Our phone rang about an hour after Alder left our cottage with the good news that he was alive and back in Saltash. Auntie didn't tell whoever was on the line that I had received him from the sea or that we had breakfasted with him at our kitchen table. The Remembering was now a party, a celebration, a giving of thanks for his return. It was a Returning.
Good thing we had assumed as much and already started our baking. By early afternoon, my lemon tarts were cooling, each topped with a delicate, sugared beachberry garnish, and Pim and Una were waiting on our scones in the oven. Una loved scones. The sun was high in the sky, the tide was out, and the beach was calling to me, so I took a break from the kitchen.
The cold wind of the early morning had gone out with the tide, so in my loose, linen overalls and giant, floppy straw hat, I answered the call of the sea. Even though the briny scent of the bay traveled on our clothes and clung to our hair, snuck through doors and open windows, permeated every dwelling in our coastal town, there was nothing like the wall of thick, salty air that hit you on the shore.
I abandoned my sandals at the point where the beach turned more sand than pebble. Stretching out my bare arms, the sun's heat soaked into my skin. I loved the crackle it made, like fire or electricity, like bubbling champagne, just underneath the surface. I was Goddess blessed to never burn in the sun.
Pim and my father had light brown skin, my mother white, while I was some combination of them all. Always a golden tan, even in the fieriest summers and the gloomiest winters. Except no one in my family had this corn silk hair or eyes as dark as mine, almost black as obsidian. It wasn't unusual to see a mixed family in Saltash. Pim believed that this land, the cape below the canal that divided Crone's Bend from the mainland, was so diverse because of the history of magick here.
If our books were to be believed, at one time this little cape had drawn sea witches from all over the world and they were welcomed. There's an illustration in one text that depicts our bay filled with fishing boats, practitioners of different races at every bow charming the day's catch into the nets. These witches made their homes and families here, changing the ethnic and racial makeup of the area. If this was a true history, I didn't know.
Though I loved it here, couldn't imagine myself away from this sea and sand, that didn't mean that I believed there was anything especially appealing to cunning folk about Saltash or Crone's Bend over any other beach town in the world. Why would they have been pulled here in particular? Whatever the truth, the magick had long since washed from the blood of the people, for the most part. Pim and I and two others further up the cape, were proof that there was still a little magick here.
Pim claimed that when she was a child, the oldest villagers bragged about having a witch on their family trees. But their children's children had grown up and grown wary of us cunning folk. There must be many inhabitants of Crone's Bend with magickal ancestry, but Pim and I were some of the last practitioners left.
I'd often wondered if the reason that magick didn't bloom here anymore was because the people's fear and suspicion did not provide hospitable ground in which the Goddess's gifts could bloom. If we believed the books, however, those cunning folk had made at least one lasting impact on this cape, because the ethnic and racial diversity, not to mention a variety of pagan traditions, remained.
And that was one thing that I loved about Saltash, this bounty of difference. Even if I didn't exactly fit with the people here. When I turned eighteen this spring, the Naval Academy had come to our door. A practitioner who could call forth a tempest was a powerful weapon for a military to have, and increasingly rare. I could have traveled the world by sea, experienced differences that I only glimpsed here. But I had no desire for war.
And it was dangerous for a sea witch to give in to the darkness it would take to wreck another country's fleet. It was a constant struggle not to slip into the abyss of our power. Our Gifts came from a place of light and darkness—from the heat of the sun soaked into the sand and light dappled waves to the unknowable, sightless depths of the ocean's trenches. So I walked my shoreline and waded in the shallows of the bay. This was my place, my home, my magick.
Today my feet followed a memory path, walking in the direction I'd gone that morning, but then I felt a pull in my belly and my aimless steps were directed by some Other force. As by a string threaded through my belly button, I was guided over the damp ocean floor that had hidden beneath the waves that morning. The wet sand squeaked and the occasional shell or rock bit into the soles of my feet. I was released, seemingly at random, but somehow I knew that this was the exact place where Alder had first touched ground.
