Daisies for Innocence (21 page)

“Thanks. I will.”

But after we hung up, I reconsidered. The grills I’d seen at Gessie’s were, indeed, big. I needed something smaller.

Not too big and not too small
 . . . Then I remembered where there were grill grates that would be just right.

“Come on, Dash. Let’s go for a walk.”

He sat still while I fastened his leash onto his collar.
Together, we went out the gate to Corona Street and turned left, toward the park. As we walked, we passed a father and son playing Frisbee, a ponytailed man walking his dog, and an older woman setting up an easel and glopping paint onto a paper palette. Farther along the fitness trail, a middle-aged couple sat on a blanket with a picnic spread out between them.

We rounded the far end of the loop and entered a part of the park that was unoccupied. I eyed the enclosed grill areas we passed. There were big ones you could have cooked a dozen steaks on, but also small ones designed for just a few burgers or hot dogs. I wanted to steal one of those smaller ones.

Okay, not steal. Borrow. I’d return it the next day.

I was looking for one that wasn’t so covered with grease and burned food that I didn’t want to touch it. Finally, I spied a grate that looked to be the right size and fairly clean. With a little wrestling, I managed to dislodge it from the concrete it rested on. With a confident smile, I walked the rest of the loop with Dash, acting for all the world as though I was officially supposed to be carrying a grill grate when other walkers and bikers passed by.

No one batted an eyelash.

Back in the distilling area of the Enchanted Garden, I piled together the oak twigs, then topped them with the lengths of larger branches. I set flat rocks on either side and placed the grate on top. Lastly, I brought out my copper distiller and tested to see if it sat evenly over the fire.

“Bingo,” I said to Dash.

He woofed.

I set the jug of spring water out and a box of matches. By then, the sun was beginning to set.

It won’t be long
now.

I
WAITED
until the moon rose above the horizon and got to work. The fire lit from a single match as if doused with kerosene, the flames crawling along the wood with eerie efficiency. It burned merrily for a while, painting the back of the garden with flickering orange light. I sat on the ground next to it until white ash had begun to dust the hardwood oak kindling. I fitted the grate over the top and went to gather the raw ingredients for tonight’s perfume.

Ingredient.
One.

Eschewing gloves, I selected a pair of deadheading shears, and took the copper pot and the onion-shaped condenser that served as its lid over to the mnemosyne plant. With my eyes narrowed in the dim light, I held the first pot below the plant, carefully snipped one of the blooms at the base of its stem, and let it drop into the
vessel. I did the same thing with four more flowers, then set that pot aside. One by one, I clipped the final two blossoms and caught them inside the condenser.

When I’d harvested the final bloom without having touched any of them with my bare hands, I breathed a sigh of relief and carried the alembic back to where the fire had burned down to glowing coals. Filling the pot with water, I set it on the grate, then filled the condenser with more water and waited for the first one to come to a boil. The air began to grow heavy with the intoxicating aroma I’d become so familiar with over the last four days.

Breathing it in, I sat cross-legged by the fire and waited. I concentrated on the flames and on the water in the pot beginning to shimmer as the temperature increased. Curiosity spread deep inside my mind like an itch I couldn’t ease. Would I finally have some clear memories of my mother? Or remember more of Gamma’s teachings? So much of her murmured advice was buried deep in my mind by the years that had passed. Or would I remember something completely different, something unrelated to Gamma?

I opened her journal to the page with the mnemosyne drawing again, scanning the verse and all her notes.

Hidden memory,

Unbound

Best heeded. Those words sent a shiver down my back. They felt like a warning.

Then I spied something I hadn’t noticed before, the edge of a faded word written so close to the spine that I
had to carefully, oh so gently, open the book further in order to see it. The elderly volume creaked ominously but didn’t split. Finally, I could make out what was really two words.

For Elliana.

Stunned, I checked along the rest of the interior margin. Nothing.

Dash nudged my arm with his nose, a rumble of concern emanating from deep within his chest.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, and wrapped my arms around him. He snuggled onto my lap, and together we watched the water begin to boil.

As the steam rose, I moved Dash and knelt beside the distiller. I attached the condenser, and topped the flower-filled reservoir with cool water. The bird’s beak tube went on next, and I uncorked the bottle I had brought to capture the essential oil.

