Page 11 of Jingle Spells
Twelve laughed. “Be fair, the actual young scalawag is my boy, Nate.”
“Sure, but my great-great grandson ain’t here at the moment, which makes you, at age sixty-one, the young scalawag currently in the room.”
“Your names are Nine through Twelve . . .” repeated Jasper slowly. “But your great-great grandson is . . . Nate? So he . . . what, he didn’t want to be Thirteen?”
“Can ya blame him?” said Twelve with a wink. “Say, how’s your grog, there? Can I get you a warm-up?”
“No no, I’m good. Tell me, is everyone in your town this welcoming to strangers?”
The Earls exchanged glances.
“Well. We believe in hospitality, I suppose you could say,” said Ten.
Nine nodded. “Seems only right, given our history.”
“What history is that, exactly?” Jasper tried to keep his tone casual, professional. But inside, his archivist’s heart was racing. An entire town’s worth of untapped historical records? The academic papers practically wrote themselves. The ladies at Daughters of the American Revolution were going to flip their perfectly coiffed wigs.
“Well now—” Eleven settled back in his chair “—that’s quite a tale. Goes back to Salem—the true Salem, mind you, not that tourist trap they’ve got going now.”
“That’s right.” Nine picked up the thread. “You see, back in the bad old days, when the witch trials started, the true witches of Salem had a choice to make. They either—”
Jasper nearly choked on his coffee. “I’m sorry—did you say true witches?”
“Yes, true witches,” Nine shot back.
Twelve chuckled. “Try and keep up, Jasper.”
“Anyway, they could’ve stayed, fought the witchfinders. And that idea was discussed at the time, or so I’m told. But instead, they picked up and ran. Founded their own town, Oak Haven. So, they saved themselves. Which was good, cause wouldn’t any of us be here if they hadn’t. But unfortunately, they did leave the innocent gals to their fates.”
“Weren’t even witches, those girls that got hanged,” Ten added softly. “Bridget Bishop, Sarah Good, Alice Parker, all the rest. Poor things, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“That memory is the burden we carry here in Oak Haven.” Nine nodded. “It’s the original sin, if you like, that we all live with.”
“Sorry but, uh . . .” Jasper took a gulp from his mug for courage. “I’m still stuck back on the witches are real part of this story. How do you expect me to believe—”
“Tell me, Jasper. Have you tried to take a picture of anything since you arrived?”
“Um. Yeah.”
Nine winked. “And how’d that go?”
“Have any trouble locating Oak Haven with the GPS on your car?” asked Ten.
“Or,” added Eleven, “have you tried looking us up on the, uh, the Wiki-whatchamacallit?”
“Or Yelp,” offered Twelve, a bit mockingly. “Checked us out on Yelp, have you?”
Jasper’s mind raced. The missing street records, the unlikely architecture, that violin in the window . . . “Are you saying there’s some kind of . . . spell? What, like there’s some magical fairy dust protecting the town from auslanders? Am I in Brigadoon all of a sudden?”
“There he is.” Twelve grinned. “There’s our grouchy little archivist.”
Eleven smiled too. “Good of you to join us, Jasper.”
“What does that even mean?”
“The forgetting spell keeps us hidden from the outside world,” explained Nine patiently. “Outsiders who visit Oak Haven forget the town as soon as they leave. And the spell has been updated for this here digital age—no selfies, no satellite images, no Google Street View.”
“But . . .” Jasper’s hand trembled slightly as he set down his mug. “None of this is possible. You do understand that, right? That this is impossible? I mean, I’m the county archivist! I should know about this place. I should have records, documentation . . .”
