Chapter 8

Susana wielded Lily's "pocket boline" with more grace and precision today than she had yesterday. Her sandals discarded beside her, she knelt in the dirt, not concerned about the soil and grass staining her blue jeans, and she wore a broad-brimmed straw hat to shade her delicate features from the sun. Three large baskets sat beside her, and as she filled them, she was careful to keep the herb cuttings in distinct piles. Not her favorite work in the garden, but at least she didn't suck at it. Lily would be back at the house after the lunch shift at the diner, and she could critique her work then.

Susana inched forward on her knees to the next group of lavender plants. Though she had protested when Lily asked her to work in the garden today, she was enjoying the time alone, in the company of scented plants and an old dog. Susana looked over at Baird on the porch and smiled. All of the running around she had planned to do that day seemed miles away from being even remotely important.

She held the sharp edge of her knife to the closest plant. "Thank you,"s he whispered to the plant, not remembering the poetry of gratitude that Lily had taught her, and still feeling a bit foolish for talking to the garden. She harvested what she needed, placed the fragrant leaves into the smallest of the three baskets, and continued forward. She was getting into her rhythm, an almost trance-like state surrounded by so many healing and mystical herbs.

Unbidden, a song was born in her throat and slowly climbed its way to her lips. "Now I walk in beauty," she serenaded the lavender quietly. "Beauty is before me, beauty is behind me." She kept cutting and moving forward, her mind on nothing but the plants in front of her. "Above and below me. Now I walk in beauty..."

Susana sat back on her heels and wiped the seat from her brow with her garden glove. Where had she learned that song? She closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun, feeling the gentle breeze across her damp skin as she heard the leaves above rustling in the tree branches. Breathing in the sunlight, she let the boline knife slip from her hand into the grass.

Susana....

She opened her eyes, startled. Had someone just called her name? It was almost as though she could feel gentle hands on her shoulders, pulling her forward. She looked around the yard, but there was no one there. On the porch, it was still just Baird keeping watch over her. But there was something.... She shook it off and reached down to pick up the knife.

Susana....

She was on her feet, again scanning her surroundings. It wasn't a voice she had heard, exactly, but what was it? She glanced back toward the greenhouse, half-expecting to find Maimie standing in the doorway scowling at her, but the brooding spirit was nowhere in sight. Turning to scout the other side of the yard, her eyes came to rest on the side gate leading to the sidewalk that skirted the neighborhood. She felt that small nudge again. Susana slid her feet into her sandals and strode across the grass, headed for the gate.

The gate closed with a small click behind her. Stepping outside the property boundaries, Susana looked up and down the sidewalk but still didn't see anyone. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a tall, slender man appeared at her side.

"Hello?" he inquired tentatively.

Susana jumped at the sound of his voice, and took a couple of steps backward, away from him.

He grinned in apology. "I didn't mean to startle you," he offered. "I just moved in and thought you might be one of my neighbors?"

Sizing him up, Susana recognized him by Lily's description. The strange man with the strange accent and the strange Tarot reading. Like her cousin, she was more amused than suspicious. "I am," Susana replied cheerfully, extending her right hand. "I'm Susana, and I'm guessing you must be Roy."

He smiled and accepted her handshake. "I am indeed." He grip was soft but strong, and he could read her immediately, Not as standoffish as her cousin, not as certain of herself or of her own strength. This was the one he had come to meet.

* * * * *

Lily returned home that afternoon smelling of potato salad and tunafish. After a collision with another waitress at the diner had left her covered in someone's lunch, she just hadn't been able to get the scent off of her. Turning off the car, she pulled the keys out of the ignition and just sat for a moment, realizing that the whole car reeked of the diner -- and not just today's menu items, either.

It could have been worse, she kept reminding herself, though she was hardly in love with her job to begin with. Maybe she would quit. Running Tic's herb business wasn't all that difficult, but together she and Susana could absolutely grow the client base and even branch out into new areas. It would break Ruby and Mo's hearts to se her leave the Dogwood Deli, which they'd been running themselves since they opened it in 1974, and they had been so very good to her, treating her almost as a member of the family, since she started there a few years after high school. But did she really want to be a waitress the rest of her life?

She grumbled a few unintelligible syllables and dragged herself out of the car, not noticing the black sedan that sped by on the road behind her. At least she'd get to play with plants this afternoon, she promised herself.

