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“And ready to play referee just in case this little family reunion goes awry,” Ellen said and laughed. Then her expression softened, grew more serious. “Why do you think, after all those years of keeping Daddy’s other children a secret, she broke down and told us?”
Iris pulled one of the chairs closer. “I don’t know. She and Ginny squabbled so for decades, even though sometimes I swear those two were flip sides of the same coin. I think Ginny’s death made her realize her own mortality. Maybe she just wanted to make some form of amends.”
“Maybe she felt guilt for having cozied up to the demon that killed Ginny.”
“Possibly, but I think it went deeper than that. Those two old girls shared a connection. I can’t even hazard a guess what it was, but I think with Ginny gone, the dam Jilo had built broke. She chose to clean up her side of the street before she
passed on herself.”
“Are you nervous about meeting them?”
“Frankly, yes. If the rest of them are anything like Jessamine, well, then we’ve got our work cut out for us.” Iris sighed. “A lot has changed since Ginny’s passing.”
It had been a little over two years since what witches had come to call the “Great Shift” occurred on the heels of Ginny’s death. Somehow her demise had triggered an end of an era, no, the end of an epoch. The line still stood, that life on earth as we knew it continued was testimony enough to that fact, but the line had broken free from its anchors, seemingly of its own will. The historians of the line, witches like Iris herself, had only found one other similar shift such as this. The last was when the line was decoupled from the great monuments that had served as its original anchors, and was bound instead to the living anchors who had shouldered the burden of the line for millennia. That first shift had been debated, voted on, and carefully orchestrated. This change had occurred in a blink of an eye without a soul’s having seen it coming.
“Everyone’s magic is crazy now,” Ellen said. “Witches who were once quite capable can now barely bend a spoon with both hands, and others who’d been perfectly average are accidently blowing doors off their cabinets.”
“We are still in a period of adjustment, but in the end we will adjust.” Iris felt something tickle her ear, and she swatted, thinking a bug had landed on her. “I wonder if the old rumor was true after all?”
“Which old rumor?” Ellen asked and laughed. “I’ve lost count.”
Ellen was right. If Iris chose to apply herself, she could collect a canon of purported truths and old witches’ tales concerning the line. Maybe with the Great Shift, she ought to do just that. Save the stories for posterity. “We’ve always been told that witches get our power from the line. The rumor is that the exact opposite is true. That the anchors used the line to control all magic and parcel it out in the way they saw fit. Maybe the line has rebalanced things, or even left us capable of what we naturally should be without the help or drag of others.”
Everyone was indeed out of sorts, but the only ones who seemed to have suffered any real ill effect had been the former anchors themselves. Their magic had been cut from them, as cleanly as if the line itself had wielded the scalpel. Both the united and the rebel families had been affected. Even the great Gudrun had not escaped the fate. She had sent a distress cry to the other anchors to save her in the moments before the dimension to which she had been exiled folded in on itself and disappeared for what might well be forever.
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that.” Ellen poured a glass of lemonade and offered it to her sister. “Sounds a bit too much like what the rebel families wanted. You know, consolidate the power among the strong, crush the weak.”
“Good heavens, Ellie,” Iris said, taking the sweating plastic glass. “There is plenty of room between absolute magical communism and offering the world up as tribute to the rapacity of the old ones. I’m not saying I have any answers. I just think we witches have let the radicals do most of our thinking and all of the talking for us for far too long.” Ellen poured herself a glass of lemonade. Her expression told Iris her sister was not convinced. “Now the volume has been turned down on the extremists, maybe those of us with common sense can begin to carry on a conversation. We may get nowhere, but it’s been too long since we’ve tried talking. Maybe the young ones from the rebel families don’t want their home destroyed any more than we do.”
“Why,” Ellen asked, “do you think witches’ connection to the line ended with Ginny?”
“I don’t know.” Iris fanned her imagined bug away once more. “Maybe the line thought she was somehow special. I fear in my heart of hearts we misjudged the woman.”
“Tomorrow, I’ll make up a nice bouquet, and we’ll head over to Greenwich to visit her.”
“Yes,” Iris concurred. “Let’s do that.”
Ellen drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. Iris had to smile as something about the pose stripped decades away, leaving Ellen looking once again like a young girl. Still, Ellen’s face clouded over with concern. “A lot of folk are frightened that even though the old ones remain banished, many lesser evils may filter through.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie. Even if it’s true, I’m sure it’s nothing we witches can’t handle.”
“But we aren’t exactly accustomed to managing these infestations on our own.”
“Then we will simply have to learn. I think for far too long we have forgotten the line is a security net, not a hammock. We are all going to have to toss in and do some work if we want to preserve our way of life.” Iris noticed movement in her peripheral vision and ducked just in time to miss being hit by a football.
Ellen stood and placed one hand on her hip. “Paul Edwin Weber, you and Martell be careful with that darned thing.”
“Sorry, Aunt Iris. Sorry, Mom,” Paul called and waved at them.
“Really, Ellen, you still speak to Paul as if he were a little boy. He’s getting married in two months.”
“Ugh. Please, do not remind me of that.”
“Ellen,” Iris said, her tone a warning. “She’s a lovely girl.”
“That she may be, but—”
“Sorry, Mrs. Weber,” Martell said, running over and scooping up the ball.
