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Syndi Teller definitely did not deserve to be grounded.
She’d just been working on her assignment for her journalism course, it wasn’t her fault that her ride along Monday night had a) gone late and b) ended in an intense battle between firefighters and an infestation of cats in the trees at Deadwood Park. The article she wrote from that was so good her teacher was going to submit it to a national student journalism competition!
And yet, she was grounded.
It was beyond unfair. Marshall got up to way more shit than she did – and hers was for a grade – and he never seemed to get grounded.
“What am I even supposed to do?” she had demanded when her mother had laid out the ground rules – straight home after school, no weekend outings – and Marilyn Teller had presented her with a list of chores she could do should she get bored. Out of spite, Syndi had powered through the list over the course of the first week of grounding and now, instead of hanging out with her friends on Friday afternoon, she was staring at the disaster of a back garden they hadn’t done anything with since they moved in.
It wasn’t that her mom hadn’t wanted to do something with the garden, it was just that between work and taking care of the house and the finances and Syndi and Marshall, she really didn’t have the time. So their backyard was an overgrown mess, flowers choked with weeds, trees and bushes with scraggly, untrimmed branches that reached out to snag on loose clothing. Syndi stood on the back porch, surveying the work ahead of her, hands on her hips as she decided exactly where to start.
Well. She knew where to start.
She marched to the clear patch in about the center of the yard, where the picnic table would be set up in the summer, and grabbed the blanket Marshall had left the last time he and Simon had been on UFO watch. It was unpleasantly damp and she tried to touch as little as possible as she carried it back into the house and added it to the pile of laundry that had been growing since she’d last done it. She sighed, knowing she would have to do another round in only a few days. Who would have guessed how quickly four people could dirty their clothes?
As much as being grounded sucked, it definitely gave Syndi more appreciation for all the work her mom did. Not only did she run her own business and take care of the family finances, Marilyn Teller also took care of most of the household tasks and chores, cooked and cleaned, scheduled doctor’s appointments, and so on. It was a lot and after one week of all of that on top of her usual chores and school had Syndi both in awe of her mother and wondering how she handled it.
Syndi sighed and turned her back on the laundry room. She would deal with that later. For now, she was focusing on the garden. She stood in the kitchen, leaning against the sink and staring out at the daunting task before her. She was determined to make that garden into the most beautiful thing anyone had ever seen, but she had no idea where to start.
She heard the front door open and her mom called a greeting, so Syndi left the view behind and went to help bring in grocery bags. “Hey mom,” she asked as they settled the bags on the kitchen counter so they could empty them. “Would it be okay if I went to the library today? I want to get started on the garden but I’m not sure where to start.”
Marilyn thought for a moment as she loaded the fridge with her purchases, then gave a quick nod. “That’s a good idea. We can go out after I get changed. I need to swing by the World O’Stuff, too.”
“That’s fine, maybe I can grab some fertilizer or something.” Syndi started moving boxes of cereal to cupboards and Marilyn disappeared, off to go get changed while Syndi finished unloading the groceries. Syndi felt a little lighter. Sure, it was only a trip to the library and the World O’Stuff, but at least she was getting out of the house.
–
Syndi stood in the 630s, staring at the shelves and shelves of books on agriculture, plants, gardening in general, and gardening design and techniques… There was so much information, on topics she never even considered like natural pest control or that you could design gardens differently? She’d only thought about cleaning up some flower beds and trimming back the bushes but apparently if she wanted she could turn the whole of their backyard into a vast, lush gardenscape.
She definitely didn’t want to. Sure, it would look beautiful for a few days but the upkeep would be hell. She didn’t have the time or the patience for that. She skimmed her eyes across the books, barely registering titles as she searched for something simple. She grabbed one called Warring on Weeds by Demetrius Zane, one called Nurture Your Nature by an author who only used the name Persephone, and was going to leave it at that when she caught sight of a title that intrigued her: Strength in Your Soil . There was no author name on the cover or any of the pages, but it looked promising, so she added it to her pile and headed to the circulation desk to check the books out.
