Surrender the Witches

Being out in the garden always carried a bit of magic with it. Brushing back the rosemary for the sweet smell of it. The calming aroma of lavender and anise made the world take on soft purple hues that swirled into each other like a twilight sunset. Walking through the garden was stepping into an Autumn corn maze, head high and miles deep. But it wasn’t miles. It was footsteps. The same footsteps Mom used to take to pluck her posies and parsnips.

It was my job to tend to the garden in the after Mom. I was just a child pruning and plucking around her labyrinth of lilacs and lettuce. The deep, overgrown raised beds bled into each other, arching overhead and brushing through my hair. You could get lost in this place.

Not physically. Not really lost. Anyone looking would find you in a few short turns. But time wafted away with the fresh smells of cucumbers and dahlias.

In the after Mom, I inherited a wilted garden, a garden that knew its caretaker was gone from this world. No one ever taught me how to take care of any of it. I could name a rose for the rose it was, but hydrangeas and carrot stalks were dug into foreign soil.

Especially the back garden. The one Mom kept locked behind the tall gate.

But it was my job to tend the garden. In the after…

Sorry Dad. No one taught me how to take care of it, so I had to go looking myself.

That first Springtime, I took Mom’s gardening book from where she kept it. I carried the step stool from the kitchen to the garden shed and opened the top cabinet of the cherrywood armoire. Next to the Farmers’ Almanacs and Herbology texts, I found the leather-bound tome resting with a blanket of dust. It had been out of use for months now. The worst year of our lives spread out in a soft white film over the book’s binding, another reminder of the things she left behind. But still I picked it up and opened the hand written pages to the section marked “Spring.”

Then came the cabbages, cauliflower, fennel, and peppers. The zinnias and sweet peas and gladiolus. And marigolds. You plant the marigolds to attract the bees and ladybugs, Mom used to say. Plant them everywhere, sprinkle them about in each plot to ensure the little buggers touched each fertile plant. And kill the aphids.

Okay, Dad, so maybe Mom taught me some things without even trying.

In the pages of the book were all her little notes. “Green is better is colder weather” was scrawled across a Winter page.

“Egg shells and drippings will fatten up your weaklings,” said Annual.

“Roll up your sleeves and trim the big leaves,” said Spring.

“Mix your roots with thyme and time. The moon will share its paradigm,” said Autumn.

Not all of them made sense.

By Summer, the chamomile was ready for drying. It made way for Sunflowers. Life had taken on the kind of normal where everything is routine. Wake up, making breakfast for Dad, tend to the vegetables, make lunch, read to the flowers, clean up around the house, make dinner. The same things every day until the day Dad finally said, “Claire, honey. Have you found a way into the back garden? The neighbors were complaining about the smell.”

“Not yet, Dad.” He was right. So were the neighbors. The back garden died before Mom did. It seemed right to leave it that way, untouched by anyone but her.

Dad started going to grief counseling shortly before he took an interest in us again. They were group sessions at the community center next to the church led by Pastor Holly. The group was only four people deep.

That’s the way it is in a small town.

Reggie Farrow was 73 years old and took care of his wife who suffered a stroke in the years prior. She wasn’t dead, but she might as well be. Laura Leigh Edwards was 25 and her dad mysteriously disappeared one Sunday afternoon when he was supposed to be fishing. Cal Edwards was two years away from death by absentia. Tilly Reinhold was 82, and her husband passed away one night in his sleep around the time Mom got sick.

You could make a case that my 52 year old dad was having a hard time connecting in group, but you couldn’t deny it was helping in some small ways.

He started some small projects, too. He made a corner shelf for the living room, adjacent to the fireplace, where he put Mom’s urn. A few photos. He built a birdhouse, too. Something to put in the front yard next to the maple tree. The projects were a reprieve from watching old Westerns and avoiding calls from Mom’s sister. They kept him busy, and I was glad.

