“Get up!” I remember the old woman saying this because those were the two most frightening words I had ever heard in my life. They were spat out and hissed and gargled and loud and quiet. They had that creepy, old lady, bad witch tone to them, like you might here in the movies, so of course I complied. I remember thinking to myself then, that I would do anything in this world not to hear those poisonous, sour words again.
I looked down, and there next to my feet was Sir James Andrew Davis, smiling up at me as if the enormous hand of the gargantuan son wasn’t shoving his entire body to the ground from his shoulder.
“Don’t you worry about me Sunset. I’m comfy right here. It’s kinda nice to take a load of.” He was almost convincing me of his relaxed attitude, but there was an edge to the end of each of the words uttered. As if he were trying to suppress a grunt of pain. He was hurting.
“What do you want?” I know that I was only brave enough to ask this because, wickedly, Jem’s pain was my fuel.
“We want to see you do your little parlor trick, like you did before. Only this time, we want to film it. We want to show the world how special you are, Ivy. You’ll be a star, Deary.”
“But you don’t actually want to help me. I’m certain of that. What are you actually up to, Hag?”
“Well, since you asked so nicely, really all we want is a successful business practice. Isn’t that right, Damian?”
“Yes, mother. That’s right mother… And to get my children back.”
“So you want to sell me? How could you even do that?”
“Everything is for sale, Deary. A smart girl like you should know that.”
“What do you want Jimmy for then?”
“Oh, nothing really. Just motivation.”
“I understand. Well… a deal’s a deal. I do your thing, but first you have to release Jimmy.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I blast you. Plain and simple. No more successful business practice, no more grandkids, no more…you.”
‘Alright. Alright, Deary. Calm your jets. We’ll let him go. But go stand in the circle please.”
“Let him go.” I went over to stand in the circle.
“Let him go, Damian.”
“Sunset, what are you doing?” That was the last thing I heard from him before Damian ungently hoisted him up and pushed him out of the little nook of the forest where my life became terrible.
I knew that I had to do it. He had to be safe and maybe he could get help.
The next thing I knew, the cameras were on me, and I was performing the most sacred art on this Earth for corporate America. The most impure society. It felt dirty. Slimy. Like scuzz I would never be able to clean off, but my thoughts were still pure and the spirits respected me. And I respected them. And the lofted me in the air, the spinning golden light of a brand new star around me. I became the center of another planet. My hair, flowing in every direction became my atmosphere as every pore of my body swelled, invisibly with electricity. I was part of the magic of the Earth. I was every rock and animal and forest and sunset. Something I knew from my very core was that the only thing that I wasn’t was those black, three-legged spiders that glinted their eyes back at me, recording my every move to sell to the troubled, darker souls of our world. I was grateful that I wasn’t the spiders. Because it would feel like I could be for a while.
I drifted down, like a feather coming back to Earth. My skin, still tingling along the current of electric veins.
Cameras were clicked off. And the deed was done. I sold the Earth’s most precious secret gift to save my distraction. Someone, I could now definitively say that I loved.
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“Wow, Grandma! That’s a lot of bad stuff that happened in a short amount of time.”
“Sure is.”
“Is that really what magic feels like?”
“Well, I explained it to the best of my abilities, but nothing really does justice to feeling it.”
“Will I ever feel it?”
“If I ever get to the end my story, definitely, Mia. But we must relive the past before we can trudge on into the future. That way, even though most things repeat anyway, we can try not to make the same mistakes twice.”
“So that means I will never feel it?”
“Don’t be smart, Mia. It’s too becoming. Your grandfather would be proud.”
“You bet I would. And at this rate, she’s right, Sunset. She’ll never hear the end of your story.”