The Witching Wind, page 14
Colette likes to say that Aunt Weezie is “a mood.” She always wears red lipstick and black-and-white striped clothes, because that’s what she thinks French people do. Weezie was not raised in Paris. She’s never been there. She grew up on Monarch Mountain, like Dad. But she’s worked very hard over the years to get rid of her mountain accent. I don’t understand why but figure it’s none of my business.
I wrap my arm around Weezie’s tiny waist and squeeze. “Thanks for the milkshakes. They look amazing.”
She kisses the top of my hair. “Je t’en prie! That means you’re welcome in French. All of you are welcome.” She points at Mars. “And everything here is peanut free, as I’m sure Roxie told you! My daughter has a peanut allergy, too.”
With a wink, and a twirl, Weezie heads back to the kitchen.
The milkshakes look like something out of Willy Wonka’s personal pantry, swirled high with whipped cream and dusted with cookie crumbles.
Not everybody had a first impression of the record shop. But everybody has a reaction to Weezie’s milkshakes.
“Wow!” Mars says, eyeing his towering milkshake with wonder.
We’re all about to dig in when we hear a certain, screeching sound—the sharp, squawking caw-caw bird sound specific to . . . a crow.
I run outside, the rest of the Yeehaws fast on my heels. Two crows sit in the tall tree in the middle of the pavilion.
“What now?” I whisper.
Grayson’s hands are gripped tight to the handles of her walker. And she’s looking up at the crows. Does she talk to them in her mind? Are birds telepathic? Is Grayson?
Finally she lifts a finger and points.
“I see it! There’s a sparkle. Roxie . . . they already found your ring.” Grayson puffs up her chest. “I knew it would work. I knew it.”
At first, I feel like I’m looking for a four-leaf clover in a field of weeds. But Grayson is right. Loretta Lynn’s haunted ring is there in the tree.
“I can go get my drone!” Eli says. “I think I could knock it out . . .”
“No, I’ll get it,” I say. Here’s what people don’t realize about mountain girls: We’re natural tree climbers. There’s not much else to do in Shady Grace in the summers besides play in the woods. I used to be super speedy at this endeavor. But it’s been a while. Thankfully, this tree’s a good one for climbing.
I jump, grab the lowest branch, and swing my legs over. Once I find my balance, I do it again. Limb by limb, I make my way higher.
When I’m midway to the top, I hear the airy, confident voice of my beautiful nemesis.
“Careful, Roxie. Those branches aren’t very sturdy.”
Love Kilgore. It’s like she appears out of thin air sometimes. Actually, I’m pretty sure she appeared out of the ice-cream shop next door. Her girls are walking out of it now, herding around her. Including Loretta.
“Did you lose your haunted ring?” I holler.
“Yeah,” Loretta says.
“I think I found it.”
I just need to keep climbing. The sparkle is just a few branches away now. But suddenly I’m very self-conscious about this process. Is this what middle school is like? Is it normal to be suddenly self-conscious about EVERYTHING you do?
Just climb, I tell my heart. Take a breath. And climb.
I pull myself higher. The muscles in my arms tremble, and I like the feeling. It’s like my body is helping me remember what I’m capable of doing.
One last push and I’m nearly to the top. I wrap my fingers around the ring.
“I got it!” I yell.
I balance in the crook of the branch and suddenly Loretta is there, beside me. We’re both squealing. “My ring,” she says. (Loretta’s accent is so thick, the word ring sounds more like rang. But I understand her.) “Roxie! My ring!”
She hugs me tight. Just like we used to hug each other when we had good news to share. Or when we saw each other for the first time after a long summer. Or when it was Friday and we got to sleep over at each other’s houses.
“I’ve missed you,” I say.
“I miss you, too.”
“What happened with us?” I whisper.
“ETTA!” Love is down below the tree, hands on her hips. “Let’s GO.”
Loretta doesn’t answer my question. She pushes her hair behind her ears. She’s always had the prettiest red hair. It looks like fire in the sun. It used to be wavy, but she’s keeping it straight now. I wonder if it’s because she likes it that way or because Love tells her to.