She heard voices coming from the wrap-around porch and stopped dead in her tracks. Susana was sitting with Roy on the veranda, sipping iced tea. For Christ's sake!

"Susana!" Lily called out to her and waved. The sooner Lily got this guy's attention and found out what he was up to, the better.

"Hey! You remember Roy, right?" Susana smiled at Lily as she climbed the front steps and made her way over to their tea party.

"Of course." Lily nodded toward their guest, not letting her guard down.

"It's good to see you again, Lily," Roy replied smoothly. It wasn't that she was so much suspicious of Roy himself, but of his convenient appearance instead. Was it just her imagination, or did he just always seem to be hanging around?

Susana pushed a footstool across the porch to Lily, encouraging her to sit down. "Roy was just telling me about his decision to come to Richmond. It's funny, because I'd never though of someone actually choosing to be here...." Susana laughed, but she was dead serious. She was thirty years old and still stuck in her hometown. She'd always heard the Native American legend that once a person had ventured into the area, unless he left by a particular, hidden pathway, he would always return, again and again, to this place. It had always sounded like more of a curse to Susana.

"It really wasn't so earth-shattering," Roy explained. "Life has a way of conspiring to get us exactly where we need to be. Right place, right time."

Lily nodded. "Something like that." She thought again about the diner and tried to imagine herself as a waitress ten years in the future. She shuddered at the thought.

Roy leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "Ladies, have you ever felt that you had a calling in life? Or, that a destiny had reached out and chosen you, even when you may have been looking for something else?"

The cousins hadn't been prepared for the sudden serious turn in the conversation. Susana pulled her arms in close to her chest. She glanced quickly at Lily, who was staring at her feet. Susana looked back to Roy, whose tender eyes awaited her reply.

"You know, that very thing, I think, happened to me just about a week ago." She kicked at the leg of her chair with the toe of her sandal. "I was on a career path that, while completely successful -- or, well, mostly successful, things were going well -- it just didn't feel right to me. But I didn't know what else I might choose, so I just kept with it, you know? I was afraid of getting stuck, I knew I was getting stuck there, in advertising, but I couldn't imagine what else I might do."

Lily looked up at her, realizing that the Universe was speaking to her now. Nobody wanted to get stuck. Everyone wanted to reach out for a bigger life of meaning. But how many people had the courage to make that choice? To choose to walk the unbeaten path?

"So then, Bam! No more job." Susana nearly laughed, even though it still stung. "It was like a slap in the face, a real shocker, but at the same time, there was this part of me, deep down, that knew that it was all going to be okay. That everything would be alright, and that this was even a good thing."

Roy nodded. Susana smiled at Lily, just a hint of tears springing to her eyes. "Of course," Susana continued, "It turned out that was the same day Tic died." She hung her head and sniffed back the tears. Roy, sitting close to her, reached out to pat her shoulder gently. Lily watched the exchange, saw the gentleness in Roy's eyes, and relaxed.

"I'm sorry." Susana shook her head and shrank away from his touch.

"No, that's precisely what I was talking about." Roy sat up straight in his chair, considering how much to reveal. "It was nearly a year ago that applied to the masters program in health administration. I wanted to come to America to study, and then to take my education back to Trinidad, to try to improve things there. It's not an impoverished little county," he scratched his head and looked across the front lawn. He was distracted by a flash of movement, an unnatural shadow in the hundred-year-old magnolia tree. This was unexpected.

"But you wanted to do something to help." Susana prompted him, drawing Roy's attention back to the conversation.

"Right, yes." He glanced between the two women. He was certain that neither of them knew they were being observed. "But there was a terrible accident, just a few weeks ago." Roy took a deep breath. Though he hadn't been there, his body could still feel the pain as though the wounds were fresh. "I was shot."

Lily sat bolt upright. "What?"

Roy tried to wave off her concern. "It was a drive-by shooting, something gang-related. I was one of the innocent bystanders. You know the story."

Susana shook her head and sank back into her chair.

"But, you're okay?" Lily asked.

"Yes." Roy unconsciously put his hand just below his ribs, over the new scars. "But what I wanted to say was that sometimes things happen, completely unexpected things, that either thwart the plans you already had for yourself or make you stop and think about the direction your life is taking."

