Callia lay in her dead-dark room, wove her web, spun her spells, and pulled the whole farm inside herself.

When she used the magic, nothing hid from her. No brick wall could block her, no bedroom door could shut her out, no secret was safe from her prying eyes. She knew everybody’s darkest secrets. She saw her ma downstairs making breakfast, still in her thin cotton robe, her hair all pulled back and mussed from sleeping. Callia heard the bacon sizzle, smelled the coffee dripping into the pot, saw her pa getting the morning paper off the porch. She saw twelve-year-old Charlie in the bathroom, lips drenched in foam as he brushed his teeth, pajama top unbuttoned down to his belly so he could see in the mirror how strong and manly and tanned his chest was getting to be.

And outside, why the sun was up already, leaping over the rooftops like a yellow-gold beacon, calling the children to another day’s play, and the adults to their work. She smelled the early summer air, and it stirred her the way a woman stirs a simmering pot. All without moving, Callia whirled in the scents of young pine from up over the hill, moist earth and sweet basil from her ma’s garden, old man Peterson’s wheezy truck starting up down the road, and faint as ever faint can be, the buds of wild roses growing in the lee of the shed.

Charlie stuck his head in the door to her room, switched on the light. “You gonna get up today, Cally?”

Callia’s magic web of seeing and smelling ripped into tatters at the interruption, and she turned her head toward the door. “Ain’t you supposed to knock? I’m getting powerful tired of you just barging in. Maybe I should turn you into a toad to learn you some manners.”

“Aw, you ain’t no witch, Cally. ’Sides, I bet you need me just now. You gotta pee?”

Callia made a face. “Yeah.”

“Well, come on, then.” Charlie pulled back the covers and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, put his shoulder under her arm and helped her slide into her chair, just as smoothly as if he’d done it a thousand times. But it wasn’t no thousand times yet; it was only two hundred and twelve. Callia knew because she’d been counting right along, ever since the accident.

She could push herself well enough once she got into the wheelchair, but Charlie followed along and made sure the towels and toothpaste and whatnot were all down on the counter in the bathroom where she could reach. Pa’d put in special railings, and once she’d built up the strength in her arms, she didn’t need no help with the toilet. Good thing, too. A fourteen-year-old girl wanted her privacy sometimes.

“Call me when you wanna come downstairs,” said Charlie, “less’n you’re gonna fly down today on your broomstick.”

Callia aimed a hairbrush at his head and let fly, but he ducked, laughing, and bounded down the stairs. She grinned, too, then wheeled over, leaned down, and scooped up the brush. It only took her a couple dozen minutes to finish her morning routine, but she didn’t call Charlie back right away. Instead she wheeled down the hall to her room. Getting dressed by herself was right difficult, but by leaning and rolling and pulling she got her useless legs out of the pajamas and into a skirt. It didn’t hurt too much if she was careful and went slow. She pulled on a blouse, squirmed back up into her chair, and got ready to do a summoning.

She plucked a thread from the hem of her skirt and tied a knot near the end, all the while thinking Charlie’s name. Then she tied another knot at the other end while filling her mind with images of herself, sitting just so, right here in her room, a-tying the knot while the forces of magic whipped and whirled around her like heat waves in the air. Then she held the two ends together, so the knot for Charlie touched the knot for herself, and she twisted the thread into a come-hither, twisted it with her mind and her fingers all at once so the binding would hold.

It was a good come-hither; she felt proud of herself. Less than five minutes later, she heard Charlie’s feet pound up the stairs, pause at the bathroom, then pad down the hall to her door.

“Where you been, Cally?” said Charlie. “Ma saved you breakfast, but she’s gonna be right sore if you ain’t down before they leave. Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did,” she said, holding out her palm with the come-hither thread curled on it. “Now who says I ain’t a witch? Why else did you come to my hexing?”

“Couldn’t be ’cause Ma said to fetch you, huh?” Charlie shook his head. “You turned weird with all that witch stuff, Cally.” He grabbed the handles on the back of her chair and started wheeling her toward the ramp at the head of the stairs.

“You’re just too young to understand, that’s all,” she said over her shoulder. “Is Ma all ready to go to Aunt Gertie’s?”

