Scarlet Flower Tea

Scarlet Flower Tea 

Waiting for the tea to take effect induced a mild panic, like a light blanket of ants settling over her entire body. Gish endured for a moment, then squirmed against the sensation. The creeping gave way to a net of nervous sweat that broke out over her skin, making a lacey cage. She allowed a little shiver, both of revulsion and excitement. Although the rufous liquid warmed her throat going down, it sat like a sliver of ice in her stomach. When the vision began—whenever that would be—the floe would move from her core outward, freezing, solidifying, until even her thoughts could no longer move.

She stood, chafed her palms against one another, stepped closer to the fire. A gnat whined in her ear, and she brushed it away. No, not a gnat, a cry, a

woman—wailing. Louder now. Their mother.

Saya, Amira, and Gish drew demon cards to decide who would drink the Scarlet Flower. A formality in Gish’s mind since she knew it had to be her. She had aged exactly one year since Malus disappeared. Although she had been his first, his favorite, he loved Saya and Amira, there was no doubt. Besides, Saya and Amira had

never taken on a vision before. Only Gish had experience with that. After their mother had died—there had never been a father—she cared for her sisters by scrying and projecting in return for necessities.

Gish felt a tremendous pressure from all sides, suffocating, blotting out all light. She collapsed to her knees, unable even to take enough breath to scream. She felt as if a great snake had her looped in its coils, closing each time she breathed out, inexorable. When she could suffer no more, a blinding light assaulted her eyes, and a violent rush of air penetrated her lungs.

In her mind, a parade of firsts. Her first step, first word. The first time she got angry and was aware of it. Her little brother, Baran, had snatched a stick she was playing with, taunted her with it. “Gish is a witch! Gish is a witch!” He hadn’t been punished for using that word. Instead, she had gotten paddled for slapping his face. First day of school. The first time she bled. Her first kiss. Her first memory of what Malus could do.

“What is all this?” Malus had demanded, but without scold. Twelve-year-old Amira was surrounded by mewing tabbies prancing figure eights in and out of her legs. Gish had one in her lap and another in her arms.

“Aren’t they precious?” She said, kissing a feline nose. No shame. That’s what Malus said to Gish and her sisters over and over. Don’t allow any kind of ‘should not’ within you. Let the magic come. Let the witch live and breathe. “Amira wanted a cat; she called out and the magic answered her.”

“One was following me home,” said Amira, her eyes wide and watery. “Just one! Ansil here,” she bent down and stroked a black kitty. “I guess I was enjoying it too much. They started appearing from under the steps and out of the alleys. They just kept coming.” Malus smiled. “Does this great number distress you?” He prompted.

“Yes,” she said. “Can you make them go away?”

“I certainly can, but you wouldn’t like my methods,” he said. “Try it yourself. Send them back.”

Amira had tried and tried, but the magic deserted her. On the floor, in a tearful heap of exhaustion and frustration, she cradled the original black cat that had chosen her.

The next morning all the cats were gone, including Ansil.

After a moment of darkness, Gish made out the man she hoped she would see in the doorway of the tearoom. He crossed the floor, extended a hand to help her up. She rose, thrilled and nauseous at the sight of him, at his touch. “You are a witch,” he said, his voice silky. The flames from the fireplace writhed in his dark eyes, and Gish could not look away. His focus stirred her, the hated word

taking on new meaning, making promises. “You injure yourself in denying it.”

A hundred responses shaped themselves in her throat, but what emerged was “Why did you leave?” At once, she loathed herself for asking the question. It was not the one she was meant to ask. She opened her mouth to try again, to get the correct words out, and said, “I loved you.” By the gods! Why wouldn’t her voice work properly? The others were counting on her to find him, and all she could do was mewl out irrelevancies.

He smiled, read her mind. “You know where I am.” With that, he pressed his warm palm against her chest. In a breath, he was gone.

Gish lay on the ornate rug, the fire suddenly hot and uncomfortable despite it having burned to embers. It took her open eyes a minute to adjust, discern the draped velvets and satins, the low table, and tufted ottomans. The world was red, then pink, and finally her vision gave way to all things in their accustomed colors.

“Did you see him?” Saya’s silks whispered as she rushed over to where Gish was sitting up. “Where is he?”

“You saw him. You talked to him. I feel it,” said Amira, close behind Saya. “It’s like he lingers in this room.” She looked about as if he might come out from behind a curtain or the sofa.

“Yes,” Gish rose to her feet. “I saw him. And even in the vision world, he had the power, just as he always has.”

“What do you mean?” Asked Amira. “If you saw him, surely you have a hint of where he might be.”

“Gish is right,” said Saya, sinking onto a nearby chair. “If he wanted her to see him on a cloud or under the ocean, that’s where he’d take her.”

Amira collapsed onto the sofa. “We have to know.” She sounded close to tears.

She looked at Amira and Saya, their fallen faces, their faces...falling...

Everything around her—the smooth and shining fabrics, the incense smoldering on the mantle, her beautiful sisters—melted. She stood on a scrubby, gravel-strewn promontory. A muscular breeze tossed her hair, and the sea grumbled far below her.

His steps rubbed the rocks together, heralded his approach. He could be silent, she thought, but he wants me to know he’s coming, announcing himself not out of any kind of courtesy, but to show that even the smallest, most inconsequential thing has meaning. Everything is a choice. She would not turn.

“You’re here,” he said, stopping behind her. His hand cupped her shoulders and his lips dropped to her ear. “You’ve come back to me.” His words suggested the irresistible turning of the tide.

Her words echoed the grievance of the water. “You brought me back. Why do you turn everything on its head?”

