by Sarina Dorie
She snorted at that and bit the head off the burnt gingerbread man. She offered the plate to me. I took one to be polite. She poured tea into her own cup and drank. I supposed that meant she hadn’t poisoned the tea. But I knew from my mom’s kitchen witchery more could be done to food than poison.
I refrained from eating and drinking.
She dunked her cookie in the tea. “I will tell your fortune for very good price, yes?”
“What price?” I set my saucer on the table. My suspicion meter flew off the chart. “My firstborn child?”
“Ha! That is stereotype of my people.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Nyet, I want one year of your life.”
“No, thank you.” I stood to go. As much as I wanted to know about magic, about these people, I wasn’t willing to bargain with that.
“Nyet!” She jumped to her feet. “It was just joke, dearie. You have gold?”
“Gold? No. I have twenty dollars.”
“Morty money? Blah! Ebanuti? How about lock of your hair?”
“How much hair?” My thoughts tumbled through my brain in this order: Oh, no, I don’t want to be like Rapunzel with her butch haircut. Wait, what is this lady going to do with my hair? Is this like Samson and Delilah in the Bible and she’ll take my power? No, it’s for the voodoo doll she’s going to make of me.
“Just little.” She held up her fingers to show me an inch.
As much as I wanted to know what was going on, I didn’t think giving her a piece of myself was worth it. “Are you sure you won’t take a twenty? Do you have Square?”
She stared at me in confusion.
“It’s an app for a cell phone so you can accept money at any time.”
“Blah! Pisdets! Electronics. Those weaken us Witchkin. Take away our magic and make us powerless like mortals. They make us age and shorten our lives.”
“Electricity does?” My eyes went wide.
“That and many other human crafted things. Cars. Computers. The microwaves. Pisdets! You stay away from human magic.”
Human magic? It was a ridiculous idea. Technology wasn’t magic; it was science.
I had never been affected technology. I didn’t think I had, anyway. Then again, I’d never gone without a cell phone or MP3 player or camped out in the woods without electronics. Even here at the fair there were sound systems and generators to heat water and enable the food booths to cook meals.
Wouldn’t my mom have banned electronics in our household so they wouldn’t weaken her magic? Then again, she hadn’t wanted us to use magic. She’d wanted to suppress my powers.
“Do you remember my sister?” I asked. “You met her at Oregon Country Fair. It would have been about seven years ago.”
“What was her name?”
“Missy.” I swallowed. My throat was dry, and more than anything I wanted to drink the tea.
“Da. The blonde.” She tugged thoughtfully at the long hair growing out of a wart on her chin. “Your sister knew what she was, but you … you are different. Not water witch. Not plant witch. Your affinity is … mystery.”
I leaned forward with interest.
“Long ago, I met Missy’s mother.” She waved a hand over a crystal ball on the table and a beautiful blonde woman’s face appeared in the glow. Missy would have looked like her if she’d lived to be an adult. Tears filled my eyes.
Baba waved her hand over the crystal ball again and the woman’s face vanished. “Her real mother. Powerful water witch. I told Missy about her true parents when she came to me for knowledge. I warned her what happen if she used magic irresponsibly.”
“Missy didn’t come to you seeking knowledge. She got lost. My mother said you tried to steal my sister away.”
She shrugged. “Steal? Nyet! Only those who want information find me. Your sister. You. There are others who come. I help those who I can. Lost children.” She nodded to me. “Lost adults.”
“So you’re like an information booth in the Witchkin world?”
She cackled at that.
“What were you planning on doing with my sister? How could you have helped her?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I would have kept her away from you, for start.”
I slouched down in my seat, my guilt weighing me down. This was the woman who had predicted I would kill my sister. She knew exactly what I’d done.
“I offered her sanctuary. She would have made good apprentice. I am old, lonely woman. No children of my own. We could have helped each other. Her affinity was water. That good for brewing potions.”
“What do you mean by affinity? You keep saying that word.” Baba knew everything my mom had tried to keep from me. She knew about Missy being adopted and being a witch. She knew about me. I had to know more.
“Affinity is where a Witchkin’s power comes from. I tell you all about your magic, but you pay me in gold or pay me in kind.”
“What did my sister give you to tell her fortune? She didn’t have gold.”
She smiled. “Nothing that didn’t grow back. Da. Nothing you would notice.”
My suspicion meter went off again.
“What does that mean?”
“Hair,” she said.
Baba hid secrets under her smiles. I didn’t believe her. Even if all she did want from me was a lock of hair, I suspected hair meant something more than she was letting on. I needed a low-tech solution for bartering. “How about I entertain you? I can juggle for you.”
She lifted her nose up in the air.
“I can draw your portrait,” I offered.
She scratched her chin. “You are artist? You make things, dearie?”
“Yes, I specialize in portraits.” A small fib, but I did like to draw from observation, and I was good at people. I sold caricatures at the market.
“You draw first. If you are any good, I tell fortune.”
I didn’t have any of my art supplies with me, but Baba had a bottle of corked ink and a quill on hand. The ink was a suspicious hue of red. I decided it was safer not to ask what it was. She gave me a sheet made of thin, soft leather to draw on.
