Landlocked (A water witch novel) by C.S. Moore

palpitations.”
    “I’ll just get some when I go into town. I mean, Starbucks brews a better cup of coffee than you any day,” she said, winking at me.
    “What?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Oh that was a low blow.”
    “Come on, Mari honey, I’ll get you a vanilla latte the way they were supposed to be made.” She walked over and looped her arm in mine; I gave an apologetic look to my uncle, but was happy to see that Sylvia had chilled a few degrees. I didn’t want her on stress level nine for the next week… or two.
     
    ***
     
    We walked down Main Street past some of the more touristy shops into the art district of town. Wide windows displayed an array of oil paintings by local artists, some of them quite remarkable, and others not to my taste. Then again, I never did understand ‘modern’ art. It didn’t seem special at all to me. But I guessed the beautiful thing about art was that, like life, everyone saw it differently.
    “Maribel!” my aunt called out. She had gotten a few paces ahead of me while I had paused at the window. Her beautiful face was moving back and forth searching the crowd, when she landed on me, her eyes lit up.
    I sped walked to her, only slowing for a moment when I noticed a beautiful red Harley parked on the street. “What’s up?” I asked looking inside the shop she had paused in front of. No paintings hung in the windows, or if they did, I couldn’t see them, as they were blacked out.
    “This is the first shop I want to hit,” she said.
    I looked the dark shop over once again. The whole building seemed like it didn’t belong. “Okay…”
    We walked together down the entryway and through a door that strings of beads covered. Pushing them aside, the beads rattled and caught my eye. They shone in iridescent gold and purples. I pinched one of the gold ones between my thumb and forefinger and inspected it. It was the most beautiful bead I had ever seen. At first I thought it to be glass, but the weight was all wrong, it was too light.
    “Pretty aren’t they?” Sylvia’s voice startled me. I looked up at her as she ran her fingers through a string of the shimmering purple beads. “The owner of the shop makes them.”
    “Out of what? I was just trying to figure it out?” I asked.
    “I’m not sure. This shop is filled with raw ingredients to make a variety of things. That‘s why I came here first. I need to know what they have so I can try to find things that will work at other shops if they don‘t have everything I want,” she said.
    We walked into the heart of the shop; the inside was well lit by antique looking wavy green light fixtures. It put out an interesting glow, almost like the light that shone down through the pool water when I was at the bottom looking up.
    “Can I help you?” a voice so deep it shook my bones asked. I jumped and turned around.
    The gruff looking man belonging to the voice was at least six foot three and had a long graying beard, a Harley Davidson bandana wrapped around his squared off brow. I guessed that he was the reason the bike was parked in the art district. He was almost as wide as he was tall, though I wouldn’t call him fat by any means; he was just thick like an old tree. His brusque demeanor melted away when he set his eyes on Sylvia.
    “Sylvia?” he asked, smiling. “Well I’ll be. I haven’t seen you in ages! How are you and Dylan faring?”
    Sylvia swiftly glided forward with the grace that only she possessed and embraced him. “We are very well. And sorry about my absence, Johnny, we've been busy raising a teenager.” She wrapped an arm around me.
    Johnny turned his brilliant gray eyes to me. “Is this Maribel?” he almost whispered.
    “Yes it is,” she said with pride, like I was someone who had accomplished much more than I ever had.
    His eyes were bright as they shifted over my face seeming to try to memorize every detail. “She so looks like her mother,” he whispered.
    Sylvia cleared her throat, and