SOFI
Getting Mirtel back to her wagon was both easier and more difficult than I’d expected.
Easier, because despite my fears, whatever drugs she’d been given appeared to wear off quickly. Though she seemed a little disoriented when I shook her shoulder, whispering at her to keep quiet while frantically trying to unclasp the leather straps that bound her to the bed, she was perfectly able to walk on her own once I’d freed her.
More difficult, because Darja and Aggie spent the entire time trading barbed comments that seemed to be quickly escalating to a full-on shouting match. And though I could only hear one side of the argument, it was still enough to distract me so that I almost missed my father’s car pulling into the parking lot at the same moment we all stumbled out of the front doors of the municipal building. It was Mirtel’s sharp indrawn breath that made me look up, and then we were all stumbling to the side, my left hand supporting Mirtel and my right clutched tightly around the book I’d snatched from the library.
Thank God for the overgrown hedges that framed the front of the building, not yet manicured into shape by the landscapers the city kept on contract. That and the fact that my dad was anything but a morning person. I pulled Mirtel behind the tall shrubs, the two of us disappearing into the thick foliage, though I could tell from my father’s glazed eyes as he passed by not three feet from us, a cup of coffee gripped in his hand, that he probably wouldn’t have noticed us if I’d been waving my arms and shouting. I still held my breath until the door had shut firmly behind him, then gave Darja the darkest glare I could manage before we all scuttled across the lot to my car and piled in.
The drive to Mirtel’s was silent and tense. Darja was in the car with us again, but I didn’t know if Aggie was there or not and I didn’t ask. Mirtel seemed lost in thought, her brow furrowed as she stared out the window, and I left her alone, preoccupied by my own troubled thoughts.
The quiet broke the second we stepped through the brightly painted door of Mirtel’s wagon and latched it firmly behind us.
“What were you thinking?!” That came from Darja, directed at Mirtel, who of course couldn’t hear her, but Aggie could, and responded with a vicious snap.
I couldn’t hear her words, but they must have been harsh, because Darja looked furious.
Mirtel turned at Aggie’s words as well, and both she and Darja spoke over each other. I ignored them, moving instead to the tiny kitchen table, where I let the heavy tome I’d been carrying fall with a thump on the worn wood. In the brief beat of quiet that followed the noise, I spoke, my voice loud in the small space.
“The police are looking for Darja; someone reported her missing. And this book has pages that can only be seen by dead people.”
The silence after that was absolute. Both Mirtel and Darja turned to stare at me, and I could only assume Aggie was quiet too, because their attention didn’t waver.
“What do you mean, they’re looking for me?” Darja said softly, at the same moment Mirtel said, “What do you mean, seen by the dead?”
Then both of them turned to stare at the empty space between them, and I gave up and sagged down into the plush armchair in the corner.
“This would be a lot easier if we could all see each other,” I grumbled.
Mirtel shot me an apologetic glance and chose a seat next to me in a rickety-looking rocking chair. “Tell us about Darja.”
I quickly filled them in on my conversation with Jared. There wasn’t much to tell, but Darja seemed even paler by the time I’d finished.
“Who could possibly have reported her missing?” Mirtel asked, bewilderment on her lined face.
“It would have to be someone outside the town, right?” I asked. “No one from Vaikesti would have. I mean, all the adult women know what happened, and no one outside the koolis would have known her.”
“We did see people outside of the koolis, you know,” Darja put in acerbically. “It’s not like they chained us up in there.” Then she fell silent.
No, not chained up maybe. Just drugged and murdered on a bonfire. I didn’t say it. I didn’t have to.
Mirtel cocked her head to listen for a moment, then turned to me. “Aggie asked why Jared was questioning you, specifically.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think he was looking for me. I just happened to be there outside the station and he knew we were in class together.”
Darja shook her head. “No, when we walked up, he said he was glad to see you, and he’d been planning to come find you this morning. I heard him. He would have come looking for you if you hadn’t happened to show up there.”