“Champin’ at the door. Pa, too, don’t forget. He’s powerful eager to get going.”

Aunt Gertie in Indiana had broken her hip, and Ma was going to nurse her. She’d be gone for weeks, but there weren’t nobody else to do it. Pa’d have to drive her down there, near four hundred miles away, and that’d take all day long, so of course he wouldn’t come back till tomorrow.

“You just don’t forget who’s in charge today. You gotta mind me, Charlie.”

“Grab the brake and shut up,” he said. “I reckon you’re in charge of me, all right, but I gotta take care of you while Pa’s gone. Don’t start thinking you can run things just ’cause you’re older. You got that brake tight? Here we go.”

Charlie tilted her chair back a bit and set her front wheels onto the edge of the ramp. She stared down at the landing, only six steps down, but looking like forever away and just as steep. Her hand pulled up on the brake lever all by itself, pulled it tight, hung on so hard her knuckles turned white and her arm ached. Charlie went around in front, like Pa always said to do, leaned forward, grabbed the arms of her chair, and nodded. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Callia took a deep breath and released the brake just a little. The chair creaked and jerked a couple of inches down the ramp. “You holding tight?”

“I got you, Cally. C’mon.”

Little by little, she eased the chair down the ramp, Charlie bracing her the whole way. She didn’t breathe easy until she was level again and had wheeled into the warmth and safety of the kitchen. “I purely hate those stairs,” she said, hoping for some sympathy from her ma. She wouldn’t get none from Charlie. He borrowed her chair sometimes and shot down the ramp on it like he was driving a race car. ’Sides, he’d already run back up the stairs. But her ma didn’t have time for no idle chat today; she was already dressed and a-standing by the door ready to go, and it was plain she was thinking about her trip and all the little details she might have forgot, and how it was too late now to attend to them, so she’d just have to pray to the Good Lord and keep her fingers crossed, too.

Callia endured the usual lecture about watching her little brother, making sure he stayed out of trouble, took his bath, didn’t sass, and went to bed on time, then she kissed her ma and pa good-bye and watched while they drove away.

Charlie, now wearing only red shorts and his tan, blew past her and banged out the door right after they left, his bare feet popping on the cement driveway as he ran off. “You stay ’round here!” Callia yelled after him, but she didn’t worry much, ’cause he was mostly a good boy, even if he was only twelve still and full of rambunction and high spirits. She heard him shout “Yaaaaaa!” once, then he was gone, swallowed up by the summer morning.

She ate the breakfast her ma’d left out for her, and even tasted the left-over coffee in the pot before she cleaned everything up. She didn’t like coffee too terrible much, but it made her feel growed up to drink it, and she figured she’d have to learn to like it someday, so she might as well practice a bit.

’Long about noon, Charlie came back from his playing, fair blowed from running so much, and so dirty she knew he must have been down by Devil’s Crick again, scratching for tadpoles and crawdads in the mud. She fixed some sandwiches and milk for lunch, and made him wash his hands before he ate.

“It’s gonna rain,” she said. “I got a weather-sense.”

Charlie nodded over his sandwich. “There’s clouds something fierce out west.”

“You stay away from Devil’s Crick then,” she said. “You can play out back the house instead, where I can watch you.”

“Rain never hurt no one.”

“If you wash away in the crick, ma’d be sore, so you just do what I say, Charlie.”

He shrugged, finished his sandwich, and drained his glass of milk. “You need anything from upstairs?”

Callia shook her head. “I’m all set. You go on and play, but stay in the yard.”

“Okay.” One second he was there, a-grinning at her with his white teeth and dirty face, and the next second he was gone, the door banging behind him and his battle-cry “Yaaaaaa!” floating back on the breeze.

She spent the afternoon daydreaming by the big front window and reading, then she dozed off in her chair, listening to the distant thunder and the cicadas and birds and wind.

What woke her was the silence. It came all of a sudden, and it wasn’t until the birds started up again that she realized they’d been quiet. She didn’t need no weather-sense to know something unnatural was going on. The sky was purely dark outside the window, ’cept where it was a kind of yellow-green away out to the west. And now the wind picked up, real strong for a second, so that the tree tops bent way over, then still again. There was a big clap of thunder that shook the window glass and made her heart thump, and all the birds and crickets shut up for a minute, only gradually a-starting in to make noise again.

