Flock Read online

  Jack slid in next to Jinky, and I took the spot beside Penny.

  “That was an Asking Fire to remember,” I said, slipping a menu out of the tabletop holder.

  “I’ll say,” Penny said, biting her lips back to keep from smiling.

  I eyeballed her, dropping my menu; I already knew I was going to get apple pie à la mode. “Spill.”

  “I’m going to the dance,” Penny said.

  I couldn’t help it; my eyes flickered to the front of the restaurant, where Abby was still, for all appearances, happy as could be. “Who?”

  “Who do you think?” she said, as if it was a dumb question.

  “Uh.” Again my gaze roamed. “Does it start with an M?”

  She finally unleashed the smile she’d had such a hard time controlling.

  “Then where is he?”

  “He took off. He wasn’t feeling good. I, on the other hand, feel great.” Penny said. Her smile had broadened; she’d have marionette lines if she didn’t dial it down soon.

  Jack and Jinky were discussing burger toppings. He recommended pepper jack to Jinky, who was firm in her conviction that Americans made cheese about as well as they made beer.

  I took advantage of the moment to whisper to Penny, “So when did this happen?”

  “On the dash for the parking lot through the pouring rain.” She lowered her voice and turned her head to my ear. “It was the fire; I’m sure of it. He said I hadn’t turned ugly like the others.”

  Jack and I hadn’t acted ugly, either, but it wasn’t like I needed affirmation from Marik.

  “We need to come up with a few dresses by next Saturday,” Penny continued.

  “A few?” A couple meant two, so a few was more than that.

  Penny motioned across the table with her head. “Jinky needs one.”

  “I need one what?” Jinky asked.

  “Homecoming dress,” Penny said.

  “Oh. Cool. Who are you going with?” I asked Jinky.

  “It’s a surprise,” Penny said with a lift of her shoulders.

  So this evening was getting weirder and weirder.

  “Let’s check out that vintage clothing store in Walden,” Penny continued. “They have some nice stuff.”

  “I’m not wearing some dorky ball gown,” Jinky said.

  I sighed with relief. The world was not off its axis and careening through space. Though there was an alternate realm that I was pretty sure would like to see us roll.

  Arriving home, I realized I’d been mistaken in thinking all was temporarily OK with the world. I found my mom pacing the kitchen floor with a distraught Leira in her arms. According to my mom, Leira had been fussy all evening and hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Stanley had already been on the phone twice with the doctor. They were in wait-and-see mode for now, but I noticed an overstuffed diaper bag at the back door.

  I offered to give my mom a break while she ran out to the pharmacy for soy formula, which the doctor had suggested they try. Once I had Leira settled into her reclining rocker and she had calmed enough for her sobs to transition into a kind of blubbery hiccup, Stanley snuck off to his office to Google WebMD. Again.

  Alone with Leira, I placed a hand on her birdlike chest. Her heartbeat was more fluttering than pounding, and her tissue-thin skin felt as dry as onion skin.

  “Hang in there, sister,” I said. “We’ll get this figured out; we’ll get it all figured out.”

  Leira looked up at me with her more-purple-than-blue eyes. Tears clung to her lashes and her thin bottom lip trembled. In moments like these, I perceived a wisdom beyond her years. Given everything I knew about the provenance of souls, it made sense. Did she remember her time as an essence? Was it preferable to the rough start she’d had in bodily form? And did she know anything of my role in it all?

  “You know I’d do anything for you, right?” I continued.

  She stretched, bringing her fist to her mouth in a self-pacifying gesture. She continued to fuss and fidget and spill fresh tears. I wondered at my mom’s patience and strength through all that Leira had already endured. But how much more could she take? It was a question I didn’t want the answer to — one that I made a fresh resolve to never find out the answer to. I was relieved when I heard the jangle of my mom’s keys as she came in the back door.

  Though I was exhausted after the turmoil of the day, I couldn’t sleep. I continued to hear Leira crying, which meant — if nothing else — that she hadn’t taken a turn for the worse, necessitating a trip to the emergency room. I dedicated the next few hours to prayer and positive thought.

