Slight Movement
“Charlotte come on. You’re being
ridiculous.”
The
girl tried to retreat, she had made this trip many times before but this week
it felt like too much. Her father however had a firm grasp on her sweater. She slipped
out of it and left him holding on to an empty sleeve. Turning to run away she
could see the pegasi they had flown in on tethered to a nearby tree. A few more
steps and she would reach them, flying away from here. Suddenly, the dirt
beneath her feet twisted and dropped.
Charlotte
lurched forward, putting out her arms so she could land on them and not her
wrists. She lay there, feeling the dirt against her cheek; wishing her fall was
all she had to deal with.
“Charlotte
come back now before I have to do something drastic!” She felt her father’s
voice vibrate through the ground. There were times when having a father who was
also an Earth Master was a pain.
“You
have to let me go first.” Her voice sounded muffled to her own ears. Pushing
herself up slightly, she spat dirt out of her mouth. Experimentally she tried
to move her ankles. They were still firmly earthbound.
“Can
I trust you?” The ground rumbled again.
Charlotte
was silent. If she didn’t answer maybe she could stay where she was. It was
better to be trapped in the dirt than go into that stone house just down the
walkway. And Dad would release her- eventually anyway.
“Charlotte!”
The earth trembled this time, as if shaking with nerves.
“You
can trust me!” Charlotte called. It wouldn’t be fair to Dad to let him go
alone. This trip was always harder on him than it was on her.
The
dirt loosened and fell completely. Charlotte took her time getting up, rotating
each ankle, brushing earth off her clothes and brushing leaves out of her curly
brown hair. Haltingly she returned to her father. Reaching him she looked up
into his eyes. “What do you think it will be like this time?”
Dad
looked into her eyes not really seeing them. Charlotte could tell that all he
was doing was staring at his own reflection in her own green eyes. What was he
thinking?
“I don’t know
honey.” There was no way to tell his thoughts.
Father and
daughter turned to face the manor again, this time moving forward. Their
progress was slow, each trying to let the other outrace them. Eventually
though, they reached the great oak door sunk into the stone archway.
Charlotte stuck a
finger on the brass crow knocker. The beak nipped her finger.
“Who is it?” The
squawk was female, fussy and precise.
Charlotte stroked
the crow’s head. “Poppy it’s me, Charlotte.”
The knocker’s
rounded eyes swiveled in their sockets, examining Charlotte’s face. “Oh so it
is. Sorry to have bitten you.”
“Poppy you say sorry every time. And you bite
me every time.” A giggle slipped out of Charlotte’s mouth without meaning to. She
curled her lips inward hoping Dad hadn’t heard. Now wasn’t the time to act
giddy.
If Poppy had been
a real crow she would have ruffled her feathers in indignation. “Yes well,
can’t be too careful. Especially now-awk!” She squawked again as Charlotte
clamped down on her beak forcefully.
“Poppy don’t say
anything else.” She glanced worriedly at her father to see if he had reacted to
Poppy’s comment but Dad still seemed lost in his own thoughts. “Can you please
just let us in?”
The door swung
open and Charlotte froze. Talking to Poppy had distracted her for a moment, but
now she was brought back to real life. Dad wasn’t moving either. Great.
“Dad?” Sparks of
light flew in front of his face. She saw him blink and twiddled her fingers so
that the sparks disappeared.
“Oh. Yes.” He kept
staring at the dimly lit entryway not moving.
Charlotte wondered
what it was like for him to do this every week. She wondered if she should try
to make another escape attempt. Not for her this time, but because stopping her
would give Dad something to do. In some ways, it was easier to be the parent
than the child. She had the luxury of showing her feelings.
Someone had to
start. She forced herself to enter. “Grandpa! We’re here!” Habit took over and
she raced up the stairs just as she always had. Kicking off her shoes she
paused for a moment to arrange them neatly just as Grandpa always demanded.
Behind her she heard Dad walking up more slowly.
As Charlotte
straightened she saw Grandpa. For a moment everything was normal. He was
hunched over the large wooden table in the center of the room pouring over
spell books. A lamp was hovering above him, casting light on the text. Through
the doorway some sort of potion bubbled merrily over the fireplace. Inhaling, Charlotte
realized that the potion was just soup.
“Charlotte.” He
beckoned with a bony hand. “Come here, I need your help with locating the
etymology of these incantations.”
Charlotte walked
forward, carefully looking at Grandpa. Her ears were alert listening for Dad.
Footsteps echoed softly behind her, and then passed through the hall leading
off to the rest of the house. He must have gone to see Grandma.
She pulled a chair
out and sank onto the cushioned seat. “I don’t see why you care so much about
where the words in these incantations come from but you won’t just make the
letters bigger.”
A chuckle rolled
out of her grandfather’s lips. “It’s interesting and the University still lets
me publish my papers. And as long as I have you, there’s no need to work a
spell.”
