by Danny Adams
Floyd County, Virginia, in 1928 was not an easy place to find magic. Outsiders—those who believed in such things—would reckon this surprising: It was still a wide land in its most remote places. There was a bit of ancient forest left older than any human settlements, mostly on steep mountains where loggers refused to carry their tools. There were occasional springs untouched, without springhouses built over them. There were plenty of caves, limestone, undiscovered by explorers, children, criminals, or even animals.
But not many, and each spread so far apart those wild places had long since lost contact with each other. There were none at all on Layla Switzer's farm as far as she could tell. The most magical things she'd seen by that December of her 13th year were the Model A's in town, the radio on display in the storefront—how she yenned for one of those!—and the new camera Mama bought Daddy for his birthday last month, the kind you didn't have to sit forever posing for, that Daddy hadn't yet used once.
Floyd, a county built crosswise over Appalachian mountains, wasn't a place that made it easy to find anything. And it held you tight. Layla knew Mama was ready to start instructing Layla's in woman's matters—wife and mothering, mostly, neither things Layla cared to think too hard on just yet.
But she did think on them whether she wanted to or not, at the most inopportune times, usually when the world held the least light. Like the rest of the family she was up before the sun regardless of the weather, wrapped up and then out of doors into a windswept darkness devoid even of stars, where it was easy to believe in that bleak island of frozen land that one misstep too far and you would fall off the edge of the world.
She had nothing against such things as marriage and children. She had no great desire to leave the mountains; she just wanted to see what was out past them. But even as the sun rose it was choked behind a sky consumed by clouds, a perpetual gray shroud that occasionally lowered to their farm, wisping across the hard ground, hiding everything more than a few paces out and promising nothing but more winter.
The wisps surrounded her when the milking was done and she stepped out of the barn. At first they caressed her and cooled her face. But the cool turned to sting and caress turned to choking and she found herself running through the mountain-clinging clouds, waving her arms to banish them and their chill till she crashed into a great stone.
Then there was nothing in the world but her and the stone, tall and rounded at the top and smooth of face, sticking straight up and tearing open the fog at its tip. Where had it come from? She'd been through the woods a piece but never seen this before.
It was cold to the touch but something tingled her fingers, whispered that there was a way the stone would warm, if you just knew the right words. Cold though it was, when she removed her hand she was colder still, frozen to the bone by the fog and December, and suddenly feeling very much alone, and lost. The clouds sunken to earth had not given up their control and Layla could see nothing past the length of her own arm.
"Which way?" she cried.
There was a whistle behind her, a mourning song from wind cut in twain by the standing rock. "Which way back?" she asked the gray stone, and the earth answered with a low rumble.
She knew the strange ways fog carried sound, that this noise melting up from ground to sky at her feet was not beside her, but not far away. Heart pounding, she followed it until the rumbling offered by the air sharpened into the familiar whirring of something mechanical. A split-rail fence at the edge of their fields appeared when the fog parted for a few breaths, long enough for her to see the summer-green Model A containing her cousin Hazel, Uncle George, and Aunt Dottie pulling into the end of the driveway.
The rest of Layla's family was surrounding the car and Layla climbed over the fence and went back for the milk buckets, willfully flattening her expression like she was just coming from the barn—and not, as her grandpa would've warned her, as if this time the shroud hadn't almost caught her for good and covered her over. Would have if not for the magic stone.
Much to Mama's distress, before Layla went out to milk she put on the dog for Hazel's and her aunt's and uncle's annual two-week Christmas visit. She wore her prettiest dress, cream-colored and down to the knees and with a round fold-down collar, plus black stockings and her scarlet ribbon tied into a bow on top of her head. Layla never cared much if scarlet didn't go with whatever else she wore; it was her best ribbon and today she wore it for Hazel's welcome.
Hazel lived far away, a county over in Carvin's Cove. She put on a more rumpled dress, something she could travel in the hours it took to drive, but that was OK, because she already had everything: They had a nice apple orchard at the edge of the valley—Carvin's Cove was called the Happy Valley—along a stream and with a beautiful waterfall at the edge of the farm. The trees stayed colorful in Fall longer and the winters were easier there. They had electricity and a telephone and water in pipes instead of pumps, and a Philco radio. And of course there was Uncle George's new Model A.
