Beautiful Creatures

2.05

The Battle of Honey Hill

The next morning, I woke up with a pounding headache. I did not, as so often happens in stories, think that the whole thing had never happened. I did not believe that Macon Ravenwood appearing and disappearing in my bedroom the night before had been a dream. Every morning for months after my mom’s accident, I had woken up believing it had all been a bad dream. I would never make that mistake again.

This time around, I knew if it seemed like everything had changed, it was because it had. If it seemed like things were getting weirder and weirder, it was because they were. If it seemed like Lena and I were running out of time, it was because we were.

Six days and counting. Things didn’t look good for us. That was all there was to say. So of course, we didn’t say it. At school, we did what we always did. We held hands in the hallway. We kissed by the back lockers until our lips ached and I felt close to being electrocuted. We stayed in our bubble, enjoyed what we tried to pretend were our ordinary lives, or what little we had left of them. And we talked, all day long, through every minute of every class, even the ones we didn’t have together.

Lena told me about Barbados, where the water and the sky met in a thin blue line until you couldn’t tell which was which, while I was supposed to be making a clay rope bowl in ceramics.

Lena told me about her Gramma, who let her drink 7-Up using red licorice as a straw, while we wrote our in-class Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde essays in English, and Savannah Snow smacked her gum.

Lena told me about Macon, who, despite everything, had been there for every birthday, wherever she’d been, since she could remember.

That night, after staying up for hour after hour with The Book of Moons, we watched the sun rise—even though she was at Ravenwood, and I was at home.

Ethan?

I’m here.

I’m scared.

I know. You should try to get some sleep, L.

I don’t want to waste time sleeping.

Me neither.

But we both knew that wasn’t it. Neither one of us felt much like dreaming.

“THE NYGHT OF THE CLAYMYNG BEING THE NYGHT OF GREATESTE WEAKNESSE, WHENNE THE DARKENESSE WITHINNE ENJOINS THE DARKENESSE WITHOUTE & THE PERSONNE OF POWERE OPENNES TO THE GREATE DARKNESSE, SO STRIPPED OF PROTECTIONS, BINDINGS & CASTS OF SHIELDE & IMMUNITIE. DEATH, AT THE HOURE OF CLAYMING, IS MOST FINALE & ETERNALLE…”

Lena shut the Book. “I can’t read any more of this.”

“No kidding. No wonder your uncle is so worried all the time.”

“It’s not enough that I could turn into some kind of evil demon. I could also suffer eternal death. Add that to the list under impending doom.”

“Got it. Demon. Death. Doom.”

We were in the garden at Greenbrier again. Lena handed me the Book and flopped on her back, staring up at the sky. I hoped she was playing with the clouds instead of thinking about how little we had figured out during these afternoons with the Book. But I didn’t ask her to help me as I paged through it, wearing Amma’s old garden gloves that were way too small.

There were thousands of pages in The Book of Moons, and some pages contained more than one Cast. There was no rhyme or reason to the way it was organized, at least none that I could see. The Table of Contents had turned out to be some kind of hoax that only loosely corresponded to some of what could actually be found inside. I turned the pages, hoping I would stumble across something. But most of the pages just looked like gibberish. I stared at the words I couldn’t understand.

I DDARGANFOD YR HYN SYDD AR GOLL

DATODWCH Y CWLWM, TROELLWCH A THROWCH EF

BWRIWCH Y RHWYMYN HWN

FEL Y CAF GANFOD

YR HYN RWY’N DYHEU AMDANO

YR HYN RWY’N EI GEISIO.

Something jumped out at me, a word I recognized from a quote tacked on the wall of my parents’ study: “Pete et invenies.” Seek and you shall find. “Invenies.” Find.

UT INVENIAS QUOD ABEST

EXPEDI NODUM, TORQUE ET CONVOLVE

ELICE HOC VINCULUM

UT INVENIAM

QUOD DESIDERO

QUOD PETO.

I tore through the pages of my mom’s Latin dictionary, scrawling the words in the back as I translated them. The words of the Cast stared back at me.

To Find What is Missing

Unravel the tie, twist and wind

Cast this Bind

So I may find

That which I yearn for

That which I seek.

“I found something!”

Lena sat up, peering over my shoulder. “What are you talking about?” She sounded less than convinced.

I held my chicken scratch handwriting up for her to read. “I translated this. It seems like you use it to find something.”

Lena leaned closer, checking my translation. Her eyes widened. “It’s a Locator Cast.”

“That sounds like something we can use to find the answer, so we can figure out how to undo the curse.”

Lena pulled the Book into her lap, staring at the page. She pointed to the other Cast above it. “That’s the same Cast in Welsh, I think.”