At least he wouldn’t die of a broken heart.

Shortly after the projects started, he began attending the church services on Sundays, something Pastor Holly suggested. He was starting to do a lot of things Pastor Holly suggested. Staying late on Sundays, volunteering to make Church repairs. It was good for him. Or so I kept telling myself as Pastor Holly’s name kept coming up more and more in our brief, passing conversations.

“I’m heading to the church this afternoon. Pastor Holly asked me to fix a broken pew.”

“Pastor Holly has asked us to make something for the potluck. Where’s the recipe box?”

“Holly is expecting me to help setup for group today.”

I smiled and nodded and said things like, “I’m happy for you. Dad,” with hollow feelings. It’s why when Dad asked that I clean up the back garden, I didn’t object. It was part of his healing process. It was one of mine, too.

Sorry, Dad. I know you didn’t mean to become a burden.

I found the key to the back gate in the cherrywood armoire, tucked in one of the enclosed drawers of the top cabinet under some old seeds. The bags were unlabeled with tar black pods of various sizes inside. Under the packs lay a baroque key with a sculpted Poppy at the helm all made of brass. I didn’t have to guess if it was the key or not. The padlock on the back gate resembled a Poppy.

Poppies were the only plant I recognized in the back garden before they had all wilted away. Another thing I didn’t even realize Mom taught me.

I guess I should tell you now, before you start asking, there was a section in Mom’s book about the back garden. Of course I was curious, flipping through the pages of her collected knowledge bore with it expectation that I was keeping her alive. I couldn’t leave that pot unplanted. What the family had always called the back garden had a different name in her book. It was a name that made me uneasy, like unlocking the gate and trodding upon the soil would defile it in some way. Opening that lock would release her power and make the whole thing mine instead of hers.

But that was silly. She was dead and gone and nothing was going to change that. Not even opening the gate to her Spirit Garden.

It was around that time that Heidi Lamont went missing, and Mary Lamont joined Dad’s grief circle. The weeds were cleared. My hands muddy with freshly fertilized soil. Two bags of the mysterious pods from the armoire drawer had been planted when Dad came home and told me about Heidi.

One missing person was enough to throw the equilibrium out of whack. But between Cal Edwards and Heidi Lamont, our small town felt like a veritable Bermuda Triangle.

Mary Lamont was a school teacher at St. Zita’s Catholic School for Girls about an hour outside of town. The private institution had reared many of the housewives who lived in Andover Falls and had a reputation for community service. The home economics class sewed clothes for clothing drives. Instead of car washes, fundraising campaigns came in the form of housecleaning services. When Cal Edwards never came home from his Sunday fishing, the girls of the senior class were first to form the search parties.

St. Zita was, after all, the patron saint of maids and domestic servants.

The senior class looked for Heidi for two days when Mary came to Dad’s group. The next week, half the town and the state police were still searching. By that time, the Vervain and Hemlock already started to sprout.

And Mary Lamont came to group holding a sheet of paper with a symbol scrawled on it. Everyone in group copied down the symbol, including Dad. He showed it to me when he returned home.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?”

“No,” I lied.

Sorry Dad. It’s important to lie, sometimes. To protect things, and preserve other things. Like memories.

When Dad went back to the garage to finish his latest woodworking, I went to Mom’s book. I turned to the pages of the Spirit Garden and there, next to the best ways to rear Lady’s Mantle, was the symbol. It looked like a five pointed asterisk with two arrows at the top star. A small circle encompassed the point where all lines intersected. It looked nautical, something you might see on a seafarers map, pointing the way.

I returned to Dad. He hammered a nail into something like a bookcase. I asked him where the symbol came from.

“They found Heidi’s jacket in the woods leading to the mountain. In the pocket was a sheet of paper with that symbol on it. She copied it down and asked us to show it around,” he told me.