Layla envied her, but not the kind that made her dislike Hazel. Hazel was her favorite cousin and trusted in all matters. They were the same age, both an only child, both even had short-cut bobbing dark hair. Plus Hazel thought their mountaintop was the prettiest place in the world.
"Your mama wants to take our picture," Hazel said after breakfast, when her father was chewing Layla's daddy's ear off about how many new assistants Uncle George was able to hire for his blacksmithing business, and how he was making even more money now by selling automobile parts. "Where should we take it?"
Layla was already feeling the misspirit coming on her so soon after Hazel arrived, so she grabbed her cousin's hand, said "I know just the place," and they ran outside.
Layla's father watched from the back porch, or at least his eyes lingered in their direction. Layla and Hazel stood on a pile of rocks in a back field laying fallow for the last three years, and lingered after Mama hurried back into the house, and finally took a seat.
"Why are these rocks still here?" Hazel asked. "They're right out in the middle of the field."
Layla shrugged and fiddled with the end of her scarlet bow. "I guess they go down too deep for clearing."
"You know what Grandpa John would say," Hazel said. "He'd say they weren't meant to be moved. That they'd been here since the beginning of time, and they'd been a fairy circle or somesuch. Look at the way the ones on the outside are all in a circle, like they were set down that way on purpose."
"If Mama ever heard him say that, she'd make Daddy move them right off."
"Wonder if we can make a wish on them?" Before Layla could reply her breath caught in her throat, because suddenly Hazel was sobbing.
"What is it?" Layla asked, though she couldn't possibly imagine anything being wrong with Hazel. She had everything she wanted.
"They're going to make us move," Hazel finally told her, gasped, then finally caught herself. "The city. They're going to put a dam in. Our whole valley's going to be underwater."
Layla felt her jaw drop without any words to go with it. Then Hazel kept on, "And they're going to put it right on the edge of our farm! You know our waterfall you think's so pretty? They're going to tear it all up and put the dam there. And then our house will be gone, and all our apple trees, and Daddy's blacksmith shed..." She plunged into tears again.
And then a mischievous thought poked into Layla's mind, but mischief with good purpose, the kind Grandpa John always liked. "Up for a secret, Hazel? These are magic rocks. You can make wishes on them. Maybe you can wish that they'll change their mind about the dam."
"You can wish first," Hazel said. "They're your rocks. Then I'll go next."
"All right. I wish for..." A dozen things ran through her head, everything from a short winter to the radio, to seeing the world past Roanoke, the city she only saw at Easter and Christmas when they'd pass it by on the way to Carvin's Cove. But her grandfather was still in her mind then, and she remembered how he'd tell her magic was still around in pockets here and there, hidden the way you'd suddenly stumble across water coming out of rocks on a hillside, if you just knew how to see it. But that most people couldn't see such things anymore.
"I wish to see things I can't see," Layla finally said.
"What's that mean?"
Layla wasn't sure herself, but felt as if the wind had retreated, decided for its own reasons to leave her be.
"Get off those rocks!"
The girls jumped away before Layla recognized the sullen figure looming over them as her father.
"Uncle Hardy!" Hazel cried. "You gave me a fright!"
His eyes were hard and fiery for the first time in ages, maybe since before he fought over in France. His face was chiseled as solid as the rocks they sat on but there was a bit of fear in them too, something deep and old Layla never even saw the one and only time he ever talked about living in the trenches.
"I heard you wishing on those rocks—don't make any wishes anywhere near them. Hear?"
"What's wrong with wishing?" Layla challenged.
He turned that fiery stare directly down on her and she nearly didn't recognize him for it. "Because you never know who or what might be listening."
He regarded the girls' blank looks, frowned. "Remember when we tore down the old barn and built a new one on the old foundations? This pile is the same way, only older. Once, long ago, it was a fairy ring. Then somebody built something—maybe a tower—on top of that. Then that was torn down and a new thing was built. And again and again. What you're sitting on is the ring and the remains of all the workings. Each had a different magic... but tearing down one didn't destroy its magic, not completely. There's several old magics here, all mixed together, and nothing you want to stir up."
He straightened, gazing off into the distance. "I left this rock pile here to leave it be. I don't bother it, and it doesn't bother us."
He stalked back to the house and Layla disobeyed him several times over as she stepped off the rocks: She wished to know why he wanted them away from them, and what he was so angry and afeared about, and that something would happen to make Hazel happy again.