Roy took a sip of the cool tea. He felt the women's eyes on him, and their shock over his revelation. They had no idea what they were in for, Roy noted. He put the glass back down on the small, metal side table. "They tell me that I died on the operating table." Roy shook his head and laughed. "What I know is that I woke up in that hospital, you know surrounded by health care, which was my chosen field, and I knew I had something bigger to do than administration."

"Yet you still came to Richmond." Susana propped her feet up on the spoked of her chair.

He nodded. "Yes. I knew that whatever was coming next for me, it wasn't in Trinidad." Roy paused to clear his throat. "At least, not right now. Whatever the next step is," he spread his fingers and pressed his palms down, emphasizing this moment in time, "It's here. It's in Richmond."

Lily laughed. "Well, that's a first!" She immediately regretted her remark, but caught the glint of a smile in Roy's eyes. "I mean, this is a pretty backward place, is all. Even with all the Southern Splendor."

"Yes," Roy smiled broadly. "Precisely."

* * * * *

Susana weighed the aengus wort file folder in her hands while Lily inspected Tic's basement workroom. "Okay, he was definitely working on something down here," Lily commented as she inspected the ceramic pots on the handful of burners, laid out on a medium-sized table next to a massive sink. The milk crate full of the bottles of tincture they had found in the greenhouse sat on the large worktable in the center of the space.

Susana sat down at the desk, slightly larger yet organized as a mirror image to the one in the greenhouse. She fingered a stack of large, very old books. Susana guessed that they had been sitting there since they were first published, but then she realized that not a spec of dust marred the leather covers. Lifting them carefully, she spread the books out in front of her. She opened a few to check the titles.

Lily was checking the measuring cups and spoons left lying about, trying to figure out what they'd last been used for. Giving up, she reached up over the sink and opened the double cabinet on the wall. She found another collection of the small tincture bottles, each full of liquid and labeled with a name a date. "Bingo!"

Susana got up from the desk. "What did you find?"

Lily pulled one of the bottles down from the cabinet. "Another stash." She examined the writing on the label. "What did the other ones say? 'Aengus wort day,' right?"

Susana sat on the edge of the desk. "Yeah."

"Well," Lily said with a smile as she shook the small bottle and held it up to the light. "These are 'Aengus wort, night.'"

"What's the difference?"

Lily looked over at her cousin and smiled. "We're going to find out." She twisted the cap off of the bottle and took at sniff at the contents, then stepped over to the center worktable. She grabbed one of the previous bottles and similarly uncapped it, comparing the scent of the two bottles. She couldn't detect a difference.

Susana looked back down at the books beside her. "Lily, what's a grimoire?"

"It's a book of magic, you know, spells. Same thing as a book of shadows. Why?"

Susana scanned the title in front of her. "Because I've got a whole stack of them over here."

Lily put the bottles back down on the table and walked over to the desk. She had never seen these books before, that was certain. Tic had never been stingy with his wisdom in the past, so what was so special about these books? She ran her fingers over the dark, age-worn covers.

"Where did you find these?" Lily asked as she opened the largest volume.

Susana shrugged. "They were just sitting right here."

Lily frowned and looked at her. "Are you sure? Right here?" She gestured toward the top of the desk.

"Yes, right here." Susana wasn't sure what Lily was driving at, but she didn't like her suspicious tone. "I sat down, and there they were."

"Okay..." Lily held her hand to her forehead. She turned slowly to scan the rest of the basement workspace, then turned back to stare down at the magical books in front of her.

"What's the problem?"

"I don't know if it's a problem," Lily began. "But I was down here yesterday. I was sitting at this desk, looking through the drawers. There was nothing on top of the desk. These books were definitely not here yesterday."

* * * * *
In his bedroom, Roy sat in his chair, facing the window looking out onto the Frye house. In his lap he held the waxy magnolia leaf he had taken from the tree in Lily and Susana's front yard. At the end of their tea party conversation, after the two ladies had retired into the house, Roy had approached the tree, slowly, trying to gauge what he had detected in its shadows earlier. He could feel the wisdom emanating off of the tree in gentle waves. Having asked the tree for permission, he had chosen a single leaf, by which he intended to discern more of what was going on inside that house, and more specifically, in the back garden.

Eyes closed, Roy took a deep breath, enjoying the homemade incense. He let the leaf rest lightly on his fingertips and humbly asked it to tell him its story.

