Small Town Witch (The Fae of Calaveras County)

by Kristen S. Walker

  Glen pulled up outside as quickly as Ashleigh promised. His dad’s family lived just down the street from her house. One stop at my house and a change of clothes later, they let me pick my favorite place for breakfast. It was a little place by the side of the highway called the Heavenly Cafe, and they were only open for breakfast and lunch. It didn’t look like much on the outside and their food wasn’t anything fancy, just simple country style, but what they made, they made really well.

  Ashleigh and Glen got coffee and I had iced tea, which they brewed strong. I ordered my favorite breakfast: eggs benedict with country fried potatoes. Ashleigh had French toast and Glen had an omelet.

  After a while of eating and making small talk, I said, “Look, about last night.”

  Glen and Ashleigh looked at each other, then Glen said, “I already talked to Heather. She feels bad about what she said, and she wants to apologize.”

  I glanced at my purse involuntarily. “Yeah, I saw that she left me a few messages. So did Lindsey. I don’t have the energy to deal with any of that yet.”

  Glen nodded slowly. “Okay, I’ll let her know that you need some time.”

  I sighed. “I’m not saying that everyone needs to tiptoe around me right now.” I looked up at the ceiling, but nothing that I saw there helped me. “Look, I just want to get through this. Get over it, and forget about it.”

  “About Lindsey?” Ashleigh asked.

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah. You were right. I’ve been holding on to this thing for too long, and I need to let it go. When I move on, then everything else will be easier to handle, and I can be a better friend to everyone.”

  “No one said that you aren’t a good friend, Rosa,” Glen said gently.

  Ashleigh reached across the table and put her hand over mine. “I don’t think you can just forget what happened and move on that easily. You need to give yourself more time.”

  “I’ve had time. It’s been over a year. How much more time does it take to get over something that barely even happened in the first place?”

  “I don’t think there’s any specific timeline—”

  “Well, this is the end of it.” I poked at the second poached egg on my plate so the yolk ran out over the English muffin. “Can we talk about something else now? I’m still kind of embarrassed about this whole thing.”

  Later that afternoon, when I was home, I went to look for my mom to ask for her help. I found her in the garden, weeding one of the flower beds on her hands and knees.

  I had to watch my step because a lot of the stone path was covered in piles of weeds and upturned dirt. “Hey,” I said. I thought it would be a good idea to start with another apology. “Sorry for not coming home last night.”

  Mom looked up at me from under a big, floppy black straw hat. “It’s all right since I found out where you were. It’s a good thing Ashleigh called me to let me know what was going on. Did something happen which prevented you from calling before you fell asleep?”

  I looked at my feet. “Nothing special, I guess it just got late and I lost track of time. I’ll try to do better next time.”

  Mom gave me a disapproving look. “As you’re getting older, I am trying to give you more freedom, but you need to be more responsible with it. I need to know where you are and who you are with, so I know that you’re safe. It’s the main reason why I pay for your cell phone.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  She bent over the flower bed again and tugged at a root complex with her little rake thing. “That’s good to hear. Was there something else you came out here to talk to me about?”

  I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Um, yeah. I was hoping that you could help me out by recommending some kind of spell.”

  Without looking up, she said, “That’s vague. What do you want this spell to do?”

  I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to phrase my problem without telling her any details that I didn’t want her to know. I regretted that my mom was my only teacher for witch stuff—there were some questions that were pretty awkward to ask, but I didn’t know anyone else that I could talk to. “Well, sort of like something to do with memory. Or forgetting. Like, if I didn’t want to remember something anymore, so it wouldn’t bother me.”

  Now she looked at me. “What kind of disturbing memory are you trying to put out of your mind?”

  Her tone was getting sharper, which meant that she was getting concerned. That wasn’t good, because she was going to keep prying. I cleared my throat nervously. “Let’s just say that, um, I kind of like this person—uh, just this little crush thing—but it’s not really a good person for me to like. Is there some way for me to forget that I like them like that so I could just get over it?”

  Mom was silent for a long moment. I hoped that I was close enough to the truth to satisfy her, and she wasn’t going to make me say who I had a crush on. If I lied, she would know. She seemed to accept my explanation, because she sat back on her heels. “I’ve told you before that any kind of emotional manipulation is very difficult to do with magic, and that’s even more true when it comes to spells that you do on yourself, because your own powers are tied to your emotions. You need to be careful when you decide what to do.”

  “I know, Mom. Isn’t there anything that can help?”

  She pursed her lips together. “Well, it is possible to do something that will discourage your mind from following a certain train of thought. If you start thinking about the forbidden subject, then the spell will make you talk yourself out of it and change the subject to something else.”

  “And is that something dangerous that I shouldn’t be dabbling in?” I made sure to ask.

  “I think that a light version of the spell will serve you just fine without doing any kind of damage,” Mom said. “Let me check over my notes and supplies to find what you’ll need, and then I’ll help you with the spell tomorrow. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. Thanks, Mom.”

