Chapter 14

"Daphne? Shari?"I called, slamming the car door shut with a lot more force than necessary. I started at the sound, my nerves frayed, and hurried up the rest of the driveway to the little path in front of the witch hat house.

"Misty? Is that you?" Daphne's voice answered from the veranda.

Oh thank the Green Mother they were home. My heart leapt as I jumped on the first porch step, and then the dream catchers hanging from the eaves started to thrash. The dangling feathers whizzed, the bells chimed frantically, and two chairs screeched across the floorboards as two women hurled themselves upright.

I'd backed off the step by the time they rushed to the porch railing and into view. Shari reached up to the nearest dream catcher to examine its twirling, much slower now that I was no longer on the porch step.

"What's going on, dear?" Daphne asked, deep blue eyes wide with concern. While her shawl had slipped from her slender shoulders, she made no move to pluck it up, nor tighten it against her body by crossing her arms over her chest. It was a defensive posture most adopted when facing something difficult or foreign, and my heart leapt that she wasn't closing herself off to me.

"I-I need Flora," I said, keeping the whimper from my voice. Thistle thorns, I hated how scared I was. How vulnerable I felt all alone out here. How angry I was knowing that I'd only done this to myself. I needed grace and mercy right now, and I didn't deserve any of it. But I had to hope.

"You don't have her number to call her," Shari said shrewdly. Though there was no judgment in her voice, I felt like a gavel had thundered against a sound block all the same.

She released the dream catcher and pitched over the railing, shouting, "Ame! We're going to Flora's!"

Daphne gave me a small smile, as if apologizing for Shari, and now plucked up her shawl. "You'll follow us in your car," she instructed. "Just let me grab a few things. It'll only take a minute. Shari, let's do our ‘leaving the house' routine."

I returned to my car to wait, squeezing and resqueezing the steering wheel. When the two women emerged from the house a few minutes later, Daphne pausing to lock the door while Shari left an open tin of cat foot on the top step of the porch, I started up the car and circled it around.

The drive to Flora's was longer than I would have liked, given how I wanted immediate treatment, but on an unhurried day, it would've been a pleasant drive through the woods and fields. When we arrived, I was shocked to discover the garden gnome living in a full-sized house in the middle of nowhere, her little plot of land completely surrounded by shorn fields on both sides of the road. You could see for miles in either direction, the land gently undulating away to a hazy fringe of forest on the horizon. A faraway water tower punctuated the fringe and powerlines followed the road, the only signs that civilization wasn't forgotten out here.

The garden gnome's house was a short distance from the road, just two cars' length, so we parked in tandem and hurried towards the garden gate. I assumed her property was surrounded by a white picket fence, given the gate, but it was so thickly planted with sunflowers that it was impossible to see the fence or anything of the house except its gabled roof.

And like the dream catchers, the moment I neared the garden gnome's gate, I set off a hidden proximity alarm that had the sunflowers' heads turning into the snapping maws of lions. Easily fourteen feet in height, these leonine sunflowers bowed their stalks to lunge after me, spade-shaped leaves flapping madly like swiping paws.

"Flora," Daphne called, her voice surprisingly calm as she dodged snarling sunflowers. "It's us, dear. Daphne and Shari."

"My prairie-dog-riding fanny you're not!" the garden gnome bellowed. "Not with the way my sunlions are acting. You're imposters! Get back, for I'm far worse than their bite!"

"It's me, Flora," I shouted back. "I'm sick. I need your help."

"Misty?"

There was a rustling, a smacking of leaves, and the garden gnome rode up to the gate on the back of a brown rabbit the size of a dog.

"Hey there, Poppy," Shari said, producing an apple from her bag and offering it to the rabbit.

"She's a Flemish giant," Daphne explained, catching sight of my shocked expression. "They can get upwards of thirty pounds."

Flora, who gripped one of the giant rabbit's ears in each hand like reins, released her hold and scrambled up until she was standing on the rabbit's head. Unperturbed, Poppy settled on her haunches to munch on the apple as Flora examined me with squinting eyes.

"What have you gotten yourself into, cider witch?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I got stung by a bee, at least, I think that's what got me, and now this." I shucked the bandage, revealing the purple-ringed blister that was now tracking purple lines like vines in an outward radius. It looked like I had a passionflower tattoo on my arm.

"Yuck," Flora said, grimacing. "What else?"

"I think my core's contaminated." I hadn't said the word aloud yet, though I'd thought them plenty, and with the admission came a fresh wave of fearful tears.

I fought to remain composed, to relay my findings and suspicions in a calm and professional manner, but all I could think about was how I was failing my family and how alone I was and that I didn't want to die as a forest monster with fiery arrows sticking out of my body.

Daphne and Shari stood there quietly, offering solidarity in their nearness. Flora barked something at her sunlions, turning them back into docile sunflowers, and wrestled open the gate. Poppy stayed inside on the brick path, munching away, as Flora padded closer.

"Did you try to heal yourself with an uncontaminated source?" she asked.

Unable to form words, I simply nodded yes.

"And it went to your core first, not the wounds on your arm and hand?"

I nodded again.

"But you don't feel sick, right? At least, not yet?"

Another nod.

"What was your source?"

I pulled the amazonite pendant from my pocket. The garden gnome gasped at the size and quality of the blue-green stone. "And it was fully charged?" she blurted.

A fresh wave of tears sprang forth at my own stupidity, for letting the parasite ring drain it all away. Knowing the garden gnome would discover that secret eventually, I unbounded my wounded hand and showed her the ring. The new rainbow tourmaline was already glowing, sucking away my leaking magic.

The garden gnome shook her head, not understanding. Not many would, for it was an arcane practice and the rings so closely resembled normal jewelry that it took a special kind of crystallographer or witch to recognized what they were.

"Parasite ring," I forced out between the sobs.

The garden gnome's eyes widened with recognition.

"A what?" Daphne asked.

"It means she's not just a cider witch," the gnome said gravely. Cautiously.

"She's still our friend," Shari said firmly.

Daphne offered me a soft, kind smile. "A woman's past is her own for her to share when and if she likes. We know you now, Misty Fields, and what Shari says is true. You're our friend, and we'll help however we can." She gave the garden gnome a sharp look. "Right, Flora?"

Flora Ironweed gave me a narrow-eyed look, sniffed, then jerked her thumb. "Head around to the back. Avoid the sunflowers. Be right with you, witch."