Backwards Moon (10 page)

The rain fell steadily, sloshing in rivers down the front window of the pickup truck.

A sort of blade moved back and forth across the window, swishing off the water with a steady
thwak, thwak, thwak
.

Bracken glanced at the farmer, but he didn't seem tired.

“Aren't you going to need to sleep sometime?” she asked at last.

Ben shrugged. “It's kind of strange. I think it's the spell, but I don't feel tired at all.”

In the middle of the morning they stopped at a place called Gordie's Econo-Mart. The farmer came back with a large brown bag, a jug of water, and a little dish. “For the coon,” he said. “So he can wash his food before he eats it. They do that, you know. I bought him some sweet corn too.”

He set the things in back, then steered the truck along a dirt road past a sign that said
WAYSIDE REST
. It turned out to be a clump of trees and some rickety wooden tables, each with a
roof over the top. Raindrops splattered on the roofs and blew in on the tables.

“We'll reach the city by tonight for sure,” said Ben after they had eaten. “It will be a miracle if we find the Safehouse, though. I mean, I'm happy to try. But it really sounds like a long shot to me.” He shook his head. “A very long shot.”

“How's your leg?” asked the raccoon.

“Not very good,” admitted Bracken.

“Can you fly yet?”

Bracken stood up and pulled out her broomstick. She climbed on and stood poised, her leg throbbing terribly. Raindrops tapped her hat brim.

“Well?” said the raccoon.

“I can't,” gasped Bracken. “Nothing happens.”

Slowly, Bracken put her broom in her pocket and sat back down.

“It's got to be the lead,” said Ben.

The rain beat harder.

To think about looking for the Door was one thing, but where did you start? Nettle leaned over her broomstick, hovering uncertainly above the Atkinson House.

Something wafted toward her. A scent, a hint of spun spell. . . . It was coming from the walled garden around the great oak.

She skimmed the tree's huge crown and landed on grass still wet from the long rain. She walked along the flowerbeds, sniffing. They were planted with many types of herbs, but none of them gave off the mysterious scent. She spotted a patch of enchanter's nightshade: a plant small and modest, but powerful. As she crouched down and breathed in, the roar of the city seemed to fade away.

Then a hand touched her shoulder.

Nettle jumped and spun around.

It was an old, messy-haired woman. She wore trousers and big muddy boots and spectacles that glinted in the harsh
not-dark of the city. But she could see Nettle, obviously. “Did the nightshade bring you?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Nettle, startled.

“So it's worked! Old Mr. Atkinson would be very pleased.”

“What?” said Nettle, staring.

“Mr. Atkinson liked witches. He put it in his will that there would always be a garden here with the sorts of plants that witches like. The rowan trees, the nightshade. That big oak. He'd be pleased to know it finally worked.”

“Who
are
you?” asked Nettle.

“My name's Dee,” said the woman. “I'm the gardener here. I've come to weed the nightshade. By moonlight, when it sends out its scent,” she added, prodding the plants with her walking stick. “But
you
should keep an eye out.” She nodded wisely. “The police have been around. Somebody took some very witchy items from the glass cases in the big house,” she said, looking hard at Nettle.

“They didn't belong to humans,” said Nettle.

“No,” agreed the woman. “I don't suppose they did. Or to Mr. Atkinson, either.”

“Did you know him?” asked Nettle.

“I'm not
that
old! But I've read about him. I've worked here a long time. The Atkinson House has a whole library of books about witches, did you know that? Though some don't want to admit that now.” She laughed. “ ‘Special Collections,' they call them, but they're all still there if you know what to ask for. And I've read them all.”

“Did you ever hear of the Door?” blurted Nettle. “There's supposed to be a door somewhere here, a door to another world.”

The woman thought for a long time. “Door,” she muttered. “Door. . . . It seems to me there
was
something about a door.”
She leaned on her walking stick, frowning. She bit her thumbnail and tapped her foot. “Maybe my sister will know,” she said at last. “Come.”

“People used to say old Mr. Atkinson was a crackpot, but
I
never believed it,” she said as she stumped down the path. They followed it to a patch of hazel bushes growing in a far corner of the garden. “The potting shed,” she said, waving her walking stick. “They made it into a gardener's house.”

“Anna!” she called, kicking off her boots and banging open the door. “Anna! Do you remember anything about a hidden door in the big house?”

It was a messy and crowded room, filled with old bottles and empty cans and piles of magazines stacked high against the walls. “No,” said a woman sitting in the gloom.

“I found a witch in the garden!”

“Witches are dead and gone. Dead. And. Gone.”

“That's what you think,” said Dee. “Look, here's one. The nightshade called her in! Come, turn the lights on. It's no use sitting in the dark.”

“I can't find the extension cord,” said Anna.

“It's around here someplace,” said Dee. She reached down and rummaged, then suddenly a light came on. It was a little milky globe, dangling from the ceiling by a single cord. “Fire up the hot plate, Anna. We'll make some tea.”

It was odd, sitting in the little house. The walls were the familiar gray stone of home. The windows had many small, wavering panes, just like the ones in a witch's cottage. The tea tasted almost like meadow-mint. But other things were a mystery. Nettle's teacup had writing on it that said Dunkin' Donuts. Anna's said Have a Nice Day. “Thrift shops,” said Anna, as though that explained anything.

