Celestine Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Celestine Nightshade knelt in the Maple Crypt garden and pressed her palm to the soil. It was cold tonight. The first time she walked this ground, the earth had warmed under her feet, and she took that as the land choosing her. She had come back every moon since to prove the land right. She wanted Shadowmoss to bloom here, the herb that could stop a heart or start one again, the herb no witch had grown past a seedling. Tonight she meant to seed the first bed. Tonight the soil felt like any other dirt. She knew why. Her grimoire was gone. Someone had lifted it from her cottage three days back, and without its moon-pages she had no focus to pull lunar light into the beds. She had tracked the thief as far as the ridge and lost the trail in rain. She could feel the book out there, still shut. Whoever took it was afraid to open it. That was the only mercy she had. Celestine set out what she did have. A row of small glass jars. A packet of Shadowmoss seed wrapped in waxed cloth. Her turquoise skirts pooled in the dirt. She spoke the binding words her mother had taught her and lifted her hands to the moon. The light slid past her fingers and scattered. The seed in her palm stayed dull. She tried again. Nothing held. A soft weight landed on the fence post beside her. A young owl, no bigger than her two hands, silver feathers catching the moon like frost on glass. It watched her with one wet blue eye. She had seen it twice before at the edge of the garden. Now it hopped down into the bed and dropped something from its beak into the loose soil at her knee. A wand. Slim, wood-shafted, crowned with a crescent of pale metal and a pink stone at the throat. Filigree ran the length of the handle. She knew the make. It had been her grandmother's, buried with her, and gone from the crypt for forty years. Celestine lifted it. The crescent warmed against her thumb. She raised the wand and spoke the binding words again. The moonlight bent this time. It ran down the shaft, pooled in the stone, and poured into the bed in a thin silver line. The seed in her other hand pulsed once, like a small held breath. She pressed it into the dirt. The soil closed over it warm. The owl did not fly off. It settled on the fence post and watched the bed. Celestine looked from the wand to the bird to the dark trees past the garden wall. Someone had put this wand in the owl's beak. Someone who knew what she needed, and knew where her grandmother was buried, and knew she was here tonight. She wrapped her hand tighter around the shaft and stood.