I’d forgotten he’d said that. I shook my head. “I don’t think he meant he was going to come find me to question me. He might have just wanted…” My face flushed. “…to stop by,” I finished lamely.
Darja narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t trust him.”
“You don’t trust him?” My brows shot up. “He’s better than that creep following us around town, taking pictures when we’re not looking.”
“We’re the ones that followed him to the library,” she shot back. “He didn’t follow us!”
“Girls,” Mirtel cut in mildly. “Remember we can’t all hear you.”
I took a breath, then apologized, filling her in on everything she and Aggie had missed after the debacle at the festival. Stephen, and his camera, his arrest, and then the events at the library. I retrieved the book from the table and brought it over, sitting and cradling it in my lap. Darja came over to perch on the arm of my chair, and for the first time, I didn’t find myself shying away from her at all.
Mirtel’s gaze sharpened. “He said it was a book of spells? How could he know that?”
“He could read it,” I said, flipping through the pages, turning it around in my lap so the text faced her. “He wasn’t fluent, but it was obvious he had a lot of experience.”
There was a pause, then Mirtel nodded toward where Aggie must have been standing. “No,” she answered the girl. “I don’t think anyone in Vaikesti is fluent anymore. Some of the elders still can read the words pretty well, but I don’t think they know what it all means.”
There was another pause, and then she laughed, her eyes crinkling at the corners and making her whole face fold like origami. “Me? You know I was never a very good student. I probably know a few words here and there, but that’s about it.”
She rocked the chair forward and leaned over the book where it was propped on my knees.
“Here,” she said, pointing at a word in the block of text. “Tulekahju. That means ‘fire.’”
I glanced up at Darja, but she was staring at the book.
Mirtel flipped a couple of pages, then stopped when another word caught her eye. “Here,” she said with a laugh, then moved her finger along the text, “and here, and here. Ja. That means ‘and.’”
Darja snorted.
Mirtel turned the page again then paused. “It’s blank,” she said unnecessarily. “And you said the book is filled with blank pages?” She flipped further through, answering her own question. She stopped on an empty page near the middle, the weight of the thick tome spread evenly over my lap.
“I don’t understand why you can’t see them,” Darja said softly, and I repeated her words to Mirtel.
The old lady turned to the side, raising an eyebrow.
The silence must have held confirmation, because Darja sucked in a breath. “Aggie and I can both see the words there,” she said, leaning close to the page.
“But you can see the words on the other pages, too?” Mirtel asked, directing her question at Aggie, but Darja nodded in response.
“I wonder if it’s because they’ve been alive, but we’ve never been dead,” I mused, staring at the page as if I expected something to appear on the wide swath of blank parchment.
Mirtel tilted her head to the side in a thoughtful gesture that reminded me of her chickens. “That’s a good theory.”
We all fell silent for a long moment as Mirtel flipped further through the book, skimming her fingertips across the pages as she went.
“Why would Stephen be looking through a book of spells?” I asked, my mistrust of him rising again.
“Maybe he wanted to try one,” Darja said lightly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped. “Magic doesn’t really work.” The second the words left my mouth I could hear how dumb I sounded. I was standing here, surrounded by dead people, claiming magic didn’t exist.
Darja raised an incredulous eyebrow at me, but Mirtel didn’t seem surprised at all by my outburst.
“Magic has always existed,” she said calmly, her attention still on the pages. “We’ve just forgotten how to use it. The first settlers from the old country still had the use of it.” Her gaze softened with what I assumed was memory. “I remember my mother used to talk of it with her sister, my aunt, before she died. They used spells for many things in the old country.”
“Did you see them use magic? Your mother and her sister?” Darja asked.
Aggie must have repeated the question, because Mirtel looked up. “No, I was too young. The spells must have stopped working shortly after they settled here. By the time I went through my Ceremony, none of the bondings or other spells were successful anymore.” She shared a glance with the space to her right. “Except ours.”
Other spells.
