The Crimson Brand (17 page)

The caffeine was clearly having the desired effect.

Penny grabbed the remaining jars, cradling them in her arm, and pulled the photo album from beneath her pillow.  There was still a bit of catching up to do with Zoe.  Might as well bring the evidence.  She thought Katie would like to see the photos, too.

Penny stepped back through and found Katie unrolling a nylon stocking while Zoe twisted the lid off the jar clamped between her knees.  The second rested between her feet.

“What are you doing with that?” 

A second later Katie answered Penny’s question by gathering the stripped ash shoots in her free hand and sliding them into the unrolled stocking.

“It’s the closest thing to a net that I have,” she said, tying a knot in the stocking, then selecting a large rock from the creek’s edge.  She pushed the stocking below the water and weighed the loose end down with the rock. 

“Quartz, smoky quartz, amethyst, citrine,
prasiolite, quartz.” Zoe plucked stone after stone from the jar, identifying each and setting them aside
.  Her jaw dropped, and her eyes went even wider for a moment.  “
Ruthenium
!”

She held up a small, narrow
crystal that shone like silver in the firelight.

“There!” Katie said.  She rose with a smile of accomplishment on her face, then laughed out loud at Zoe’s bug-eyed excitement.  “No more coffee for her!”

Zoe ignored her.  “I’ve only ever seen that in books!”

“You can have it,” Penny said, barely holding back her laughter as Zoe clutched the small crystal to her chest.

They sifted through the jars for the next half-hour, setting aside anything that looked like it might fit the ends of the half-dozen new wands.  When Zoe’s excitement seemed to ebb a little, Penny decided it was time to bring out the photo album.

Katie flipped through the brief photographic history of Penny’s family and stopped at the page that showed her family
—
mother, father, and aunt.  She spent an especially long time staring at the face of her younger father, and Penny thought she might be softening toward him a bit.

Zoe scanned the photos from over Katie’s shoulder while Penny filled her in.

“Someone stole their memories?” Zoe turned to regard Penny with something like disgust, then looked back at the photos.  “Did Ronan tell you who?”

“No,” Penny said.  She wasn’t sharing the last revelation, that a traitor had helped to break the last circle, until she knew who it was.  Maybe not even then.

Katie turned the page, and Penny saw the overlarge, spectacled brown eyes of the mystery girl, Janet.

“Hey, I’ve seen her before,” Zoe said, bending low over Katie’s shoulder to examine the picture more closely. 

“You have?”  Penny regarded Zoe, stunned into speechlessness for a moment, then her brain kicked into gear again.  “Who is she?”

Katie had dragged her attention away from the still images to stare at Zoe.

“I don’t know,” Zoe said, and, seeing Penny’s frustration, elaborated.  “My grandma has a picture of her with her family photos.  I’ve never met her.”

“Well ... can you find out?”  Penny couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before.  After all, Dogwood was a small town.

“Yeah.  I’ll ask her tomorrow,” Zoe said.  “She was one of ….”

Penny pointed to the end of a wand protruding from the bag slung over the mystery girl’s shoulder.

Katie absorbed the images, but her eyes became dreamy, unfocused.  “The lady I saw when we made the circle said it was a bond only death or treachery could break.  So which of them was it?”

Zoe’s eyes snapped to Penny’s face, scrutinizing, and Penny felt warmth in her cheeks as she flushed.  “The lady in the trees.  She told me the same thing.”

“The lady I saw was in the water.”  Katie faced Penny.  Now they were both watching her expectantly.  “Yours was in the fire, right?”

Penny nodded.

“So, which was it?”

Penny sighed. 

“One of them betrayed the others the night I was born.  I don’t know who.  Ronan wouldn’t tell me.”  And because she was sharing everything she knew now, told them the rest … the part she felt least like sharing.  “The
others
, that’s what Ronan calls them, they came here to break up the Phoenix Girls.  Ronan said the others befriended them, then turned one of them against the rest. 

“Last year, Susan told me about the Reds, a family of performers who used to come to Dogwood with the fair, and she told me that the last time they came to town things ended badly.”

“You think the Reds are the others?” Katie said, trying to move the story along.

“Yes,” Penny said, and she pointed out a snapshot of her mother and father.  “And I think my father was one of them.”

Katie regarded her with a mixture of shock and sympathy.  Zoe, however, seemed unsurprised.  “No wonder Susan hates him so much.”

Neither spoke the obvious.  If Penny’s father was one of
them
, then her own mother might very well be the traitor. 

*   *   *

The next day Penny found herself alone in the hollow, Katie still grounded and banned, Zoe stuck at home to watch her sickly grandmother and, they hoped, getting some information about the mystery girl.  Unable to do anything with the new wands until the required time in the creek had passed and unwilling to restart lessons without the others, Penny decided to try something she’d wondered about for a long time.

She tapped the book with the tip of her wand, then set the wand aside as the book sprang open in her lap.  She thumbed through it until the first blank page presented itself, then wrote.

Will you tell me how to fly
?

She retrieved her wand while the book shuffled its pages, and ran the tip of it over the page of indecipherable text that presented itself. 

She read the translation with growing excitement.

Ten minutes later, her wand stuffed into her waistband, Penny dashed through the door, out of her wardrobe, and hurried down the steps of her attic bedroom.  The house was deserted, Susan at work, and no guests expected.  She ran downstairs and through the front door to her bike on the porch.  She wondered if she shouldn’t take it up into the deserted field but decided there was no point.  She probably wouldn’t get off the ground anyway.

If she did, however, it would be something very cool to share with Zoe and Katie that night.

