A Lost Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 7) (19 page)

Caro shrugged.  “When someone’s been sitting in your shop for twenty-five years, you take the moments that come.”

Something any healer understood well.  “And how was our Marion after her tears?”  She’d grown rather fond of the dour woman with the heart of gold.

“Fragile.  In a good way, I think.”  Caro’s needles moved at a speed better suited to thinking than knitting progress.  “Helga took her home.”

Then Marion was in very good hands indeed.  “Sounds like a successful morning, then.”  And perhaps not the kind of one that triggered a surprise visit.  Moira sat patiently, quite certain there was more.

Caro nodded in acknowledgement of the unsaid.  “Hannah was there.”

Ah.   That was a different cauldron of fish entirely.  “Her magic slipped out?”  High emotion was a trigger for powers of every kind.

“My control’s better than that.”  Caro sipped at her iced tea, eyes far away and over the waters.  “It’s the woman who surprised me, not the witch.”

Now that was interesting.  Moira picked up her own tea and waited for the juicy part of the story to arrive.

“She’s been a scared little mouse in my store.”  No judgment, just a simple stating of fact.  “Understandable.”

So much empathy in a single word.  “She’s got terrifying magic in her veins.”

“Yes.  And twelve years living in four walls that don’t much resemble the world she just fell into.”  Her visitor contemplated a stray bit of fluff, gathering her thoughts.  “Today, when Marion crumbled, I expected Hannah to hide.”

Moira smiled—it was more than the old curmudgeons shaking off dust this day, or so her romantic soul hoped.

“She never moved, just sat there and watched.” 

Patients often did when you dumped them in the deep end.

Caro’s eyes darkened.  “But inside that heart of hers—she knows something of shattered dreams.  I don’t think she’ll just be watching tomorrow.  Sounds silly, perhaps, but I could feel her readying.”

Not silly at all.  A soul on the brink of exhale. 

The two women sat a while, appreciating the moment.  Bearing witness. 

And Moira watched the storm brewing on the other side of the table.  Finally, she reached for the fingers wrapped around bamboo needles.  A healer, asking the storm to break.

“She was
fifteen
when she went into that place.”  Slow words said by a witch nearly shaking with anger.  “Just a girl.  I’d have come out a scared, hollow shell.”

In seventy years, Moira had crossed paths with magic’s cruel edge more than once.  And always, there had been witches who rose up to meet it.  She grasped the hands of the woman who had just volunteered to do so this time.

“She sat there on a stool in the corner of my shop and felt deeply sorry for a woman she’d barely met.”  Caro’s eyes were wet now—and ferocious.  “I would have fought for the scared little mouse.”

“Aye.”  But she’d fight with a different light in her eyes now.

“She’s as fine a person as I’ve ever met.  And I think she’s about to get a lot less quiet.”

Respect.  From a woman who didn’t give it easily.  Moira nodded, well pleased by the visit.  “Well, that might make training her a stitch more difficult.”

“I don’t much care about that,” said Caro, setting down her glass. 

With some witches, their strength was obvious.  Her visitor had always been one of the quiet ones.  Moira smiled.  “I didn’t think you would.”

“I came to say that I won’t let my shop be her next prison.”  Her guest stood up, ready to depart.  “And it isn’t big enough to hold her for long.  She’s got some living to do.”

Moira stared at the dregs in her glass and sent a quick prayer to the skies that it might be so.

-o0o-

Lauren rubbed at her scalp, trying to loosen up the mental kinks.  Clearly she’d fallen into lazy, married sloth—hanging out at Hannah’s training session was seriously hard work.

Jamie, lying on his back in the grass, merely groaned. 
How do you think WE feel?

She knew exactly how they felt.  Her barriers were feeble enough at the moment that her mind was picking up three peoples’ worth of limp spaghetti.

Shit, sorry about that.
 Jamie’s soggy-noodle act dimmed somewhat. 
Did we finish all the cookies?

