Waking Nightmares (8 page)
Authors: Christopher Golden
Come Saturday, there would be live outdoor music and children running amok in the hay maze. Parents and kids alike rode the hay wagon up to the top of the hill, filled bags with apples they’d picked themselves, and then trudged back down, laden with fruit. People lined up at the windows at the back of the barn to buy cider and donuts without even having to go inside.
In all her life, Keomany Shaw had never met a group of people who worked as hard as the owners and employees at Summerfields. The two women who owned the place, Tori Osborne and Cat Hein, were the kind of married couple that other couples envied. They fought, but they never went to bed angry, and whatever conflicts arose, neither of them ever seemed to worry that they would erode the foundations of the relationship. Keomany wished she could find someone—man or woman—who would give her life the peace and harmony that Tori and Cat gave each other. She admired the women, and all of the Summerfields employees, for the sincerity of their efforts.
Keomany lived among them, but as much as she tried to help out where she could, she also lived apart from them. Unlike the rest of the people who worked at the orchard and farm, she had her own business on the grounds. When Keomany’s original shop had been destroyed, along with her entire hometown, Tori and Cat had given her an entire corner of the big red barn and hung a sign from the ceiling—
Sweet Somethings: Confections by Keomany Shaw
. She had tried to argue with their generosity, but they insisted, and at last she had relented, not only because she did not want to seem ungracious, but because they were her friends, and she couldn’t imagine anywhere else she wanted to be.
Sweet Somethings: Confections by Keomany Shaw
. She had tried to argue with their generosity, but they insisted, and at last she had relented, not only because she did not want to seem ungracious, but because they were her friends, and she couldn’t imagine anywhere else she wanted to be.
Summerfields had become her home. She had her own bedroom in the big house far across the fields from the barn. Tori and Cat usually had one or two other friends and employees living with them at any given time—it was simply their nature—but Keomany had become a permanent resident. At first they had taken nothing in return for the gifts they had given her, but in time, as Sweet Somethings had grown more and more successful, they had agreed to a percentage of her profits in exchange for the space her shop took up in the barn. But that was where they drew the line. They would not allow her to pay rent for her room in their house, and so she paid them back in other ways, by taking turns shopping or fixing meals, and by helping out at the orchard or on the farm whenever she had free time.
In the handful of years since she had come to live with them, Summerfields had only become more popular. Vermont was one of the most progressive states in the Union, and Keomany had never run into anyone who seemed at all troubled by the fact that the two women who owned the place were lesbians. She had often wondered, though, if people would be quite so accepting if they knew that Tori and Cat—and Keomany herself—were also witches. They practiced earthcraft, not traditional witchcraft, but she doubted most people would see the difference, especially given how fearful some people had become in the years since the existence of vampires and demons and magic had been revealed to the world.
So, although they didn’t really go out of their way to keep their beliefs and practices a secret, they also didn’t broadcast it.
Which was how Keomany came to find herself walking alone up the hill through rows of apple trees on that Wednesday morning. So many people favored the sweeter apples, but Keomany loved a good Granny Smith. She tugged one off a branch as she passed and took a bite, savoring the slightly sour flavor.
At the top of the hill, on the western end of the orchard, far from the most frequently trodden rows, Tori and Cat had ordered a section of the land staked off from the rest. Yellow caution tape was strung from one stake to the next, making that section of the orchard look like a police crime scene. Dozens of witches would be visiting for the equinox. Added to the Summerfields employees—all witches, though most in faith only—there would be nearly one hundred people gathering on this small patch of the orchard that day. Summerfields would be closed to the public for a “private party.”
The preparations were already under way. Blessings had been spoken and spells cast. Ribbons surrounded the trunks of trees on the edges of the clearing that had been set aside for the celebration. There would be prayers and rituals at dawn and dusk, and music and dancing at intervals during the day. The entire day would be filled with celebrations of the equinox, or Harvest Home. They would celebrate nature’s bounty and honor the passing of the growing season. It was a time to give thanks for the fruits of the earth and of their labor, to look back on the year that was ending and forward to the future. There would be wine and cider, some of which would be poured at the foot of each tree in the ring around the clearing.
The clearing itself had been partially prepared already, but Tori and Cat had asked Keomany to complete the preparation and purification in a way that only she could. The two of them had some skill with earthcraft and some innate power, but nothing on the level of the magic that Keomany had discovered within herself. Of them all, only she could perform the desired purification.
The soil in the clearing had been turned and most of the yellowing grass raked out, as though in preparation for a garden. This section of the orchard was kept as free of pesticides as possible, but still the soil had trace chemicals that traveled through groundwater. The celebration of the equinox called for purification. For many, this would be symbolic purity, but Keomany wished for something better.
From somewhere far off, she heard a woman calling after her child. She turned her face toward the sun and closed her eyes, arms outthrust, apple still clutched in her hand, and let its warmth fill her and flow through her. She felt it in her bones and relished it, even as she enjoyed the sound of the autumn breeze rustling through the apple trees. The scent of the rotting, fermenting apples already fallen mixed with the sweet smell of those still hanging from the branches, and this was the smell of life, and of the earth.
Contented, she opened her eyes and walked to the center of the clearing, her shoes making impressions in the freshly turned soil. Closing her eyes again, she faced eastward and whispered blessings to the air and earth, then turned and repeated the blessings facing west, then again south, and finally north.
