Magus

by R H Frye

  “I see.” The lady sounded a bit more alert now, and John could hear papers rustling across the connection. “How does a week from Thursday at 8:00pm sound? I’m booked solid until then.”

  John winced. “I was hoping for something a little sooner.” Like yesterday, he thought but did not say. “Is there any way you could work me in for this afternoon?”

  “I’m sorry. That’s completely out of the question. But if you’d like, I’ll put you down for 7:00 Thursday after next.” Impatience was clearly beginning to show in the lady’s voice.

  John thought quickly. “Well, what’s the cost for a reading?” he asked.

  “A standard reading costs $50. As a special introductory offer, Madame Serena gives an initial reading at a discount rate of $40. Now do you want me to schedule the appointment or not?”

  Fifty dollars! Jesus! Did he really want to spend that much money on the chance that the whole idea would not be a complete waste of time? With a sigh, John realized that he was willing to spend considerably more than $50 to get some answers, so he made a counteroffer. “Look, if you’ll work me in by 1:00 I’ll make it $150.”

  Suddenly the lady sounded much more pleasant, as well as a bit surprised. “Well…um…let’s see. You know, I do believe I can work you in. Of course, I’ll have to reschedule some appointments, but it sounds like you have urgent needs that must be met, and who am I to keep the spirits waiting?”

  “Somehow I just knew you’d change your mind,” John replied dryly.

  “What was your name again, sir?”

  “John Raintree, but this is the first time you’ve asked.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “You said, ‘What was your name again…?’ I said this was the first time you’ve asked, so it’s not as if you’re asking again.” John was irritated about the mercenary way in which he had been treated thus far and did little to hide his irritation.

  “Oh, I’m sorry sir. I didn’t mean to be rude.” The woman’s conciliatory tone only increased his agitation. What a greedy bitch, he thought.

  Keeping a tight rein on his temper, he said, “Look, can you give me directions or what?”

  “Oh, certainly sir.” After receiving the directions, John grudgingly thanked the woman and disconnected. He went back inside the service station and bought a street map of the reservation. He returned to his truck and pulled away from the pumps to an empty space in the lot. He unfolded the map and spent a few minutes getting oriented before he located “Madame Serena’s” street. It was soon obvious that he had some time to kill since his destination was probably only twenty minutes away. There was no use in returning to the cabin; he would no sooner arrive before needing to turn around and leave again. He considered briefly how best to spend his spare time before returning to the service station a third time to ask the clerk a question and buy another cold Sun Drop to combat the heat of the day.

  With an answer to his question and his purchase made, John returned to his truck and left the service station.

  John parked the big Ram in a parking space in front of a small bookstore in downtown Cherokee. He grabbed the tobacco from his gym bag, stuffed it in his back pocket, and walked into the store.

  An elderly man, obviously of Native American descent, sat on a stool behind the store counter, smoking a Marlboro. John approached the old man with a friendly smile on his face. The old man gave John an inquisitive look but said nothing.

  “Excuse me, sir. I was wondering if you could tell me where I can find some information about legends and folklore of the Cherokee. About other Native Americans, too, for that matter,” John inquired politely.

  “Sure. We have a few books about that,” the old man answered slowly. “Some of them even get sort of close to the truth. What did you want to know?”

  “Well…” John hesitated briefly before deciding that the simple truth may serve him best. “I need to know about anything relating to Cherokee medicine men, especially about legends from before the white men came to America.”

  “Why do you want to know?” The old man sounded a little guarded now.

  Again, John hesitated, considering fabricating some story to tell the old man. He had no idea of whom to trust and he certainly did not want to sound like a nutcase, but he had to find out certain things and his intuition was warning him strongly not to lie to the old man. After a brief internal debate, he decided to risk telling the pure, unedited truth. “Because I think something very old and very evil is loose, I think I’m supposed to stop it, and I don’t have any idea of how to do that,” John said bluntly, a hint of desperation unintentionally creeping into his voice.

  The old man studied John intently for several long moments. John fought the urge to fidget under that intense scrutiny, forcing himself to remain calm and meet the old man’s eyes. Finally, the old man sighed and said, “You’re an honest man, and I like that.” The old man stood up, then reached under the counter and retrieved an item that he placed on the smooth wood of the counter between them. “You are in danger, and the knowledge you need can’t be found in a book. Wear this,” he said, placing the item in John’s hand before continuing, “and come back here after running your next errand. I will try to help you, or at least teach you to begin helping yourself.”

  John studied the item in his hand. A thin leather strap formed a necklace. This necklace passed through a loop on a medallion fashioned in the shape of a silver wolf. Small chips of turquoise formed polished eyes for the wolf, and two thin bands of gold crossed the wolf’s torso and clasped a shark’s tooth to the back of the medallion.

  John dropped the leather necklace around his neck and tucked the medallion inside his shirt. He looked at the old man and asked, “What’s this for? And how do you know so much?”

