Feathers (A Witch Central Morsel)

Feathers
(A Witch Central Morsel)

by Debora Geary

Copyright 2014 Debora Geary

Fireweed Publishing Ltd

Lauren looked up from her packing, contemplating how many pairs of shoes a person really needed for a week in the rainforest.  She eyed the woman sitting peacefully at the head of her bed, Fuzzball snoring in her lap.  “So how much did you have to do with this, exactly?”

Nat raised an eyebrow.  “With what?”

“Our sudden journey into a rainforest in July.”  Which, according to Google, was a fairly batshit-crazy time for wimpy tourists to be traveling to the Costa Rican jungle.

Her best friend shrugged.  “I talked with Téo a little, that’s all.  This was Moira’s idea.”

So everyone was claiming.  Moira always had her reasons—but they could run the gamut from deeply serious to a sudden craving for fried plantains.  Lauren laughed as her stomach growled.  Apparently it approved of the trip.

“Don’t overanalyze it.”  Nat grinned.  “Maybe Witch Central just needs some play time.”

It was a key ingredient in the glue that held them together.  Maybe it was just that simple.  “So we’re going to Costa Rica in the middle of their stinking hot season for fried bananas and fun, huh?”  She grinned at her best friend.  “We couldn’t have just resorted to the usual water fights and ice cream?”

“You sound just like Jamie.”

Probably—they both tended to hang out in the back-row delinquent territory of Witch Central.  “Kenna will love it.”  Matt had promised a big bonfire, which would delight all the visitors with arsonist tendencies, but no one more than her small, fiery niece.

“Benny too.  Gramma Retha promised to teach him how to slide down a waterfall.”  Nat reached into Lauren’s suitcase and pulled out a shoe.  “I think you only packed one of these.”

Good thing someone was keeping track.  Lauren looked around for its mate.  “Gramma Retha will probably have help with that lesson.”  Which was a good thing.  Benny was headlong reckless and tended to forget he couldn’t swim yet.

“She promises me she hasn’t lost a grandchild yet.”  Nat looked amused.  “Although I’m pretty sure my crazy boy takes that as a bit of a dare.”

Benny would be fine.  He had a bevy of uncles who knew what it was to have feet miles faster than your brain.  And two grandmothers—Helga had adopted him every bit as fast as Retha had.  The family tree of Witch Central, mangled a little bit more.

Moira had claimed him too, but she somehow convinced him to rock in her lap, a feat that only Nat replicated with any regularity.

Lauren found the missing shoe.  It would be fun.  Even if she melted.

Nat reached over and did some kind of fancy shoe origami that freed up an extra square foot of space in the suitcase. 

Lauren grinned.  There wasn’t a limit on what porting spells could transport, but Devin, his things neatly packed in a duffle bag the size of a small watermelon, had snorted when she’d insisted that seven pairs of shoes could fit in her suitcase.  Which she had somehow taken as a dare, complete with calling in the assistance of the best packer she knew.

She contemplated the snorkel in her hand and a space next to one of her shoes that was more suited to a handkerchief, and did the deed anyhow.  The suitcase bulged dangerously.

She stuffed in a couple of bikinis and tried to yank the zipper closed with one hand.  Devin was going to eat that snort.

Nat chuckled quietly from the bed—and then fell over in full-blown giggles.

Lauren raised a crooked eyebrow.  “What?  It’ll totally work—just help me get it zipped.”

“You, um…”  Nat let loose one more hiccupping giggle and swung back up to sitting.  “You need a packing supervisor.”

Lauren looked down at the protruding bits of swimwear she’d just stuffed in, perplexed.  Two tops, no bottoms, and one stray sock.  Oops.  “Dev wouldn’t complain.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t.”  Nat’s eyes flashed mischief.  “But Gramma Retha swears she’s going to get you sliding down a waterfall this time too.”

Lauren snickered. 
That
was a dare.

And possibly grounds for a second suitcase.

-o0o-

It was like they were moving to Antarctica.  A warm Antarctica.  For years.  Nell looked at the pile of accumulated important stuff in her living room and shook her head.  The girls had insisted they were packing themselves for this trip.  Which meant Aervyn had promptly followed suit.

Letting them might rank as one of her dumber parenting decisions of this decade.

Nathan walked into the room, carrying swim trunks and a baseball, and grinned.  “Better tell Uncle Matt we need a bigger shack.”

The medical clinic’s accommodations were rustic at best, and all her children adored them.  But the huts were small, leaky, and prone to visits from monkeys who liked to borrow things.  “I think we’d better take the circus tent.”  Helga’s gift to the girls on their last birthday. 

Her oldest son rolled his eyes.  And would be the first person to volunteer to set the tent up. 

She waved her fingers at his baseball and trunks.  “That’s all you’re taking?”

“Sure.”  He shrugged.  “Uncle Matt and Téo have lots of food.”

Teenage-boy priorities.

Nathan slung his form into a chair, the baseball tracing casual figure eights in the air.

Nell smiled.  Her son was getting very good at magic he wasn’t supposed to be able to do.  She scanned his energy streams, just in case he’d grown a little air power overnight.  Nope.  Using water power and sheer will, just like Devin did on a broom.