In the following weeks, the Missing Persons’ posters no longer simply included a picture of Heidi. Next to her smiling Homecoming Queen face was an image of the symbol. Mom’s symbol.

If you want me to tell you why I never told anyone, you’re wasting your curiosity. The symbol wouldn’t have helped find Heidi, anyway. Within the month, they found her body in a mountain cave. The cave wall etched with marking.

I heard she was missing her toes.

Mom couldn’t have done that; she was already dead.

Plus, the Vervain and Hemlock needed nursing. They’re very hard to grow. I had just discovered the third bag was Monkshood, so there was that to attend. Plus the roses. I wanted the Spirit garden to have a healthy array of roses. It was best to keep occupied when ugly business of murder shows up in a small town like Andover Falls. People poking around tend to dredge up their own ghosts.

And then Henry came home.

Henry was a senior when Heidi was a freshman, before she transferred to St. Zita’s. He knew her through whatever sports team was in season. Heidi was on the pep-squad and baked cookies for team events. She helped paint banners. And Henry was the kind of high school sports star that was kind to everyone. He came home from college for Heidi’s memorial service.

Did I mention I started writing in Mom’s book?

____________

Nothing was the same after that Memorial.

I helped Dad get dressed in his Sunday suit, the same one he wore to Mom’s service and had appropriated for his Sunday’s at Church. Henry wore slacks and a black polo. I went and purchased a new black dress. It didn’t feel right to wear Mom’s dress. I didn’t even really know Heidi Lamont, but the whole community came out for her Memorial.

I snipped a half dozen deep red roses from the Spirit Garden and tied them together with twine. I don’t know why, but I added a single flowering Vervain stem. It felt like the right thing to do.

Mary Lamont addressed the congregation after the Lord’s Prayer, standing next to a closed casket with that same photos of Heidi from the missing person’s posters plastered on a torso-sized canvas propped beside. My head filled with lemony floral scents as I held the bouquet in my lap and listened to Mary’s words echo across the pews.

“Fellows of the flock. Hear me,” she began. The words came from a place of anger, and curiosity sprang from my chest as the grieving mother thwarted my expectations of solemnity. “Before you is an angel who was chosen to embrace God before her time. But God did not choose her. No, God did not. Only the Devil could choose this fate for her. And though she is embraced in Heaven, it is Hell that delivered her there. Hell which has infiltrated our small community and poisoned our minds with grief and sorrow.”

Mary dug in her pockets and retrieved the now infamous sheet of paper on which she ascribed the symbol from Heidi’s jacket. The symbol from the caves. The symbol in Mom’s book.

“This was an act done in darkness!” Mary shouted, “And this is the proof of that darkness!”

She held the paper up for all to see.

I peered around the congregation, breathing deeply the calming flowers in my lap. My neighbors held enrapt attention on Mary. Some leaned forward, getting a closer look at the symbol they must have seen before on the posters littering the town. Some nodded in approval of Mary’s ferocity.

My heart fluttered with unease. Something was about to happen.

“This,” Mary paused like a Shakespearean actor. She shook the paper before her and continued, “This is witchcraft!”

A gasp cascaded through the pews. And despite my furrowed brow and the incredulity of her outrage, I felt around me the ravenous belief that witches were among us. As heads turned, surveying those around, the congregation seemed enlivened by the accusation: Here there be witches.

I turned to Henry and placed my hand on his knee. I whispered to him, “She’s joking, right?”

Henry’s eyes glittered with interest, not moving from the woman on the mount, “Is it so hard to believe?”

“It’s just a little…dated, isn’t it?”

Before he could answer, Mary continued her sermon, “We must take action to stop the madness! We must submit ourselves to God and embrace his wisdom. I ask you here now, before the Lord and the people, to prove yourself to him and to my Heidi, so we may rid our community of this evil!”

Pastor Holly was already halfway down the aisle with her communion cart like a flight attendant passing out peanuts. Instead of snack bags, Holly held communion wafers. Instead of tiny soda cans, Holly had little plastic party cups of wine. Each person would take one and pass it down until each person had their refreshments.