Layla was in a doleful mood all day, watching Hazel be so sad and being so taken aback by the rough edge in Daddy's voice—one Layla remembered now Mama saying he used to have all the time but thought gone forever after the war. That young Hardy Switzer was a man his only daughter had never known; she was three when he came back from France.
Glancing out the kitchen window she saw the rocks on the far end of their hillside and thought,
I wish I could see Daddy the way he was before the war.
Layla only then noticed that the rocks were glowing with a pale white gleam that mirrored the faint moonlight. And she looked at Hazel, whose eyes were still a mite puffy, and all at once her doleful mood changed into something altogether different.
When dinner and dishes were done later that night she pulled Hazel aside and whispered, "The rocks aren't the only magic things around here. I found a standing stone too, just like the kind Grandpa said were all over Europe. I'll bet its even more powerful, and if we make a wish on it, it's bound to come true."
Hazel was near breathless. "A what?"
"A standing stone, like the kind Grandpa said were all over the place in Europe. Grandpa told me they'd been standing there for thousands of years, sometimes all in rows that were hundreds of miles long. So maybe ours isn't all alone!"
"Where is it?"
"I don't rightly know. I found it this morning by accident. But I'll bet we can find it again if we try right now..." Her look turned mischievous. "And if we're worthy."
"What's that mean? And you mean to go now? When it's so dark out?"
"Course I do! Most magic happens at night. Even more at midnight. No one'll know if we sneak out."
Hazel's gaze plummeted. "It's awful dark out. And cold as the Devil's—"
"You want to stay living in the Cove or not?"
Hazel looked like she'd shoot back something angry, but finally nodded. "You wake me, then," she said testily. "I won't be able to stay awake so long."
"I promise!"
She kept her promise too, and when they were all wrapped up in coats and hats and gloves so only the barest bit of face showed, they snuck out Layla's bedroom onto the sleeping porch and then tiptoed down the steps, and were away. Layla led them to the barn first, figuring it would be easier to find the stone if she started from where she started before, but then Hazel grabbed her arm and wouldn't let go.
"Layla, look there!"
The rock pile on the edge of the fallow field was glowing, all right. Not just with any glow, but one with an arrow a half-blind man couldn't mistake.
"Is that seeing something you couldn't see before, Layla?" Hazel asked. "You suppose it's pointing the way to the standing stone?"
"I reckon it might be. And if it's making us an invitation then it would be rude of us not to accept, you think?"
She moved before the gaping Hazel could answer.
The arrow may've pointed the way, but that didn't mean the way would be easy. "I swear, Layla," Hazel chimed in between exhausted gasps, "I think every briar and thicket and bit of scrub on this mountain has closed in on us tonight."
Layla was feeling worn out and deflated herself but kept moving so fast the gray fogs of her breath couldn't keep up with her. "Well, what'd you expect? Something this powerful's got to be guarded so not just anyone finds it. It won't make this easy."
"You suppose there are any—other guardians? Like spirits or such?"
Layla grinned wickedly. "Ain't nothing we can't face. We're fire, you and me."
Then all at once they were at the standing stone and Layla knew right off why she'd never found it before. Aside from the fact that the thorny briars were all over, the stone was in a strange sort of depression all its own, at the edge of a steep hillside, not necessarily a place Layla would've thought to wander.
In fact, she was hard put to figure out just how she got through the thorns before. But now that she was close on it, she could see the pale gray glow through the scrub, and the rounded top of the stone peeking over the small trees growing up around it.
Layla was still rapt, watching the way its light seemed to drift up past the top toward the sky, meeting up with the moonlight until they were all of one beam, when Hazel cried out that she'd found another standing stone.
It, too, was only visible from the very top, but was built into a small rise all its own just a few yards away. And then—another! Just beyond. And...
"There is a whole line of them!" Layla said. For now it was as plain as Hazel's eyes before her. "Let's follow them and see where they go!"
"All the way? Didn't Grandpa John say they could go for hundreds of miles?"
"That was Europe, silly. Whoever built these wanted to keep them secret, I bet. They might only go for just a little ways."
Layla felt her freezing legs might collapse out from her at any time but was too excited to care, and hardly noticed the scrub and brambles trying to catch at her dress. Hazel was red-faced but grinning, too caught up to aside now.
The last stone ended at a rocky hillside too steep to climb—certainly there would be no more of them straight ahead.
"You reckon they might be up top, Layla?" Hazel asked.
