The Wisp of the Willow

The book was whispering again.

Laurel did her best to ignore it, but sometimes it would yell its whispers, and other times it would mutter under its breath. Either way, there was a low guttural noise coming from the book since she woke up this morning.

She walked across the room to the ancient spindle that had been passed down for as long as the book had been, pricked her finger, and crossed back to the little black book. She opened it, its whispers growing louder and more coherent. She forced all her energy into ignoring its desires and pressed her bleeding finger to a blank page. She watched, as she did every time, as the blood disappeared onto the papyrus. The whispering ceased and the room grew still.

Laurel tended to her flowers. A touch of her pricked finger brought any plant back from death, but Laurel’s flowers were always the most beautiful anyone had ever seen. She planted tomatoes and bell peppers, digging deep into the earth to fill the roots with her magic. She gave back everything that she took. Magic always required a price, and for making the world a more beautiful place, Laurel was always willing to pay it.

Late in the afternoon, Willow’s beat-up truck came down the drive, dirt swirling up behind it. The truck seemed nearly as old as the book, but it couldn’t be. The book was centuries old, the truck only twenty, but it had seen some bad drivers.

Willow hopped out of the truck, her too-short shorts paired with some cowboy boots. Laurel’s teenage sister was a force to be reckoned with. She wore her magic like a badge of honor while Laurel’s was a quiet whisper behind the ear.

“They’re at each other’s throats again,” Willow said, referring to their parents. Their fights were the only reason Willow came to visit her adult sister.

Laurel didn’t have anything to say. Her parents had been estranged since their wedding, despite two daughters and thirty-two years of marriage to show for it. Instead she led her sister inside. She hadn’t been expecting guests. People rarely drove all the way out to the swamp to visit Laurel’s shabby hut. But she liked it that way. She didn’t care for much more than the earth.

Usually Willow called, but not today. If she had, Laurel would have remembered to put the book away. But Willow hadn’t called so Laurel hadn’t put the book away.

When they walked inside, the book called out like a siren song. Willow always had so many questions about it. Laurel thought, maybe this once, she could appease her sister for just a moment. “Do you want to see it?”

Willow held out her hands greedily as Laurel placed it in her palms. “Ava told me how it works,” she said, falling into a chair at the table.

Ava being their mother, but Willow refused to call her anything but her given name.

“Oh yeah?” Laurel asked, trying to act as though the book was nothing special. “What did she tell you?”

Willow pulled her legs up onto the chair, resting the book on her knees. “You write whatever you want on the pages and POOF it shows up.”

Laurel rolled her eyes, trying to ignore the way her body felt like it was shutting down. “That’s . . . not exactly how it works.”

It was just like Ava to spill secrets that weren’t hers to share. She’d never stopped being mad that her mother had given the book to Laurel instead of her. It was supposed to go from mother to daughter but when it was Charlotte’s time to pass the book along, she told Ava that Laurel was the only deserving descendant and handed it to her granddaughter.

Was it the magic? Ava had asked. I know I’m not as strong as Laurel. But the book belongs to me.

It’s not the magic, Charlotte had answered but they both knew it was. Laurel was born with powers no one had seen in generations.

Laurel eyed the book in her sister’s hands. She was determined to give her a moment with the book before snatching it back up. She walked to the kitchen to put on a kettle of tea, watching from the corner of her eye as Willow flipped through the empty pages.

The tome was full of the blood of the Walcott women, but not a single page showed it. Each owner of the book had asked for things—riches, children, eternal loves—and the book had bestowed the gifts. In return, the women had paid with years of their lives, some only enjoying their gift for mere moments before the reaper came to take payment.

The book was restless. It whispered to the owner, begging it to ask for things; telling Laurel all that she could wish for could be hers forever. One drop of blood a month usually kept it quiet, but it had been whispering more and more lately, requiring Laurel to spill blood on almost a weekly basis.

Laurel didn’t want anything from the book. If she thought she could burn it without any repercussions, she would. But she was terrified that destroying it would cause her grandmother to fly into a rage and she didn’t want to risk hiding it anywhere her mother could get her hands on it. So the book whispered and she sated it and it whispered and she bled and she never asked it for anything.

Willow tossed the book onto the table as though she was disgusted by it and walked back outside. Laurel left the tea on the stove and picked up the book, taking it quickly and quietly to her bedroom and hiding it between two tomes on growing plants. She got her tea and followed her sister outside.

