Chapter 29

Chapter 29 of 56 · 8-minute read

Somewhere, a bubble pops. Like wind, but not quite. Like yawning when my airplane takes off or lands to clear my ears. A soft sound that ripples through my bones and joints.

There’s no dismissing the quarters, neither mine nor Virgil’s. My four Sacred Dead and Virgil’s four previous incarnations are gone, just gone.

The Morrigan is gone.

The circle of entwined energy redirected around us into a sphere above and below the earth where my toes sink into the grass—gone. I’ve never seen a circle close in quite that way. The only thing left of it is a single thought.

The creek deep in the pasture, bare feet, flowing water. Release.

I sink backward against Virgil. Sighing, he wraps his arms around me and hugs me tight before releasing me.

I turn to face him, my palms on his chest. “Did you see it? What my grandmother showed me?”

He nods. “All of it. And then at the very end, Laguz. The rune for flow. We need to take a walk. Down to the creek?”

He saw it. He really saw it. So odd to have this kind of connection with him! With anyone.

I sniff twice. “Do you smell that?”

Petrichor. The scent of rain beating into the parched earth. One of my favorite smells. Somewhere north of the farm, heavy thunder clouds loom, emptying into the woods and fields belonging to our neighbors’ farms. The dry creek that cuts across our farm and once emptied into the old swamp will not stay dry for long. Funny, how the weather patterns here are.

Or is this Virgil’s weather magick again?

It’s rained heavily on the backside of our farm, down near the swamp, ever since the workers found Bobby’s car. The ground’s been wet enough that they haven’t been able to get the backhoe close enough to help pull it out or even to investigate what’s inside the old car. I know that it’s only camping gear in the trunk and in the backseat, but no one else knows that. Or who the car belongs to.

Sure, it’s been dry enough for workers to get in there this afternoon, but their labor has definitely been hindered by the weather. However, while it’s rained over the swamp and old woods this week, a mile to the north, they’ve had not a single drop. Such is the life of dry-land farming in Southern Georgia where some of the farms still don’t use expensive irrigation systems and risk losing their investment every year to their lenders.

For all those times when I stood on the back porch with my mom and watched her fret about a “good rain” visible across the field, but not on her own property where her crops wilted, I’m suddenly grateful for the spotty rain coverage in this part of the state. It means that, while the swamp has been too wet for heavy equipment for the last forty-eight hours, a new deluge is on its way to keep them at bay for a few more days.

“Hang on, Laurie, while I grab my boots from the back porch. You want shoes, too?”

I laugh. “I never want shoes. Ever. I love being barefoot and feeling Mother Earth under my soles, and in my soul. I love absorbing those calming vibrations as I walk through Nature. It makes me feel connected with my Goddess and here in this place, with my ancestors.”

“You know that in the big cities they call that ‘forest-bathing’ now, right?”

“They can call it whatever they please. Me? I call it ‘home.’”

I grab the nearest garden hose that’s coiled on the side of our house. The sprayer nozzle attached to this end cuts off the steady flow, except for a trickling leak that runs down my elbow. It’s probably the same nozzle my mom used for garden hoses when I was a child. She never throws away anything. Just true to a generation that grew out of the Great Depression’s effects on their family wealth.

Although the roaring bonfire has dwindled to coals, I spray the ground around the fire to prevent any spread and then lightly spray the coals. They hiss. Clouds of white smoke that rise in the air and catch in my throat. Water from the ancient nozzle runs down my wrist and drips off my elbows. I toss the garden hose aside and remind myself to check the fire when we return.

Pamela emerges from the back door and says something in a low voice to Virgil, who nods and gives her a thumbs up. He braces himself with his cane as he stands and tugs on his boots one at a time. He glances skyward at the dark clouds visible in the moonlight to the north, then shoves both of our phones and a pack of cigarettes that Dixon has left on the garden table on the back porch a little deeper into the shield of an oversized Christmas cactus, one of my mom’s favorites.

Pamela and Dixon are inside with my mom, chatting with her, and all is well. I can’t remember the last time I felt this relaxed—no phone in hand, no standing over my mom and wringing my hands. I know in my core that this sense of peace won’t last. But for this moment, I’m grateful for the chance to be able to breathe.