I’d found the perfume bottle in a junk shop years before and bought it for a few cents. Many of the bottles I used for custom perfumes were fancy or scalloped, gilt with metallic paint, odd shapes and different sizes. I collected them—always had—from garage and estate sales, thrift stores and online auction sites, and also purchased them new from gift shops and aromatherapy supply houses. Now that I had Scents & Nonsense, I was able to give some of them to my customers, but I’d always kept this one, empty, tucked away for some special purpose. If there was a special purpose, I had reasoned when looking for what to collect the mnemosyne essence in earlier in the evening, this was it.

It was purple, like the petals of the mnemosyne, made
of glass that looked more than old: ancient. It was uneven, slightly lopsided, certainly handblown, and plain. But for some reason I loved it. Now, as I held it up the bird’s beak, the rising moon shone through it like a portal to another realm.

The first drop of oil appeared. Its scent was so strong that my eyes watered. It let go of the metal tube and fell into the mouth of the bottle. A second one began to form.

My hands were shaking. One knee on the ground, I bent the other parallel and braced my elbow on it.

The next drop became round, grew larger, fought gravity, and plummeted into the bottle.

Barely breathing and keeping the bottle steady, I watched five more drops of the precious substance distill and collect. The last began to squeeze out of the tube. It took longer than the others, and I recognized there would be no more. The seventh drop of oil finally elongated, quivering at the tip of the bird’s beak. Without thinking, I capped the bottle and put it to the side.

The final drop of mnemosyne essence fell from the copper as if in slow motion.

I held out my palm and watched as it splashed onto my skin.

Looking around me, I became aware of all the
life
in the garden, in sap and cells and the blood of creepy crawlies and those who flew, but also in the granite of a rock or the shine of a beetle shell, thrumming through wood already put to use in fence and house and planter and
fire
.

Whispers. Glimmers. Invisible moans. Slithering and laughter and chimes that can be heard only in dreams.

And then I remembered.

Mr. Finder, standing on his front walk. He seemed like an impossibly tall man, even though he was thin and his shoulders slumped forward. I was three years old and barely came up to his knee. It was late in the evening, at least for a little girl who had to go to bed when it was still light in the summertime, and he had just parked his old station wagon in the driveway of their home. I’d been playing in my yard, and when he’d pulled in, I’d skipped next door. Mr. Finder’s wife frowned all the time and wasn’t very nice. Her mother lived with them, too, though she had to stay in bed and so was rarely seen in the neighborhood.

But Mr. Finder was a nice man, and I liked him a lot. Now he was checking the mailbox. He pulled out a pile of envelopes with addresses showing through glassine windows. I hadn’t known it then, but now, as an adult in the midst of this vivid recollection, I knew they had been bills. He sighed.

Then he saw me, and his eyes crinkled in a smile.

He
felt
funny, though. He felt so tired, as though his bones were mushy.

And I knew what would help.

“Wait here,” I commanded as only an imperious three-year-old girl could do, and ran back to my mother’s garden bed. There I picked a sprig of lily of the valley and, little legs churning, ran back to where Mr. Finder patiently stood.

I handed him the flower. “Smell this.”

Obediently, he did. His eyes opened a little wider, and his bushy eyebrows rose. He sniffed again, and I could feel a quiet vigor returning to him.

“Thanks, Ellie,” he said. “That was a real nice gift.”

The memory faded, and I sat beside the dying fire, stunned. That had been the first time I’d used my gift of empathy and scent. And I realized that I hadn’t really
remembered
the experience until now. It had just been a story told by my grandmother and, after she passed, by my father and sometimes even Colby. Every family has stories like that, cute things from a child’s early years that take on the form of either myth or joke.

But it felt as if I’d just relived it, and that made all the difference. Because now I realized that I’d truly felt his discomfort, just as I did with clients now, and had known how to fix it. There had been no “fine-tuning” involved.

I truly had a gift—and always had.

Without warning, another memory flooded into my consciousness.

This time I was lying on the sliding porch swing in Gamma’s gazebo. My head was on Mama’s lap, and her fingers stroked my wild curls. Her long dark hair was held back from her pretty face with jeweled barrettes, and the bangles on her wrists clanked softly next to my ear as she moved her hand. The long skirt over her leg was warm against my cheek, and I inhaled her scent of love and licorice.

