The Crimson Brand (16 page)

Penny shielded her eyes and Katie squinted to cut the glare, but didn’t look away.

The long seconds turned into a minute, then two, as Katie focused on the pure energy she was pouring into the big tree.  Then, at last, the tree itself began to spill light from every crack and crevice. 

“You’re doing it!”  Penny nearly shouted in amazement. 

Katie never even heard her.  She was watching the tree’s upper limbs, waiting for the energy she was pouring into the ash to find the easiest way out.  Whichever limb the pent up energy exited through ….

Then brightness pierced the darkness over their heads, and Penny looked up to find Katie’s light shining through the tips of a half-dozen upper limbs.  As if pruned from the tree, the glowing limbs fell, raining down into the clearing around them.  When the last of them hit the ground, the light shining from the ash faded, and Penny turned her happy grin on Katie.

But Katie was no longer standing at the base of the ash with the twisted old wand.  She was collapsed on the ground between two bulging roots, her forehead smudged with dirt where it had struck the earth.

She had fainted.

Around them, the harvested ash wood continued to glow for a few moments, then the light faded from them, too.

*   *   *

Zoe was furious the next morning. 

“Why did you let me go home?”  Zoe shoved her ugly old bike into the school’s bike rack between Penny’s and Katie’s.  “Something cool finally happens and I sleep through it!”

At least she seemed well rested this morning.

“Hush,” Penny said, casting her glance around for potential eavesdroppers.  “Stop yelling.”

“Don’t worry,” Katie said, clicking the lock on her bike chain.  “Next time
you
can do it.”

Zoe’s frown lingered for a moment, then quivered a little around the edges.  “You ate dirt, huh?”

“Totally,” Katie said.  She lifted her hair away from her temple and showed her bruise.  “I told my mom I fell out of bed.”

“You should have seen it.”  Penny locked her bike next to Zoe’s.

The flow of foot traffic past them was easing as first bell approached. 

“So, what now?”  Zoe led them down the path to the entrance, looking over her shoulder at them.  Katie kept an easy pace, but Penny had to quicken her stride to keep up. 

“We’ll start working on them tonight,” Penny said.  “Later.”

Inside, she went to her homeroom, Katie following Zoe down another hallway toward theirs. 

By lunchtime, Penny was ready for the day to be over.  The intensity of Miss Riggs’s scrutiny seemed to have lessened, but the cumulative effect of all the unwanted attention was enough to shatter Penny’s already shaky concentration.  Every time she tried to focus on her work, she could feel the teacher’s beady eyes boring through the top of her head. 

“TGIF,” Zoe said as they crossed the street toward their usual lunch destination.  She stopped a half-block shy of Sullivan’s, and Penny walked straight into her back.

“Who’s that,” Zoe said, as though she hadn’t noticed the collision. 

Penny glanced around and saw the object of Zoe’s attention.  She also understood Zoe’s unease.  The guy made her want to walk the other way, too.

Leaning against Susan’s storefront, next to the open front door, was the creepiest man Penny had ever seen: tall and gangly, with a belly that drooped beneath the hem of a dirty T-shirt; a long, greasy head of hair with a teacup-sized bald spot in the back; a scraggly beard; and tiny dark eyes that seemed to watch them keenly. 

He smiled, folded his arms across his chest, and looked away.

“Come on,” Penny said in a low voice, angry that she’d let him spook her so suddenly and completely.  Penny led Zoe the rest of the way, keeping her eyes determinately on the Golden Arts sign hanging on the next door.  Before they reached the door, however, another man stepped out of Sullivan’s and spoke.

“Joseph, quit loitering out here and find something to do.”  The man was middle-aged and plump, his bald head deeply tanned.  Penny stopped this time, and Zoe walked into her.  The man looked tidy and professional in his crisp, spotless black suit, like a banker or lawyer.  “Go on down to the café now and get some lunch, son.  I’ll meet you there.”

The man had a slight Southern accent rather at odds with his appearance.  Penny had expected a British accent or maybe a yawning Massachusetts drawl. 

