Chapter 13

The morning sunlight streamed in through the bedroom window, the tree branches swaying gently in the breezing casting shadows on Susana's face as she slept. She squinted against the light falling on her closed eyelids and stretched the full length of her body beneath the light bedspread. Her eyes blinked open, and she was surprised by the brightness of the sun in her room. Groggily, she reached for the watch on the night stand. It was just after 8am.

She sat up in bed and yawned. How late had she stayed up, with all of the madness in the house? She had no idea. But at least she felt rested. And calm. She took a mental inventory, checking for any signs of lingering impatience or aggression. The rage that had fueled her during the night's activities would have frightened her before, but this experience had been liberating. Perhaps she was truly coming into herself after all.

She showered and dressed, as if in a dream. Susana felt lighter and surprisingly more awake than ever. Whatever shift had occurred, she wondered if it would last. Slipping on a pair of sandals, she opened the bedroom door and headed down the staircase.

Roy was at the breakfast table, reading the morning paper. A fresh pot of coffee waited in the coffee maker, and there was an ample spread of fruits, toast, and condiments on the table.

"You made breakfast," Susana greeted him cheerily.

"Good morning, sleepyhead." He smiled at her quickly, then returned to reading. "I've still not seen Lily, but I think I heard her stirring."

Susana poured herself a cup of coffee and looked out the window over the sink into the backyard. Only Baird stood watch over the aengus wort.

"Where are the others?" Susana ran her hand through her wet hair, lifting it off the back of her neck. She heard the mail slot on the front door open, followed by the sound of the day's mail falling to the floor in the front hallway.

"They're around." Roy turned the page of the newspaper. "There's not as much of a threat during the day. At least for now."

Susana sat down across from Roy. She heard Lily's bedroom door creak open upstairs. "What's in the news this fine Monday morning?"

Roy peeked around the side of the paper at her. "It's Tuesday morning."

Susana frowned. "Yesterday was Sunday..."

"No," Roy smiled. "Yesterday was Monday. You went to bed late Sunday night and slept all through Monday."

Susana put her coffee mug down on the table. "What?"

"Yep." Roy continued reading. "It's Tuesday."

Susana stared at her coffee mug. Had she really slept more than twenty-four hours? She stretched her arms out to her sides and rolled her wrists, then leaned forward to check the date on the newspaper in Roy's hands. Sure enough, it was Tuesday.

She picked up her mug and pulled her knees up to her chest. "So, what's in the news this Tuesday morning, then?"

"Well..." Roy rested the paper on the table and looked down at the stories in print. "Quite a bit of turbulence in the city, as you might imagine."

Susana leaned forward, reading the article titles upside down: "Poltergeists or Pranksters?" read one headline; "Local Ghost Tours Lose Ghosts," read another, followed by, "The Spirit of Richmond Tourism."

She rested back in her chair and took a sip from her mug. "You think we did all that?"

"We certainly set things in motion." Roy reached for an apple from the fruit bowl and sliced it into quarters.

Lily padded down the stairs in her bare feet and picked up the pile of mail from the floor. She sorted through the bills and advertisements as she made her way back to the kitchen. "Susana?" She was still looking down at the mail as she cross the threshold into the kitchen. "Were you expecting a letter from Simone Carver?"

Lily placed the envelope on the table in front of Susana. Roy rustled through the newspaper.

"Hmm," Susana commented curiously, tracing the flowery handwriting on the envelope with her finger.

"I meant to tell you...." Roy folded the paper and pushed it across the table to Susana. He tapped on Simone's name. Susana blinked. It was the Obituaries page.

"What?" Susana sat up straight in her chair and read the text. "She... died in her sleep Sunday night. She seemed perfectly fine Sunday afternoon!"

Lily leaned over her cousin to read the newsprint. "Gee." As the weight of the announcement hit her, Lily glanced nervously back and forth between Susana and Roy. "You don't think.... We killed her?"

Susana looked up at her cousin standing above her. "What are you talking about?"

"The tea!" Lily took a seat beside Susana. "She drank the tea, and now, now she's dead."

