Also, if I touch something and sort of clear my thoughts, I can get images and memories associated with the object. That’s psychometry. I can pretty much control when it happens, so it's not like I’m a witchy version of that chick Rogue from the X-Men comics having to wear gloves all the time.
(Sorry. My high school boyfriend, Billy Wayne, was a major geek. To him, visiting Comic Con was like taking a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.)
Aunt Fiona has led me to believe there will be more abilities, especially if I make an effort to get up to speed, which is something I’ve also been working on.
For instance, the store stocks herbs and crystals, so I’ve spent a lot of time learning the properties attributed to each. In fact, I’ve started carrying a piece of amethyst in my pocket for “change, protection, and enlightenment.” I have more than enough of the first, and could use a healthy dose of two and three.
Dispensing herbs and recommending teas or infusions is more like practicing folk medicine than performing actual magic. Aunt Fiona had a slate of standing orders for regular customers that I simply continue to fill. For newcomers, I err on the side of caution. Chamomile to cure insomnia, shaggy hickory bark for coughs — that kind of thing.
But doing something to help the cemetery ghosts was incredibly more complicated and potentially risky. For instance, necromancy was totally out. That’s magic to raise the dead. The last thing I wanted to do was create a hoard of Walking Dead extras.
And the ritual involves a goat.
You don’t want to know.
After hours of research, I thought I might be dealing with some kind of binding spell. But why would someone do that? According to Beau, Aunt Fiona helped a couple of spirits to “move on,” but even she hadn’t been able to lift the barrier at the periphery of the property for them all.
She thought the reason was that the ghosts had unfinished business in this plane of existence, but I wasn’t so sure about that. It just sounded a little too easy and pat for me, like a leftover script they didn’t get to shoot before Ghost Whisperer was canceled.
But I had already come up with a nagging question of my own. Who put the spell on the cemetery in the first place and why? From what I could tell, no one buried in the graveyard presented any possible danger to anyone living or dead.
Have you caught on to the second nagging question?
For a spell to be cast, you need a witch.
Were there other witches in Briar Hollow?
And, to blatantly steal a line, were they good witches or bad witches?
Was I getting ready to play the new girl in town on an episode of The Real Witches of Briar Hollow?
I would have loved to discuss all this with Aunt Fiona, but she’s not easy to track down on the other side. All I know is there's a bowling league and something called “Punk That Ouija Board.”
When my magical research stalled at that point, I decided to try to find out more about the cemetery itself. Briar Hollow is located in the northeast corner of North Carolina, adjacent to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
In this part of Appalachia, there are three major cultural groups that comprise the heritage of the mountain people: Scot-Irish settlers from Europe, the native Cherokee people, and the descendants of African slaves.
Each of those cultures offers up a rich and unique body of folklore and mythology. I had never taken the time to learn anything about what is popularly known as "Appalachian granny magic," because frankly I had no reason to.
Now that I do have a reason, I'm more than a little ashamed about my ignorance of the region where I was born and raised. And trust me, I still have a lot to learn.
After everything was settled about the unsolved murders, I began to sit up night after night watching living history interviews on YouTube that recorded for posterity the lives of remarkable mountain women. They talked about the old days up in the hills, before the Great Depression and even earlier.
Those were the days when money had no meaning and people lived by the barter system. By modern standards, we would call those people poor, and even backward, but I was moved to tears by the daughter of a Cherokee healer who told an interviewer in 1995 that she no longer had anything to be happy about.
For her, the hard times were the best years of her life. I'm still working on getting my head wrapped around that lesson, but I think it's safe to say a major part of it is, we have things too easy.
When I inherited the store, I didn't expect to learn such a fundamental truth about who I am. Aunt Fiona told me that she trusted me with her magic because she knew in the depths of my heart I always know the right thing to do. I'm not so sure about that, but I was convinced that helping the spirits in the cemetery was one of those “right” things.
The problem with doing the right thing is that sometimes you have to get there by the wrong road. That night, while Tori and the cats snored on the couch, I picked a wrong road right through the Orkney Islands.
For those of you for whom high school geography is but a dim memory, the Orkney Islands sit off the northeast coast of Scotland. The people who live there are 25% Norwegian. Their mythology and folklore derive from both Celtic and Norse traditions. Historians have documented a particular fear among the Orkney Islanders of the dead rising from the grave to torment the living.
(And you thought worrying about the zombie apocalypse was a modern phenomenon.)
Because of that fear, and against all recognized Christian doctrine, the Islanders made use of binding rituals to keep the dead well and truly planted in the earth.
I know all of this because I acquired a list of everyone buried in the local cemetery. One name jumped out at me, Knasgowa Skea. The first name is Cherokee for “Heron.” The surname is from the Orkney Islands and is taken from the Gaelic word “shee,” which is a fairy hill.
In these parts it wasn't unusual for a Scot-Irish man to marry an Indian woman. So much so, that folks who identify themselves in the United States as Native Americans may also have applied for and received membership in their clan back in Scotland. Specifically, this cultural mix is referred to as Scoto-Indian.
