By Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
Chapter Fifteen "A Shadow on the Wall"
When Sarah and Missy reached the house, there was a strange car in the driveway, and a brilliant blue smoke was pouring out of an open kitchen window.
Sarah called into the house before entering. "Ganny Pansy?"
There was no answer, but a strange series of sounds were emanating from within the structure. Hoots followed by clacks followed by a tortured whine, and a long sputtering cough made Sarah cautious. But she began to enter the house anyway, with Missy pulling on her arm to keep her out.
"Granny Pansy?" she tried again. "Abbey? Mr. Burrbuckle?" she said into the blue smoke. And then, after a slight pause, she even tried "Dar? Are you in there? Anyone?"
A hunched man, with a wild ring of gray hair around a great bald dome of a head came rushing out of the door past the girls. He was coughing uncontrollably. Missy squeaked. He whirled his arms around and turned back to face the house. He stopped coughing long enough to say "Well, devil take me, if it isn't little Sarah." And then he was off again, coughing like a rusty water pump. His face was getting redder by the minute. Sarah looked at Missy, who shrugged perplexedly.
Out of the smoke behind them, without their noticing, sailed their Granny Pansy, a tall water glass tinkling with ice cubes in her hand. She paused beside Sarah, handing her the glass when Sarah started and saying, simply. "Give this to your Great Uncle Charlie."
Sarah handed the glass to the choking man at the bottom of their stoop. His turtle-rimmed glasses had slipped to the tip of his red nose, having left two deep indentures on either side of the bridge further up. One would have thought a hawk perched there daily, the marks were so deep.
"I have a Great Uncle Charlie?" Sarah asked, turning back to her Granny Pansy. Before Granny Pansy could answer, Great Uncle Charlie spit up a tremendous gobstopper of a snotwad onto the cobblestones. It was as green as a praying mantis, and as shapeless as a squished praying mantis.
"Ick!" said Abbey and Shelly together, emerging from behind Granny Pansy.
"All right now, me fellow, try me kerchief." Barnabas Burrbuckle strode to Great Uncle Charlie's side and gave him a brave slap on the back between his shoulders. This started Great Uncle Charlie on another round of unstoppable coughing.
"Oh, Barnabas." Granny Pansy made her way to her brother Charlemagne Sigmund Farnfeather Twisslestarn, reached into one of the innumerable pockets in her apron, pulled out a pinch of her own herbal snuff, and without further ado, stuck her fingers up her brother's nose. Great Uncle Charles reared back as though he had been stabbed in the chest. His eyes virtually exploded in tears, and he drew in a breath big enough for a horse. The sneeze that followed these gyration was too grand to describe with the alphabet.
"Arrgh-blabber-durst-mc-faygala-fix-em-up!!!!"
Great Uncle Charles' head wound up down between his knees, and his glasses rattled on the stones. After a moment, he swept up his spectacles, popped them back on his face, stood up straight, or as straight as he got nowadays, and said. "Thanks, Doris. I needed that."
At this signal, Granny Pansy commanded everyone back into the kitchen, which was now clear of smoke, and told her brother, "You're more than welcome, you old snickerdoodle."
The kitchen was a maelstrom of witchy paraphernalia. Granny Pansy was in her tall hat with its wide brim, and as soon as they were getting settled, Great Uncle Charles donned his own tall, conical hat. His was a brilliant Caribbean blue, with a swirled pattern on the cloth that seemed to still be moving and changing as you looked at it, although the changes came over the surface slowly, as if one were pouring out a sand sculpture and watching its defacement against the glass. Great Uncle Charles' hat, though, had no brim whatsoever, but was even taller than Granny Pansy's. Sarah couldn't resist asking her Granny Pansy about the hats, even before she indulged in her own incredible tale of the evening's events.
"Oh, no, m'dear. There will be answers aplenty when the time comes. But you are the one to be answering questions now. First, let me see that you are hail of limb and bright of brain." Granny Pansy reached into her everything bag and pulled out something that was not quite a stethoscope, and not quite anything else either. She placed the narrow end of the device of Sarah's forehead, right between her eyes. Sarah stood there with crossed eyes as the device made a gentle...well, cooing noise. Granny Pansy listened carefully, and after a moment, put the device away. Then she clapped her hands loudly behind Sarah's back, which made Sarah flinch, since she couldn't see what her Granny was doing. Even the feather in Sarah's pocket wiggled, and Sarah smoothed out her skirt to disguise the wiggle.
"Fine as a fiddle. I imagine you must be the same, Missy, if you two were together the whole time. Each to each, and each like each."
"Yes, Ma'am," agreed Missy. The thing was, as Sarah had discovered as she and Missy had walked home alone in the long evening, Missy seemed to remember nothing of their adventure in the basement. Not the pointing hand, not the singing harp in its glowing purple globe, and especially not being caught by Mr. Plimsoul and Eva. And, of course, Missy hadn't had dinner in that strange dining room under those austere, half-finished portraits.
