Natural Witch

by K. F. Breene

  “Dang it,” I muttered, grabbing it out and starting all over. You never knew with the rocks. Sometimes they didn’t like to be set in the same place twice.

  And that, right there, was another little personality quirk that people made fun of me for. Thinking rocks had personalities. It was no wonder I only had one real friend (who had a very open mind), was still taunted by the school bully (who should’ve retired when we’d left high school), and an overprotective mother who thought I couldn’t tie my own shoes. I was not normal.

  Speaking of not normal…

  I finished setting everything up as my mind strayed to New Orleans. I’d felt so powerful when reading the zombie-creating spell. So confident. Then, with the mages and Reagan, I’d felt peaceful. Well…bullied, confused, exhausted, stubborn, and eventually drunk, but beyond that, peaceful. They didn’t think I was weird, and given the way we’d met, I could see why. My little peccadilloes probably didn’t seem like a big deal to them.

  “Look alive, here we go,” Geraldine said, squeezing her girth between her table and the back of her tent. She’d misjudged the space in there again.

  I laughed and stepped over to pull it out a little. “This doesn’t count as helping you,” I said as a table leg scuffed the ground and the items on her table jiggled. An old-fashioned though cheap-looking candleholder fell over. I smiled at the sound of plastic hitting wood.

  “Oh good, then I don’t owe you one,” she said with a smile.

  I straightened up and went to turn, but an interesting blue stone caught my eye. I bent to the area of her table reserved for items for sale. Half the size of my palm, it was translucent, with pinks, blues, and greens inside. Along the bottom, it looked like a brown fog was billowing up inside it.

  “Lux Opal,” Geraldine said, following my gaze. “With the galaxy inside. Neat, right? My daughter gave it to me as a gift.”

  “And you’re selling it?”

  “Do you know how many gems, stones, and everything else people give me? They’d fill a truck. Besides, she’s in college now. She has other things to worry about than thoughtful gifts to her mother. She probably just grabbed this at a crystal shop.”

  I frowned at it, feeling the tingle in my fingers to pick it up and add it to my collection. I, too, was given gems and rocks as gifts, and most of them were as useless as the crystal ball. Some of them I’d leave at the playground among the plain pebbles for the kids to find and marvel over. But every once in a while, I came across a rock with a voice. And those needed to be treasured.

  I pointed at it as a gangly older man in a rumpled jerkin and obscene doublet walked by with his hands clasped behind his back and a small smile on his face. He came in almost every day, dressed in his Renaissance faire finery, to take in the grounds. He never stopped at the vendors’ tables.

  “Just Rick,” Geraldine said, recognizing him.

  “You should keep that,” I said. “That’s a good one.”

  Her brow furrowed as she followed my pointing finger. “Really?” She took it up and surveyed it, then glanced at the others on the table. “It’s just an opal. They don’t have psychic powers.”

  “Maybe not”—I glanced behind me to make sure no one could hear, a habit from youth that wouldn’t go away—“psychic powers, but there is power in that stone. I’d keep it if I were you.”

  Her gaze came up and her brows lowered as she surveyed me. I couldn’t read her expression. “You take it, then. I have plenty.”

  “No, really. That’s a good one. It was given to you. You should keep it.”

  She pushed it across the table at me. “Take it. For helping me. And get your clothes on, or no one will want their fortunes read.” She tapped the opal. “Hurry. Someone is bound to come through soon.”

  Normally I’d continue to refuse, because I didn’t like taking things like that, but in this instance, the allure of the gem was too much. I thanked her with a heated face and did as she said, hurrying over to my cart and stashing it in the bushes behind my stall. That done, I stood in front of my table one last time, reaching out with the gem to see where it would land.

  In the middle, toward the top. It would be a little in the clients’ way.

  Couldn’t be helped. That was where it wanted to be, so that was where it would go.

  I really was weird. I’d probably make fun of me too.