–
Back in the car as her mom drove them down the road to the World O’Stuff, Syndi flipped through Strength in Your Soil . What she could tell from a cursory glance at some of the subject headings and illustrations was that it was exactly what it seems like: a book to help you make the most out of your garden. She let it fall shut as her mom parked the car, leaving her little stack of books on her seat as they headed into the store.
“I’m going to look at the gardening supplies,” Syndi said, veering off from her mother’s trajectory and down the gardening aisle. She scanned along the displayed items, most of them stuff she knew they had at home. She surveyed the seed options and picked out some flowers she thought would look nice once the beds were cleaned up, then she crouched down to look at the fertilizer. There were the standard options, of course, but there was also a stack of bags with a bright yellow tag announcing how fresh and new this product was. It was called Max’s Miracle Formula Fertilizer and according to the label it would work wonders on even the saddest of gardens and you would have flowering plants before you know it. With a shrug, Syndi hefted a bag of it up and headed to the counter.
–
On the drive home, books in her lap and supplies in the trunk, Syndi rested her head against the window and absentmindedly toyed with the cover of the top book on the pile, Strength in Your Soil . If she were to look down, take her eyes from the passing houses and trees, she might catch sight of the eerie dedication on one of the first pages: For the wild witches.
–
That night, after dinner, Syndi lay sprawled on her bed looking through her gardening books. Nurture Your Nature was fairly hippy feeling, full of advice for how to listen to your beds and plants so you knew exactly what they wanted. There were some good tips about soil to fertilizer ratios, what plants to plant when, and a few charts on growing times so Syndi stuck in some post-it note bookmarks and moved on to Warring on Weeds which, as advertised, was full of advice on managing weeds and it had some good comparison pictures of weeds that could be mistaken for plants and how to tell them apart. She skimmed a few chapters, trying not to doze off as she waded through the dry text.
The second time her chin slipped off her hand as she started falling asleep, she shoved the book aside and pulled Strength in Your Soil towards her. She let it fall open at random and leaned down to see what exactly this book had to tell her.
To get the most out of your soil and fertilizer, brew this simple potion and add it before planting. This will give your plants a little something extra.
Syndi furrowed her brow. Potion sounded like something Marshall would be going on about, but the ingredients were common household items. There were a few instructions that were strangely specific – stirring clockwise for a five count, then counterclockwise for a ten count, that sort of thing – but Syndi figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot. She wanted to knock this garden out of the park, not because it would shorten her grounding but just for the satisfaction.
–
The next day was a Saturday and Syndi started out the morning in the backyard, weeding and trimming. It was hot, hard work and she was glad she wasn’t doing this in the height of summer. By the time she broke for lunch, she’d gotten a little less than half the beds weeded to her satisfaction and had trimmed back most of the bushes. Before scrounging something to eat, she brought out her bags of fertilizer and a hoe she found buried in the back of the garage, tangled up in spider webs and almost but not quite rusting away to nothing. It would have to do.
Inside, she shucked her boots in the laundry room and hurriedly washed her hands in the kitchen sink, wanting to avoid trailing mud everywhere – she was, after all, the one who would have to clean it all up – then searched the fridge for sandwich fixings and slapped together a tuna melt. After she’d eaten, she grabbed Strength in Your Soil from where she’d left it on the table and flipped to the potion she’d read the night before, figuring she may as well give it a try.
It took her 45 minutes and left the kitchen a disaster, but soon she had a pyrex measuring cup half filled with a brownish sludge. She took it outside and set it on the grass next to an empty bucket. She ripped open the bag of fertilizer, hefted it up, and dumped about half the contents into the bucket, then she added the potion and used a stick to mix it all together. The odor wafting up from the bucket made her gag, and she hurried to add the fertilizer to the flower beds and mix it all together. It still smelled, but the soil muted it some. She rinsed the measuring cup out with the faucet on the side of the house before setting it on the back stoop to take back inside when she did the dishes.
Carefully and methodically, Syndi laid out the flowers how she wanted them and planted them in her newly fertilized beds, then watered everything with the hose. She was grimy and smelled awful and mud was caked into her clothes and boots and the loose strands of hair that had come undone from her ponytail were stuck to her face with sweat, but she felt invigorated.
She’d done it.
