Exploring*
A couple hours later, most of the boxes had been moved into the house. It was a bit like walking through a cardboard jungle. At the front door, Vander signed a paper on a clipboard and gave the mover a tip.
Powder brought her things upstairs, then came downstairs with her raincoat on and found the family moving boxes from one room to another. It looked like trying to organize leaves in a jungle.
"Where are you going?" asked Vi, holding a large box in her arms.
"I'm gonna explore outside," Powder replied. "I wanna find that garden."
Vi struggled to balance the box in her arms.
"O-Okay, just don't go far. And remember that well Vander told us about!" Vi called louder over her shoulder as she quickly walked away with the box into the kitchen before she could drop it.
Powder shrugged and walked down the hallway, past the door to the study. Her brothers were going back and forth from the dining room to the study, placing Vander's boxes of office supplies inside. There was a large wooden desk in the middle and an office chair on the floor that Mylo was halfway through assembling.
"Hey, I dare you to go find that old well," sneered Mylo as he glanced up from the instruction manual, drumming his fingers on a toolbox in his lap.
"Don't listen to him, Powder," said Claggor as he walked past her, entering the room with a glare at Mylo, a box lifted over his shoulder. "He should know better."
"I'm just saying," Mylo shrugged innocently with a screwdriver, "When we would explore as kids, Vi could've found that well before noon!"
"I know. I was there," Powder scoffed.
"Not for all of our escapades," he added before bending down to his work again.
Powder narrowed her eyes and huffed, walking away. When she reached the front door and their backs were turned, she stuck out her tongue and closed the door behind her.
She knew Mylo was bluffing. He had to be. There wasn't anywhere Powder hadn't explored in their previous neighborhood. She and Vi were the queens of finding new places.
Powder looked up at the sky. The weather seemed to slightly improve. It stopped raining, but the ground was extremely soggy and muddy.
Powder shrugged and dropped her backpack off on the front porch. She jumped into a puddle and kicked the water for a little while. Then she walked in a big circle around the outside of the whole house.
The house sat on top of a hill and the lawn slightly sloped in all directions. Her eyes followed the curve of the driveway from the standalone garage, thorough the oak tree that fell over, around the side of the hill like a crescent, and merge with the main road. The one that wove back and forth like a snake through a pine forest into town.
At the back of the house, Powder found something. She spotted a low, gray wall, made of stones. In the middle was a tall, wrought iron gate. As she pushed it, she was glad the hinges still worked despite being so creaky and stuck with rust.
This must be the garden Vander had told her about.
She smiled widely. Pushing her way through the gap in the gate, Powder climbed her way inside. Although she found all the plants inside were black and dead, Powder looked at it with awe. She could see where the flowerbeds were sectioned off and understand why the gardener chose what plants they chose.
Seeing it with her own eyes, Powder immediately started to make plans in her head. It would be her biggest garden project yet.
From what she saw, there was a rose garden, an old one, filled with stunted, fly-blown, rose bushes. There was a rockery that was all rocks. There was a fairy ring made of squidgy brown toadstools which smell dreadful if you accidently trod on them. Old, brittle vines clung to stone walls. Even two dead willow trees were bent over and sagging.
There were stone walls encircling the whole enclosure and separating landscape sections. Stone paths connecting in between. Short stone stairs led to higher elevated floors. There was an empty pond in the middle, shaped like a kidney bean, and a wooden bridge, like in Cinderella, that arched over the deep, empty hole.
When she looked down, she saw the walls covered with moss and mildew. She reckoned it was probably deeper than she was tall. With a smirk, she walked along the edge of it, like a tightrope walker.
What Vi would say if she saw me, Powder huffed to herself.
Despite her rainboot's sturdy tread grip, she tried to make the game harder on herself by wobbling a little on purpose. But the game soon became boring, and she stopped.
At the very back of the garden was an opening in the wall to a meadow that lay beyond. Powder spotted a dirt path cut in the wild tall grass. It forked.
To the left, it led to an old, glass, greenhouse, the windows covered in grime and green stuff. Going straight, the path curved up a hill, across a meadow, and further into the tree line of the pine woods.
