Part One
Chapter ONE
June
The bell chimed as the giantess walked into the Chestnut. Andromeda Waters looked up from the invoice, immediately alert. The giantess was a phantom customer. Her appearances in the store were rare—like a glimpse of Sasquatch—and not always with the same employee at the helm. She was the only person Andre had ever seen in real life who was somewhere north of seven feet tall. The woman’s hair was in a scarf that covered her ears. She wore a black dress and moved like a statue gifted with life. Andre had no idea how old she was. Large sunglasses—which she kept on despite being inside—shielded her eyes.
“Let me know if I can help you find anything,” Andre said.
“Thank you.” The woman’s voice held overlapping timbres. She moved down the aisle, scanning the dried goods.
Most people in Arroyo went to the Safeway a mile down the road for their grocery shopping, but the yuppies and hippies kept the Chestnut busy. The tiny store was nestled in a shopping center between an Indian restaurant and a massage parlor. Local produce was crammed into small refrigerators against one wall. Supplements were on cluttered shelves next to flower essences, herbal tinctures, incense, and a plethora of liver, kidney, and colon cleansers. There was a spinning fixture with dreamcatchers, wind chimes, and crystals—“the sparkle stand”—as Andre and Merri referred to it. In one corner was a small bookshelf and a rack of New Age magazines.
Perched on the stool behind the counter, Andre opened a bag of expired gluten-free pretzels she’d pulled off the shelf that morning and marked off in the waste log. She finished with the invoice and flicked through a catalog while stealing glances at the giantess, who had moved over to the corner with the bulk bins. A few minutes later, the woman walked up to the counter with a large bottle of honey and a jar of aloe. The giantess paid with a card and held out a tote bag for Andre to put her items in and left with a nod.
That evening, Andre pulled a brush through her hair as she stared out her bedroom window. She’d long since smoothed out all her tangles, and the brush fell through the jet silk without resistance. Her posture slackened as she prepared to fall onto her pale blue bedspread. The ritual of brushing her hair until it was silky and then lying in bed on her side was set since childhood. As a young girl, she’d imagined she was going to sleep half-submerged in a shallow pool, and her hair was water.
Only a salt lamp on her dresser cut through the darkness. A bookcase took up half the wall between the closet and the window. On her dresser sat little treasures: a small porcelain jewelry box with a faerie painted on the lid; a picture of Andre and Ryan in the redwoods, her legs around his waist, piggy-backed. There was a framed photo of Amy and Andre from when they were four years old, wearing a wreath of flowers in their hair.
She scooped her hair over her shoulder and looked at the waning moon over her yard and the forested Arroyo hills, which were a dark smudge of shadow. Ryan would be back on Saturday. Maybe they would go to the lake, pack a picnic, finally move some more of her stuff to his apartment. Her thoughts were scattered by the appearance of a bright sphere—a shimmering, zapping ball of electricity, the size of a classroom globe, bobbing just outside of her window. Andre yelped and crouched down, squeezing the handle of her brush. Her heart hammered and her first lizard brain thought was that there was about to be an earthquake or an explosion. She stood up and gaped at the light zig-zagging around. It moved from her window and down the side of her house, drifting out over the backyard toward the shed.
Ben had stopped playing his keyboard twenty minutes before, but it was too early for him to be asleep. He was lying on his bed, looking at his phone when Andre burst into his room without knocking. “Oh, my god. You gotta see this. C’mere.”
He didn’t move. “What?”
“There’s this weird light outside. It’s crazy. Hurry. There’s like this orb moving around. C’mon, hurry. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
They turned on the back porch light and walked around the yard. At first, it seemed to have disappeared, but then it shot out from behind the shed before popping over the backyard fence and out into the park beyond.
“What the hell is that?” Ben opened the fence, and they walked a little way down the path, but the ball had moved quickly. There was no sign of it anymore, and they’d need flashlights to go any farther.
“I don’t get it,” he said as they went back inside. “It was like CGI, you know? Crap, I didn’t get a picture. Did you get a picture of it?”
“No. It happened too fast. I didn’t grab my phone. So freaking weird, right?”
They spent the next hour looking online. When they came upon a phenomenon known as “ball lightning,” they decided they’d found the closest thing to an answer.
Andre tossed her purse onto the passenger seat the next morning, plopped into the car, and observed the sunny, innocuous morning suspiciously. Her gaze drifted up to Ben’s window. He would be asleep for a couple more hours. Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her purse. Ryan. “Morning,” he’d texted and sent an emoji of a bee. She sent him a smiley face.
Ten minutes later, she pulled out her keys to unlock the glass doors of the Chestnut, losing herself in the vines and flowers and art nouveau–style lettering of the store’s name painted on the glass. Andre liked to pretend she was opening some special chamber, some magical apothecary with her special keys. It was a habit of her perception to make the mundane more interesting. When she pumped gas into her car, she pretended she was feeding her large, sentient beetle with wheels. But she didn’t need her keys. The door was already unlocked, and she could see some of the lights on down the length of the store.
Merri had beaten her there, and the morning’s produce shipment had already arrived. “Hey.” Merri nodded at her and set a wooden crate of radishes down in front of one of the refrigerator doors. Fortunately, it looked like she was almost done. Andre disliked this part of her job because handling the cold food and being in and out of the refrigerator and freezer made her hands ache. She was one of those small girls who was always cold. She helped Merri put away the last bags of chard and kale on the bottom rack.
Merri glanced at her and spoke hesitantly, “So, um, I was wondering . . .” She took a deep breath and clasped her hands beneath her chin in a supplicating gesture. “Can you do me a huge favor and work for me tomorrow? Pleeeease?”
“I haven’t had a Saturday off in ages.” Andre’s voice was too loud as if one of her ears was plugged. “I specifically asked your mom for it off. Ryan and I were going to do something. Maybe go to the lake.” Merri’s mom, Vivian, owned the Chestnut, but Andre and Merri usually ran the shop.
“I know, but there’s the overnight festival at the Shrine tonight, and The Maze is going to play, and Amy has an extra ticket for me.” She was wringing her hands. “She assumed you wouldn’t want to go because of the crowd. You could just open the store. I’ll come by in the afternoon?”
Andre sighed. “Okay.”