  “The wolf is very old, and he will help hide you and protect you until you can protect yourself. And I’ve lived a long time and learned a little of how to see things that most people can’t see. In fact, I learned most of what I know from your grandfather. I don’t know much, but I think I can start you on your path until you can find your own way. Now go on to your next appointment. I don’t know exactly why, but you need to go. I’ll tell you what little I know when you come back.” With that said the old man sat on the stool and lit another cigarette.

  John hesitated, burning with the desire to ask more questions, but he sensed that the old man would say no more. He turned to leave when a sudden impulse caused him to pause. He turned back to hand the old man the tobacco from his back pocket. The old man nodded and smiled approvingly as he took the tobacco. Without another word, John left the store.

  Chapter 6

  Madame Serena raced madly about the house as she struggled to clean up through a fog resulting from a night of poor sleep.

  Madame Serena had been born Sarah Ferguson in the small town of Murphy, North Carolina. She had spent the first 18 years of her life living the unexciting existence of a pleasantly pretty girl in that small mountain town. Those 18 years were mostly unremarkable. She had dabbled in boys, alcohol, and marijuana, like so many of her high school friends and had graduated from that pinnacle of her educational career in a very undistinguished fashion. Without the grades necessary to ensure a scholarship to one of the several fine colleges in North Carolina, she briefly turned her attention to the very limited career opportunities in Murphy. A quick trip to the nearest community college had netted her a degree in Cosmetology, and the degree had earned her a job at the local beauty parlor. A couple of years spent listening to the gossip and complaints of blue-haired old ladies had caused her to sour towards the life of a stylist, and she began to look for something more.

  One night she returned home from an evening of partying with her latest directionless love interest and turned on the television in her bedroom before flopping onto a bed which did not seem to want to remain firmly attached to the floor. Or maybe the bed was sitting still, and it was the room that was spinning. Either way, her eye wandered to the television scre
en as a rock of stability in a sea of buzzing motion. As the room steadied around her, she noticed an infomercial for the latest psychic hotline. The face of a vaguely familiar actress was explaining how calling the psychics there had changed her life forever. On a whim, Sarah turned to the phone and dialed the number on her television screen. After following the steps of the modern-day ritual necessary to speak to a live person instead of a recorded voice (“Please enter your credit card number now.”), she was rewarded with the voice of a perky young lady that asked an awful lot of questions for someone that was supposed to be psychic. The young lady informed her, carefully and speaking in broad generalities, of the great things that were in her future. The conversation lasted about 20 minutes, and Sarah hung up the phone feeling uplifted… until her drunken stupor cleared enough for her to realize that her 20 minutes of inspiration had come with a price tag of approximately $100.

  Despite her irritation over the price of the call, Sarah slowly realized that there were probably easier ways to make money than cutting the hair of little old ladies that spent entirely too much time prying into the affairs of their neighbors. The next morning, after fighting through the hangover that was the unwelcome price of the revelries of the previous night, she logged onto the Internet and did a bit of research on how to become a psychic. After all, she reasoned that she had as much intuition as the next person, and the career field seemed much more lucrative than a lifetime spent cutting hair and listening to unwelcome gossip.

  After several months of intensive study about being a psychic, Sarah finally felt that she was ready to give it a try. She began her career as a psychic with her friends. At parties she would use astrology, intuition, and vague but pointed answers to convince her friends. She found performing (as she always thought of it) difficult at first, but soon she was handing out advice and dealing with tough questions in a manner that became increasingly self-assured and businesslike. In only a few months, she had progressed from giving free readings at parties to giving advice on the telephone to strangers that her friends had referred to her. During all the months of preparation for her business venture, she had carefully hoarded her wages from the hated beautician job until she finally had enough to rent a small house with a sign in front and buy an advertisement in the yellow pages of the Cherokee phone book as “Madame Serena-Spiritual Advisor.”

  Initially, she lived just above the poverty line. Her meals consisted of Ramen Noodles and Hamburger Helper. She was even forced to take a job near Harrah’s as a beautician to pay the bills, but this turned out to be one of her best decisions. With a few casual hints dropped into the steady stream of gossip flowing around her, she let it be known that she was a psychic that was accepting clients. Finally, one of her clients at the beauty parlor overcame her skepticism enough to schedule an appointment. The reading went well, with her first client assured of imminent success in life and love heading her way, and with Madame Serena pocketing the first capital from her new business venture.

  Soon the phone rang several times a day, and Madame Serena was able to quit her job at the beauty parlor and live well from the proceeds of her performances. And amazingly enough, she did seem to be fairly accurate in most of her predictions. She chalked her accuracy up to the tendency most people had of want to believe in something they had purchased with their hard-earned money, and she soon fell into a pleasant routine of enjoying her mornings and nights and seeing a few clients in the afternoons.

  Sometimes she had dreams that would translate into advice for her clients. She could not really explain these dreams but assumed that they were simply her subconscious mind’s way of delivering good advice for her to pass on to her clients. She wasted little time worrying about the dreams and simply accepted them as another useful tool for helping her clients. And she did genuinely enjoy helping the people that came to her for readings. She grew to accept that the advice she gave was sound and was delighted to have found a job that she enjoyed that actually helped people to be happy.

