Jaclyn of the Lantern by Amy Stilgenbauer
Her mother had insisted though. Being Harvest Queen meant scholarship money and besides, she had been Harvest Queen when she was nineteen. She had worn the sunflower crown and done all the waving required of her. Cerise wondered if her mother had been required to pose for the newspaper in a pig pen.
"Got the shot," the photographer finally said. Cerise breathed a sigh of relief and immediately started climbing out of the pen. Staying balanced while climbing in her heels took effort, but she managed it deftly. She would not give the boys the satisfaction of seeing her fall into the mud.
"Can I go now?" She asked the crew of lifestyle section reporters. They shrugged their assent.
"Make sure you're back for the ribbon pinning at 2," said the woman who handled the schedule of events. Cerise nodded to her and rushed off, ignoring the boys with the apples as she went.
It was hard to navigate the dusty dirt pathways of the county fair in high heels and a dress that made her look like an overly sexualized pioneer woman. She felt uncomfortable, both because she was sure that people were staring at her and because her shoes were sinking into the ground. Growing ever more frustrated with the whole ordeal, she made her way along, passing fried food stands and more animal pens than she could count. There were games and rides at the other end of the midway, but she wasn't interested in either. At least, not enough to make the trek in those particular shoes.
Across the way she saw the apple boys approaching again. One of them pointed in her direction and snickered. She looked for the nearest booth and ducked inside.
This turned out to be a horrible mistake. Immediately, she was confronted with what appeared to be a middle aged woman in the most stereotypical witch's garb the woman could find. Her face had been painted a pasty green and she wore a synthetic wig of grizzled black hair. A cardboard cutout of a black cat was pasted to the side of her table and the sign above it read "Grizelda's Spell Shop." Cerise groaned inwardly at the sight.
"Skeptical, my child?" The woman asked in a clearly affected voice meant to sound mysterious.
"A real witch wouldn't do any of this." Cerise said as she gestured at the set up.
"Wouldn't they?" The woman, presumably stage-named Grizelda, asked with a smile
"Of course not. They're just like everybody else." Cerise's mother had tried to instill this in her for her entire life. She didn't know that she believed it because she certainly felt different, but she also didn't look anything like what this woman was trying to convey.
"Maybe you are," said Grizelda, her affected voice gone and replaced by a more disillusioned tone. "I have a different sort of fish to fry."
Cerise watched her uncertainly, unsure of how to respond to that. "Different fish?"
Grizelda nodded. "Not all of us are pretty little harvest queens."
"This was my mother's idea," Cerise said quickly. She had to admit Grizelda was beginning to intrigue her. She knew her mother was like her, but she had encountered few others.
"I don't mean the title. I mean...who you are." She waved a hand over the glass orb which sat in the middle of her table. Her hands, also painted green, had large fake nails glued to the fingers.
"Who...I...?" Cerise gasped as an image appeared in the orb. It was of her, walking through a field, plants sprouted as she walked past. Just as quickly as the image had appeared it was gone. "How did you do that? My mother says..."
"We all have our own skills. I can't make flowers grow, after all."
"Neither can I," Cerise admitted. She had liked the image the orb had shown but it wasn't true. Her flower beds were average at best and it was her mother's skills that managed the family's farm, not her own.
"Not yet, but would you like to?"
"I..." Out of nowhere, she felt a chill. There was something wrong about what Grizelda was doing and she knew it, she just couldn't put her finger on what it was.
The green painted woman raised a single finger to signal that she should wait and then proceeded to rummage around under her table. "I have just the thing..."
"I think my mother could teach me," Cerise said awkwardly. She glanced at the exit and saw the apple boys were waiting for her. She wanted to leave, but not if it meant walking right into them again.
Grizelda placed a small vial of amber liquid on the table. "Nonsense, it will be easier just to drink this."
Now, Cerise felt especially uncomfortable. The one value her mother had repeated to her over and over again was that if there was an easy way to a magical skill, there was something dark and wrong about it. Part of her was certain that the vial couldn't contain anything more damaging than beer, but the rest of her wasn't eager to find out. "No, thank you," she said politely, turning to go.
"You're going to waste winter's time?" Grizelda asked fiercely, reaching out to take Cerise by the wrist. She twisted slightly and Cerise yelped in pain.
"Let go!" She demanded, but the woman did nothing of the sort. Cerise glared down at her hand, meaning to shock it if she could. It required a great deal of concentration, but she stared as hard and as deep as she was able.
Grizelda twisted harder, pulling Cerise's arm behind her back and out of her line of sight. “Nice try, but you don't have it in you.”