Susana's own alarm softened into a smile. "So did you," she reminded her. "We all drank the tea. And we turned out okay."

"I guess...." Lily reached for a piece of toast and slowly spread some strawberry preserves on it.

Susana checked the postmark on the front of the envelope. "This went out yesterday." She paused, still staring at the postmark. "She must have put this in the mail Sunday afternoon...." Susana carefully opened the envelope with her pinky. "Let's see what she wrote to us."

"But yesterday was Sunday?" Lily asked, confused. Roy handed her the newspaper, pointing first to the date, and then to the stories he was showing Susana. Lily frowned.

Susana glanced over at her. "Don't ask. Just eat."

Lily dutifully took a large bite of toast and started reading the story on Richmond tourism.

Susana pulled the folded piece of stationery from the envelope and began to read, tears springing to her eyes before she was even halfway through.

Lily looked up from the newspaper. "Well?" She took another bite of toast.

"It's just a short note really." Susana sniffed and quickly wiped at her eyes. "A simple thank you for our visit with her, for bringing her the tea."

"So what are you getting all sniffly about then?" Lily got up from the table to pour herself a cup of coffee.

"It's just this bit here." Susana held up the letter and read aloud: "I am still basking in the glow of our short visit this afternoon. The balm of your company has done me a world of good. I feel a lightness in my heart this evening that I've not felt in decades, as if all of the worries and burdens have simply fallen away. I am grateful to you and your friends for such a simple gesture. I know I will sleep at peace tonight."

Lily sat back down at the table and looked over at Roy. "I guess that tea did the trick, then?"

Susana quietly returned the letter to its envelope.

"So they're gone, huh?" Lily asked Roy. "All of the ghosts downtown. Even the ones on the plantations. I guess the business owners are pretty pissed."

"Language, you lady!"

Lily, Roy, and Susan jumped and the strong voice. They were startled to find Tic standing just inside the doorway to the back yard. Tic was wagging a finger at Lily playfully.

Lily breathed a sigh of relief. "You scared me half to death, old man!"

"Half to death, eh? Then you'd be half-way to where I am." Tic stepped into the middle of the kitchen, and his entourage of at least a dozen other partially translucent men and women followed him inside.

Susana got up nervously from her chair. "Okay.... What's this?"

Tic smiled at Roy. "I'm glad to see the personalities are coming back into balance." Tic turned and gestured toward the uncertain faces crowding the small kitchen. "This is my corps of volunteers."

"Volunteers for what?" Though she stood behind her chair as a kind of protection, Susana found herself stepping up as the leader once again. She heard her own voice and watched her actions, and smiled inwardly. A dozen ghosts in the kitchen? Big deal. She could handle this. She could handle anything.

Roy folder up his napkin and placed it on the table. "Volunteers for tourism." He shook his head and laughed. "To replace the ghosts that left. That's brilliant."

"Some of us are sticking around of our own free will, you know." Tic commented. He smiled at Lily and Susana. "First, I wanted to see how my girls were getting along. And then you show up with your E.T. investigators," Tic gestured toward Roy. "I had to stand by and guard that herb!"

"Your what?" Lily asked Roy.

Roy stood up and laughed nervously. "They aren't 'E.T. investigators,' but that's not a bad description." He rested his fingertips on the table and looked at Lily and Susana. "They're the men in black, tracking me under the auspices of my father's crimes in this country."

"But they really know who you are, don't they?" Susana let go of the chair and stepped out from behind it.

Roy pointed out to the yard. "And they know what that plant is. They knew before I even got here. Before it first sprouted, even." He glanced at Tic. "They would have come, whether I was here or not."

"The dark forces...." Tic said quietly.

The wind kicked up a bit outside. Roy glanced out the window behind him. "I don't think that's going to be an issue much longer." He walked toward the door. "Susana, come with me. Lily, turn on the television."

