Death of the Body

by Rick Chiantaretto

  “Well, let’s take a seat, shall we?” It wasn’t a question that expected an answer. “I ordered a pot of tea for the table,” she said while pouring herself a cup from a large metal pot, “but of course we can order coffee or whatever else you would like.”

  “I’m going to go get a sandwich. Edmund? Xia? Want me to order you anything?”

  “Split a turkey bacon avocado?” I offered.

  Xia flushed slightly green. “How about the vegetarian?”

  “Still a bit queasy from the butcher?” Nicholas chuckled. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve lost all taste for red meat.”

  Xia glared, her nose wrinkled in disgust. It was adorable.

  “I’m afraid I’ve missed something,” Linda Rose stated—or questioned—I wasn’t sure which.

  “It’s too soon to make jokes,” I chided Nicholas, “regarding recent events.”

  “Ah, I see,” Linda Rose remarked quite seriously, although her lip turned upward slightly. It seemed Nicholas’s twisted sense of humor was not lost on her. This small insight into her character settled my stomach some. “On that subject, I’ll have you know the school called looking for Nicholas. I took the liberty of informing them that all three of you were staying with me, and that you were most distraught about not knowing when you would be allowed back into the dorms to collect your personal belongings. I told them you had come for Thanksgiving and had no knowledge of the events. They’ll want to speak to all of you, of course, but I convinced them to hold off until after the break. You should stick to that story if you are questioned.”

  I was filled with gratitude.

  “I’ll have a vegetarian too, please, Nicholas,” Linda Rose added, placing her napkin in her lap.

  It was here, in this moment, when my stomach had just started to settle, that something quite subtle occurred, or at least it would have been subtle by anyone else’s standards. Linda Rose picked up her spoon, shuffled a few spoonfuls of sugar into her tea and started to stir. While this event was not out of the ordinary or unexpected, what happened next was both.

  Linda Rose lifted her hand from the spoon and simply hovered it over the cup while she turned to Xia and started asking something about her family. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear the question above the screaming.

  The motion of the spoon was subtle, but it continued to stir, all the while screeching with a horrendous metallic moan. It was almost the same noise as the metal-on-metal sound you hear when your brake pads are getting too low, but the sound was amplified to a state that made my hair stand on end.

  I looked around the café wildly. How could no one else hear the noise? Xia was chatting brightly with Linda Rose who smiled graciously before her mouth started forming words I couldn’t hear. Nicholas was flirting with the barista, his back to us. All of the other patrons seemed unbothered.

  “For the love of that poor spoon, stop!” I bellowed, slamming Linda Rose’s hand down over the cup so hard that it tipped over and spilled the tea. It felt like time had stopped. The silence that now permeated the room was heavy. All eyes were trained on me. It became obvious I had yelled more loudly than I had thought.

  Linda Rose maintained her composure, even with the spilled tea now running off the table onto her flowered sundress. She didn’t look at me with any anger or malice, but instead with inquisition.

  I became aware of my hand still clutched over hers and I released it awkwardly, offering no apology. “Couldn’t you hear it screaming?” I asked in a whisper.

  Only now did she move to clean up the tea. She started with a couple of napkins along the edge of the table, but a change in the air, and the feeling in the pit of my stomach, made it obvious that Linda Rose had no issue using magic to do everyday tasks. The tea fled from before her hand as she motioned it across the table, congregating into an easily seep-able puddle. Her power felt odd to me. It took me almost until she was finished adding a few more spoonfuls of sugar to the righted and refilled cup to find the right word for it: forceful. Her power required much more force than I would have expected from such a frail-looking woman. She was undoubtedly strong, her will obeyed as long as it remained unbroken, but she had to push hard to get magic to work for her. I wondered why she was so pushy. It seemed strange for what seemed like such a proper woman in every other aspect.

  Linda Rose stirred her tea, by hand this time, until the café patrons returned to their normal conversations. Then she took a sip from her cup and asked me a very odd question.

