Chapter 12 What Are You Doing With That Belt?

"I can't believe you invited him to stare at trees with us!"

It was midnight, and the sisters were standing at the base of the hill just outside of town. The night was chilly but clear, the moonlight casting a silvery glow across the hills. In the distance, the hoots of an owl echoed through the trees. Above them loomed the oak grove and, hopefully, answers about what was wrong with magic in Oak Haven.

Delilah snarled, "This is not date night, Scarlett!"

" Date night could not be further from my mind," Scarlett replied. "We had a nice chat earlier, and Nate and I are friends, period."

Both sisters groaned. Luna said, "That's absurd, Scar," while Delilah offered, "You're embarrassing."

A pair of headlights swept across the darkness: Nate's truck. The sisters waited as he parked and ambled over to join them. "Evening, everybody. Thanks for letting me join your Scooby-Doo gang for the evening."

"We're breaking a fairly serious rule here," Delilah noted.

Scarlett rolled her eyes. "It's a stupid rule—Nate's not Handsome Bill, for crying out loud. He's not going to hurt anything."

"Don't worry," Nate assured the sisters. "Whatever you folks say goes. I'm happy just to be able to join you up there. I promise I won't get in the way."

Delilah emitted a little "humph" and headed up the hill first, with Luna behind. Scarlett and Nate hung back, then began the climb side by side.

"Beautiful clear night," he said.

"Cold, though." Scarlett hunched her shoulders against the chill—a typical posture for her in San Francisco. But here in Oak Haven, the imperfect weather was just another sign that something was wrong.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Cooler than usual. But just look at those stars."

It was a clear, cloudless evening, and the sky was positively crowded with stars, like a glittering carpet almost close enough to touch.

"Yeah," Scarlett said. "We never get stars like this in San Francisco, too much light pollution. Hey, remember when we used to sit on the roof of your dad's store and stargaze?"

"And you'd make up rude stories about the constellations."

"Oooh, Orion," Scarlett said in a sexy baby voice, "what are you doing with that belt?"

Nate laughed. "Yep, that's what I remember . . ."

When the group reached the grove's edge, Delilah suggested they conjure some light. "Be careful," she advised. "Nothing complicated."

"You okay with little old me using magic, Del?" Scarlett asked.

"Not really," Del shot back. "But go on, surprise me."

Luna conjured an antique lantern. Delilah turned the palm of her hand into a flashlight while Scarlett cast a torch that filled the space around her with flickering fire.

"Scarlett!" Luna gasped. "What are you doing?"

Delilah shook her head. "You're so bad at this, Scar."

"What?! What'd I do now?"

"You're gonna bring open flame into a grove of ancient trees in the middle of autumn," replied Delilah. "That sound like a good idea to you? Sparks everywhere? Are you completely stupid or what?"

"There's no sparks," Scarlett said defensively, "look how clean this casting is! And I won't drop it in a pile of leaves, for crying out loud."

Delilah exhaled sharply and headed off into the grove alone.

" God, fine. " Scarlett extinguished her flame and turned to her younger sister for sympathy. "What is her problem tonight?"

"She was a little harsh." Luna conjured a lantern for her sister, identical to her own. "But, Scar, it's true that you can be careless with fire sometimes. Remember the time you decided to make s'mores in our bedroom? Hey, Delilah, wait for me!" Luna hurried after her older sister.

"Wow." Nate chuckled. "You set a fire in your bedroom?"

"I was six . I mean, seriously?! Do I ever get to live that down?"

He laughed. "Probably not, no."

***

The foursome made their way to a clearing in the middle of the oak grove. Moonlight filtered through the sparse branches, casting odd patterns on fallen leaves underfoot. A damp, earthy scent hung in the air, tinged with a trace of something sickly sweet, like overripe fruit. In the center of the clearing sat the great-granddaddy oak—the largest and eldest of all, the one that had greeted the founders of Oak Haven and had stood vigil over the town across all the centuries.

"Nate," Delilah said quietly, "I'm going to have to ask you to stay back here."

"Sure. You do your thing; I'm just here soaking up the atmosphere."

Scarlett handed him her lantern and followed her sisters.

The witches circled the massive tree, studying its thick, strong branches and pointy leaves. Nothing was obviously wrong, but all the women could feel, in their hearts, that absolutely nothing was right.

"Okay, you two," Luna whispered. "I'm going to have that chat."

She knelt before the old giant, gently caressing its knotty trunk. From the folds of her cloak, Luna removed an elaborately carved wooden box. Inside the box were nine small candles. She removed one candle and, with a small flame that ignited off the tip of her index finger, melted one end of the candle and attached it to the tree.

Scarlett nudged her elder sister in the ribs. "Open flame. Alert, alert: there is an open flame in the woods."

"She's allowed," Delilah whispered back.

"Why is Luna allowed?"

"Luna is allowed to use flame because Luna never set her bedroom on fire."

"Six. Years. Old."

"Can you two stop?" Luna called over her shoulder. "Sacred ritual and all that?"