  My mother’s voice drifted into my head. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

  I snickered as I quickly donned a medieval-style gypsy dress (the costume store said that was a thing, so I’d gone with it), searched for my headscarf and realized I’d forgotten it, and slipped into the rear of the tent. My mother needed to switch out her clichés. That, or I needed to get laughed at a lot more often, because Callie was right about one thing: I was pretty sure tough girls didn’t hide in closets at the first sign of danger.

  Families and couples came through in a steady stream—not too many people, since it wasn’t a holiday, but plenty enough with it being nearly summer and dry (for the moment). A few of them sat at my table, and I was relieved to find that I needed very little fishing to tell them things that awed them. One lady couldn’t believe I knew her daughter was about to have a baby. Clearly she’d forgotten that she and her husband had been speaking about it when they wandered by before doubling back and choosing to visit my booth and Geraldine’s. Another woman shook her head and stared at me with wide eyes when I revealed her poodle was doing just fine in doggy heaven, and didn’t want her to be sorry for its loss (I couldn’t tell from the picture keychain dangling off her purse if it was a boy or a girl, but the cross sticker was telling enough).

  In the early afternoon, as the sky boiled and rolled above us, turning darker by the minute, the crowd thinned dramatically. It was Duval—residents here knew when it looked like rain.

  I peeked out to look at the clouds when a strange knock sounded within my ribcage. A moment later it happened again, as though my heart were swelling to dramatic proportions, rolling over, and slamming against the bars holding it prisoner. The hairs on my arms and the backs of my neck lifted, giving me goosebumps.

  I braced my palm to my chest and tilted my gaze skyward again. The intensity of the air jiggled my nerves and quickened my suddenly too-large heart.

  “Geraldine,” I called. “Geraldine!”

  “Get up and go over there if you want to talk to her,” my other stall neighbor, Albert, said. “That’s just like kids these days. They all think we need to hear their yelling. Lazy as I’ve ever seen.”

  A strange blend of excitement and anticipation tingled my scalp before sifting down inside of me. Butterflies filled my belly and my legs turned restless, my heels tapping against the ground.

  It was the fight-or-flight reflex. I recognized it from the zombie and closet incident last month, but this time, I couldn’t identify the source of the danger.

  I also didn’t know what I would choose to do.

  “Geraldine!”

  “What is it, Penny?” she finally called. “Do I have to get up?”

  Blue canvas ballooned in places on my tent, catching the increasing breeze. It yanked at the flimsy frame. “Do you feel that?”

  A woman passing by with her teenage daughter glanced at me.

  “No. What is it?”

  “Electric charge.” I rubbed my hands against my arms. “Are we going to get hit by lightning?”

  Chapter Seven

  The woman who’d been passing by, nearly out of my line of sight, stopped dead and looked upward. Her daughter about-faced without hesitating. In a moment, they were both headed back the way they’d come.

  “No,” Albert said. “You know when you’re going to get hit because your hair stands on end. And it isn’t.”

  “How do you know?” someone called, and I suspected it was Albert’s other neighbor, a middle-aged goth woman who played a little too much Dungeons & Dragons. “You don’t have any hair.”

  “I have hair on my arms, don’t
I?” Albert yelled. He was largely unconcerned with how he appeared to the customers, something not entirely helpful in a sales profession.

  “My hair is standing up on end,” I replied, still feeling the tingles of my scalp.

  “All your hair? Even your head hair?”

  I ran my hand above my head but didn’t feel anything. “No,” I said in a smaller voice.

  “It’s probably a premonition,” Geraldine said. “Get out your crystals and reflect on it.”

  “You should know the difference between getting struck by lightning and intuition, girl,” Albert said. “Though I guess now we know why you don’t get much business.”

  “Oh, shut up, Albert,” Geraldine hollered. “She doesn’t get business because her tent looks like she stole it from a homeless person, her chairs are suspect, and she sinks back into her seat instead of making eye contact and smiling. It has nothing to do with her ability. No offense, Penny.”

  I frowned at the slight, but she did have a point.

