GARDEN GRIMOIRE (EBOOK)

CHAPTER 1

The car was out of control, probably due to the ice on the road. 

But that was odd, wasn’t it, given that it was still summer? I mean, the rising sun was glaring in my eyes! Or perhaps that was just tears obscuring my vision. Then again, if it wasn’t ice, why was my car swerving from side to side like a drunk trying to walk a straight line?

I leaned forward, peering over my steering wheel to see if there was indeed ice on the road, or whether it was just that I couldn’t trust my own eyesight.

Like I couldn’t trust my own judgment.

A fresh flood of tears poured down my cheeks.

“Oh, son of a biscuit!” I howled, reaching a hand up to scrub at my face.

Speaking of biscuits, just then, something the size of a rectangular Julie’s Biscuits tin slammed into my windscreen, causing cracks to spiderweb across it.

“Ah!” I cried, slamming the brakes down as hard as I could.

My car didn’t get the memo, though. If anything, it went even faster. I jerked the steering wheel to the side, yelling at the top of my voice.

The steep grassy embankment by the side of the road appeared in front of me like a specter, open arms and all.

CRUNCH!

PLOOF!

“Urgh.”

I pulled away from the airbag that had emerged from my steering wheel, feeling like I’d been punched in the face. 

Well, I had essentially just been punched in the face by my airbag. But at least I was still alive.

I tried to look around to take in the damage. But blood, tears, and not a small amount of snot were obscuring my vision, as well as a… hang on. Was that a huge chunk of ICE lodged in my windscreen?

I reached a hand up to rub my eyes, then peered through the spider-webbed glass again. 

That was ice!

I looked up into the sky and shook my fist, releasing a fearsome roar. It couldn’t just rain, could it? No. The fates had to serve up hail the size of a baby’s bottom just for me. 

It just figured.

I should probably call a tow truck. Maybe an ambulance, too. I wasn’t quite sure I could feel my toes.

But whatever was ailing me sure wasn’t affecting my voice box, which was great, because I’d never known yelling could feel this good before!

I drew in a deep breath for round two, then let it rip. 

I’d just gotten to a pitch perfect, rage-fueled vibrato when the chunk of hail the size of Hawaii quivered, plopped right out of the windscreen, then rolled across the now deflating airbag to smack right into my head.

“AAAHHH—heck!”

I faceplanted once more onto the airbag. Stars swirled mockingly across my vision. I focused on a particularly large one through the gap left in my shattered windscreen. 

It seemed to get larger the longer I stared at it, until I felt sure it wasn’t actually an incorporeal star, but something in the sky, zooming down at top speed towards me. 

Hmm. It looked like a dragonfly with a very fine head of hair. Or a poodle with an abnormally long, tasseled tail. Or… right. I knew exactly what it was.

It was a witch riding a broomstick.

That’s it, Temmie. You’re not going crazy at all.

You just crashed your car because you packed your sunnies into your luggage instead of wearing them like you’d planned. Then you got nailed by hail on a bright summer’s day, and now you’re going to be saved by the Wicked Witch of the West.

No wonder your marriage failed, you silly goose! You’re clearly deranged!

A fresh deluge of tears surged forth, and I closed my eyes, ready to surrender myself to the flying dragonfly-poodle-witch that was about to take me to whichever afterlife I deserved to go to following my death.

I just hoped the journey would be quick and relatively painless. I felt like I’d had more than enough drama and pain to last several lifetimes.

Indeed, my wish seemed to be granted. I could feel myself slipping away into a blissfully relaxed state. My body was weightless, wind was in my ears, and… was that cat hair wafting in my nose and wedging between my teeth?

I opened my eyes and caught a nice bird's-eye view of the highway I’d been traveling along about ten thousand feet below me. 

There was my little hatchback Toyota, crumpled up like a deflated accordion. And here I was, zipping through the air on the back of a broomstick, with a fluffy black cat practically sitting on my face and an extremely broad back just a few inches away from my nose. 

A broad back attached to a very handsome male, judging from the glance he gave me over his shoulder. Yum. 

“I wouldn’t advise licking the rescue ranger”, a high-pitched yet growly voice said in my head.

Rescue ranger? Who are we talking about? Chip or Dale? 

I stifled a hysterical giggle, keeping an eye on the still receding ground while I searched around for the owner of said cute voice. 

It couldn’t be the man I’d been ogling on the other end of the broomstick. Having a voice like that would be a true tragedy for any male, let alone one as ripped as he was. 

Though, maybe that was why he was so muscular. To compensate, you know. People do that because they feel insecure, but really—

Really! What really? Get a GRIP, Temmie! That’s no man, that’s a witch! Or wizard. Hmm. Could a male be a witch?! After all, I was riding his broomstick.

Haha! 

Oh, I kill myself with the puns sometimes. But no, really. A LITERAL broomstick. 

I must have smacked my head good when I’d gotten into that accident. I couldn’t believe I’d dreamed up this hallucination to entertain myself while I was probably slipping into shock and bleeding out on the road—which was like a hundred thousand feet below us by now.

Could I get a heart attack from a hallucination that I’d dreamed up while already flat lining following a car crash? Good one to ask the paramedics if and when they saved me.

“Relax, you’re not going to fall. And you’re already in good hands. Leo’s one of the best flyers in Blisswood. Or, well, the fastest, at any rate. Well, relatively. And before you ask, he’s not the one speaking to you. That’s me.”

The small cat shoved its face into mine and gave me a Cheshire grin, exposing teeth that looked longer and sharper than any cat should have. 

I emitted a squeak, which was about all I had breath for at this point, and leaned backwards, trying to keep my jugular as far away from the cat’s jagged teeth as I could.

I might have managed to recover from my fright if the weather hadn’t chosen that very moment to turn fickle once more. As I struggled to regain my balance, lightning forked across the sky and thunder boomed right beside the broomstick. The heat from the strike was immense, and I instantly sprung out in sweat all over my body, just as the broomstick accelerated beneath me.

Uh oh!

I grabbed for the broomstick, desperate to cling on to it. But despite my best efforts, my fingers slipped, and I found myself plummeting through thin air, wailing once more at the top of my voice.

I was pretty sure I was going to go splat and never wake up. Or else I was going to wake up from this rollercoaster of a fantasy to find myself lying on the tarmac, with a bump the size of a robin’s egg on my forehead…

I glanced back down at the fast approaching earth, hoping to find a way to soften my fall. But there was nothing that looked like a landing pad on what I would normally have considered to be a picture perfect little hill overlooking a babbling brook and a forest of pine trees. 

There was even a majestic-looking wolf sitting on a huge rock at the peak of the hill. It lifted its nose and cocked its head quizzically to the side, as if wondering how the moon it was supposed to be howling at had come to be replaced by a lady, flailing and shrieking as she fell from the sky.

Sorry, wolf. I’ll be out of your way soon.

My scream petered out as the ground rose up to meet me. I closed my eyes, resigning myself to my inevitable fate. Somehow, at this moment at the end of my life, the thing I wanted most to do was to fully embrace what little life I had left.

Perhaps my willingness to just be helped to dull my senses. Because the ground didn’t so much as slam into me as meet me with a hard, yet giving embrace. The wind stopped howling in my ears, and instead took on a low, persistent growl. Meanwhile, the sour, sickening taste of fear in my mouth bled away, replaced by the scent of berries and mint leaves.

I had just begun to think that death wasn’t all that bad when my senses caught up and the world crashed over me, leaving me wet and cold, with pain burning through my limbs.

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