The Patron Saint of
Lost Causes
Why her daughter had promised this miracle Joanna did not know. She knew, of course, that Ingrid had set up something of a clinic in the library, doling out her brand of practical charms and domestic talismans while Freya was now offering her custom concoctions in a brand-new cocktail menu at the North Inn Bar. Both endeavors were clearly against the restriction, and yet Joanna could not find it in her heart to scold her daughters for their actions or demand that they stop. As she had overheard the girls say to each other the other day, it wasn’t as if she were completely innocent of the matter either. Already someone had reported a UFO sighting in the area after she had taken off to the skies the other day—Joanna hadn’t been as careful with the cloud cover as she had thought. UFOs indeed! She had not gained that much weight, had she?
At first she had told Ingrid there was no way she was going to do it; it was simply out of the question. She was still unnerved by her experience after the benefit; at night she could feel the vines begin to slide around her legs and suffocate her mouth. Joanna had performed a check of the seam, which she discovered had frayed in certain places. She refrained from mentioning anything to her daughters, since she did not want to worry them until she knew what it was.
Also, it was one thing to make toy soldiers run around and fix a burned pie; it was quite another to perform the Lazarus-like undertaking her eldest was asking her to do. This was resurrection they were talking about here, and yes, she had been put on Earth precisely for this task. But those days were over: the restriction had seen to that—and there was also the Covenant of the Dead to consider. One did not tiptoe around Helda’s territory lightly. Render to Caesar what was Caesar’s and all that. Okay, so maybe Lionel was technically still alive, but according to the doctors he was a vegetable. Joanna shuddered at the term and wished people would stop using it. To think of a man as nothing more than a plant was too . . . demeaning somehow. Of course, that was the point—to ease the sorrow so that the family could let go, since their loved one wasn’t truly there anymore.
But Ingrid had asked, and it really was an awful story: Emily, who painted those gorgeous seascapes and brought them beautiful brown eggs from her chickens and fresh milk from her cows, was getting booted out of her home just because of some nasty in-laws. Joanna definitely knew all about that. No one was ever good enough for anybody’s precious sons. No one ever called daughters precious, and why was that? Things had not changed very much. In the end women like Emily and Ingrid and Freya and Joanna only had one another to lean on. The men were wonderful when they were around, but their fires burned too bright, they lived too close to the sun—look what happened to her boy, and to her man. Gone. Women only had one another in the end. So she agreed to do what she could for Lionel, for Emily’s sake.
Privately, Joanna had started to wonder if provoking the Council might be a good idea, anyway. Freya’s upcoming nuptials had put her in an optimistic mood. If the fickle goddess of Love was tying the knot on the night of the harvest moon (the Labor Day weekend fell right on their traditional holiday—not that they were allowed to celebrate it anymore, of course), perhaps there was still hope that things would finally change around here.
But if she was actually going to do this she was going to need the right ammunition. It might be a good idea to have it anyway, after what happened the other night. They would need protection from whatever was out there. Joanna climbed up the attic steps and rooted around the cramped space until she found the false wall where she had hidden their greatest treasures. She had been very careful to make sure the Council did not take everything back then. Ah. There was the black steamer trunk, right where she had left it hidden under a piano sheet so many years ago. She pulled off the dusty sheet, unlocked the lid, and looked inside. The box was empty save for a simple wooden case, and from inside the wooden case Joanna removed three ivory wands, as pristine and beautiful as the day they were made.
“Mother? What are you doing up there?” she heard Ingrid call from below. “We need to leave for the hospital now, before visiting hours are over.”
“Coming, dear,” she replied. When she climbed back down she was holding the three wands tightly in her left hand. She handed two of them to Ingrid. “Make sure you give Freya hers when she gets home. But remember to be careful with them. Only use when absolutely necessary.”
“Are you sure about this, Mother?” Ingrid asked, holding the wands reverently. They were made from dragon bone, from the skeleton of the old gods, older than the universe itself, the very bones that created the earth, the same ones that once supported the bridge. Translucent, white to the eye, they shone with an iridescent light.
“Not really. But something tells me it’s time we took them out of storage,” Joanna said. She stuck her wand in her coat pocket. “Now, come on, let’s go see if we can wake up Lionel.”
They arrived at the hospital in the late afternoon, managing to make it right before the patients’ rooms were closed to visitors. “So how long has he been out?” Joanna asked, rolling up her sleeves as they made their way to the correct floor.
“About a week or so.”
“And there’s no brain activity at all?”
“Some, but not enough to guarantee he would ever recover consciousness.”
Joanna nodded. “Good. This shouldn’t be too hard, then.” If there was still some brain activity it meant Lionel was only barely submerged in the first level of the underlayer, and it would be easy enough to pull him to the surface.
“That’s what I thought.” They arrived at the right room, but before Ingrid opened the door, she turned to Joanna. “Thanks, Mother.”
Joanna patted her daughter’s arm. She would never have agreed to it unless Ingrid had asked, and since Ingrid never asked for anything, as her mother she couldn’t refuse. Besides, Emily Foster’s story piqued Joanna’s sense of injustice. Marriages weren’t held together by paperwork, and it angered her to think that a woman could be thrown out of her home simply due to bad luck and horrid in-laws.