  I clasped my hands and rested them on the table as a few more people ambled by. Two, a couple, looked at my setup with interest before glancing in at me. Another, a solitary man behind them, studied Albert’s setup. Clearly they’d heard the exchange and wanted to compare for themselves.

  “I’ll bite,” the man from the couple said, directing his lady friend—no ring, so probably his girlfriend—toward me. He wore a good-natured smile, but hers was a tad brittle. Jealousy, or a hatred of divinity-type folk.

  I doubted it was the latter, since she hadn’t worn that look before coming over, so that meant their relationship was fresh. They were still working on trust and intimacy.

  I smiled and straightened into a semblance of professionalism. “Hello.”

  “Honey?” the man said, stopping in front of the single chair and looking at his girlfriend.

  “Sure.” She put her hand on the back of the chair. It wobbled a little and she hesitated.

  “I can go if you want?” he asked, bending toward her.

  “Oh no, it’s fine.” She gingerly sat in the chair. Her relieved smile when the chair didn’t collapse spoke volumes.

  Fine. I would get new chairs.

  I caught movement behind them, someone veering to the left. The other man had decided he’d try Geraldine’s hand at palm reading.

  “Would you like a tarot reading?” I asked with my version of a kind smile. My best friend Veronica said it made me look like a cornered animal, but I was pretty sure she was joking.

  “Um…” The woman’s gaze slid to the crystal ball and my smile tightened.

  Please don’t pick that. Please don’t pick that. Please don’t—

  “How about the crystal ball?” she said with a sparkle of excitement in her eyes.

  I kept my sigh at bay. “Of course.”

  Careful not to disturb the rocks placed around the table, I pulled the ball closer and grabbed a cloth from the bag resting on the ground beside me. I slipped the cloth over the ball to cover it, something that seemed very mysterious, but whose only true purpose was to give me time to think.

  “Do you have any questions?” I asked her as I laid both palms on the covered ball and made eye contact.

  A small knot wormed between her brows and her gaze slipped toward the man before she could drag it back.

  Clear as day. People’s tells made this job easy.

  “No,” she said with a forced light tone.

  I nodded like I’d known she’d say that, and slowly pulled my hands away from the crystal ball, sliding off the cloth as I did so. I stared at it for a long moment before closing my eyes. Power pulsed in my middle from my rocks and the charged atmosphere. A feeling of inevitability lodged in my chest like a spiked ball.

  “Something is coming.” The words slipped out of my mouth, unbidden. “Something will happen soon that will change your life forever.” The pressure in my chest increased. “But the journey has already begun. You can’t hide from it. You won’t be able to turn away. A chain of events has started, and at the end will be your destiny.” I opened my eyes and she was leaning forward slightly, her eyes riveted to my face.

  The ball inside of me loosened a little, and I had a moment of supreme confusion, like I always did when my intuition forced itself to be heard. Because this reading wasn’t meant for her—this was me telling myself what was coming, using extremely vague, general, and unhelpful words.

  “Sorry,” I said as heat rushed to my face. “That just came to me.” I fingered the cloth, half thinking I’d slip it over the ball and start over. I hated doing that. My excuses always sounded lame.

  “No.” The word sounded more like a release of breath from the woman’s mouth, and I belatedly realized I should’ve asked her name. My bad. “That was dead-on. That sounded right.”

  “Heavy,” the man said, and tried to lean against one of the support poles. It groaned loudly and the whole tent shifted. “Oops.” He hopped away.

  Fine. Albert and Geraldine were right about my entire setup.

  “Wow.” The woman smiled and leaned back. The chair shifted and her eyes widened until everything settled again. Clearly she thought she’d be dumped out of it at any second.

  I stared into the depths of the twenty-dollar crystal ball, trying to see its middle through the white coloring. Not because any images or messages would await me, but because it made me look like I was concentrating really hard.