What caught my eye, however, was that last name. I was looking for anything in the cemetery that had a magical connection. First, I started looking into fairies, and I'm here to tell you that they are not cute little winged creatures like Tinkerbell. They're nasty sword-carrying mini warriors with bad dispositions, and you seriously do not want to tangle with them.
In the process of doing that reading, however, I ran across the Cherokee legend of the Little People. According to the Cherokee, the Little People are a race of kindly, gentle, music-loving spirits who stand about two feet tall. They wear their hair so long that it touches the ground, and they make their homes in rock caves on mountainsides.
According to the Cherokee, there are really three types of Little People: Laurel, Rock, and Dogwood. The Laurel People are mischief-makers. Among other things, they are responsible for children laughing in their sleep. Rock People, on the other hand, are known for getting even for invasions of their territory by stealing children. Finally, there are the Dogwood People. They are the ones with the reputation for being kind and caring.
Now, here's where it gets interesting.
When Scots came to the United States and heard the Cherokee legends of the Little People, they assumed the Indians were talking about brownies, small creatures in Gaelic legend that like to live in close association with households.
Brownies are particularly fond of doing helpful little chores in exchange for porridge and honey, but they don't like to be seen. Therefore, their good works are done by dark of night.
I'm just going out on a limb here, but I think J.K. Rowling based her house elves on brownies. To be 100% truthful? I really don't care about the exact genealogy of little magical creatures with a desire to clean my house. If you exist, you are totally welcome. Seriously, any house elves reading this? Come on over! You can have all the porridge and honey you want.
The way I'm talking he
re, I’m making it sound like I went into the situation armed with all kinds of knowledge. I assure you that that was not the case. Which may have been part of the problem.
That night, after the argument with Myrtle about the paint, everything that I'm telling you now was scrawled over a series of notebooks, and contained in random web pages saved on my laptop.
Maybe it was the red wine and popcorn, but I couldn't sleep that night, and suddenly I looked at all these random pieces of information, and they started to not look so random at all.
I realized that there was a Cherokee woman who had been married to a Scotsman from the Orkney Islands buried in a cemetery where none of the spirits of the dead could move on.
As far as the tradition of the Little People and the brownies, all it meant to me at the time was that the Scots and the Cherokees shared a lot of similar folklore.
My working theory was that Knasgowa’s husband might have decided to bind her to her grave just to be safe, and did his job entirely too well.
When I turned out the light that night I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself. Actually, let me rephrase that with language my mother would use. I had a swelled head and was getting entirely too big for my britches.
There is nothing worse than a completely ignorant person operating with complete conviction. That night I was thoroughly guilty on both counts, and I couldn't wait to get up the next day and compound the error of my ways, starting with telling Tori everything I just told you.
3
Tori stared at me bleary eyed over the breakfast table while the cats scarfed down their morning chow. She took another hit of her coffee liberally laced with half-and-half and said, “So, you think a Scottish-Indian Elf on the Shelf locked the cemetery gate and hid the key?” she asked.
Not exactly how I would have summarized the careful recitation of relevant folklore and mythology I had just shared with her, but close enough.
“More or less,” I admitted.
“And we’re going to, what, give the elf socks, set it free, and hope Voldemort doesn’t find out?”
(Tori had read all the Harry Potter books. Twice.)
“I kind of doubt socks had anything to do with Orkney Island binding rituals,” I said. “From what I read it was more like stick corn between the dead person’s toes and cover the corpse in barley, or something along those lines.”
“That would have been my next suggestion,” Tori said sardonically. “So, do we have a plan?”
“Well, this is cemetery night,” I said. “I thought we might start by finding Knasgowa’s grave.”
“You don’t think she’s there hanging out with the others?” Tori asked, reaching for another piece of toast.
“I can’t be certain,” I said, “but I haven’t seen anyone there who looks like a little old Cherokee woman. According to the list I got from the Briar Hollow Historical Society, she was 85 when she died.”
Tori frowned. “And her husband was still alive?”
“Alexander Skea lived to be 98,” I said.
“And I’ll bet he was just a joy to be around,” Tori grumbled.
“Okay,” I said, “you need another cup of coffee. Maybe two. You cannot go downstairs and be in a bad mood with Myrtle. We need those cabinets moved today.”
“I’m not upset with Myrtle anymore,” Tori said. “Yule snored in my ear all night and Xavier hogged the pillow.”
“Welcome to my world,” I said, smothering a smile. “Mark says your new mini apartment will be ready in another 2 or 3 days. Isn’t your furniture supposed to be delivered Saturday?”
“It is,” Tori said, brightening up. “I can hardly wait to play with it.”
The addition on the back of the shop was less than 400 sq. ft. Tori had opted for a Murphy bed to save space, and then had gone shopping for multi-purpose furniture. She’d picked out a lot of cool pieces, including a coffee table that housed four chairs in its base and became taller at the touch of a hidden hydraulic switch.
I was fascinated with her tiny kitchen that included a two-burner stove and a microwave / convection oven combo, as well as an all-in-one washer-drier. The whole electrical system interfaced with her smartphone and nothing but LED bulbs were allowed over the threshold.