Cerise thought back to the apple she had made rot. She knew she had it in her. She closed her eyes and concentrated as Grizelda pressed the vial toward her lips. Squirming wasn't enough. She had to shock her. She had to make it work.
When it finally came through, the shock was tiny, but it was enough. Grizelda let go automatically, dropping the bottle. Cerise ran as fast as she could manage, not looking back once.
"The Underland will have the Harvest!" The woman called after her, but Cerise only cared about getting away.
*
Opaline Mooreland did not expect to see her usually poised daughter running toward her, out of breath and shoe-less, but that was the sight that confronted her. She was completely speechless.
"Mother," Cerise panted, gripping the rail of the nearest booth.
"What have you done to your hair?" Opaline asked, carefully removing some of the bobby pins that had been holding her braided bun together before the stray hair had begun flying every which way.
"Mother...it's important..."
"You have a ribbon ceremony in an hour. What in the world have you been--"
"She wouldn't let go!" Cerise shouted, cutting her mother off.
Instantly, Opaline's expression changed. Her brows creased together, concerned for something other than her daughter's appearance for now. "Who?"
"I...I don't know...the sign said...Grizelda's spell shop."
"Grizelda?" The name didn't ring any bells to Opaline, but she didn't like the sound of Cerise's story either way.
Cerise nodded. She felt a pit in her stomach begin to grow. Her mother had never been a fan of "spell shills." Cerise just knew she was going to be angry.
"Did she say anything else?" she asked. Her voice was tense and urgent, definitely not what Cerise had been expecting. "Did she try to get you to go with her?"
"She...she told me if I drank...something...it looked like beer..."
"You'd have new powers?" Reflexively, Opaline clenched a fist. Proper lady or not, she wanted to pummel this woman into the ground for going anywhere near her daughter.
Again, Cerise nodded sheepishly.
Opaline took in a deep breath and held it for a long moment before sighing. She looked relieved, but then she spoke sternly. "I don't want you going anywhere near those people. Ever again."
"I-"
"I'm serious, Cerise. Promise me."
"Why?" She was sure that she could keep such a promise, but she wanted to understand the urgency in her mother's voice.
For a long while, Opaline watched her daughter's face without saying a word. She seemed to be deciding if Cerise was ready to know something. "There is an old warning for our family regarding our...special abilities."
Cerise tried to keep her face unreada
"Death will take one of the harvest witches to the Underland," Opaline continued. "It will break our powers, the hold over growing things."
Cerise was still confused, but she didn't know what to say. "What does that mean? Take to the Underland?"
"I don't know for sure, but...I do know the Underland witches, they exist for decay. They hate any and all harvest witches, especially a line as solid as ours and if you eat anything they give you...that was a close call, Cerise. You must promise me you'll be more careful."
"Of course, Mama," she said quietly. She knew she had no plans of ever going near Grizelda's Spell Shop again.
10.
Jaclyn squinted at her mother, confused by her story. "The Underland? I don't understand..."
Cerise shook her head. "I didn't either, at the time, but I wasn't really paying attention."
"Was that the year we met?" her father asked, smirking inappropriately. "I think remember your pretty little corn queen dress."
"No," Cerise said quickly, sounding a little offended. "It was another year yet before I met you."
"I could have sworn it was the year you were the fair queen."
Jaclyn reached out for Butterscotch who had started pacing the floor in front of the couch. At the first sign of movement from Jaclyn toward her though, she immediately hopped back up into her owner's lap. She rubbed the cat's ears and listened to her purr as she puzzled over the last missing piece of information. Her mother and father had both shared their stories, but there was still one last thing she needed to know. "Just tell me what all this has to do with me," she said quietly.
Cerise and Jonathan frowned at one another. "There's still time," Jonathan began. "We have a whole month to prepare her...and maybe they won't come for her at all."
That didn't seem be enough to satisfy Cerise. "They'll come. A harvest witch whose father tricked death is an extra prize."
"But I'm not a harvest witch," Jaclyn protested. "All of my magic is inside."
"Because I purposefully never taught you anything," her mother snapped rather harshly. “I saw to it that you weren't something they wanted, but no, your father has to go and give you the iron anyway.” Jaclyn moved back from her almost instinctively frightened by the vitriol in her voice. Cerise sighed when she noticed. "I'm sorry, Jaclyn, it's just...I have been dreading this day..."
"Maybe if you told me why they wanted me..."
Cerise closed her eyes for a long moment. When she finally opened them, she looked to Jonathan and waited for him to nod before she continued. "You could walk between the veils if you wanted to," she admitted. Her face looked pained, almost as though the words hurt her to say.
