Light as a Feather
BY LINDSEY JAMES
The girls wait, stifling their giggles, until the square of light outside the attic window fades a color that defies naming and the one at the bottom of the stairs goes dark.
“It’s time.” Rochelle’s voice is muted. Exultant.
Shoving aside their sleeping bags, the girls rummage in duffels, in backpacks, in pockets, pulling out wilted stems of lavender, of nettles, of yarrow. Only Allie has found sage, a curlicue of bark dangling where the stem snapped. Tricia has rosemary. For memories, she says. Betsy hangs back, unwilling to uncup her hands.
“Dandelions?”
“They’re medicinal.” A belated sunset flames her face. “You know—like dandelion wine?”
Tension expands between them, sticky in the late-summer air. Rochelle releases it with a quick nod and turns to Krista, who pulls a french vanilla candle and a dogeared matchbook from her bag. Accepting the offer solemnly, Rochelle slides a sheet of paper with a purple-crayoned pentagram from under her rug, places the candle in its center, and motions them all into a kneeling circle.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today–” Tricia pitches her voice low. The girls giggle, but Rochelle glares them back to silence.
Usually she is the least of them, their shadowy, shabby afterthought, with her home-cut hair and her brother’s hand-me-down t-shirts and her small voice upturning the ends of sentences. Tonight, though, backlit by her bedside nightlight, emboldened by the illicit mystery of the ritual, Allie thinks she looks otherworldly. Regal, even. Chill bumps rise on her forearms.
The first two matches tear without lighting. The third sputters into a brief flame that licks the candlewick to life.
“First, we bring our offerings to the fire.”
No one giggles now. One by one, they pass their stems through the flame. The lavender in Sami’s hand crackles and sparks blue. Swallowing a yelp, she drops it and smothers it with the heel of her hand.
A breeze blows through the window, warm breath haunting the backs of their necks. “There are powers here,” Rochelle says. “Forces too strong for us to imagine.”
Is the tingle in her feet from kneeling or those forces? Allie can’t tell. The girls nudge closer, tightening the circle until their shoulders kiss.
“If any of you are unbelievers, you’ll have to leave the room. Doubt will disturb the vibrations. The ritual will fail.” Rochelle’s eyes, surveying each of them in turn, flicker with reflected flame. No one stirs to leave.
“Now. Who among us is a true believer?” Rochelle asks.
“I am.”
Allie’s as shocked as the rest of them to hear her own voice, ringing like it knows something. It takes a beat for her brain to catch up, spilling pieces of memory, parts of the magicless trick Rochelle is describing:
The moments of just-before—a pause before the elongated creak of the floorboard he never bothers to step around/ the swirl of an ice cube in whiskey before it clinks the glass/ the rub of skin on metal before the knob swivels in its socket—each one a spark of lightning on the horizon.
The putty-stretched way that time goes elastic and floods her with power—to muscle shut her eyelids; to work her way down, inch by inch turning her skin to stone; to snip the link between her body-self and soul-self; to float herself free, above and away—before the door snicks closed, before his smoky breath clogs her throat, before his rough-callused thumbs snag the sheet.
Before the storm makes landfall.
Allie swallows hard and shakes away the shards prickling under her skin. The circle fills with hunched stillness.
Krista brushes tentative fingers across Rochelle’s forearm. “We need you to tell us what to do, anyway.”
A knothole presses into Allie’s shoulder when she stretches out. She shifts off of it, crosses her arms across her chest, and closes her eyes. There’s a shush as the girls scootch back into their circle.
Their two-fingered touches surround her, cupping her gently as she goes through the familiar motions, battening down the hatches.
Light as a feather, stiff as a board—
This time there is no tether of fear to unknot. Their voices lap across her toes, build and crest and break, floating her like a raft.
Light as a feather, stiff as a board—
She hears the soft-gasped catch breaths between repetitions, the almost-synchronicity of their whispers beating softly against a receding shore.
Light as a feather, stiff as a board—
Yes, Allie thinks, letting herself lift out of her body, watching her circle of friends as if from above. Yes, she can believe in this, in the clean tingle of their hope and anticipation. She can believe, after all, that in their fingertips are sparks of untapped magic.
