An Imperfect Witch (16 page)

Ouch. 

“Found out later I could have just ridden the chair lift back down.”  Lizard looked up from her study of the scratches in the desk.  “Yesterday, I tried to take the hard way off the mountain, and I didn’t much care who I kicked in the process.  You, Trinity, Josh, Thelma’s petunias.”

Maybe that explained the flowers.  “You didn’t exactly volunteer for this particular mountaintop.”  Not all of it, anyhow.

“Yeah.”  Lizard traced the desktop’s scratches.  Acknowledging life’s dings.  “Yesterday I thought that meant I didn’t have to get off it very gracefully.”

Wow.  A
lot
of growing up.  Lauren thought about her crystal ball and its one implacable demand.  Mountaintops came in a lot of forms.  “Sometimes we don’t get a choice.  We’re in it, like it or not.” 

“Sucks.”  Lizard shrugged.  “Really sorry I tried to break my toe on your head.”

Lauren grinned.  Feet, back on solid ground.  “It’s okay.”  Toes and head dents were things that could be fixed.

-o0o-

Lizard ported into Moira’s kitchen bearing a whole two dozen bacon biscuits, a small purple rock, and enough nerves to make her teeth shake.

The old witch turned from her stove, eyes full of surprise and welcome.  “My, you’ve come with a full load.”

“I bake when I’m nervous.”  Lizard thunked the tray of biscuits on the counter and shoved her hands in her pockets.

“There are plenty of us who do that.”  Moira stirred whatever was in the pot on her stove.  It smelled of sage and butter and all things autumnal.  “I’ve a wee bit of soup in here that would go very well with those biscuits.”

She hadn’t come to talk about lunch menus.  “I made a big mess yesterday, and part of it happened here.  Sorry for all the wailing and tears.”

“Ah, sweet girl.  The Irish invented tears, and probably the wailing parts too.  You’ve no need to apologize.  I’m glad you felt safe enough to do it with an old witch for company.”

She’d feel a lot better if someone kicked her right about now.  “I know what it’s like to have a sucky life, and I don’t have it.  Not anymore.  There’s just some stuff I have to figure out.”

“Sounds like you’ve done some thinking.”  Moira smiled and crumbled something green into her soup. 

Lizard sniffed, trying to identify the smell.  “I went to a beach.  Like you told me to.”

“Ah.”  Moira handed over the jar of green, label up.  Lemon oregano.  “And did it help?”

“Kinda.”  Nervous fingers played with the bracelet that still felt like a strange new appendage.

Old eyes tracked the fidget, perking up in interest.  “That’s a lovely new bangle you’re wearing.  Elorie would love to see it, I’m sure—the artist is very talented.”  Moira leaned in, studying the curving lines.  “And knows you quite well, I’m thinking.”

Lizard clutched the bracelet tightly, feeling very naked.

“I’m sorry, sweetling.”  A quick kiss on the cheek and the old witch was back to her soup.  “You came to tell me something, and I’m meandering off on tangents and sticking my nose into corners where it isn’t welcome.”

People understood her too damn well.  Lizard slid the bracelet off her wrist and held it out in apology.  “Josh worked with the artist.  It was a present.”  And then she'd stomped on him.

“A lovely gift.  And a complicated one.”

Yeah.  “We had a fight.”  That wasn’t right.  “Well, not really.  Mostly I yelled at him.”

Moira’s eyes twinkled.  “I’ve been known to have a fight like that a time or two.”

Lizard looked down at her hands, choking back the angsty poet and trying to hold on tight to the message in the purple rock that dared to wear its cracks on the surface and call them beautiful.  “So many people have helped me get here, and there are things I want to be able to do right now, you know?”  She looked up at the kind old lady, knowing her eyes said far too much.  “But I’m not ready.”

“Ah, sweet girl.  You had it right until the very last line.”  Moira looked over, eyes equal measures of tough and kind.  “And I think you knew that when you landed in my kitchen.”

Nowhere left to hide. 

Lizard closed her eyes and looked at the truth everyone was suddenly insisting that she see.

Somewhere in the last two days, she’d stopped wanting to turn the clock back to the way things had been a week ago.  But that didn’t make her any more clear on how to get to where she needed to go.  “You told me to find out why I lashed out so badly.”