Susana followed Roy out to the back porch while Lily went into the den. She flipped through the local channels, but they were all broadcasting the same thing. "An unexpected collision of fronts appears to be convening in our area. Again, we have no word from the National Weather Association on prior warnings." Lily watched the Channel 6 forecaster step in front of a huge weather map, showing the same weather progression over and over again. "It's early in hurricane season yet, and unusual for metro Richmond to experience this kind of weather. Uh, we've really been scrambling here folks. Agatha is the first official hurricane of the season, and she's just blowing in out of nowhere, coming up in land from Norfolk. We're stressing again that this storm, the hurricane is heading right for us. It looks like Agatha is going to give us a real pounding...."

Lily stepped away from the television in disbelief. "Are you shitting me?!" she shouted at the weather man.

"Lily...." Tic stood in the doorway.

"Yeah, yeah. Language." She waved him off, keeping her eyes on the screen. "This is just, unreal."

Roy ran to the greenhouse and grabbed a shovel. Susana ran after him, he hair flying about her face in the wind. "Roy? What is it?"

Shovel in hand, Roy walked quickly to the honshawe plants. He was about to start digging, then stopped himself. "Do you have a harvesting knife handy?" he asked Susana.

"The boline? Sure." Susana jogged over to the greenhouse and slipped the scythe-shaped knife from its hook on the wall. She stopped for a moment and grabbed a large, woven basket from the greenhouse floor. Susana crossed the grass to stand beside Roy, who was staring down at the massive leaves of the plants.

He rested the tip of the shovel on the ground. "It's grown again. Overnight."

"What do you want me to do?" Susana balanced the knife in her hand.

Roy lifted his eyes, gazing toward the garden gate. "Start cutting," he told her. "Now."

Susana knelt down and reached into the leaves of the plant, feeling for the base of the stems. When had the plants grown so thick. The wind picked up even more speed as she whispered her prayer of thanks and blessing to the sacred herb. The she began cutting, talking to the plants as she went. "I don't even know what to call you any more," she murmured to the leaves, so close to her face. The fragrance was heady, and she made a conscious decision to keep her wits about her. "So many names," she said quietly. "So many places, so many generations."

Baird began barking on the back porch. She sat up and dropped her first handful of cuttings into the woven basket at her side. Looking around, she saw that Roy had stepped several yards away, holding the shovel as a weapon. Then she saw them: three men, all of slight build, all dressed in black, from their shoes to their sunglasses. They stood facing Roy, and she could just barely make out what they were saying over the strong wind. What was with all of this wind?

"You can't take me in," Roy shouted to the men coldly.

"What would be the fun in that?" One of the men stepped forward, coming face to face with Roy. "We've come for the plant. You're still more valuable to us on the outside."

Susana knelt down again and resumed harvest the herb's leaves. She worked as quickly as she could, still catching bits of the confrontation.

"And what do you think you could possibly do with it?" Roy demanded. "Your studies won't show anything. You know that. Your science doesn't yet have the capability to analyze starseed material."

Starseed? Susana turned the word over in her mind as she clipped the leaves and dropped them into the basket beside her. She paused, gazing through the tangle of leaves to the plant stalks, seeing the root network in her mind's eye. Starseed material?

"Stand aside!" one of the men yelled at Roy.

Susana worked fervently, cutting the leaves as quickly as she could. But with each leaf that she cut off, she swore that five more instantly appeared in its place.

"Agatha has other plans for you," Roy shouted at the men in black and the tree limbs creaked overhead in the powerful gusts of wind.

Agatha? Who the hell was Agatha? Susana sat up again quickly and found that Whispering Crow stood at Roy's side, looking as solid and real as he must have in life -- assuming he had ever really been alive. The basket beside her was nearly overflowing with herb cuttings, and yet the plants in front of her looked untouched by her blade. Where the hell did this herb come from?

Susana heard a loud crack above, and one of the limbs from the mighty oaks trees came crashing down between Roy and the men in black. Baird ran to Susana's side in fright. The dark-clad intruders jumped back in alarm, but Roy stood his ground and smiled. "She's coming," Roy taunted them. "And the herb and I will be long gone by the time she blows out of town."