Despite the fact that I sat here with a book full of spells on my lap, despite the fact that my bonding ceremony had worked, despite the fact that I had proof of magic right in front of me, in the chaos of the last few days it hadn’t really occurred to me that the bonding wasn’t a standalone incident. There were other spells. Spells to do all sorts of things. And they probably worked.
My breath caught as the weight of the realization settled over me. I could see Darja watching me out of the corner of my eye, but I carefully kept my gaze down, refusing to meet her eyes.
Mirtel turned another page, tracing her finger down the lines, and I frowned, trying to work through everything in my mind. “But why do you think they work sometimes and not at other times? Or is the binding spell the only one that works at all anymore? You never hear of other magic. And do you think it just doesn’t work or do you think we’re doing something wrong, and that’s why?”
Mirtel looked thoughtful. “I think it’s because something…maybe more than one something, has been lost over time. It’s like we’re trying to make a cake, but we don’t have the whole recipe anymore.”
“And maybe sometimes we stumble across the ingredients by accident?” Darja put in.
I repeated her words and Mirtel nodded. “Maybe. That’s just my theory.”
I was quiet for a moment, turning this over in my head, before frowning and returning to my original point. “But still, whether the spells could work or not, why would Stephen be looking at them?”
“God, Sofi,” Darja exclaimed. “Give him a break. He had a whole stack of books to look through. He’s not the devil.”
I scowled at her, but let it drop. I didn’t trust him. I’d seen his camera.
Leaning back in my chair, I stretched my arms over my head, careful not to jostle the book on my lap that Mirtel was still flipping through.
“I think so,” Mirtel said, clearly in response to something Aggie had asked. “I just don’t know what they mean, but it’s not hard to sound out the words. Honestly, you probably know more than I do. You were always a good student.” She laughed.
Part of me envied the two of them, how easily they spoke to each other and interacted. I wondered if Darja and I would ever have the ease and familiarity that Mirtel and Aggie had. What must it be like, to be bound together for so long, over fifty years? My mind shied away from the thought.
Mirtel had flipped to a new spot near the back of the book. The left page had three words at the top, clearly the title, then a small paragraph of text. There was a drawing of a candle below the text, and then another larger block of text took up the bottom half of the page, this one broken up into numbered sections. The facing page was blank. It must have been a short spell.
Mirtel was leaning far forward over my lap, one finger tracing the words in the title.
“Eemaldus,” she sounded the word out, then paused. “No,” she answered, “I have no idea what that means, do you? Valgus. Yes, that one’s ‘light.’”
She paused again as Aggie answered, and I tuned them out, turning to Darja.
“Can you read it at all?” I asked, keeping my voice low so as not to interrupt Mirtel.
Darja laughed. “Not a word. I wasn’t exactly a model student. Well,” she amended, “I mean, I can probably sound out the words. But I don’t know what any of them mean. You?”
I shrugged. “Probably about the same. We’d get in trouble if we messed up the prayers and stuff. I probably know like ten words.”
She nodded, glancing over at Mirtel and Aggie. “They must have taught a lot more back when they were in school. They’re sounding those words out much faster than I could.”
“Does Aggie know any of it?” I asked, looking curiously into the empty air to Mirtel’s right.
“She’s not doing bad,” Darja said, leaning over the book.
Mirtel was talking again, working her way through the top paragraph on the page. She was reading faster than I could stumble over the unfamiliar words, and I gave up trying to keep up. I leaned forward, following Darja’s gaze down to the blank page.
“What do you think it means?” I asked. “That you can see words where we can’t?”
“Well, I—”
It was so obvious, in hindsight, I couldn’t understand how we hadn’t connected the dots that were right in front of our faces.
Because when Mirtel stopped reading, and raised her finger triumphantly from where she’d been tracing the letters on the page, there was a long moment of silence, when surely Aggie was sounding out the words on her side. And then, without any warning, every light in the small wagon went out and we were swallowed by darkness.