Jesse imagined the tricycle on the farmhouse lawn. It had been his final image of the house that June day when he’d walked away from it all. He’d buried his wife and son two days before.
He stripped off his wet clothes and plodded up the stairs, forgoing his intention to leave the furniture untouched. He crawled into bed and pleaded for sleep to take him.
Chapter 11
Liv
“What is that?” Stephen asked, startling Liv as she sat on a rock near the lake.
She pulled the stone from her eye and held it up to reveal the small round hole in the center.
“It’s called a hag stone.”
“A hag stone?” He crinkled his forehead and held out a hand.
“Can I see it?”
Liv hesitated. George had been very clear when she found the stone, she must never share its magic. The stone chose the seer, he said. Liv had only one stone, but George had six. They hung in a small leather satchel around his neck.
“Sure.” She handed Stephen the stone. It wasn’t as if he’d know what to do with it, anyway.
He turned the stone over several times, rubbing his hand over the smooth edge.
“What’s a hag stone, then?” he asked, handing it back to her and already shrugging out of his clothes.
They’d met at the pond every day for a week now, and Stephen no longer blushed when she stripped down to her undergarments.
Liv considered how to explain it.
“Some people believe they’re magic.”
He perked up at the comment and leaned in for a second look at the stone.
“Magic, how?”
Liv shrugged.
“Sometimes when people look through them, they can see things.”
“May I?” He held out his hand again, and Liv pulled the stone away.
“You have to catch me first.”
She jumped off the rock and ran down the dock, diving into the pond and swimming fast. She heard Stephen’s dive follow her own.
Suddenly a hand grabbed her ankle and pulled her beneath the water. She almost kicked out, but instead spun and put both hands on Stephen’s shoulders. She popped above the water and leveraged up, pushing him down. He thrashed away from her, and she realized he was panicking. When his head shot above the surface, his eyes were filled with terror, and he coughed and hacked as if he’d taken in a mouthful of water.
“What’d you do that for?” he yelled, kicking away from her. He climbed from the pond and kneeled on the bank, continuing to cough.
She followed, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, remembering his story of jumping off the cliff. She should have known better.
He rubbed his throat, and when he looked at her, she saw red blisters inflamed on his lips.
She put a finger to his lower lip, but he jerked his head away.
The blisters had not been there the day before.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
Liv thought back to the previous day and the angry tone of his mother.
“She saw me, didn’t she? You mother?”
He didn’t look at her but nodded.
“Does she hurt you, Stephen?”
He glared at her and then stood.
“I don’t feel like swimming today.”
He stalked back to his clothes and grabbed them before disappearing into the trees.
She almost let him go. Years later, she would reflect on all those chances to turn the other way and let their friendship dissolve as quickly as it took shape.
Instead, she followed him.
“Wait,” she called. “I’ll show you how to use it.”
He continued walking — stomping, really — and then slowed, turning back.
“How to use what?”
She held up the hag stone.
His eyes narrowed on the stone. The ugly blisters on his lips had paled, but when he bit his lip, he winced.
“Okay, yeah, sure.” He strode back to her and held out his hand.
She dropped the stone in his palm, ignoring George’s voice in the back of her head.
“I need a drum,” she told him.
“A drum? And you think we might find one lying around in the woods?”
She smiled and shook her head before walking to a tall, leafy fern. She pulled the largest leaf from the bunch.
“Now, something hollow,” she murmured, walking around the forest and kicking at downed trees. She walked back to the lake and pulled branches from a weeping willow. Weaving several branches together, she made a frame, and then stretched the leaf over the branches, securing it by tucking the leaf’s edges into the braided wood. When she bounced her finger on it, a barely audible ping reverberated out.
Stephen stood back, watching with interest.
“Not much of a drum,” he murmured.
“The best kind are born of necessity,” she told him, repeating words George had told her more times than she could count.
She paused and gazed toward the lake, and then back into the forest.
“I think right here beneath this willow,” she said. “This is the best spot.”
“For what?”
“To call in the spirits.”
He gaped at her and then gazed beyond her, as if he expected to see one such spirit gliding across the lake toward them.
“As in dead people? Ghosts?”
She laughed.
“As in ancestors. They lived once, but it was a very long time ago.”
Liv settled on a patch of grass and placed the makeshift drum in her lap.
“What should I do?”
“Sit.” She patted the space beside her. “And look through the stone.”
Stephen held the stone up to his eye, and Liv began to drum her fingers on the leaf. The sound was small and seemed swallowed by the crickets and birds, but slowly the resonance seeped in.
She felt the drumming in her blood, in her heartbeat. The steady throbbing pulse as it pulled her deeper, until her eyes drifted closed and she swayed with the sound. The voices of the spirits rose in a steady hum.
Beside her, Stephen let out a little gasp.
She tried to open her eyes, to ask him what he saw, but the drumbeat pulled her down and down. She did not fly, but sank. The voices rocked her, lulled her, but soon they shifted, their tones no longer warm and comforting. They seemed to be shrieking at her.
“Go away, go away, go away…” the words flowed together, stretched long and angry.
It took her a moment to understand. The spirits didn’t want her there.
Her eyes popped open, and she saw that Stephen had shifted to his knees, the hag stone pressed so tightly against his eye, the surrounding skin bulged. She could see the pale blue of his eye peering through.
He gasped and fell back, throwing the stone away.
Liv watched him, dazed. The thick, murky darkness she’d been plunged into had not fully released her.
For a moment, they both sat unmoving, lost in their separate reveries.
“What did you see?” Liv asked him.
She pushed the drum off her lap, and then wrenched the leaf free of the branches.
He swallowed and touched a finger to his blistered lips before shaking his head, as if banishing the images.
“I don’t know… I-”
“Never mind,” Liv said quickly. She realized she didn’t want to know what was responsible for the haunted look in Stephen’s eyes.
He said nothing, and then a grin slid over his face.
“That was amazing,” he breathed. He gazed into the distant sky, again lifting his fingers to his lips. “You’re magic.”