Witches in Flight (6 page)

He smiled slowly.
 
“It made me wonder what the new name is.”

As she mentally stomped out of class, Lizard could hear the
frustrated answer swinging around her ribcage.
 
Sometimes poems lied.
 
There was no new name.
 
She
was Lizard.
 
She would always be
Lizard.

~ ~ ~

Elsie watched as Helga clambered up the ladder to the trapeze,
and prayed that Abe knew what he was doing.
 
The Trapeze Arts trainers hadn’t even blinked when
seventy-year-old Helga had shown up, peeled off her warm-ups to reveal a
spangly cat suit underneath, and announced she wanted to try flying.

Apparently half the world wanted to try flying.
 
The line-up in their beginner class
included a football player, three teenagers, a man with a beard long enough to
be a safety risk in the air, and a mom of six.
 
Other than one of the teenage girls, they were all bouncing
happily in line and waiting their turn, shouting encouragement to whoever was
currently up with the trainers.

Helga waved down as they cheered her on, and then grabbed the
trapeze with both hands.
 
Elsie
watched in interest and relief as Abe clipped on a couple of additional
wires.
 
Good—they were taking
extra care with her bold friend’s old bones.

Some students froze when they first gripped the bar, clutched by
the exultant terror Elsie remembered all too well.
 
Helga, however, leaped off like she did this every day,
swinging her legs back and forth with nicely timed momentum, her spangles
turning her into a happy flying rainbow.
 

Elsie grinned—it was entirely possible this wasn’t Helga’s
first time flying through the air.
 
Seventy years of bold living had probably generated a fair list of
adventures.
 
Her list was a baby by
comparison—but she
had
a list, and it would get longer.

She ran over to the base of the net to help Helga’s final
dismount, and giggled as they collapsed in a pile on the floor.
 
Helga was still gasping for
breath.
 
“Sorry, darling.
 
My legs are still trying to figure out
which way is up.
 
That’s quite a
trip, isn’t it!”

Elsie laughed and logged a wish—please, when she grew old,
might it be with even a fraction of Helga’s spice.
 
“Are you going to go again?”

“Goodness, no.”
 
Helga’s voice was tinged with regret.
 
“I firmly believe this old body can do anything it sets a
mind to do, but I think once is my limit.”
 
She patted Elsie’s cheek.
 
“But I might just come back again with you sometime.”

There would be plenty of opportunity.
 
Elsie’s second time at Trapeze Arts had blown on the banked
embers of joy from her first visit.
 
“I think it could become a bit of an addiction.”

Helga chuckled and slowly got to her feet.
 
“We knitters know all about addiction,
dear.
 
The trick is to pick
passions that fuel your soul.
 
I
think you’ve chosen very well.”

It felt almost like a benediction—or like the easy
maternal approval she’d never really known in her life.
 
Elsie moved on instinct, leaning in for
a hug.
 
And then giggled as she ended
up nose-to-nose with Helga’s spangles.
 
“Can you help me make a suit like this?”
 
Being a flying rainbow had become a sudden personal
ambition.

“Of course.
 
Sparkles aren’t just for the little ones.”
 
Helga’s eyes twinkled—and then slid away, distracted.

Elsie turned, looking for the cause.
 
It was time for the one girl who wasn’t at all eager to go
to have her turn.
 
She couldn’t
make out Abe’s gentle words or the girl’s tearful replies, but everything about
her body language proclaimed her fear.

Hazel’s hand pushed her gently forward.
 
“Go on.
 
Help her out, sweetheart.
 
You know what it is to be afraid.”

Elsie wasn’t at all sure that qualified her to intervene, but
she walked over slowly. Abe looked up as she approached and smiled in
welcome.
 
“Melissa here is feeling
a bit nervous.
 
Maybe you can tell
her about your first time flying.”

Melissa was more than a bit nervous—she looked half an
inch away from bolting for the door.
 
“My friends came on a dare, but they do crazy stuff like this all the
time.
 
I’m not like them.”

It often sucked to be the sensible one.
 
“My first time was a dare too.
 
And I’m about the least crazy person in
the universe.”
 
Elsie breathed and
hoped her words were the right ones.
 
“Forget why you came.
 
You’re here now, and nothing before really matters, or anything that
will happen after you leave.”
 
She
pointed up to the sky.
 
“If you
look up there, and listen inside, what do you hear?”

Melissa managed half a smile.
 
“My teeth chattering?”

Elsie grinned and slid an arm around the terrified girl’s
shoulders.
 
“Besides that.
 
Listen deeper.
 
Maybe you truly don’t want to go up,
and that’s okay.
 
Lots of really
interesting people never fly through the air on a tiny little bar.”

Abe chuckled, but said nothing more.

Elsie looked over at Melissa.
 
“But if that place deep inside you really wants to fly, this
would be a great time to listen.
 
To discover that about yourself.
 
Even if you don’t choose to go up today.”

Melissa closed her eyes—for long enough that Elsie got
concerned.
 
But when she opened
them again, it was clear she’d found her answer.
 
She reached out for Abe’s hand.
 
“Help me do this.”

The impressed look in Abe’s eyes made Elsie feel good.
 
The gulping courage in Melissa’s made
her feel wondrous.

And when Melissa flew through the air screaming in delight,
clipped in to Abe’s harness, Elsie wasn’t entirely sure her own feet stayed on
the ground.