“Is this vellum?” I asked. “Wait, don’t answer that.” I didn’t want to know what animal it came from if it was.
If it came from an animal.
I placed dots on the sheet to mark my guidelines to reduce mistakes. Baba sat smiling next to the hearth where I would be able to see her features best. She sipped her tea as I sketched.
“You not like tea?” she asked. “Would you prefer boiled water? Wine? Blood?”
I hoped she was joking about the blood.
Tea and wine could mask other ingredients. I accepted the water. It was still hot. She refilled her teapot from a pitcher of water and set it on a grate over the fire.
I resumed drawing. One of the things I had learned early on was that no one wanted a portrait of what they actually looked like. People wanted a portrait that looked like a better, prettier version of themselves. I didn’t expect Baba would be any different. I left out the nose hairs and wart, and lessened the comical exaggeration of her chin. Even minimizing her features, the portrait managed to look more like a caricature of the famous painting, Whistler’s Mother, than something grounded in realism. I held up the drawing when I was done.
Baba smoothed a hand over her cheek and studied the drawing. “I am so young.”
I’d left out a few wrinkles too.
She nodded in approval. “Now, I tell you fortune.”
She bade me sit beside her at the hearth. After all the running and dehydration I’d experienced that day, the warmth of the water and the coziness next to the hearth left me sleepy.
I glanced at the shifting light past the curtained window, wondering how much time had passed. “Is it safe here?” I asked. “The ravens won’t find me?”
“Did they see you come in?”
“I don’t think so.”
She shrugged.
“Safe enough, da?” She brought her face close, squinting at the lines of my palm. “I see life line split in two. You have difficult choice ahead of you. No money line. No surprise if you are artist.”
I sighed in exasperation. She sounded like my mother now.
“Magic runs hot in your blood. Such sweet blood. It smells like honey and gingerbread.” She inhaled.
I was pretty sure she smelled her own cooking.
She went on. “Strong intuition line, but wavers. Truth is often before your eyes and you see, but you do not listen.” Again, she sounded like my mom. “Da, typical for foolhardy youth. Many important travels. A handful of lovers. Each love line is deep, passionate, significant.”
“Right.” I rolled my eyes at that.
She held up a crooked finger in stern warning. “You think you know truth of everything? You have never had lover yet. When you do, you will know I am right.” She lifted her head, staring into my eyes. “Ah, I see tragedy. No lovers, yet true love has touched your heart. You yearn for man you once had, but he was taken away from you. Carried away by … wind.”
I leaned forward. There was only one man she could mean, only one who I had truly loved and pined for, even after his death. No, not death, disappearance.
She closed her eyes. “His affinity was air. But you already knew that, nyet?” She wet her lips. “His magic and your magic … strange reactions. Your magic wild, untamed. Fertility affinity? Nyet, a little different. Your magic, I can’t see. But his is clear as … tornado.”
“Tell me more about Derrick,” I begged. “Is he still alive? Somewhere?” I resisted the urge to say, “over the rainbow.”
“He is far away and out of reach … for now.” A crafty smile stretched across her lips, revealing toothless gums.
I laughed, tears welling up in my eyes. “Really? So I might see Derrick again someday?”
She leaned back in her chair. “What does your intuition tell you?”
Was the flutter in my belly when his name spilled from my lips blind hope, or was it truth speaking to me? I couldn’t tell.
I wondered if fortune telling was like portrait drawing. In drawing, we showed people what they wanted to see. In palm reading, the old woman might be telling me what I wanted to hear.
“Is any of this true?” I asked.
She waved a hand at the portrait of a younger and more beautiful version of herself. “As true as your drawing.”
“Oh.” My heart shattered into a thousand shards of disappointment.
She cackled as she shuffled over to the table and poured tea into my cup. “Drink. I read leaves.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to be drugged like what my mother had done to suppress my powers and make me forget. If I couldn’t trust my own mother, how could I trust a stranger not to do the same?
“You want truth?” Baba asked.
When Baba Nata had offered Missy a cookie, that was the moment my mom had flipped. She’d insisted the cookies were bad. That was what she hadn’t wanted Missy to eat. She had been very clear about not accepting candy and food from strangers. She hadn’t said anything about tea.
“If you want truth, you must start somewhere.” Baba waved a hand at the door. “You want to leave? Go. Ask someone else to help you?”
I sipped at the lukewarm tea. Underneath the tangy sweet flavor was the spice of cinnamon, cloves and ginger. The fogginess that lay between the present and past lifted. The memories of Oregon Country Fair came flooding back to me with vivid clarity. I’d spoken with the bird women before. I’d witnessed Baba Nata offer Missy a cookie and heckle my mom. Baba had known Mom’s name. When my dad had asked Mom who she was, Mom had made a gesture with her hand. Dad stopped with the questions. My own curiosity had faded away.
“No cookie?” Baba waved a hand at the little man on my plate. I wondered how she had iced it before she baked it in the oven. Cooking witchcraft, I guessed.
The idea unsettled me.
“No, thank you. I’m not a cookie person.” I giggled in sudden nervousness.