Nettle leaned over her tea and breathed in the steam, for
that was what you did with tea, to be polite and to honor the plants that were giving up their essence. She looked up—Dee and Anna were doing the same thing. Both their spectacles filled with fog. They took them off and set them on the table, and it was then that Nettle noticed that their eyes were a deep violet-blue.

They had once been
witches
, she realized with a shock. Oh, it was awful to think of! And the Fading must have taken away their powers.

“Dee,” she said cautiously. “Anna. Were you once . . . witches?”

“Witches?” Dee shook her head. “How could
we
be witches?” asked Anna.

“I think you were,” said Nettle urgently. “And then, well, I think something called the Fading got you. Did you ever hear of the Fading?”

Anna frowned. “No.”

Dee shook her head again.

Then all of a sudden a thought struck Nettle.

It was an
awful
thought, a terrible thought—so awful that she couldn't stop staring at the two old women who sat across the table from her.

Dee
.

Nettle's mother's name was A
de
lia.

“Dee,” said Nettle. “Is your full name Adelia?”

Dee looked puzzled. “It might be. I've forgotten, really.”

Nettle asked Anna, “Was your name Nicotiana?” Because that was Bracken's mother's name.

Anna frowned. “I think it
might
have been,” she said slowly. “But no one calls me that anymore.”

“Where did you come from?” asked Nettle, her heart sinking.

“We don't know,” said Dee. “That's the thing. We can't remember anything before we came here. Nothing at all.”

“We were hired as the gardeners at the Atkinson House. For the witch plants,” said Anna. “We knew about herbs. But that's all we remember.”

“We've forgotten all of our old lives,” said Dee softly. “So many memories that were important to us . . . They're lost. Gone.”

Nettle put her hands to her face and turned away, shaking.

How do you tell someone she is your own lost mother?

And what if the mother you thought you would find someday turns out to be completely different than you imagined? An old not-witch with muddy boots.

Nettle stood for a long time, there in the cluttered cottage with her back to the two old women. Everything was going wrong. Everything.

“Is there something we can help you with?” asked Dee at last, her voice kind.

Nettle took her hands from her face. She stood for a moment, not knowing what to do. Then she turned back.

“The Door,” she said, her voice quavering. “Do you remember anything at all about a door?”

“Door,” said Anna. “Door.”

“There's a door near the Atkinson House. A door to another world. I think maybe it's the reason you came here. I think you were looking for it.”

Dee bit her lip. “It does seem to me there might have been a door.”

“If Bracken were here, she could do a remembering spell,” said Nettle.

“Bracken,” said Anna.

Your
daughter!
Nettle almost said, but it was too sad, too
terrible. “My cousin,” she said instead. “She's better at spells. I never remember them quite right. But I could try to get you to remember. Because I do really, really need to find the Door.”

“Try,” said Dee.

Breathe, thought Nettle. Breathe, and the spell came back to her.

Most of it, at least.

She let out an impatient breath,
huh
, and began. “ ‘Rosemary green, and lavender blue, thyme and sweet marjoram, hyssop and rue,' ” she muttered. There was more: something, some something. . . . Drat. Still, she made a spark from her finger—the last part of the remembering spell. “Awake, memory,” she said and held the light high.

Anna and Dee looked at it, transfixed.

“We came from somewhere else, I know that,” said Dee slowly. “Home was someplace far away, and then for some reason we came here.”

“Did you find the Door?” cried Nettle. “The Door to another world?”

“It seems to me we might have,” said Dee. She shook her head. “But I can't remember.”

It was night when Bracken and Ben and the raccoon reached the City on the Great River. Lines of cars streamed in front of them, behind them, and on either side. Lights flashed and whizzed. Green signs saying things like Exit 24 came careening out of the glare, hovered above, then vanished as the pickup truck sped underneath.

“I don't like this,” muttered the raccoon. He held his tail, fingering it nervously. “I don't like this at all.”

Ben leaned over the wheel, his big-knuckled hands gripping it tightly. Every once in a while he muttered something under his breath.

The raccoon turned to Bracken. “How about using that necklace of yours? Just
wish
us to the house and out of this!”

Bracken touched the cool, smooth beads. “It only works three times,” she told the raccoon. “It has to be dire need. And it has to be a wise wish.”

“Look,” said the raccoon. He put his little hand on her
arm. “Wise means not getting killed! Doesn't it? And dire? Believe me, I know dire when I see it.”

Bracken shook her head.

“But you would still have one wish left!”

“I just don't think I should,” said Bracken.

Three wise wishes
. . . . If you made an unwise one, maybe it wouldn't be granted, and it wouldn't count against your wishes? Or maybe it would, and one of your precious wishes would be wasted?

She was still puzzling and worrying when Ben spoke up.

“I'm guessing this house you're looking for is an old house,” he said. “If it was on that map of yours, it's got to be. So it's in the old part of the city. I'm going to try to find the oldest neighborhood, and then maybe something will come to you, huh? I mean, if it's a magic house and all, maybe you'll recognize it, somehow.”