by Paula Guran
Inside was a sachet: soft fabric and pungent, full of smells and sweet and strange that made my eyes water. “Green,” I whispered to myself. It didn’t smell like grass, or forests, or gardens. It smelled green.
This’ll do it, the letter said, in Alice’s angular hand. The perfect loops trembled. Not unpracticed; just seldom used. Steep it into tea. I’m sorry.
“Drink me,” I murmured, and coughed a laugh. Cupped the sachet in my hands and imagined it staining them green, streaks the color of sunlight on maple leaves that would never wash away. She was sorry.
There was a lot of magic here, in the tucked-away hills by the Canadian border. No way of knowing if this was a love spell, or a hate spell, or one to strip the flowers away from the ground whereon I stood.
“Oh, Alice,” I whispered, and put the kettle upon the stove.
I drank it when it cooled. It tasted like the forest in midsummer.
The flowers fell out like cancer, shriveling away and fading into dust that coated the kitchen tiles. When it was done I flexed my feet, felt the muscles. They looked naked. A bare few days, and I’d grown used to the scent of roses.
The aloe was blooming in the kitchen floor. A butterfly hovered around one of the blossoms. I could pot them. There was a potter halfway to the city who threw solid pots for plants. She sold them by the roadside, painted Indian colors. Tourists bought them wrapped in newspaper fifty miles before the clattering painted sign on Alice’s parked red truck. There was a market for growing things here, in the hills. They bloomed better. As if by magic.
I teased the daffodils from the shower drain and put them into water. They’d stood up against the onslaught of chemical soap and synthetic shampoo. I bundled them into a bouquet and brought them when I locked the house up for my week in the city office.
Perhaps on my way down, into the smoke and asphalt, I’d drop them off at Idaho.
Don Webb’s story is, ultimately, about fear and hatred of anyone who is perceived as “different”: race, gender, creed . . . so many reasons we devise to destroy our fellow humans. But his witch, Barbara, is of particular interest because she challenges our ideas of “good witch/bad witch” and exposes how shallow our own beliefs may be. There are certainly those who do believe in a God who is opposed by Satan, but one wonders how many of the residents of this small fictional Wisconsin town actually believe in either. Of those who do, theologically they would believe witches must be in league with the Devil and use their powers to harm people and property. Yet Barbara not only has done no harm, she has done considerable good. And popular culture now tends to side with the witch rather than condemn her.
So, the question arises: Is the following scenario unlikely? Or do we still fear “the other” on such a primal level that we instinctually destroy rather than think? Don’t worry. Merely offering food for thought. There will be no quiz at the end of the book.
Afterward
Don Webb
After twenty-four years of working for Wisconsin Data Systems, Barbara made her first tactical error. She revealed that she was on the side of Darkness to someone she’d known for seven years. She was fired within a week, then there were the harassing phone calls and she began hearing things outside her house at night, and woke to find foul things written on the sidewalk in front of her house.
It had happened like this:
The boss had had yet another bad idea, he wanted to remove all horizontal communications between fellow workers. No one would talk about the Project save to him. He didn’t like innovation, “self empowerment,” or “total quality culture.” He had dismissed them jokingly as “Tools of the devil” not knowing how right he was. No one, of course, would stand up to him.
Except Barbara.
Barbara had the work record and the smarts and the “Question Authority” button. She should have risen far on the management ladder, but she liked what she was doing—she liked writing code. She was good at it and she believed that the answer to life’s questions was to find a job that provided endless pleasurable challenges.
The meeting went as everybody hoped it would.
Barbara called the plan “Bullshit.”
Then a polite and detailed logical analysis showed why the plan would not only stifle creativity, but cost money, slow production, absorb the boss’s time and otherwise disrupt the company. The boss had almost begged her to stop when she reached her fourteenth point.
He retreated as he always did, saying it had been a proposal, an experiment, and that he had merely wanted feedback.
After he left the room, some people giggled.
Robert Hiker followed Barbara back to her cubicle. They made small talk while various folk drifted by to thank her for standing up to the boss (as always).
Then Robert said, “Do you get what you want with the boss because you’re good with people or because you’re a witch?”
Barbara laughed, “Isn’t ‘good with people’ and ‘witchcraft’ the same thing?”
“No, I mean it. I mean we all know you’re a witch.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh we’ve noticed that you pick up certain stones, that you make teas when anybody is sick, that anybody you really don’t like isn’t real lucky. It’s okay because we know that you’re a white witch.”
“You mean some goddess-worshiping woman who takes her clothes off a lot and dances under the moon? I suppose that’s all quite beautiful and everything, but that’s hardly me.”
“But you are a witch.”
“Robert, you’ve known me for seven years, been to my house, taken me to the movies, would have made a pass at me if you weren’t scared of your wife. You know I’m the one who helped you through your bad flu last year. You’ve borrowed money from me.”
“What’s your point?”