I had assumed that he'd walked into the sea, sometime before I'd arrived, though I'd been so shocked to see him that I hadn't questioned why or how he was on our quiet stretch of coast specifically. I relaxed my senses to See beyond the physical, to glimpse the shimmering silver, psychic snail trails people left in a place. It was a skill that only worked for me this close to the sea, my magick ignited by my physical connection to the water saturating the ground.
I watched the ghostly traces of my own movements from that morning, but Alder seemed to have materialized in the deeper waters a few feet out. I tried to tell myself that perhaps he'd been thrown from a boat into these waters, but my inner eye could not detect such a journey. I dropped to the ground, on the spot I believed Alder had first put foot to earth, and my fingers sought the ripple marks in the sand made by the waves.
Sometimes you could read a story in this undulating pattern. I dipped my fingers into the grooves and traveled the long path, sensing a deep and unabating loneliness, which resonated within me. Familiar, shared. The ridge curved. I followed the hook in the ripple and was tossed into a tumult of emotions: horror, sadness, yearning, and a tentative hope. Another curl in the sand and I encountered a decision made, an action taken, a bright ray of possibility. But also uncertainty.
The ripple dipped again, a long valley in the sand, which held a confusion of emotions, new and in some kind of nebulous state, as if they hadn't yet been felt. Future emotions. A churning, hazy cloud of what might be. Love and fear and panic and more love. The feeling of freedom, escape, freefall. A swooping feeling in my chest, like missing a step.
These future emotions roiled and twisted with the potential to morph into something else, but that depended on events that had not yet taken place. And then there was nothing more. A break in the sand ripple, an end to whatever connection I'd made to Alder's story.
I didn't know what any of it meant. I knew that this winding path of emotions had something to do with Alder, but I had no context. The mystery of Alder Flint felt just as cloudy as it had when he'd left our cottage that morning. Except that I had heard him calling out from that deep well of loneliness and something in me called back.
~~~
Our cart was filled with our offerings for the Remembering and attached by tow to my motorbike. Pim was in a flowing linen dress that accentuated her curves, her short hair in a turban. I was still wearing my overalls and one of Pim's tasseled shawls.
As we were leaving, Pim told me to hold out my hand. My breath caught at the silk Luna moth, pale green and almost the size of my palm, crystal eyespots glittering on its diaphanous wings. It seemed alive, wings fluttering from my exhalation of breath.
"I thought you could wear this in your hair," Pim said, tucking a few strands behind my ear.
"I love it," I said, my voice a little watery.
"No need to cry, my sweet. Just let me..." She took the clip from my hand and fastened it in my hair. "Beautiful."
"Auntie, thank you. Where did you...?"
"The jeweler was having trouble getting pregnant and I helped her out. Just a little bonus since she's now expecting twins. What can I say? I'm just too damn good at my job."
I laughed a bit, gently touching my hair. "It doesn't look too—"
"It looks perfect is what, and you could never be too anything. Now get your scrawny butt moving."
We left the cottage through the front door, Una following.
"My butt isn't scrawny," I said. "Is it?"
"Every butt is scrawny next to mine, but everyone can't be so blessed. Now get in. I'll drive there since you'll be on your own to get home. Celeste and Mary invited me over and I'm spending the night. You can pick me up tomorrow afternoon."
Pim wasn't all that interested in romance, but Celeste and Mary Tan were a married couple whose bed she occasionally joined. They were the only people in town who I think Pim really considered friends, and I sometimes wondered if she would be living with them if not for my presence here. She insisted that the only thing that could make her leave our cottage was a hurricane, and not before she leveled every charm in the books at the storm. I believed her because I wanted to.