It took Jaclyn a long while to digest that information. Since she was a little girl, she knew she only saw her father in October because he was required to spend the rest of the year in the shadow world between the living and dead. Though it might be a more unique separation than her friends may have had from their parents, she had accepted this as fact. More than one school counselor had tried to convince her that she was making things up, but she had been resolute. This revelation changed everything.
She stared at her parents, glassy eyed, stroking Butterscotch's fur. Her mind, whirling, completely disregarded their worried expressions. Minutes passed. Then slowly Jaclyn spoke again, "You mean, I could have seen my father more than once a year?" Her voice was calm and steady, but at the edges a tense aggression was trying to force its way through.
"In a manner of speaking, yes," her mother admitted.
Jaclyn didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Keeping this from her seemed cruel. "And you didn't tell me?"
"I was trying to protect you."
Then she looked to her father. He was fiddling with the ribbons on the box of iron nervously. "Didn't you want to see me?" She asked him, a bit more plaintively.
"No," he said immediately.
That had come as a surprise. Her parents, if nothing else, had always made her feel loved despite the complicated situation that was their lives. "No?"
He shook his head. "It's not...that I didn't want you, faerie princess, it's just...if you ate anything there, anything at all, you would never be able to come back." Cerise placed her hand on his shoulder in a rare gesture of solidarity. He glanced at her and smiled sadly. "Your mother and I figured...that was what they wanted...for you to visit...and never leave."
"They wanted to steal you. It was the prophecy," Cerise added, still holding tightly to Jonathan's shoulder. "I wouldn't have been able to bear it."
With another glance back at Cerise, her father stepped forward and handed her the box of iron, his Halloween present to her, the most ominous of them all. "Take this. I don't need it anymore. They're going to try something this year to trick you, I just know it and...I want you to be prepared."
Hesitantly, Jaclyn took the box and peeled off the wrapping. Inside was a simple bar of iron. When she touched it, a cool chill ran through her. She noticed that her mother was crying and she began to understand. Not only did taking this iron mean accepting her father's fate as her own, but it also meant that he was no longer protected. "I couldn't..." She said, trying to push it back toward him, but it was too late. He faded from view almost immediately.
Her mother looked like a shell. It was only then that Jaclyn knew how much she truly did love him after all.
11.
The atmosphere in the tea shop grew cold. "How do you know who I am?" The young man asked, eying the death card as if he wanted it to burst into flames.
"I'm going to need to see your hands," she said, not looking at him, but rather rooting in a drawer. "Palms up please."
He offered them without question. Not a second later, Jaclyn had swiftly set the bar of cold iron across them. He narrowed his eyes toward her, but she had no idea what the expression was meant to convey.
"You really didn't see that coming?" She asked in a tone that was perhaps too mocking.
His eyes narrowed further. She could feel the barbs of rage zeroed in on her. "Apple," he croaked, his face contorting into a painful wince.
"Oh, so you can speak? Father made it seem like...you do remember my father, don't you?"
"Tree..." He forced out. Jaclyn could see the strain of effort in every muscle of the young man's face.
"You should have worn your hood. I can tell how much you're hurting right now." Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice that sounded an awful lot like her mother's was telling her to be careful, that she was acting far too boldly, but she enjoyed the rush. She wanted to be bold. "You want me to take it off?"
"Yes..."The voice pleaded inside her mind just the way her father had described it.
"Why should I?"
"I'll make you a deal."
"And that went so well for my father..." She stood up and paced in a circle around the table. The young man tried to watch her, but could no longer move his eyes. "I think you'll find the I have a bit more of my mother in me."
Though she expected some sort of recognition or response, none came, so she continued. "Don't get me wrong, I love my father, but he's just a man, a strange sort of man, I'll grant you that, but just a man. My mother, however, she's powerful."
"So it's power you want?" The voice in her mind sounded more silky than it had before. It was no longer the voice of a pretend young man; it was slick, like oil over water.
"Maybe," Jaclyn admitted honestly. She eyed the young man and slowly a smirk began to grow across her face. She knew he was a shapeshifter and only looked this way because he thought it would be pleasing to her. If only he had anticipated what kind of desire Jaclyn truly harbored inside. "But it's not her power that I want. Abundance, Fruitfulness, making things grow, that's never really been in me. She didn't want it to be."
"Then what sort of power do you want?" The desperation showed, even in the oily deal-making voice. Jaclyn knew he wante
"Yours."
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
You can find her online at https://amystilgenbauer.wordpress.com/ and on twitter @Rosainverno
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And, be sure to read the next novelette in the Season of the Witch series: Bethania's Broomsticks