyard night.

  Merry stepped back as Larinda regarded her with lash-less, amused eyes. The witch then kissed the tips of her fingers and placed them on the door, leaving a trace of her red lipstick behind. Wordlessly, she resumed her stroll down the sidewalk and disappeared into what was left of the fog as if she’d never been there at all.

  After an extended held breath, Merry re-opened the door and checked down the street.

  There was no sign of Larinda, but there was a strange new scent on the air.

  It was the smell of something souring, possibly even dying. Like pumpkins rotting on the vine.

  Merry returned to Starlight and held him. He seemed dizzy. She opened a jar of sage and sprinkled a dusting over his head to eradicate whatever negative energy Larinda might have let loose. It worked, a little. His aura brightened and some of the rotting smell even dissipated.

  Afterwards, she looked up, surprised to find that it was business as usual in Miss Sasha’s Magick Shoppe. Customers
were still shopping and chatting and speaking of their plans for the holidays. Not a soul appeared to have noticed Merry’s strange encounter with the dark-haired witch.

  Starlight shivered lightly, and Merry calmed him with her words. “She’s gone now. Don’t worry.” She blew into her hands and wrapped them around the owl until his trembling ceased.

  He closed one drowsy eye, and then the other.

  His aura flickered, lime green to gold, then back to green again. But the green was tinged with slivers of gray.

  Had Larinda done something to Starlight?

  She worried for her small friend.

  Then, with a child’s resolve, said, “You’ll be okay, Little Starlight.”

  If words really did have power, she had to believe in the power of her own, even as Starlight shook in her hands.

  It was Christmas, after all.

  FIVE

  AFTER CLOSING THE store, the sisters marveled at the array of white Christmas lights encircling every shop window on Main Street, as well as the majestic pine tree that stood in the center of the town square. The tree was lovingly adorned with clear glass bulbs and topped by a star that shone so brightly that even the weary Starlight opened his eyes to gaze upon it. He hooted softly before falling back to sleep.

  Before leaving the town proper, they stopped at Delilah’s Deli for sandwiches and pie. Uncle Joe wrapped their dinners in foil and handed Ruth Anne a separate package to give to their mother.

  “Tell her I just made this fruitcake,” he said. “But she’s still nuttier.”

  It was an old joke, one he made every year, and the girls laughed respectfully even though they knew their mother would throw it out the second she got it.

  While Dark Root didn’t experience the harsh winters that more northerly locations did, the winters could still be cruel. The shortened days held little sunlight, and the relentless wind chill bit at the tips of their fingers and cut at their noses.