Tori had been talking for years about saving her money to build a tiny home, but I hadn’t realized how much she’d been able to put away, or how inexpensive a small, efficient space could really be. Honestly, I was a little jealous.
In the interest of privacy, there were two entrances to the apartment; one into the store and another into the alley where we parked our cars under a newly constructed double carport. Owning your own building has major advantages when it comes time to get building permits. Other than having to move the meters closer to the alley, everything was going smoothly under Mark’s careful supervision.
And, speaking of things going smoothly, when Tori and I went downstairs, we found a grim-faced contractor with a crowbar in his hand staring at the recalcitrant wall cabinets.
“Good morning,” Mark said in a resigned tone.
Tori and I both offered our good mornings, and then I said to Mark, “You look like you’re about to enter battle.”
“I feel like I am,” he admitted, “but it’s killing me that to win I have to ruin these antiques.”
“Maybe that won’t be necessary,” I said. “Why don’t you try to move them one more time?”
Mark shook his head doubtfully. “Okay,” he said. “It won’t do any good, but we’ll try.”
He motioned to his workers, who positioned themselves on either side of the first cabinet. It slid away from the wall like butter on a hot pancake.
Mark turned to me in astonishment. “Okay,” he demanded, “what did you do to them?”
“Me?” I said. “How in the world could I have done anything? I think you all just loosened them up yesterday.”
Trust me. That one always works on men.
“Huh,” Mark grunted. “Maybe. Come on, guys. Let’s just get these things across the room before they decide to get stuck to the wall again.”
We left the men to their work. Tori headed down to George and Irma’s grocery on the corner to pick up her latest order of coffee beans. (More on that in a minute.) I went into the storeroom to feed Rodney, our resident rodent.
Yes, Aunt Fiona also left me a rat — a handsome black-and-white rat to be precise. Rodney lives in a premium condo behind two cans of horse liniment on a back shelf in the storeroom, an area Tori now calls the Rat Cave.
I don’t know why that arrangement suits Rodney, but when I asked if he’d like his quarters to be moved to a location with a better view, he answered with a vehement negative shake of his head. There’s no accounting for someone’s taste in real estate.
Even though Mark and the guys were making plenty of noise out in the main room, I kept my voice low when I said, “Thank you, Myrtle. I really appreciate you letting them move the cabinets.”
In response, I heard a subdued musical chime that sounded like, “Don’t mention it.”
So far the day was getting off to a good start.
At the sound of my voice, Rodney came scampering out to the edge of his shelf, and gave me a wave with one front paw.
“Good morning, Rodney,” I said. “Sorry I'm a little late today. Ready for your breakfast?”
Talk about the great granddaddy of all rhetorical questions. Rodney is always ready for a meal any time of the day, and has proven himself to be an accomplished albeit polite beggar.
He would prefer a steady diet of junk food, but now that I’m in charge of his menu, Rodney eats at least one meal a day of premium, nutritionally balanced, rodent chow. My own mother has always said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so that's when Rodney gets his health food.
At the sound of the pellets bouncing off of his bowl, Rodney made a face. It's difficult to describe how a rat can grimace in displeasure, but trust me, Rodney pulls it off.
“Q
uit your complaining,” I scolded. “Since I insisted you start eating some decent food, you're getting yourself a real six pack. You're going to have to beat the lady rats off with a stick.”
In reply to that, Rodney stood up on his hind legs and raised his front legs in a classic bodybuilder stance. When he was sure I was looking at him, Rodney flexed his muscles.
“That's more like it,” I said, putting his bowl down. The rat stared at the pellets for a minute and then started munching with studied resignation.
Rodney is yet another of the many mysteries of Aunt Fiona's store. According to Chase, the domestic rat was left at the front door of the shop in his cage. There has to be more to the story than that. Rodney has an uncanny degree of intelligence and personality. He’s not just any rat, but so far he hasn’t come clean about the truth of his origins.
I sat down in the worn-out easy chair that was my favorite and opened my iPad to look at the day's news. It wasn't long before Tori came in carrying two big boxes along with a white paper bag of donut holes balanced on top.
“My God, Tori,” I said, getting up to rescue the bag, “we just had breakfast.”
“And now we will have second breakfast,” she grinned.
(She’s also seen all the Lord of the Rings movies. More than twice.)
For the time being, Irma at the corner grocery was lumping Tori’s experimental coffee bean purchases in with her own orders to save us shipping costs. Before my very eyes, my bestie, who used to consider putting peanuts in her soda pop a delicacy, was turning into a coffee aficionado.
As I watched Tori unpacking sacks of beans, she asked brightly, “So what’s the plan for today?”
Inwardly, I groaned and steeled myself for what was to come.
“First, I think we should re-stock those cabinets the guys just moved,” I said, with equal good cheer, “and then we really do have to decide on an espresso machine.”
It was Tori’s turn to groan — audibly.
For weeks we’d gone back and forth on this very question. I was in favor of going with a used machine to save a little money and Tori was adamant that we not risk “the potential for the god shot.”
Witch at Odds: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 2 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries) Page 2