  Sarah gave herself a mental shake to bring her mind into focus in order to prepare for the upcoming reading. It was unusual for her to awaken so out of sorts with her surroundings, but she had slept poorly. Disturbing dreams had invaded her rest and brought her gasping awake repeatedly throughout the night. The dreams were especially troubling since she could think of no unresolved issues that may have plagued her sleeping mind. She had certainly never been immune to disquieting images in the night, but since settling into her new life bad dreams had become an almost forgotten aspect of her nightly forays into dreamland.

  Tearing herself from her musings, she glanced at the clock and realized that she had only 15 minutes remaining until her reading with a new and hopefully very lucrative client. She peered around the common areas of the house and decided that her level of cleaning was adequate, if only barely. She had just time to dive into the shower and throw on some fresh clothes before her new client arrived, so she was disrobing on her way to her bedroom.

  Sarah gave only passing attention to the image of the tall (5’ 9”), auburn-haired lady in the full-length mirror on her bathroom door as she dashed into the bathroom and entered the shower before the water was even warm. The icy blast of cold water brought goose bumps to her creamy, pale skin, and she stayed under the stream of rapidly warming water only long enough to rinse off the sweat from a restless night before stepping out of the shower into the embrace of her favorite, fluffy towel. She rapidly toweled most of the water from her sensuous form and then grabbed her toothbrush to freshen her breath prior to meeting her new client. Honey-brown eyes stared back at her from the face in the mirror over the bathroom sink until she bent to spit the foamy stream of toothpaste from her mouth. She had just rinsed her mouth and the toothbrush when she heard a knock at her front door.

  “Oh shit! He’s early,” she cried in quiet desperation. She fled to the bedroom and quickly cast about for her bathrobe amongst the jumble of clothing piled untidily in one corner of the room. After several fruitless seconds of searching, the knock on the front door was repeated, louder and more insistent. “I’ll be right there!” she yelled towards the front of the house. She cast one last desperate eye about for her bathrobe, but the clothes in the corner refused to yield the quarry she sought. Exasperated, she dashed back into the bathroom and grabbed the large towel she had used to dry herself after her bath. She hesitated briefly. “Oh, fuck it,” she mumbled as she wrapped the large towel around herself and dashed on her bare feet to the front door. If the new client was in such a hurry, he would just have to see whatever there was to see.

  As she reached the front door, the knocking began again, louder and more insistent than ever. She snatched the door open, hot words dancing on her tongue, but then she saw the man that was waiting on the other side of her door. The sharp words withered and died before they could be spoken, and a flush darkened every bit of her exposed creamy skin. “Uh, hi.” It was the best she could manage. The man standing in her doorway was simply the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes upon. And, strangest of all, she felt that she knew him, even while she was certain she had never seen him before in her life. In her eyes, the man was a dream that walked the waking world…although she would not realize this until much later in the day.

  John stood appreciating the sight of the woman that was barely clothed in front of him. The dark maroon towel that she was clutching to her body barely covered the private portions of the vision before him, and he found himself wondering, even against the strong sense of propriety that normally motivated him, what exactly she would look like with the towel cast down on the hardwood floor beneath her feet. A conscious act of will was required to focus on her warm brown eyes as he spoke to her. “I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

  The lovely flush in her high cheekbones deepened as the lady replied. “Uh, no…not really…I mean…yes…I mean…you’re early!” The last was said with a desperate, mortified glance at the clock hanging on the far wall of the living
room to her left. John managed to tear his eyes from the soulful, horrified stare of the woman in front of him long enough to glance at the clock she had indicated. He immediately saw that she was right. He was in fact early…by at least 3 minutes.

  Attempting to relieve the beautiful lady’s embarrassment a bit, John agreed with her. “I’m so sorry. You’re right. Please, take some time to get ready. I’ll just wait out here.”

  The last thing that Sarah wanted was to risk closing her door on the fine specimen of a man in front of her. What if she opened it and he was gone? She had no explanation for the animalistic attraction she felt towards the stranger in her doorway, but an explanation was honestly the last thing on her mind. She only knew that she could not stand the thought of putting a thick wooden door between them. There was something about the man, something more than pure lust, but with one look at him and the few words they had exchanged, she knew that she would rather die than risk losing him. With these barely formed thoughts flashing through her mind, she blurted, “Don’t be silly. Come on in. I’ll just go make myself presentable. Honestly, I don’t know what’s gotten into me today. I seem to be having a hard time getting started, that’s all. But please, come in. I’ll only be a minute.” She stopped herself as she realized she was starting to ramble…and to sound more than a little desperate. Dear God, it was not as if she was some untouched virgin, was it?

  John hesitated briefly before accepting her offer. “Well…if you’re sure?” He turned the statement into a question that hung briefly in the air between them.

  “Absolutely.” Sarah even managed a smile that felt very natural on a face that was still too hot with the rush of blood from her embarrassment. She stepped backward and waved an arm (the one that was not occupied keeping the towel wrapped around what was left of her dignity) towards the living room sofa. John accepted this most classic of invitations and studiously ignored the way her towel threatened to escape from the single arm that fought valiantly to keep covered the parts of her that society ferociously demanded must be covered.