Those who refused got sidelong glances from those around them.

Sorry Dad. I should have just eaten the damn wafer.

It was all Henry’s fault, anyway. He saw me slip the cracker into the bouquet, crushed in the flower petals as I threw back my shot of Jesus blood. Just because he didn’t like it doesn’t mean I was wrong.

But all I wanted was to get back home and back to Mom’s book. The book would give me answers. Mom would tell me what to do.

As the service let out, I watched Goldie Cressick, who owned the tourist shop, and Melissa Bowdery, the city journalist who vacationed here in the Summer, get called back by Pastor Holly. She, Mary Lamont, and Reggie Moss huddled together in front of Heidi’s photograph with retired police captain Jose Batista. I watched as the group ushered Goldie and Melissa into Pastor Holly’s chambers.

Neither woman had taken the forced communion.

There were others, too, who abstained, but Melissa was particularly loud about her refusal. She likely had only come to the service to find out more about Heidi, and the turn to satanic panic sparked that detective fervor that journalists get when they stumble upon an unlikely story. But that didn’t mean she would suddenly convert just to get the scoop.

Goldie herself was a practicing Wicca. It was well known around town. She sold herbal “potions” in her tourist shop along with crystals and tarot cards. She kept them all behind the counter. They were high theft items for teenage girls trying to piss off their parents. But she was harmless as a June bug, often remarking on positive energies and good vibes. It was clear why she wouldn’t take part in this temporary hysteria.

The police consulted with her when the symbol first appeared, but it was just as unusual to her as everyone else. But still, Goldie was swept away while everyone else exited the church, and I felt a guilty sort of sick brewing in my stomach.

At home, I read about zinnia and jalapeño peppers. I busied myself with composting. As banana peels decayed in the soil beneath my butter lettuce, I saw Dad come home the next Sunday with a white ribbon pinned to his lapel and a button labeled AWA. He handed one each to Henry and me, along with a sheet of white paper. It read: Anti-Witchcraft Alliance.

The text below espoused the ideals of faith and goodness. It made demands. As I read through the sheet, Dad went into my room and collected all my candles. He set them on the island in the kitchen.

“Anything else listed on that paper needs to go. I’ll bring in one of the cans from outside.”

Candles and incense.

Cast iron bowls.

Crystals.

Religious icons (non-Biblical).

Herbal Blends…

“Mom’s garden?” I asked, reading and rereading the herb clause in the zealot’s contract.

“What about it?” Dad asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“There’s lots of herbs out there.” My mind raced through the jars under my bed. The drying herbs hung on laundry twine in the shed. There was more in Mom’s book than just how to grow them.

“It’s herb blends, honey,” Dad said, pointing to the page with a tap-tap for emphasis. He made his way to the kitchen cabinets and pulled out the Italian Herb seasoning I had dried and crushed for pasta night. He set it on the counter next to my candles. “The garden is fine. Living things can’t hurt people.”

“What about bears?” I said sarcastically.

Henry tapped me on the back of the head, “Don’t be dumb. You know what he means. How can I help, Dad?”

Oh, Henry. Always stepping in to help whenever Dad was in crisis.

When Dad gave up alcohol cold turkey, Henry helped by drinking all the remaining booze in the house. When Dad decided we were going to be a technology-free household after 7pm, Henry helped by volunteering his room to keep all the unwanted static.

Saint Henry the Helpful. Ready to hock Mom’s antique Buddha statue at a pawn shop for a new hard drive, as long as it helps Dad’s new crusade.

That was when I went back to the armoire in the shed and removed the last of the mystery seed packets. In my room, I poured over the book to find Mom’s sketches of the pods. Things sometimes look the same, but the smell of vanilla bourbon or rotting fish distinguished them. Belladonna. Monkshood. Henbane.