She scooped up the measuring cup and headed back inside, stripping off her clothes in the laundry room and wrapping a fresh towel around herself before hurrying through the kitchen to drop off the cup, then up the stairs to the bathroom and the blessed shower. She still had so much to do before bed, especially getting the kitchen cleaned up before her mom came home and tried to make dinner, but she let herself linger under the hot stream of water for an extra few minutes, resting as much as she could before she had to get back to work.
–
Syndi woke the next day to darkness. She scrunched up her brow, staring at her alarm clock that insisted it was well past sunrise and her east-facing bedroom should have been bright. She sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes, and was met with Marshall standing in her doorway with wide eyes and not nearly enough clothes.
“Put some pants on,” Syndi grumbled.
“Look outside,” Marshall responded.
Syndi turned her head and stared. Greenery pushed up against the window, blocking the sky and any light. “What the hell?” she whispered.
“Syndi, what did you plant?”
“Flowers and stuff.”
“Did you add anything? Say chants over them?”
Syndi whipped her head around and glared at her brother. “Stop being such a weirdo, Marshall. A tree branch probably fell and is hanging over the edge of the roof or something.”
But Marshall wasn’t listening. He just kept mumbling possible reasons this – whatever this was – could have happened and was meandering down the hall towards the stairs. Syndi sighed and pushed her covers aside. She knew little brothers were weird as rule, but why did hers have to be so weird? She threw on a robe over her pajamas and followed Marshall out into the hall and down the stairs. The living room was as sunny as usual for a spring morning, so Syndi was pretty sure Marshall was full of shit.
Until she walked through to the kitchen where plants pressed up to the windows kept any natural light from filtering into the room. “What the hell?”
“I told you!” Marshall shouted, arms up, triumphant.
Syndi glared at him. “Put. On. Pants,” she growled through clenched teeth, then marched out through the back door and into...A forest.
“Oh, good, your up!” Her father’s hand landed on her shoulder, making her jump and pulling her attention away from the sprawl of plants, the looming trees and bushes, the flowers that snaked their way up trunks and siding. “Your mother and I are happy you found something that interests you, but could you maybe...tone it down a little?” he gestured helplessly at what had once been a backyard.
“I. Yeah,” Syndi swallowed hard, cleared her throat, tried to calm her racing thoughts. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Good, good,” Edgar Teller said, patting her on the shoulder as he disappeared back into the house, on to the next thing.
Syndi sighed and scanned her eyes across the backyard one more time, confused as to how all of this could have happened over night. She only just planted anything and what was already there wasn’t anywhere near that tall before. What had happened? She shook her head and turned to go back inside. She’d eat, get dressed, and go through her gardening books to figure out what had happened and how to fix it.
Breakfast was tense. Edgar and Marilyn kept making comments about how pretty the garden was but also nudging Syndi about when she thought she’d be able to get it back to something more manageable and if she could do it before they got back from their Sunday errands.
“I’m going to start working on it today,” Syndi said for the third time. “I promise.” She shook her head, pushing her cereal around in the bowl. “I just don’t understand it, I only planted it yesterday it shouldn’t have gotten that wild that fast.”
“I’m telling you! It’s another sign of Eerie Weirdness,” Marshall interjected. Syndi shot him a glare and he shrank back a little in his seat, but he mumbled, “We have got to investigate this” under his breath and Syndi knew she was going to have him and Simon underfoot while she was trying to fix whatever had gone wrong.
Great.
She managed to finish her breakfast without feeling sick and said goodbye to her parents as they headed out to run errands before she started working on cleaning up the kitchen. All the while, her brain turning over possibilities and options as she ate and worked. She studied what she could see of their new forest through the window over the sink, considering the overgrowth and the thriving plants, going through everything she did the day before and trying to figure out what could have caused it. The seeds themselves? Unlikely. They were just generic flower seeds. The fertilizer? Maybe. It was named after that wizard guy from that movie, right? She couldn’t quite remember, it had been too long since she’d seen it. She decided to check the ingredients in the fertilizer, see if there was anything that could cause spontaneous overnight growth.