“Your mom’s asleep. Napping.” Virgil beams at me as he joins me next to the fire. Or what’s left of it. “Your mom finished the movie, then fell asleep watching a documentary about Scotland. Pamela said that she was humming to the sound of bagpipes before she fell asleep. She’ll be okay. Pamela will watch out for her. Dix, too.”

“She’s probably dreaming of Scotland,” I muse. “She’s wanted her entire life to go there. So have I. Now she’ll never see it.”

“But you still can. Why have you waited?”

I shrug. The truth of it is, I don’t want to go alone. I can, but I would prefer that my first trip there be one that I can share with someone special to me. Quent had always promised, but then Quent had always made plenty of promises. Jesse and I had actually planned a trip before everything fell apart. Sonnet and Christabel are too busy evangelizing all around the country, though they have been planning a European tour next year to include a stop in Edinburgh or Glasgow and I’m seriously thinking of joining them. Rhiannon is pregnant and has too many family obligations staring her in the face. So if I go to Scotland this year, it will probably be alone or not at all. Then again, I don’t want to be like my mom and spend my life wishing without taking action. Wish, to me, is not an action verb.

“Virgil!” Pamela stage whispers from the corner of the back porch. She holds up a long silver cylinder and tosses it to him. He catches the flashlight in one hand, nods his thanks, and jams the shaft of the flashlight into his back pocket. Not that we needed to find our way across a field in the light of a full moon, but Pamela’s no witch. She wouldn’t know how attuned to the Earth and the cycles of light and dark that Virgil and I are.

I take the lead as I pick my way across the grassy field, sticking close to the field road that’s almost overgrown with weeds and spreading grass. I walk a path worn from my own feet in my teen years when I escaped through the pastures, over stones and sticks and sharp thorns, to the place where the creek murmurs and gurgles. Even from this distance, I can hear the bubbling of rising creek waters.

Glancing back at Virgil, I find him close behind me. “I can’t thank you enough for tonight,” I say. “I had no idea how much I needed this. I mean, I always feel wonderful after a ritual—full of energy, and sometimes euphoria—but I had no idea how much I needed this.”

“I’m glad, Laurie. I could see how worrying about your mom was wearing you down. Not that I can do this with you every night, but certainly more often than once in a lifetime. You know, don’t you, that whatever you need, I’m here? You don’t have to worry about falling or failing because I’ll catch you.”

I know he will. Our friendship is sure, solid. That’s nice, too. To have that. Virgil feels like a blessing in my life. Dixon too, but not a solid for some reason, despite how many kisses we’ve shared.

My heel catches on the edge of an abandoned fire ant mound that’s become a little more than a hard lump of dirt in the middle of the pasture. One of many. I stumble, but Virgil catches my elbow so that I don’t fall.

Already, he is staying true to his word. He doesn’t let go. He doesn’t take my hand and weave his fingers through mine in a romantic way or grasp my hand as if we’re more than friends. Instead, he simply holds onto my elbow and offers support.

“You mind if I ask you something, Laurie?”

I shrug. “Go ahead.”

“I saw the vision your grandmother showed you. Frankly, I was surprised. I’ve always known your mama to be a force to be reckoned with. I never knew what was happening with your dad. He was always so outwardly friendly and like a father to everyone else in the community.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. I’ve heard from others how kind my father was to those around him, particularly in the church. It’s true that he acted as a father-figure to many of them, but his way of being an actual dad differed greatly from what people thought it would be. In reality, the people he was an actual father to suffered under his tyranny and still have scars on our flesh and psyches.

The air is filled with the aroma of damp earth and the scent of pine trees as we pick our path through a patch of overgrown weeds. The stream is loud and clear now, water rushing over rocks like fingers running through hair.

“Was that truly really true?” Virgil asks hesitantly. “I know your mom believed it and so did your grandmother, but would your dad really have hunted down your mom if she had taken you and run away? Tracked you down, killed you both?”

“Yes? No? I don’t know. It could have gone one of two ways, Virgil. If my mom had disappeared with me and never come back, he could’ve played the victim. I’m sure he would’ve been more than happy to suck up all the sympathy he could get. He could probably have taken advantage of that for years. On the other hand, I can absolutely believe it that he would have tracked us down and killed us in our sleep. I once saw him throw a hammer at his dog and crush its skull. And he loved that dog. A lot more than he seemed to love us.”

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