She slips the ring on her thumb. “I don’t know what happened. Sometimes people grow apart.”
“Not us!”
“ETTA!”
“I gotta go,” she says. “Listen, I don’t know how you found this. But I’m glad you did. I’ve missed it. And I hope you find your granny, Roxie.”
Loretta slips back down the tree—she’s as good at climbing as me. Probably better. I don’t follow her, not yet. I watch her from the branches. Then I pretend the branches are arms, that they’re holding me, that they’re keeping me safe from Love. That they’re keeping Granny safe, wherever she’s at.
“Roxie!” Grayson yells up. She’s holding on to her walker, looking up through the branches. I lean over, balancing myself carefully, and look down, just in time to see her grumpy face melt into a quick smile.
“It worked,” she says.
“It worked,” I echo. It worked. For a minute, sweet relief snuffs out the Dreads spinning wild in me.
Until Aunt Weezie opens the door and shouts, “Witching Wind headed down from the mountain! Category Six!”
“Hurry down, Roxie!” Mars yells.
As if he needs to tell me to do this. I scramble down a few branches before I dangle off a low, strong limb and turn loose. I pretend the bones in my legs are springs when I land, crouching. Then I hustle inside along with my friends. Eli can move fast in his wheelchair. But Grayson goes slower, and we all huddle around her to make sure she gets in safe while Weezie waves us inside.
From far away, we hear the wind scream. The leaves on the trees tremble, then shake. Then whole branches and tree trunks begin to shiver.
We back farther away from the window. The wind’s been breaking lots of glass this year.
“We’re going to find them,” Grayson says to me, while we all watch the skies darken.
“Yeah, we are,” I whisper.
“Yeah, we are,” Mars says. Then Ameerah says it. Then Eli. Somehow, we’re going to make our way to Mount LeConte. We’re going to find the cave of the Witching Wind. And we’re going to demand back the people, pets, and stuff we love from whatever—or whoever—is waiting there.
The next morning, Grayson’s up early, as usual. She’s sipping John Cotton’s finest espresso, as usual. And she’s texting Beanie, as usual.
Beanie doesn’t answer.
As usual.
Grayson goes back to her room. She carefully climbs down onto the floor and pulls out a tin box of tiny treasures she’s collected over the years. She hid them under the bed from Freya, who saw them once and thought they were Barbie toys. But they’re not, they’re Corvus tributes—at least that’s what she and Beanie always called them.
Their mama taught them how to speak Corvus.
Grayson doesn’t remember much else about her mom. She knows her name was Shannon. She remembers Shannon’s hair was yellow like lemons. That she coughed a lot. That she had skinny wrists. Weird things, stupid things. She can’t even remember her mom’s voice but she remembers her wrists?
Gosh, brains are so weird.
So are birds.
Grayson remembers being little—really little—the first time Shannon talked to crows. The Patch girls all lived in a little house somewhere far away from Tennessee. Somewhere with mountains the color of sunsets. A place where cacti bloomed as thick as wildflowers do here. Was she as small as Freya when this happened? Maybe. Because her mom reached to pick her up. Pulled her loose from the blankets she’d been cuddled up inside. Grayson remembers resting her head on her mom’s bony shoulder.
“Where we going?” Beanie asked. She was holding Mama’s other hand. Yawning. Rubbing her eyes.
“I got something like magic to show you.”
Grayson remembers those exact words but not much else. She doesn’t even remember hearing her mom say “I love you.” But of course, she said that at some point, too. All moms do, right?
All she remembers is that sentence: I got something like magic to show you.
They walked out on the wobbly front porch in front of their little house. The red sun was rising in the distance. Grayson watched her mom settle trinkets on the porch rail.
A fake seashell.
A pink pencil.
A ball of tinfoil.
Then they waited. They sat in the two plastic chairs on the narrow porch. Beanie was in one chair. Grayson sat in her mama’s lap in the other. She remembers having pink casts on her legs. Her bones broke more often when she was little.