Then, as she placed the last dish in the drying rack and pulled up the plug from the sink to let the water drain out, she considered the “potion”. That was what the book had called it, after all. She dried her hands and set the towel on the counter, meandering absently through the kitchen, into the living room, past the couch, up the stairs and into her bedroom. She changed into some old clothes to work in and grabbed the three library books from her bedside table, then marched down the hall to Marshall’s room. She knocked sharply and, after a moment without a response, pushed the door open and met his glare with one of her own.
“Put on something you can work in,” she said. “You’re helping me.” She didn’t wait for him to answer, just left him gaping at her and headed back down to the kitchen to look for information that might be able to help.
If Marshall was going to get in her way anyway, she may as well put him to work.
–
Simon joined them halfway through Marshall’s first rant about how useless reading books was. After which, Syndi implemented a rule that every time he started complaining about her plan he had to go outside, pull one weed, and bring it in to prove that he knew what he was doing out there. He hadn’t said anything since.
They each had a book and were going through carefully, looking for anything that could have happened or any way to fix it. Syndi chose Strength in Your Soil because she just knew how Marshall would react to it and she didn’t want to deal with that. It wasn’t a magic book, the mixture she’d made yesterday wasn’t a magic potion, and there was absolutely a non-weird explanation for whatever was going on.
Or so she told herself.
“Could this help?” Simon asked, pushing Warring on Weeds towards Syndi, holding it open with his fingers and pointing to a section on weed growth. Syndi leaned forward to give it a closer read, skimming her eyes over explanations of the varying speeds at which different plants grow, why weeds seem to grow faster, and ways to speed up the growing process for the plants you actually want to have.
“Bookmark it,” she said, leaning back again. From her brief glimpse, it didn’t look like it was relevant to anything she had done but it might help them cut back their brand new encroaching forest. She turned the page in Strength in Your Soil and found herself back on the page detailing the potion she’d used the day before. She skimmed the ingredients and instructions again, trying to understand how anything in there could have caused the sudden overgrowth.
“You did add a potion!” Marshall exclaimed, making Syndi jump. She hadn’t realized he’d leaned closer to her. He glared at her, pointing accusingly at the post-it note book mark at the top of the page. “I asked what you did and you said nothing but you added a potion! This has to have done it.”
“Marshall, it’s just a bunch of herbs and spices,” Syndi said, closing the book. She kept her finger on the page, but pulled the text further across the table away from Marshall. He was looking a little manic.
“That’s what a potion is, Syndi! Let me see, maybe there’s something you missed.”
Syndi raised an eyebrow. “And you’ll catch it because?”
“Because I investigate Eerie’s weirdness every day.”
Syndi rolled her eyes. Eerie weirdness again. “Go,” she said, pointing towards the back door. “Bring me a weed, oh wise Weirdness Investigator.” For a second, she was pretty sure Marshall was going to protest but he just rolled his eyes and stormed out of the kitchen. Syndi sighed and opened her book again, glancing at Simon who was doing a terrible job of pretending he was more interested in the page in front of him than in Syndi and Marshall’s argument.
She chuckled, then turned to the next page in her own book.
It was more about the mixture she’d made. She skimmed over the notes, brow furrowing as it detailed exactly what it was supposed to do: speed growing time, strengthen plants, discourage pests. She reached the bottom of the list and froze. There, at the very bottom in the smallest of print, it said Warning: Do Not Mix With Fertilizers.
“Shit,” she whispered.
She was absolutely not going to tell Marshall about this.
“Syndi!” Marshall shouted from the back door and she jumped guiltily, but all he said was, “you’re going to want to come out here!”
She glanced at Simon who looked ready to go into battle. “Shall we?” She asked and he gave a sharp nod.
–
Marshall was standing in a bare patch in the back yard, his jacket off and wrapped around his right forearm. “So. The plants won’t let me weed,” he said when Syndi and Simon joined him.
“What?” Syndi asked.
Marshall unwrapped his jacket and held out his arm, showing Syndi a long cut along the top of his arm. “I tried to pull a weed and one of the bushes did this.”
“You scraped your hand trying to get to a weed.”
“This isn’t a scrape!” Marshall brandished his arm, blood bright against his pale skin.