“But can it help us?”

“I don’t know. We don’t even really know what we’re looking for.” She frowned, suddenly less enthusiastic. “Besides, Spoken Casting isn’t as easy as it looks, and I’ve never done it before. Things can go wrong.” Was she kidding?

“Things can go wrong? Things worse than turning into a Dark Caster on your sixteenth birthday?” I grabbed the Book out of her hands, burning the daisies off the tips of the gloves. “Why did we dig up a grave to find this thing and waste weeks trying to figure out what it says, if we aren’t even going to try?” I held the Book up until one of the gloves started to smoke.

Lena shook her head. “Give me that.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll try, but I have no idea what will happen. This isn’t usually how I do it.”

“It?”

“You know, the way I use my powers, all the Natural stuff. I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be natural. I don’t even know what I’m doing, half the time.”

“Okay, so this time you do, and I’ll help. What do I need to do? Draw a circle? Light some candles?”

Lena rolled her eyes. “How about sit over there.” She pointed to a spot a few feet away. “Just in case.”

I was expecting a little bit more preparation, but I was just a Mortal. What did I know? I ignored Lena’s order to put some distance between myself and her first Spoken Cast, but I did take a few steps back. Lena held the Book in one hand, which was a feat in itself because it was incred-ibly heavy, and took a deep breath. Her eyes ran slowly down the page as she read.

“‘Unravel the tie, twist and wind

Cast this Bind

So I may find

That which I yearn for…’”

She looked up and spoke the last line, clear and strong.

“‘That which I seek.’”

For a second, nothing happened. The clouds still lingered overhead, the air was still cold. It didn’t work. Lena shrugged her shoulders. I knew she was thinking the same thing. Until we both heard it, a sound like a rush of air echoing through a tunnel. The tree behind me caught fire. It actually ignited, from the bottom up. Flames raced up the trunk, roaring, spreading out to every branch. I had never seen anything catch fire that quickly.

The wood started to smoke immediately. I pulled Lena away from the fire, coughing. “Are you okay?” She was coughing, too. I pushed her black curls away from her face. “Well, obviously that didn’t work. Unless you were looking to toast some really big marshmallows.”

Lena smiled weakly. “I told you things could go wrong.”

“That’s an understatement.”

We stared up at the burning cypress. That was five days and counting.

Four days and counting, the storm clouds rolled in, and Lena stayed home sick. The Santee flooded and the roads were washed out north of town. The local news chalked it up to global warming, but I knew better. As I sat in Algebra II, Lena and I argued about the Book, which wasn’t going to help my grade on the pop quiz.

Forget about the Book, Ethan. I’m sick of it. It’s not helping.

We can’t forget about it. It’s your only chance. You heard your uncle. It’s the most powerful book in the Caster world.

It’s also the Book that cursed my whole family.

Don’t give up. The answer has to be somewhere in the Book.

I was losing her, she wouldn’t listen to me, and I was about to fail my third quiz of the semester. Great.

By the way, can you simplify 7x – 2(4x – 6)?

I knew she could. She was already in Trig.

What does that have to do with anything?

Nothing. But I’m failing this quiz.

She sighed.

A Caster girlfriend had some perks.

Three days and counting, the mudslides started and the upper field slid into the gym. The squad wouldn’t be cheering for a while, and the Disciplinary Committee was going to have to find a new place to hold their witch trials. Lena was still not back in school, but she was in my head the whole day. Her voice grew smaller, until I could barely hear it over the chaos of another day at Jackson High.

I sat alone in the lunchroom. I couldn’t eat. For the first time since I met Lena, I looked at everyone around me and felt a pang of, I don’t know, something. What was it? Jealousy? Their lives were so simple, so easy. Their problems were Mortal-sized, tiny. The way mine used to be. I caught Emily looking at me. Savannah bounced into Emily’s lap, and with Savannah came the familiar snarl. It wasn’t jealousy. I wouldn’t trade Lena for any of this.

I couldn’t imagine going back to such a tiny life.

Two days and counting, Lena wouldn’t even speak to me. Half the roof blew off the DAR headquarters when the high winds hit. The Member Registries Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Asher had spent years compiling, the family trees going back to the May-flower and the Revolution, were destroyed. The Gatlin County patriots would have to prove their blood was better than the rest of ours, all over again.

I drove to Ravenwood on my way to school and banged on the door as hard as I could. Lena wouldn’t come out of the house. When I finally got her to open the door, I could see why.