  The next morning, Sunday, I was exhausted after a fitful night of sleep. I flopped into a kitchen chair.

  “How’s Leira?” I asked a nose-in-book Stanley.

  “The good news is that she and your mom are sleeping.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “They were up all night.”

  I stopped feeling sorry for myself.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “That sleep is a very good sign, but if she doesn’t eat today, she needs to go to the emergency room.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sleep is definitely the good news.”

  Stanley situated his bookmark, closed his book, and got up to refill his coffee.

  I looked at the title to his latest read: The Painted Ladies. On the cover was a row of Victorian houses in pastel hues of lavender, powder blue, mint green, and pink.

  “Pretty racy title,” I said, turning the book to face me. The name tugged at my subconscious; I heard the snap of neurons firing.

  Stanly chuckled as he dropped a glug of half-and-half into his cup. “Just getting a few ideas on how to restore this old lady.” He sat back down across from me, resting his steaming mug on a coaster. Leaving the book facing me, he fanned the pages; they shuffled like an animated strip. Something about the way they fluttered into place reminded me of my vision quest. The girl had ripped the pieces of paper into squares and thrown them into the air, scrambling them. On a hunch, I grabbed a notepad and pencil from the countertop and jotted “dinky pal” across the top of the paper. Crossing letters off one by one and reassembling them below, I ended up with a likely rearrangement: pink lady. Parcel from a pink lady. Could it be? But what pink lady? What parcel? At that moment, it didn’t make any more sense to me than dinky pal. But, if nothing else, it was progress. In celebration, I voluntarily refilled the cup for big-gulping Stanley. What he lacked in café etiquette, he made up for in choice of reading material. OK, he was also a pretty nice guy. Yep, I was feeling that good about a first puzzle piece finally sliding into place.

  That same afternoon, Penny, Jinky, and I took a junket into Walden.

  “I can’t believe we have less than a week to transform these things into dresses,” Penny said, dumping our day’s haul — a jumble of vintage dresses and an assortment of belts, vests, notions, and one piece that we were calling chain mail — onto her bed. “It’s going to be nothing short of magic.”

  “Magic, you say,” Jinky said, raising her eyebrows at me.

  I cut her a don’t-say-a-word look. Like I needed the shaman-in-training to chime in on my abilities. If only I had those kinds of powers. As a girl, I’d been positively gobsmacked by the scene in Cinderella where all the little critters help her assemble her gown. But no “bibbidi-bobbidi-boo” was going to take the place of a seam ripper, sewing machine, and good ol’ needle pulling thread.

  “Where do we even start?” I asked. Not one of the dresses was to remain whole following what we were already calling Project Homecoming. I was going to pair a tea-length gauzy bone-toned skirt with a silvery tunic that, yes, in its current state had the look of a suit of armor. Once I scooped the neckline and cinched and belted the waist, there’d be nothing medieval about it. Penny had found a long dusty-rose dress in a taffeta moiré with a ruffled collar. She planned to add ribbon trim at the hem and cuffs and a wide, tied-at-the-back waist sash. Jinky’s dress was the most original, a find
for which I took full credit. It was a long silk, mandarin-style, embroidered midnight-black dress with a diagonal of three Chinese looped frog closures angling from chin to armhole. The plan — all mine — was to slit the skirt to waist level at both sides and for Jinky to wear black silk pants underneath.

  Penny held the makings of what would be her dress against her and stood in front of the full-length mirror. “I hope you don’t mind, Kat, but I have a piece of jewelry in mind for this neckline.”

  “Why would I mind?”

  “Because it’s that cameo I told you about. Its color, its vintage style, just everything is perfect for this dress,” she said. “I haven’t asked my amma if I can wear it yet, because it’s supposed to be saved for a special occasion. But if a formal dance your senior year isn’t a special occasion, what is? Do you want to see it?”

  “Sure.”

