The Magical Book of Wands

by Raven M. Williams

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  A Wand Needs A Witch

  By Victoria Raschke

  A note on Slovenian pronunciation.

  SLOVENIAN USES A FEW extra characters.

  č is pronounced like the ch in church

  š is pronounced like the sh in shirt

  ž is pronounced like the second g in garage

  Familiar letters are pronounced differently.

  e is most often pronounced like a in bay

  i is most often pronounced like the e in be

  j is pronounced like a y

  r without a paired vowel is pronounced like the ir in skirt

  Goran reached up to the top shelf to pull down a box of trinkets he’d collected over the years. Now that he had others working in his space with some regularity, it was important to be a little more organized. As his esoteric filing system was impossible to describe to another, he’d spent most of the day checking the labels on all his herbs and spell ingredients. He didn’t want anyone mistaking dried elder flowers for those of the poison hemlock.

  He said he’d never take another student; instead he’d taken three, a trio of sisters. He’d avoided trouble for as long as he could, maintaining his shop and practice in the old quarter of a city that had once been called Emona. But as his mother had said, when a lost witch finds you, you have a sacred duty to offer hospitality. Or if the witch is young and untrained, you must teach them.

  The box came down with a passenger on top, a smaller box, long and thin, that almost hit him in the face. He set the bigger box on an old breakfront he kept in the office to house paperwork and the other mundane things being a shopkeeper required. He held the narrow wooden casket, surprised to find his hands were shaking.

  He set the box on the desk and ran one hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, even though he knew the gesture made his mop stand up at strange angles. After staring at the box for a minute, he picked it back up, undid the ornate latch, and pulled it open like a skinny book. Both halves were lined with cool, green velvet. A curved willow branch was nestled into fabric folds in one half; they looked as if they were embracing the wooden rod.

  Goran plucked the wand from the velvet and more than forty years fell away in an instant. He was sitting on the floor in his mother’s junk shop on a hidden street in the capital, less than half a kilometer from where his antiquarian shop was in present-day Ljubljana.

  His ten-year-old self had pulled the same plain box with the funny lock from a carton of curious bottles and random animal bones his mother had told him was mostly rubbish. She put the box in the storage room with the moth-eaten rugs and furniture broken beyond repair that her customers thought they could get a few dinar for. His mother usually gave them at least a few para, even for useless trash, in hopes that next time they would bring something of value.

  When Goran had taken what he’d thought was an ornately carved stick from the plush green velvet, he’d felt a warmth and a tingle like peppermint on the tongue spread from his fingertips, up through his wrist to his elbow and shoulder, and even to the top of his head.

  “What did you find?” His mother poked her head into the office she kept at the back to do accounts and sort through the bundled parcels hopeful customers left with her.

  “Nothing. A fancy stick.” He hadn’t intended to lie to her, and his words were true, but he already sensed the stick was far more than just fancy.

  His mother, ever able to sense any hesitation or untruth in his voice, joined him in the small dusty space. She eyed the mess he’d made.

  “A stick you say. May I see it?”

  Goran reluctantly yielded his find to his mother. The stick seemed to want to stay with him, too, as it stuck to his open palm as his mother pulled it away.

  She turned the twig between her thickened fingers and looked down at Goran still cross-legged on the floor. “Do you know what this writing is?”

  Goran shook his head.

  “It’s Glagolitic script.” She held the wand up and examined the marks and continued talking to herself as if she were still a lecturer with a roomful of invisible students. “It was invented by St. Cyril in the 800s to translate liturgical books into Old Slavic to assist in the Christianization of ‘the barbarians’ who hadn’t quite accepted Jesus yet.” His mother handed the stick back to him.

  “Is it really that old?” He looked at his treasure with a little more wonder and awe.

  “I doubt it would have ended up in a box with a bunch of dried-up herbs and mouse-eaten papers if it were. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t special.”

  She pointed at the mess he’d made excavating the contents of the carton. “Clean up that other rubbish and take it out to the collection bins. You can keep the wand if you want to.” She disappeared into the storefront, where he could hear her humming the same tune she always did when she was dusting and arranging the inventory.

  Wand? Like a magician? Goran’s thoughts ran to fairytale castles, fierce dragons, and wizards who could turn lead into gold or block out the sun on a cloudless day.

  He set his find on the desk, straightening the box so it lined up with the edge of the metal top, and scrambled to pile the bottles and jars and paper scraps back into the box.

  When he’d gotten back from taking out the garbage, his mother had put a few nickel-brass para in his hand and told him to pick up some bread on the way home. They lived then in a flat in a new high-rise on the edge of the city center in Šiška. It wasn’t far, but his mother had known he would have to investigate every interesting crack and insect he came across on his way home and that she would most likely get to the flat before him. He had slipped the wooden box into his jacket pocket and run out of the shop and down the cobblestone street toward home.

  Goran, now very much an adult, sat at his desk and placed the box on his ink blotter. It was an old-fashioned addition to his workspace, but he enjoyed making quick calculations on the heavy cream paper tucked flat into the leather corners. He stared at the box for a few minutes, his thoughts running through a catalog of images from that evening walk home and the mess he’d made in the dusty courtyard surrounded by hastily constructed blocks of flats.

