Flames of Indigo (The Idlebelle Stories, #1) by LYNDSEY RESNICK

Author:LYNDSEY RESNICK
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poison Ivy House
Published: 2025-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

I come home in the golden hour. That stunning, light-filtered-through-the-trees hour, when the birds sing their evening songs and the bees are reluctantly heading home for the night.

Cosmo, worn out from his time with Rowan, happily enters our place and goes straight to his bed. Leaving him there, I walk back to the barn, enjoying the coming night’s softness. The goats bleat their happiness with their evening feed while I close everyone’s coops and stalls, and refill waterers for the morning. Lastly, I close the barn doors. Everyone’s tucked in. Suddenly I am seized with the need to talk to my dad.

I hurry back to shower off the day, making sure to wash off all my makeup, then paw through my clothes to find my best dress. Stepping in front of the mirror, I carefully put up my hair. It’s how I was taught to present myself to visit the dead.

After lining a basket with a clean cloth, and nestling in a few beeswax candles from the cupboard, I let Cosmo out one last time, telling him he must stay behind.

The sun is down, but the sky still echoes its light. Enough that I can see to gather lavender and rosemary from the nearest herb beds. They were my father’s favorites. Then I wind my way back to the family tomb.

The path is well-worn. Mama and Gram go regularly, but this is my first trip since I’ve been home. I follow their way to the great wooden door dug into the hillside, back in the pines and oaks. It’s a bit taller than I, and one of the Grampas, long passed, carved their clan’s symbol, the bear, in fighting stance on the door face. I touch its strong shoulder. Trace a grand canine in its open mouth. There are worn places where others have stroked him over the decades, borrowing his Spirit in their most vulnerable times.

Setting the basket on the ground, I use all my strength to pull the heavy door open, then I pull a fat candle from my basket, light it matchless like a party trick, and enter the dark cave.

There’s a small room just past the entrance and I stop, removing my shoes and pushing them under the bench there. The cave floor is cool, but dry, under my feet. There is a second door before me, carved in the likeness of a tree, every leaf detailed, filigree branches reaching for sacred light with spaces between them. Through those, flows the glow of older candles guttering in the main part of the cave. Pushing the door closed behind me, the living world fades away, quieting my mind. There are no earthly concerns here. Only rest.

Walking to each alcove, I replace the old candles and lighting the new. A few sprigs of rosemary and lavender fit in a depression on each elder’s crypt. I honor Great-grandfather, Grampa, and lastly, Dad. Their stone lids also feature the symbolic bear, carved to highlight something about their particular energies. Great-grandfather’s is the most dangerous, fierce-looking bear.

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