  From her top dresser drawer, she removed a small velvet box. After snapping it open, she gently lifted the pin from its cushion and held it against the high collar.

  The oval brooch, encased in a delicate silver framework, had a muted pink background over which an ivory carving depicted a woman’s profile with delicate features and an elaborate updo of hair.

  I gasped. Everything about the pin was special. It went perfectly with the look Penny was going after. And should she wear her hair up with tendrils framing her face, she would certainly mimic the portrait. But none of that was what had me sucking air. It was a pink lady. And, moreover, our grandmothers had once fought over this item because each had believed it was intended for their own descendant. Visions of my recent discoveries crowded my thoughts. There had to be a connection between “dinky pal” scrambling to “pink lady” and this item. By the time my head cleared, Penny was obviously on her second round of questioning.

  “You didn’t answer me.”

  “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “I asked if you liked it.”

  “It’s gorgeous. And perfect for that dress.”

  “I know. It’s what drew me to the color of this fabric.”

  Jinky stepped between us. “It’s very old, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I think so, anyway,” Penny said. “It once belonged to the woman who owned Kat’s new house. She was a friend of both of our ammas.” Penny lowered her head, seemingly not wanting to bring up their disagreement.

  Jinky fingered the brooch, but then pulled her hand away suddenly. “I don’t know how you say it in English, but in Icelandic, my grandmother would call this a keep-safe.”

  “You mean a keepsake,” I said.

  “No. A keep-safe.”

  “What’s the difference?” Penny asked.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “It’s possible to leave a personal item embedded with a message or intention of the deceased.”

  Penny looked at Jinky like she was headless, which was bizarrely prophetic, as I did want to rip Jinky’s throat out.

  “She was already known as a witch,” Penny said, dropping the pin back in its box. “Now you’re telling me she’s a ghost, too.” She placed the open box onto her dresser.

  “It’s really rather nice, when you think about it,” Jinky said, “especially when you own a keep-safe from someone special. Like this ring of my mother’s.” She held her hand flat, showing a ruby-studded band she wore on her right ring finger.

  I was confused. I’d seen her mother in Iceland; she was the not-so-friendly, gypsy-garbed vendor I’d met at the festival. She had been alive and kicking, last I’d seen her.

  “But you just said they were items of the deceased,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “But I met your mother, didn’t I?”

  “That was my stepmother: my evil stepmother, who insists I call her Mother even though I hate her and would rather travel halfway across the globe than live under the same roof with her.”

  “Oh,” I said, collapsing onto Penny’s bed. I’d known Jinky for weeks; she’d been instrumental in rescuing Jack from Brigid’s clutches and we’d broken onto the site of a prehistoric settlement together, but, the truth was, I’d made very little effort to really get to know her. “I’m sorry; I didn’t know. What happened to your real mom?”

  “She died. In childbirth.”

  I must have flinched or popped my mouth open.

  “Yes. With me.”

  Knowing what I knew about a soul’s journey, the tragedy of an essence and vessel crossing paths like that stabbed me with sorrow. And I still hadn’t said anything, but I felt like I needed a moment — and possibly a wall of cubbyholes — to sort through my mixed feelings for Jinky.

  “That must have been tough,” I said, fumbling.

  “Yeah, well, not all paths are straightforward or without their climbs.”

  “Having an everyday connection to her must help,” Penny said, schooling me with her superior diplomacy skills. “I lost my parents, too. I know it’s hard.”

  Jinky gave Penny a long, contemplative look. “I still haven’t read your runes, you know. I should do it now.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” I said. “We have to get going on these dresses.”

  “It won’t take long,” Jinky said, removing a pouch from her pocket. “A simple three-rune Norns cast is quick and easy.” She bent down to her knees.

  Easy, yeah, right. Nothing was ever easy, not lately, anyway.

  “I don’t know,” Penny said. “It sounds kind of odd. We all know norn is the Icelandic word for ‘witch.’ Besides, the runes seem like the sort of thing —”

  “We’d sell in the Sage Hand?” Jinky finished for her.

