Magical Spice - Part Eight
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
I trail my fingertips very gently over the heart-shaped leaves of the little-leaf linden sapling. It droops beneath my touch, as if hanging its head.
“Hello, little guy,” I say softly, sympathetically. “You’ve been through hard times, haven’t you?”
The poor little thing can barely even be called a sapling yet. It’s younger than that, or else very small for its age. It’s probably been conserving its very limited resources for the struggle to survive, not trying to actually grow.
Aiden is watching over my shoulder, his blue eyes traveling slowly over the two potted saplings in the trunk of my car. He’s still wearing his work clothes, looking very yummy in them. He spreads a hand on my back, watching me as I examine the linden.
“What’s wrong with it?” comes his deep, soft-spoken voice from behind me.
“It’s been kept in completely the wrong environment,” I tell him sadly, wishing I could give the sapling a hug. I straighten up and turn to face Aiden, twisting the heist ring around my finger. “It’s been living inside an air-conditioned home goods store, and this kind of linden loves sunlight, needs sunlight. Full sun, partial at the least. That’s why it makes such a good shade tree. Because you can plant it right out in the open and it’ll still be happy, as long as it has the sunshine. This is what happens when it has to go without.”
“Aw.” Aiden catches one of my curls in his fingertips and gives it a playful tug. “Good thing it has you looking after it now. I’m sure it’ll be alright. Hey - I know that Raj found it, but can we keep it, once it’s better? Feels right for us to have it. Given it ended up being a linden.”
“Mhm.” I cast him an affectionate smile as I hand him the pot with the little-leaf linden. “We’re keeping both.”
Aiden’s curious blue eyes flit to the other sapling. “That’s the one from Kent, right?”
“It is.” I take it from the trunk and turn to face Aiden, who tilts his head to the side inquiringly when I let out a helpless laugh. “Can you guess what kind of sapling it just so happened to be?”
Aiden blinks hard, staring at me, then looks down sharply at the sugar maple in my hands. He stares at it for a moment, then breathes out a deep, rumbling laugh. He shakes his head, looking a little dazed.
“Oh my god. Seriously?”
“I know,” I laugh, closing the trunk of my car. “And I had no idea until I’d already said I would take it. For both of them, actually.”
Aiden sets off through the green passage that leads to our house, carefully cradling the linden in his arms. He looks at me with shining blue eyes, warm through and through.
“Life with you is something else, Keane,” he says softly.
I hug the sugar maple to my chest, smiling adoringly up at him. “Funny, I was just gonna say the same thing to you, Callahan.”
There’s a little silence. Aiden has turned his face aside, but I know that he’s smiling to himself. After a moment he gruffly clears his throat.
“Is the sugar maple gonna make it, though? It looks like it’s in pretty bad shape.”
He’s not wrong. The sugar maple has grown bigger than the linden, but a dry brown edge lines almost every leaf. The leaves are all curled in on themselves, making the sapling look like it’s trying to hide the damage.
“The poor thing has leaf scorch.” I hold it very carefully, making sure not to crush any of the fragile leaves. “Young trees that have already been under a lot of stress are more susceptible to it. This one just needs to be planted down in the right kind of soil. Get the care and nourishment and calm that it needs. It’ll take time, but it should get better.”
Aiden shifts the linden into one arm so he can put his other arm around my shoulders. He leans down to kiss the top of my head, quiet and thoughtful in that way he gets.
He usually likes it when I go on talking during that, and as an incurable chatterbox, I don’t mind doing so.
“I’ve got to put both of these in new pots and keep them that way for a while before we plant them. They’re gonna need some love before they can withstand being outdoors, especially with the summer storms Ketterbridge gets. It’ll be a lot of work, but it’ll be worth it! When the linden blooms in the summer, it’ll have beautiful clusters of pale yellow flowers. They’ll smell so good. This kind of tree can be home to a lot of things, too. Bees, hummingbirds, butterflies… that’s why people like them for pollinator gardens.”
A little smile quirks up Aiden’s mouth.
“Not surprised to hear it’s a sheltering plant,” he muses softly, pushing open the rounded gate of our front garden. “What about the sugar maple? Can it be home for anything?”
“Oh, definitely, yeah! It’s going to be gorgeous, especially in the fall. Songbirds like to nest in the cavities of its branches. And it feeds a lot of things, too. Deer, bunnies, other little mammals. Moths.”
“Oh.” Aiden’s surprised eyes travel to the sugar maple in my arms. “Hm. That sure sounds like a lot of creatures in our already creature-filled garden.”
