More Than Magic (19 page)

“One can never be too familiar with a champagne bottle, ma’am,” he responded, pouring it full.

Grace waited as he filled his own glass. She cleared her throat and faced the stone, lifting the delicate champagne flute to the stars.

“Happy birthday, Pops. I miss you, you old reprobate.” She drank her toast and managed not to cry.

When she looked back, Nick was standing behind her, raising his own glass. Pooka walked up to push his warm muzzle into her hand.

“You all right?” Nick asked, taking a sip.

Grace rubbed Pooka’s ears. “Just miss him. You do too, don’t you boy?”

“From what I’ve seen, he’s left a wonderful legacy.”
 

“Yes. That he has.”

“So.” Nick held up the bottle and she held up her glass. “Where to from here?” He refilled her glass.

“Granny Lily.”

“I think I need to hear more about
this
lady,” Nick said as they walked through the headstones to the oldest part of the cemetery with Pooka trailing behind them. “Given that she invades your dreams.”

Grace held the full glass carefully as she walked over the uneven ground. “She is my great-great-great-grandmother. Lily Loreena Hickey Woodruff.”

“Great-great-
great
?”

“Yes. And my great-great-great
-
grandfather, Zachariah Logan Woodruff, lies there beside her.”

“That’s amazing— Your family history’s all here on these stones, isn’t it?”

“Most of it. There’re a lot of stories out here.” Grace pointed her flashlight at the two headstones, pitted with age, names and dates nearly obliterated by time, standing there in the grassy soil. “And this is where they start.”

She set down the basket once more and pulled out another wreath, laying it carefully between the two headstones.

“Hello Granny Lily,” Grace said. “I wanted you to know that Tink’s in complete remission. Cured. She’ll grow up now and dance and, maybe, have babies.” She leaned closer and whispered. “But I think you already knew that. And you probably also know that I’m about to do something that’s equally irresponsible, so if you have any words of wisdom, please share them now—loudly and with special effects.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and drained the glass completely this time. When she walked back, Nick’s eyes glinted silver in the moonlight.

“So—Granny Lily?” he asked again.

Grace took a deep breath. “Granny Lily was a healer—an Appalachian Granny Woman. A witch.”

“Witch?” he paused a moment, digesting the word. “You’re kidding, right?”

Grace shook her head and started walking away from the cemetery and back into the meadow. “Granny Witches weren’t witches in the sense we think of today. They were the midwives and healers of the community. For folks isolated up in these mountains with no medical care, they were the doctors.”

Nick followed behind, taking a quick sip of his champagne. “Witch doctor?”

She grinned at him. “Well, yes. In the sense that a witch doctor is the healer in their community. The shaman. The expert in herbal medicine.”

“Witch doctor,” he repeated.

“It’s a tradition that’s passed down in families. In this case from mother to daughter to granddaughter. One woman per generation,” Grace went on. “Some claim it goes back to ancient times.”

Nick stopped. “So, are you—”

She faced him. “What?”

“A witch?”

Nick watched Grace smile and hold out her glass. “Hang on to this for me.”

Nick stared at it for a moment, wondering why she didn’t just answer “no”. Then he took it carefully, holding the bottle under his arm.

Shaking out the blanket, Grace laid it on the grass and knelt down, holding her hands up for her glass and the bottle, which he handed over.

“Sit,” she said smiling up at him. “Pretend it’s a picnic.”

As if on cue, Pooka ran to see what they were up to. When he realized no food was involved, he resumed scouting the edges of the meadow.

Nick paused, wondering if he should make a dash for his SUV and get off this mountain while he still could. But something made him sit.

“So,” he took a deep breath, as if he was about to set foot on some strange new world he didn’t understand. “Witch?”
 

She twisted sideways, managing to sit gracefully on the blanket without spilling a drop of champagne. He was beginning to wonder if she had faked being tipsy.

“Remember, I said not in the ‘double, double toil and trouble’ kind of way.”

“So, no cauldrons or eye-of-newt things going on?”

“Well, actually, the old cauldron you see in the front yard of a lot of Southern homes used to mean there was a Granny Witch in the house, but—”

“Don’t you have one of those in your garden? Full of flowers?”

She smiled. “You noticed! Yes. Like that. But no evil spells or hexes.”

“So you
are
a witch?”

“Well, no. I was talking about Granny Lily. I’m—” She stopped, suddenly thoughtful.

“So, you’re
not
a witch?”

“You know, I’m not sure.”

Nick frowned and drained the rest of his champagne, holding out his glass. She poured it full and sat the bottle on the ground beside the blanket.

“I would think you would notice something like that,” he said.
Of course she’s a witch McKenzie, she’s had you under her spell since she met you.

“Look, I probably shouldn’t have used that word. People don’t know about the Granny Witch tradition at all, and they automatically think black cats and broomsticks and pointy hats. It was mostly about herbal medicine and midwifery.”

“Can you deliver a baby?” he asked.

“Well, certainly.”

“And you practice herbal medicine.”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like you’re qualified. Maybe over qualified.”

“It’s not that simple. Some of them did divination and water dowsing. It’s a tradition requiring training and practice. The Granny Witch passes down all her lore to her designated successor and teaches her everything she knows.”

Grace looked off toward the cemetery and he followed her gaze. The headstones were just distant shapes in the moonlight.

“So your mother— No, that’s your
father’s
side of the family.”

“Exactly. And anyway, the tradition stopped with Granny Lily. She quit practicing and didn’t pass it on to any other female relative.”