"I'm starving."
"And no wonder, m'dear, with all of your doings," agreed Granny Pansy. "Abbey, Dar, share your plate of cookies with Missy. Barnabas, please get Missy a glass of milk while we finish our interview. There, dear, sit down right here," continued Granny Pansy, righting a chair that had gotten tipped over in the hubbub.
"Now, what exactly happened to all of you? We heard a little bit from Barnabas, but your Great Uncle Charlie and I were right in the middle of a delicate incantation when Barnabas appeared."
"You mean blundered in!" exclaimed Great Uncle Charles, wiping blue powder off of his face with Barnabas' kerchief. "I've known steam trains with more grace."
"I'm sure Barnabas was simply concerned for the children's welfare, Charlie," said Granny Pansy. "Barnabas, please continue."
"Thank you kindly, ma'am," began Burrbuckle. "Well, as I was saying afore, we was hunched down behind the tall grass, peering like rabbits at a fox in his hole, and it was dark and smoky in there." Barnabas looked around at the present state of the kitchen. "Not as smoky as in this kitchen, though, I mun say." He added this with a look over at Great Uncle Charlie.
"But that smoke smelled horrible! This smoke smells kind of like a raspberry pop sickle," said Missy, amending Barnabas' report with an olfactory detail.
"We looked in the basement window, like Mr. Burrbuckle said," reported Sarah.
"Ay," concurred Barnabas. "And thet dwarf fellow opened the window, and the foul smoke come out. And not long afterward the lights went out, and we could hear the front door opening. That's when we creeped away, just as we had creeped toward."
"Rolling down the hill was loads quicker, though," noted Shelly, who was nibbling on Missy's cookies. Missy hadn't liked her gingersnaps.
"And after Barnabas and the other two girls rolled back down the hill, what happened?" Granny Pansy was looking a Sarah. Sarah had not yet sat down, despite being tired from the long walk, the large dinner, and being preoccupied with thoughts of her own. Sarah began a cautious explanation. One that, curiously enough, while not actually lying, certainly left out much of the truth. For some reason, Sarah didn't feel like sharing all of her discussion with Eva with her Granny Pansy. She got the uncomfortable impression that her Granny Pansy would never approve of such talk. The Draggonnaths didn't sound to Sarah like something of which her Granny would ever really approve.
"Is that what happened?" Granny Pansy looked sharply at Missy Quicknass.
"I think so," Missy replied, confessing. "It all seems kinda blurry now. I'm just glad we're not there anymore."
"Yes. Well, that's good enough, child. I don't want to add any extra burden on you now. I'm certain your folks must be very worried at this point. No doubt, you should be hurrying along home after we give them a call. There's some chocolate pudding on the counter with your name on it."
"Chocolate pudding!" Missy was gone in a heartbeat.
"And use the napkin next to it to wipe your mouth when you're through," Granny Pansy called through the divider.
Granny Pansy set her eyes carefully upon Sarah. Sarah was chatting away with her Great Uncle Charlie, who was full of funny stories of all the interesting, silly and outrageous things that Sarah had gotten up to as a toddler. Then, all at once, Sarah rushed over to the mantelpiece and pulled down an old black and white photo from its place in front of one of Gilman's archery marksmanship trophies. Sarah's mother had intended to take those "horrendous war trophies," as she called them, down from the mantle over a year ago, but had settle on the expediency of putting up old family photos in front of them instead. There was simply no room left in the Tones' closets.
"Is this you?" Sarah asked incredulously. The man she was pointing in the photo to was a handsome youth, with an infectious grin that bordered on a smirk. He shoulders were thrown back casually, leaning on the same old Rolls Royce roadster that sat sadly in the drive, as though daring the world to do its worst. He had the careless look of the truly debonair. Great Uncle Charlie took the photo from Sarah and squinted at it fiercely, as if trying to see a gnat trapped in a laundry basket's worth of spider web.
"I suppose it must be. That's my automobile." Great Uncle Charlie shared a wan smile with Sarah. "That bloke seems to be a bit of a toff, if you ask me."
"Oh, Great Uncle Charlie," protested Sarah. "How can you possibly say that. You're as handsome as a prince! Or, you were." Sarah blushed, fearing she'd been rude.
"Indeed, lass, I was that to some eyes. No harm done. Vanity doesn't age as well as wine, you know."
Sarah decided to change to topic. "Where the heck are Mom and Dad?"
"Committee business," Granny Pansy informed her, with an air of disdain for the whole thing. Granny Pansy no doubt thought a parent's place was with their child, especially at a time such as this. "Won't be back until tomorrow."
"Oh," said Sarah. "That figures."
Barnabas had been poking around in the scattered apparatuses in the kitchen. A coil of copper tubing hit the floor with a wicked whang, making everyone turn their heads. Granny Pansy stepped to his side, and quietly took the coil from his large hands. Barnabas took a pudding and headed into the living room with the little ones.
"Yes," Great Uncle Charles commenced. "Where were we, Doris?"