Thirty-six cookies, a half dozen pints of ice cream, and some neon-green Popsicles that had definitely seen better days.
 Thinking maybe we need another approach to this.
  They’d been trying to repeat Hannah’s first lesson—loosen the brain clamp, center, come out the other end in one piece. 

Lauren’s job was to shut it all down any time the visions were disturbing—and then to start it up all over again.  Practice, while trying to blunt the emotional trauma.   That much had worked halfway decently, but the rest was a mess. 
It’s like trying to restrain a tiger. 
Their student was no wimp—and so far, none of them could deal with letting go of the clamp more than a tiny fraction.
 

The third person on the grass shifted, restless.  “You guys having a little head chat without me again?”

Crap.  “Sorry, yeah.  Lack of energy, mostly.”

Hannah managed a diffident shrug.  “When you live in a mental institution, you learn to hate the quiet whispers.”

Ouch.  Yeah.  Lauren sent out a heartfelt mental apology.  “We were thinking that we need to go about this differently.  Letting the top off the toothpaste a little isn’t working all that well.”  That seemed like a safer mental image than caged tigers.

“I’m good with any ideas that don’t involve moving.”  Hannah lay limp, soaking in the afternoon sun.

Lauren sent Jamie a mental nudge.  He had more experience working with magic’s wallops than anyone.

Thinking.
 He tossed an arm over his eyes.  “Fire power is like this, kinda.  If too much builds up, it comes charging out.  We need a way to take the edge off so that it flows more gently, like earth or water power.”

Lauren snorted.  Her water-witch husband had plenty of experience with magic of the charging variety. 

Dev’s a freak.
  Jamie managed to roll over this time and looked over at Hannah.  “We teach fire witches to knit because that helps the magic come out in a trickle instead of an explosion.”

Their student frowned.  “I already weave.”

Lauren had been on the receiving end of an attack while Hannah’s loom had been in her hands.  It hadn’t done a whole lot to declaw the tiger.

Jamie was tracing a different line of thought.  “Maybe it’s not an accident that you like the weaving so much.  I’ll talk to Caro—let’s try lesson three at her shop.  It might help you stay grounded.”

Something almost whiny leaked out of Hannah’s mind.  “I thought I was trying to be a little round pebble, rolling wherever the water wanted to push me.”

Yeah.  And before that, a happy yellow flower, a marshmallow, and a trickling stream.  Lauren pushed herself up to sitting—time to be more than the resident brain clamp.  She knew how important visualizations were, and how frustrating it was to be on the receiving end of a trainer trying to find the right one.  “There’s no right way to picture working with magic, which is why we’re being all confusing and shifting gears on you.”

Hannah’s next thought dialed up the cranky a hundredfold.

Lauren opened her mouth—and then shut it again.  Jamie had way more practice with whiny trainees than she did.

Thanks a lot.
  He had enough energy to sound amused—the lime Popsicle must be sinking in.  The thought he pushed their student’s way was a different tone entirely. 
It’s okay to say that out loud.

Hannah’s eyes stayed fixed on the sky.  “I just want to make it go away.”

Yeah.  Which didn’t make the work any easier.  And Lauren was pretty sure her two trainers felt the same way.  It was damn hard to work with a magic everyone wanted to banish to the next galaxy.

“I hear you.”  Jamie made wispy clouds move in the shape of a rocket.  “I really do.  Let’s give it a rest for today.  We’ll try act three tomorrow at Caro’s shop.”

“Not making a lot of progress, huh?”  Hannah’s voice was poker neutral, but her mind was limp and sad.

“We won’t know that until we get there,” said Lauren gently, knowing that wasn’t enough.  “And rest can be as important as practice.”

She remembered the first time she’d heard those lines and sighed.

They’d sucked then, too.

Chapter 14

Caro drank her morning coffee, staring at the small shoe box sitting on the shelf under her counter.  And wondered if taking the lid off was the right thing to do. 

If it wasn’t, she’d spent a long afternoon chasing a man around New Hampshire for no good reason.

