Feathers (A Witch Central Morsel) (6 page)

And then, somehow, they were at the bottom of the batting order.  Just two players left.  Nell nodded at her youngest son.  He held her eyes for what seemed like a very long time—and then headed off to do his job.

His father watched from the pitcher’s mound, assessing.  Measuring.

Aervyn crouched down over the plate, his face screwed up in an excellent imitation of his older brother.  Daniel lobbed an easy curve in the air.

The swing was big enough to have knocked one into the trees—and missed the ball by about three feet.  Jamie, on catcher duty, managed to come up with the ball without getting conked on the head.

The cheering section, still wildly exuberant, did their best imitation of the local monkeys.

Aervyn giggled, picked himself up out of the dust, and set up at the plate again.

Jamie leaned over and whispered something in his ear.

Aervyn listened seriously and then crouched into his batter’s stance again.  This time, his hands clutched the bat about halfway up.  Daniel, who knew better than to aim at his son’s bat, tossed another easy curveball.

Again, the bat swung and missed.  But this time, only by a couple of inches.

Nell held her breath.

“Damn.”  Nathan watched intently from a couple of feet away.  “He might actually hit one.”

They’d been waiting for three years.  Ever since Aervyn issued the edict that nobody gave him little-kid help anymore.

One more time, Aervyn set his feet just behind home plate.  The sounds of the jungle slowed, as if the day itself was watching.  Daniel moved through a long, exaggerated windup, gluing his son’s eyes to the ball.

And let it loose.

The baseball came into home plate, smooth and steady and chest high.  Aervyn’s face was a study in focus.

And this time, when he swung his bat, he caught a piece of the ball.

There was no crack.  No home-run ball flying gracefully into the air toward the trees.  Just one that stuttered about three feet and then rolled in the dust in the general direction of center field.

But nobody saw it.

They were all watching one seven-year-old boy, charging to first base as fast as his legs could run.  Beaming million-watt glee.

Gramma Retha was dancing long before he hit her base with two exuberant feet.

It surprised no one at all when the radiant kid covered in dust joined her, one hand wrapped around the feather in his hair.  And then he headed for second, since nobody had bothered to find his ball yet.

Nell grinned, fierce and proud and vision more than a little blurry.  And then picked up his bat out of the dust.

No way she was leaving this runner on base.

-o0o-

Moira sat in the shade of a lovely tree, enjoying the hint of a breeze moving the air over her cheeks.  Such a hot and muggy place, especially when you’d spent the morning chasing a wee ball in the dirt.

Aervyn still sat out in the sun, eating a sandwich as big as his head and reaching out every so often to touch the bat at his side.

She’d been around for a lot of her special boy’s successes—but this one felt particularly sweet.  He was a child to whom much came easily.  And even though he worked hard, his talents often put him at the head of the class before he even wiggled his fingers.

Such things had warped the hearts of more than one witch.

But this child was wise enough to seek experiences that made him humble.  And his parents were smart enough to let him play in entirely non-magical dirt, even when he wasn’t very good at it.

She would savor the image of his hellbent slide into Devin’s waiting knees for a long time.  Their big water witch had made an impressive picture, crouched over second base, yelling at Daniel to hurry up and find the ball in the dirt already.

Daniel had been too busy cheering his son’s run to even try, but that hadn’t diminished Aervyn’s sense of accomplishment one little bit. 

And Moira was pretty sure the pitcher who had once had a shot at the big leagues had given the next batter up at the plate something she could hit in her sleep.  Which Nell had, so far off into the trees that the monkeys were still looking for the ball.

Officially, even with the dozen runs scored, Moira was quite certain they’d lost.

Witch Central had never kept score the usual way, however.

Daniel took a seat in the grass at her feet and offered up a glass of lemonade.  “Maybe there’s hope for him yet.”

Moira smiled.  Some fathers would be dreaming of future baseball glory.  This one was just happy his son’s morning was full of sunshine.  “You let him swing wildly at things for three years.  That was very well done.”

“He asked.”  Daniel shrugged.  “There’s power in knowing how to get things the hard way.”

Aye.  “Still.  It takes a wise parent to sit back and let him struggle.”

He shrugged, face giving away nothing.

Oh, she knew him too well for that.  She waited another beat, and then let her eyes twinkle.  “How easy was that pitch you threw to Nell?”

He chugged his glass of lemonade, eyes amused.  “A better question is, how many witches helped it land in a foreign country?”

Moira smiled.  Probably a dozen.  Done so that the outfielders could give up with dignity and join the general celebration dance on the field.  So that a small boy could run slowly enough to appreciate every second of his victory lap to home plate.  And so that Witch Central could do what it did best—blow great gusts of air under the wings of happiness.

So many feathers shining just a little brighter, for so many reasons.

This was insane.

Lauren glared down at the man lazily treading in the pooling water below, grinning up at her in the moonlight, and sent him a pithy mind message. 
I could just get in the way sane people do. 
The less-sane crew had invented fifteen dumb ways to get into this swimming hole over the last couple of days.

Devin just laughed.  Not that she could hear him over the noise of the waterfall.

Thirty-something-year-old realtors didn’t slide down waterfalls.  That had to be in the rulebook somewhere.

That rulebook should be burned.  Along with bras and to-do lists and my mom’s cooking.

Yup.  He was definitely laughing at her now.

