
Chapter 30
51.3% of Oregon, 32 million acres, is forest
land. One tenth of all US forests.
“MAYBE GOLLUM HAD THE RIGHT IDEA and
we should consult MoonFeather,” I stalled.
“We don’t have time,” Lucia said, lighting a candle
beneath the newly installed but not cleaned French doors. That was
east.
The normal little votive in an art glass cup gave
off a heady aroma reminiscent of hot dry air, salty seas, and olive
trees. I followed behind Lucia sprinkling the mixed herbs in her
wake. She stepped carefully, making her arc to south perfect.
Allie sat on the foot of the bed, her hands on the
crossed ankles of my girls. Phonetia began to struggle at the first
whiff of burning herbs mixed to provoke a cleansing of magic.
At the south end of the room, Lucia lit another
candle. This one smelled of ordinary bayberry, but there was
something more beneath it. She’d done something weird to my dollar
store finds.
I spread more herbs around the votive. So far she
set up a pretty standard ceremonial magic milieu. “MoonFeather
would have done much the same,” I commented.
“Your aunt would not allow me to delve into the
darker side of the magic,” Lucia said as she lit west. I caught
snow on the wind and musky animal scents from that one.
She really had done something strange to my
candles.
“I don’t see a pentagram. We should draw one inside
the circle before we close it.” The five-pointed star inscribed
inside a circle was the basis of all ceremonial magic I’d ever read
about or participated in.
“Trust me, there is a pentagram.” Lucia continued
her ritual.
“But don’t we need white magic to counter the black
of the original spell?” Allie asked. She’d read all the available
vampire fiction and had a passing knowledge of magical
theory.
Having grown up with a witch for an aunt, and
having researched magic for my writing, I too knew a lot about it.
That didn’t mean I believed it.
Well, sometimes I did.
“For long-term effects you may repeat the spell
with white parameters. But we don’t have time. We must break the
elf’s hold on his daughters now, before the sun sets or they will
never take human form again.
Startled, I looked more closely at my girls. Sure
enough, their skin had taken on a green tinge; their hair had begun
to clump into the shape of overlapping leaves.
E.T.’s fingertips and toes sprouted poisonous
berries. The digits themselves flattened and spread, taking on a
green tinge.
Blackberry, Phonetia no longer, had thorns growing
from her pores. Her eyes nearly shot venom at me.
“White magic works by undermining the core of evil,
worming itself into every crack and crevice. That takes time. It is
more long lasting. But it takes time. Years sometimes. My spell
will be quick. And dirty. But it will salvage their souls and give
your MoonFeather something to work with.”
Lucia hovered over the last candle on the bookcase
headboard.
I knew she waited for me to give her permission to
complete the circle that would bind all of our energies
inside.
“We have Earth in the herbs. We have Air in the
incense. We have the Fire in the candles. I presume you will need
blood for the Water to complete this.”
She nodded.
“We’ll use mine,” I said with more determination
than I’d felt a few moments ago. “I will bind myself to them as if
I were their own mother. I will become a part of them and they of
me.”
You sure you want to do this, babe? Scrap
asked. He’d been strangely silent through the entire process. No
backing out or changing your mind once you start. If they were your
biological children you could give them up to foster care if things
got too hairy. With this you can’t. Not even if you wanted to. Not
even if your life depended upon it.
I had to think about that a moment. One look at my
girls reverting to plants, with only a tiny bit of humanity still
pulsing through them, reminded me of the face of the Green Man in
folklore and in dozens of pagan artifacts. Not truly human, nor
truly a creature of the forest. Lost and alone ... I knew I could
not condemn my girls to that kind of wild, half-existence.
“Yes, Scrap, I’m sure. Do it, Lady Lucia. Light the
candle and open my vein with the knife I know you have in your
pocket.”
“Very well. You are wearing the pearls?”
I touched the strand around my neck beneath my
sweater as a talisman. “Of course.”
“Good. You will need them.” She touched her lighter
to the wick. The flame flared as it caught. Then it settled to burn
cheerily. The scent of fresh cut pine overwhelmed my senses. Not
just any pine, but an Italian Stone Pine from the Southern
Alps.
The natural form of our nasty Nörglein.
Instantly, a frisson of energy coursed through my
veins, burning into my heart. New awareness opened in my
brain.
For a moment I was back in the audience chamber of
the Powers That Be, signing my name in blood upon the contract that
would ensure no demon ever again tried to wrongly manipulate the
sacred, neutral space where my father’s bed and breakfast
sat.
I jerked back into my own body and time with a new
piece of knowledge. The crystal ball Scrap had hidden in the armory
closet in the basement of Dad’s house ate away at the fabric of
reality to open a new portal. It would be permanent and independent
of the ball.
“Scrap, get the crystal ball out of its hiding
place now!” I screamed before the heady aromas of the magic
building within the circle made me too dizzy and incoherent to
think straight.
A stream of arcane syllables spilled from Lucia’s
mouth. She made the harsh, glottal sounds flow like a mountain
stream struggling to get past sharp cascades. She grabbed my hand
in a grip that brooked no defiance or escape.
She slashed her little knife across my palm. Blood
welled up before I felt the sting.
Then she produced the missing pentagram. A silver
medallion the size of my open palm, a five-pointed star within a
circle of entwined leafy vines—perfect for the symbolism in the
spell. She smeared my blood on the amulet, then slashed each girl’s
palm and added her blood to the pentagram.