Willow was sitting on the porch swing, kicking off on the beaten boards, her boot leaving a mark with each punt.

“Why do you live like this?” Willow asked, gesturing to the small house and fields and swamp around them.

Laurel sat in the rocking chair opposite the swing. “What do you mean? Quietly? Privately?”

“Like this,” Willow emphasized. “Like, you could have anything you want. A giant house, a nice car. You could be famous, even. But you live in the back of the woods with gators and swamp people and you grow stupid flowers and vegetables. You look like you’re homeless.”

“Except that I have a home,” Laurel said.

“How did you even find this place?” Willow asked.

Laurel shrugged. She supposed by magic. She felt something calling to her, so she followed it. And it had led her here, to a tiny house by the swamp, where she had never been happier.

“Ava says you’re an idiot.”

Laurel shrugged. She didn’t think too highly of their mother, but she didn’t feel it was a good idea to say it front of her sister.

“She says you don’t deserve the book.”

Laurel supposed that was true. She didn’t think she deserved the book either. She certainly didn’t want it. She’d argued with her grandmother about it, telling her to give it to anyone else, but it was put in Laurel’s hands and now it was hers. Laurel didn’t want children. She planned on destroying the book before it could be passed to someone else who was made to bear the constant whispers. But she kept these thoughts to herself.

“I asked it for something.”

Laurel wasn’t sure she’d heard her sister correctly. “What?”

“Your book,” Willow said, like it was nothing at all. “I wrote in it. Just real quick. To see if it would work.”

Laurel’s heart was racing. There’d barely been any time at all that it had been in her hands. And there hadn’t been a pen anywhere.

“What did you write?” Laurel found herself asking, each word coming out like a single breath.

“Twenty-thousand dollars,” Willow said and shrugged. “But I don’t think it works. It didn’t POOF or anything.”

Laurel knew how it worked. The money would show up somehow. And the owned would pay the price. That would be decades off her life, not just a few years. Twenty-thousand dollars was no small favor. Laurel could die in five years for a boon like that.

She tried to stay calm, but her eyes were starting to glaze over, staring at her younger, stupid, selfish sister.

“You’re the idiot,” Laurel said, standing up. “Didn’t Ava tell you that you have to pay for it.”

Willow looked confused. “You have to pay for twenty thousand dollars?”

“No, you moron. You have to pay for whatever you ask. And not with money. With years of your life!”

My life, actually, Laurel thought, because she was the owner of the book.

“You need to leave,” Laurel told her sister, pointing towards the old truck. “You need to go. And don’t come back.”

Willow wasn’t sure if she was being serious, but Laurel didn’t budge, so the teenager got up and left her sister’s house by the swamp.

Laurel watched the dust swirl up again. And she sat on the porch. And she waited to pay.

Less than a week had passed when an envelope arrived in the mail. Twenty thousand dollars in cash. No name, no address. Just a pristinely sealed cream envelope with crisp one hundred dollar bills.

When Laurel opened it, she let it fall to the gravel. Some of the bills swayed in the wind, flying across treetops while others raced to the swamp. She scooped up what she could and took the money into the house.

Nothing changed. She didn’t sprout any gray hairs. No crow’s feet popped up by her eyes. No spider veins appeared on her legs. Everything seemed almost perfect. But she knew it wouldn’t stay this way for long. She knew it couldn’t.

After the money sat piled on her table for four days, there was a knock on the door. Laurel knew it couldn’t be Willow. She doubted it was her mother, or any other family member. When she opened the door, no one was there, save for the outline of a specter. Laurel thought it would be the reaper, to tell her that there was only a decade left.

But it was a phantom of Willow, her body a wisp of what it once was.

The phone had been ringing all day yesterday. She hadn’t answered a single call, too scared to pick up the phone. Had it been about this? About Willow who was now just a soul?

You were right, the Willow wisp said. You’re always right.

Laurel slammed the door and ran to the book, ripping it from the shelf. She wondered if the words were still there, if anything remained of what her sister had written.

Each page was blank like it always was. Except for a page near the middle, where the seam was starting to fall apart.

I know you’re my real mother.

Willow had written it, in her loopy handwriting. A secret. A past buried so long ago that Laurel was sure she’d forgotten.

Laurel fell to the ground. She had placed the book right into Willow’s hands. She had given it to her willingly. Mother to daughter. Willow had asked and now the price had been paid.