When he asked me to elaborate, I cut him off. I hadn’t forgiven myself for the neglect, and the sourness in my stomach was spreading to my heart. “He’s my ex-husband, but he’s still your father. We’re both to blame for our marriage not working out.”
Harp took a long swallow of the juice, a challenge in his guarded eyes. “You’re not going to forbid us to explore our magic, are you?”
“Absolutely not. Your skills and talents are yours to develop as you’re ready, and I will help you in any way I can.”
“And you’re going to study too right?”
“Absolutely.”
He nodded. “I’m glad. For all of us. What do you think about Tanner?”
“I only met him two days ago. I like him so far.”
“I do too. I’m excited and a little scared and…”
I waited as my oldest struggled to articulate.
Thatcher was awake and listening, ready to jump in with the brotherly thought-sharing and sentence-finishing they’d been doing their entire speaking lives. “And we shouldn’t tell Dad, right?”
I handed Thatch his glass of juice, extended my legs and crossed my ankles, and waited for the voices from both sides of the fence to flood my head in one…two... “I think we keep this amongst ourselves while we’re figuring it all out.”
Both nodded their agreement and dove in to speculating about how their magic might manifest and what they could do to boost their abilities. The phrases they tossed back and forth sounded like they’d been pulled from a discussion of their favorite online multi-player game. I scooted backward out of the tent, my work for the moment done. Overhead, the aged crabapple tree’s leafy branches carried a smattering of misshapen fruit. My older cousins and I had played battle games with the apples we found on the ground, and the trunk and lowest branches were already gnarled when my mother and I first arrived at the house.
Mama.
Moments of intense mothering left me wanting a mother of my own. I ran my fingertips over the nearest fruit. Tears blurred my vision, and I gave in to the invitation to step closer and closer still, until my sternum fit snugly over the place just below where the trunk separated into two main branches. I rested the side of my face against the bark and reached my arms up as though to partner in a dance with this steadfast friend.
The Old One had a lot of life coursing under its scabby surface. And it had a heartbeat, slow, so very, very slow. The dappled sun warmed my back, and my feet reached below the uppermost layers of sod and found a groundwater aquifer—sandstone and siltstone; shale and conglomerate, glacial sediments, fossils and mudstone.
I hugged the crabapple more tightly, close to full-on crying. My breast bone became spongy, like living wood. The whoosh of blood through my veins matched the capillary-like action taking place beneath the bark, a drawing up of water from the roots all the way to the leaves and fruit.
Interspersed with those same, nourishment-seeking roots was a whole other network. I followed the mycelial layer past the boundaries of my property, coursing faster and faster, to other apple trees and orchards until I crash landed at the base of one of the oldest trees in the Pearmains’ orchard.
A laugh—rich, resonant, and feminine—rolled through the flexible underground plexus and flooded the porous spaces in my bones.
“Mom.”
I ran. Or I tried. But my feet and toes were rooted to the ground at the base of the ancient tree and my arms were wrapped around the crabapple’s trunk, and every morsel of awareness was caught somewhere between the far section of Cliff and Abi’s orchard and my lone malus Rosaceae companion, miles away.
“Mom!”
The worry in my sons’ voices, helped along by firm hands shaking my shoulders and gripping my wrists, gave me a route back. Honing in on the beacon of their touch, I crashed into my body and slumped to the ground.
“Mom.”
“I’m okay,” I whispered. “I’m okay.”
I wasn’t okay. Whatever valve or switch that regulated the flow of my magic, the one that had clicked to the on position two days ago, was now dialled to four. Or maybe five. The bottoms of my feet tingled, while liquid echoes of the connection to the Pearmains swam up the connective tissue in my legs and swirled around the bowl of my pelvis to gather at the base of my spine.
“Just let me lie here for a sec.” Why was there so much internal movement through my hips and belly? Sharp pains pinged from side to side, like I was ovulating from both ovaries and having menstrual cramps at the same time.
Harper and Thatch kneeled on either side of my torso. “Do you want us to get Tanner?”
“No.” The disturbance on the left side of my belly included itchy skin near the tattoo. I shielded my eyes from the brightening sun and scratched over the layers of my underwear and pants. Rolling my head to the side, I said, “Let me catch my breath. Do you know what you want for breakfast?”
Thatcher let out an exasperated sigh. “Mom, we can get our own breakfast. We should be asking what do you need?”
My body returned to normal in the spaces between a handful of breaths. Harper brushed off whatever bits of grasses and leaves had collected on my back and helped me to stand. As soon as I relaxed from my neck and arms down, my fingers unclenched, and I dropped the short, thick section of branch I must have grabbed as I fell. I bent to pick up the stick.
It was straight, tapered, and the perfect length for a wand. My old one, held together with duct tape and sentimental attachment, was more than ready to retire.
I tucked the length of crabapple wood into a back