Syndi grabbed his jacket and pressed it against the wound. “Okay, you two go inside and get Marshall a bandage. I’m going to try and figure out what the hell is going on out here.”
Marshall looked like he was about to protest, but Syndi put more pressure on his arm and he flinched and gave a nod. He and Simon disappeared back into the house and Syndi surveyed the backyard, the looming trees, the robust bushes, the thriving flowers. And she realized she was still holding Strength in Your Soil . She opened it to where her finger held her place and saw that the note about fertilizer had changed.
Warning: Do not mix with fertilizer. Fertilizers will increase the effectiveness of this potion and the authors cannot be held liable for what occurs in such a situation. If you have already mixed with fertilizer and seen the results and decided you do not want them, please turn to the “Failure to Read All Instructions” section and proceed from there.
Glaring at the book, Syndi checked the table of contents and found a new chapter heading and all new page numbers. She turned to the section and sat down in the middle of the clearing to read, resigning herself to the fact that she may have to tell Marshall about this after all.
--
On Fertilizer:
Fertilizers are great for mundanes who lack the innate talent of bewitchment. Indeed, some fertilizers were created by witches to aid their mundane brethren. This is why it is very important to never mix growth potions with fertilizers as this is a case where too much of a good thing is, indeed, true. When mixed, the effect of growth potions and fertilizers increases exponentially. There are a few cases where this may be desirable – combating deforestation, for instance – but for most of us, the results will be detrimental to our gardens.
But if you’re reading this, you know that already.
So. You mixed your growth potion with fertilizer and now you don’t know what to do, is that it?
Syndi stared at the end of the sentence, flicked her eyes down to the blank page beneath it, then back up. “Uh, duh?” she said. A moment later, the page filled up.
There’s no need to be snarky about it.
Now. Here’s the thing: there is no one-stop spell or potion that will fix your problem, unfortunately. Many have tried, all have failed. Most notably, there was Herb Snyder in the 1850s who thought he’d finally found a way to reverse the effects, only to be found forty years later grown into a tree. We don’t want that now, do we?
Again, the writing stopped. Syndi sighed. “No, we don’t,” she said.
The writing came again, a whole new page appearing where none had been before.
Of course we don’t.
So.
The first thing you need to know: You don’t have a lot of time. The growth will continue and unless you wanted a forest that isn’t going to do anybody any good.
Unfortunately, the fixes also take time so while you’re working your bewitchment you need someone to physically keep the growth at bay. It won’t be pretty – these plants want to grow and they don’t take kindly to being forced to stop – but if it gets t o o far even your bewitchments won’t do any good.
Now, I’m sure you have someone who could give you a hand. Maybe a pesky little brother who definitely knows you used magic even if you won’t admit it?
Syndi glared at the book. “I did not use magic,” she said.
Didn’t you?
“No.”
Dearie, you’re arguing with a book.
“Damn it,” Syndi grumbled. “Fine, I did use magic. Just tell me how to un-use it!”
Is someone holding the growth at bay?
Syndi looked up and jumped. The flowers and branches were all closer than they had been when she sat down. “Uhhh,” she said, flicking her eyes back down to see the words Thought not had appeared at the bottom of the page. With a sigh she closed the book, finger holding her place again, and stood to head back inside and find Marshall and Simon. She wasn’t sure how she felt about asking for their help with this, but she had no one else. Their parents were out for the day and apparently she had this bewitchment that would make whatever fix the book gave her work.
She wove her way through encroaching plants, worried what it was all going to look like in the time it took her to tell Marshall what was going on, endure Marshall’s triumphant “I told you so” and tell him what she needed him to do to ensure they could stop this before it got worse.
She was pretty sure the next time she looked outside, they wouldn’t have any backyard left.
Inside, she met Marshall and Simon in the kitchen as they made their way back to help her. Marshall had a bandage wrapped around his arm and was half-way through pulling his giants sweatshirt over his head.
“For protection,” Simon explained when Syndi shot him a confused look.
Syndi wasn’t sure how much protection the sweatshirt was going to give him, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt. “So we have kind of a problem,” she said.
“We noticed,” Marshall said, his head popping out of the neck of his sweatshirt. He finished pulling it on, straightening it and glaring at Syndi. “Are you going to tell us what you did?”