“Aye.”

“I thought this was all about Raven.”  Lizard squeezed tight on the bracelet in her left hand and the purple rock in her right.  “Turns out, it somehow ended up about me.  And I got mad at everyone who was trying to tell me that.”

“You searched your soul very well, my dear.”  Moira leaned in and touched both clenched hands.  “And I hope you don’t mind an old witch saying she’s rather proud of you.”

That did things to Lizard’s heart that she hadn’t felt in a very long time.  “I’m not done yet.  I still need to fix some stuff.”

“Hard work is never quite finished.”  Strong old hands ladled out two bowls of soup.  “But life doesn’t need to be perfect to be celebrated.”

Lizard took the soup.  And closed her eyes.  “I don’t know how to be happy with unfinished Lizard.  I was hoping maybe you could tell me how.”  

“Oh, child.”  Two gnarled hands cupped her cheeks, calling her eyes to open.  “Exactly the same way you’ve done everything else.  With that great, generous heart of yours right on your sleeve.”

Lizard tried to work up a decent glare.  And failed miserably.

Moira’s fingers trailed down Lizard’s arm.  “I always imagine it right there, nestled amongst the beautiful drawings you wear on your skin.”  She smiled.  “Be proud, my girl.  Very few people can go through life so deeply vulnerable.  You manage it with far more grace than most.”

Lizard ducked the words.  Tried to bounce them off the shield the savvy young realtor had built around the scared, delinquent poet.

And felt it wilt in the face of the unfathomable strength in the deep green eyes.  She cuddled her bracelet and her rock and let two old arms cuddle her. 

Moira’s voice could have soothed volcanoes.  “You are an imperfect witch, my sweet girl.  And a magnificent one.  Don’t look only to the first.”

Lizard stood, wrapped in solid Irish love, and simply drank it in.  She still had no idea what to do with Raven, or with Josh, or with her life beyond tomorrow, but she knew one thing for certain.  Those who said Moira Doonan’s witching powers were weak had frog pus for brains.

Chapter 14

Lizard pulled her coat tighter around her ears as she slipped down the alleyway.  Freaking cold at the crack of dawn.  She crept as far as Trinity’s doorway and set down the mongo box of apple fritters.

At this hour, nobody would disturb them.

“You back in my alley, noodle girl?”

Lizard nearly cracked her brains out on the dumpster.  “What the hell are you doing up?  It’s 6 a.m.”

“I’m one of those night-owl types.”  Trinity leaned back against the dumpster.  “You?”

“Can’t sleep.”  Too many apologies that still needed saying.  “I was an idiot last time I saw you.  Laid my shit on you, saw things that weren’t there.  Rocky’s a good guy.”

“Yeah, he is.”  Trinity’s eyes looked Lizard up and down.  “Snazzy outfit.”

No time for costume changes this morning.  “I have stuff to do.”

The dark-eyed woman nodded.  “You let go of the street on the outside real good.  But you still carry it around on the inside some, huh?”

Frack.  Surrounded by amateur psychologists.  “Yeah.”

A long silence.  “That why you bring us noodles?  Because you remember?”

It sounded better than being a do-gooder shithead.  “Something like that.”

Trinity smiled.  “Missy says she wants a job like yours one day.  Where she can hold her head up high and buy classy boots.”

Lizard squirmed.  “I’m nobody’s role model.”

“Like hell you aren’t.”  Trinity smirked.  “On the work stuff, anyhow.  You want some advice on keeping your man happy?  I got you some of that.”

On the street, that kind of advice tended to get pornographic in a hurry.  “Nah.  Don’t eat your fritters all at once.”

Trinity took the box.  “There’s guys who can handle seeing the street, you know.  Decent guys.”

Lizard realized she wasn’t the only one hoping like hell that was true.  “Yeah.  There totally are.”

Amusement, a head toss, and a grin.  “Get out of my alley, mini.  You mess with my décor, all snazzed up like that.”

Lizard snorted.  And walked back down the alley, several light-years happier than when she’d come in.

