Silence.
Complete and utter silence settled over the room as Luna stared into the same, cold, silver eyes that haunted her nightmares. She almost couldn't believe what she was seeing. It had been six years since she had last seen her twin, and back then Twyla was a quiet mouse-like child with a biting stare and pinched features. She still retained her sharp features and malevolent stare but she was no longer a mouse. An eerie feeling crept into her bones as they stared at each other. Neither one of them knew what to think or feel. Luna couldn't decipher whether or not she was supposed to be afraid of her sister's daunting appearance or if she was supposed to be angry that she had dared to return. So, she settled for shock.
Twyla recovered much quicker than Luna. She was expecting to see her sister eventually. She hadn't expected to see her so soon but she still entertained the thought that they would be forced to come face to face. After all of those years being separated, Twyla could honestly say she was happy that she didn't have to grow up with Luna in her life. What a disaster that would have been! Her sister was the princess of pep with her sprawling golden locks, baby blue eyes and pastel clothes. Surely, a girl like that had hundreds of friends and a superstar jock as a boyfriend. Twyla's lips curled into a cruel smirk, as she continued stare at her twin. Luna stood in front of her, paralyzed with shock. Twyla decided her sister's pea-sized brain obviously could not handle what was happening.
"Luna. Luna Goodwin," Twyla said in a mocking tone, "What has it been? Six years? Gosh, time surely flies by! How have you been? Good, I hope. And your mom I hope she's in good health."
Luna opened her mouth to say something but her voice was lost in her throat. She vaguely registered that Twyla was mocking her but since she was on the verge of a mental breakdown, she didn't really see that as an important thing to focus on. It was too much! First, the vision, and then whatever had transpired in the principal's office. Oh, she felt sick. Her life felt like it had been teetering on the edge of the cliff, and Twyla had just pushed it into the chasm below.
"Oh my!" Miss Clark whispered. Her shaking hand gravitated to her lips. "Twyla?"
Turning her stare from her sister, Twyla looked at the secretary. The woman had been so confident only minutes ago and suddenly, she looked like a gaping fish. It sure was nice to be known, thought Twyla. If she had known that they were waiting to give her such a warm welcome, she would have visited years ago.
"That would be me!" Twyla had yet to decide whether she wanted to cry or laugh, so she settled for the latter. A half hysterical chuckle escaped her lips. The window shudders swayed and clattered amongst each other. Both Luna and Miss Clark jumped upon hearing the noise.
Twyla looked out the window, "What a windy day."
Furrowing her brows, Luna remembered walking into the office mere minutes before Twyla and there wasn't even a breeze. The air was stagnant. Miss Clark chose to swallow Twyla's lie and scurried back over to the desk. She practically ripped the phone from its chord as she frantically called someone- most likely the girl's mother. Twyla and Luna tuned out Miss Clark's as they turned back to look at each other. The manner of their stare had changed drastically. Whereas Twyla looked like the poster child of peace and serenity, rocking on the back of her heels, Luna had to control herself as the pent up rage of twelve years threatened to pour out. She wanted to scream at Twyla, bash her head against the wall. The overwhelming urge to kill her twin for the way she robbed her of having any childhood, strengthened. And Twyla, though she equally hated Luna, was saving her anger for their mother.
"Girls," Miss Clark said in a quiet voice, "Your mother is ready to see you."
"Great!" Twyla exclaimed. She tried to grab hold of Luna's arm but Luna flinched away and swiftly bounded up the stairs.
The two ran up the spiral staircase. Their hands trailed the golden railing as specks of dirt fell from their shoes and marred the velvet carpet. At the top of the stairs, a row of doors lined the walls, with golden plaques announcing who hid behind each door. It was no surprise to Twyla that her mother's office lied at the very end of the hall, behind a set of very intimidating, double doors.
"So, tell me. I know why I'm here but why are you here? Did you run into some trouble with the law, need mother dearest to sort out a parking ticket?" Even before the words managed to leave Twyla's mouth, she was snickering. Luna and trouble did not belong in the same sentence. If she was anything like the girl Twyla once knew, then she followed the laws very carefully. Like a child who was afraid to color outside of the lines in a coloring book.
Luna's jaw clenched. She tried to block out Twyla's taunting voice but the words struck a nerve. She was certainly in some trouble, no parking ticket or cops involved, but it might as well have been worse.
"Look at that," she whistled, noticing the tension, "Luna Goodwin got into trouble."