“I am wondering out loud if I can trust you. Trust you as a friend and trust you to think rather than spasm-off in knee jerk reactions.”
“Sure. You can trust me.”
“You know,” Barbara said, “I think I can. I am witch, a Black Witch. I am on the side of the Prince of Darkness.”
“You can’t be serious, you’re the nicest person I know.”
“Think about it, Robert. I always stand up to the boss. Does that sound more like Lucifer or Michael? When someone’s sick I don’t pray for help, I do things. I don’t call upon God as male or female, I am working to be as God. Lucifer is my role model, the rebel against cosmic injustice.”
“Do you drink blood or something?”
“No, Robert, I don’t drink blood, do black masses, or anything else the tabloids might ascribe to me. You know me, remember?”
“Yeah, I guess I know you.”
He backed out of her cubicle and she knew she had blown it. She figured he was bright enough: she had taught him C++, she had made potato salad for his birthday (he loved potato salad). Maybe it was just the shock. At least he wouldn’t blab it around the office. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that made office gossip.
She hoped.
She was wrong.
It was in their eyes the next day. All of the forces that keep stupidity the ruling paradigm of the Earth: fear, loathing, forced humor. By the end of the day, she knew that her work place of twenty-four years had turned on her. People didn’t drop by her cubicle to chat, no one asked her to lunch. When people had to hand her things they kept their bodies as far away from her as they could. The boss had called in and taken her keys away from her. He said it was a new company policy that only he could have keys to the office.
She had felt this kind of hatred before from male chauvinists. She knew that time could cure it, but she didn’t know if she had time.
She worked harder than ever, kept her tone bright and cheery, tried to get people alone so she could talk with them.
There was some goofy movie about a Satanic cult on Thursday night TV.
On Friday she was fired.
The putative reason was bad performance on a project abou
t six months ago. The project hadn’t shipped on time, but that had been the boss’s fault. She had had good performance reviews for twenty-four years. The security guard helped clean out her desk.
She could get more work, but she would have to move. Her gloomy garden with its dark ivy and green moss would be gone. The owl who frequented the twisted old oak would be gone. If she moved to a big city there would be too much light pollution for her beloved telescope. Oh and the packing! Hundreds of books on everything.
Her phone rang a couple of times in the night, but when she picked it up there was no one there. This might be scarier than she imagined.
She thought of her mother, who used to be scared at night after her father had died. Mom was scared if someone called her at night, she wouldn’t leave the house at night, and sometimes she thought there might be someone in the dark rooms at the front of the house.
She wouldn’t let herself be like Mom. She wished she knew some protective magic. But like all true magicians she did her magic in the plain simple way of the world. She wanted protection, so she had moved to a small town with a low crime rate. She wanted work that was just stimulating, so she made herself indispensable for a small company. Over the years she had more of a hand in determining company policy than some of the people on the board of directors.
She could cast a spell over everybody so they would forget and forgive—but it would take a vast amount of work, and she would have to keep it going all the time, and besides she didn’t like casting spells that interfered with the free will of others. It wasn’t the path of spiritual rebellion.
She would hire a headhunter and flog her resumes in bigger cities, she had enough to live on comfortably in the meantime. Her mother had suffered through the Depression and so she had a fear of poverty.
In the next week, Sharon, an old friend from the office called and wanted to talk to her about “it.”
They had dinner in a diner in the next town.
Sharon wanted her to know that she was still her friend.
Hard to know how to answer a statement that is both brave and cowardly, loving and pathetic.
“What’s it like?” asked Sharon.
“You mean,” said Barbara, “are there Sabats and do I get to fuck demons, and fly on broomsticks?”
“Well, that’s kind of silly, but yeah that’s what I mean.”
“No, it’s not like that at all. It is quiet and philosophical. I just realized over the years that I’m on the side of the rebels. Everyone’s on Superman’s side, you know. He’s got better lighting and all these powers. I was always on Lex Luthor’s side. He’s just a human, but by his own hard work becomes something better than himself. That’s what’s life’s about. Well, I did fuck a demon once, but that was years later.”
The raw heat of that memory possessed her, she hoped Sharon would ask about it, but when no questions came she realized that Sharon had thought she was joking.
“Were you born that way?” asked Sharon, “I mean—evil?”
“What evil thing have I done?”
“Well, you’re a Satanist.”
“I can repeat the query.”
“What about demons?”
“After years of rebellion I became aware of them. It’s like being on a battlefield. Even a foot soldier like me knows that there’s tanks and planes and bigger firepower. I am part of the cosmic struggle to be free.”
“Do you have powers?”
“All humans have powers. Here.”
Barbara put her hands briefly on Sharon’s head. Sharon purred and put her head back.
“Tell me what you see,” whispered Barbara.
“I see the stars of the night sky. They’re different colors—did you know that stars are different colors?—and I am rising towards them. And I hear singing, ‘To me the white nights, to you the gray days, to me the crows and toads, to you salvation and the promise, to me the Fall and the moon and neon lights, to you milk, to me venom, to me, to me, to me.’ ”
Barbara took her hand away from Sharon’s forehead.