  “Edmund, do you think that spoon would have stirred for you, if you simply asked it to?”

  The question was perplexing. “I couldn’t know the answer for sure until I asked it to. I suppose now it would feel that it owes me a debt since I saved it from—” I didn’t finish when I realized my thought was coming out as an accusation. Instead I said, “So I guess it probably would, as long as it wasn’t too tired.” I was trying to find a tactful way not to add because you forced it to stir against its desires, but since I doubted Linda Rose understood this, I hoped this point would be lost on her anyway. Surprisingly, it wasn’t, as her next question hinted to understanding.

  “Do things often obey you, simply because you ask?”

  “I prefer to think we understand each other and have a relationship. If I respect something and it respects me, we can mutually benefit,” I replied.

  “Have you ever forced something to do something it didn’t want to do?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had a reason to.”

  “And why not?”

  I briefly scanned the room, stood up, and pulled a spoon off the table next to us. “Options,” I responded, putting the spoon in her cup. It began stirring when I asked it to, just as I knew it would. “This one wanted to stir.”

  “How did you know this one, above all the others, wanted to stir?”

  I hesitated. I had to think about this question. I had never really analyzed what it was that made my ability unique, what gave me the ability to communicate with the elements. Finally, when I could come up with nothing better, I responded, “Magic. I think that is what magic is… the feeling… the knowing… the understanding.”

  I wasn’t sure if the answer satisfied her or not because Linda Rose fell into deep thought. Her eyes went vacant, but she rubbed her index finger and thumb together in small circles, a twitch I took as pensive. We sat in silence for a good while, Xia and I passing uncertain glances back and forth.

  Linda Rose didn’t break her concentrated look until Nicholas came back, placing a tray of sandwiches on the table. “I got his number, the coffee guy,” he nudged me playfully. “What did I miss?”

  I was just opening my mouth when Linda Rose answered, “Your friend here, Edmund, has a very ancient way of looking at magic—a way that is now only whispered about among very old and powerful practitioners of the craft. I’ve only heard rumors…” she left her sentence unfinished until I prodded.

  “What rumors?”

  “Well, witches, Edmund, like people, don’t tend to be very observant of things like the feelings of a spoon. We believe very much in the elements, and in balance, but there aren’t many of us who know exactly what that balance means or how to achieve it. We spend our entire lives trying to understand it. We often can only settle for balancing the things we do know, and hoping we do well enough with the rest.”

  “What’s the best way to put it,” Xia interrupted, hoping to clarify whatever it was Linda Rose was trying to convey. “We understand how elements work together and understand that there must be balance. We know how to use and summon them, but we don’t really have the ability to understand them the way you do.”

  “Except for the Originals,” Linda Rose added shortly, and the air went cold.

  “The Originals?” I repeated.

  “No one knows exactly how witchcraft came to be, Edmund. Some people think it started with a group of people who hoped to understand and worship nature. Bible believers would tell you Satan gave it to man. My cove
n believes it was taught by those to whom it just comes naturally, people we refer to as the Originals. If I were to ask you, Edmund, what the source of your abilities is, or who taught them to you, how would you answer?”

  “It’s simple understanding,” I responded, because it was the only answer I could think to give that would be honest.

  “And if you tried to teach me that understanding, would I be able to hear the spoons?”

  “Probably not.”

  “And if you tried to teach me your abilities anyway?”

  “Then you would end up in a café, forcing a spoon to stir, without the understanding necessary to know you should use the one from the table next to us instead,” I answered, finally grasping where the conversation was going… where Linda Rose was gently guiding me.

  “Not just understanding, Edmund, but ability. And the fact that you were born with that ability makes you an Original.”

  Linda Rose sat back, crossed her arms, and looked proud of herself.

  “There are others?” I prodded.

  “I would imagine there have been many. Adam would probably have been the first recorded. Moses, Noah, Jesus. I believe all miracles, all prophets, and all magic comes from the same source, the same understanding. It takes someone very special to master it and—as you said—understand it.”