 She closed her eyes.  Looking down was definitely not helping.  When she swam in the pool during the day, working on her water-survival skills and watching the munchkin crowd slide down with wild abandon, it looked fun.  And not all that steep.

The perspective from the top of the slippery rocks was entirely different.

Next they’d be trying to convince her that jumping off the top of the Ferris wheel at the Chicago Pier was fun.

Nah.
 Devin was patiently amused. 
Concrete’s not a fun landing.  Jamie and Téo are scouting fun places for cliff diving, though.  We’re trying to get Mom to try it.

Retha wasn’t at the head of the sane-people line. 
She’d happily hurl herself off a cliff for the pure fun factor.   

Probably.  With Helga hot on her heels.

Lauren hoped Jamie was scouting cliffs safe for octogenarians.  If Helga got wind, she’d totally be there with bells and swimsuit on. 

And one pathetic realtor would still be sitting at the top of a little waterfall slide with her knees knocking.  Time to screw up her courage.  She squinted one eye open, still glaring at her husband.  Stupid feathers. 
I’m probably going to puke on the way down.

No.
 His mind reflected nothing but deep love. 
You’ll feel like Aervyn did halfway to first base today.

Damn.  She opened both eyes. 
Low blow.
 The man was a human tornado—he shouldn’t understand, either her fear or what would help her get her butt moving.  And yet he did.  The joy of the baseball miracle on grass had been contagious.  Anyone still breathing would want their own ride on that.

One finger at a time, Lauren peeled her death grip off the rocks.  Poised for a moment, suspended above the moonlit eyes of the man who would catch her, no matter what.  And gave herself the tiniest of pushes.

It was probably the water-sliding equivalent of Aervyn’s hit—three sad little feet of flight and then a dive to the dust.

But Lauren, who had lost her stomach to the stars and her fear to the magic of the night, didn’t care.

She only soared.

-o0o-

Jamie grinned at his wife.  “So.  What do you think
those
two are up to?”

Nat, picking up on the same blast of unabashed joy that everyone within ten miles was hearing, chuckled quietly.  She had two heads asleep in her lap, and even Auntie Lauren’s really leaky mind barriers hadn’t woken them up.  “No idea, but it’s exactly what she needs, whatever it is.”

“Devin’s pretty good at finding ways to make people happy.”  And not all of them involved defying death.

“Yeah.”  Soft eyes, ones that loved the wildest Sullivan brother dearly. 

Nat and Devin were in many ways polar opposites.  The kind of people who shouldn’t have understood each other at all.  And they’d bonded in about ten seconds.  Jamie started to say something, and then stopped as a mental image beamed in.  From Aervyn this time, who had clearly picked up more than Lauren’s mental shriek of adrenaline-laced joy.

One witch, flying over the waterfall.

And the great, whooping love of the man waiting for her to land.

Jamie laughed—it was impossible not to.  Lauren had been swimming at the edges of the pool for two days, watching.  Quietly denying her desire to be just a little reckless.  Trust Devin to choose to lean on that.  He, more than anyone else, understood that life wasn’t meant to be lived in zones of safety. 

Presumably they’d shut Aervyn out soon.  Not all activities in moonlit pools were fit for seven-year-old consumption.

Duh.
 Aervyn sounded seven going on twenty-five. 
Uncle Devin said I could show you all what happened and then I should get lost.

Jamie grinned.  Yup.  Water and moonlight for the win.  Sadly, there was only one really good pool within hiking distance, and his wife currently had two small children asleep in her lap.

She smiled at him.  Unspoken rain check.  “It’s not an accident it happened tonight.”  Nat’s eyes misted in the haze of lazy thought.  “Aervyn started something this morning, just as he was meant to.”

Jamie squinted, trying to follow.  “Nobody helped him.”  He had no idea how it could have been planned—his awesome nephew hadn’t hit a ball in three years.

“I know.”  His wife shrugged.  “But sometimes things just shake loose in the universe.”  She touched a hand to each sleeping head.  “There are ripples of courage on the move.”

“Witch Central’s pretty good at bravery.”

Nat’s head tipped sideways a little, thinking.  “This has a particular vibe.  Aervyn walked bravely today into a situation where he has pretty shaky skills.  And succeeded.”

That was a generous description of his nephew’s baseball talent.  But Jamie had caught up now.  “And Lauren, too.”  Other than Moira, everyone in Costa Rica had gone down that slide.  And he was pretty sure Moira was only waiting patiently because she liked being the caboose. 

His wife was nodding again.  “It takes a different kind of courage to face something you know you’re not very good at.  Even when people are waiting with open arms for you to finish.”

Feathers.

He reached out for the light-green one in his wife’s hair.  The woman with so many fabulous pieces of herself collected—and he’d had the dumb luck to marry her.

He grinned.  Feathers could be earned in all kinds of ways.

This fire didn’t have the spiritual energy of the last.  But it called to Moira’s Irish heart in an entirely different way.

She’d noted that Costa Ricans liked to play.  To spend time simply being with each other, and to enjoy the pastimes of small children.  The generations intertwined here in a way that she rarely saw outside small Nova Scotia fishing villages anymore.

It was that energy Téo had brought to the cozy fire tonight.  She didn’t doubt it was intentional—the man with twinkling eyes might call himself a doctor, but he carried his grandfather’s shaman calling in his soul.  She’d bet her life’s very last cup of tea on it, especially after the last couple of days.