In a flash, Roy saw the man's concerned face in his mind's eye. The deep wrinkles in his wizened visage betrayed more than his years, and Roy immediately recognized the spirit of the elder. "Greetings, grandfather," Roy whispered as he sat still in his chair. In his vision, the shaman leaned heavily on his staff, having grown weary of his watch over the land. He pointed a bony finger toward the Frye garden, and Roy could see the plant in question, glowing against the dark ground as it grew and flourished before his eyes.

"Yes," Roy whispered to the medicine man. "I see it."

"Honshawe." The word echoed through Roy's head. A glint of a smile grew in the old man's eyes, and Roy understood his meaning perfectly. He nodded and pressed his lips together. "It is time."

Roy opened his eyes, surprised by the darkness in the room. How long had he been meditating? The orange and red light of sunset spilled in through the windows, illuminating the magnolia leaf in his lap. It sparkled there in his hands, then evaporated into thin air.

* * * * *

Susana and Lily were camped out around the coffee table in the living room, papers and notebooks strewn across the couch and the floor, with Tic's files and his ancient grimoires spread out on the table in front of them. The sun had long since set, but the women had forgotten dinner in the excitement of their discoveries. Two brown tincture bottles -- one of 'aengus wort, day' and one of 'aengus wort, night' -- sat on the mantle above the fireplace.

Susana had pulled her long, blonde hair up into a ponytail to keep it out of her face, while Lily wore reading glasses and had her dark hair tucked behind her ears. Susana put down the book she had been balancing carefully in her hands and leaned back on the sofa. She tightened her ponytail and watched Lily chew a pencil while she read.

"I'm still trying to get my mind around what I'm looking for." Susana looked up at the ceiling to stretch the muscles in her neck, then reached up to gently massage her own shoulders.

Lily took the pencil from between her teeth and pursued her lips. "Yeah," she sighed. She pushed her glasses up on her face and looked at what she had written in her notebook. Despite their work over the past five or six hours, they hadn't learned much more than they had known to start with. They were finding bits and pieces here and there about the history of the mysterious herb -- it had apparently gone by many different names over the centuries -- but had uncovered frustratingly little about the plant itself and what it could do.

Susana's stomach growled loudly. She held her hand to her rib cage in embarrassment. "Sorry."

Lily checked her watch. Yes, it was way past dinner time. "I'm pretty hungry, too."

"I'm thinking.... pizza," Susana suggested as she rose to her feet.

"Good idea." Lily glanced at the books on the table that she still hadn't opened yet. "You'd better order plenty of soda, too. It looks like we're going to be up for awhile."

Susana was already on her way down the hall to the kitchen. "You sure you want soda?" she called back to Lily as she sorted through the collection of take-out menus that had accumulated on the kitchen counter. "We're not exactly teenagers anymore. At least, I'm not." She found the menu she'd been looking for and crossed the floor to pick up the phone.

"Yeah, I know," Lily called back from the living room. "We're old enough to know better, we'll pay for it in the morning, blah blah blah." She put down her pencil and rubbed her eyes under the frames of her glasses. What had Tic been up to? She tossed her notebook and pencil onto the coffee table, then leaned back against the couch. She rested her head on the back of the couch, looking up at the ceiling, and then closed her eyes.

"Hey." Susana plopped down onto the couch beside her cousin, startling her. "The pizza will be here soon." Susana reached for the largest grimoire on the table and began leafing through its pages, very carefully.

"Sorry," Lily grumbled. "I guess I fell asleep for a second."

"You can go rest, if you want," Susana suggested. Two weeks ago, she wouldn't have been the least bit interested in the healing properties of herbs, nor even known what a grimoire was. Now, she couldn't get enough. "We've not yet looked in this one, right?"

"Yeah," Lily slowly sat back up and gazed sleepily at the book Susana was holding. "You know you need to–"

"Be careful with the old books. Yeah," she replied in mock frustration. "Where did Tic get all of these?"

Lily shook her head. Had they really just manifested on the desk in the basement overnight? Doubtful, Lily told herself, or the books at least would be more helpful than this. She reached for her notebook and reviewed what she had jotted down so far.

"Okay," she announced to her cousin. "We know this plant has a habit of showing up spontaneously, which I'm guessing is what happened here."

"Mmm," Susana replied without listening. She stopped turning the pages of the book in her lap and lightly ran her fingers over the text in front of her.

"And there's got to be a reason for the two different batches, you know?" Lily speculated. "Solar and lunar energies could produce different results in an herbal remedy."