  Penny colored. “Exactly.”

  “All the more reason for you to see that they’re harmless.”

  “Do I have to do anything?” Penny still sounded hesitant, but she, too, crouched down. I had no choice but to join them.

  “Not a thing.” From the pouch, Jinky first pulled a square of white fabric and spread it on the floor. “Which way is north?” she asked, glancing up to the window.

  “Why?” Penny asked, but pointed to her right.

  “When casting runes, it’s best to face north toward the Norse gods,” Jinky said.

  “Gods?” Penny asked. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Maybe gods is one of those words that doesn’t translate well,” Jinky said. “I think of them as the supernatural custodians of this vast universe, not necessarily its creator. And it doesn’t mean you worship them, only that you recognize them as oracles, acknowledge their energies, and receive their messages.”

  I waited a beat. Jinky didn’t crack a smile.

  “Of course she’s joking,” I said to Penny. “As if there really are celestial janitors out there.”

  “Custodians,” Jinky said. “Not janitors.”

  I huffed. Some jokes just didn’t translate.

  Jinky held the pouch by its gathered top and shook. Next, she held the sack out to Penny. “Choose one and place it on the cloth.”

  Penny reached in and took a single stone and set it on the white square. Jinky had her do the same with two more, being careful that Penny placed it just as it was in her hand — upside down, in one case — until Penny had a line of three. Then, as if turning the page of a book, Jinky uprighted the third rune

  “Now, concentrate on an issue,” Jinky said to Penny.

  “What kind of issue?” Penny asked.

  “Something that is important to you.”

  Penny’s mouth twitched to the side, and she went Bazooka pink: a dead giveaway to what she had conjured. Good thing she was destined for the straight and narrow; she would suck at professional poker, as well as espionage.

  Jinky pointed to the first rune. It looked like a blocked capital C, but with the top and bottom lines bumped inward. “In a three-rune draw, we first consult Urdh, goddess of the past. Urdh calls to the rune Perthro, a symbol of mysteries, secret matters, and hidden things; it often indicates that things are not quite w
hat they seem. It is known as the All-Mother rune because of its association with fertility and feminine mysteries. Its symbol in fact is a ‘cup,’ which some suggest is representative of the vagina.”

  I coughed. And not only because of her anatomical reference. On my vision quest, one of the women surrounding Frigg had carried a golden cup. Jinky stopped and, after slashing a look my way, studied Penny; neither spoke or moved. I finally cleared my throat.

  “We next consult Verdandi, goddess of what is, or the present.” Jinky pointed to the center stone, marked with an X. “Here we see Gebo. It is a balance symbol and refers to exchanges, contracts, and partnerships. Though it can refer to a group affiliation, it is often called the Lover’s Kiss because it can mean that a relationship will move to a deeper level.”

  It was my turn to shoot Jinky a look. Was she seriously trying to mess with Penny’s mind? Penny’s crush on Marik was about as subtle as Borat, so Jinky had to know she was telling her exactly what she wanted to hear. Penny leaned forward as if getting into the reading.

  “For the final stone that reveals what shall be, the future, we look to the goddess Skuld, who displays a very interesting rune, Othala, the rune of ancestral property. This rune represents inheritance and the discarding of the past in order to move forward. Sometimes Othala can symbolize a property or possession; other times it can mean a mental or spiritual heritage. Often it can be an omen of safety.” Jinky trailed her hand across the bottom of the three stones. “So there you have it: feminine mystery, the Lover’s Kiss, and an inheritance.”

  The latter had me thinking. I glanced over to the open jewelry box atop Penny’s dresser. The brooch had been a matter of dispute between our grandmothers. Steel-faced Grim had won out — no surprise there; my amma had been a marshmallow by comparison. But now, seeing it in the form of a pink lady, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was it rightfully mine? Were the runes intentionally prompting this question of inheritance? It was almost too much to take in. For now, the task at hand seemed a better use of my time.