Delilah muttered, "She started it . . ."

Luna repeated the melting gesture with the rest of the candles, creating a small, glowing circle on the side of the oak. As she did so, she spoke gently in some ritualistic dialect Scarlett didn't recognize.

"What's that language she's speaking?" she whispered to Delilah.

"I believe it's a hortikinetic language."

"You say a hortikinetic language, meaning there's more than one?"

Delilah made a face. "There's loads. What, do you think seaweed speaks the same language as cacti? Duh."

"Wow, a whole world of hortikinetic languages . . . I doubt I could learn a hortikinetic language if I lived a thousand years."

Delilah agreed. "That's our baby sister for you."

"So impressive. Fucking Gandalf up in here."

Luna turned. "Guys, shh! I mean it."

"Sorry . . ."

Returning to her incantation, Luna reached out very slowly, placing her palm in the center of the circle of candles. After a moment, the bark around her hand began to glow.

Scarlett and Delilah watched in amazement as the glowing light spread from the bark to Luna's hand, then crept throughout her entire body. Luna whispered, and nodded, and whispered some more. The glow receded as gracefully as it had arrived. She blew out the candles, carefully removed them from the bark, and placed them back in the box. Luna picked up her lantern and returned to her sisters.

"What'd it say?" asked Scarlett. "What's the news from Treetown?"

"To be clear, trees don't speak English. They communicate through feelings and images. This oak showed me a different oak on the grove's western side. Something about the condition of that western tree is bothering all the other trees in the grove. When I tried to understand why, the oak showed me a strange insect, like a small dragonfly. Its wings lit up like a firefly, but a crimson light, not yellow. The image came to me accompanied by a tremendous sense of concern. Which is to say, whatever's going on with that western tree, the other trees are really unhappy about it."

"Sounds like some kind of magical infestation," Delilah suggested.

"Felt that way, too." Luna nodded. "The red dragonflies are upsetting the rest of the grove. Come, let's find the tree they're all so troubled by."

The two sisters hurried to the west, but Scarlett paused. "Sure," she muttered. "Let's go find the tree that all the other trees are scared of. What could go wrong?" She turned, gave Nate a little whistle, and pointed westward.

He approached her. "Are you sure your sisters want me coming along?"

"Never mind what they want. What I don't want is for you to get lost in the middle of a magic oak grove in the middle of the night."

"I, too, do not want that."

"Right, so stick with me, kid."

They made their way through the darkness side by side. The farther west they walked, the more Scarlett sensed a certain unnameable wrongness in the air.

Distracted by this thought, she put a foot wrong on a fallen branch, which snapped under her weight, causing her to stumble. Nate reached out, wrapping his strong arm around her waist and righting her. He pulled her close, and she could smell the vague herbal scent of the hardware store's back room. His body radiated a gentle strength that warmed her, inside out.

It struck Scarlett suddenly that "Why Can't We Be Friends?" was a lousy song.

As they approached the far western edge of the grove, they confronted a peculiar and unsettling sight. One of the trees stood out starkly against the surrounding oaks, its oddness radiating across the grove like a malevolent beacon. Tiny, glowing dragonflies swarmed around, darted around the branches, leaving trails of red light in their wake. The tree seemed to pulse with an unnatural energy, the crimson glow beneath its bark writhing and undulating.

The air around the oak buzzed with the hum of the insects' wings—a disconcerting chorus that filled the otherwise silent grove. The insects' glowing bodies cast dancing shadows across the ground and nearby trees. These were no ordinary insects; they were magical parasites, feeding on the very essence of the oak and twisting and warping its power.

Luna had set up her candles around the tree's base; she was attempting the same hortikinetic conversation she'd had with the oak at the center of the grove. But this time, something was wrong. Her expression pinched and twisted, and her head tilted from side to side as though she was trying to understand the incomprehensible.

Nate stood close, one arm still around Scarlett's waist. "Is your sister okay?"

"None of this is okay . . ." A crease appeared across Scarlett's forehead, and her lips pressed together in a thin line. "I don't know, I've never seen her like this."

Luna emitted a low moan, which then rose in tone, octave by octave, becoming a yell and then a scream. Then, some invisible force sent her body flying backwards away from the tree and tossed her in a heap.

Scarlett and Delilah raced to Luna's side and knelt down beside her, saying, "Luna! Luna, are you all right?"

Dazed, Luna tried to sit up. "I'm all right . . . just a bit overwhelmed."

"Sweetie, what did you see?" Scarlett took Luna's hand and held it tight.

"Nothing that made any sense. It was just showing me nonsense images, and the harder I tried to piece the details together to make sense of things, the more confusing everything became. It was as if the tree wanted to communicate with me, but it couldn't put its thoughts together."

Nate sauntered over to the oak and rested his own hand on the trunk. "This tree is tripping balls."

"Who asked you?!" Delilah snapped.

"I'm just saying, you don't need to be a witch to feel the crazy coming off this thing."

"What are you even doing here? You have no business—"

"No, Del, stop," Luna said. "He's right. The tree is hallucinating."