The Witch of Belladonna Bay (10 page)

I reached down behind my chair and brought the book out from where I kept it, safely tucked away under a stack of books on the lower shelf.

“I'm sort of … adding things to it,” I said.

“All the better.” He smiled.

He wasn't afraid of me.

“Want to get out of here and take a walk? Are you allowed?” he asked.

I laughed then. The sound shocked me. I couldn't remember laughing, not once.

“My aunt owns the place. No one comes in here anyway. Tourists. That's about it.” I got off my stool and came out from around the counter, acutely aware that my long hair was tangled, and my sundress, once bright green, had faded to a really soft sage.
He'll think I'm homeless,
I thought. And then realized it didn't matter, because I was.

We closed the shop and I turned the
BACK—WHEN I CHOOSE TO COME BACK—AS IF IT MATTERS
sign over on the door.

“You've got some moxie in ya, girl. Now, show me around.”

And boy, did I give him a tour.

As we walked he told me how he'd “stumbled” on the town while looking for that book. He drove right into Fairview without a second thought. Which is odd, because there's that behemoth of an asylum that actually blocks the entire town.

You have to drive around it, in a rotary to see Fairview's beauty. But he wasn't daunted by the ominous building. Not Jackson.

We walked together along those cobblestone streets, and I watched as he gazed in amazement at the picturesque surroundings. It's nice to see something familiar through someone else's eyes.

He marveled at the things I showed him. Things that made him wonder if those books he was collecting didn't have a little bit of truth to them after all. By the end of the day, he was a true believer.

“I've met a witch! A real live witch,” he said.

The rooftops of Fairview stretched out across narrow streets, circling toward larger cliffs, and all the homes, especially the large Queen Anne Victorian down by the shore—Coveview, my old home—seemed to shimmer. And the flowers, zinnias of all colors, were enormous.

“It's beautiful here, magical,” he said.

“I guess,” I responded softly.

“It's all a matter of perspective, right?” he asked.

I just looked at him. And wanted him to take me away.

Was it love? For Jackson there was no question. He told me that mine was the voice he'd heard in the wind but never understood until he met me. He said I filled a longing in him he never thought would be filled.

I don't think I was able to live up to that description.

Besides Minerva, I'd never known love. So I didn't think about it much. When we were settled in Alabama, I felt it. It hurts, love. I wish I'd known.

So while we sat on a large rock overlooking the waters between Fairview and Fortunes Cove, I said, “Take me away from here.”

“Why would you want to leave such a place?” he asked.

“Prisons come in all shapes and sizes. I can't breathe here. How's the air in Alabama?”

“Well, it smells like fish after it rains sometimes.”

“I don't care what it smells like. If I don't leave soon, I'm sure I'll get sent back there.” I pointed in the direction of the asylum. “Or over there,” I said, pointing to the island of Fortunes Cove.

He didn't even mention the asylum. How brave he was. Or maybe love
is
crazy.

“What's over there?” he asked instead, following my gaze across the channel to Fortunes Cove.

“No one knows. A strange island full of strange people. I suppose I belong there, only it feels … I don't know. Wrong. Don't you feel it when you look over there?”

“Well, I hate to tell you, but I have a misty island, too.”

“You have an island?”

“Well, yes. It's part of our land. No one lives there though. Not now, anyway. Not for as long as anyone can remember. It's behind the Big House and across the creek. That's what we call my house, original, huh?”

“What's it like?”

“The Big House?”

“No, the island?”

“I don't know.”

“How come?” I asked.

“Ain't never been there.”

“But it's behind your house!”

“Sure is. Have you ever been over to
your
island?”

I laughed again and shook my head.

“See? It's probably better for both of us that we haven't had the pleasure of those adventures. Bad things happen to people who visit that type of land.”

“And still … you ventured here,” I said.

