Slate and Earth Chapter 2

II. Esther

In all her years, Esther Keeling hadn’t lived for anything quite like she did for a thunderstorm. It was a rare thing in the Pacific Northwest for the weather to get it up enough for a truly exceptional, chill-the-forest, rattle-the-rafters thunderstorm.

When Esther was a girl, she spent drizzly afternoons sprawled on the window seat in the front room of her mother’s pristine Victorian praying for a storm. She watched the mist settle on the windowpane and longed for a crack of thunder to shake the glass in its frame. She collected static in her hips and the little bones inside her wrists, the ache of an AM frequency reserved specially for her.

Once the lightning hit, it came like magic striking through her heart.

Now, Esther was an old woman who had curated a home to accentuate the rain. She left her windows open, panes jammed so high in the frames she almost doubted she’d ever get them closed again (but for the fact that she always, every time, did). Water collected in the cast iron pan she left to cool on the sill, in the vases of dead flowers she’d disregarded. It danced along her rose bushes and into the lining of her kitchen sink. There were tiny silver bells in her cottage rafters, antique rings in antique ceramic coasters, and every roll of thunder was a song.

All of this is to say that, when this particular storm rolled in it brought something more than thunder through Esther’s cottage window.

The girl crashed over the kitchen sink, soaking wet and cracking three of Esther’s mismatched china plates on her way down. Esther stood in the little crooked doorway between the kitchen and the bathroom, her face raw and freshly scrubbed, her hair pale and grey and wrapped into a braid that draped her shoulder. Upon seeing the girl crumpled on the mat in front of her kitchen sink, the first thing Esther felt was disappointment, swiftly followed by a deep and looming sense of dread.

Esther strode across the kitchen and hauled the girl up by the arm. “You are not supposed to be here,” she hissed.

The girl teetered on her feet. She stared at Esther, her eyes glassy and dull. More a woman than a girl, up close, though it didn’t tend to make a large difference for someone as old as Esther.

Esther pushed her. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Ana,” she said, softly, and then her skin went hot as coals and Esther drew her hand away with a hiss.

Rain pattered the windowsill, warped from years of exposure. The forest drew a breath and held it, static crackling in Esther’s ears. Outside, behind the mist, something stirred.

Esther watched the girl, this impossible girl, with rain dripping from the frayed strands of hair escaped from her braid and the frenzied flush that crept along her nose. “How did you come here?”

“I ran,” she said, and lost her knees from under her.

Esther caught her by the elbows. Ana’s skin seared her palms but she gritted her teeth and eased the girl to the floor. Humans weren’t meant to enter the forest. The veil had been constructed, woven of Esther’s curious nature and Sebastian’s careful skepticism, to keep them from the heart that pumped life and energy and magic, magic, magic through the fibers that held it all together.

Esther knelt on the kitchen mat. Blisters rose on her palms but she brushed a strand of hair from Ana’s forehead. Her heart thrummed inside her chest. Panic, panic, panic. “Come now,” she murmured. “It’s time for you to leave.”

Ana jerked, her fingers tightening around Esther’s forearm, her eyes wide. “Wrong, wrong,” she insisted. “Something is wrong with it.”

The girl’s fingerprints singed the hair from Esther’s arm. Her skin had gone old and taut like leather, tanned from long days in the garden. She had marks and scars and bruises; it made no difference to her. But Esther had been touched before, by human and other alike, and never had she felt it burn.

Ana drew Esther’s hand to the curve of her womb. In a moment, the earth went cold. Rain swept through the kitchen window and settled a chill into Esther’s bones. She longed for a sweater, one of the old chunky things she’s knitted a decade ago when she’d supposed it was time to take up knitting. She could not let the girl go.

“He can’t have it,” Ana whispered, watery eyes locked on Esther. “My little human. Don’t let him take it.”

Sweat pricked along the girl’s brow; a fever was coming. The forest had let her in, but not presumably without cost. Esther squared her shoulders and hauled the girl to her feet. She led her across the room to the old, overstuffed couch that lived beneath the wide bay window that looked on the garden. No matter what the forest had allowed, this girl did not belong here. But there was no removing her like this.

Esther pulled a thick, well worn quilt from the back of the sofa and draped it over Ana and the child inside her womb. A pair of candles stood on the end table. Esther breathed a flame into the wicks and held a sprig of lavender to burn between them. She smudged the ash into Ana’s forehead.

When Esther was a girl she bargained a bit of magic from a pair of silver spoons taken from her mother’s hope chest. She’d wanted to dissuade the advances of a particular black haired boy who had started following her home. He’d mistaken removing her school bag and offering her tender golden chains from his mother’s jewelry box as courting. Esther had buried her mother’s silver at a cross in the dirt beneath the porch. Four days later, the boy fell from a bridge and drowned in the Willamette. Later, Esher would learn that it had been Sophie English - a girl two years above her - who had shoved the boy over the bridge after he’d decided to stick a hand up her skirt without her permission.

Magic did not always come the way you asked, but it listened.

Now, beneath the pressure of Esther’s fingertips, Ana shuddered. Her eyes closed and she slept. The smell of burn lavender was sharp between them. It lingered in Esther’s hair. She tucked a stray silver strand back into her braid and stood, knees creaking. She was too old to keep a girl so young in her home.

Esther eased back on her heels and smoothed Ana’s hair away from her neck. It had all but come undone, a tangle of red splayed over Esther’s throw pillows. Beneath it, the skin that curved the base of her ear had started to turn grey.

Outside the cottage, beyond the mist and rain and rolling thunder, the King of the Forest stirred. The trees shuddered. He scraped the earth with his hooves. Esther held her breath, waited for the reverberations of his footfalls to dissipate like ripples in water. He passed on to another part of the forest. Hands clasped in front of her, pressed to her forehead, Esther whispered her words beneath her breath.

It had taken a remarkable magic to steal this girl through the veil. Despite the curiosity that welled in the pit of her stomach - how could she be here, who had called her, what of the child being built inside her? - it was imperative that she return her lest the forest demand balance.

Esther stood, creaking, and took the inherited grimoire from its place beneath the coffee table. Then, she set to work.