Ravenwood had changed again. Inside, it looked like a maximum-security prison. The windows had bars and the walls were smooth concrete, except for in the front hallway, where they were orange and padded. Lena was wearing an orange jumpsuit with the numbers 0211, her birthday, stamped on it, her hands covered in writing. She looked kind of cool, actually, her messy black hair falling around her. She could even make a prison jumpsuit look good.

“What’s going on, L?”

She followed my gaze over her shoulder. “Oh, this? Nothing. It’s a joke.”

“I didn’t know Macon joked.”

She pulled at a loose string on her sleeve. “He doesn’t. It’s my joke.”

“Since when can you control Ravenwood?”

She shrugged. “I just woke up yesterday and this is what it looked like. It must have been on my mind. The house just listened, I guess.”

“Let’s get out of here. Prison is only making you more depressed.”

“I could be Ridley in two days. It’s pretty depressing.” She shook her head sadly and sat down on the edge of the veranda. I sat down next to her. She didn’t look at me, but instead stared down at her prison-issue white sneakers. I wondered how she knew what prison sneakers looked like.

“Shoelaces. You got that part wrong.”

“What?”

I pointed. “They take away your shoelaces in real prisons.”

“You have to let go, Ethan. It’s over. I can’t stop my birthday from coming, or the curse. I can’t pretend I’m a regular girl anymore. I’m not like Savannah Snow or Emily Asher. I’m a Caster.”

I picked up a handful of pebbles from the bottom step of the veranda and chucked one as far as I could.

I won’t say good-bye, L. I can’t.

She took a pebble from my hand and threw it. Her fingers brushed against mine and I felt the tiny pulse of warmth. I tried to memorize it.

You won’t have a chance to. I’ll be gone, and I won’t even remember I cared about you.

I was stubborn. I couldn’t listen to this. This time, the pebble hit a tree. “Nothing will change the way we feel about each other. That’s the one thing I know for sure.”

“Ethan, I may not even be capable of feeling.”

“I don’t believe that.” I flung the rest of the stones out into the overgrown yard. I don’t know where they landed; they didn’t make a sound. But I stared out that way, as hard as I could, swallowing the lump in my throat.

Lena reached out toward me, then hesitated. She put her hand down without so much as a touch. “Don’t be mad at me. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

That’s when I snapped. “Maybe not, but what if tomorrow is our last day together? And I could be spending it with you, but instead you’re here, moping around like you’re already Claimed.”

She got up. “You don’t understand.” I heard the door slam behind me as she went back into the house, her cellblock, whatever.

I hadn’t had a girlfriend before so I wasn’t prepared to deal with all this—I didn’t even know what to call it. Especially not with a Caster girl. Not having a better idea of what to do, I stood up, gave up, and drove back to school—late, as usual.

Twenty-four hours and counting. A low-pressure system settled over Gatlin. You couldn’t tell if it was going to snow or hail, but the skies didn’t look right. Today anything could happen. I looked out the window during history and saw what looked like some kind of funeral procession, only for a funeral that hadn’t happened yet. It was Macon Ravenwood’s hearse followed by seven black Lincoln town cars. They drove past Jackson High as they made their way through town and out to Ravenwood. Nobody was listening to Mr. Lee drone on about the upcoming Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill—not the most well-known of Civil War battles, but it was the one the people of Gatlin County were most proud of.

“In 1864, Sherman ordered Union Major General John Hatch and his troops to cut off the Charleston and Savannah Railroad to keep Confederate soldiers from interferin’ with his ‘March to the Sea.’ But, due to several ‘navigational miscalculations,’ the Union forces were delayed.”

He smiled proudly, writing navigational miscalculations out on the chalkboard. Okay, the Union was stupid. We got it. That was the point of the Battle of Honey Hill, the point of the War Between the States, as it had been taught to all of us, since kindergarten. Neglecting, of course, the fact that the Union had actually won the war. In Gatlin, everyone kind of talked about it like a gentlemanly concession on the part of the more gentlemanly South. The South had taken, historically speaking, the high road, at least according to Mr. Lee.

But today, nobody was looking at the board. Everyone was staring out the windows. The black Lincolns followed the hearse in a convoy down the street, behind the athletic field. Now that Macon had come out, so to speak, he seemed to enjoy making a spectacle of himself. For a guy who only came out at night, he managed to command a lot of attention.

I felt a kick in my shin. Link was hunched over the desk, so Mr. Lee couldn’t see his face. “Dude. Who do you think is in all those cars?”

“Mr. Lincoln, would you like to tell us what happened next? Especially since your father will be commandin’ the Cavalry tomorrow?” Mr. Lee was staring at us with his arms crossed.