I wonder what she did, Twyla thought, must have been something bad by the look on her face. She didn't think Luna was the kind of girl to get into a fight or ditch, so she doubted the trouble had anything to do with school. A pretty girl like her though must have been familiar with the party scene, it was possible she was a drug addict or maybe pregnant. There were thousands of theories swirling through Twyla's head and they were slowly driving Luna crazy as she heard each one.
"I am not pregnant!" Luna eventually exclaimed as they reached the end of the hall, "I'm not a drug either, nor am I skipping my classes or getting into fights!"
Twyla stood frozen in place, stunned by Luna's outburst. "What did you just say?" Twyla asked, her eyes narrowed.
"J-just what you said," Luna swallowed the lump in her throat.
"I didn't say anything."
"Neither did I," Luna scrambled to gather her wits. Her heart leaped in her chest as she caught Twyla's icy glare out of the corner of her eye.
"I'm not deaf, I heard what you said." Twyla wasn't sure what to make of the strange occurrence- she couldn't possibly believe that her perfectly normal sister somehow had the ability to read minds.
"No," Luna gritted her teeth, her hand gravitated to the doorknob. "Not deaf but delusional. That happens to freaks like you. Devil-"
Luna's head was slammed against the door before she could finish her statement. A immeasurable force weighed upon her chest. Luna expected Twyla to be the one holding her against the door, but her sister stood off to the side with a stormy expression on her face, her left hand hung extended in the air. Even with the weight of a ton of bricks resting upon her chest and a growing ache in the back her head, Luna still had a few choice words for her sister. Twyla didn't belong in New Brooks or in Luna's life at all and she planned on making her aware of that whether or not Twyla planned on using her freaky devil tricks on her. She had lost so much of her dignity already, why not lose a little more!
"Say one more word," Twyla growled, "I dare you."
"Okay-" Luna was once again interrupted, this time not by her sister but by the opening of the door behind her. Releasing her control of Luna's body, Twyla watched as Luna slumped into the arms of a woman.
That woman was none other than Celeste Goodwin. She wore a carefully ironed three part suit, tailored for her feminine body and a pair of polished black pumps. Teetering on the bridge of her nose was a pair of thick rimmed, cat-eye glasses. Twyla wasn't used to seeing the glasses, or the silver strips in her golden hair, but the sweetheart face and sweeping cheekbones remained the same, as did her swirling bluish-grey eyes. Pushing herself onto her feet, Luna jumped behind her mother, using her body as a shield from Twyla
Celeste said nothing at first. There was nothing she possibly could say as she looked into the anguished eyes of her abandoned child. Inside those eyes, she saw six years of pent up fury and hate just waiting to burst free. Outside the office, the wind raged on violently, pulling on tree roots and rocking cars. Through the thin walls of the City hall, the three women could faintly hear the sound of car alarms screeching. Luna, was a quivering mess. The last time she saw Twyla fly off the handles, their entire house was torn to shreds. Now, she was older, more practiced and maybe even more powerful.
A single tear fell from Twyla's eye. The second she felt the wetness trail down her cheek, she started cursing herself out in her head. Damn you! She thought. You're weak and pathetic. Twyla switched her chain of thoughts before she could travel down that dark road. Her anger was better directed towards the woman in front of her. The real demon.
"Hi Mama, did you miss me?" Twyla choked back her tears and forced herself to smile.
"Twyla," Celeste started.
Over the years, Celeste planned what to say to her first daughter, in event she ever needed to call her back to New Brooks. But the words escaped her in the moment. She could say, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again but that would never fix what had happened. Celeste could feel her own tears shimmering in her eyes as she stared at Twyla. Whereas Celeste didn't change much, Twyla looked like a completely different person. She was no longer a little girl for one, she was a woman. There was a maturity that clung to Twyla, one that Celeste also noticed in Luna. They were forced to grow up much faster than the other kids their age; it was Celeste's biggest regret.
"You see, I only ask if you missed me because I never got a phone call from you or a text. Or a letter, or even a postcard. You just left me and I'd be a damn liar if I didn't say that hurt," Twyla sneered.
"Why don't you come in, Twyla. We have a lot to discuss."
"Yeah. We do." Twyla walked into the office.
The office was very different from how her father used to keep his. Whereas Nathaniel Goodwin usually had overflowing piles of papers on his desk and random books lying open throughout the room, Celeste kept everything in organized piles. She noticed her mother kept Dad's desk from the house. It took up a good half of the office and without all the clutter on top of it, it somehow managed to look even bigger. Running her fingertips over the glossy desktop, Twyla remembered the restless nights she spent with her father as a small child. She would sit on top of the desk, reading the files with him but never truly understanding what they meant. She supposed, if she took a look through those files again, she still wouldn't understand the political vocabulary that covered the pages.