Layla owned there might be, but also knew they'd never find a way to the top in the dark. "We've made a good start, Hazel. Tomorrow we'll..."
A few moments later Layla realized Hazel was impatiently asking what was going on because she hadn't seen the lights—lights coming from inside the mountain.
"It's a cave!" she cried triumphantly. "I'll bet my scarlet ribbon that's where the standing stones are taking us." The cave mouth was small but able to accommodate at least one person at a time. It was slightly overgrown and she might even have missed it in the light, certainly in the dark but for the orange dots glowing inside.
Now it was her turn to be impatient when she swung around to her cousin. "You coming?"
"How? We've got no light!"
Layla frowned, but said, "Maybe just a little ways..."
Then the whole cave screamed at them.
Both girls jumped back; and the scream seemed to echo through the bowels of the whole mountain. There was another scream—like a woman's scream, but not quite, surely not earthly, but something hungry, something that would take their blood if they penetrated too far into what wasn't their property.
"The guardian!" Hazel shouted.
The girls spun as one and nearly slammed into Layla's father.
"Didn't I tell you not to mess with the magic?" he hissed, but then glanced uncertainly at the cave. "Get on back to the house—behind me, so you can follow my light. And look at your dresses, I'll have to stay up half the night to think of a way to explain that to your mothers."
They walked in silence—Hardy Switzer's as deep as the night, Layla's and Hazel's abashed—until he surprised them by stopping and facing them with a hard face tempered by a strange soft expression Layla had never seen in him before.
"Me telling you no ought to be enough. But I can see you're at that age... After breakfast you girls come to me and we'll have a talk about this place. And I'll show you something so you don't stumble across it yourselves and get hurt. Mind you, don't tell anyone else about any of this, you hear?"
A couple of hours later, staring up at her bedroom ceiling, Layla asked, "Hazel, you awake?"
"Yeah. I don't think I'll get sleep tonight, Layla."
"Me either, but know what?"
Hazel sat up in the guest bed and grinned. "Doesn't matter."
And it didn't. Layla knew she wouldn't be tired the next morning even with no sleep, as if the magic itself was feeding her its own energy. But why not? It felt like the land had plenty to give.
Layla's father told her mother that he had some chores outside he wanted Layla and Hazel to help with, excusing them from the dishwashing, and when he was sure no one was looking, he grabbed an old Norfolk and Western caboose lantern from a peg in the living room. It was their sturdiest lamp; he said they would need the sturdiest and most reliable light possible where they were going.
The glowing arrow was gone of course, faded with the end of night, but he took them straight to the first standing stone. It was only about a ten-minute push through the woods though it had seemed so much longer the night before. They passed stone after stone—six in all—and then the cave mouth opened before them, small and tentative but challenging them nevertheless.
There Layla's father faced the girls.
"Where do you suppose your grandfather got all his stories about magic?" he asked.
Layla nearly answered but realized she had none. Hazel shook her head.
"From his father, your great-grandpa. Heinrich—Henry—Switzer. Grandpa Henry was born in Germany, and brought all those old tales with him, then he handed them onto your Grandpa John—Johannes. My grandpa gave up a lot to live here. His birth home, his language, nearly everything he owned. But he still had his stories. He wanted to make sure they survived. And when he found this place, this land—he felt the magic, felt it familiar, knew that he and it would get along just fine as long as they respected each other. And so they did, and so have I"—his face turned stern—"and so had you better."
The girls nodded, enraptured even more than Layla had been finding the first standing stone again.
"You'd better," Hardy Switzer said again, "if you want to go in this cave."
"We promise!" Layla said, and Hazel gave the same assurance.
"All right then. Step where I step. Don't wander off—you get lost in here you may never come out."
The father ducked inside first, then Layla, then Hazel. The small mouth was deceptive: Just a few feet through and you could stand up with room for even the tallest man to spare. They stood in a great ring of granite, and Layla recognized scratches on the right-hand side of the dark wall and prints in the mud at her feet.
"Bobcat," she realized. "Should've known. There wasn't a guardian here after all."
"You sound awfully sure of yourself, child," her father said.
"Guardian or no, a bobcat's wicked enough," Hazel said. But she was grinning again. "It'll be gone by now, though!"
"Let's press on," Hardy told them. "Watch your heads, it gets narrow in parts."