“Yes. The way I figure, it's all about instinct. And fate. Thank God I came. Because I found you.” He asked, “Marry me?” as night fell and mermaids swam all around us. Or so Jackson liked to say when he told the tale. It made the story finer, somehow. Besides, Bronwyn and Patrick always wanted to hear more about mermaids.

So that's it. My own personal love story. And as Jackson used to say, “It's a hell of a yarn.”

Minerva came with me to Alabama. Bless her. I'd have died a lot sooner if she hadn't.

The bond between us was strong. Family or caretaker, or both. My ring was a blue crescent with a ruby tucked in beside it like a dangling fiery star. And she wore her matching necklace as a sign that we were bound together. For life.

When I got to Magnolia Creek, I wanted, more than anything, to be normal. So I took off my ring, and I made Minerva put her necklace away, even though I knew it hurt her to do so. I wanted no reminders of my old life. I wanted to believe that Minerva was there with me out of love, not some magical duty.

There's so much to explain.

I get tired, flitting in and out of reality like this. It's not a bone tired (ghosts don't have bones), just tired like a wind that dies down suddenly. Out of breath.

I tried to hide the ways of my people from my beautiful babies when they were growing up, but they saw things, felt things. And Bronwyn had a touch of magic in her, so I had to answer their questions or lie. And I've never been fond of liars, especially after I became one.

“What's a caretaker, Mama?” asked Paddy once.

“Well, sweet baby, where I'm from there is this strange idea that certain people are born and connected to other people, and that it's their life's job to protect them. Take care of them … see? Caretaker!”

“Is it like that for everyone?” asked Bronwyn, combing out a tangled mess of hair on one of her dolls, not looking at me. She was always the one to ask the practical questions.

“No, at least I don't think so, sweet girl. Though I suppose you could call it ‘soul mate' or something like that. Only it's not romantic, at least, not all the time.”

This made Paddy laugh. “Imagine you and Min kissin', Mama!” he said, rolling around on the carpet next to my bed.

We all laughed. Those were still the laughing days.

What I didn't tell them was the way my family treated me. But I never forgot it and that invisibility haunts me still. You'd think, coming from a family with strange ways, that I would have been accepted fully. Lauded, even. But it didn't work that way. Turns out, I had more magic in me than anyone wanted to believe or understand.

“There's a difference between guessing what a person is thinking and being able to predict their
exact
time of death, Naomi,” said my gran. Having too much magic had hurt our family in too many ways, and she didn't like that I had, let's call them
enhanced
talents. Besides, I'd chased her daughter away. She blamed me for that, too.

“You belong over there,” Gran would say, shaking a large knife as she cut stems off nettle or peeled mandrake root. She'd look out the kitchen window of Coveview over the ocean to the misty island of Fortunes Cove.

That was an insult to me, to all of us, because we all knew that crazy things happened on that island. Crazier and scarier than anything ever experienced in Fairview.

We'd seen them come and go, those people who lived there, furtive, secret, strange, sparkly residents.

Everyone in Fairview figured the island was cursed because no one who didn't
already
live there could go there.

There was no rule. Nothing like that. Just a pure, sweet sickness that you got whenever you tried to cross the sea between. So Gran telling me that I needed to live there was really just saying she'd rather never see me again.

I was such a little girl. Who does that to a little, lost girl? And why not love me regardless?

The answers to those questions took me a long time to figure out. I'm still figuring them out, I think.

But I believe I've gone on a tangent. I do that more and more lately, thoughts spinning and veering like birds in the sky, taking formation in one direction or the other. The Whalens call those kinds of thoughts “the crazy fuckalls.” A crude saying really, but accurate.

Birds. Back to the birds.

In the Green family we have a lot of traditions. And one of them, my favorite of all, is that when we die our souls become birds. I was kind of excited about getting a chance to be a bird. And when the redbirds came the day they laid me in the ground, I thought they'd take my soul with them. Only … they didn't. They flew away and left me here. Left me like everyone always did. Everyone but Minerva.

Even my babies left me.