Callia wheeled her chair across to the back door, pulled it open, and rolled out onto the wooden porch. A few drops of cold rain sprinkled across her legs, and the wind lifted her skirt and hair. “Charlie! You get inside now!” She made her voice as loud as it could go, ’cause she didn’t see him in the yard where he belonged. “Charlie!”

It weren’t no good calling him, but she did it anyway, all the while knowing in her brain that he was too far off to hear. There wasn’t but one place he’d be, and that was wherever she’d told him not to go. “Why didn’t I tell him to stay away from his room?” she demanded of the sky, like it could hear and maybe answer. But the sky didn’t care; it just got on with its business, and soon the rain was coming down steady. “Charlie!” she called. “Charlie, if you catch pneumonia and die, Pa will whip you! Charlie!”

Callia swung the chair around and headed back inside. The clock on the kitchen wall said it was only six, though it was dark enough outside for midnight. She switched on the porch light, thinking maybe that would help Charlie find his way, and then settled herself down to wait in the kitchen. Then she got to thinking that he’d need hot food when he got back, so she started fixing dinner. The thunder crashed, and the rain didn’t let up. If anything, it came down harder. Callia heard the trees whipping back and forth in the wind, though she couldn’t see anything outside ’cept when there was lightning.

By seven o’clock, all the food she’d made was sitting cold on the table, and still the rain came down. She figured that Charlie was a-sitting out the storm somewheres, and she hoped he had sense to stay out from under the trees what with all the lightning banging around out there. Long about eight o’clock, with the rain coming down as hard as ever, she started thinking maybe he was lost. She closed her eyes, wove her web, spun her spells, and tried to see where he might be.

It was hard to concentrate with the thunder booming and crashing every few seconds, and she couldn’t tell from one moment to the next what she was looking at ’cause everything was black, and nowhere did she see the spark of a twelve-year-old boy lost in the storm. Well, if she couldn’t find him, maybe he could find her. She pulled a thread from her skirt and made the knots for a come-hither, binding it with the image of her and Charlie meeting right there in the kitchen, him all wet but safe. But even as she tied it, she knew the summoning wouldn’t work, ’cause she couldn’t picture him right. Every time she tried to see him clearly in her mind, she didn’t see him smiling and safe the way he’d have to be for the summoning to work. Instead, she saw him a-lying on the ground, not moving, hair plastered down, his face all peaceful despite the rain and thunder and mud.

The room got hot and prickly suddenly, and she knew she was seeing a maybe—something that might really happen, something that would happen if she didn’t do something about it. But what could she do? She didn’t recognize where he was, and even if she did, how could she get there?

There was a tremendous flash, and a clap of thunder right on top of it, and all the lights went out. Callia shivered, even though it wasn’t cold, ’cause as sudden as a lightning hit, she knew what she had to do. She had to go get Charlie. And she knew where he was, too—she’d known it all along. He was down by Devil’s Crick, right where she told him not to be.

She made herself stop and think out the route. The shortest way was out the back, up over the hill with the pine trees, and down the other side right into the crick. But she couldn’t go that way. There wasn’t no path for wheelchairs through the trees. She’d have to go the long way, down along the road until it crossed the crick, then somehow she’d have to get off the bridge and down to the water. From there, she could follow the bank until she found Charlie. But how would she get back? There weren’t no way she could go uphill, not unless she had something to pull on.... A rope! She could take a rope, and pull them back up!

There wasn’t any more time to think, ’cause she suddenly remembered that Devil’s Crick always flooded real easy, and it had been raining for hours already. She pictured the black water swirling and rising, with Charlie caught on a log or knocked unconscious, the water up to his knees, then his waist, then his chest, then—

No! She was moving before she knew it. Out the door, across the porch, down the ramp, and back to the shed. The wind and rain lashed her like whips and the thunder was so loud it hurt her ears. The rope came to her hand, right where it was supposed to be, and then she rolled onto the driveway, her arms pumping in a steady rhythm on the wheels. “I’m coming, Charlie!” Her wheels skidded on wet pavement, but she dug in, got traction, and sped down the road toward the bridge.