They went around a bend and as they did the granite disappeared first, replaced by dripping clay and limestone. Then the only light was given from the railroad lantern. And there was the sound of water off to their right—a stream, Layla saw when her father held the light over it. It disappeared into a hole in the brown wall.
"Where's it go?" Hazel asked.
"Nobody knows. Nobody knows where it comes from either. But it feeds this cave, so maybe we weren't meant to know."
They hiked—sometimes crawled—gingerly for a time Layla couldn't reckon, and her father said no more, even when they passed an enormous skull with large, sharp teeth embedded in the wall, one Hazel said belonged to a long-ago creature called a dinosaur. But her voice was muffled as if the cave itself tried keeping her quiet; she showed shame in her face for talking here, for showing the cave disrespect.
Layla had expected the path to go down but instead the track led them upward, upward, so steep at one point her father had to grab her and Hazel's hands one by one and haul them up.
"Don't all caves go underground?" Layla asked.
Her father squinted at her. "We are underground, Layla."
"I mean—shouldn't we be going down?"
"We're going where we're supposed to be going."
Over the second steep rise Layla heard a rush of water—not the stream, but something bigger, more powerful.
It was a waterfall pouring from a broad hole in the roof of the cave forty feet above them, birthing the stream. She saw it at the same time she realized their lantern wasn't the only light anymore. Something glistened off the water, turned it white.
"Turn off your lantern, Daddy," Layla said. Then added, "Please?"
He complied, and a shaft of sunlight appeared.
"Where's it go?" Hazel asked.
He jerked a thumb toward the light. "You came this far, you going to turn back now?"
The climb up was easy, if slick, and the whole not much larger than the one they came in through but also made of the more solid wall of granite. Layla blinked when she stepped through and then nearly jumped back when her eyes adjusted and saw even the highest mountain peaks were below her.
Her father laughed—laughed! A sound she'd never heard him make before. Layla and Hazel laughed to hear him. And laughed more still with wonder at the place they found themselves: A long knob jutting out of the mountainside, near the top of the peak, offering up a view of dozens of miles even in the weak sunlight and the valley-shrouding fogs.
"I'll bet you can see for a hundred miles," Hazel said.
"Maybe on a sunny day when there's no haze. I reckon we're at about three-thousand feet. It's the last link in a chain, you see—there's a little magic in the rocks you were standing on. Then some more in the standing stones, some more in the cave, and then this place. Most of the magic left in these mountains has been fragmented—broken up. Sometimes by men, sometimes by time and wind and water. But the pieces on our land are all still held together, talking to each other..."
"This is where you make the wishes," Layla said, not exactly sure how she had the knowing of it but feeling she was right nevertheless.
Her father nodded solemnly. "All of the elements join up here. The earth, both inside and out. The air, the water—the stream inside... And the fire, well that's you, Layla, and you, Hazel. You two were never content to just sit and smoulder if you could do something about getting what you wanted. You two are the only missing pieces."
"What can we wish for?" Hazel asked.
"Whatever you want—on one condition. It has to be for someone else. And you have to give something of yours to the person you're wishing for. Magic doesn't work, doesn't mean anything, if you don't share of yourself."
Layla and Hazel glanced at each other and ideas sparked off of them without having to say a word.
Layla reached for her scarlet ribbon, worn even though Daddy had warned her to wear workaday clothes otherwise, but then stopped abruptly, feeling it wasn't enough. A heartbeat later she knew what
was enough.
"Hazel Armistead," she began formally, "I don't know if we can wish away that old dam or not. But I can wish that if you ever have need of me, or if there's something I can ever do for you, if it's big or small, than I'll have the power in me to do it, for the rest of my life."
A small smile traced over Hazel's face. "Layla Switzer, I wish for you to see things you've never seen before, see things you can't see right now, to never feel apart from the whole rest of the world. I wish that you get to do and see everything you want to do and see, and if I'm ever in a place where I can send you there, I will."
Layla's father leaned back against the rock wall with his arms crossed. "Fine wishes, girls, both of you. But now your mothers are going to be antsy as to where I've taken you. We'd best head back down..."
"You aren't going to make a wish?" Layla asked.
"Already did. I just didn't say it aloud is all."
"We're still not done yet, Uncle Hardy," Hazel said. "We haven't made a wish for you yet. Layla, you say it. He's your father."