  “It’s not mastery,” I felt defensive. “It’s… purity.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I had to seriously think before I spoke next, because I knew it would offend her, so I tried to make it sound like a compliment of sorts.

  “You’re very strong willed. It seems odd to me how forceful your will is. You’re such a refined woman, but what I have seen of your practice so far is… I don’t know how to put it non-offensively…”

  “Say what you must,” Linda Rose encouraged.

  “Well, it’s… rude. Harsh. I’d imagine you must offend everything you use your magic on. The only reason you have any success is because your will is stronger than the will of… well… the spoon, for example.”

  “Witches take years to learn to master their will,” she responded, but it wasn’t defensive, it was explanatory.

  “It feels wrong. It feels immoral. It feels like a form of slavery.”

  Linda Rose smiled and raised her eyebrows at me, a reaction I was not expecting.

  “We could learn a lot from you, my dear boy. I would love to know if you could teach me some other way.”

  “You aren’t from Orenda. I believe it is our people’s ways you would have to learn.”

  “Ah yes. Orenda,” Linda Rose’s smile expanded into a knowing grin. “Actually, I do think I’ve been there. But you’re right. I’m not from there.”

  She purposely paused here, lifting her teacup to her lips, building suspense for some revelation, or debating whether she was going to tell me where she was going with that at all. I could see that whatever she wanted to say was about to burst out—her eyes were bright and sparkling, her lips pressed together as she swallowed her tea, before her knowing grin returned.

  “And you are from there?”

  I was pretty sure I had already established that.

  Linda Rose laughed at the quizzical look that must have been on my face.

  “Oh, dear boy, must I really spell it out for you? I believe that I’ve been to the place you call Orenda. I believe it is the place we all go after we die, to wait our reincarnation. And if Orenda is my place to go to wait for reincarnation,” her lips curled even further, “then this here, dear Edmund, is yours.”

  Something within me shifted with her words. For just a moment, perhaps, I lost control. Every single object, every element, every molecule spoke to me then, as if Linda Rose had cast a spell upon them all. In this small moment, my whole body convulsed with so much power that escaped from me in spite of me not wanting it to. Every single coffee cup exploded. The shrieks of the patrons couldn’t drown out the voice in my head—the voice telling me that Linda Rose was telling the truth.

  Then one voice, one object spoke louder than the others, it wasn’t a person, but something that cried from Linda Rose’s handbag. It spoke in a voice that was familiar to me.

  “You have something for me,” I said, refocused, my energy and abilities feeling sharp.

  Linda Rose flashed her lovely smirk as she dabbed nonchalantly at the tea from her broken pot with a napkin that was already soaked through and not nearly big enough for the job. She did not look up. “I was told not to give it to you unless you asked,” she said, reaching into her clutch and pulling out an object wrapped in a pressed handkerchief. She set it in front of me, careful to pick a spot that wasn’t saturated with tea.

  When I unfolded it, I felt my eyes widen. The look on my face must have been one of wonder or fear—because I was feeling both. There, now seemingly delicately placed in the center of a pure white kerchief, was an acorn.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked with an undertone of anger that made me wished I had controlled the question better.

  “Not where, but from whom.” Linda Rose’s tone was condescending… corrective. “A nice woman gave it to me in the Carlsbad Mountains. My coven was there last week. This woman spoke highly of you. I believe she was once a nun.”

  My vision blurred. Tears welled up in my eyes, threatening to spill over, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t feel sad or frustrated. I wasn’t hurt. The amount of energy that suddenly entered the room was overwhelming. The frantic waitstaff was wiping down tables, the barista more interested in wiping down Nicholas. Xia and her collected energy still vibrated heavier than normal and Linda Rose seemed not only unbothered but prepared… she was using this energy. She wanted this.

  “What was the nun’s name? Mary Elizabeth?” I had planned on driving up to Los Angeles this weekend to see her as I had told Father Paul. So much had happened since I promised him I would go; that conversation seemed months ago, not just barely over a week.