The winds whipped at their faces as leaves, twigs, and debris blew through the yard and out into the street. More branches groaned and creaked overhead, tested and twisted by the approaching hurricane. "I think we're looking at a category three, boys." Roy climbed over the fallen limb and faced the black suits. "You can't do your work in this kind of weather. Go on home now. Live to fight another day."

A huge gust a wind stirred up, lifting the men off of their feet and tossing them over the hedge like rag dolls. Roy smiled, unaffected. He turned to Whispering Crow. Tend to your tree," Roy suggested to him.

With a solemn nod, the medicine man turned and made his way to the front yard, headed in the direction of the ancient magnolia tree.

Roy tossed the shovel in the direction of the greenhouse and climbed back over the fallen limb. There was another snap overhead, and a smaller branch hit the ground just behind him. He ran to Susana's side. "How are we doing?" he shouted over the roar of the wind.

"I don't understand it!" Susana fought for her voice in the building storm. "I cut and I cut, and it just keeps coming back!" She gestured to both the overflowing basket behind her and the even larger cluster of plants in the ground.

"It's okay! Leave it!" Roy picked up the basket and grabbed at Susana's arm, pulling her to her feet. "We've got to get inside!" Roy took off for the house, easily scaling the steps two and a time. Baird ran ahead of him, ducking into the house through the dog door.

Susana glanced quickly back down at the herb plants and smiled. She had no words to describe what she was feeling, or to explain what was raging all around her. Gripping the small scythe in her hand, she ran up the stairs to the back porch and into the house.

* * * * *

The storm had raged the rest of the day into the night, the dark clouds overhead blocking out the sun. They followed Agatha's path as broadcast by the local and national meteorologists but thad then lost power just as the full force of the hurricane hit the city. The eye finally passed over close to 6pm, and in those moments of sudden silence, Susana, Lily, and Roy just looked at each other dumbly as they huddled under blankets in the hallway corridor, halfway between the kitchen and the front door. Baird had curled up in a ball between Susana and the wall.

Susana jumped up and ran into the kitchen, grabbing as much food out of the refrigerator and cabinets as her arms could hold, then dashed back into the hallway and dumped her load and Lily's feet. Then she was off again, returning with every bottle of water she could carry.

Lily looked up at her in surprise. "What's with this?"

Susana crouched down beside her and opened up three bottles of water, distributing them around. "We've not eaten since breakfast. I am not running back into that room full of windows once the storm starts up again."

The wind began to pick up outside just as she finished her sentence. Susana reached for her blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. "It could be a long night...."

* * * * *

Susana awoke to the sounds of birds chirping. Her entire body was sore from sleeping on the hardwood floor all night long, and her stomach was protesting the dinner of sweet pickles and canned almonds. She dropped the blanket from her shoulders, seeing that Lily and Roy were also beginning to stir awake. Susana got to her feet and stepped lightly into the kitchen.

Early morning sunlight was creeping in through the windows, a good half of which were broken. Susana checked her watch: 6:17am. She tried the light switch on the wall, though she knew there was no way the power company could have restored electricity overnight. They would be without power for days, weeks even. Hurricane or not, when disaster struck Richmond, she reminded herself, it struck with a fury.

Susana lifted the receiver of the telephone on the wall and listened for a dial tone. The phones were out, too.

"How bad is it?" Lily voice shook as she climbed her feet and took a few steps into the kitchen.

Susana looked down at her cousin's bare feet and held up a hand to stop her. "Lily, there's glass all over the floor in here. Go put some shoes on. I'm going outside to survey the damage."

Susana grimaced as Baird trotted across the broken shards on the floor on his way out through the dog door. Susana reach for the doorknob and followed him outside.

Nothing could have prepared Susana for what awaited her. The carefully manicured and maintained gardens were unrecognizable, the shredded plants tangled in the nearby shrubs. The greenhouse had been ripped apart and lay in impossibly small pieces strewn about the yard. Whole trees had been uprooted and had crashed through the hedges that marked the perimeter of the yard, taking power lines down with them. Stepping down from the shelter of the back porch, Susana looked up at the house. Other than the broken windows and shutters hanging at precarious angles, she was surprised to find the house largely intact.