"I wish..." She searched for just the right thing, and it came to her when she searched her Daddy's face. "Hardy Switzer, I wish for you to be able to laugh a lot more from now on."
But before she could think of something to give him he snapped his gaze away. "We'd best head back," he said, never letting his daughter and niece see his face once.
Layla's and Hazel's days passed with adventures. They played around the old fairy circle and tower base—sure it was a tower at one time, maybe a whole castle, but only the magic-protected tower was left. They played around the standing stones, and even went into the cave—when they made sure to tell Hardy where they were going, and when it was daylight and no bobcats or guardians of any other sort were likely to cause them grief.
This lasted till Christmas Eve, when Hardy Switzer approached his daughter after the dinner dishes were done and told her to walk with him outside with him for a time.
"I do something wrong?" she asked once they were out of earshot of the house.
"No, Layla, but I may have. I never lied to you before, Layla, and I never aimed to this time. But—I reckon I didn't think. It seemed like the right thing to do."
"You lied to me about something, Daddy?"
He gazed off toward the fallow field, where the white arrow was glowing in the moonlight. "There's no magic here, Layla. There's no such thing as magic. I told you stories. And it wasn't right of me."
"But the arrow! And the stones—"
"Layla, listen to me. Your grandpa came to America when he was just a little boy and he missed home something terrible. Nothing could—make him smile. So his daddy decided to give his mind something happy to think on, something to help bind him to this land. Grandpa Henry found the cave first. Then he saw the layers of rocks on the hillside, and remembered the standing stones he'd seen, and spent the next couple of months using all his free time hauling those up just like the ancient ones. Then he took the quartz in the fallow field, the quartz from that very rock pile, and lined it up and half-buried it so it was shaped like an arrow."
He let out a long breath, buried his hands in his trouser pockets. "That's the real reason I never dug up those stones, Layla. They're an heirloom to me. I didn't have the heart to tear it up." He tugged at his chin. "But it worked. It worked just fine. My daddy found something to be happy over, and—well, you heard him tell the stories to you when you were growing up just the same as he did me."
Layla stared at her father, waiting for more.
At length, he told her, "I knew you weren't happy, Layla. But I didn't know what to do to remedy it. I know you want to leave—"
"I don't! I love it here!"
"Tell me that again in a few years. It's natural enough to want to leave. You'll need to find your own way first. You may want to come back, but if not... At least I hope you'll realize what this place means to you. And I pray to God every night it doesn't take you having to see every way a man can die a hundred times over for you to know it."
Another long breath. "I heard Hazel talking about the dam... Then I heard you girls talking about magic, and I remembered the old stones, and the cave. I wanted to give you something happy. Something Hazel could take with her no matter what happens next."
Layla cocked her head at him. "You've told me no lie, Daddy."
"I already said there's no magic."
"Know that for true, do you? You sure those stones weren't a fairy ring once? Or maybe Great-Grandpa Henry was right about this place. Or maybe he brought some magic with him from Germany. Can you say for true any of that's wrong?"
"Layla..."
"How do those quartz stones glow in the moonlight? Only when the moonlight's just so and no other time?"
He studied her. "I can't say. But that doesn't mean there's no other—"
"And the standing stones? Those are granite and granite doesn't glow if its plain and proper, but Hazel and I both saw them glow with our own eyes—"
"All right! But magic or none, I didn't think you'd find the cave at night and didn't think to look to see if it had a—guardian. That was sore stupid of me."
"It turned out fine. You were there." Now it was her turn to study him. "You're not going to tell Hazel this, are you? Cause I'd rather you didn't. I want her to carry this home, like you said."
He shrugged. "No reason to say anything, if I told the truth."
"There you are!" Layla heard her Uncle George shout from behind them, and Layla heard another automobile coming up the long stretch to the house. "We nearly ransacked the house looking for you two. We're about to exchange gifts. In fact"—he pointed to the old Model T truck pulling in front of the house—"they're carrying yours. I paid special to have it brought up Christmas Eve for you."
Layla and her father exchanged befuddled glances, but the answer was already waiting in their parlor when they got back to the house: A Philco radio, the small cathedral-shaped kind you could set on a table.
Layla gasped, but her father snapped, "George!"
"Don't think on it at all, Hardy. Business is going so well at the smith shop, and with the extra money we've made selling automobile parts—"
"But George... We don't... the house doesn't have..."