  The look on his mother’s face had been impossible to distill into one word. She had been disappointed and concerned, a little angry even, but the resigned look in her eyes was as clear to him now as it had been all those years ago. As the years passed and his memories of her patinaed and faded, the look on her face that day in the courtyard had stayed with him.

  His mother, years before, had also said she would never take on another student. In fact, she had washed her hands completely of anything that even sniffed of witchcraft or magic. Communism, even under Tito, discouraged religious beliefs, and anything that marked someone as different drew suspicion. She still tended her herb garden and made teas and tinctures, but she didn’t talk about the old gods or celebrate any of their festival days.

  But after Goran had summoned every snake in the neighborhood and set fire to Gospa Vidmar’s nightgowns, girdles, and brassieres on the communal clothesline, his mother had no choice but to call on her dormant abilities and the assistance of the witch goddess Morana to clean up his mess.

  He had expected his mother to be angry with him, but she partly blamed herself. She had not told him about her abilities, nor those of her mother and grandfather. Her wish had been that being ignorant of such things and untrained in them would insulate him from magic and witchcraft.

  “Natural talent will out.” He sighed his mother’s words out loud and opened the box again.

  He picked up the wand and felt the same sensation of minty warmth tingling up his arm that he’d felt when sitting on the floor in the shop all those years ago. The carved writing, showing no wear or diminishment over the years, glowed almost imperceptibly. He no longer needed the magic stored in the wand to do his workings, but the wand felt like it remembered him, and that was an unexpected comfort.

&nbs
p; The next day, he took the Novak sisters out into the woods to look for Amanita muscaria, known to most as fly agaric or the toadstools from a particularly popular video game. He suspected the oldest sister, Ivanka, had the power of sight. She had agreed to try various entheogenic plants to see which gave her the clearest visions with the least amount of troublesome side effects.

  The youngest sister’s powers gave him the most pause. His mother’s adage about natural talent was one thing. Goran believed there was natural talent—it had manifested in all three of the Novak sisters—but Ana had been saved by a river god and had shown unruly abilities far beyond those he or any other witch bore. He wasn’t entirely sure she was a witch, or that she was just a witch.

  “Ana, can we talk a minute before you disappear off into the woods?” He watched her stop in mid-skip. She turned to look at him and cocked her head in a manner that instantly recalled the small brown sparrows that swarmed the cafe tables along the river in town.

  She skipped back and stopped directly in front of him. Her dark hair shone in the sunlight. That, coupled with her curious expression, made her look very much like her mother. Goran wondered if Katarina had had any inkling of her power. Had a family lineage been hidden from her with more success?

  “Yes?” Ana’s voice still held the lilt of a child, but her eyes were older and more knowing. At eleven, she’d seen her share of trouble.

  “I have a gift for you.”

  Her eyes widened and held all the delight of child’s for a brief instant. Her sisters stood off to the side paying close attention but pretending not to. He had an idea of what to give both of them to hone their particular skills, but he had struggled with what to do for Ana. Perhaps his mother was nearer to him than he had believed. Maybe it was just wishful thinking that she was guiding him still after all these years.

  Goran handed the girl the box and watched as she turned it in her hands to examine the unadorned wood and the elaborate clasp.

  “It’s beautiful. Thank you.” She turned to go.

  “Open it.”

  She opened the casket as he had, like a thin wooden volume. In his previous research of the object, he had learned the box was made from an ancient fallen tree from Kočevje. Ana’s head tilted again as she ran her index finger over the smooth willow wood. In the wake of her light touch, the letters glowed and reflected a shimmering blue in her dark eyes.

  The wand had reacted to her.

  “Is it magic by itself, or is it magic because I touched it?”

  Goran snapped back in surprise. She had gotten to the heart of the matter from one interaction with the tool.

  “Both. The wand has its own magic, but it recognizes that you have a gift as well.”

  She lifted the wand out of the emerald velvet and laid it across her palm. Faint sparks and tracers followed the wand tip as it moved through the air. She closed her fingers around it and handed him the empty box.

  “Will you keep this for me until we get back?”

  He nodded, and she skipped away from him and ahead of her sisters and disappeared into the trees.

  He held his hand up as if to wave, palm out. But it wasn’t a wave; it was a wish. It was a hope that he had done the right thing, and that he and Veronika and Ivanka, Ana’s older sisters, wouldn’t be sending all the testy snakes in Slovenia back to their homes after a serpent bacchanalia in the woods outside Škofja Loka.

  At least there wasn’t any laundry hanging nearby.

  ANA WOUND HER WAY FURTHER into the wooded area. Goran and her sisters’ voices faded and were replaced with the hovering stillness the forest had when a human first arrived. The chattering and rustling stopped while the creatures there waited to see who had come into their space and if the new arrival was friend or foe.