In the midst of her examination, Twyla noticed an open book lying on top of the desk. She reached out but her mother snatched it first. Celeste cradled the thick, leather bound books next to her heart as if it were her baby. Using the sleeves of her blazer, she tried to hide the Celtic engravings from Twyla's sharp gaze. She knew, however, from the cruel smirk that crawled onto Twyla's face that her attempts were in vain. With a quick flick of her wrist the book slipped through Celeste's grip and into Twyla's waiting hands.
"The Book of Draíocht," Twyla read, "I remember this book. I remember the hours of sitting cross legged on the floor of the attic, pouring over these pages. Hoping just one spell, would free me."
"Oh look," She turned the book around to show both Luna and Celeste. Her fingers brushed against the jagged end of several ripped pages. "I'm guessing those spells would have been here."
"Spells?" Luna stepped away from her mom. Her brows furrowed. "What is that thing?"
It had occurred to Twyla when she was fourteen, two years after her exile, that Luna was kept completely and utterly ignorant to the world of magic. It made sense at the time. If she was just a normal human then she had no place learning about the magic world, the law strictly forbade it.
"You see, my sweet sister, this thing here is a book. People read it."
"That's not a normal book," Luna denied, looking at the strange symbols that sprawled across the withered pages. "Mom?"
A hardened look crossed Celeste's face as she looked away from the book to Luna. "There are things about this family, Luna, that I have never told you. Things I hoped, I never would have to."
The room began to tilt and twirl as black spots appeared in Luna's vision. She could feel her left eye twitching and her nose crinkling. If Will had been there, he would have taken her to the side, and told her to calm down. But Will wasn't there to stop Luna from pushing forward. The golden crypt flashed before her eyes as she took a step towards Twyla. She remembered the cold, dank air and murky water. Taking another step forward, Luna remembered hearing Will's thoughts and then her sister's. She knew that wasn't normal. She also knew, that the things that Twyla did were definitely not normal.
"What are you?" Luna asked.
"Luna calm down," Celeste placed a hand on Luna's shoulder. "There is much that I need to explain to you. We don't have time for this."
"Then tell me!" Luna shoved her mother's hand off of her. "Both you and Twyla know something I don't! Why?"
"You don't want to know, little sister."
"Try me." Luna bit out. She could see how Twyla looked at her, as if this was a game of cat and mouse.
"If you insist," Twyla closed the book shut and threw it on the desk.
"Twyla no-"
"Come on, mother. Don't you think she ought to know? Shouldn't she know why I'm called a freak, demon, even a devil child at times?"
"There is a certain way to go about things Twyla. You can't just spring this on her," Celeste tried her best to calm both of the girls but that was like calming the raging tides of the sea- impossible. There was no stopping them now, not when they were already on this track.
"Like you would know," Twyla's upper lip curled into a sneer.
Turning her attention back to her darling little sister, who was practically who was practically falling apart at the seams, Twyla contorted her features into a sweet and almost docile look. Luna's eye twitched once more as she looked at Twyla's forced smile. She look like the big bad wolf, dressed in granny's clothes. Well- she looked granny if granny was in a biker gang.
"What are you?"
Twyla kept her lips closed, as she gave Luna her answer. She had never been one to pay attention in class, especially not in science but over the years she picked up a few things like, how to conduct an experiment.
Step One: Create a hypothesis
Check.
Step Two: Gather information
Check.
Step Three: Do an experiment
Check.
Step Four: The Conclusion
"You're a witch," Luna's breath stilled in her chest.
"And so are you. Well actually, let me put this in your terms. You're a freak, a demon, a devil child. Welcome to the club."
Check.
**I'm just like you. You're just like me. There's somewhere else we'd rather be, somewhere that's ours, somewhere that dreams come true. Yes I am a girl like you! I don't know if anyone else remembers that from their childhood but that's all I thought about while writing this chapter. In the next chapter Celeste is forced to answer some very hard questions. If you've read the Dark Witch then you're probably getting similar nostalgia feelings from when Caddie found out about her powers, I know I was. But Caddie and Luna are different people and I'm not too sure, Luna will be able to swallow this easily.
I hope you guys like the book so far and thank you for reading!
XOXO,
Ro.**
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