  “Chantale, I believe.”

  My eyes flashed with anger. I felt the emotion settle behind my pupils. It pushed out the tears that had been welling up there—making it hard for me to convey my anger with the appropriate stare. “Mary Chantale is dead.”

  “She said you’d say that. I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

  Anger mixed with relief and excitement. If Mary Chantale were alive, I had to find her. “Where?”

  Linda Rose cocked an eyebrow. It was an odd expression and position for her to hold her face in; it made her porcelain appearance look asymmetrical and off-putting. “Ask the acorn. After all, if it can’t tell you where it came from, then you’re not the person she thought you were.”

  I didn’t have a response. I didn’t think I needed to say anything. I found myself standing, snatching the acorn, and turning to leave. Right before I headed for the door, my manners caught up with me. Luckily, this gave Xia and Nicholas the hint that I was about to storm out, along with the time to quickly collect their belongings and follow me. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” I said dryly before heading for the door.

  Twenty

  It was going to be a busy day, and I couldn’t sleep. The clock on the wall had an hour hand that seemed stuck at three a.m. for an eternity. My father’s ring on my hand pulsed every time I was about to drift off to sleep, sending an icy spasm up my left arm, and the jolt would start my mind spinning and spinning. Orenda seemed close tonight—and I wondered if it had something to do with three a.m. also being the witching hour.

  Xia was fast asleep, curled into my side. Her deep breathing reminded me of a cat’s purr. If I had any doubt that the pulsing ring was bringing a true chill into the stale night air, it was confirmed by Xia’s slight shiver every time it pulsed. First she would shiver, then she would pull herself in tighter to me. Whether or not this was an unconscious movement I didn’t know, but either way I didn’t mind.

  At 3:26 I maneuvered a pillow into Xia’s relaxed arms and slipped out of bed. I pulled on my jeans, keenly aw
are of the small lump the acorn made in my front pocket, and tied the laces tight on my favorite pair of red Converse shoes. I needed to go to Carlsbad to find where the acorn came from. I was certain I could find its parent tree among the mountain forest—although what else, if anything, I would find was entirely a mystery.

  I needed to find Sister Chantale and Mary Elizabeth as well. I had held off long enough on seeing them. I hadn’t purposely forgotten or pushed it off, but it did seem like every time I thought about going something catastrophic would happen—like Nicholas’s possession or a trip between spaces to Orenda.

  The ring pulsed again and my left arm responded with a wave of goose bumps.

  I calculated my time. First the forest, which hopefully wouldn’t take more than a few hours. Then, I would spend some time with Mary Elizabeth. I had her address somewhere. I patted down my pockets, already knowing I didn’t have it on me. I would have to call Father Paul and get it from him on the way.

  Finally, I had to have drinks with Henric. It was Friday and I had no doubt, with how little he had seen of me lately, that he would file that missing person’s report if I missed our routine trip to the bar. I’d get him drunk enough to ensure my job at the supermarket, then skip out back to Xia.

  Xia. I caught myself looking at her the moment I thought her name even though I hadn’t consciously moved my gaze toward her direction. The moonlight spilling through the window onto her soft skin made her face look paler than normal. Even in the moonlight her lips were fire red. The soft lines of her bare shoulders with the sheet draped across her breast surprised me because the softness seemed juxtaposed to her inner strength. My body ached to crawl back into bed with her, to press her smooth skin against mine, to part my lips with hers, and feel our inner fires ignite.

  Instead, I pushed my keys into my pocket, ran my fingers through my hair, and silently left the room.

  “Going somewhere?”

  I was going to wake Nicholas up to tell him where I was going and when I would be back, but I didn’t have to. His room was right next-door but he wasn’t in it. Instead, he was leaning with one foot propped up against the building, inhaling deeply on a cigarette, his face half-shadowed by a baseball cap he was wearing to keep his unkempt hair from falling into his eyes.