“So in this book,” she held up Strength in Your Soil but pulled it out of reach when Marshall grabbed for it, “there was a mixture that was supposed to help plant growth. I missed the fine print about not mixing it with fertilizer and now, well.” She sighed and gestured at the kitchen window, dark with leaves.
Marshall eyed her warily, clearly not buying her explanation of events. “I find it hard to believe a simple mixture from a book could do this just because you mixed it with fertilizer.”
Syndi sighed. Well. Leaving it out was worth a try, but Marshall had always been too smart for his own good. “Apparently I bewitched it,” she said. “The book says those with the ability of bewitchment turn the mixture into, essentially, a potion and that once it’s been bewitched mixing it with fertilizer causes it to work too well and, uh, not stop.”
“Not stop?” Marshall asked.
“Oh man, oh man,” Simon muttered, shifting his weight and glancing between the book and the backyard.
“There’s a way to fix it but I need someone to, well, basically fight the plants until I can get it made?”
Marshall was quiet for a long few seconds and Syndi thought he was going to say no, but finally he met her eye and said, “Say it and I’ll help.”
She didn’t need to ask what. She pulled in a breath and let it out long and slow, knowing they didn’t have time to argue. She closed her eyes and spoke, “Eerie is the center of weirdness for the entire planet,” she said.
She opened her eyes as Marshall clapped her on the shoulder, grinning. “Welcome to the fight,” he said. Then he and Simon disappeared out the door to the back and Syndi’s stomach clenched with guilt. They were way too young for her to ask this of them, but she was the only one who could stop this for good and she couldn’t do it alone. And she didn’t have a lot of time.
She thumped the book down on the counter, opening it to where she’d left off, and prepared to work.
“Someone is holding the growth and bay,” she announced and the book, well.
The book didn’t disappoint.
Congratulations! Now you have to work quickly but you also have to work carefully. One mistake and this won’t work. The wrong mistake and it will have the opposite effect. Are you ready?
Syndi rolled up her sleeves and gave her knuckles a quick crack. “Yes.”
–
Much to Syndi’s chagrin, the first thing she had to do was perfectly recreate the potion she’d made in the first place.
“That sounds like it’ll just waste time,” she said to the book even as she began collecting ingredients.
Unfortunately we can’t counter the bewitchment without the bewitchment itself. Hop to, dearie.
“I’m hopping,” Syndi grumbled. She carefully measured and stirred and timed, following the instructions exactly to ensure she didn’t accidentally wind up with an extra counterclockwise twist of the spoon or steep the spices for a second too long. When she was done, her little pyrex measuring cup sat in the middle of a cluttered counter, filled with that familiar muddy-brown liquid.
“Okay,” she asked, leaning over the book, “now what?”
Now your brother needs your help . As soon as the words finished forming on the page, the window over the sink shattered as a thick tree branch broke through. Syndi yelped and jumped back, her heart pounding in her chest. She hastily grabbed the measuring cup and the book, moving them out of reach – she hoped – then ran out the back door and into chaos.
Marshall and Simon were back to back, facing off against thrashing branches and twisting vines with trash can lid shields and pruning shear swords.
“Syndi!” Marshall shouted, parrying a writhing flower with his shield while Simon twisted around from behind him to cut it back. The flower and stem fell separately to the ground, but more took their place in a moment.
There was no way the two of them could keep the plants at bay for long.
Syndi rushed back into the garage, mind racing. She looked through the half-empty bottles on the shelves lining the back wall, searching for something, anything...There it was. Weed killer! She pulled it from the shelf and grabbed the spray top, hands fumbling as she switched the cap out for it before she rushed back outside, hoping this would work.
“Get down,” she called out, waiting until she was certain Simon and Marshall were out of the spray’s direct line before she doused the flowers and bushes attacking them with a steady stream of the killer. The plants seemed to flinch, writhed, started towards her before pulling back to get away from the weed killer. She slowly and carefully cleared an area around Marshall and Simon, then let up on the spray and handed the much depleted bottle to her brother. “I’ll work as fast as I can,” she said, meeting his gaze, “do your best.”