Baird dashed back and forth across the yard with a small branch gripped between his teeth, dragging the attached leaves across the grass like a broom. His tail wagged wildly as he tried to entice Susana to chase him. She just watched him and smiled.

Roy stepped out onto the back porch, followed by Lily, who had pulled on Susana's hiking boots. Susana looked at her feet and raised her eyebrows. "Those are mine you know."

"Yeah. Get over it." Lily jogged down the steps and wandered across the yard, looking for the familiar gardens. "It's all.... just, gone."

"Pretty much." Susana stepped over to where the honshawe had been. The plot was covered by a collection of stray branches, and she began tugging at them, trying to pull them out of the way. Roy kicked his way through the twigs in the yard to help her. Excited by the activity, Baird dropped his toy and ran over, grabbing part of the branch Susana was pulling on his teeth, hoping to engage her in a tug of war.

"Baird!" she yelled at him. He let go immediately and put his head down, looking up at her sadly from beneath his lowered brow. Susana's sharpness fled. "Not now, puppy."

Baird dashed back across the yard to reclaim his own small branch, prancing about proudly as Lily joined the others to help clear off the honshawe plot. They pulled the last bits of debris from the plot, and discovered it empty.

"What the hell?" Lily rested her hands on her hips. The soil lay flat and smooth, as though it had never been disturbed, as though nothing had ever grown there.

Susana looked to Roy in a panic. "Those men! Did they come back and steal it?"

Roy knelt down on the ground and pressed his palms against the wet soil. He cocked his head, listening. "no." He stood up and looked around the yard. "No, they weren't here."

"So, what? It's just gone?" Susana picked up a stick and dug it into the dirt, trying to find any traces of the herb. "Not even the roots?" She dropped the stick. "That's impossible."

Roy laughed aloud. "After everything you've seen these past few weeks, you actually still believe in 'impossible'?"

Susana rested on her knees in the dirt, getting her clothes muddy. She knew Roy was right. That day that she had lost her job, she had said a prayer asking that she might let go of expectations and her attachment to "common reality." She just hadn't been prepared for everything to be turned upside down like this. But really, when she thought about it, life was so much more interesting this way.

"Yeah," Susana nearly laughed. "Okay." She got up to her feet and made an attempt to brush the dirt off of her clothes.

"I don't get it." Lily frowned. She stared down at place where the aengus wort should have been, then glanced around the torn up yard.

"That's okay. You will." Susana spotted the shovel from the day before and crossed the few yards across the grass to pick it up. She carried the shovel toward the back porch. "We'll start over, Lily," she called over her shoulder. "Right back to the beginning."

* * * * *

They had spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon clearing debris from the back yard. The heavy branches they had stacked as neatly as possible in the nearby alley, with the larger limbs left for city maintenance crews that might take up to a month to reach them. They had even banded together with the neighbors -- the very ones who had eyed them so suspiciously these past weeks -- to clear the streets of fallen limbs, stray trash cans, and even building materials. However, the three trees that had been uprooted and stacked on top of each other in a pyramid shape, still lay across the road in the middle of the block.

But there was no saving the great magnolia, the tree that had watched over the house since it was first built before the Revolutionary War. Not only had the great tree been entirely uprooted, but it had also been smashed into thousands of pieces -- none larger than fire logs. Its roots had been scattered like massive snaked across the entire neighborhood. Not surprisingly, there was no sign of Whispering Crow.

Sitting on the front steps, Lily and Susana enjoyed tall glasses of regular iced tea -- no herbs added. Lily studied the pyramid sack up the street. "It's funny, where those trees fell." She took another sip of tea, watching the neighbors on this side of the tree stack laughing together as they worked and sharing food that would otherwise spoil in warm refrigerators; those on the other side of the tree pyramid hadn't shown themselves beyond sneaking quick peeks outside their front doors. "It's kind of like the new Mason-Dixon line."

Susana laughed. She heard a car approaching and rose to her feet as she recognized Bitsy's massive Suburban pulling up the drive. If you're going to go out driving in this mess, Susana thought, might as well take the tank. "Well, my step-mother is here."