Powder paused to consider.
Nearby, she found an overgrown, red-leafed bush beside the garden wall. She reached in and pulled out a Y-shaped branch, tearing the leaves off and leaving the stick bare. She held the branch out in front of her, closing her eyes and feeling for any little twitch, letting her intuition lead her.
After a moment of considering, she followed the twig toward the woods. She could explore the greenhouse another time. Right now, she was looking for a hidden well.
She followed the twig in her arms, pretending to feel where it was going.
In the distance, she spotted something else. At the very back was an old tennis court, but no one in the house played tennis, and the fence around the court had holes in it. And the net had mostly rotted away. Powder walked beyond it, closer toward the woods.
As the grassland expanded around her, Powder got distracted as she saw movement on the hill rise beside her.
"Hello?" she called out tentatively. She could only see a cluster of rocks and pine trees that reached for the sky. After a moment she stamped her foot. "That better not be you, Mylo! Come on out or you'll be sorry!"
Still, no one came out.
Cursing herself for being scared, Powder picked up a rock and threw it into the woods. She didn't know why. Just to prove something, she guessed. That she wasn't a fraidy cat.
But as the rock landed, some animal yowled. It sounded very big and very close. Right behind the rocks.
Powder jumped back and took off down the path at a run. She didn't know where it led into the woods, but it was better than getting mauled by a mountain lion in the meadow.
She didn't think, she just ran.
The sky grew darker as more trees and clouds covered the sun. The wind picked up. It whipped at her coat and her hair, despite the hairclips pinning her hair out of her face. Rows and rows of apple trees closed in on the path on either side. Their bare, skeletal branches rubbed together, clawing the air like fingers. Wind whistled through the tops of the pine trees almost as loud as a train.
Powder ran and stumbled into a clearing where the path ended. It seemed to open to an old picnic area, or campground, or apple-picking orchard, or something. Under a dead apple tree was an abandoned tractor and an old wooden wagon that was beyond repair. The ground in the area was covered with mud.
She panted as she heard something rustling in the bushes. She stood up and held her stick out to defend herself. Now, she was certain something had chased her.
Then a loud yowl behind her made her want to jump out of her skin. She screamed and whirled around.
Powder scowled as she saw a pale, boney, hairless cat sitting on a log, hissing at her. Huge, green eyes glaring with its batty ears folded back.
"You scared me to death, you mangy thing!" she complained.
The cat stopped hissing, simply bowed its head, and licked its paws, seeming satisfied with itself.
"I'm just looking for an old well. Know it?" Powder asked.
The hairless cat licked its leg nonchalantly, ignoring her.
"Not talking, huh?" she said. Frowning, she lifted her branch in the air. "Magic dowser… Magic dowser… show me the well!"
Thunder clapped. An air horn sounded. And a kid was screaming.
Powder turned around to the top of the hill behind her. A guy on a bike was tumbling down the hillside, the bike pedals spinning out of control, barreling straight toward her.
Powder's scream matched his scream, above the whir of a motor.
"Get away from me!" she yelled instinctively.
Powder leaped out of the way as he tried to steer the bike around her. She had never seen one like it before. It was made of mismatching pieces of junk and roared with a motor. As he rode by, he accidentally grabbed her stick and sent her sprawled in the mud. At the last moment, he managed to skid to a halt before going over the edge of the hill. Black and white skeleton gloves covered his hands that lifted the welder's mask from his face.
"I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" he asked.
Powder recoiled as she stood up. "I'm fine," she huffed, brushing the mud off her pants, the water from it seeping through to her legs anyway.
The boy frowned at his bike and begrudgingly kicked it with a scoff, "Can't believe the cannon pinion busted! I'll have to find another one."
He pocketed the broken piece and realized for the first time the stick that was in his hand.
"Huh? Oh! Are you a witch?" he asked as he started waving her stick around as though to copy her.
Powder stared in confusion. One minute, she was alone, the next minute, she was in the company of a black boy, no older than herself.