Sharply, fiercely, she thrust it first onto
Phonetia’s forehead, then onto E.T.’s.
More ritual words invoked chills and searing heat
that coursed through my veins as she smeared our commingled blood
on the tops of their heads, brows, mouths, throats, heart, belly,
and pubis.
The seven chakra points. When all were opened, they
gave a doorway into the soul. Afterimages of the pentagram glowed
red where it touched each of the girls.
Then she repeated the ritual on me. The pentagram
left a searing impression. Seven times it branded me.
My limbs spasmed, convulsed, and cramped. I felt
myself curling in on myself and falling, falling.
My back opened with wounds reminiscent of those
inflicted by the blackberry vine whip. Again and again it lashed me
through time as it had lashed my girls.
My mind tore open to admit seedlings of alien
thoughts. The Nörglein sent barbed hooks into my mind, gleaning
information and asserting control. Through him I accessed all the
fear and humiliation he heaped upon Phonetia and E.T.
My soul ripped out of my body and fled from him in
terror.

Vertigo sent my senses flying in six directions at
once. I lost my orientation to up and down, north and south. I fell
down, down, down. Twisting around and around in a spiral of doom.
Leaking magic behind in a blazing trail so bright anyone could
follow me.
All Hallows Eve, the night when the barriers
between worlds thinned and became vulnerable. I punched through a
whole series of them, desperate to stay ahead of the dark elf. His
all-consuming avarice followed me easily.
Down I passed through the shadowy illusion of the
condominium complex. Past the basement, into the dirt. Rootlets
reached for me, trying to snag in my hair and penetrate my skin,
make me a part of the green ecosystem. Worms and burrowing beetles
peered at me in curiosity, thought about feasting on what was left
of me, changed their minds, and went about their business.
I became the being I feared most for my daughters,
a wild thing, so much a part of the forest that I could never be
human again. And yet I yearned for human contact. Any trace of
language, or the touch of a hand, or shared experiences.
Isolated. Alone.
The water table flowed around me, threatening to
drown what breath I had left.
And still I drilled deep, deep, deeper into the
Earth, fleeing the elf mind that sought to consume me.
Darkness crowded all my senses. I had nothing to
anchor myself to, if I even knew who I was anymore. Then I became
aware of the pearls blazing around my neck, lighting a path of
sorts for me to follow.
“I can’t fight both you, evil Nörglein, and the
Earth at the same time,” I whispered in my mind. Exhausted, I
covered the pearls with my hand and melded with the darkness. I
drifted.
Which way was up? Where was home? Who was I?
“I can’t do it anymore. I give up.”
“Not yet, babe.” Scrap reached out a pudgy
four-fingered hand and grabbed hold of me. “I’m not ready to give
up yet, so you can’t. If you die, I die. If I die, you die.”
He manifested as tall as me, solid, and reassuring.
He spread his wings to enfold me in a protective blanket.
I halted the downward spiral.
“Was this what it was like for you when you were
imprisoned inside the Goblin Rock by the Guardians of the Valley of
Fire?” I asked him.
“Yeah. But I was alone. You do not have to
be.”
“What saved you?”
“I thought about what your life would be like
without me. Not alive but not dead either, powerless to fight the
evil that would target you the moment you became vulnerable. So I
found the right answers to save us both.”
“Is that what you are doing now?”
“Sorta. Come.” He took my hand and led me on a new
journey. Like Peter Pan leading Wendy to Neverland.
I felt like we flew sideways. But the Earth gave
way to air. Tangled roots became a tapestry of branches. Leaves
flowed out of me to bind themselves to barren limbs. Shadowy trees
flitted past us. Insubstantial deer and rabbits peered at us
curiously then returned to their browsing. And still I shed the
greenery, giving it back to the original owners. I caught glimpses
of sunlight, heard echoes of birdsong.
None of it real.
Except the pearls lighting our path like a fragile
glow stick in the hands of a toddler on Halloween night.
I grew cold. My teeth chattered but I couldn’t hear
them gnash together. The landscape grew barren, devoid of green
things. A frozen wasteland.
“Imp Haven,” Scrap whispered, as if afraid of
rousing his mum if he spoke too loudly.
More imps joined us—tall ones, short ones, young
and old. Rainbows flashed across their magnificent wings. They
appeared less substantial than Scrap, more present than the icy
lumps of the garbage dump.
They chittered and squealed in high-pitched
conversation I couldn’t understand. I knew they talked about me,
scolded Scrap for bonding with me as an unworthy.
One word of their tirade penetrated my
understanding. Pearls.
“Thank you for being my friend,” I told Scrap.
“You’re a pain in the ass, but I love you as much as I do any of my
family.” I couldn’t remember what my life had been like before I
wandered into the Citadel in a lost ravine on the high desert
plateau of the Columbia River Basin in a fever delirium. The fever
had opened new pathways in my brain to allow me to see and hear
Scrap.
He was just a scrap of an imp, the runt who
shouldn’t have survived. But he was my imp. My heart filled with
love.
She’ll do, the other imps whispered among
themselves. Her strengths outweigh her taints. And she is the
only human who could control you, Scrap. You are the only imp who
can curb her instincts. They escorted us out of the wasteland,
through the shadow forest, and back into ...