by Douglas Rees
Laura looks like she thinks she’s still in for it, too. She sits with her head down and her fingers tight around her pen. She doesn’t raise her eyes, or pay any attention.
Not that there’s anything to pay attention to. The teacher is a grammar freak. Ms. Southworth has just started teaching high school after eight thousand years teaching seventh and eighth grades. She taught grammar there, and she’s going to teach it here. Since my schools up north started teaching it in sixth grade, this is the fourth year in a row I have had grammar. Gerunds. Participial phrases. All seventy-two prepositions. I do not know why some ancient goobers sat down and made all this stuff up, but I know it all already. A witch should know it. Grammar = gramarye, after all.
So I am imaging. This is when you imagine yourself at the center of the universe and then imagine there is a great big tree running all up and down it with its branches everywhere, and then you imagine everything in the universe is on the tree like old-time Christmas presents, and you imagine for yourself the things you want the tree to give you.
But it’s hard to image what I want. Because it isn’t an object.
“Hey, universe,” I keep saying in my head. “Lighten up. If you want to diss somebody, diss the Queens. In fact, kill them for me.”
Now that I can image. T&A hanging from a branch of the tree by their necks. It’s a beautiful night and the birds are singing on the other branches. And T&A are slowly twisting back and forth like a couple of dangling participles.
But the universe is not done with dissing me for the day. And when the next bad thing happens, it doesn’t come from the Queens. It comes from José Iturrigaray and Blake Cump, who not only are not subjects of the Queens, they don’t even hang together with each other. Which only proves the universe is ganging up on me.
It is the end of the day and I am taking my pentagram down because they are going to paint my locker, right?
My locker is in the second row of them next to my English class, which José Iturrigaray is in, even though he’s a year older than any other kid there, and he looks big enough to be in college—or in state prison, which is where he really belongs.
He always comes into class late, and he always wears shades even when the teacher turns out the lights and shows a video to enrich our understanding of pronouns or adverbs while she does whatever it is teachers do when they’re not teaching and they’re supposed to be. He always slouches like he’s hoping somebody’s going to drop a nickel that he can dive for. His face never moves.
And every day at 2:25 p.m. this cherried-out deep blue ’57 Chevy covered with more chrome than they mine in Africa in two years and riding three inches off the ground pulls up rumbling and purring like a tiger, and the back door opens. José gets in with three guys who look just like him, except they are older and they all look like they are carved out of granite, and they peel out. I don’t know where they take him. Maybe they put him back in his coffin and he comes out again at midnight.
No, if that were true, there’d be something about him that I could like.
So I’m kneeling in front of my locker and I hear this voice behind me and it says, “How come you don’t wear the uniform?”
I turn around and there’s José. The slouch. The glasses. The no-move face.
“Because it sucks,” I say.
“Everybody else got to wear it,” he says.
“Because everybody else sucks,” I say.
“How come you got that thing in there?” he says.
By that thing I know he means my sacred pentagram.
I think, A Witch Never Lies. But what truth can he handle?
While I’m still thinking, he says, “Is it satanic?”
“Oh, man,” I say. “We’ve been getting that bogus rap laid on us for a thousand years. No, it’s not satanic. And it’s not Titanic, either. It’s just part of my religion, okay?”
“What religion’s that?” he asks.
“Never mind. I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
“You a witch?” he asks me.
By now there’s this cluster of kids standing around to listen to us. They probably never knew José could talk before. And one of those kids is Blake Cump. I’d say Blake has a face like a perverted rat, but that would be an insult to all the perverted rats in the world. He’s also in English. José never talks. Blake never shuts up.
“A witch!” he shouts. “Blondie’s a witch! Aaaah!”
Never call me Blondie. Never call me Susan. Never call me Blondie.
“Shut up!” I say.
“Ooh, Blondie’s gonna turn me into a newt!” Blake shouts, and everybody else starts laughing. They’re not laughing because he’s funny. They’re laughing because they see he’s getting to me and they want me to lose it.
“Somebody already beat me to it,” I shout back.
“Ooh, the witch told a joke. Blondie told a joke. Hey, that’s her name. Blondjoke.”
I’m on my feet now, my back’s to my locker, and I hear a sound behind me. I turn around, and somebody’s ripped my pentagram out of my locker and is running down the hall with it.
I scream and start after them. But somebody blocks my way. Somebody else dumps my backpack. Out falls The Witche’s Formulary of Magick.
“Ooh, satanic,” somebody shouts.
“Cool!” says Blake and starts off with it under his arm.
“Give that back! It isn’t mine, it’s the library’s,” I say, and I start after Blake.
This time, instead of blocking me, somebody trips me. I fall and bite my tongue. I start to get up and see blood on the linoleum.
“Ew, gross,” says one of the more sympathetic pigs.
I’m surrounded by blue uniform legs, and everyone’s laughing except someone who’s shouting, “A witch, a witch, a Blondjoke witch. Hey, you better cast a spell on that tongue.”