He was the first kid she saw that was her age around here. She didn't know where he could've come from. She thought there wasn't a neighboring house for miles.
When he took off his mask, she realized the white on the top of his head was actually his hair, buzzed cut and bleached almost pure platinum blonde. His eyes were brown, and he had a splash of freckles across his face. Or was that dirt?
"Excuse me?" she asked.
He hopped up on a tree stump and held the stick dramatically to the sky like an antenna above his head, watching the clouds for anything to happen. He didn't seem daunted by a fear of lightning.
Was he mocking her?
"Let me guess," the boy smiled widely. "You're from Texas or Utah, someplace dried-out and barren, right?"
Powder didn't answer, frowning, backing away, eyeing him.
Now that she could see him fully, he wasn't scary. He wasn't any taller than her. Just a scrawny kid, wearing clothes that were too big on him. Something like a black and silver firefighter's coat went all the way down to his knees and took over his small frame, nearly swallowing him whole. Peeking out from underneath, she saw a pair of jeans rolled up to his shins and some muddy sneakers, with the shoelaces untied.
He wore Halloween-themed skeleton gloves on his hands and his welder's mask was spraypainted with a giant bug's skull. Instead of eye holes, the mask had a disk with three, green-tinted, telescopic lenses, she deduced, able to spin with the handle at the side of his head.
Based on his fashion alone, he reminded her too much of Mylo. Which wasn't a good sign.
The boy chuckled, considering the stick in his gloved hands, "I heard about weather witching before, but it doesn't make sense." He shrugged like a skeptical scientist. "I mean, it's just an ordinary branch."
Powder huffed and rolled her eyes. "It's a dowsing rod!" she snapped, before slapping him on the leg.
"Ow!" the boy yelped, dropping the stick to the ground and hopping on one leg.
Powder took back the stick and stood tall. She thought of her big sister, protecting her from bullies in grade school, as she glared down at him as menacingly as she could.
"And I… I don't like being stalked! Not by psyco nerds or their cats!" Powder snapped, holding the stick between them like a sword.
But the boy didn't leave. Climbing down the stump, the boy shrugged, unoffended. He didn't get scared, or angry, or yell back. He didn't seem to care, which made Powder more annoyed.
"Well, he's not really my cat. He's sort of feral. You know, wild," the boy said, either missing the point of Powder's argument or ignoring it.
When the cat rubbed against his leg, he smiled and knelt to pet it and scratch it under the chin.
"He used to have black fur, but it was patchy. I think he likes living alone. Of course, I do feed him every night," the boy answered, continuing to scratch behind the cat's ears as the cat purred. "And sometimes he'll come to my window and bring me little dead things."
Powder rolled her eyes, groaning, "Look, I'm from Pontiac."
The boy blinked at her. "Huh?"
"Michigan," she answered impatiently, "And if I'm a 'water witch', then where is the secret well?" she scoffed, throwing out her arms and stomping a foot on the ground.
The boy's eyes widened instantly.
"If you stomp too hard, you'll fall in it!" he said quickly, pointing to her feet.
Looking down at her boots, Powder suddenly realized what he meant. The faintest trace of a circle, the size of a manhole cover, outlined the ground around her feet. Little, orange mushrooms grew in a ring around it, like fairy circles she had read about in books. She was standing in the center of it.
Powder leapt back in surprise. She might have even made a squeaking sound, but she wasn't going to admit that.
The boy made no comment. He knelt beside the circle and scrapped some of the mud away with his hands. Beneath, there were old, wooden planks, nailed together, mud stained and weathered, like an ancient treasure chest.
"See?" he said, smiling as he knocked his knuckles against the wood.
The dull, hollow sound seemed to echo deep into the ground beneath them. Even, she imagined, vibrating her toes.
The deep vibration of the echo gave Powder a chill up her spine to think she only had an inch or two of solid ground beneath her feet a moment ago.
Nearby, the boy picked up a thick, broken branch from a tree and shoved one end against the lip of the wood. As he stuck it under and levered the branch down, a round, wooden lid lifted from underneath the mud.