“I’m actually not sure that these two are going to fit in the garden.” I let us into the living room of our house, which flickers into a warm glow as soon as I switch the lights on. “An open-grown sugar maple can get pretty huge, if it’s left to grow long enough. Like - easily over one hundred feet tall.”
“Oh, damn, really? What about the linden?”
“Probably - more like fifty to eighty,” I admit, then blush a little. “But it’s not the linden’s fault that the sugar maple is a giant, okay? That’s only short by comparison!”
“Okay,” Aiden laughs fondly, his blue eyes warm and soft in the golden light.
I carefully place the sugar maple near one of the living room windows. Aiden comes over to hand me the pot with the linden, which I put right beside the curled-up sugar maple.
I run my fingertips lightly over our two new arrivals, gently finding the sore spots, all the places that need some love and care. Aiden gets a fire burning in the fireplace, then leans one arm on the mantel and watches me in silence for a little while.
“If they’re not going in the garden, then where are they going?” he murmurs eventually.
“I’m… not sure.”
I stand back and gaze down at the two saplings for a long moment, then turn and head for the kitchen. Aiden follows me into the back garden, then out through the gate in the garden wall.
Twilight is deepening into a rich summer night around us. The clouds in the velvet purple sky make it look painted with watercolors, but the stars are glittering through the gaps.
I lead Aiden to the little sloping hill just behind our garden. We stand there together, looking out at the view.
To one side, the natural peach orchards send out their heavy fragrance on the breeze, leaves whispering softly as the branches sway in slow movement. Before us, the woodlands leading down to the river, to the haunted house where the ghosts live. To the other side, the wildflower meadow we’re standing in spreads out, blanketed with a thick topping of colorful petals, wildflowers running riot in their summer profusion. The distant mountains beyond are frozen giants, towering black shapes against the sky with white caps.
Behind us is our cozy little house, so tiny in comparison to it all. But warm, glowing, with golden light spilling through the windows beyond the garden walls. The smoke from the chimney is winding high up into the night sky.
It all looks so gorgeous that it pulls my breath to a standstill. I feel strangely translated beyond myself. I instinctively take Aiden’s hand, and he gently squeezes my fingers, looking with me.
I’m not sure who owns the wildflower meadows behind our house. Based on how many birds and bees and little creatures live out here, the richness of the plant diversity - I’d guess that it’s gone untouched for a very long time. That makes me hope it’s some kind of protected land. Even the hazel bushes, the winding stream slipping gently along in the distance - they all seem to have come here naturally.
If we plant the sugar maple and the linden here, and they’re left undisturbed, they could outlive me and Aiden by hundreds and hundreds of years. Maybe it’s naively optimistic to hope that they won’t fall or be cut down before their natural time, but I don’t care. I like to hope. I want to hope.
If they could live for hundreds of years, I want them to be someplace beautiful. And this is someplace beautiful.
“Right here, Sugar Maple?” I murmur, gazing out at the summer night.
“Here sounds good to me, Linden,” comes his deep, quiet, rumbling answer.
I tighten my hold on his fingers, then turn to gaze up at him suspiciously.
“Did you cause this somehow, Heliomancer? A linden and a sugar maple, both of which need our help, delivered right into our hands?”
“I have no idea if I caused it,” Aiden informs me, looking helpless. “Who fucking knows, man? It’s completely possible, yeah, but if I did, I’ll never find out. You know how Guardian magic is. Anything nearby that could sorely use some help is gonna find its way to me eventua-”
Aiden breaks off, his eyebrows furrowing as he stares at something behind me.
“What is that?” he asks, sounding slightly alarmed.
I spin around to find a little shadow picking its way through the wildflowers towards us. Aiden quickly lifts one hand and releases a spill of fireflies, which drift out to illuminate - a cute, furry grey face. Luna.
We both breathe out a sigh of relief.
“You scared us, baby!” I call reproachfully, then stop still, narrowing my eyes. “What’ve you got there? What’s in her mouth, Aiden?”
He drops down to a crouch as Luna trots over to him. She sits down in front of him to show us what she has dangling from her mouth: a minuscule, jet-black kitten, held by the scruff of his little neck.
He’s ridiculously tiny, his eyes barely open, his paws scrabbling weakly at nothing. He gazes up in terror at me and Aiden, then lets out a pitiful little squeak, struggling to free himself.
“Oh my god!” I lean down to Luna, who slow-blinks up at me as I stab an accusatory finger in her face. “Did you - unspay yourself, somehow? That’s not allowed!”