They needed to be tended. They needed to grow so Mom could keep living.

Sorry Dad. It was more practical that way.

As the Spirit Garden’s new occupants sprouted, so did our little town’s religious fervor. It was no different than any crusade before. I find it best to stay out of these little town matters. Mom always did.

Like when Gina and Billy’s new pit bull mix kept digging his way out of their yard. His name was Bruiser, it was the name he came with from the adoption center. Gina and Billy thought it suited the little mutt. The black splotch surrounding his left eye really did look like he had been punched. After much fanfare about the dog being a town menace (despite his sweet disposition the couple times I had found him wandering in the streets), one day he was struck by a work truck. And while Mr. Torrence swears to this day it was an accident, Gina and Billy don’t believe it, but the town stuck by Mr. Torrence and his story. Mom just kept tending her garden.

Besides, I’ve read The Crucible; I know how these things turn out.

So I stayed in the garden, too. I poured over Mom’s book. I dried herbs in the garden shed. I started keeping the candles there, too. Things were just easier that way. Dad had started making routine checks of the house, just in case something witchy was hiding somewhere he had overlooked. In his dinner prayers, he started adding little asides after thanking God for our meals.

“And surrender us the witches, Lord, so they may be reunited with your glory.”

It was cute. Especially considering what happened to Goldie.

After their little interrogation in the back of the Church, Melissa Bowdrey felt it best to leave the vacation town and just go home. Despite the juicy nature of a modern witch-hunt, she knew better than to become part of the story. Goldie Cressick was another matter. Goldie is the reason this whole thing came crashing down to begin with.

Sorry Dad. I know you would prefer I take full responsibility, but really everything would have been better if Goldie hadn’t come to visit the garden that late Autumn day.

I managed to get some tiny pumpkin vines going just before Halloween with a glorious bounty of the little orange squashes. When I planted them, my mind had thoughts of setting up a little booth on the sidewalk. But Halloween was a tenuous time, with neighbors looking to neighbors for appropriate Autumnal celebrations. Even if they wanted to, having a Jack-O-Lantern on your porch was a guaranteed trip to the AWA for what some had dubbed “reprogramming.” It consisted of a two-week Bible course, a full-home search, and a reunification ceremony with God Almighty.

And those who didn’t comply? Well, they got taken to St. Zita’s until they were cleansed of their sins. Only two had gone, a teenage girl with an Ouija board and a middle-aged bachelor who proclaimed himself an atheist during one of their “door-to-door christening” campaigns. Both were still not returned.

Suffice it to say, my poor pumpkins rotted away on the vine. I was clearing out the decay when a loud Psst! interrupted my digging for roots.

There, peering over the side of the fence, was Goldie with her wild, ashen hair blowing across her face. Her eyes wide and rimmed in puffed pink. She ticked her head to the side gate latch in a let me in motion.

I brushed the dirt on my pants and removed the garden gloves before opening the gate for the frantic woman. She took the door from me and quietly shut it behind her, checking the latch with spider-like fingers, each moving like it had its own consciousness. I had never noticed how skeletal they were, nimble and precise finger made for playing pianos or stringing thread. I looked down at my own and recognized her hands in mine.

“Oh, my dear girl. I’m so glad to see you tending this place,” she whispered. Her eyes darted toward the backdoor of the house, barely visible through tall stalks of tomatoes and corn.

“He doesn’t come out here,” I told her.

Relief softened her shoulders and unclenched her jaw.

“You have quite the green thumb. Just like your mother. She would be so proud of you,” Goldie smiled. Her face changed, too, a glow of affection colored her cheeks and made her tired eyes glitter like marbles.

I felt a pride swell in my chest like a blimp taking off. I was taken by a sense of comfort and longing to share this place with Goldie. Though we rarely spoke before this moment, I had the universal knowledge that Goldie had been a friend, a trusted friend, who was invited deeper into this sacred place than I ever had been.