I climbed into the sidecar, Una settled in my lap, and away we sped towards town and the beach next to Saltash Harbor. When we got there, the party goers filled the boardwalk and spilled onto the sand where the bonfire was already blazing. It seemed every villager had turned out for Alder's Returning, a lightness on their faces that I hadn't seen in months. The pall had lifted.
We added our food and drink to the altar, and Pim and Una slipped into the crowd to find her friends. I lingered on the edges of the gathering. At one point, Edgar, a boy from school, regaled me with the juicy gossip about Alder's return. Apparently, the story was he'd only told his parents that he'd been lost.
Edgar's tone was slightly mocking, as if he and the other villagers were owed some better explanation. We had all mourned Alder's loss, after all. When he realized he wasn't going to get me to join in his scorn, he backed away to find someone more receptive to his tale.
All the while, my eyes sought Alder. My cheeks warmed a little at the sight of him wearing the clothes I'd given him. I wanted to say hello, since he'd said we were now friends, but his parents never left his side and his mother had always seemed to dislike me. Not the benign wariness of the other villagers but an active dislike. Now she clung to his arm and his father hovered right behind, his hand on her back.
I couldn't blame them, and it seemed that, while the townsfolk were light as bubbly, the shade hadn't entirely left the faces of Layla and Jonquil Flint. If Edgar was to be believed, not exactly a given but assuming his yarn hadn't spun too far from the truth, Alder had given them a pretty thin explanation for his absence.
And what did that even mean? He'd been lost? Lost where? Where had he been all this time? I had trouble picturing him wandering, confused, unable to find the road to Saltash. Perhaps he meant emotionally lost? Physically, he appeared hale and hearty. His hair even looked the same length as the day he left.
Though he was different. The shine had left his eyes and he seemed uneasy in the crowd. He flinched when random villagers gave him a pat on the shoulder and his face tensed when they pressed in on his personal space. Alder had always seemed a people person, but perhaps that had been an act. Or he had changed while he'd been gone. Unlike Edgar, I knew that the mystery of Alder Flint wasn't to be solved by gossipmongers at a party where alcohol flowed generously.
The evening wore on. A few villagers in need of magickal aid approached me for appointments later in the week. Eventually I drifted to the darker edges of the beach to sit in the sand and nurse my glass of duneflower wine. Unlike many of the people here who lived in town, I couldn't stagger home on drunken legs, and I had no friend to put me up for the night. But one glass of wine, watered down with ice, wouldn't hurt.
I hadn't spoken to Alder at all, but that wasn't much of a surprise. I'd brought him a small present, a hagstone necklace, though I could give it to him another time. Hagstones, rocks found with naturally occurring holes made by water, offered a small protection against harm.
The churning nebulae of future emotions that I'd glimpsed in the ripple marks, Alder's fear and panic, made me feel like I needed to do something to shield him from harm. Given a little time, I could come up with some stronger talisman. But I didn't really know how Alder felt about magickal intervention. I thought perhaps his mother didn't approve, and I wasn't sure if he shared her beliefs.
A hagstone, however, was pretty innocuous, especially in these parts where there was a historical relationship between mundane villagers and cunning folk. Many people incorporated little bits of magick into their lives without even realizing it. I couldn't count how many witch balls I'd seen hanging in cottage windows. Glass orbs once meant to ward off evil spirits were now sold as trinkets in town.
Lost in my head, as I was inclined to be—especially when in a crowd—I didn't hear the crunch of footsteps until they were right upon me. Startled, I jerked in surprise at the sight of Alder standing at my shoulder, a splash of wine jumping from my glass onto the sand.
He scratched the back of his neck. "Sorry."
"No big deal," I said, scattering the red sand with my hand. I set my glass down, drilling the base into the ground so it wouldn't tip over.
"Wyn, mind if I join you?" he said.
"Of course not! How are you?"
He sat down facing me, crossing his legs. "It's a lot."
"I wanted to say hi, but someone else always got to you first." I didn't mention that his mother's obvious dislike made me uncomfortable.