  I left her in the garden and went back inside the house. I hoped that she would be able to help me out and this would be the end of it. I’d gotten more text messages from Lindsey telling me all about her date with Peter, and all the gushing was not easy for me to hear. This needed to stop now.

  The next day, my mom called me up to the attic where she kept her witchcraft tools. She actually had most of her supplies at her store, where she had a workshop in the back to work on her clients’ spells; but there was still a set of the basics at home. The attic was supposed to be my workshop as well, but I don’t cast a lot of spells without Mom there to help me, since I’m still learning how magic works from her. When I was a kid, I used to imagine myself going up into the attic and boiling things in cauldrons every time I wanted to do well on a test or get a new doll for Christmas, but real magic turned out to be a lot of work that wasn’t very glamorous.

  Mom had the room set up with incense burning and the small window open to let in the sunlight. Menolly, her familiar, was curled up in the patch of sun on the floor. I stepped carefully around the cat.

  Mom was sitting at the work table in the center of the room. She gestured to the chair next to her. “I’ve got everything we’ll need already,” she said.

  I sat down and tried not to breathe too deeply. Mom made her own incense from her garden, and the stuff was way more potent when it’s fresh. I looked at the tools laid out on the table: a thick piece of paper covered in faint pencil scribblings, a calligraphy pen with a carved wooden handle, a glass bottle of black ink, a small wooden dish of black sand, and a dark blue candle in one of her short silver candlesticks. “This is it?”

  “I told you, I’m only going to let you do a simplified version because I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” Mom said. “Besides, most of the tools you use are just props to help focus your mind. You don’t need as much for a small working like this one.”

  I sat up straighter when I heard that. “Does that mean I’ll be able to do magic without needing to carry around anything someday? Like, I co
uld just snap my fingers and have something happen, if I was thinking about it the right way?”

  Mom gave me a withering look. “We’re not magicians, Rosamunde. Witchcraft always takes time and focus, along with a certain amount of preparation. There aren’t any shortcuts.”

  I sighed and looked at the things arranged on the table again. “Okay, so what is all of this for?”

  She pointed to the candle first. “Indigo is the color we use for binding spells, whether we are trying to bind a person, a thought, or another force.”

  I remembered what she’d taught me before about the significance of the color of candle chosen for particular spells. “Why did you pick that color instead of black?”

  “Binding something is different from banishing it,” she said. “Trying to banish your own feelings or memories could have negative side effects. If you bind it, the idea or feeling still exists, but you put it out of your conscious mind so that it no longer bothers you.”

  I nodded. “Okay, what about the rest of it? Am I writing something down?”

  “I’ve traced a sigil for you.” Mom slid the paper across the table to me. Now I saw that the pencil scribblings were faintly tracing a design made up of numerous geometric shapes. “You will trace over it with the pen and ink in order to inscribe it. You’ll be creating the spell on the paper, but it will also be etched into your memory at the same time so that it will affect you. The sand is for you to sprinkle over the paper when you’re finished, to soak up the excess ink and keep it from smudging.”

  “Is that it?” I asked. “It feels like something is missing.”

  Mom placed everything carefully in front of me and sat back in her chair with her arms folded. “That’s everything. The rest will be up to you. Remember, it’s all about how you focus your mind on what you want to achieve. If you try to rush through this or don’t use the extent of the power that you’ve developed up until now, this spell won’t really do anything.”

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I tried to focus my mind like she had taught me to do in the past, clearing it of all other thoughts except the one thing that I wanted this spell to do. When I thought I was ready, I opened my eyes again and reached for the pen.

  “Light the candle first,” Mom said in a pointed tone.

  I looked around for matches or a lighter, but I didn’t see anything.

  “You should be able to do it on your own by now. Have you been practicing those exercises like I taught you?”

  Recently, I had been studying more and practicing the exercises, although still not as often as Mom told me I should. I knew she would be upset if I admitted that, though, so I bit back my argument and just looked at the candle.

  To create fire just involved combining all of the components. I already had the oxygen and the fuel, which was the candle wick, so I just needed the heat. It would be easier if I could touch the candle, transferring the heat with my hand, but I knew that my mom would scold me for using the crutch, so I glowered hard at that candle wick until, to my relief, a small flame flickered into life.

  I picked up the pen again in my right hand. With my left hand, I removed the stopper off the top of the glass bottle of ink. I dipped the pen and poised it over the paper, looking for the place to start.

  “Work widdershins, moving from the outside to the inside,” my mom said. “Focus on making the thoughts and feelings diminish slowly, trapping them into the center of the sigil.” She turned and called the cat to her. Menolly yawned and walked over to her, stretching out her legs behind her. Mom scooped her up and put her on her lap.

  I relaxed, because if Mom was paying attention to her cat, then she wouldn’t be staring at me with those laser-focused eyes. I took a deep breath and looked over the pencil trace lines until I found the outside, which was just a big square. I held the pen up carefully at a forty five degree angle and traced down the left side of the square, then across the bottom from left to right.