It was a long way, near half a mile she reckoned, and uphill the last hundred feet where the road went over the crick. Her arms were powerful tired by the time she got there, and she was wet clear through her clothes. The rain slacked off somewhat, but it didn’t matter if the clouds broke up and moved off—the storm’d done its work already. She saw quick glimpses when the lightning flashed. Devil’s Crick rushed and roared below her in the dark like it’d gone mad. The water was mighty fast and high, all aroil with tree branches and swirling debris.

She’d be insane to go down into that, not even knowing if Charlie was out there. She shouldn’t have come. She knew that now. She should have gone for old man Peterson. He’d have brought his truck, and he had two strong legs for climbing, two strong arms for carrying. Even if Charlie was down there, what could she do? All she had was a rope and a wheelchair. There wasn’t even a path down from beside the bridge, or if there was one, it was washed away by now.

She turned away and let the wheelchair start rolling down the bridge. It wasn’t too late to fetch old man Peterson. He’d come right quick, but she’d have to go back down the road, past her house, find him in the dark and convince him that—

“Help!”

Callia jerked up on the wheelchair’s brake. She froze in place, listening. It’d been awful faint, probably she’d just imagined—

“Help!”

She heard it for sure that time. It was off to the left, Charlie’s voice and no mistake—even so faint and distant, there wasn’t no way she’d not know her own brother’s voice. “Charlie!” she yelled. “I’m here, and I’m a-coming!”

But how? She wheeled over to the guardrail and looked down. It wasn’t too deep here, maybe three feet to the ground, but there was nowhere for her chair to go even if she could get it over the edge. The ground was all mud, sliding straight down into the water ... what was that? Something bobbing in the crick, something white.... Another flash of lightning, and she saw him, clear as day, water up to his armpits, out near the base of the bridge, where a tangle of branches had caught on a piling.

She didn’t stop to think. She tied one end of the rope to the guardrail on the bridge, the other end ’round her waist, and fell forward out of her chair, over the rail, down to land with a thump in the mud. A stone gouged her left knee, but she ignored the pain and slithered down the bank on her belly. His face was a pale blob against the dark water, only a dozen feet out from the edge. He looked to be treading water. Why didn’t he swim in?

On one elbow and hip, her useless legs trailing through the mud behind her as if they belonged to someone else, she lurched forward, flung her other hand out, grabbed at the thickest branch within reach, and hauled herself into the water.

All at once she was in over her head. The current slapped at her like a giant hand, pulled her instantly downstream. She breached the surface, windmilling her arms, grateful for the muscles she’d built up by pushing her chair. In the water, her legs didn’t matter so much. They didn’t help, but they didn’t hurt none either. She shook the hair out of her eyes, angled against the current, and swam over to Charlie with only a couple dozen powerful strokes.

She wanted to laugh and cry, hug him and strangle him, all at once. “Charlie,” she said when she was near enough she didn’t have to shout. “What are you doing out here?”

“I’m hurt, Cally,” he said. “Maybe bad. My foot’s caught. I think it’s broke.”

While he was talking, the current swept her downstream. She wasn’t worried too much, ’cause she was still tied to the rope, but that wouldn’t do Charlie much good. She swam back to him against the insistent tug of the water.

“I’m awful tired, Cally,” he said. “I been swimming a long time.”

She didn’t say what she was thinking—that the water was already up to his shoulders, and still rising fast. She just nodded and said, “Well, hold on, I’ll take a look.”

She took a deep breath and pushed herself under the water. She followed his leg down and down while the crick tried to swirl her away. She couldn’t see nothing, but she could feel the branches, anchored deep in the muck. She explored them with her hands, ignoring the way her lungs were aching. Charlie’s ankle was trapped in the crook of one branch, another log pressed against it, holding it tight. She worried at it until she couldn’t hold her breath no more, then pushed up off the bottom and exploded into the air, gasping and blowing. The water was up to Charlie’s neck now, and he looked mighty scared. “You just keep treading water, Charlie,” she said, then sucked in as much air as she could hold and dove again.