Joseph nodded once at his father and eyed the girls again before he pushed away from the wall and strode off in the other direction, toward Grumpy’s, the restaurant favored by Zoe’s grandma and her troupe of blue-haired town elders. 

“Well, hello, girls.”  The man’s eyes twinkled down at them. 

Penny was momentarily stymied by his unexpected friendliness.  “Uh … hello, sir.”

“Susan said you’d be coming along soon.”  He moved aside and waved them in, looking more like a doorman than a customer.  “I’m afraid I’ve monopolized her time this morning, but you’ll have her all to yourselves in a few more minutes.”

Penny looked at Zoe, and Zoe looked at her, eyebrows raised.

“After you.”

Penny passed beneath the bald man’s indulgent smile and into Sullivan’s, and Zoe followed. 

“Hi, girls.”  Jenny stood behind the register, ringing up the first in a short line of midday customers.  She waved at them before returning her attention to a man with a stack of invoice books.

They found their usual seats on the reading-corner couch, but it took them a moment to realize that the expected supply of lunchtime pastries was missing.

“Looks like we’ll have to fend for ourselves today,” Zoe said.

Penny thought she could survive without their daily doughnuts.  Susan always fretted that she should be feeding them something a little healthier than dough and sugar anyway, but she was curious about the bald man who had so completely distracted Susan from her normal midday errands.  Also, she wasn’t sure that Susan could survive without her usual maple bar.

They watched the man as he moved—with a speed and grace that was a little surprising for someone his size—down the main aisle and around displays and customers toward the back rooms of the shop.  He lingered at the
Of Regional Interest
shelf on the back wall and flipped through a large
Grays Harbor County
photo book with apparent lively interest. 

A few moments later, Susan emerged from the back room with two steaming mugs of coffee and an ear-to-ear grin.

“Oh, my,” Zoe said as the bald man greeted Susan and relieved her of the cups.  “Does Susan have a new boyfriend?”

“I guess she does,” Penny said, glancing toward the register counter to catch Jenny’s eye.

Jenny was seeing her current customer off when she noticed Penny.  Seeming to guess at Penny’s unspoken question, she glanced at the large man chatting with Susan, then back to Penny.  She gave a slight shrug, as if to answer Penny’s unspoken question: Y
eah, he’s a bit old for her, but she seems to like him
. 

The big man in the banker’s suit seemed to be the ‘boyfriend’ that Jenny had alluded to at Penny’s birthday party and Susan had admitted to the next morning.

“She has the love look in her eyes.”  Zoe winked, then giggled when Penny elbowed her in the side. 

Susan led her new friend to the front of the shop and waved at the girls when she saw them.    

“Hi, Little Red …, Zoe.”  She took a seat next to Penny, and the bald man sank into the comfy old chair by her end of the couch, setting the cups down on the magazine table in front of them.  “Girls, this is Morgan Duke.  Morgan, this is Penny and Zoe.”

“I’ve already had the pleasure,” Morgan said, giving a little bow in Penny and Zoe’s direction.  He picked up one of the cups and gulped the steaming coffee, sighing in apparent satisfaction.  “This is fine, Susan.  Hits the spot for sure.”

Susan blushed, taking a sip from her cup.  She swallowed quickly and wiped her lips with the back of her free hand.  Penny had never seen her quite so fidgety.

“I’ll take you over to the bakery tomorrow,” Susan said, waving vaguely toward the sidewalk.  “They make a mean espresso.”

“It’s a date, then,” Morgan said enthusiastically.  He drained the rest of his cup and turned to regard Penny and Zoe.  “Been a real treat, young ladies.”

Morgan Duke placed his cup back on the table and rose from his chair.  To Penny he looked like a benevolent giant. 

Susan almost jumped to her feet.

“And you,” Morgan said, taking her small hand in his large ones and bowing to give it a quick peck.  “I’m looking forward to drinking a mean espresso with you tomorrow.  We can discuss my proposal in more detail.”