~ ~ ~

--------------------------------------

To:
[email protected]

From:
Caro Genady <
[email protected]
>

Subject:
You’re invited.

--------------------------------------

Hey
Jennie,

Do they serve up email on airplanes?
 
I have no idea what your girls are up to this afternoon, but
they’re busier than an anthill over on the other side of my duplex.
 
And I’m supposed to pass on a
message—you’re invited to Sunday dinner.
 
Said with the kind of cackle that would make me entirely
nervous.

You might be made of sterner stuff.

Elsie went trapeze flying again this morning, accompanied by the
unstoppable Helga, and apparently talked some poor scared child up onto the
trapeze, much to everyone’s delight.
 
This all relayed by Helga, whose arms were so tired she gave up trying
to pick up her knitting needles this afternoon and just gossiped instead.

Give the two of them a few more days, and I won’t be at all
surprised to see more of my knitters traipsing off to Oakland to join the
circus.

All I’m picking up from Lizard is hunger, so Elsie must be
making her tomato sauce again.
 
Which means I’m entirely jealous you’ll get there before I will.
 
(I have another obligation that will
make me late, even for magical spaghetti).
 

Enjoy
your tasty welcome home, and save me some if you can,

Caro

~ ~ ~

Jennie nearly blessed the cab driver as he pulled up in front of
the duplex where her students lived.
 
Home—or at least, reasonably close to it.
 
Her husband, who had gone off to San
Diego to visit the grandbabies, wouldn’t be home for a few hours yet, and
magical spaghetti sounded like an ideal way to while the time away.

Then again, there might be more than spaghetti for dinner—Caro’s
email had suggested something was afoot.
 
If Elsie and Lizard had put their heads together, that opened up a
fairly creative world of possibilities.

She was tired of creative.
 
She just wanted a home-cooked meal.

With a nice tip to the cab driver, she hopped out and
contemplated tucking her luggage behind the first convenient bush.
 
Once upon a time, she’d known how to
travel light.

“I’ll give you a hand with that.”

The looming voice of Freddie Grenadine shouldn’t have surprised
her—but it did.
 
As did the
nerves in his mind.
 
When he’d
walked Lizard into the Starry Plough, he’d been a lake of calm.
 
“I’d appreciate that.
 
I’ve been lugging these things over
half the country.”

He hefted one of her bags by the shoulder strap—and his
eyebrows winged up.
 
“What you got
in here, rocks?
 
Pirate loot?”

She grinned, very glad not to be the one doing the hefting.
 
“Camera equipment.
 
It used to be I could hike around with
that on my back for hours, but apparently old age has made me soft.”

“Heh.”
 
He grabbed
her other bag.
 
“Soft’s not the
first word that comes to mind.
 
Good thing, too—my Lizard doesn’t need soft.”
 
He put a hand on her arm.
 
“Before we go on in, I wanted to say
thank you.
 
I don’t know how she
ended up with you in her life, or any of these other folks, but for the first
time in a long time, I’m not worried about her anymore.
 
She’s gonna do fine now.”

Jennie had spent a lifetime honing her ability to move in the
moment.
 
And in this moment, she
wasn’t the one who needed to be thanked.
 
“Without your bus, she wouldn’t have come to us with anything left to
reach.
 
It solved a big mystery for
us when you walked into the Starry Plough together.”

A mystery she’d totally missed until after the fact, but that
was her lacking, not Freddie’s.
 
She’d known enough delinquents in her life that she should have
recognized the strangely solid ground under Lizard’s feet.
 
The pub had been full of mind witches
going “oh, duh,” when Lizard had walked through the door with the man who loved
her as his own.

Freddie shrugged, the uncomfortable feeling back in his
mind.
 
“That’s the first time I’ve
ever seen her off my bus.”
 
He
looked up at the door.
 
“And now
she’s invited me to Sunday dinner.
 
The wife’s coming by in a bit, after she gets off at the hospital.”

Jennie felt the import of that whack her like a
two-by-four.
 
Lizard had spent a
decade keeping her worlds very carefully separate.
 
This was a very big moment.
 
“Well, let’s go in then, shall we?
 
I heard rumors of spaghetti.”

Freddie’s face collapsed comically.
 
“I guess I was thinking it would be biscuits.”

She’d have given up her plate of spaghetti for that face in a
photograph.
 
Jennie wished for the
million-and-first time in her life that the camera in her brain had a slot for
film.
 
She patted Freddie’s arm,
about to sing the praises of Elsie’s spaghetti sauce, when the door opened and
the smells wafting out did the job for her.

Lizard stood at the door in an interesting mix of delinquent
regalia and nine-year-old-girl pink glam.
 
Jennie blinked.
 
“Nice
outfit.”

“The girls helped decorate.”
 
Lizard’s eyes were all on Freddie.
 
“Thanks for coming.”

The big man produced a potted plant from somewhere inside a
pocket.
 
“The missus sent this for
you.
 
She’ll be by as soon as she
gets off shift.”

Getting past Freddie’s bulk wasn’t an option, so Jennie leaned
quietly against a post and watched two people who adored each other squirm in
entirely unnecessary discomfort.
 

It was Lizard who finally broke the silence.
 
“I’ve been getting on your home for ten
years.
 
It’s about time you came to
see mine.”