  And then I was stuck. To keep moving widdershins, or counter-clockwise, I would have to start at the bottom and move up. But holding the pen at that angle made moving in that direction impossible—it would scratch the tip of the pen instead of letting the ink flow naturally from the well. I started to move the pen to the top of the right side and stopped, looking up at my mom.

  “Rotate the paper,” she said. “Keep turning it to the left so you can keep working to the right.”

  I used my left hand to slide the paper around. She was right: I could keep tracing the sigil that way, moving widdershins, without working against the pen.

  Mom scratched Menolly under her chin. She began to hum softly to the cat. Menolly purred so loud that she sounded like a counterpoint harmony. Loose black fur began to drift up into the air and across the table.

  I finished tracing the square, and then moved in to a circle, and it continued inward in something like a spiral. It kept getting more complex the farther it went in, and it took a lot of concentration just to keep finding the next piece of the design and follow it. At the same time, I was trying to hold my goal in mind: binding my feelings for Lindsey and the memory of our time together so that they wouldn’t keep bothering me. I had to remember to keep breathing and to dip the pen at frequent intervals so the ink wouldn’t run out.

  A clump of black fuzz fell onto the paper. I frowned and trying to blow it away, but it had landed in the wet ink and stuck. When I brushed it away with my hand, it smudged several lines of the sigil. I tried to trace over them again, but I couldn’t get it to look neat. Hopefully the sigil didn’t have to be perfect to work right.

  Finally, I reached the center of the design and lifted the pen up off of the paper. I shuddered: it felt as if something was being pulled out of me and being drawn into the sigil, and in my gaze the drawing seemed to twist and contort around it. I blinked and it was over.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When I put the pen down, I noticed that I had been gripping it too hard, and now my hand was cramped. My shoulders ached from hunching over the table and I was lightheaded. I sat back in the chair and tried to relax, easing my muscles and breathing evenly.

  My mom closed the bottle of ink and passed me the bowl of sand. I sprinkled it over the paper, then picked it up and curved it so the sand pooled in the middle. I poured the sand back into the bowl carefully without spilling. The ink that remained on the page was dry.

  “Extinguish the candle, and we’re done,” my mother said. I looked at the candle. I had to blink a few times to bring it into focus, because my eyes were crossing, but I managed to put it out.

  I stood up from the table, holding the edge of the paper in my fingertips. “Now what do I do with it?”

  “Put it somewhere that you spend a lot of time,” she said without glancing up. She started to pick up her tools. “You don’t necessarily need to see it, it just needs to be around you to keep having an effect, like in your bedroom closet. I think it should work just fine, but let me know if you have any problems.”

  “Okay.” I stood up to go, but then I saw a pile of quartz crystals on the shelf by the door. I paused in front of them, thinking about the one I’d found in the protection spell in my room. “Hey, Mom, what are these for?”

  Mom looked over and waved her hand. “Oh, you know, those are good for scrying. For example, if you want to find something, you’d put the crystal with something associated with the missing object, and then the crystal would pick up traces and lead you to it.”

  “Huh. Sort of like—a tracking device?”

  “Yes, but of course it’s much more accurate than crude technology. With one of those crystals, I could tell you exactly where in a room the object was located.”

  I thanked her and hurried out of the attic.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Full Moon Flight

  When I was alone in my room again, I pulled the spell out of the wall above my bedroom door. The quartz crystal was still there. The thing wasn’t just a protection spell, it was a track
er, one that meant my mom could find me wherever I was. That was far less innocent and a lot more invasive than I’d originally thought. I wasn’t sure that I was comfortable having it in my bedroom anymore.

  I put the protection spell down on the desk for now. I would decide what to do with it in a minute, but first I had to hide the sigil. I hoped that the sigil would work. I didn’t really feel any different now that the spell casting was over, just my usual stiffness and exhaustion that I always had after doing magic.

  I looked around my bedroom and tried to figure out where I should put it. My closet was such a mess, I didn’t even want to open the door and look in there. I could tack it to the bulletin board with my photos, but I felt weird about having it staring at me all the time. Under the bed was dusty and gross.

  I folded up the piece of paper a few times, creasing the stiff paper, and started to stuff it between the mattress and the box spring. I’d never see it under there.

  My hand bumped into something lumpy and soft.

  That was strange. Had I lost something there?

  I lifted up the side of the mattress and looked underneath. There was another bundle of cloth, probably a spell. How many spells did my mother have hidden in my room?

  I pulled out the bundle and sat on the floor to unwrap it. What I found was way more personal than just a lock of my hair. There was no mistaking what this spell was supposed to do: it was a charm to prevent me from getting pregnant.

  I dropped the thing on the floor and flinched away from it. That was disgusting. Knowing that my mother had put it there—knowing that she had made it—knowing that she thought it was necessary for me to have something like that—

  I realized that I was starting to hyperventilate. I forced myself to calm down and slow down my breathing. Freaking out was not going to do me any good.