“That,” said Barbara, “is the infernal choir.”
They ate dessert and Sharon promised to see her again real soon.
Two days later someone had written BURN THE FUCKING WITCH on the sidewalk outside of her house.
Barbara knew of few other practitioners of the Black Arts. There were some groups, and a few individuals, but they had their own agenda. She doubted that they would be of much help. She could sue for religious discrimination, she supposed, but since she was alone in her practice it was an unlikely suit. She might want to keep that option open, though, she would call an attorney as soon as she moved out of town.
She washed her sidewalk. Washed it three times, it seemed so dirty to her. When she was bent over scrubbing it, someone drove by and threw an apple core onto the middle of her back. Threw it hard.
She jumped up and saw the blue Mustang wheeling around the corner. It was the boss’s two teenaged sons.
She yelled a word, a word that she had sensed that the demon troops used in their battles with the self-righteous ones. In human languages it would have been “Stop!” but the language of demons is much more operative.
The car stopped, the engine died, and the teenagers peeled out of it like pop bottle rockets on the Fourth of July. She went inside and called the police complaining that there was a car blocking traffic on Maple Street.
The next couple of nights were quiet, and she thought she had scared them off. She got a good call from the headhunter on a job in Houston, Texas and she made airline reservations for three days later.
Houston? She could live in Houston—big city, no telescope, but there was a giant butterfly house and she could drive out to bathe in the warm Gulf of Mexico anytime she wanted. There was probably a poetry group there too. She had been promising herself for a long time to learn the art of poetry. Things were looking up. Perhaps her magic had caused the crisis as a way of getting her out of the nest. The Prince of Darkness doesn’t like satisfaction. Faust, she recalled, lost his contract when he was satisfied. Satisfaction was for the forces of Light in their static heaven. Houston? Yes, she could do Houston.
That night someone dumped about twenty gallons of raw sewage on her front porch.
Barbara packed her bags and got ready to move into the local motel.
“Sorry, ma’am, we’re remodeling, we’ve got no rooms.”
She didn’t see any remodeling going on. She drove home. She could stick it out, what’s the worst that they could do? It wasn’t Salem for God’s sake.
Barbara figured the local moving company might not be the best either, so she talked to the one in a nearby town. She’d seen their sign the night Sharon had taken her to Big Eddy’s. She decided that she was going to move to Houston, job or no job. If she stayed here, she’d wind up using her powers to hurt the panicked sheep. After she left, the move of claiming power would be gone from the office. It would be just like God’s hierarchy—all communication lines straight up to him. No decisions, no use of free will. She would have lost her battle for freedom, which meant in the cosmic sense a tiny loss for the side of the Devil. She wondered if she should invoke him and tell him about it.
It was probably too small a thing to care about, and besides her fight wasn’t over yet. There was no doubt a battlefield waiting for her in Houston—some petty tyrant to lead rebellions against—some mock-up of the heavenly bureaucracy to test her powers on.
But on the other hand, maybe he needed to know. So she lit a candle and she poured her heart out to the Archetype of Human Consciousness, the force always seeking to be free.
They came for her the next night. She knew it was going to be bad about seven in the evening. The sun had set and darkness was beginning to pool up in the low places of the Earth. The birds that graced dark skies were beginning to sing, and with her heightened senses she had felt that tiny shudder the earth gives just as she is falling asleep. The plane would take her away tomorrow, but
she doubted it would be that easy.
She called for a pizza. The phone was dead. She looked out her front window. Someone had parked across her driveway with a Ford Bronco. There were a lot of cars in the neighborhood.
What had suddenly made them so fearful?
Had they had a cow that went dry, or couldn’t get it up after having a few too many beers, or maybe their gamble in the stock market hadn’t worked so well . . .
Maybe it was watching movies on TV till they were good and scared—and then calling each other until the wee hours of the morning. Or maybe it was something they had always longed to do. Mankind has a great hatred for anyone who is different. Race, gender, creed. All good excuses to kill.
But not, thought Barbara, to die for.
When it got good and dark, she could hear them gathering on the lawn. She saw lights.
Torches.
Oh good, this really was a movie ending.
They began banging on her door about nine.
She opened the door, wearing a see-through black silk dress, a little too tight, that ended just above the knees. It was all she wearing, let them see what they were about to waste. Not a bad looking broad for forty-five.
Robert grabbed her by her right arm.
They had put a stake in the middle of the yard and piled firewood around it, as she had foreseen in her magical working the night before.
Robert pulled her toward it, she could not smell the roses she grew, not even the sweet tuberoses that usually enchanted the night. She could smell gasoline. She pulled her arm from his, but kept walking toward the stake.
“Do I get a final speech before you roast me?”
Some yelled, “No!” and others, “Yes!” and so she knew that she could speak since they were too weak-willed to stop her.