Charlotte placed
her hand on top of her grandfather’s, feeling Grandpa’s strength despite his
rapidly shrinking body. Looking at the words on the page in front of her she
wiggled her fingers. The letters swelled taking up the entire page. Her fingers
twitched. This time, the words fit the page but were still large enough for an
old man to read.
Grandpa squeezed
her hand. “What would I do without you?”
“You’d go blind
from straining your eyes. Remember Grandpa that it’s an illusion. It will fade
after a few hours.”
“I’ll do what I
can until then,” he told her comfortably and went back to reading, occasionally
motioning for Charlotte to look at a passage he knew she would find interesting.
The scene was
familiar: one Charlotte had enacted many times. The sound of fortune telling
cards hitting a desk floated into her ears and she could almost smell bread
baking in the fireplace in the chamber off the one where she sat.
Unconsciously, she
turned around wanting to see Grandma with her Tarot cards, reading off this
month’s predictions, then rushing to stop the bread from burning.
“Charlotte!” That
was Dad’s voice, hushed but urgent. Charlotte looked down at her shaking
fingers and placed her hand on them, steadying herself. Out of the corner of
her eye she saw an image of a witch, with creamy skin and spikey white hair
draped in flowing lilac robes hunched over a crystal ball, flicker and
disappear.
“Grandpa I’m going
to sit with Dad okay?” He nodded lost in his books. That was good. Grandpa
needed the escape.
Dad was sitting in
an armchair a few feet from the table holding a woman’s hand.
“Was she asleep
before Dad?”
“Yes, I woke her
up while you were helping your grandfather. It’s good for him not to have to
take care of her once in a while.”
Charlotte looked
at the woman sitting in the chair next to Dad’s. She had scraggly white hair
and was wearing a sack-like gray dress. The skin though was the same. Wrinkle
free and the color of fresh parchment, it was skin that belonged on a much
younger woman.
“Hi Grandma.”
She looked into Charlotte’s
eyes with a clear, steady gaze. “Hi.”
“Grandma, it’s me,
Charlotte.”
“Yes.” Those brown
eyes didn’t waver. It would have been easier if her pupils were cloudy and
unfocused. At least then there would have been a less painful explanation for
why even though Grandma was looking straight at her, their eyes did not
connect.
“Mom, it’s
Charlotte, your granddaughter.”
“Yes I know.”
Grandma was getting impatient now. Charlotte wondered if it was from searching
for knowledge that was long gone.
“Do you think she
actually knows who I am? Did she know who you were?”
Dad shrugged. “Who
knows? All I can do is talk to her. If she understands great, if not, at least
I’m spending time with my mother. In the end what matters is that she knows
that I love her.”
Charlotte looked
at Grandma, still holding Dad’s hand but just staring into the flames, which
were floating in a haze of heat. These were the same flames that Grandma had
once used to tell the future, to see more than was there. To not only remember the
past but to help create the future. Now the flames just consumed the logs
marking the passing time.
“Why don’t you go
back to your grandfather? I’ll take care of Grandma.”
Charlotte
gratefully returned back to the table and the grandparent she could still help.
The print in the books was still large enough but Grandpa could still teach her
more and it was good for him to talk to someone who could respond.
An hour later
Charlotte left the table after kissing Grandpa on the head. Then she hugged
Grandma. “I love you so much.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Good.”
As Charlotte and
her father walked down the walkway toward their pegasi Charlotte turned to him.
“Sorry about the illusion. I didn’t mean to make it.” She clamped her lips
together to stop them from quivering, then continued. “Everything just felt so
normal and I was remembering how things used to be.”
Dad put an arm
around her. “It’s fine. It was nice to see my mother healthy. But it would have
upset your grandfather.”
“I know. I feel
bad for him being all alone with her.”
“That’s why we
have to visit.”
“You’re right. I
always knew that. It’s just sad.”
Father and
daughter walked in silence until they reached the pegasi tied to the trees.
Charlotte watched her father untie them and go over their tack.
“Dad. How much do
you remember about Grandma? I mean, like she was before?”
“I remember
everything. I have to, in order to not just see her for what she is now. Why,
are you having trouble?”
Charlotte swung a
leg up and mounted her pegasus. “Yes. It gets harder every time I see her. We
used to bake together and she would read the cards to me. She said she was
going to teach me to be a seer one day, just like her. Past that though, it’s
getting harder.”
“Keep trying.” Dad
mounted his pegasus. “You need the memories. They keep you from getting too sad
when you see her in person.”
Charlotte nudged
her pegasus into flight. Her mount followed Dad’s and she turned her head to
watch the stone manor shrink slowly behind her, becoming less real and more
dreamlike. Taking her hand off the rein she waved, wiggling her fingers.
“Bye Grandma. See
you next week.”
A tiny figure
appeared in front of the walkway with lilac robes, spikey white hair, and
ageless skin. The figure smiled at Charlotte and waved. Charlotte waved back
and the figure disappeared, retreating within.
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