-o0o-

It was a coziness, this chance to curl up in front of the fire on a chilly morning and mix up a bit of this and that.  Moira smiled at her companion, head peering down at the innards of a potions jar.  “Worked out what it is just yet?”  It was good for young healer noses to get regular training, even those as gifted as this one.

“Some burdock root—that’s the big smell.  And lemon balm to make it smell nice.”  Ginia paused, thinking.  “And maybe to potentiate the vitamin C of the nettles, too.”

So far, exactly right.  “Which makes it a remedy for arthritis, no doubt.”

Ginia grinned.  “Maybe.  But there’s something else in here, and I’m going to figure out what it is.”

Smart girl.  “Good healers use their noses, but they also use their heads.”  Moira stopped, curious if her pupil could pick up on the hint.  Ginia was a powerful energetic healer, but they were still working on getting her herbals knowledge caught up to her inborn talent.  Two years was only scratching the surface of the lore of plants.

“Hmm.”  The blonde and sunny child settled back on her heels, thinking.  “Well, Sophie made it, because nobody else can get a potion that smooth.  And I found the mostly empty bottle sitting on her front step, so the patient must live here in Fisher’s Cove.”

Moira simply rocked, knowing that following a line of clues was its own reward.

“Old Billy has arthritis,” said Ginia, eyes lighting.  “His hands hurt a lot, even when he doesn’t tell anyone.  Especially when they get cold.”  She fingered the square, dark blue bottle.  “And a fisherman wouldn’t want a pretty potion.  Just one that gets the job done.”

A child who knew how to observe.  “Exactly right, my dear.” 

Ginia leaned over the bottle again.  “Ah.  Flax—that’s why I missed it.  Sophie put in the whole seeds ground up, not just the oil.  Smells different.”  The young healer’s forehead wrinkled, mystified.  “Why’d she do that?”

Moira watched as her student’s fingers began to move.  Tracing.  Feeling out the lines of a subtle healing spell.

“She heated it!”  Ginia looked up, fascinated and very proud of herself.  “Like when Auntie Nat puts her bag of flax in the microwave to warm up, only Sophie put it right in the potion.”  A very quick brain caught up with the flow of words.  “Wait.  How’d she do that?  She’s not a fire witch.”

Moira touched a glowing cheek, delighted by her student.  “It’s not a fire spell—just a warming one, done from right inside the seed itself.  Flax likes to hold heat, and Sophie just gave it a wee reminder.”  The kind of subtle, persuasive magic that very few witches in the world could manage, but she sat with one of them.

“When Old Billy puts it on his hands, it makes them warm.”  Ginia touched the blue glass in wonder.  “Sophie’s so smart.  I bet he uses it more that way, too.”

“Aye.”  Moira leaned forward, enjoying the warmth of the fire on her face.  “Old fishermen need plenty of encouragement to do what’s right for themselves.”

“We’re all like that sometimes.”  Ginia put the stopper in the blue bottle.  “Kenna needs cuddles and songs to take a nap, and Lizard needs you to remind her of the important stuff so she can get all kissy-face with Josh again.”

Oh, dear.  “Not everything can be fixed with a potion, child.”  Ginia wouldn’t be the first young healer who had tried.  “And the patient has to be willing.”

“He was.”  Bright blue eyes dared anyone to question her ethics.  “We just gave Josh lots of hugs.  And I might have put a tiny sleep spell on his pillow.”  Shoulders scrunched up to curl-topped ears.  “He looked so tired and I used the kind that would only work if he really wanted to go to sleep.”

A gift Moira had left on a thousand pillows over her life.  She touched the hunched-up shoulders gently.  “You did no harm, sweet girl.  And you might have made our Josh’s night a little easier.”  And men who’d had a decent night’s sleep sometimes rolled a little better with whatever the universe landed on their doorstep.

She leaned over and kissed Ginia’s head.  It wouldn’t be the first time a small act of kindness had made a heart ready.

-o0o-

Neutral ground.

Lizard waited outside the building that housed Josh’s technology startup.  The man had to go for coffee eventually—it was freaking 9 a.m. already.

“Hey.”

Damn.  She turned around, almost afraid to move her feet.  Eggshell territory.  She took a good look at the guy who’d come up behind her.   Careful eyes, hands in his pockets.  But less fragile somehow.  “This is awfully late for your first coffee run.”