Link pretended to cough. Link’s dad, a browbeaten shell of a man, had the honor of commanding the Cavalry in the Reenactment since Big Earl Eaton died last year, which was the only way a reenactor ever advanced in rank. Someone had to die. It would have been a big deal in Savannah Snow’s family. Link, he wasn’t too big on the whole Living History scene.

“Let’s see, Mr. Lee. Wait, I got it. We, uh, won the battle and lost the war, or was it the other way around? ’Cause around here, it’s hard to tell sometimes.”

Mr. Lee ignored Link’s comment. He probably hung the Stars and Bars, the Confederate flag, in front of his house all year round, I mean his doublewide. “Mr. Lincoln, by the time Hatch and the Fed’rals reached Honey Hill, Colonel Colcock—” the class snickered, while Mr. Lee glared. “Yes, that was his real name. The Colonel and his brigade of Confederate soldiers and militia formed an impassable battery a seven guns across the road.” How many times were we going to have to hear about the seven guns? You would have thought it was the miracle of the fish and the loaves.

Link looked back to me, nodding in the direction of Main. “Well?”

“I think it’s Lena’s family. They were supposed to be coming in for her birthday.”

“Yeah. Ridley said somethin’ about that.”

“You guys still hanging out?” I was almost afraid to ask.

“Yeah, man. Can you keep a secret?”

“Haven’t I always?”

Link pulled up the sleeve of his Ramones T-shirt to reveal a tattoo of what looked like an anime version of Ridley, complete with the Catholic schoolgirl mini and knee socks. I was hoping Link’s fascination with Ridley had lost some steam, but deep down I knew the truth. Link would only get over Ridley when she was good and done with him, if she didn’t make him jump headlong off a cliff first. And even then, he might not get over her.

“I got it over Christmas break. Pretty cool, huh? Ridley drew it for me herself. She’s a killer artist.” The killer part I believed. What could I say? You tattooed a comic book version of a Dark Caster on your arm, who by the way has you under some kind of love spell and who also happens to be your girlfriend?

“Your mom is gonna freak when she sees that.”

“She’s not gonna see it. My sleeve covers it, and we have a new privacy rule in my house. She has to knock.”

“Before she barges in and does whatever she wants?”

“Yeah, well, at least she knocks first.”

“I hope so, for your sake.”

“Anyway, Ridley and I have a surprise for Lena. Don’t tell Rid I told you, she’ll kill me, but we’re throwin’ Lena a party tomorrow. In that big field at Ravenwood.”

“That better be a joke.”

“Surprise.” He actually looked excited, as if this party was ever going to happen, as if Lena would ever go, or Macon would ever let her.

“What were you thinking? Lena would hate that. She and Ridley don’t even speak.”

“That’s on Lena, man. She should get over it, they’re family.” I knew he was under the influence, a Ridley-fied zombie, but he was still pissing me off.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Just stay out of it. Trust me.”

He opened a Slim Jim and took a bite. “Whatever, man. We were just tryin’ to do somethin’ nice for Lena. It’s not like she has that many people willin’ to throw her a party.”

“All the more reason not to have one. No one would come.”

He grinned and stuffed the rest of the Slim Jim into his mouth. “Everyone will come. Everyone’s already comin’. At least, that’s what Rid says.”

Ridley. Of course. She’d have the whole damn town following her around, like the Pied Piper, at the suck of her first lollipop.

That didn’t seem to be Link’s understanding of the situation. “My band, the Holy Rollers, are gonna play for the very first time ever.”

“The what?”

“My new band. I started it, you know, at church camp.” I didn’t want to know anything else about what had happened over winter break. I was just happy he had made it back in one piece.

Mr. Lee banged on the blackboard for emphasis, drawing a big number eight in chalk. “In the end, Hatch could not move the Confederates and withdrew his forces with a count of eighty-nine dead and six hundred and twenty-nine wounded. The Confederates won the battle, only losin’ eight men. And that”—Mr. Lee pounded proudly on the number eight—“is why you all will be joinin’ me at the Livin’ History Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill tomorrow.”

Living History. That’s what people like Mr. Lee called Civil War reenactments, and they weren’t kidding. Every detail was accurate, from the uniforms to the ammunition to the position of the soldiers on the battlefield.

Link grinned at me, all Slim Jim. “Don’t tell Lena. We want her to be surprised. It’s, like, her birthday present from the two of us.”

I just stared at him. I thought about Lena in her dark mood and her orange prison jumpsuit. Then, Link’s no doubt terrible band, a Jackson High party, Emily Asher and Savannah Snow, the Fallen Angels, Ridley, and Ravenwood, not to mention Honey Hill blowing up in the distance. All under the disapproving eye of Macon, Lena’s other crazy relatives, and the mother who was trying to kill her. And the dog that allowed Macon to see every move we made.