  The small mammals and birds and spirits of this place knew her well, and it didn’t take them long to resume their journeys, conversations, and songs. Ana made her way to the clearing. She didn’t call it hers, as it belonged to the forest, but it was the place where she felt welcomed. Her sisters and Goran had never found it. She could hear them and sometimes even see them calling for her, but she had come to understand that in the clearing she had stepped sideways. She hadn’t figured out yet if it was out of space or out of time.

  Usually she would lie on the accumulated pine needles and twigs that had formed a mat big enough for a tall man to lie down. Instead she chose a seat on a tree that had fallen at the edge of the clearing. She pulled the willow wand out of her jeans pocket and examined it. As she followed the script with her eyes, the letters glowed again.

  The wand had whispered indecipherably to her on the walk, and now it was trying to explain the strange writing. Ana touched each letter with her fingertip, and it made a sound. It reminded her of an electronic toy that had been handed down to her when she was much younger. She had sat on her mother’s lap and pushed the buttons to make the sounds of letters and animals.

  She touched the first letter again closest to the part that seemed to be the handle and then ran her index finger along to the first gap, covering what should be the first word. It sounded a bit like Slovenian but not any word she knew. She did the same with the other words, some of them sounding more like Slovenian than others.

  A presence joined her on her log perch, and a thick-fingered hand reached over and took the wand from her very gently. Ana looked up into the face of woman with a mane of white and silver hair. Her expression was difficult to read, but she was intent on the wand and a little sad.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this.”

  “Goran gave it to me today.”

  “He did, did he?” The woman smiled broadly, revealing large, even teeth.

  “I think it belonged to him when he was a boy. It’s trying to teach me to read the words, but I’ve never seen these letters before.” Ana ran her fingertip over a word again as the woman held the wand.

  They tilted their heads together to listen. The woman looked up into Ana’s face. “I think it is saying hello.”

  “Do you know how to read this language?” Ana watched the woman’s face as she formed her answer.

  “Not as easily as Slovenian or even English, but I do know what the wand says. And you were right about it belonging to Goran when he was a boy.”

  Ana waited while the woman continued. The girl had spoken to other spirits in this place, and the kind ones always had more to say if she was quiet.

  “The wand says it was made by a great magician from wood taken from a tree along the banks of the Ljubljanica river, though I think he called it something else. It also says it holds its own magic, unique to its maker.” The woman turned the wand in her hand to the script on the other side.

  “I can tell you that the wand doesn’t care who holds it so long as they have magic in them.”

  Ana traced the words on the other side, and whispers gathered and fell. “What is the language?”

  “Old Slavic, but the wand is much newer than that. Magicians believe you have to use old languages and a lot of fancy things to do work.”

  “Are magicians always men?” This had puzzled Ana for some time. Goran referred to himself as a witch and to her sisters that way, too, but the books he assigned them to read often talked of men as magicians and women as witches.

  “No. And, as you know, witches aren’t always women. But people have their own ideas about things, and some people like all the smells and bells and Latin incantations and alchemic rites to connect to the Unseen. And some people just like to close their eyes.” The woman handed the wand back to Ana.

  “I just like to close my eyes. Or come here.” Ana slid the wand back into her pocket.

  “I was the same when I was a practicing witch. I think you’ll find Goran falls somewhere in between.” The woman looked out past the edge of the clearing. A flash of red T-shirt between the trees was Ivanka picking her way through some branches.

  “What does the other side of the wand say?” Ana thought the w
oman might be avoiding telling her on purpose because something about the wand and the words gave her a sour, mad feeling in her stomach. Sometimes she just had to directly ask a spirit to get an answer.

  “I think it will tell you itself as you work with it. Ana, please remember that a witch doesn’t need a wand, but sometimes a wand needs a witch.” With those words the spirit left, and Ana was alone again in the clearing.

  Ana moved from the log to the bed of pine needles on the forest floor. She looked up into the crowns of the trees, following the gaps between them with her eyes, and listened as the dormice and deer approached and the smaller slithering and crawling things made their way through the undergrowth.

  She had the strangest thought about burning underpants and laughed out loud, momentarily making the creatures pause again, before she closed her eyes and listened deep.

  GORAN WATCHED THE HUSTLE and bustle in the courtyard in front of his shop as he dusted the items on display in the front window. Jo and Vesna, who lived in the same building, owned Renegade Tea with their landlord. Goran enjoyed the people-watching their punk rock teahouse offered, and though the music wasn’t to his taste, he had a special fondness for the American-style brownies Jo was famous for.

  He also appreciated the little haven she had created for some of those who lived behind the Veil in Ljubljana. He did not, however, appreciate the presence of an Observer in their building. The current Observer for Slovenia had a paternal soft spot for Jo and was generally not the interfering sort. Goran didn’t seek out his company, but he didn’t instantly remove himself from the little gray Austrian’s presence.

  Goran did ponder how long Gustaf Lichtenberg’s tenure in Ljubljana would last. Gustaf’s predecessor had been made in the older mold of Observers, in that she had no use for those she had been assigned to watch. Her constant reporting to the Board was the final straw that had driven the few remaining witches underground in their practices. Some, like his mother, had even given them up altogether.