Penny rolled her bike down the steps and into the overgrown lawn, mounted it, and took a deep breath to steady herself.

She’d expected something like the levitation spell; she’d levitated herself once but hadn’t been able to do anything but bob around in the air.

Flying was a little more complicated.

It was not the person who flew, but an object. 

After reading that, Penny had considered books she’d read, modern fantasy and old accounts of witchcraft.  The object was always a broom, a rug, something common, something that every household had at least one of.  Something big enough to sit on and innocent enough to hide in plain sight.

She pulled her wand out and realized she was about to perform, or attempt to perform, her first invocative magic.

“
Animus de aerus, suo mihi obvius opus es supero efficio
.”

She felt a wind from the east, weak and insignificant.  It died quickly.

“
Animus de aerus, suo mihi obvius opus es supero efficio,
” she said again, careful to pronounce each unknown word exactly as the book had shown her.

A sudden, strong gust nearly toppled her from her bike, would have if the tips of her toes had not been touching the ground.

She spoke the phrase a third time, and a heavy, sustained wind blew in from the east, sending stray weeds, wheat stalks, and a large round tumbleweed flying past her.  The porch swing thumped forcibly against the house.  The tall grass rippled violently around her ankles, and the wild field beyond the gravel driveway moved like a green ocean.  After a few seconds, the wind died down, except around Penny herself.  Around her, it intensified and began to spin, centering her in the eye of a small but strong whirlwind.  Her hair blew around her head, in her eyes, and across her mouth.

It was time for the second phrase, and Penny couldn’t remember it.

She felt her toes and the tires of her bike skid through the grass as the whirlwind tried both to unseat her and to lift her from the ground.

What’s the next line
?

“
Animus de
….”

She felt herself slide again, almost lost balance.

“
Animus de aerus, tribuo ventus ut sic besom
….”

Her hair flew straight up over her head, and she could see again, but her feet no longer touched the ground.  She looked down and was stunned to find herself rising into the air.  Buffeted by the wind, Penny’s bike began to spin, and her with it.

“
Et vinculum eius volo
!”

The wind died as suddenly as it had come and Penny fell, still whirling, back to earth.  The bike’s tires struck the ground and bounced her from the seat.  Her wand spun from her hand, and she hit the ground hard, the bike landing beside her.

For a few seconds Penny couldn’t breathe.  Her lungs felt flattened, emptied.  When they opened again, Penny filled them with a grateful, gasping breath.

She lay in the grass for a few moments, not moving, enjoying the ability to breathe again, then rose slowly, pushing herself up, moving each part of herself individually to make sure nothing was broken.  When she was sure she could, she stood, found her wand, and lifted her bike back onto its wheels.  The bike seemed all in one piece, too, nothing bent or broken, so she sat on it.

Time to see if it had worked.

Her bike seemed as normal as ever.

She took her handlebars, the right in an awkward grip because of the wand still in her hand, and began to pedal.  Across the lawn, into the driveway, kicking up gravel and dust as she pumped the pedals harder.  She hit the stonier, uneven ground of the wild field, wobbled, and almost lost her grip on the right handlebar, then leaned back.

Go up
, she thought.

And the bike went up, its tires an inch, six inches, a foot, then five feet above the ground.  She saw the bare upper boughs of a scrawny bush racing toward her and leaned hard to the left.  The bike followed her lead and turned sharply, looping around and pointing her back the way she’d come.

She was flying!

Then she saw the lone figure standing near the top of her driveway, her own bike firmly on the ground at her side, and almost fell back to earth.  

Of all the days to get an unexpected visitor.

It was Ellen Kelly.

“Uh-ohh,” Penny said

Ellen stared open-mouthed at Penny as she guided her bike back down to solid ground, thumping down so hard she almost unseated herself again, then backed off a few steps as Penny rolled to a stop in front of her.  For a moment, Penny thought she’d jump back on her bike and pedal for all she was worth.  She could almost hear Ronan’s angry reprisals.

I told you this wasn’t a game, Little Red
!

“Hi,” Penny said, a bit breathlessly.

“Uh …,” Ellen’s eyes moved from Penny to the bike, then to the wand in Penny’s right hand.  “Uh … hi ….”

Penny tucked her wand into her back pocket, out of Ellen’s sight, as nonchalantly as she could manage. 

“Penny?”  Ellen’s eyes settled on her face again, and Penny was relieved to see no fear in them.  Only wonder.  “How did you do that?”

“Kinda like to know that m’self, Little Red,” Ronan said.

Penny’s and Ellen’s eyes turned in unison and spotted him trotting toward them from under the porch.

Ellen screamed, of course.

Ronan continued toward them unconcerned.  He was used to it.

Ellen was in motion, backing another step away from Ronan’s approach, and Penny reached out and grabbed her arm.

“It’s okay,” Penny soothed.  “He won’t hurt you.  He’s nice.”

Probably kill me though
, Penny thought.

“I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, Little Red,” Ronan said, turning his full, intense attention on Penny.  “
Nice
has never been one of them.”

“It talks,” Ellen said, her voice barely more than a squeak.

“Indeed it does,” Ronan said.  “And apparently she flies.”

Ronan turned his attention back to Penny.  His irritation seemed to be waning. 

“And if you can see me, young lady,” Ronan said, turning his attention to Ellen and making her flinch, “then you can, too.”

A few minutes later Ellen sat on the porch swing, Penny having coaxed her closer to the house rather than letting her pedal as far away as she could.  She sipped from a glass of water Penny had brought her and kept a wary eye on Ronan.  Ronan stood well away, giving her the space she apparently needed, but also kept turning his gaze to her.  He seemed to be sizing her up.