“Mama.”  His groan of disgusted protest came with a grin that said he wasn’t really all that put out.  “I’m not a kid anymore.  I scan myself, you know.  You can stop checking up on me.”

She was smarter than the average mom.  “Mmm-hmm.  And when’s the last time you scanned your sisters?”

The baseball lurched a little.  Nathan snagged it out of the air with a fast hand.  “Yesterday.  During water tag.”  He looked at her, totally deadpan.  “But they’re still kids.”

She threw a pillow at his head, chuckling.  And opened her mind a little more than usual.  She knew what it was to be older sibling to a crazy trio.  Nathan handled it much the way she had—with a little bossiness, a clear sense of who he was, and deep, patient love.

All three of which he would probably deny.  He was just their big brother.

“I’m okay.”  He cut her a quick look over his baseball’s new trick.  “At least nobody’s filling my room with fireworks in the middle of the night these days.” 

She smiled—it was one of her very favorite memories.  Aervyn had pumped out magic from the moment he’d been born.  And one night, when he was about eight months old, his exhausted parents had woken up to absolute silence.  No baby in their bed.

They’d found him down the hall in Nathan’s instead, cooing happily and making fireworks.  And a year and a half later, when Aervyn had learned to port, the first place he’d gone was his big brother’s bed.

A baseball zoomed in front of her nose.  Nathan grinned.  “Lost in space, huh?”

Lost in memories.  She snagged the ball out of the air on its next pass.  Daniel wasn’t the only parental Walker with fast hands.  “Careful.  If you break my nose, I won’t be able to cook lunch.”

“My friend Chani broke his nose.  You just stuff a hundred miles of gauze up it and then you’ll be fine.”

That didn’t sound like much fun for Chani.  “Thanks a lot.”

He grinned, totally unrepentant.  “I have better control than that.  And Uncle Jamie would feed me if you couldn’t.”

Probably.  Her brothers had passing acquaintance with the appetite of a teenage witch.  “You’d get sick of spaghetti after a while and you’d come crawling back, totally heartsick about what you’d done to your poor mother’s nose.”

“Nah.”  The merriment in his eyes doubled.  “Aunt Moira would have found you and made you drink some green stuff by then.  You’d be fine.  And I’d never get sick of spaghetti.”

A new hand tagged Nathan’s floating baseball.  Daniel tossed a small bag onto the pile.  “Who are we trying to make grovel?”

“Our eldest.”  Nell knew when to add fuel to the fun in her life.  “He thinks I’m old and decrepit and my baseball skills are in severe decline.”

Nathan just snorted.

Daniel raised an eyebrow.  “And he still lives?”

“Mmm.”  Sometimes there was nothing in the world better than pure silliness. “I’m considering bread and water rations, though.”

“That works.”  Nathan had reclaimed his baseball.  “Caro’s making a gazillion loaves today.  I like the sourdough one with all the holes in it best.”

“
That’s
for me.”  Daniel returned his son’s pitch.  “Inmates of the dungeon get the moldy crusts living under Aervyn’s bed.”

Uh, oh.  Nell winced.  “Is he running science experiments again?”

“Yup.”  Daniel grinned and fielded the fastball from his eldest son.  “He’s pretty sure the blue stuff is penicillin.  Ginia’s quarantined the whole mess and they’re going to go visit Sophie after breakfast and meet us in Costa Rica later.”

Sophie qualified as the witch most likely to be sympathetic to Aervyn’s mad-scientist tendencies.  Even if skunky bread was involved. 

“You better check his luggage,” said Nathan darkly.  “You never know what he might try to grow in the rainforest.”

Good advice.  And a little scary.  “Whatever it is, we’ll feed it to the obnoxious teenagers in the dungeon.”

“They’re long gone.”  Nathan’s ball returns were almost as fierce as his father’s.  “Some old, decrepit parent forgot to lock the door.”

Nell whipped out an air-layering spell, snatched the ball out of Daniel’s fingertips, and blasted it to within a millimeter of her son’s nose.  And then dusted her fingers on her shorts.  “Watch who you’re calling old, punk boychild.”

Her husband grinned at their son, who had only flinched a little.  “She’d be the old, decrepit shortstop on my team.”

Nell fired the baseball at Daniel’s nose, just for good measure. 

Game on.

-o0o-

Packing always had such loaded memories.  Moira laid a light summer dress on her bed and looked at her ancient valise.  Remembering.

Once, a journey across the waters had seemed nigh impossible.  Now she could lay a finger to her phone and be anywhere in the world.  An old witch wondered if perhaps something got lost in the speed and beauty and ease of a teleporting app.

Oh, she wouldn’t give it back for all the earth—her elder years were so deeply fertilized by all the hearts she got to be with far beyond the edges of Fisher’s Cove.  But she knew what it was to journey long and hard.  To have it be a full day’s walk merely to see the ocean or deliver a healing tea or borrow a book.

Or to leave, and know you could never return.

She shook her head ruefully and selected another dress.  Traveling always brought out her cranky old curmudgeon.  The young of this day would learn different lessons, perhaps—but they had not lost the capacity to learn.  Eyes were as bright as they had ever been.  And they did an old witch the honor of still coming to her doorstep for a lesson or two.