  I flicked my gaze toward the man, a very quick gesture, before I scrunched my brow and looked at the woman pointedly. The pointed stare was always the way to go in this business. “You will find…what you seek.” I let my eyes flicker again, but just in his general direction this time. “The thing you are after…will become permanent down the road. But only if you keep faith. Work on trust.”

  Red infused her cheeks and a delighted smile pulled at her lips.

  “It seems a little general,” the man said, crossing his arms.

  Please don’t make me prove myself. Please don’t make—

  “No,” the woman said, her eyes rooted to mine. She put out her hand to stop him. “No, I know exactly what she means.”

  I leaned back. Hopefully that would be enough. “I’m glad. When there are two people present, I always worry about being too…descriptive.” I gave her a demure smile. “Privacy is important.”

  “I totally get you.” She nodded adamantly. “Sorry, how much—”

  “No, let me.” The man reached for his wallet, and the woman gave him Bambi eyes as she went to his side.

  I collected payment and watched them go. A moment later, Geraldine filled the front of my tent.

  “Another happy customer?” she asked.

  I frowned at the ball. “Yes. Overly happy. I accidentally blurted out my own premonition, which was as infuriatingly vague as they always are, and she ate it up.”

  “Ah.” Geraldine smiled knowingly, checking out my rock configuration. “Yeah. She was responding to your…” She made a fist and shook it.

  “Confidence?”

  “Nah…” She pursed her lips. “More like…” She shook her fist again.

  I didn’t know what that meant, but I went ahead and nodded knowingly anyway. Otherwise these charades might go on all day.

  She glanced at the sky and looked down the path. “I just had a stinker. He didn’t give me anything to go off. And he picked up nearly everything on the table and analyzed it.”

  “If you weren’t such a hack, that wouldn’t be a problem,” Albert yelled over.

  She took a step and angled so she could shoot him a fierce glare. “You sell fake bows and swords. What do you know about it?”

  “They aren’t fake,” he said. “I sell quality items!”

  “Quality items my left foot,” Geraldine grumbled, stepping back.

  Flapping fabric and canvas sounded down the way as the wind picked up. The pressure in the air increased until it felt like we were inside a shaken soda can. A hint of moisture traveled on t
he salt-encrusted breeze, even though we should’ve been too far inland to smell the sea.

  Geraldine smiled at a teenage couple meandering by. They were never overly worried about the rain. “Anyway, when I tried to fish, real sneaky-like—I disguise my fishing in flattery, you should try it—he smiled like he knew what I was doing.” She scowled. “I’ll bet he’s in the trade. Here to suss out the competition, maybe.” She braced her hands on her hips. “I hate looking clueless in front of the handsome ones.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t look clueless. He was probably one of those super-jaded guys. We get them all the time.” I put my money away and moved my crystal ball back to its correct position. My tent groaned again, pushed by a particularly strong burst of wind.

  Her eyes narrowed as she shook her head. “No, it wasn’t that. It was…something else. A certain confidence…” A knot of concentration worked into her forehead. A moment later, her expression cleared and she shrugged, smiling down at me. “Doesn’t matter. I got his money in the end, so all is well. I’m going to pack up. I doubt there’ll be many more today.”

  I grimaced and checked the time, then the sky. When the weather turned nasty, the managers of the village would usually stroll through and tell us it was time to leave. Anyone who left before she gave the okay might find themselves out of a space. And while this line of work only made me as much as a low-paying job, it was better than stocking shelves or working in an office. At least until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

  “I might hang on a little longer,” I said, dropping my hands into my lap.

  “Little Miss Rule Follower,” Geraldine said with a smile, and turned toward her booth.

  But a half-hour after Geraldine tugged her wagon past, my resolve had weakened considerably. The patter of the occasional raindrop splatted against my tent. More plunked off the dirt path. Only one or two souls wandered by, and that was to head out. The day was done, regardless of whether anyone had bothered to tell us.

  A strange surge of power amped up the energy rolling around my body, the effects of the premonition. I glanced down at my gems and stones, wondering if it was them. It could’ve been the weather. It was hard to say when the atmosphere was so wound up.