Marion had sat in that chair for nigh on twenty-five years now, and not once had she asked for her life to be upturned.  A knitting matron, content enough with her life, peace made with a marriage and a man who would never rise above the level of adequate and often fell below.  A quiet life with friends and a steady supply of yarn.

Caro took a deep breath and reminded herself of two things.  The face in that chair was always stoic—but the mind was often sad.  And Marion’s yarn was always bright.  Hot pinks and searing greens, sunshine yellows and little-girl rainbows.  Not the colors of a knitting matron.

The colors of a young bride-to-be who still, somewhere, held on to dreams.

Caro picked up the box and took off the lid.  They had another young woman in their midst now—one who also needed to remember what it was to dream.

Perhaps a couple of sticks with hooks could help. 

Caro picked up one of the spindles.  A work of art, it was.  Created by a master woodcrafter, all glistening wood and shiny newness, nestled in a soft bit of spring-grass-green fiber.

It nearly begged to be spun.

She heard Marion’s hissed intake of breath and laid the spindle and fiber fluff down on the countertop.  “Picked them up yesterday.  Give it a try if you like.”

Desire warred with painful, scarred pride.

Caro didn’t give a damn about the latter.  “It’s never too late to make a different choice.”

“Who says I want one?”

They had the full attention of the rest of the knitting group now, all eyes glued to the invisible swordfight in their midst.

Caro fought the way she did best—planted her feet and dared Marion to move her.  And watching the angry steel in Marion’s eyes, wondered if she’d made an enormous mistake.

“It’s so lovely.”

Hannah’s words were barely a whisper, a floating sigh as she slid up to the counter and picked up the spindle and its nest of green.  Her fingers traced the lines of amboyna burl and bloodwood and then danced lightly over the fiber cloud.

And her feet traced an unerring path to Marion’s side.

Caro let her smile stay inside.  Their weaver was a smart chickadee.  And perhaps today, wiser than the cranky old woman who owned the yarn shop.  There was more than one way to win a swordfight.

Marion’s eyes softened.  “It is a pretty little thing.  Makes the one I used to use look like a great, galoofing giant.”

Caro had figured that much.  The spindles of yesteryear had been boat anchors—and anyone who had managed fine lace on those was going to find the modern art making its way into her hands irresistible.  She backed away slowly into a corner of yarn that needed no straightening and waited for history and beautiful tools and the intrigue in Hannah’s eyes to do their work.

Helga wasn’t nearly so patient.  “Well, are you going to spin the darn thing?”  She dragged her chair closer, practically squishing Marion’s toes.  “I want to see how it works.”

“I don’t have any idea how to use it.”  Marion’s hands were already busy drawing a twisted tendril of yarn out from the cloud of green.  “Probably break it or something.  Looks delicate.”

Caro hid a snort.  Insults were a very good sign.

“Wood’s stronger than it looks.”  Hannah’s nose was practically glued to the spindle’s whorl.  “What’s the hook for?”

“Beats me.”  Marion tied her makeshift leader onto the shaft and stared.  “Never seen one like this.”

Upside down.  Ever so faintly, Caro pushed an image from one of the videos she’d watched.

Marion muttered something about newfangled gadgets, but she turned the spindle over—and lightbulbs went off in several heads.

The next thirty seconds were a mess of babbling ideas and fifteen hands trying to do a job best suited for two.  But when it was done, a glistening whirl of wood hung twirling from Marion’s hands and a slow, steady string of lime green grew between her fingers.

Her audience stared, awestruck.

And Caro sat down on the floor, suddenly shaky, as Marion’s mind bloomed in focused joy.  Hands doing what hands were meant to do.

A dream, rescued from the ashes.

Hannah cupped her hands as the spindle descended into her waiting lap.  And said the magic three words.  “Show me.  Please.”

The world could handle more than one dream at a time.

Caro hugged a ball of orange yarn to her cheek and cursed the tears.  She stayed where she was—they’d discover the other spindles in the shoe box soon enough.