This time she hauled herself down, hand over hand. She used his leg like a rope ladder, and went right to the tangle. She pushed and tugged at his foot, turning it this way and that, but the branches held it firm. She dribbled air out of her mouth as slowly as possible, trying to extend her time underwater. Her lungs burned and her head felt like it was going to explode. There was no way his ankle was coming loose. She finally surfaced. For a moment, she was so glad to be breathing again, and so tired, that she let the current drag her downstream. It would be so easy, so restful, to just float. But Charlie needed her. She shook her head and struck out against the flow. The water was still rising. Charlie’s face was tipped back now, and the water lapped his chin and ears. “I can’t swim no more, Cally,” he said.

She grabbed one of his arms and shook it hard, then had to let go again to keep herself afloat. “Charlie, Charlie, you got to listen now. Pa said to mind me, so you just keep swimming, hear? That’s an order, Charlie! You hear me?”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were shut, and his arms weren’t moving no more. The water closed over his mouth and nose, and he drifted quietly down, away from her.

“Charlie!” Callia screamed so loud she thought her lungs would come up her throat. She grabbed after him, caught one hand, and used it to pull herself down again. She found his leg, then his ankle, then the tree-trunk that was pinning it. This time, instead of trying to pull his foot out, she swam along the length of the log until she reached its free end. She wrapped both arms under it, like carrying firewood, but that wasn’t no good. She didn’t have any leverage ’cause she couldn’t push with her legs. So she got all the way under it, her shoulders against the bottom of the crick, and pushed up and over as hard as she could. She thought her heart would burst before the log moved, but then suddenly it came free. It slid ponderously to one side, and almost landed on her legs. But she pushed against it as it was falling, got her legs out, and shot to the surface.

For a second, she couldn’t find him. Then the lightning flashed. He was drifting free, not three feet away, head down, being pushed by the current. She lunged through the water, grabbed his hair with one hand, turned over on her side and pulled him in close. She got his head up high, her right arm under his chest, and just held on. The current swirled them downstream until they hit the length of the rope, then swung them over to the bank.

Somehow she got them both up out of the water, digging with her elbows in the mud, yanking on Charlie’s arms to pull him after her. She rolled him onto his back and pushed on his chest until water spurted out his nose and mouth. “Charlie! Charlie, don’t you dare die!” She pushed on his chest again, then breathed into his mouth until she felt his lungs inflate. “Charlie! Oh, Charlie, baby, come on, you can’t die, you can’t. I won’t let you!” She was crying now, her tears mingling with the rain that fell on his peaceful, upturned face. It was the maybe-picture she’d seen, him lying on the ground, body still, so still, too still. Dead. He was dead. She knowed it all of a sudden.

“Wake up!” she shouted, banging on his bare chest with her fists. “Come on, Charlie, come back to me, come back. I love you, Charlie! I love you. You can’t be dead. Breathe, Charlie, breathe!” She put her mouth over his again and blew into his lungs. Again. And again. And again. Then she pushed on his chest. “Come on, Charlie!” Suddenly he coughed weakly, then gasped and coughed again.

“Oh, Charlie!” She was laughing and crying at the same time now, but she didn’t even know it. She cradled his head against her chest and held him tight, rocked him like a baby, held him while he coughed. He finally got his breathing under control, and she smoothed back his hair and looked down at him.

“You okay now?” she asked.

“I’m sore all over, and my foot hurts something wicked. I reckon I had my bath for tonight.”

His voice was hoarse, and he looked awful young. Callia wiped her nose with the back of her hand and started crying again for no reason she could see. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “We’ll both be okay now.”

He started coughing again, and it was a couple minutes before he could talk. “Cally, I couldn’t swim no more. That’s all I recollect. What happened after that?”

“Magic,” she said. “Powerful strong magic. A come-hither like you never seen.”

“Aw, Cally, you ain’t no witch.”

“You shut up,” she said, and hugged him for all she was worth.

Story Notes

This story is technically well-written, but just doesn't muster much energy. The best thing it has going for it is the dialect and the invention of the word "rambunction," of which I remain absurdly proud today.