Bitsy pulled the mammoth machine to a stop, parking awkwardly in the stone cul-de-sac in front of the house. The heavy door swung open, and Bitsy slid down from the driver's seat., landing with a "clack" as her leather pumps touched the cobblestones. She straightened her dress and adjusted her pearl necklace.

Susana smiled. Even in the aftermath of a massive hurricane, Bitsy was dressed for a tea party.

"My God, honey!" Bitsy hurried across the cobblestones, taking small, lopsided steps due to the constraints of her tailored dress and high heels. "Are you alright? We've been worried sick about you!"

"So... where's your Dad?" Lily asked Susana as Bitsy clambered up the steps to the porch.

"Don't ask," Susana responded in hushed tones.

Bitsy reached the top of the stairs and stopped to catch her breath. She leaned against one of the porch columns and held a hand over her heart, in high dramatic fashion. "Isn't is simply dreadful?" she complained at last.

"I don't know," Susana replied. "It could have been worse."

"Just look at this neighborhood!" Bitsy stood upright and waved her arms around frantically. "Destroyed! Oh, darling! How will you ever recover?" Bitsy grasped Susana's arm plaintively, her meaning immediately clear. She didn't want Susana to recover. She didn't want the herb business to survive this catastrophe. She wanted Susana to give up this temporary fairy tale and do something sensible with her life.

"I think we'll be just fine." Susana gestured to the neighborhood clean-up crew laughing as they worked together in the street. "The garden is gone, of course, but that's easily resolved."

"But Susana," Bitsy lowered her voice as if imparting a scandalous secret. "This was an act of God." She emphasized each word, speaking slowly."

"Ha!" Lily exclaimed, immediately clapping her hand over her own mouth. Bitsy shot her an uncomplimentary look.

Susana assumed an air of cheerful diplomacy. "But remember when St. James's caught fire, and the roof collapsed? You all chose to 'rise up and build.' You didn't let some silly little thing like a lightning bolt get in the way of your faith, or your church."

Bitsy stiffened. "That was entirely different."

"That was pretty funny." Lily stepped up beside Susana. "The church got hit by lightning right?"

"Yes," Bitsy responded coldly.

"That's an act of God!" Lily exclaimed with glee. "It was a church. Don't you get it? God's up there, like Thor with his lightning bolts..."

Susana turned to Lily. "Lily, it's okay."

Roy stepped out onto the front porch. Looking him up and down, Bitsy was visibly shaken, especially when he smiled and nodded to her.

He touched Susana's shoulder, deliberately raising Bitsy's already heightened suspicion. "I think you can take it from here." He smiled quickly at Lily and then headed down the front steps.

"You're leaving?" Lily protested. "Just like that?"

At the bottom of the stairs, Roy turned to face the women. "The honshawe has moved on, and so must I."

Bitsy leaned close to Susana. "Susana, what is this young man talking about? Were you having him do some work for you?"

Susana ignored her step-mother. She gazed down gratefully into Roy's face. "I'm not sure what we would have done without you, Roy. I, we're sorry to see you go."

Roy nodded, then held Susana's gaze for a long moment. She took a deep breath in, feeling her body and mind flooded with light, and with the visions to come that he imparted to her with his eyes. Susana blinked and smiled. Without another word, Roy turned and walked away.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Bitsy grabbed Susana's arm. "Did you see his eyes? I'm certain he was on drugs!"

"Bitsy..." Lily warned.

"But what do expect from hired help like that," Bitsy continued. "That's what happens when you hire negroes off the street."

"Bitsy!" Lily shouted. "Using such a word...." she pointed angrily in the direction of Roy's departure. "That man is our friend!"

Susana held up a hand to restraint Lily. She smiled at her step-mother and gestured toward the front door. "Bitsy, would you like to come inside? We have some lemonade iced tea that I think would really hit the spot."

Susana held the door open for her step-mother, and Bitsy stepped inside. Lily followed them in. "Yeah, it really takes the edge off."