I can’t talk. My tongue hurts like fire, and I’m scared, mad, and crying. Then the legs start to move. Fast. And they’re gone. And there’s this teacher standing there who helps me up and takes me in the teachers’ lounge and puts some ice on my tongue, which is the pits, but eventually the bleeding stops.
He asks who I want him to call, but I just shake my head. I want to walk home. I want some privacy. I go down the quiet hall and out onto the street, which is also quiet now. Everyone else was picked up long ago.
Every step of the way home I’m working out the spells I’m going to cast on Blake Cump and José Iturrigaray.
9
THE UNIVERTH THUCKTH
WHEN I GET HOME, I have to write out what happened, because I can’t talk. Aunt Ariel stands over me like a thunderstorm waiting to happen.
She gets on the phone to Garbage the next morning and there is a LONG conversation. The outcome is, José and Blake get detentions for a while, and Gorringe will get my book back from Blake. It doesn’t sound like much to me.
Anyway, I’m off school until I can talk again. It gives me a chance to see what Ariel does all day.
Aunt Ariel used to have a real job. A lot of real jobs, I think. I used to hear BD say things like “You’ll never believe what that idiot sister of mine is up to now” after their annual talk on the phone.
Aunt Ariel always calls BD on the day before his birthday. Not calling him the rest of the year is supposed to be his present.
Anyway, whatever she did before, she’s into desktop publishing now. She does a newsletter called Grimoire. Grimoire is full of articles on how to grow your own mugwort and how to image white light more successfully. The rest is full of personals and lame poems. Most of it is written by other witches she pays in copies of the newsletter and herbs from her garden. Thousands of people send her money for this thing every year, and she gets invited to speak to women’s groups and libraries about being a witch and she gets paid for that, too.
I’d like to do that. Maybe after I’ve afflicted Blake and José with incurable pustulent boils over every part of their bodies and the Queens are run over by a garbage
truck, I’ll be invited to libraries to tell how I did it.
Anyway, incurable pustulent boils are my new interest. They are my first step in my campaign of revenge. I plan to go on from there, but I know I’ll have to work up to it slowly. Really nasty spells take a lot of practice.
Ariel’s office is in one of the bedrooms. Besides her ’puter and her printer and her scanner and stuff, she has her books. Two whole walls, and all on the Craft. Some of them aren’t even in English. I figure the spell I want has got to be in one of them, but how will I find it? I know she won’t tell me. Not Ms. White Magick Only.
So this morning I go in there and just kind of browse. Way up at the top of the shelves is The Alembic of the Soul. Next to it is Yeats As Magician. The Herbalist’s Compendium. Die Untedrückerung Die Hexerei in Deutschland in XVI Jahrhundert.
I pull down this one and try to figure out what it’s about. The printing isn’t even something I can recognize. It stares back at me like a lot of fat little wiggly uglies under a microscope. A few letters look something like the English alphabet, but even these have spikes and horns all over them. How can anybody read this stuff?
Ariel comes and stands in the doorway with a cup of coffee in her hand. I don’t know if I’m allowed in here or not. She never said.
“Onh. Hni,” I say with the book in my arms.
“It’s all right, Kestrel,” Aunt Ariel says. “I don’t mind you looking through my library. What are you reading?”
“Thinh,” I say. “Inh looks inneresthinh. Whanh inh ih?”
Ariel takes the book and says, “Oh. The Suppression of Witchcraft in Germany in the Sixteenth Century.”
“You cah reah thih?”
“I wouldn’t have bought it if I couldn’t read it,” Aunt Ariel says. “Cost me an arm and a leg. But money spent on a book you want is never wasted.”
I go on looking at the titles. If Aunt Ariel has read them all, she must be the smartest witch on the planet.
So I ask, “Havh you reah all theth?”
“Most of them,” Aunt Ariel says. “Sometimes I buy books in the hopes I’ll grow into them.”
“Gool,” I say.
Then she says, “Were you looking for anything in particular?”
I start to lie. Then I remember A Witch Never Lies.
“A thpell,” I say. “Thomethig tho dho tho thoth guyth.”
“That ol’ black magic?” Ariel says. “Don’t mess with it if you want to grow into your own powers, Kestrel. It will always lead away from them, even if it works. Especially if it works. And it always comes back at you. That’s its nature.”
“But they hurgh me.”
“Yes. And their punishment isn’t very much,” Aunt Ariel said. “And as for those girls—” She shakes her head. “Gorringe.”
Then she sits down in a big armchair she has in there. It’s big enough for two people, even when one of them is her. She pulls me down beside her and puts her arm around me. It’s big, soft, and warm, like the chair. “Why do you suppose the universe is letting them off so lightly?”
“Cauth the univerth thuckth,” I say.
“Think about it, Kestrel. You bit your tongue. The universe is trying to tell you to be careful what you say. The Craft isn’t for everybody. The universe is using them to tell you that.” Ariel hugs me harder.
“Buht I didnh’t thay anythinh to the Queenth,” I say. “And Jothé athked me. Whath wath I thupposedh to dho?”