“What are we doing?” Beanie asked.
“Shhhh,” Mama told them. “Close your eyes and listen. Or the magic doesn’t work.”
They waited. They listened. And then came the rush of crow feathers. Grayson didn’t peek even though she wanted to. She heard the birds pick through the trinkets on the railing. After all the rustling stopped, Mama said they could open their eyes.
“WOW,” Beanie said, opening her eyes. “That was fantastic!”
Mama told them the crows would bring treasures back, too. Wait and see. By tomorrow, the crows will bring something in return.
Shannon didn’t lie. Not about that, at least.
It was sometime not long after that when Shannon left for good; Grayson doesn’t remember when. She never knew why.
But she and Beanie never stopped collecting crow treasures. Never stopped delighting in the surprises they’d find once the crows knew they were trustworthy. Once the birds realized the Patch girls were kindred spirits who could see little glimmers of joy in ordinary things that other people might not even notice.
It was something like magic all right.
As Grayson got older, Beanie made up stories about the birds.
How the crows had their own kingdom. How somewhere in the sky, there’s a door to their world. And in that world, the crows transform into the most beautiful humans you’ve ever seen. They just can’t do it on earth, is all.
“I wish that was real.” Grayson sighed.
“Maybe it is,” Beanie said.
Maybe it is, Grayson decided. Maybe her mama was one of them, one of those midnight-colored crows. A sad human in this world. A beautiful princess in some other place. Maybe that’s why she left: The other world needed her. Maybe she changed back to a bird and flew away. She’d have taken her girls with her if she could—of course she would have. But maybe she knew that world wasn’t for them. So she taught them to talk to crows. So they could always talk to her.
It’s a silly story. It’s a fairy tale.
But somewhere in her foolish, little-kid heart, Grayson kinda believed it. She decided her mom was a blackbird. Decided every treasure she collected was really for her.
She knows it’s not true now.
Mostly, she knows.
But today, she puts out the one treasure she’s been saving: a scrunchie that belonged to Beanie. She hopes the note got delivered. There’s no way to know, of course. But she hasn’t actually asked the crows to help her find her sister yet, and there’s a reason.
Grayson knows the crows can’t find someone if that someone does not want to be found.
And that’s her biggest fear: that Beanie is really gone. On purpose.
That she up and left without saying goodbye, just like their mom.
What if everybody Grayson loves just flies away in the end?
She balls the scrunchie up in her fist. She whispers a prayer over it, like the Cottons do. Then she places it gently on the porch rail. She keeps her eyes closed, even when she hears the rush of feathers. Or wind. Whatever it is—that lonesome sky sound—it makes her feel like she’s part of a fairy tale for a second.
She imagines the crow carrying that silly scrunchie high above Silas County, above the mountains, above the cities far away from here—all the way to the wishing star. The brightest one. The place where magic still exists.
“Gray, Gray.” It’s Freya in the doorway. She’s holding up a book.
“You want to hear that one again?” Grayson asks.
“Pweez. Yes.”
“Fine,” Grayson says with a groan. “Come on.” She goes inside, flops down on the Cotton couch and Freya climbs in her lap to hear her favorite story. One she’s heard a billion times before. The kind Grayson secretly likes reading to her.
Because the magic is always real in books. And the endings are always happy.
On Thursday morning, the ride to school is quiet. Dad doesn’t turn on the radio. He doesn’t roll down the windows.
I glance at his face while he watches the road. The shadows underneath his eyes are deeper than ever. The longer I look at him, the bigger the crack in my heart feels.
“Stop worrying about me, Roxie.”
“I worry about everybody I love!”
“I know. It’s because you got a good heart, like your mama. Like your granny.”
“And like you.”
He flicks on the windshield wipers. The skies are dark as wet pavement. Lightning crackles in the corner of my eye. Rain speckles the glass at first, then falls in a torrent.
“It’s been a week since we saw her,” I whisper. Then add, quickly, “We don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want.”