“Now, tell me dear, did you keep up the whole garden?”

Puzzle pieces set themselves in my mind and within seconds I understood what my mom never told me. Goldie had been there, too, the whole time.

She wasn’t alone in her Spirit Garden.

“The whole garden,” I answered. I pointed down the final row of flowering plots to where we both knew the Spirit Garden hid. Goldie’s smile nearly broke her cheeks as she walked briskly towards it. I followed behind. The key was in my apron pocket. The same one in which I kept Mom’s spade.

Goldie disappeared towards the Spirit Gate. I took one last look at the house behind. Even though I knew the plants provided all the cover we needed, one becomes extra cautious when conspiracies are afoot.

Goldie stood anxiously at the gate waiting for me, bouncing on her toes like a schoolgirl needing to pee. I unlocked the gate and let her enter first.

“Oh, my dear. You’ve done very well.” She took in the whole garden, admiring the flora with a reverence one might find at Notre Dame. She walked on clouds around the two plots, calling plants by their names as she came about to each one.

“Can I ask you something, Goldie?” I ventured, circling around the opposite way from her.

“I imagine you're curious about your Mother, yes?”

“Well, no.”

I wasn’t. Mom gave me everything I needed in her book.

“Oh?” Goldie stopped. She squatted next to the rosemary and smelled its purple fragrance.

“Just what do you need…from the Spirit Garden?” I asked her.

She stopped smelling and cocked her head towards me. It was a cautious turn, almost suspicious. This was a woman who had been hiding for a long time now. It’s hard to keep a level head when you’re a real Wicca dealing with the Anti-Witchcraft Association, after all.

She breathed out, nodding with understanding, before rising from her squat. She played with her spider fingers like a cat would a ball of string.

“Your Mother and I…well, she would help me. I could never keep a garden like this. I wasn’t really a ‘Green Witch’ as they say. She was brilliant, though. Like you. Like this,” she motioned again to the beauty in the soil. “Those goofy spells I sell? She mixed the herbs. She tended them and dried them. And when I needed something for myself…well, she helped me with that, too.” She let her fingers dust over the plants with the reverence of mystics.

It’s a curious thing, in this garden with all its insinuated magic, that I hadn’t thought Goldie knew about Mom’s secret. I didn’t think anyone knew about it.

Except Heidi Lamont, of course. She knew about the garden.

Sorry Dad. I really wanted to tell you, but it never was the right time.

“So, with the town nonsense that’s going on,” Goldie continued, “I just need some things.”

“You’re doing a spell?” I asked her.

“I’m doing some craftwork, yes,” Goldie replied. Her nervous energy vibrated the vine of licorice root she had pinched between her fingers. “Just to disguise myself. Help me hide. Make me dim to the mob…while I get my affairs in order.”

I nodded again.

This is what Heidi wanted, too. That day, so many months ago now, she was tired of Mother Mary keeping her from her silly teenage girl things. She wanted help disappearing.

Goldie’s face suddenly screwed into a confused glower. She knelt down, peering deeply into between the stalks into the center of the plot. She squinted her eyes, through the licorice and hemlock.

“You have mushrooms?” It was more a statement than a question, but her voice still lilted like a curious child asking for just one more cookie.

“That happens sometimes,” I told her, removing the spade from my apron, letting it hang in my hand just behind the hem of Mom’s apron, “so, you need help disappearing?”

Goldie seized with a wicked understanding. Turning to me, I knew she saw the hilt of the spade clutched in my fist. The nervous flickers in her fingers turned into full shakes as her adrenaline spiked. It was a sight to behold as she attempted feebly to sulk backwards, losing her balance and falling on her ass as I lunged forward to my knees beside her. The spade came out in a swift drive, missing Goldie’s outstretched hand by a quarter of an inch as it drove into the soil at the edge of the plot, just underneath the licorice root.

Goldie froze.