Proposal
? 

Penny could only blink in surprise.

Next to her, Zoe was nearly shaking with suppressed laughter. 

Susan laughed.  “I’ve already given you my answer.”

“I know,” he said, sounding theatrically regretful.  “But at least trying to change your mind gives me a good excuse to spend time with you.”

He flashed them one last cheesy grin and joined the foot traffic headed for lunch at Grumpy’s. 

“Proposal?”  Penny jumped from her seat to face Susan.  “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Susan laughed.  “Don’t be silly, it’s business.  He wants to buy Clover Hill for development.”

“
What
?”  Penny and Zoe shouted together.

“He thinks Dogwood could be a great tourist town and says Clover Hill is a prime location for a resort.  I told him I wasn’t interested, but he’s determined to change my mind.”

Penny guessed that Susan hadn’t yet told him the whole story about Clover Hill’s ownership.  The land, the house, even Aurora Hollow, belonged to Penny, held in trust by Susan. 

“So is he your boyfriend or what?”  Zoe almost shouted, overcome by her curiosity.

“I’m not sure,” Susan said, sending a perplexed grin down the sidewalk after Morgan Duke’s retreating form.  “I’ll let you know as soon as I know.  Hang tight and I’ll get your lunch.”

Susan returned a few minutes later with ….

“Sandwiches?”  Penny felt her taste buds rise in silent protest. 

“I warned you,” Susan said, handing them each a ham and cheese in plastic wrap.

“Thanks, Susan,” Zoe said, unwrapping hers and taking an enthusiastic bite.

“Better eat on the go,” Susan said, regarding her own sandwich with a little less than Zoe’s enthusiasm.  “You’ll be late.”

Zoe’s sandwich was gone before they left the sidewalk, and, despite her less-than-eager first bite, Penny’s was gone before they reached the school.

“Do you think you’ll make it tonight?”  Penny had an idea Zoe wasn’t going to be missing any nights at the hollow soon, but all the early mornings with her grandma had taken a toll.

“
Yes
,” Zoe said, a little fiercely, and Penny thought that she still hadn’t completely forgiven them for letting her go home early the night before.  “
Don’t
start without me.”

They met in the hollow that night and stripped the thin layer of bark from the half-dozen narrow limbs the ash had given them the night before, and Penny recounted the previous night’s adventures for Zoe.

“Maybe you should have started with a smaller tree,” Zoe suggested, and added quickly, before Katie could take offence, “You did excellent … we won’t have to fight over wands anymore … but I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Katie rubbed the bruise on her temple and shrugged.  “It’s nothing.  Besides, the ash just felt right.”

Penny secretly agreed, it seemed different, special.  It didn’t belong here, but here it was, old and strong.

“You’re more awake tonight,” Penny said, and Zoe shot her an irritable sidelong glance as she set a newly stripped ash branch aside and picked up another. 

“I made myself drink two cups of coffee tonight.”  Zoe made a face.  “I don’t know how you stand that stuff.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” Penny said, remembering her time at the group home and how she’d had to gag down cup after cup of the instant stuff the staff kept in their lounge to make it through lessons after her first sleepless nights there.  “Try it with cream and sugar next time.”

“I’ll bring some Red Bull tomorrow.”  Katie finished her last branch and turned to the wand-making instructions in the book while Penny and Zoe caught up.  “Now we have to soak them in the creek for a few days.  Hey, Red, did you bring the rocks?”

“Huh?”  Zoe looked up from her own work to regard them with interest.

“They’re in my room,” Penny said, pulling the last narrow strip of gray skin from her last stick.  She dropped it next to the others, and a second later Zoe’s joined them.

“Well, what are you waiting for?”  Zoe pulled the black wand from her waistband and practically bounced to the door.  It opened into Penny’s room before Penny caught up.  Zoe followed her through and immediately spotted four glass jars on the table next to the guest bed.  She grabbed two of them, regarding the contents with manic eyes, and was back through the wardrobe door into the hollow before Penny had crossed the room.