Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Our breath frosted upon entering the attic, swirling like smoke in the moonbeams slanting in from the vents. Inside the protection barrier I'd erected seemingly ages ago, the mirror shimmered with its opalescent waterfall effect.

Hiking up their skirts or trousers, the Hawthorne witches high-stepped over the barrier and arranged themselves in an arc around the front of the mirror. Grandmother snapped her fingers at me. "You too, Meadow. This will take nine of us."

I hastily joined them.

"We must be quick," Grandmother told us. "This is not the same as summoning a demon, where a door opens and shuts between our world and the next as fast as a snap of your fingers. This is the equivalent of keeping a window open in a tornado for an indeterminant amount of time. The strain will be intense, and it will weaken us. So, the faster we accomplish this, the better for everyone."

Removing the clip from her belt, she pooled the chain of the censer into her palm and flicked open the golden sphere to reveal the Hawthorne ember she'd removed from the hearth. Keeping it in the bowl of the censer, she placed the ember on the floor in front of the mirror, little tendrils of heat rising to lick against the bottom of the mirror, though not hot enough to catch.

Aunt Hyacinth, Uncle Badger, and Otter were the first to summon their magic. The hearth ember glowed green, offering its own magic for them to draw upon. Emerald green threads grew from their fingertips like thin whips and wound around the wood we had painstakingly divided and lacquered. When each piece was encircled, they lifted from the floor at a silent command and shuttled into place to create a thick frame around the mirror.

"Cherry, rowan, and oaken wood

Bind with this ash, make strong and good."

The edges where the rooting lacquer had been applied blazed yellow, liquifying into glue and fusing together. The blackberry lily rhizomes, powdered down, acted like they had in my protection barrier, creating a network of contact points to create a robust and firm seal.

"Become as one, your seams no more.

Hold fast and true this mirrored door."

Green crackles of electricity burst from the seams between the various pieces of wood, scattering across the rest of the frame like a lightning-struck spiderweb.

Aunt Hyacinth, Uncle Badger, and Otter repeated the incantation, that green spiderweb pulsing in time with the cadence of their words, the wood of the makeshift frame tightening and fusing as they bonded on a cellular level.

Mom, Dad, and Aunt Peony were up next, the hearth ember reinvigorating its glow at their approach. They all wore their foraging bags across their chests because we didn't have bandoliers for potions, something Aunt Eranthis declared she would rectify immediately once we were all safely back at the manor. All three of them extracted willow branches and Mason jars from their bags, each filled with a different potion, and poured their magic into them. Aunt Peony's glowed purple and took on the consistency of runny honey, and it clung to the end of the willow branch she dipped into it. Mom's was blue and thin like acetone; Dad's a yellow-green just like his magic and almost vaporish, though it stuck to the willow branch in his hand easily enough.

The three of them stepped forward and began inscribing runes onto the shimmering surface of the mirror. No sooner was the rune completed did the "ink" of the potion absorb into the mirror, the rune vanishing from sight. This seemed to be expected, since no one panicked. Each witch boldly declared a different spell as they wrote, all the chanting echoing off the arched ceiling like someone had trapped a thunderstorm inside. It was now impossible to determine one spell from the next, but the witches knew their business and didn't falter. From the snatches of incantations I heard, the rune-inscribers were layering the spells to give the connection that would be established strength, clarity, and integrity.

Their runes complete and their potions spent, it was time for them to join the other three witches in a circle of six and the remaining Hawthornes—me, Aunt Eranthis, and Grandmother—to bind the portal's echo to the mirror. That kind of weaving magic was beyond my skill set, despite my success with the Hunting Spell, which in truth had been more or less bludgeoned together, and I knew my role was just to be a power source. It was Aunt Eranthis, her magic as nimble as her sewing needle, who would do the true fastening, Grandmother supporting and me merely stabilizing their work.

At a word from Grandmother, the red thread of the portal's echo appeared in front of the mirror. It had been pulled from its origin in the forest, bending like the string of a bow, and my aunt hurried to tack it to the center of the shimmering mirror. Then she began to weave.

