Graceful Read online

  I’m tempted to run straight to the tree in the center, but that’s not what a labyrinth is for. So we start at the entrance and march along Tara’s outer circle. The labyrinth curves, and we’re in Rory’s circle, then Amanda’s. Finally, the four of us stand in the middle, in front of the tree.

  “What now?” Tara asks.

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “We need to connect to it somehow.” I kick off my sneakers and peel off my socks. The others do the same. I dig my feet into the soil, trying to ground myself in the earth. The others follow. The pulsing beat of the vortex now matches my own. I imagine a beam of energy entering through the top of my head, reaching deep into the source of the vortex’s power.

  Then I ask it, out loud, very politely, to shut itself down.

  It doesn’t.

  I’m definitely connected to it, though, because I can feel that another wave is about to hit. “Duck!” I shout. We duck and hold on to one another as the wave bursts forth. It’s easier to handle when prepared. This time we’re just a little windblown.

  “Um, Grace?” Rory tugs on my sleeve. “You’re shorter.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve shrunk, like, an inch,” Amanda says, her voice shaking. “The magic is still coming undone.”

  “Okay,” I say as bravely as possible. “I can live with losing an inch. Let’s hope everyone else was spared.”

  “Why didn’t it stop when you asked?” Rory asks.

  “Maybe because you forgot this,” Ray shouts from where he and Leo are standing on the stone bench. “Again.”

  It’s the bag of seeds!

  “Catch!” he says, and lobs it overhand. I watch as the bag sails through the labyrinth, almost in slow motion. Tara reaches up and catches it neatly with one hand.

  “Here ya go,” she says.

  “Maybe baseball instead of fencing?” Rory suggests.

  I pull on the ribbon and the top of the bag opens. Without thinking of what I’m supposed to do, I reach in and grab a handful of seeds. I sprinkle them all over the ground around the tree. “Oh, powerful vortex,” I say, feeling a little silly. “I am grateful for all the bounty you have given me and the whole town for so long.” I turn over the bag and let the last few seeds drift to the ground. “But we really, really need you to stop now.”

  “Well,” Rory says, after a moment. “That oughta do it!”

  We watch the tree, barely daring to breathe.

  Stubbornly, the tree just keeps pulsing with energy. Fear sends icy spikes up my back. What if I can’t make the vortex stop?

  Tara moves first. “What are these marks?” she asks, stepping closer to the tree. She traces them with her finger. “It looks like someone carved pictures into the trunk.”

  The rest of us inch a little closer. “They’re animals!” Amanda exclaims. “Look, here’s an owl, here’s a duck … I’m not sure what this one is.”

  “It’s a bunny,” Rory says grimly.

  “These are spirit animals!” Tara says.

  “I told you so!” Ray shouts over to us.

  We ignore him.

  “Each of them must be from someone who could control the vortex,” Tara says. “I bet we all know who the duck was!”

  “Angelina!” we cry out at the same time.

  “What’s yours, Grace?” Rory asks.

  I look at Tara, and out at Ray. “I … I still don’t know.”

  “It’s a lion,” Amanda says so quietly I almost don’t hear her.

  “What did you say?” Rory asks.

  “Grace’s spirit animal is a lion,” Amanda says, louder this time.

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a yellow plastic lion with what looks like a toothpick stuck in the bottom of it.

  “It’s the cupcake topper from the cupcake Rory brought me,” she says.

  “There was a lion on a SpongeBob cupcake?” I ask.

  She nods. “I figured it must have gotten mixed up with the one next to it.”

  “I didn’t even notice when I bought the cupcake,” Rory says. “Why did you keep it? Why did you bring it?”

  She glances over at the bench where Ray and Leo are, then says, “It’s kind of embarrassing. I collect things that remind me of Leo. You know, Leo the lion. The astrology sign?”

  Amanda allows herself a peek at Leo, who is listening intently, his hands grasped together. She quickly looks back at me. “But, Grace, the lion wasn’t about Leo, it was about you.”

  “How can you be sure?” I ask. “If I carve the wrong animal in the trunk, who knows what might happen.”

  “I’m sure,” she says firmly. “Angelina told you guys to get me that cupcake, right?”

  Rory and I exchange a look of surprise. “How did you know?” she asks.

  “Come on, that move has Angelina written all over it. A SpongeBob cupcake when I needed to be reminded of what me and Leo mean to each other? And it just happens to have a random lion cupcake topper on it when you need to find a spirit animal, one that represents courage, strength, and power more than any other?”

  “She’s right,” Tara says. “That would be too much of a coincidence. Do I even need to say it?”

  I shake my head. “I know, I know. There are no coincidences in Willow Falls.”

  “That’s the truth, sistah,” Tara says, bending down to pick up a pointy stick. “Now get carving.”

  I do my best, but when I’m done the lion looks more like a fluffy kitten than a fierce king of the jungle. Hopefully it’s good enough. I lay the stick back down.

  Amanda puts out her hand and I take it. Then I reach for Rory’s, and Rory reaches for Tara’s. Tara takes Amanda’s and the circle around the tree is complete.

  “Brace yourselves,” I say. We all dig our feet back into the earth again and close our eyes. I focus on feeling like a lion, and wait until I actually feel the strength and courage of him within me. Then I thrust him out of me, and into the tree. I open my eyes. The carving no longer looks like a kitten. There’s no doubt now what it is. The others still have their eyes closed, unaware that I’ve set things in motion. Or at least I hope I have.

  At first, nothing happens. Then it happens all at once. The wind howls as branches begin to unfurl themselves, slowly at first, then picking up speed, whipping over our heads. Our hair flies around our faces, but we don’t let go of one another’s hands. I see Ray and Leo jumping around in alarm, but they don’t dare get too close.

  Apples fly off the branches in all directions, flinging themselves at our feet, bouncing off stones, filling the pathways of the labyrinth. I blink, and the tree is no longer a tree. It’s a swirling tunnel of pure energy, pure possibility. I can see inside it, to the calm part in the very center. In there lies the building blocks of the whole universe.

  Energy waits to become matter, it waits for our choices to make reality solid. I finally understand what Angelina meant with her physics lesson. Everything is real, and nothing is real. This brings me a great sense of peace. As my connection to the vortex weakens, my body is filled with its own energy, and it shines out of every cell. This is the glow I see when I look at my friends and family. What I’ve always seen, if I only knew to look. This energy links us together, it binds us and protects us. It reminds us we are a part of a greater whole.

  I feel a surge of gratitude and love for the brave girls beside me. I’m surprised to see their eyes are still shut, their faces a range of emotions. I squeeze their hands, and suddenly I’m where they are, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel. They are not here. They are in their futures, our futures.

  The vortex is feeding them a great gift as its power quickly drains. The last few branches of the apple tree snap into place. The pulsing in the ground slows to a dull thump, and then to nothing at all. Somewhere, the energy is already building beneath a new town, where someone else will be chosen to wield it.

  And me? I’m just a regular girl now, standing in front of a regu