“He’s not her kitten, Jamie. Look at him, he’s all black fur, and he can’t be more than a few days old.”
Aiden gently takes the kitten from Luna as he speaks. She lets him go easily, looking relieved to do so, then stretches out and gives herself a shake, evidently a little sore from walking a long way with her head craned back. She affectionately scrubs her face against my leg as Aiden straightens up with the kitten in his hands.
“Oh.” I press my fingertips over my mouth. “Oh, god. Oh, my god. He’s so small when you hold him. That tiny kitten. In your huge hands.”
“They’re not huge!” Aiden protests indignantly. “They’re normal-sized, first of all, and second of all, guess we can thank Luna for making my point. See what I mean? Anything in need of Guardian help is gonna land in our backyard one way or another!”
I’m struggling not to laugh, because Aiden is gesturing with the kitten to emphasize his points, but the kitten - having discovered the true bliss that is Aiden’s exceptional body heat - appears not to care. Suddenly he looks like he’s all ready to drop off to sleep in Aiden’s grasp.
Aiden turns back to Luna, pointing at the drowsy black kitten. “Are there more we need to worry about, or did this little guy end up on his own somehow?”
Luna blinks up at him serenely a few times, then begins nosing delicately at a nearby wildflower, apparently having lost interest in this line of conversation.
“I’m guessing that means this is everyone.” Aiden arches an exasperated eyebrow at me. “And I guess we’re getting Guardian help requests from Luna, too, now? Special delivery, right to our door?”
“This is the best thing,” I whisper through my fingers, watching the tiny furball press his nose cozily against Aiden’s knuckle. “Oh, man. Where’s my phone? I need to take a picture.”
“Now we have another little creature to find a home.” Aiden starts leading the way back to the garden, his expression softening as he gets a better look at the kitten in the light of the fireflies. “Aw. Poor little guy. So scrawny. He’s all wet, too. Do you think he fell in the river, and that’s how he got stranded?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll get him cleaned up and warmed up.” I fall into step beside Aiden, and Luna falls into step beside me. “Should I send a picture around to the various group chats, see if anyone wants a kitten?”
Aiden exhales a quiet laugh, giving his head a helpless shake. “I would be surprised if that doesn’t somehow-”
He breaks off, then stops where he is, holding very still.
I stop beside him, watching him curiously. We haven’t even made it down from the hill yet. I open my mouth to ask Aiden what’s going on, then close it again as he slowly turns to gaze out at the woodlands again. With the hand not busy holding the kitten, he laces my fingers through his. Glowing, frosty blue light glitters through his eyes as the connection eases open between us.
Jamie. Hold still. Be really quiet.
Why, what’s going on? You’re freaking me out!
Don’t freak out. We’re not in danger, I would hear it. But… something is near us.
I flinch anxiously, then suggest hopefully - Mama cat coming to reclaim her kitten?
No. Aiden’s eyes flicker with icy blue light, gazing meaningfully into mine. Not that kind of something.
I try to take a deep breath, finding calm through the steady pressure of his hand around mine, the protective shadow his powerful form casts over me in the moonlight.
What is it, Aiden? What are you sensing?
I think… He hesitates for a long time, listening to something I can’t hear. It’s a spirit.
My startled eyes open very wide.
The spirit you sensed at the farmhouse, the one that Thorn sensed, too? It can leave Port Sitka? I thought it was location-locked, like the illusions or the ghosts!
Maybe not. This thing could have its own rules. Thorn did say it’s something super powerful… and I’m pretty sure - Jamie, I’m pretty sure it’s right in front of us somewhere. In the meadow. The flowers and grass grow tall enough to hide something, and it’s a small little thing, whatever it is.
With my nervous heartbeat fluttering in my ears, I let my eyes rove over the deep beds of wildflowers and the rich blanket of meadow grass carpeting the hills. I don’t see anything unusual, but…
I have the strange, unshakeable sense that something is looking back at us.
I meet Aiden’s eyes, and he looks into mine for a moment before we face the meadow together.
“Hello?” Aiden calls out softly, tentatively. “Can you - understand us?”
“Please don’t be afraid,” I pin on, in the gentlest voice I can manage. “We’re your friends.”
Silence and stillness from the summer landscape is the only answer. The only noise is the rustle of the leaves in the slow wind, the distant splash of the river in movement.
Is it still there, Aiden?
He closes his eyes, focusing. Yeah. I actually think… it’s coming closer.
Right as he says it, I catch the slightest hint of movement among the wildflowers. One of the periwinkles twitched, and then another a little closer to us did the same, and then everything fell still again.