Ingrid pushed open the door to find Emily Foster weeping by Lionel’s bedside. His body was covered by a sheet, and Ingrid exchanged a startled look with her mother before approaching.
“They pulled the plug while I went home to change my clothes and check on our animals. When I came back the nurse told me his mother signed the consent forms. She knew I wouldn’t agree so they did it behind my back. He’s gone. He’s gone, Ingrid. You’re too late,” Emily sobbed.
Joanna pulled off the sheet slowly and took the dead man’s wrist in her hand. His skin was gray, and his fingernails were white and bloodless, but there was still a hint of color on his forearms. “The body’s still warm. They did this when . . . just a few minutes ago?” she asked.
“Just before you arrived,” Emily said.
“Emily, this is my mother. She’s going to help Lionel.”
“I remember,” Emily said, blowing her nose. “Hi, Mrs. Beauchamp.”
“Close the door,” Joanna instructed. “Draw the curtains and take her out of here.”
Ingrid did as told and guided Emily out of the room. “What’s going to happen? I mean, he’s dead, right?” Emily asked, looking at the two witches fearfully.
Ingrid and Joanna exchanged another glance. “Not quite. Even without a machine, the heart keeps beating, it’s just undetectable as it’s a very, very low pulse,” Joanna said, hoping the newly bereaved woman would believe her tiny white lie. But it would be too difficult to tell her the truth: that she was going to bring Lionel back from the dead. He had been gone for only a few minutes, not even an hour, which was well within the allotted time.
When she was alone in the room, Joanna took Lionel’s cold hand in hers. She closed her eyes and stepped into the glom, the twilight world of disembodied souls. In the glom was a path, a trail in the sand. Using her wand to light the way, Joanna saw that Lionel had made it only to the second level; he was climbing the mountain toward the gate, and once he crossed the gate it would be much harder to bring him back. For beyond the Kingdom of the Dead lay Hell’s frontier.
There was something different about the glom, a sense of malice and despair that she had never felt before. “Lionel! Lionel!” she called. She wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.
Lionel Horning turned around. He was bald and severe-looking, dressed in his usual attire of paint-splattered clothing. When he saw her he smiled. “Mrs. Beauchamp, what are you doing here?”
Joanna climbed up next to him so that they were both looking over the view. “Taking you home.”
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” he asked.
“Only in human terms. Your heart has stopped beating,” Joanna said.
“Did I drown? I seem to remember being all wet.”
“You did.”
“Emily always said that ocean would get the better of me one day.”
Joanna analyzed his spirit. There were traces of a silver spiderweb around his soul; she had never seen that before and it worried her. “Would you prefer to stay here?” she asked Lionel.
He looked around. “Not really. What is this place?”
“Think of it as the halfway station. See that gate up there? Once you reach it, it’ll be harder to get you to the surface.”
“How’s Emily?”
“Not good. She’s about to get thrown out of your house.”
“My parents!” he groaned. “I know I should have forced her to marry me. She’s stubborn, you know.” He sighed. “I can’t leave her.”
“Then don’t.”
He stared at the glimmering path, at the mountain trail that reached toward the silver gate. She knew how hard this decision was. He had been in the underlayer, in the glom, for a week now. He had forgotten about hardship and fear; he was beginning to transition to the spirit world. Perhaps this wasn’t such a great idea. Perhaps she should never have agreed to do this.
He looked at the faraway gate, shining in the distance. “Right. Let’s go, then.”
Joanna took his hand and led him back down the way he had come. He started to walk back but suddenly stopped. “I can’t move,” he grunted. “My feet are stuck.”
“Try harder,” she ordered. She felt the hard tugging on the other side; that would be her sister, Helda, holding on to his spirit.
“Do not test me, sister!” Joanna called, waving her wand in the air so that it flashed with a hot white light. “Remember you agreed to keep to the Covenant! It is not his time yet!” She kept her hand on Lionel’s arm and pulled. The wind howled, the oceans crashed, lightning flashed. The Kingdom of the Dead did not give up its souls that easily.
But Joanna’s magic was stronger; this was the power that was rooted in her, older than the earth, older than the Dead, and her ferocious will held on to Lionel and pulled him up and out of the trail. . . . There was a mighty flash. . . .
Joanna was sitting by Lionel’s bedside, holding his hand in a tight grip. The dead man blinked his eyes. He coughed and looked around. “Where’s Emily?”
Lionel’s parents were thrilled to have their son back, if a bit sore about losing the house, although they tried not to show it. Joanna and Ingrid bade their good-byes.
“How can I ever thank you? I don’t know what you did, or how you did it, but thank you.” Emily wept. “What can I give you? . . . anything. Take the house,” she laughed. “Lionel’s putting me on the deed.”
Joanna embraced her and kissed her on both cheeks. “Take care of each other,” she said. “And keep an eye on him. He might be feeling a bit off for the next day or two. If anything changes with his condition, let us know immediately.”
Ingrid led them down the hallway. “So, about this whole restriction . . . I’d say bringing a man back to life kind of breaks each and every one of those rules, doesn’t it?” she teased.
Joanna smiled. The whole adventure had felt fantastic, like the good old days again. She stuck her wand into the bun of her hair. “To hell with it. We might as well admit it. We’re witches. Just let them try to stop us this time.”