"You mean when we were so rudely interrupted?" Granny Pansy actually winked at Great Uncle Charles. This may have been the first actual joke Sarah had ever heard her Grandmother indulge in, as awful as it was.
"Yes, so rudely. I believe there was something about a shadow conjuration that we were working toward. The Shadem Graviosis was it?"
"Shadem Graviosis, what's that?" said Sarah. Sarah wasn't plunging into snacks with the others. Even Barnabas was putting his long legs out in front of the fireplace and sipping at a pudding while the girls competed at tiddlywinks or snatched at jacks. Roanie followed each spoonful of pudding with the unwavering attention a zen archer.
"Its the shadow of the future, my dear. Events that have not yet come to pass, may, if looked for carefully enough, throw their shadows back into the past. And this shadow may be observed by the Shadem Graviosis if the practitioner is careful. Since future events are not yet certain, more than one shadow may be thrown, like seeing your shadow on a wall when several lights are on in the same room. There are several shadows, several possible futures, several future yous."
Granny Pansy stopped herself from continuing with the magic lesson. She couldn't go on in good conscience.
"Sarah, I feel that I must tell you something before we go any farther. Normally, I wouldn't even have gone this far with you, but I feel that your life may be in danger, and that you are somehow intimately tied up with the events unfolding in Traeshurstaene. If your father knew that I was talking to you about these matters, he would not approve. And if your mother knew, she would have a conniption fit! They do not approve of magic, and they have their reasons. Many might see these reasons as sufficient, a few might not. But there is much that you must learn if you are to stay safe. The pendant was the first step, but they are many many others." Granny Pansy paused. "Do you still have the pendant you took from your brother's closet?" she asked anxiously. "It would be a grave matter to lose such an item in the house of an enemy."
Sarah felt for the pendant. It wasn't around her neck! Had it fallen off while she and Missy were fumbling around the basement in the dark? Had Eva taken it from her when her hands were around her neck? Sarah felt an unwelcome knot of anxiety tighten in the pit of her stomach.
"That's a grave thing indeed," echoed Great Uncle Charlie, the pleasure gone from his face and replaced by a solemn concern that radiated out beyond the room. "Well, never mind for the moment. Barnabas will have to scour the side of the roadway tomorrow when it is light out. Nighttime is too rich for mischief to go back out now with the Gods of Autumn awake and a-wandering."
"Sarah, will you learn something of the magic that has been passed down in your family for centuries?" Granny Pansy also sounded serious. Sarah didn't know just what to expect, but felt that she had few alternatives, and the more she knew, the better. "Chance favors the prepared mind," was one of her Father's favorite Blaise Pascal quotations.
"Yes, Granny. I want to know what is happening. And I want to be prepared to face whatever may come my way."
"That's the girl," said Great Uncle Charlie.
"I'm sure that Missy would approve," Granny Pansy said. Great Uncle Charlie continued setting things to rights in the kitchen, preparing the potions and requisite ingredients for the Shadem Graviosis as Granny Pansy began her lecture.
"First off, these 'tall hats' of ours about which you seem so curious, are the shape they are to help focus the thoughts of the spell caster. They help to bring your thoughts to a point, as it were, and increase your concentration. Staying focused helps you to navigate the powerful forces you hope to use in your spell or potion or what have you."
"But doesn't that make you a witch? And aren't witches evil?"
"I see there's much to undo with you Sarah. Your parents have let you grow up completely ignorant of your heritage. They love you very much, but keeping you ignorant, in my opinion, simply was not right."
"So you are a witch, then?"
"Yes, Sarah, I most certainly am what is called a witch. But witches and spells and cauldrons and magics and potions are neither a good nor a bad thing in and of themselves. There are expressions of the power in nature that we see all around us. The strength of a waterfall, the beauty of a patch of forget-me-nots. A cauldron's neither good nor ill but the hand that stirs it makes it so."
"So, what our enemies might be doing isn't really evil either? Its just a choice?"
Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie exchanged a quick, apprehensive glance. This is what they were teaching the students all day long in public school. How could such children grow up to really make the choices that counted?
"They are different choices, certainly, dear. But it is the making of such choices that makes all the difference. Making the right choice is absolutely crucial. Those who are unwilling or unable to decide get pushed along by those who know where they stand. Making the proper choice, and there is always a proper choice, my dear, if we but have the wisdom to see it, is vital. The Shadem Graviosis is a spell to help us decide which choice will be the best choice. It will show us shades of things to come. And, with any luck, that will help us to decide which way to point our feet."
"And our pointy hats," added Great Uncle Charlie, whose good humor had been partially restored. His hat, slightly bent from his expulsion into the yard earlier, sat at a jaunty angle on his head. He put the last bit of coiled copper tubing back connecting two odd pots settled on the stove and pipping pink and creamy steam from under their lids, and announced that they were ready to try again with the conjuration.
"It's showtime!"
END OF CHAPTER FIFTEEN