“But you said she’s been wandering into your dreams. Does she wander anywhere else?” He looked around them at the silvered meadow and the dark trees, but nothing seemed menacing—just the opposite.
 

“No. Only in my rather intense dreams. And I’m honestly not sure what she’s trying to tell me.”

He tried to figure out where she was going with all this. Maybe it was the wine. “Well, it sounds like it might be a good thing for your bottom line. You could get additional business these days just by saying you were the descendant of a shaman or medicine woman. I wouldn’t use the word ‘witch’ though, even if they don’t burn them anymore.”

“Why did you say that?” she asked in a sharp tone. In the moonlight, her eyes shimmered green and her pale face was almost translucent, surrounded by flyaway tendrils of dark red. She might be a witch, but she was the most captivating witch he had ever seen.

“What? What did I say?”

“About burning?”

“Well, they used to— Didn’t they? I mean—”

“That was in a completely different culture. Here the Granny Witch was essential in the community. The people of these mountains were nothing like that. Granny Lily was burned accidentally.”

“She was— What?”

Grace picked up the bottle and poured her glass full, then downed it without ceremony and was about to pour another.

“Whoa. Slow down there.” He took the bottle and her glass gently and set them both in the grass. “Now, what’s this about burning? Your granny was burned?”

Grace let out a long breath. “Great-great-great. And yes. Accidentally. In a fire.”

“She wasn’t killed though. The headstone said—”

“No. Badly burned. Disfigured. She lived a long life.”

“A
very
long life, if I read the stone right.” He connected some dots and took a guess. “This was the fire that started that feud you were talking about, with your neighbors.”

“Yes. But it
was
an accident. A bunch of Taggarts and other people were gathered outside the cabin and things got out of hand. One of the Taggarts threw a rock at my Grandpa Zach. It broke a window, and knocked over an oil lamp onto Granny Lily’s dress.”

“An oil lamp.”

“It was terrible. It didn’t destroy the cabin, but she was horribly burned. Everyone thought she wouldn’t make it, but she recovered. Only, after that, she was rarely seen by anyone outside of the family. And when she was, she was covered head to toe, even wearing gloves on the hottest summer days. We have a family portrait with her in it, but only half of her face is showing.”

“That
is
tragic. What started the rock throwing?”

“A misunderstanding.”

“About?”

“A patient.”

“Someone died?”

“No. Someone lived.”

“Someone lived?” he repeated.
 

“Someone lived who shouldn’t have.” She was looking back toward the cemetery, not seeing him at all.

“And they were
upset
about this?”

“Whooping cough was killing their children. They were desperate. She wasn’t even a full-fledged practitioner yet. She was still young and learning. But the word got out that she had cured a boy—”

She stopped for a long moment and Nick considered refilling her glass to ensure the words would keep flowing.

“Wasn’t that what she was supposed to do?” he asked.

Grace shook her head. “This was different. Normally, all they could do was hand out decoctions and syrups and hope the child was strong enough to keep breathing through the coughing spells. But this boy had gone from suffocation to complete health in a matter of moments, and Lily had fainted dead away.”

“So they thought it was—”

“Magic,” she said, so softly he barely heard her.

That word again. Nick decided to refill his own glass instead.

“It wasn’t long before everyone with a sick child was at the door demanding that Lily cure them. Panicky, desperate people with their dying children in their arms coming all that way. And Grandpa Zach was trying to keep everyone calm when one of the Taggarts threw a rock.”

Nick could picture it. People pressing forward, trying to get her to touch
their
child. Lily cowering inside, maybe watching through the cabin window as her husband held them back. An angry mob that no doubt disappeared right after the accident.

“After that Granny Lily focused on finding and growing herbs on the mountain and making up a few herbal remedies that Grandpa sold along with the ginseng. Eventually, their son Jeb expanded the business, and so Woodruff Herbs was born. But no Woodruff woman ever wanted to be a Granny Witch again.”

“Except you,” Nick said.

“No. Not me. Not in the traditional sense.”
Not at all, given the choice.

Grace leaned back on her hands and gazed up at the sky. Long ago she used to lie here in the meadow trying to imagine that the stars were down and the earth beneath her was up and managing, only for a moment, that dizzying certainty that she was going to fall. She felt that way now.

“Most people are either completely serious or completely absurd when they drink. I think you do something different. I’m just not sure what it is,” Nick said.

“I love medicine. I love herbs.” She lowered herself onto the blanket. “I only ever wanted to be a medicine hunter—look for medicinal applications for plants from the rain forests, protect them from further destruction while finding new drugs.”

“Sounds like a great ambition. Why don’t you?”

Someone lived.

Nick’s face appeared above her, blocking the stars. “Are you going to pass out?”

She laughed and sat back up, nearly bowling him over. “No. Are you?”

He stared at her for a long time. “I think I already did.”

“Well, stop looking at me and look up. We’re here because I promised Pops I’d come here now and again to get my head straight.”

“That will take a
lot
of visits,” he quipped, then leaned back on his elbows.

“It’s a good thing you’re a guest and I have to be polite to you,” she said.

But Nick had gone quiet, his eyes on the stars.

“Amazing isn’t it?” she said.

He made a noise of assent.

“You should see this meadow in early summer when the rest of the stars show up.”

Nick looked at her. “The rest of the stars?”
 

“The ones that fly,” Grace said, smiling at the memory. “Pops caught me coming in one summer evening with a mason jar absolutely full of fireflies. I had punched holes in the top and felt as if I had my own personal lantern. I’m sure the fireflies felt differently about it.”