"Uh-huh," Susana studied a short paragraph, reading and re-reading the words, an expression of excitement growing on her face.

"It's just not like Tic not to keep better notes on the uses and properties of a new plant." Lily shook her head.

"Maybe he didn't have to," Susana suggested. She was up on her knees on the couch, ready to burst with her discovery. "Hey, I think I found it."

"What?" Lily leaned over to take a look at what Susana was reading, but the text was upside down to her. Even so, it didn't look like English.

"See here. It's talking about our plant." Susana read aloud from the pages in front of her. "This sacred herb springs from pain into wholeness, a medicine without equal. Its derivatives bring darkness to light, hatred into love. The drink releases fear and heals the soul. Let the earth drink, heal what binds her. Moonlight soothes the heart; sunlight heals the body. Treasure this medicine that comes to you. With it, the magician heals the world." She sat back and smiled at Lily.

Lily frowned. "That's it? Let me see it."

Susana shifted the book so that Lily could read the words, sliding a piece of notebook paper that had been resting on the opposing page into her hands.

"This isn't even in English!" Lily complained. "Quod sanctus panaces," she read haltingly.

"Latin," Susana commented. "And not particularly good Latin, either."

Lily sighs. "I always knew you went to better schools."

Susana waved the piece of notebook paper in the air. "The translation is right here. It was tucked into the book."

Lily grabbed the paper from her cousin's hands and examined it. "This isn't even Tic's handwriting. Is the whole book in Latin."

"Hardly." Susana pulled the book back into her lap and flipped through the pages. "It's a hodgepodge, really. All handwritten, with some drawings...."

Lily lifted the pages at the front of the book, trying to get a glimpse of the very first page. "Hey, Susana..." Lily turned back to the first page, where a generations-old inscription stared back at the them. Lily drew in her breath and smiled.

"Who was Nora Frye?"

"Tic's grandmother. Oh, goodness, I didn't know that anything like this existed."

Susana turned to look at her cousin. There was pure magic in Lily's eyes as the understanding of what she held in her hands began to sink in.

"This is the Frye family book of shadows," Lily whispered. She laughed, and with tears in her eyes turned toward Susana. "It's like the family bible."

Susana nodded. "Okay, so who left it out on the desk, then. You said yourself you didn't even know Tic had such a thing."

"Well," Lily mused as she traced her fingers over her great-great-granmother's handwriting. She closed the book and hugged it lovingly to her chest. "Maybe Grandma Nora put it out for us. This was her house, you know."

Susana closed her eyes and frowned. "This is all giving me such a headache." She shook her head, allowing her skepticism to get the better of her.

The doorbell rang. "Pizza." Susana jumped up from the couch and grabbed her purse from the floor in the hallway.

Lily patted the book in her arms. "Saved by the bell," she whispered.

* * * * *

Roy was on his knees beside the sacred plant, in the back yard behind the Frye house. He disliked having to be so surreptitious, but it could not be helped, not now. He was glad for the new moon, at least, which granted greater cover of darkness for his reconnaissance mission.

He planted his hands in the soft earth surrounding the network of plants and bowed his head low -- not in worship, but to better understand what the plant was telling him. Roy had traveled thousands of miles to serve as guide and steward. He had stepped into a damaged and dying body, restoring its structure and systems so that he might play his small part in this miracle.

Roy watched as the stems and leaves transformed into structures of light before his eyes. The plant revealed to him its deep network of roots. He saw the interconnectedness across time and space, but he was still having difficulty grasping the plant's appearance here. Why Richmond? Why now? Certainly there were other places, other needs more demanding, more dire. He saw again the glowing network, and Roy smiled. He lay his head on the ground next to the small cluster of plants, feeling the tips of the leaves tickle his cheek.

"Whatever you need, you've got it," he whispered the the roots below, feeling the surge in the ground beneath him.

He heard the distant doorbell at the front of the house and sat up quickly, brushing the dirt off of his clothes. Trying to explain all of this to Susana and Lily now would only compound matters. He let himself out the side gate just as the light in the Frye kitchen snapped on.

Roy walked up the block toward his small apartment in the house across the street. Before cross Hermitage Road, Roy turned around and stared up the long, dark road. He could feel their eyes on him, even if he couldn't see them. They were finally learning how to disguise themselves properly, Roy mused. He smiled and waved to the darkness, then turned around and crossed the street to his apartment.