The portal thread wound from the center of the mirror to the ornate frame like it was a hoop loom. Grandmother began to chant:

"Silk of the spider, silk of the worm,

Bind and weave and be held firm,"

then indicated that I should take over the incantation as she helped Aunt Eranthis. At the foot of the mirror, the Hawthorne hearth ember burned brighter still. As the two women tacked and looped and strung the strand over the frame and the mirror, the spell I uttered illuminated every contact point, soldering it in place.

Around us, the remaining six Hawthorne witches formed a circle, hands linked, their magic feeding into the mirror as they began the summoning chant in a low droning tone.

The shimmering waterfall surface of the mirror intensified to a blinding brilliance, its opalescent translucency beginning to clear like cumulonimbus clouds from the sky.

We'd only tacked a fourth of the mirror when I felt a tension in my magic, of the portal's echo thread resisting our work. The frame began to creak as the tension of the red thread caused it to bow inward.

"Grandmother," I warned.

"Louder, everyone!" was her command.

The six witches circling us increased their droning chant until the attic sounded like the insides of a beehive in the height of summer. I concentrated on all the tack points, stabilizing their connections while simultaneously trying to straighten out the mirror from warping.

The wood started to groan.

"Mother," Mom gasped.

"Hold on!"

Aunt Eranthis and Grandmother's fingers practically flew over the mirror, weaving the portal thread into the intricacies of the mirror's frame and back into its shimmering surface. I fought to keep up, soldering everything in place as my magical oak tree core blazed with golden-green light.

"No!" Aunt Eranthis wailed suddenly, yanking free her last tack.

"Eranthis," Grandmother snapped, "what are you—"

"Let it go," she cried, whirling around to face me. I saw my reflection in her glasses, golden-green power radiating like twin suns on my hands and blazing like sleeves of rippling flame up to my shoulders. "It's going to snap, Meadow. Let it all go now or Marten is lost!"

With a panicked cry, I snuffed out my magic and stumbled back.

Twang. Twang. Twang-twang-twang went the portal thread as it popped loose of its holdings and vanished from sight.

The mirror shuddered, snapping and creaking like an old house on the verge of collapse as it returned to its original shape. Uncle Badger rushed forward with glowing brown-green hands to assess the damage.

Meanwhile, Aunt Eranthis was bent over, hands on her knees, her glasses held pinched between two fingers as she fought for breath. With a start, I realized the rest of my family was doing the same. I'd never seen them so weakened before. Then again, it wasn't like contacting a demon in the Unseelie Court was a daily occurrence. I was panting a little, more from the anticipation than anything else, and Grandmother stood ramrod straight nearby, obviously nearing the end of her patience by the way her fingernails dug into her trouser legs as she waited for Aunt Eranthis to collect herself.

"The frame won't hold if we do that again," Uncle Badger informed quietly, coming away from the mirror. He'd retrieved the censer with the hearth ember too, the little coal looking somewhat pitiful with its muted glow.

"Why did you stop?" Grandmother finally demanded of her niece. She snatched the ember from Uncle Badger and gave it a magical boost.

"You couldn't feel it?" Aunt Eranthis answered, giving Grandmother an incredulous look. "The portal thread was fraying under our hands!"

"Meadow was tacking it perfectly."

"That has nothing to do with it—it was fraying. It's too thin. The hour it is to disappear is imminent, and the strain of drawing it here from its origin point is putting too much stress on it." She shook her head. "It'll snap if we do that again. We… we must do this on site."

Grandmother stiffened, but it was Mom who verbally protested. "Meadow can't go outside the protection of the hearth!"

"But it takes nine witches to do this spell," Aunt Eranthis said miserably.

"Is there any way we can pare it down?" I asked. "Take out something that's not needed, that doesn't require magic to activate?"

"Not unless we want an In-Between creature slipping through or another demon seizing hold of our connection," Dad said grimly. "We're getting Marten back, not releasing an eldritch being on the world."

Grandmother released an agitated growl from the back of her throat, realizing there was nothing to be done, and sliced her hand through the air. I felt the spells of my house arrest disappear. "Take the mirror," she barked. "We're going into the woods."