"Ah! So you haven't heard yet?" He grinned wickedly. "Come down from the mountain more often, Hardy. The town—Floyd—decided it was high time to start electrifying the whole county. This mountain will be one of the first places they run the lines—you should have electricity by spring. Then phone lines by summer or fall, and maybe even running water by the end of the year."
"When—?"
"Decision was made just a couple of weeks ago. Right after Dottie and Hazel and I started our visit." George clapped his brother-in-law on the arm. "It's about time you got connected to the rest of the world!"
For a moment, Hardy stared at Layla. Then he threw his head back and let free a long bellowing laugh that seemed to his daughter to echo all the way through the rest of the night until midnight turned Christmas Eve into Christmas morning.
Christmas morning was still cloudy but bright enough to illuminate the whole island of their farm. Layla herself was full of doubts, and after presents and had breakfast, and the adults and Hazel were chatting around the fireplace and the waiting radio, Layla slipped away and went out to the rock pile where her whole adventure had started.
"I don't know what this is worth to you," she said to the stones, granite and quartz alike, "but I believe you're magic. And so does Hazel. I don't know if that's enough, but there it is."
The rocks gave no indication of hearing her.
Right, she remembered.
Magic has to be shared, something of yourself, before it'll work.
A silver gleam from the house caught her eye and there she saw an old woman, one who looked a lot like Great-Grandma Sophie, sitting in a fancy wheelchair at the crest of the hill directly behind the house, watching her. A spirit maybe? But she looked so sad... Layla walked toward her, unstringing her scarlet ribbon from her hair. It would look pretty on her, Layla thought, and maybe make her happy. She looks like she could use some magic.
Layla offered her the ribbon, and for a moment the woman looked confused, as if uncertain about who what Layla was doing—doing there at all, Layla thought. Layla herself never questioned, just did what seemed right, and when the woman smiled and closed her eyes and said thank you and put the ribbon to her cheek. Hazel appeared from the house then with a question in her eyes; Layla grabbed her cousin's hand to pull her down to the rock, where they danced around in circles with one another.
Floyd County, Virginia, in 2006 was an easy place to find magic. Anyone who had lived there for a long time, or outsiders who came to visit for awhile and saw close-up this county built across mountaintops, knew that for a fact. It was a haven for artists and writers and musicians, a haven for old ways and old stories, a haven for nature.
For Kathy Layla Dogan, Layla Switzer's granddaughter, it was home—again.
Her brother watched over the family's old farmhouse on Switzer's Run while Kathy was in Iraq, even tended to her Christmas tree business that gave her enough income to spend the rest of her time painting. That was the first thing she'd wanted to do once she got home, after saying hello to her brother and her cousin Hazel, was paint: Ever since she ran across a group of ancient standing stones uncovered by a sandstorm, she'd been stuck with an image in her mind, something that proved a strange lifeline to home. It had been calling her again and again to be painted.
Hazel was some past ninety years old now, visiting the family before the annual family reunion at Carvin's Cove, a place still holding bittersweet memories. She grew up there before the dam—but the dam wasn't built until she was thirty, when she lived elsewhere with a family of her own, so the effect of losing the valley was muted. Every summer for as long as Kathy could remember she and Hazel would sit in the picnic grounds of the Roanoke City end of the Carvin's Cove Reservoir, in sight of where Hazel was raised. Hazel would tell her stories, always a smile on her strangely smooth face.
They didn't say a word when they saw each other again, but tears overcame the old woman's eyes when she took Kathy's hand. Kathy kissed her cousin's head, sat down with her easel and palette beside Hazel's wheelchair, and started sketching out a painting. Hazel recognized it immediately and looked away, bearing the weight of happy memories of times and people now all gone.
When Hazel at last glanced back down toward the Christmas tree fields she caught a glimpse of white from a rock pile she couldn't see but knew was there, and a girl in her early teens with an old-fashioned cream-colored dress and dark stockings came bounding toward her. The girl wore a scarlet ribbon in her hair tied into a bow, which she untied and handed to Hazel.
But it's so pretty, you don't want to give it away, Hazel thought, then understood the ribbon itself wasn't the only gift. It warmed her cheek and she smiled. "Thank you, Layla," she said, and the girl skipped back down the hill.
The warm tingling of magic spreading over her now, Hazel looked back at Kathy's painting, where two little girls were dancing hand-in-hand together on the old rock pile that pointed the way to a lifetime of wonders.
