M. Shedric Simpson

They sank that poison so deep in the ground they must have thought it was gone forever, but any good witch could’ve told you that everything comes back round.

I pulled up the drive to Maggie’s little one-bedroom cottage, past all the tomatoes and zucchinis spilling out of their beds, and parked next to the porch. She was already waiting by the time I made it up the steps.

“You felt it too?” I asked.

Maggie stared at me through the screen door. “Garden’s doing just fine, Elly,” she said.

“But it’s out there. Black and burbling and full of wrong.”

“And that’s my worry?”

I tried to hide my disappointment, but I’m sure she saw it. “We’re gonna sing it down,” I told her.

Maggie nodded, then clucked her tongue. “I’ll make you some lemonade.”

She disappeared inside, and I headed back to the truck to fetch my gear. A hundred-watt bass amp, cables, and my favorite Ibanez—a gold sunburst five-string, with a low B that sets my heart all aflutter. My mother scoffs, but what can I say, I’m a child of the 90’s.

Kylie was the first to arrive. I heard her motorcycle before I saw her, yellow sundress tucked into black riding pants, with her grandmother’s Gibson slung over her back. It took her longer to strip off all that gear than it did to set up her guitar, and I sure didn’t envy her that leather on an August evening.

Dorian came last, parking his little Honda next to my truck. He sat down on the steps and cracked open his case, and I must’ve sat with my jaw open for a good minute. He’d played the fiddle long as I’d known him, but here he was with something I’d never seen.

“Irish bouzouki,” he said when he saw my stare. “Gotta vary it up once in a while, you know? Can’t play the same song forever.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d always been the clever one.

I’d thought he was giving up his magic when he transitioned a few years back, but he’d known better. The Goddess looks past all that. If our prayers are honest, she’ll give them a listen. Simple as that.

That was the reason I couldn’t trick Maggie into joining us, nor goad her with guilt. If the song didn’t come from her heart, it didn’t mean anything to the Goddess. It wasn’t going to be magic.

We started up easy, Kylie throwing down some simple progressions for Dorian to play against, while I held it down with the steady thrum of the Ibanez. Maggie brought us out some lemonade and some of those cookies that aren’t quite Oreos. The fact that she hadn’t started baking told me she was sitting inside listening to us, even if she pretended not to care.

She was our voice. Without her, we weren’t complete, and we knew it. So those next few songs, we didn’t give them to the Earth. We gave them to her instead. That simple magic of sharing the things we loved.

Sure, the wards ‘round Maggie’s yard would keep her garden safe from what was stirring beyond the trees, but it was more than just our little homes at stake. So we sang about places we’d grown up, about friends and neighbors, and about the children that still play in those woods. I even dropped in a verse about that kid down at Espressoland who always adds extra whip to my latte, just because he likes to see folks smile.

Maggie must have known that kid too, because she came out a few minutes after. “Those folks you’re trying to save? They brought this mess down on themselves.”

I kept the bassline going, even as Kylie tucked away her guitar pick. “They’re our neighbors,” Kylie said. “And maybe we can stop something terrible from happening to them.”

“It’s no more than what they deserve. Killing their home just to suck a bit of gas and oil out. Right thing to do is let it come back to them.”

“Most folks have nothing to do with it,” I said. “The money, the gas, that all goes out of state. What’s left here is nothing but pain and poison. Doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Too late anyway.” Maggie stared out at the woods. Shadows gathered thick round their trunks as the twilight fell away. “Ain’t no magic gonna fix what they stirred up.”

“Maybe not.” Kylie started fingerpicking, a melancholy B minor into A5. “But we can buy them a little time to try and make it better.”

Maggie scowled and ducked back inside. A moment later she was back with a hand drum under her arm, and I knew we’d won her over. She sat next to Dorian on the stairs and wove a subtle beat into Kylie’s chords, and then we were playing again.

She let us take the lead at first. We passed some wordless vocals around, till our hands and hearts were all wrapped round each other’s melodies. Then Maggie’s voice rose like wind through all of it.

Rough and breathy at first, barely more than a whisper, then swelling as she gave her full throat to the song. Those notes wrapped around Dorian’s reel and soared out over the woods and the marsh and the little crick that cut through it, till even the whippoorwills were caught up in the song.

The bullfrogs offered up their voices too, and the crickets, and the glorious thump of my Ibanez tied them all together. Half the night we played, till the Moon herself must have heard. A song to fill the night—a prayer not even the Goddess could deny.

There’re echoes hanging out there still. Our hopes, our hurts, and a poison that’s gonna linger for years. It’ll take more than a little magic to change the road we’re heading down, but for me, I gotta believe we sang it right.

Sing the Shadows Down

To The Android I Saw Get Pushed onto the Tracks at the Archives Metro station

What the Botanist Saw