Other gypsy women picked their herbs anywhere, or they would buy them dried from a shop, claiming good results. But Kaulo Camio, a black gypsy who went by the name of Lyuba, knew better. To capture their full spiritual healing essence, she treated all plants kindly and with respect. For she believed as good gypsies did that everything has a spirit, even the stones on the ground, and everything could bring luck—good or bad.
Once she had gathered her herbs, she returned to camp just beyond the village to prepare her potions. From the roots, bark, and hard seeds she would make decoctions by soaking them overnight and boiling them the next day. Some of the decoctions she would add honey or sugar to; others she would thicken into syrup or add lard to make ointments and salves. She saved the freshest herbs for her oils.
Soon her potions would be ready, and she would take them into the village to sell. Coughs or colds, rheumatism, cuts and bruises, burns—it didn’t matter. She knew how to relieve pain, create lustrous hair, revive the impotent, whiten teeth, cure constipation, or simply heal the broken spirit. Unlike others who only pretended, she had the gift.
But that would be tomorrow. Today, after her work was complete, she would teach the children. Lyuba was a choovihni, a wisewoman, an exalted and envied position among gypsy women. As her birthright, she alone was given the responsibility to pass on the knowledge of the travelers to the ones who would follow. Today she would teach the older children about spells, making the duk rak and duk koor for protection, as well as the talisman. This particular group of children was bright and eager, but she had yet to find a child born with the natural gift. Those children were rare. In all her years as a choovihni, she had only known one—the beautiful one that was taken from her so long ago. All of the magic she knew could not heal her pain from that loss.
Outside her hut, the shadow of the elm was short; the sun almost directly overhead. She needed to finish for soon it would be time for the children. She carefully placed the last of the herbs in a bottle and covered them with olive oil. Sealing the bottle tightly with a cork, she put it with the others where it would be gently warmed by the sun.
* * *
Jimmy Bob Doake didn’t like change. Born and reared in Piedmont, North Carolina, and the only sibling out of eleven to make it to the eighth grade, he never felt a desire to visit or move to anywhere else. He still lived in the house where he grew up, at least during the day, alone, except for his hound dog, old Tick. He spent his nights only a couple of miles down the road at the Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women, his place of employment for the past 30 years. This night was no different.
Jimmy Bob slowly made the rounds in his old beat-up truck, starting with the outer perimeter along the ivy-covered stone walls surrounding the campus. He gradually circled his way toward the middle of the large, wooded property until finally reaching the center where the administration building was located. Without fail, the entire process took him two hours and 43 minutes. However, on those nights when his favorite team was playing on television—it didn’t matter which sport—he would only patrol around the dormitory and the administration building, which would take 15 minutes.
Since there had never been any reason to change this routine, he would always leave his office to go on patrol at midnight. And because Jimmy Bob was a bit of a poet, often spending his solitary nocturnal hours transferring his inner-most thoughts onto paper while others slept, he visualized himself as heroic, charged with the weighty responsibility of keeping all safe during those hours he referred to in meter and rhyme as “witches’ moments”—the magical time that occurs between late darkness and early light.
Stone apparitions, familiar and functional in daylight, now seemed unfamiliar and somewhat threatening in the soft illumination of the crescent moon high overhead. Everywhere dark, elongated shadows crisscrossed the lawn dampened by night-cooled air. The stillness was broken only by the rhythmic croaking of frogs from a nearby pond, an occasional splash, a mocking bird off in the distance, and the slight rustle of leaves.
Although the favored Durham Bulls had gone into extra innings against the Indianapolis Indians, the minor league baseball game was being televised by the local station in a delayed broadcast, therefore eliminating the need for Jimmy to cut his patrol short this evening. At exactly two hours and 43 minutes after he started his rounds, he parked his truck and entered through the locked door of the administration building, located on the east end. Within minutes he was comfortably reinstalled in his over-sized recliner, positioned in front of the 12-inch television he kept in his small office. It was the top of the 15th inning; the Bulls 6, the Indians 5. The Indians were up to bat. Next to the recliner on a small table was a bag of cheese chips, a canned soft drink, and the pad of paper and pen he kept handy just in case he felt inspired to write something—a word, a phrase, a nice couplet.
All was as it should be.
* * *
“Ouch! You’re standing on my fingers!” This from the petite girl with a long, blond ponytail, wearing a nightgown, most of which was pulled up between her legs and tied into a knot at her waist to keep it from getting tangled on the limb where she was perched. Somewhere above her the sound of a saw and splintering wood filled the darkness followed by a stream of profanity repeated in several foreign languages for emphasis.
“It doesn’t look right. It’s supposed to have a rim and a dent,” said the heavy-set girl with a slight lisp. She was wearing a nightshirt buttoned at the neck, clinging to a 12-foot ladder as she pointed the flashlight.
The petite girl with the blond ponytail giggled.
“What do you mean dent? Let me see that picture.” The completely hidden, tall black girl aimed her flashlight toward the magazine being thrust upwards through the thick branches in her direction.
“And the top is supposed to be rounded—like a button mushroom,” the girl in the nightshirt added, the word “mushroom” sounding more like “muthroom.”
“That’s because it’s circumcised,” supplied the girl with the ponytail, as she removed a small twig and a handful of leaves from the magazine.
“Shekoo, baboo! More profanity. Okay. I know what to do.” The tall black girl disappeared back into the upper-most branches of the tall plant that was more tree than bush. After several more minutes, the sawing, crunching, and clipping sounds finally gave way to the more gentle sounds of tiny snips. And then, silence.
“That’s it; everybody down.”
With the magazine that had been overlooked in the last confiscation wedged firmly under her armpit, the petite girl started the perilous descent first since she was nearest to the ground, followed by the tall black girl. The girl in the nightshirt eased her way down the ladder last, juggling pruning shears, a hand saw, and scissors. Once on the ground, the three girls stood back to admire their work.
“That is one honkin’ Peni erecti,” said the tall girl causing a fresh explosion of giggles. “Let’s get out of here.” After quickly rolling down the legs of her pajama bottoms, the tall girl grabbed one end of the ladder and, along with her two friends, lugged it and the other tools back to the shed that housed lawn maintenance equipment. Task accomplished, they returned to their rooms, careful not to disturb the other dorm residents, the floor monitors, their suitemates and, most important, their slumbering dorm mother, Ms. Larkins. Within minutes they fell into a deep, peaceful sleep—the sleep of innocent angels.
Barbara Casey is the author of several award-winning novels written for adults and young adults, and numerous articles, poems, and short stories. In addition to her own writing, she is an editorial consultant and president of the Barbara Casey Agency, established in 1995, representing authors throughout the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Japan. In 2014 Barbara became a partner in Strategic Media Books Publishing, an independent publishing house that specializes in true crime and other cutting-edge adult nonfiction. Barbara lives on a mountain in Georgia with her husband and two dogs: Benton, a hound-mix, and Fitz, a miniature
dachshund.
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