I was a cookie monster at home. Whenever my mom made homemade cookies I could eat a dozen in one sitting. I didn’t know what this cookie was made from. Maybe it was the false hope of my palm reading, or the return of memories, but I no longer trusted Baba Nata.
I no longer trusted anyone. I had to reevaluate my relationship with my mother and all she’d kept hidden from me. I thought about the times she’d made delicious meals, and I’d so easily fallen compliant to her will.
I pushed the gingerbread man away from me.
“Intuition?” Baba asked.
I blinked. “What?”
“For once you trust intuition and listen. No?”
I hesitated, afraid I was going to be rude. I didn’t want her to accuse me of assuming stereotypes again. Still… .“Do you make the gingerbread cookies from… ? What I mean to say is, what’s in your cookies?”
“Little bit cinnamon, cloves, ginger, flour, sugar, eggs. And love.” Mischief flashed in her eyes. “And the hearts of human children.” She cackled like this was the funniest thing in the world.
The tea in my stomach felt as though it curdled. I couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.
“Well, that’s nice.” That made Uncle Trevor’s “special brownies” downright normal. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she was the reason why people disappeared from Oregon Country Fair. If I wasn’t careful, I might be next.
“Did my sister eat your cookies?” I asked.
“Da. Two. Abby had many cookies when she came to see me.”
I snorted. That was unlikely. My mother had been in a rush to find Missy after she’d been abducted.
“She still have that cat? Lucy?” Baba asked.
“How do you know about Lucifer?” Mom hadn’t brought Lucifer with her to the fair all those years ago. This woman knew my mother.
Baba smiled, pleased with herself.
I set my tea down, not wanting to drink any more. Baba instructed me in swishing the last little bit of the tea counterclockwise three times and then turning it over on the saucer. After turning it back over again, I found the sediment of leaves splattered inside the walls of the porcelain cup.
She studied the leaves. “There is tall, dark stranger in your future.”
I shook my head. “This is starting to feel like a stereotype again.”
“It is true. Beautiful Witchkin man is searching for you at this very moment. Man has nice head of hair.”
Oh! I knew who she meant. The school psychologist, Felix Thatch, had really nice dark hair. It had to be magically enhanced—no amount of hairspray would hold in the humid heat of the fair. Also, he was tall. I wouldn’t have described him as beautiful though. He might have been handsome if he hadn’t been scowling all the time.
“Okay, I know Thatch is looking for me, but why?”
“You are his true love.”
“No, I want the real reason. Either he’s covering for my magic, or … he’s been doing magical things to make it look like I’m the one to blame. I swear he has been trying to make me go crazy.”
“Crazy in love, nyet?”
“No. Tell me the truth about who he is and what he wants. He’s been following me. And he has a different agenda from the rest of the Witchkin.”
“Too many variables to see his future. I only know his past. Perhaps he sell you to Raven Queen so she can use … fertility magic? She make you into sex slave to use your powers. Or perhaps he keep you to himself to torture you for revenge for what your mother did to him.”
“What do you mean? What did my mother do to him?” I thought back to only a few days ago when she’d sicked Lucifer on him. Somehow, I doubted that was what Baba was talking about. “The other Witchkin—they’d mentioned my mother. Only they didn’t call her Abigail Lawrence. They called her… .” I lowered by voice. “They called her Loraline. What do they want with me?”
Her
eyes went wide. She glanced nervously over her shoulder at the window. The lacey curtains diffused the bright summer light.
“No more wisdom for you. It is wasted like on youth.” She waved a hand at the drawing I’d made of her. “You first make me picture that tells my truth.” Her sly smile returned.
“What did my sister really give you?”
Baba held up her thumb and index finger to show me a small increment. “Just tiny bit. Nothing that showed. She paid a tithe in pain. You wish to pay me in pain? It will make me strong. I can see many things and tell you true fortune.”
Ice skittered down my spine. My mom had spoken about her foster mother using her for a pain tithe. This woman had known my mother’s name. She knew about her cat. Oh God, this was why my mom had been afraid of her? This was Abigail Lawrence’s foster mother.
I stumbled to my feet with the grace of a three-legged horse. I placed the chair between myself and the witch.
“Da! I joking. I tell you,” Baba said quickly, misunderstanding the reason I wanted to leave. “I tell you. They want your magic, the Witchkin and Raven Court. You are full of power we can use.”
I noticed the way she said “we.” I backed toward the door, not taking my eyes off her. I tripped over a stack of books, nearly losing my balance, and staggered into a pile of chopped wood. The wall behind me was smooth. I felt along the wood paneling for a door knob. Finding none, I glanced behind me. There was no door.
Baba rose. “I will be good to you because you did not eat my house and because you give me beautiful drawing,” she said. “I will not make you into gingerbread woman.” She cackled in a scary imitation of the Wicked Witch of the West. “You are already sweet enough as you are.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
This One Weird Trick Worked for Hansel and Gretel
Before I could move, Baba grabbed me by the arm and flung me at the other side of room with inhuman strength. I tripped on a chair leg and crashed to the floor. I fell headfirst into a cage in the corner of the room. I would have sworn there hadn’t been a cage there before. She slammed the door, cackling as I pushed at the bars.