The boy smirked at Powder like he was sharing a secret.
"It's supposed to be so deep, if you fell to the bottom and looked up, you'd see a sky full of stars in the middle of the day," he said, sagely.
Powder supposed the boy thought she'd be impressed, so she shrugged. "Huh."
He stepped back to let her touch the cover for herself.
Changing the subject, he put his hands in his pockets and looked out over the view of the hillside, across the meadow, to the pink house that looked like the size of a dollhouse below.
"Surprised she let you move in. My grandma, she owns the Pink Palace. Won't rent to people with kids," he said with a shrug, "At least, like, little kids. Young kids."
"What do you mean?" Powder asked, raising an eyebrow.
His ears suddenly glowed a little red. "Oh well… I'm not supposed to talk about it," he said bashfully. He then stuck out his hand. "I'm Ekko. Ekko Lovat."
Powder let him shake her hand, but she regretted it upon feeling the residue mud from his glove.
"Echo?" she asked.
"I know," he simply shrugged. "Spelled E-K-K-O. Not my idea, of course."
Powder looked down at her muddy hand and wiped it on the front of her yellow jacket.
"What'd you get saddled with?" Ekko asked, his attention diverted to the cat rubbing against his leg, again.
"I wasn't saddled with anything," Powder answered, crossing her arms. "It's Powder."
"Paula what?" he asked without looking at her.
"Powder! Powder Lane!" she snapped.
People had always been mispronouncing her name everywhere she went. She couldn't figure out why it was so difficult. She and Violet were both named after flowers.
The cat wove around Ekko's legs, and he spun to catch up to it. When the cat walked away, Ekko knelt, and the cat arched its back to meet his hand.
"It's not real scientific," Ekko shrugged, "but I heard an ordinary name like Paula can lead people to have ordinary expectations about a person."
Powder crossed her arms again, scowling. It didn't sound like a compliment to her.
Just before Powder could think of something to say to get him to leave, a strange voice called from somewhere in the distance, echoing through the woods.
"Ekkooo!" it called, sounding like a tough, old woman.
Powder stood taller, put a hand on her hip, and scoffed, "I think I heard someone calling you, Ekko."
Ekko blinked and immediately straightened up so fast the cat fell over from leaning too much into his hand for support.
"W-What? I-I didn't hear anything," he stuttered.
"Oh, I definitely heard someone, Marco Polo," Powder hissed, stomping two steps toward him.
"Ekko!" the voice called again, this time, accompanied by ringing of a bell or a triangle.
"Grandma!" Ekko seemed to groan under his breath.
Then he chuckled to Powder. Powder kept her frown stern. Ekko rubbed the back of his neck.
"Well… it was great to meet a Michigan water witch," he said, picking up his electric bike from the ground. He eyed her hands and smirked. "But I'd wear gloves next time."
"Why?" she arched an eyebrow at him, holding the stick like a baton in her hands.
"Well, that dowsing rod of yours, it's poison oak."
Powder blinked at him, about to snap at him how he was wrong, but then she suddenly remembered, to her utter embarrassment, the shape of the red leaves she had ripped from it earlier.
She shrieked as she dropped the stick. The boy chuckled, stepping on a lever to kickstart his motor.
"See you later!" he called as he pedaled away.
By the time he was out of sight, Powder stuck out her tongue after him, glowering.
Looking down, she realized she wasn't alone. The cat was still sitting on its haunches, watching Ekko leave. It looked up at Powder for a moment then seemed to shake its head in disappointment. It stood up and pounced away, disappearing into the long grass of the meadow.
Alone, Powder glanced back at the well, considering it. She got on her knees, found a pebble small enough to fit through a knot hole in the wood, and dropped it, listening for the splash.
It was a remarkably long time before she heard a tiny splash at the bottom. So faint, she thought she might have imagined it. She felt that chill again.
A drop of rain hit her cheek. Then another and another.
Cursing her hand, Powder pulled up the hood of her raincoat and hurried back down the hill, toward the pink house at the bottom as the sky turned darker gray.