"Yeah..."
"Well, you're welcome to hide in the shadows with me for a while."
"Is that what you're doing? Hiding?"
"Not really. In order for me to hide, someone would have to be looking for me."
"I was looking for you."
"And here I am." I gave him a smile. "Can't be hiding, if you found me so easily."
"Well, someone's definitely looking for me and I am absolutely hiding, so just shift over a little this way...."
"Oh, I almost forgot! I have something for you." I angled my body to dig in my pocket without standing up. "Maybe it will protect you from the madding crowd."
"Wyn, you've given me too much already."
"I don't think you can give too much."
"I beg to differ." He glanced at the crowd, the flickering flames illuminating them in dancing orange light.
"This is just a small token." I dropped the hagstone into his outstretched palm. He held it up by its red, twisted string. "You can wear it, if you like."
He slipped the string over his head and the white stone settled against his chest. "A hagstone. I've heard that you can see the fae through the hole in one of these." He brought it to his eye, looking through it at me, cracking the first small smile I'd seen from him.
"Tosh, no one's seen any sign of Faerie in generations, if they ever did." With a light touch, I moved the stone away from his eye. I didn't know why, but I felt a bit exposed by his gaze through the hagstone.
"You, who can do such wonders, don't believe in the fae?"
I blushed at his words. "It's not that I don't believe, but I've never seen and it feels a bit pointless to think about them, one way or the other. If the fae exist, they're clearly not interested in the affairs of men."
"Perhaps not," he said, again with that mysterious half smile. "Well, I thank you for the gift. If I see any fae with it, I won't tell you, as you're clearly not interested."
"Hey!" I said, laughing. "Not fair." He just shrugged. And I smiled at him like a fool. "You know, witches used to believe that their familiars were imps or sprites in animal form. It's a nice idea, but I've never seen any evidence that Una—that's my auntie's familiar—is anything but a really smart cat."
"If only you had a hagstone necklace," Alder said, patting his chest. "This one's mine, but I'll tell you what, I'll take a gander at your auntie's cat and solve the question once and for all."
"My hero!" I said.
"Your moth looks really lovely in your hair, by the way."
"Oh! Thank you," I said, touching the side of my head.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but seemed to hesitate. He scratched a few lines in the sand with his fingertip, though it was dark enough that I couldn't tell what, if anything, he was writing.
"Wyn, I hope it's all right to ask, but earlier when you said that you call yourself a cunning person instead of man, does that mean that you're not a boy?"
"Oh, I..."
"Just tell me to shut up, if this is something I shouldn't ask. It's only that I want to make sure I'm using the right words, even if it's in my head."
"I-I won't tell you to shut up, but I'm still thinking about the question. I haven't come to my own answer, but if you say something that feels wrong to me, I'll let you know."
"Okay," he said. "I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable."
"The opposite," I said, smiling. I actually felt lighter than I had in a while. "Thank you, Alder. Can I ask the same...?"
"What? Oh, yes, I am a boy. Though I—"
"Alder!" We startled at the sound of Layla Flint. "Have you been here all this time? I've been looking all over for you."
"Mum, sorry, yes I've been talking with Wyn."
Layla narrowed her eyes at me, and I realized they werethe same seafoam color as Alder's. It felt strange, wrong even, to see those beautiful eyes tinged in scorn. She turned back to her son. "Let's go."
"All right," he said, getting to his feet. With his heel, he rubbed away whatever scratchings he'd made in the sand. "I'll see you soon, Wyn."
At this Layla huffed, taking Alder by the elbow. As I watched them rejoin and then be absorbed by the group of villagers, I felt a kind of happiness bubbling up from within. Our conversation had ended on a sour note, sure, but talking with Alder had felt almost like having a friend. Like swimming out beyond a sandbar. Like the overwhelming sight of a murmuration of starlings, that living, swooping, pulsing cloud. It felt like magick.