“You can talk to me about anything. Always, always. Never hold your sadness inside, okay? Mom and I want to listen. Your voice is my favorite sound.”
His words punch me right in the gut. Because that’s how I feel about Granny’s voice.
“I miss her so much,” I say, and sniff. “What if something’s . . . wrong. Bad wrong.”
“I hope it ain’t,” Dad says softly. “But here’s what I know.”
He stops at the red light near Weezie’s. And he turns to look at me. “I love you no matter what. We’ll get through anything, no matter what. And I know your granny loves you so, so much.”
“I didn’t go back and tell her I loved her.”
He reaches over to brush a tear off my face. His thumb is rough against my skin. “She knows, baby. She knows you love her. Because you don’t just tell people you love them, Roxie—you live love. You walk it and talk it and breathe it. She knows.”
I nod and wipe off the rest of my tears. There’s no time for crying today! I know what to do: Gran’s stuck in the witch’s wind cave. She’s waiting for me to find her. I will, and I’ll bring her back, and everything will be fine!
“I believe she’ll be okay,” I tell him.
My dad’s voice is gentle when he answers. “Then I’ll keep believing that, too.”
After school on Thursday, we all meet at Mars Jackson’s house. It turns out he lives in the Harbor. I should’ve remembered that. Granny and I played a gig at his house this summer. But I was so jumbly nervous about performing that I didn’t pay much attention to where we even were.
Colette’s dropping me off. And as we get closer to his house, summer memories come creeping back through my mind. I remember Mars has a pool.
I remember his parents were nice.
And I remember thinking he was kinda cute, even back then.
“You okay, Rox?” Colette asks.
Tsk, tsk, tsk is what Hog says in the seat beside me. I pull him gently into my lap and give him a cuddle.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Your face looks red. Don’t forget sunscreen today, okay?”
Thank goodness it’s Colette dropping me off, and not Mom. Mom would know this isn’t a sunburn. It’s a crush blush. It’s super embarrassing. But Mars is sixth-grade adorable. There’s no way he’s interested in me. So it doesn’t matter.
When Colette pulls up to the Jacksons’ house, my mouth falls open. Yes, it’s just a house. Like a body is just a body. But I think the Darling family’s double-wide could fit at least fourteen times in Mars’s mansion. It’s three stories high. The cars in the driveway look shiny new.
And here I am, in Colette’s beat-up Chevy, holding a groundhog in my lap.
“You sure you’re okay?” Colette asks. “I know you’re still worried about Gran. I can take you back home if you want. This kid’ll understand. But I think it’s good for you to—”
“No, we’re doing a group project,” I tell her. “You’re right, it’s good for me to be out. To keep my mind occupied. You’ll tell me if you hear anything, right?”
“Of course,” Colette says.
A van pulls into the driveway just before we do. A lady helps Grayson out of the front seat and makes sure she’s steady on her walker. I wait for Grayson before I knock on the lion-head door knocker.
Rich people have such weird stuff.
But Mars bursts through the door before one of us can knock on the lion. “Hey!” he says, smiling extra sparkly. He has new rubber bands in his braces, teal ones. “You’re here!”
“Yep. Hi.” Then I wave. Like a moron.
A pause. Then he smiles again. “Hey!”
Grayson groans. “Seriously?”
“What?” we both say.
“Nothing.” She’s got a smirk on her face. “Let’s go, Mars. Move along. It’s hot out here.”
Even though it’s Mars’s house, Grayson barges in like she lives there, too. And we just follow her. She’s a natural leader that way. The house looks like something you’d see on TV, on one of those shows where people win a bunch of money to professionally decorate. But it’s still comfy looking, too—full of blankets, soft pillows, and family photos. We follow Mars around the corner to the kitchen that looks like it belongs in a restaurant. In the center of the room is a black chandelier. It’s drooping low, like a spider, over a round table full of the most delicious snacks I’ve ever seen.
Feasting upon these delights are the rest of Club Yeehaw. Mostly.