Bronwyn left when she was a child. She was right in front of me, but I couldn't find her anymore. One day she was there, her eyes full of love. And the next, they were vacant. She started to hate me. Then she left again when I died. I suppose I wanted her to go, because being caught in a place where you don't belong is a special kind of hell.

Paddy left me when he realized he could count on Bronwyn more than me. And Jackson, dear sweet Jackson, he waltzed me through our happy years, only to leave me for his true love, liquor. See, my husband's addiction was, and still is, as bad as my own.

I've been watching these people I love lose pieces of themselves, bit by bit, year after year. Maybe that's why I'm lingering. Maybe I'm supposed to repair what I broke.

I don't know.

At first, when Stella and Paddy got married, I thought I was sticking around to help Stella with her impossible choice. See, she had her own mysteries and sorrows. She knew she'd die in childbirth, but her own sight had shown her two paths. She could have stayed where she'd grown up, and lived to raise Byrd. But that path meant that Byrd would be trapped in some sort of evil web Stella couldn't show me. Something so dark that she blocked it from her mind. The other path was to leave that place and search for loosely related people to help raise her daughter. But that path meant she'd die, and not get to be with Byrd at all. She was a better mother to Byrd by accepting her fate than I ever was.

When Byrd was born, and so alone … I thought maybe I was here to protect her. Turns out she's been more of a comfort to
me.
Figures.

Byrd is the girl I would have been if I'd had more people around than Minerva to love me.

Nothing could explain why my soul lingered—until my first baby, Bronwyn, came back home.

She'd been gone for the right amount of time. Fourteen years. Seems like an even number, only it's not. It's comprised of two sevens. It took her seven years to run away completely, and then seven years to find her way back.

At first, she looked like a beautiful, poised, grown-up woman … but the little, wounded blond girl, with a bright red bow in her bouncy curls, was standing next to her. Trying to get her attention. Making her whole soul tilt to one side.

She was in a prison, just like Paddy. A prison she'd created for herself.

And then I saw the magic, and was relieved, because if she could grow her talents enough to see me, I could set us both free.

Because I really thought being dead would be
way
more fun. I'm tired of this game. Maybe there's glitter in the light.

Now I just have to get there.

 

9

Bronwyn

 

Before Byrd emerged from the secret doorway, I let my hand touch Naomi's bedding, just briefly.
She died here.
And in that moment, I felt that tingle I used to feel when whatever bit of magic I
did
have would riot up to the surface.

Remembering can be like swallowing glass. Cutting you up from the inside out.

Emily Dickinson said, “Remorse is a memory awake,” and I've never met anyone who'd want to wake those types of things up.
Let sleeping dogs lie. Never wake a sleeping baby.
Et cetera. Now, add a bit of “shine” to that remembering and it becomes a cinematic nightmare playing out right in front of you.

There was one big fight Jackson and I had before Naomi died. Sometimes I think if it weren't for that particular fight, I might not have left home at all. I might have stayed.

We were on one of the upstairs porches, the one we used to sleep on when the summer nights got too hot. The Big House porches are not ordinary porches. There are handwoven carpets covering white-painted, wide wooden floors. Massive tropical potted plants live out there in the summer and are moved back inside during the winter months. And ceiling fans line the bead board under the roof, bringing a constant soothing breeze. They were a sanctuary, my own personal heaven—until that fight with my father.

A huge storm was rolling in, bringing an unbearable humid heat. Naomi lazed in her rooms, and Paddy and I ran out onto the large porch and took up our usual spots. Paddy, the hammock, and I, one of the cushioned porch swings.

“You ready, Wyn? It's gonna be a big one!”

“I sure am, maybe it'll take down this whole damn house.”

Jackson was walking past the porch doors and heard me.

“That what you want, sugar?”

Problem was, he wasn't drunk that day, he was lucid. And he was
mad
. And I just didn't know how to deal with a mad, sober Jackson. So I did what BitsyWyn did all the time. I fought back, only I never fought fair.