I let go of Aiden’s hand and slowly drop down to be lower to the ground. If the little spirit is small enough to hide in the grass, we’re probably towering over it. I spread my fingers and hold my hands up, so it can see that they’re empty.
“Hello,” I try again, as softly and gently as possible. “Welcome to Ketterbridge. This is pretty far out of your usual territory, isn’t it? Did you come all this way just to see us?”
There’s no answer, but Aiden taps my shoulder, and when I look up at him, his eyes are shimmering with flowing icy-blue light, the way they get when he’s close to something magical.
It must be so close to us now, to have caused that.
“Can you talk to us?” I try hopefully.
There’s a long, long silence, and then - a strange, indescribable little sound meets my ears. There’s nothing I can compare it to, because it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. A shimmering sort of sound, almost like gently chiming bells, but not that. More musical, with some kind of sweet, chittering little melody beneath it, but not quite a birdsong.
Whatever it is, it sends goosebumps rippling down my arms.
I twist to stare at Aiden, who meets my eyes with the same bewilderment revealing itself in his own. He can hear that, too, then. And he doesn’t know what it is, either.
The noise stops, and an expectant silence falls.
“Um,” I begin uncertainly, fidgeting with my malachite necklace. “That’s - I’m sorry, we can’t understand that. Is there some other way you can tell us who you are?”
There’s another silence. This one goes on for a long time, too. I’m just expecting Aiden to tell me that the spirit is gone when a voice suddenly answers me.
It just about stops my heart, because - it’s my voice. Faint, echoing, as if drawn out of a memory, but exactly my voice.
“Come on out, lil’ sprout… lil’ sprout… lil’ sprout…”
I straighten up sharply to look at Aiden, startled and alarmed. “Wh-? Did you hear that? That was me!”
“That’s what you said to the spirit when we met it before, Jamie,” Aiden realizes out loud, his glowing blue eyes going very wide. “I think - I think it’s trying to tell us it’s the one we met at the farmhouse!”
“Hello?” comes Aiden’s deep voice, but not from him. It echoed out from somewhere in the meadow, snapping our attention back to the wildflowers. “Can you understand-” and then, in my voice - “me!”
Aiden and I stare in open-mouthed, thunderstruck silence at the meadow. It’s the strangest thing, our echoing voices mixed up together to form a disjointed sentence. Like someone took audio clips of us talking and badly spliced them together.
This little spirit, whatever it is, can’t speak with a human voice. So it’s borrowing ours, somehow.
“Did you-” it begins in my voice, then goes on with Aiden’s, “-understand-” - my voice again - “me!”
Even in our chopped-up, borrowed voices, something about the question sounds hopeful.
“Yes, we - we understand,” I stammer faintly, feeling a little dizzy.
There’s a hesitant pause, and then my voice drifts up from the flowers.
“Friends.”
That’s all. For some reason, alone like that - it sounds like a question.
“Yes,” I answer earnestly. “We’re your friends, little sprout. We’d like to meet you. Will you come out and let us see you?”
Another silence follows this, broken suddenly when Aiden lifts a hand, drawing in a fast breath.
“Wait, don’t go! We just…”
He trails off, the icy blue magic fading out of his eyes. He turns to look at me. For a moment, we stare at each other in blank disbelief. And then -
“Kasey!” we both call out, at the same time. “Will!”
They’ve appeared by the time Aiden has the glasses on his face. Two sets of ghostly eyes level on our faces, then stare at us in confusion when they get a look at our expressions.
“What happened?” Kasey asks immediately.
“The spirit came to see us,” I answer, feeling dazed. “It took our voices.”
“And we found a kitten,” Aiden adds, holding it out to show them.
Will and Kasey drop their gazes to the scrawny little black bundle of fur, fast asleep on Aiden’s palm.
“Oh!” Kasey lets out a gasp of delight, leaning down to beam at it. “Sweet thing! No way, this is the spirit?”
“No,” I answer, struggling to pull myself back together. “The kitten is unrelated. Luna found him. Good girl, by the way, Luna… we’ll give you a treat, once - once we’re normal again.”
Kasey and Will glance between our thunderstruck faces, increasingly baffled.
“Did you say it took your voices?” Will asks, his blonde eyebrows raised all the way up.
“Not, like, from us,” I murmur weakly. “We still have them. All good there.”
Will stares at me blankly, clearly lost.
“Okay, inside,” Kasey says firmly. “Late-night unofficial mini Ghost Office meeting. Now.”
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