Marshall gave a nod.
Syndi turned to go back inside, then thought of something and turned back. “Mars?”
“Yeah?”
“After all this, I want you to tell me everything about Eerie.”
Marshall gave a sharp nod. “Deal.” He raised the weed killer and sprayed at something behind Syndi. “Now go!”
Syndi turned and ran, pulling hard against grabbing vines and dodging reaching branches until she was safely inside.
Relatively safely.
The branch that had punched out the window had wrecked anything it could reach on the counters while she was outside.
She was definitely getting double grounded after this.
She hurried over to the table and looked down at the book, hoping it had already printed her instructions while she was outside.
Now you’re going to turn the original bewitchment into an anti-spell. Essentially, instead of fertilizer you’re going to make weed killer.
“If weed killer will work, we’re way ahead of you. I found some in the garage.”
Regular, mundane weed killer will slow it down but it won’t fix the problem. For bewitched fertilizer, you need bewitched weed killer.
Syndi sighed. Of course it couldn’t be as easy as an old bottle of weed killer. “Okay,” she said. “What do I do?”
A new page appeared with detailed ingredients and instructions for how to turn her growth aid potion into the exact opposite. Sudden plant death wasn’t really how she wanted this to end – she’d rather hoped she could just calm it all down and still have a nice garden – but she’d take what she could get at this point.
She grabbed a bowl and gathered ingredients and started mixing, doing her best to ignore the flailing branch behind her.
–
“And this will work?” Syndi asked, carefully pouring the resultant mixture into super soakers she’d found in the garage.
It will. Your garden will reset.
Syndi sighed. She was going to have so much work ahead of her to fix everything she’d messed up by not reading all of the instructions. “Hey,” she said, thoughtful. “You should make that fertilizer warning more obvious.”
Out of my hands, I’m afraid. That’s how my writers wanted it.
“Someone wrote you? I thought maybe you’d written yourself.”
I have some sentience when those with your abilities make mistakes, I can help guide you and teach you what you can’t learn the old way, but that’s the extent of it. I am not a thinking book, per se. I just have the knowledge my writers gave me.
“What’s the old way?”
Apprenticeships, schools of bewitchment. If any are left, I don’t know of them. Now, should we really be chatting?
Syndi capped the last super soaker and gathered them up. “This conversation isn’t over,” she said, heading outside.
Simon and Marshall had run out of Weed Killer and while the plants seemed warier now they were starting to figure out that the threat was gone. Syndi hurried over to the boys and handed each of them a water gun. “This should end it,” she said. “Get spraying.
It wasn’t pretty.
The plants writhed and twisted, pulling themselves apart as they tried to get away from the steady stream of bewtiched weed killer. Plant guts coated the ground, making it slippery and Syndi had to walk carefully as she worked to coat every attacking plant with the murderous liquid. She almost felt bad. All they wanted was to live, right? And it was her fault they were like this in the first place. But she couldn’t exactly explain to her parents that they should let their backyard be a forest because she’d brought the plants to terrifying life on accident, so this was the only option. She was pretty sure.
She’d ask the book after they were done. See if there was something else she could have done. Though. Maybe it would be better not to know, to just assume that this steady and methodical murder was the only option she’d had.
It would certainly make things easier.
–
“How the hell are we going to explain this to mom and dad?” Syndi asked, surveying the broken window over the sink and surveying the now ruined garden.
“It’s fine, they’ll probably just think the house is settling or something,” Marshall said. He kicked some debris aside and held a board up against the window, gesturing for Syndi to begin hammering it into place.
Simon stood back, nodding sagely. “Grown ups never see Eerie’s weirdness,” he said. And as Syndi thought back over the last few years of living in Eerie, listening to Marshall’s theories, she had to admit the boys were probably right.
“You promise you’ll tell me everything?” she asked.
Marshall nodded. “Everything,” he said.
–
That night, after explaining absolutely nothing to their parents, Syndi sat on her bed with Strength in Your Soil before her. She considered returning it to the library, forgetting the whole thing, and moving on.
But how do you forget you have the power to bewtich?
She pulled the book closer and opened it to the first page, intent on reading every word.