“You’ll need licorice, if my study is right,” I said as I anchored the hilt of the spade and unearthed the roots of the plant before us, “some Burberry weed, and always add lavender, just for protection.”

Goldie breathed a heavy sigh before leaning forward again and taking the roots from the head of the spade. Together, we gathered her supplies. Goldie went on her way.

Now perhaps you thought Goldie was about to become a fruitful addition to the Spirit Garden? Perhaps you’re thinking now that Heidi is already under the soil, fertilizing mushrooms.

It’s nothing like that. Like I tried to tell Dad, just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean I was wrong.

Honestly, I was just trying to do what was right.

In a town where everyone is running away, where Heidi was so scared she came to me to find a way to get out, where Goldie was so persecuted she needed to dim herself to get away, wouldn’t you try to make the whole town forget?

After Goldie left, I gathered the ingredients. Some were easy: basil, cedar oil, river water. Some more more difficult. Breaking into Goldie’s shop, I found a calcite crystal, purple ribbon, and a small cast iron pot. In the woods surrounding the town, a crow’s foot. Bark from a withering tree.

The Thanksgiving festival was coming up. The whole town would be there.

In the shed, I had everything prepared. The symbol, the blasted symbol that got us all into this, drawn on the shaved bark. I set it on the floor. The river water in the pot to the left, the herbs wrapped in purple ribbon on the right. Four purple candles lit on the cardinal directions. It was ready to go.

Now, I just needed everyone to sleep.

The festival was a somber occasion. Despite the children dressed as pilgrims and Indians, pie baking competitions, carnival games, there was an air of suspicion filing the holes between people. Even those aligned with the cause were wary of the neighbors. No one signed up to judge the pies, for fear a pie was laced with witch’s work.

It’s would be okay. Soon, they would all forget.

I approached the pyre at the end of the festival row, the one that would be lit at sunset, and stared at the tall logged structure. Dry weeds and dead flowers lined the bottom, kindling ready to set the night ablaze. But there were also books, so many books, from Rowling to Tolkien, to Secrets of the Mayas. People brought these books from their homes, they took them from the library.

Anything that could be construed as the Craft about to be turned to ash.

I couldn’t save them. But I could stop any more from happening.

I pulled the wolfsbane from my side bag and, working clockwise, dropped the flowers around the base of the pyre. I worked quickly, thoughtfully, as I’d also brought the dead pumpkins and vines. I didn’t want to raise any suspicions. Just an offering to the pyre from Mom’s old garden. No one suspected a thing.

Still, I raced back to the house when the task was completed. Sunset was upon me and soon the whole town would breath the sweet aromas of the Thanksgiving pyre while singing “How Great is our God” in kumbaya chorus. Once the sun set, I lit my candles. I said my prayers. I stirred the pot and burned the wood shaving. And I felt a sense of overwhelming calm release the worries and hardships this symbol brought upon our little town.

I’m so sorry, Dad.

I didn’t know about the wolfsbane. Mom’s book, her grimoire, it taught me about the magic of her Spirit Garden. It taught me about its healing, its goodness. It didn’t tell me about neurotoxins. It didn’t share that inhaling wolfsbane can cause severe respiratory problems, can slow heart rates, and cause cardiac arrest.

I didn’t measure.

I didn’t know.

If I did it right, you would have all forgotten about the symbol in Heidi’s pocket. The one I drew for her before she ran off into the woods to find her true love.

It was to protect her, to make her safe.

That didn’t work out so well, either.

But you all would have released yourselves from the suspicions. You could have gone back to your normal, everyday lives. You could have read books again, books about magic and wizards. We could celebrate Halloween.

But you’re gone now.

I just needed you to know.

I am sorry.

The garden won’t be tended, anymore. The weeds will overtake it. Everything will wilt and die. Only the mushrooms will keep sprouting.

Mom never did want to leave her Spirit Garden.