“Why do you? You know where I am, yet you insist on looking for me.” Strong fingers massaged the nape of her neck. “You know where you belong, yet you somehow get lost.”

During her first time—with him, with anyone—he put her magic on a leash. In a sound sleep, she awakened when his warm and solid body fractioned her bed. They had already touched and kissed many times, but the full length of his nakedness electrified her. The energy flowed back and forth between them, in rhythm with the act. It was reassuring. The power often scared her. She’d told her sisters to do what Malus said, and feel its fullness in them, but fear discouraged her from letting it roam in her. It felt like a shark that couldn’t stop moving, swimming inside her, restless and dangerous.

Gish made a sound of disgust and turned to him. The waves made whitecaps over his shoulder. “If you really believe we should be together, then put us back—in Parthay, back home—put all four of us back there together like it used to be. No twists or tricks. Make it reality.” If this was a test, he didn’t give her a proper result.

Instead, he kissed her, knowing her eyes would close. Her desire snared her sensibilities. He drew away and she opened her eyes.

Saya was the most alluring among them, and she knew it, even at thirteen. Elegant and lovely, she spent hours on her toilette, adorned herself with the most sumptuous clothing. She brushed her long, night-hued hair until it shone in cataracts over her shoulders. Gish saw the way Malus looked at Saya, but strangely, she was never jealous. She held his attention in a way the other two

could not.

It was inevitable that Saya would discover the beauty of her own body; its curved lines and the smooth radiance of her skin mesmerized even her. Gish caught Saya admiring her own abundant purity in the mirror more than once. “As much as I

adore the swishing skirts and draping coats that Malus gives me, it still seems a shame we can’t all just show our true selves,” she said.

The next morning, she rushed into Gish’s room in tears. Gish saw at once that Saya was nude, but it took a moment to understand her delirious ramblings.

“I can’t—can’t—” Saya tried to catch her breath through the sobs.

“Can’t what? What is it? And where are your clothes?”

Gish threw off the covers and swung out of bed. She reached for her peignoir only to have it turn to smoke in her hands. Her pajamas were gone, too. “What in the world?” When she threw the bedclothes around her shoulders, they disappeared in a mist.

“It’s my fault,” cried Saya. “I—I let the magic come.”

“No, no. You’re supposed to let the magic come. It’s part of you. Remember what Malus always tell us. There’s no shame in it, nor is there shame in affirming your gods-given, corporeal grace.”

Amira careened into the room, her arms wrapped tight about her breasts. She fairly dove behind a satin chair. “We cannot leave the house,” she said in a small voice.

So, they didn’t. They kept the fire going to dispel any chill, and had their meals brought. There was something special and liberating about the whole preposterous predicament. They spoke with Malus through the door.

At first, he was amused, and indulged them. But the prolonged separation irked him; Gish began to feel it in waves through the carved wood. “She has tried, Malus,” she whispered to him. “Even she doesn’t want to go through every moment of the rest of her life so exposed.”

“You can fix this,” he said.

“This is Saya’s magic, Malus. I have no claim on it.”

“You do not need permission, Gish. Just take the manifestation from her. Then the three of you can go about your lives again.”

“Is that foremost in your mind? Our freedom?” Moments of silence followed. “You want me to break an intimate bond with my sister, to violate her.”

Only a cold blankness remained where he had stood.

When they woke the next morning, the door was open wide, and their pajamas once again contoured their soft, female frames. Gish smiled. She turned to Saya, laughing, wanting to congratulate her, but Saya was not there. Gish and Amira did not see her again for three days. Questioning Malus did no good; he told them Saya would return in her own time.

She appeared at dinner on the third night, looking haunted, saying nothing, eating little. She would not respond to her sisters’ entreaties that she confide in them, saying only that the magic was like spilled Mancala stones that had to be retrieved, and it cost something to gather them.

Her gaze converged on the sitting room of their home in the city. Amira and Saya were there, draped across opposite sides of the couch, holding small books to their faces. Gish opened her mouth to call out, but something in their expressions stilled her. Perhaps it was their lack of expression. Their eyes did not move along the type and no pages turned. Malus was playing dolls.

“When you consume the Scarlet Flower, you enter into agreement with it, Gish.” He reclined on a wine-colored couch behind her. Her name on his tongue sent a tremor through her. She turned, approached, alighted next to him, hip to thigh. “If you suffer what it reveals, then it doesn’t drive you mad.”

“Witches cannot go mad,” she said to him. She twined her fingers in the dark hair caught with a ribbon at his neck. “Or they are already mad—that’s what everyone thinks, and to be truthful, I could never figure out which was true.”

He smiled at her, and merciful gods, she wanted to walk into the sunset of that smile, bask eternally in its warm embrace. “Perhaps we both find reality a little…slippery.”

It was enough. Amira and Saya were waiting, and Gish’s questions were answered. She clutched his hair, her hand tightening into more and more of a fist. She pulled down until he faced the ceiling. He reached for her.

“Be still, “she said, and he subsided at once. Gish let go, and he looked down at her with a wholly different expression. She smoothed the hair back from his forehead. “The Scarlet Flower doesn’t negotiate. It opens the imbiber up to visions, but it also draws the object of the vision into focus.”

Gish had let the magic all the way out, like a fishing line. Malus had caught it up in his mouth and pulled. She held the magic fast. “I admit that I’ve missed you. Seeing you was an indulgence. But I had to be sure. Sure you’d been properly gathered. That I could retrieve you when—if necessary. It seems that I can.”

Gish pressed her palm into his chest and in a breath, he was gone.