Gamma sat on a rocker across from us. She wore her trademark coveralls—a part of me wondered how I could have forgotten that she always wore those shapeless, denim coveralls with the shiny buckles and the pocket in
front that always seemed to contain a piece or two of candy. She smelled of earth and work, and her dark braid was speckled with silver.

I closed my eyes. There was a pair of chickadees calling to each other from opposite sides of the yard, and I tried to imagine what they might be saying to each other.

“Is she asleep?” Gamma asked.

“I think so,” Mama said.

I kept my eyes closed, listening.

“That thing she did with Bert Finder yesterday . . .” Mama said.

A pause, then Gamma said, “She has it, too. Our talent.”

“We expected that, though.”

“But this young? It’s so strong. Far stronger than either of us, even stronger than my own mother’s. It will help a lot of people.”

My mother sighed. “But it can be hard. A part of me hoped it would skip her generation.”

“Hush! Don’t say such a thing. It is a gift. We are given it in order to help others. She is a kind child, well suited to it.”

“I know, Mother. But what do the leaves say?”

Oh, the leaves.
I’d forgotten how my grandmother had
gathered her herbs to make tea, and then, after drinking it, had read the leaves.

Silence drew out, and I cracked an eyelid. Gamma was looking off to the side. Finally her gaze returned to my mother’s face above where I lay.

“We all help keep the balance, whatever our gifts. But the spirits in the leaves tell me this daughter of yours will do it in a larger way than some. That she will bring solace to others, but also right wrongs.” She looked down at me, and I clamped my eyelids shut. “And that will be triggered by violence.”

I heard my mother’s intake of breath. She was one I couldn’t read well, but she seemed scared.

“Don’t worry, Fiona,” Gamma said. “We will teach her so that she’s prepared. . . .”

The scene faded from my mental movie screen, and I was left sitting beside the glowing coals. I waited, but no more memories surfaced.

I was almost glad. The sensory memories of my mother and grandmother were so precious, and they truly felt near me now. But all that stuff about a gift and righting wrongs and predictions in tea leaves had left me reeling.

Not just tea leaves.
Her
tea leaves. From
her
herbs, which she claimed possessed spirits and personalities.

I left the water that remained after distilling the flowers to steep and went to sit on the bed of moss next to the birdbath. The denuded mnemosyne seemed to welcome my presence.

Triggered by violence.

Like a murder, say?

Hidden memory, unbound, only when ready, when needed.

Was that what had caused the mnemosyne to germinate?

And however heady, best heeded.

Heeded how? My grandmother had done her best to teach me after my mother had been killed in a freak accident, but she’d also passed too soon. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with this information about possessing a special gift.

Do what I’ve always done, I guess. Help where I can.

Gamma had been right about one thing—I did want to help people if I could.

Sitting in the lowering moonlight, my fingers buried in Dash’s fur, I tried to differentiate the life essences pulsing through the veins of the leaves, drawing sustenance from the soil and collected sunlight from the day before. Was I imagining it, or could I really sense the innocence of the daisy, the heartthrob of the rose petals, the steadfastness of the ivy, and the militancy of the nasturtiums that tumbled from the window boxes of my tiny house?

This
was how Gamma had known their language, I felt. But I was still such a neophyte.

I’d thought I simply had an elevated talent for plant scents and aromatherapy.

I’d barely scratched the surface.

•   •   •

I
AWOKE
to a cold nose prodding my neck. Then my cheek. Then my neck again. Dash made a worried sound in his throat, then gave a little bark. The dream came flooding back, then the knowledge that it wasn’t a dream, and I realized it was just after dawn. I was lying in the Enchanted Garden, chilled but weirdly happy.

My fingers were still clutched around the tiny bottle of mnemosyne oil.

I laid my head back, watching the pastel tendrils of sunrise streak across the sky and fade, my body warming in the brightening sunlight with the rest of the garden. Sighing deeply and settling into my bed of moss, I drifted off again.

Apparently satisfied, Dash lay down by my side.

•   •   •

E
LLIE
?”

I opened my eyes. Astrid loomed above me, blocking the wide blue sky. I watched a cloud float through her rusty halo of hair.

Then her eyes widened in alarm. “Ellie! What happened? Are you all right?” She knelt. “Are you hurt? Did someone do this?”