The bell rang. Surprise wouldn’t even begin to describe how she would feel. And I was the one who’d have to tell her.

“Don’t forget to sign in when you arrive at the Reenactment. You don’t get credit if you don’t sign in! And remember to stay inside the ropes of the Safe Zone. Gettin’ shot won’t get you an A in this class,” Mr. Lee called as we filed out the door.

Right about now, getting shot didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.

Civil War reenactments are a seriously strange phenomenon, and the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill was no exception. Who would actually be interested in dressing up in what looked like really sweaty wool Halloween costumes? Who wanted to run around shooting antique firearms so unstable they had been known to blow people’s limbs off when fired? Which is, by the way, how Big Earl Eaton had died. Who cared about re-creating battles that happened in a war that took place almost a hundred and fifty years ago and that, in fact, the South didn’t actually win? Who would do that?

In Gatlin, and most of the South, the answer would be: your doctor, your lawyer, your preacher, the guy who fixes your car and the one who delivers your mail, most likely your dad, all your uncles and cousins, your history teacher (especially if you happen to have Mr. Lee), and most definitely, the guy who owns the gun shop over in town. Come the second week of February, rain or shine, Gatlin thought about, talked about, and fussed about nothing but the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill.

Honey Hill was Our Battle. I don’t know how they decided that, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with the seven guns. People in town spent weeks preparing for Honey Hill. Now that it was down to the last minute, Confederate uniforms were being steamed and pressed all over the county, the smell of warm wool wafting through the air. Whitworth rifles were cleaned and swords polished, and half the men in town had spent last weekend at Buford Radford’s place making homemade ammunition, because his wife didn’t mind the smell. The widows were busy washing sheets and freezing pies for the hundreds of tourists descending on the town to witness Living History. The members of the DAR had spent weeks preparing for their version of the Reenactment, the Southern Heritage Tours, and their daughters had spent two Saturdays baking pound cakes to serve after the tours.

This was particularly amusing because the DAR members, including Mrs. Lincoln, conducted these tours in period dress; they squeezed into girdles and layers of petticoats that made them look like sausages about to burst from their casings. And they weren’t the only ones; their daughters, including Savannah and Emily, the future generation of the DAR, had to putter around the historic plantation houses dressed like characters from Little House on the Prairie. The tour had always started at the DAR headquarters, since it was the second-oldest house in Gatlin. I wondered if the roof would be fixed in time. I couldn’t help imagining all those women wandering around the Gatlin Historical So-ciety, pointing out starburst quilt patterns above the hundreds of Caster scrolls and documents awaiting the next bank holiday below.

But the DAR weren’t the only ones to get into the act. The War Between the States was often referred to as the “first modern war,” but if you took a walk around Gatlin the week before the Reenactment, there was nothing modern looking about it. Every Civil War relic in town was on display, from horse-drawn wagons to Howitzers, which any preschooler in town could tell you were artillery cannons resting on a set of old wagon wheels. The Sisters even dragged out their original Confederate flag and tacked it up on their front door, after I refused to hang it on the porch for them. Even though it was all for show, that’s where I drew the line.

There was a big parade the day before the Reenactment, which gave the reenactors an opportunity to march through town in full regalia in front of all the tourists, because the next day they’d be so covered in smoke and dirt that no one would notice the shiny brass buttons on their authentic shell jackets.

After the parade, there was a huge festival, with a pig pick, a kissing booth, and an old-fashioned pie sale. Amma spent days baking. Outside of the County Fair, this was her biggest pie show, and her biggest opportunity to claim victory over her enemies. Her pies were always bestsellers, which drove Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Snow crazy—Amma’s primary motivation for all that baking in the first place. There was nothing she liked better than showing up the women of the DAR and rubbing their noses in their second-rate pies.

So every year when the second week of February rolled around, life as we knew it ceased to exist, and we all found ourselves back at the Battle of Honey Hill, circa 1864. This year was no exception, with one peculiar addition. This year, as pickups pulled into town towing double-barreled cannons and horse trailers—any self-respecting cavalry reenactor owned his own horse—different preparations were also under way, for a different battle.

Only this one didn’t begin at the second-oldest house in Gatlin, but the oldest. There were Howitzers, and then there were Howitzers. This battle wasn’t concerned with guns and horses, but that didn’t make it any less of a battle. To be honest, it was the only real battle in town.

As for the eight casualties of Honey Hill, I couldn’t really compare. I was only worried about one. Because if I lost her, I would be lost, too.

So forget the Battle of Honey Hill. To me, this felt more like D-Day.