As she spoke, the wind rose around her, buffeting her gently with breezes both warm and cold. The air caressed her, her silken black hair whipping around her face, and she breathed deeply. She felt Gaea, the earth mother, the goddess, there with her. At all times, Keomany felt a small buzzing in her mind, a warm shiver in her flesh, a power that lay mostly dormant within her, but that connected her to Gaea. She could summon that magic at will. It connected her to the elements, to all of nature, and she had called the wind that surrounded her now.
She opened her arms and let that magic flow from her, down into the ground. The soil began to shift and the clearing to tremble as the chemical impurities in that patch of land were destroyed or rendered inert as if they had been burned away. Grass began to spring up from the soil, growing quickly. She could hear the wind singing from the blades and could feel the grass underfoot and brushing against her legs.
Keomany took a bite of the apple, opened her eyes, and dropped it to the ground. She stepped back to watch as the seeds inside the fruit sent shoots down into the soil. In the space between eye blinks, a finger-length sprig emerged. Smiling, feeling the harmony of earth magic, she moved farther away to give it room to grow, and as she looked on, the sprig stretched upward with a whisper of life, branches forming, leaves growing, blossoms appearing and then flowering into being as gleaming, green, Granny Smith apples. The tree—nine or ten feet tall now—seemed almost to sigh and settle its roots more deeply, and then the wind subsided and only the smallest breeze remained to gently sway its branches. With its leaves turned toward the sun, this newborn fruit of the earth thrived.
During the celebration there would be at least one apple for each of those in attendance—Keomany would make certain of it. They would partake together, and in years to come, other trees would grow from this one, and so the purity of the earth and the peace of Gaea would continue to spread through Summerfields and to all of those who ate of this tree, and those that would grow from its seeds.
“Blessed—” Keomany began to say.
The pain made her cry out, surging up through the magical umbilical that tethered her to the goddess. It made her muscles contract and her legs give way, and she fell in the newly grown grass. Spikes hammered into her skull and the shadows cast by the trees at the edges of the clearing reached knife-blade fingers for her, forcing her to close her eyes. But she couldn’t hide from the pain, or the nausea that roiled in her gut, or the images that rose in her mind of waves crashing against a pier, of unnatural things scuttling onto the shore, and of dark mist flowing through the streets of a small town, swallowing it up.
The mist enveloped her, pain and darkness suffocating her, and she sank down into herself and oblivion claimed her.
For a time, Keomany knew nothing. The darkness coalesced, eddying around her as though she lay in some midnight tide pool, pain subsiding and her breathing returning to normal.
A voice whispered her name. For just a moment, she thought it might be the goddess herself. Then, as consciousness returned, she winced away from the brightness of the sun. Slowly, she opened her eyes to slits, and saw Tori Osborne looking down at her, beautiful ebony face framed by ropes of beaded hair.
“Hey,” Tori said gently. “Anybody home in there?”
Keomany groaned. The pain in her head had gone, but the moment she tried to move, it returned.
“What happened to you?” Tori asked.
It took Keomany a moment, but then the memory flooded back into her mind. Whatever connection Gaea had created to link her to that place, she still felt it. The goddess had cried out as the taint of evil had touched that town and began to spread. Keomany had felt her anguish, and she knew the name of that town.
She tried to speak, but her voice was a rasp.
“Hang on,” Tori said, turning to the others who had gathered around her in the clearing by the new apple tree. She reached out toward them, and the orchard manager, scruffy Patrick, handed Tori a bottle of water.
Tori helped Keomany prop herself up and handed her the bottle. Keomany winced at the pain in her head, but the water tasted wonderful. She wondered how long she had been out there under the sun before someone had wondered why she had been gone so long and come looking for her.
“Goddess, is she all right?” a familiar voice called.
They all turned to see Tori’s wife, the tall, curvy Cat Hein, come hurrying into the clearing. Cat fell to her knees beside Tori, and now both women were doting over her. Keomany managed a smile, more for them than for herself.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Cat asked.
Keomany took another sip of water, then nodded to her friends. “I’m all right. Help me up. I’ve got to get to the house. I need the phone.”
They steadied her as she rose to her feet.
“What’s going on, Keomany?” Tori asked. “Who do you have to call?”
Keomany started away from the new tree, toward the house on the other side of the orchard.
“Octavian,” she said, glancing back at them. “And I’ll need someone to watch my shop. I’m going to be going away for a little while.”
THE
coffee Viviane Chenot had brewed could have doubled as a rust remover, but Octavian didn’t mind. He liked it strong, and if it was also bitter, he didn’t mind, and he never tried to subdue the flavor with sugar. Nikki had no such hesitations. She smiled as she dumped three heaping teaspoons of sugar into her coffee, and even then he knew she only drank it to be polite.
coffee Viviane Chenot had brewed could have doubled as a rust remover, but Octavian didn’t mind. He liked it strong, and if it was also bitter, he didn’t mind, and he never tried to subdue the flavor with sugar. Nikki had no such hesitations. She smiled as she dumped three heaping teaspoons of sugar into her coffee, and even then he knew she only drank it to be polite.
They sat around the little table in the dining area just outside Viviane’s galley kitchen. Perhaps the change could be attributed to a new lightness of spirit for Viviane herself, but the place seemed brighter to Octavian, the colors of the paintings and even the flowers on the table more vivid.
“I can’t thank you enough for what you did,” Viviane said.
“I’m only glad I was in time,” Octavian replied.
Viviane’s lover and former professor, Derek Tremblay, raised his coffee cup in a toast.
“Don’t be modest,” the professor said. “You’ve earned yourself a certain notoriety, Peter, but a lot of people think you’re some kind of charlatan. I thank God that you’re not.”
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