“The Queens are a problem, all right,” Aunt Ariel says. “But you’re a problem for them, too. Just by being yourself you challenge their power. And they see you as a great threat, even though you don’t care about them one way or the other. Because you don’t care. But let’s work with José and Blake. What would you say if it were that moment again and you could live it over?”
I tell her what I would say and she laughs. It must sound really funny with my mouth the way it is.
“Well, that’s straightforward and concise,” she says. “But not very original. What would you really say? Take your time. You’re making up an answer that will serve you for the rest of your life. Because we both know there will be other Josés.”
I think hard. I image it. I see José’s face, his stupid, blank face. Those glasses of his. I don’t know what to say to him. Then I see Blake, looking ready to gnaw me. What can you say to someone like Blake?
Then it comes to me. “Whath a withch?” I say.
Aunt Ariel claps her hands. “Great! Now, what do they say?”
I go back into my image. José isn’t saying anything. But Blake can’t keep his mouth shut to save his life.
“You ride on a broomstick?” he asks me.
I say this out loud, then I answer, “Dho you?”
My mind starts to go real fast and I get quiet.
You cast spells on people? Blake says.
Do you? I thinksay.
You put frogs and stuff in boiling pots? Blake asks.
Do you?
I ain’t no witch, Blake finally says.
Cool, I thinksay.
The Blake in my image looks confused. He wants to hurt me, but he can’t think how. Then he grins.
“Blondjoke,” he says.
I stiffen. This is what I can’t defend myself against. That kind of stupidity that’s proud of itself. But at least I’ve defended the Craft. Maybe the universe is helping me out a little, giving me a false identity to help protect who I really am. I don’t like it, but it might be true.
I look around. I see José. His arms cross. He shakes his head slowly, like a statue trying to come to life. His lips move. I hear words. He says, “Don’t call her…”
And the image breaks.
“Where have you been?” Aunt Ariel asks me.
“Thcool.”
“What did you learn there?” Ariel asks.
I tell her what I imaged, and my idea about Blondjoke.
“Buht thahs really lame evenh if ihs thrue,” I say. “The univerth thtill thucks.”
“Kestrel,” says Aunt Ariel. “There’s something very important you need to learn about the universe. It isn’t black and white. It’s black and white.”
“Hunh?” I say.
“You know my garage door?” she says. “With the little bit of black in the middle of all that white, and the little bit of white in all that black? That’s the nature of the universe. That’s the nature of human life. The light and the dark work together even when they’re opposing each other. And if you can recognize that, you’ll be much more powerful. Instead of taking sides entirely with one or the other, which you can’t really do anyway, try this—the next time the universe does something you don’t like, image stepping back. Then think, ‘That’s interesting,’ and wait. You may see something surprising.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t have anything to say, and besides, my mouth is tired. But I am surprised. I thought Ariel was just a white witch. Now she says she’s something different. I don’t know what to call her, exactly. But it might be interesting to find out.
10
MAJIX
MY MOUTH IS A LOT BETTER NOW. I can stop writing words with all those extra letters.
I spend a lot of time alone in my room thinking about the Craft and about how black and white go together and how they don’t. Like water. Sometimes it’s one thing, sometimes it’s another. It can save your life, it can drown you. But it’s the same thing either way.
But I’m still not some little wiccan wannabe. I’m a witch. I have to find my own path without turning into Tinkerbell or Darth Vader.
I go back into Ariel’s office and look at all those books. Every one of them is something about the Craft. Every one of them has something in it I need to know. But how did all that stuff get into those books in the first place? Then it comes to me. Unless every one of those books is a rewrite of all the others, and they all trace back to the first grimoire, they all have to be what one person found out working on her own.
It’s like th
e sun comes up again, right there in that room. It’s MY universe-given powers that make me what I am. I don’t need The Witche’s Formulary of Magick, or anything in this room to become myself. I have to find my own way, and I will write my own book while I do it.
My book of my own powers, which I will call MAJIX.
This book. Which I’m already doing.
Maybe the universe was leading me here all along. Maybe I started the book so that right now I would realize that I was already on my own path.
I am so jazzed by this idea that I start jumping up and down like a little kid, until my tongue starts to hurt again.
Then I calm down and get this grimoire. I flip back to the places where I wrote MAGICK, cross it out, and write MAJIX.
Then at the bottom of MAJIX I CAN ALREADY DO, I write
7. Step back and say “That’s interesting.”
Then I start a new inventory.
THINGS I NEED TO WORK ON
Starting a coven.
Getting a familiar.
(In case you’re reading this a hundred years from now and don’t know what that is, it’s an animal companion. It understands you, and it can spy for you and things. Very good to have, but not required. Ariel doesn’t have one.)
3. Getting even with the Queens.
4. Getting even with Blake Cump.
5. Getting even with José, but not as bad.
(I have decided that he’s just stupid. Blake’s really bad. And detention isn’t enough for what they did to me. I just won’t use black magick to get them.)
6. Destroying Richard Milhous Nixon Union High.
I turn back to look at the majix I’ve already developed. Only imaging seems like it’s going to be of much help.