She placed the ball into the teapot and poured in hot water.
“Let’s let that steep for a bit. Do you like yours strong?” she asked.
He had no idea if he did or not. He hadn’t drunk much tea in his life.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Anyway, this is where I work. I dry flowers and herbs down here, I make teas and lotions. I also wrap birthday and holiday gifts, which may sound funny to you because it’s not very witchy. But it’s quiet. I like being down here,” she said, spreading her arms wide and indicating the walls around her.
“I also make other things. I’m sure Malcolm talked to you about the objects we can make.”
“Like broomsticks?” Charlie asked, intrigued.
“Yep. Like broomsticks. And your bracelet. If you can imbue an object with a certain task, it will remember that task. That frees you up to cast other spells. A witch can only keep track of so many things at once.”
She poured a stream of gold-colored liquid into a mug and handed it to Charlie.
He sipped at it carefully. He first tasted the bitterness of the black tea itself, but then the flavors of mint and citrus spread throughout his mouth.
“I know it might not be as good as a sugary soda, but…”
“I like it. I haven’t had anything like it before.”
“I swear those people who make it are witches in their own right. I’m just kidding. I know for a fact that they aren’t. They just make really good tea. I’m pretty sure they use basil too, but how do they keep it tasting so fresh?”
He liked how the warmth of the tea spread down his throat. For the moment, he wasn’t worried about Diego, or catching up on his schoolwork, or even learning more about witchcraft. He simply enjoyed the tea, and the company of his aunt.
Beverly took a long sip from her mug, then set it down on the table. “The responsibility now falls mostly on me to help you develop your skills. Other adults will also teach you. But I’ll be overseeing everything. I thought we could do some practice now. Try some things out, see how it goes. What do you think?”
“Yeah, that would be cool,” Charlie said, eager to learn the things that Beverly could do.
“Okay, but we have to promise each other, that if either of us doesn’t like it, or gets mad at the other, we get to raise our hand and say, ‘I don’t like this.’ Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Good. My own father could be a bit of a tyrant – he’d breathe down our necks, complaining that we never practiced enough. Plus, he corrected everything, no matter how good we did. ‘How do you expect to be top-notch if all I do is give you praise?’” she said, imitating her father’s deep voice. “I don’t want to do that to you.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Remember the very first thing I showed you?”
“You mean with the candle?”
“Yes. Would you like to try that?”
He nodded. She stood up from the table, opened up a cupboard behind her and took out three white, round objects.
“Are those Ping-Pong balls?”
“Yep. They’re better to practice with. They won’t break, and it doesn’t hurt if they hit you in the face. Also, there’s no fire to worry about. We’ll work up to candles,” she said, smiling.
She set the three balls on the table.
“Okay, here’s how I like to think about it. First, you have to relax. Clear your mind of other thoughts. Did you practice that with Malcolm?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Then, you have to open your senses and focus on the object. See if you can hear its music, its sound.”
“Um, am I supposed to do this now, or…?”
“Let me just walk you through it first, okay? Then you can try.”
He nodded.
She held up her fingers. “So, number one, clear your mind. Number two, listen to the object’s sound. Then…,” she paused, brow furrowing, searching for the right words.
“Then, I like to imagine that I’m offering it an invitation. As in, ‘Hey Mr. Ping-Pong Ball, how about hanging out with me for a little bit, maybe float around some?’”
“You have to think that every time you do a spell?” It sounded like a lot of work to Charlie.
“Well no, not now. It becomes second nature after a while. But I did when I first started. It helped me learn how to reach out to things.”
“Okay.”
“Then I picture in my mind what I want it to do, like an offer. And if it wants to, then I say the Words, and that’s that.”
“What if the thing doesn’t want to?”
“Then it would be difficult. Think about it this way: if I ask it to float in the air, like this…,” she said. One of the white balls lifted up off the table and floated between them.
“Hey, you didn’t even say any Words!”
“No, I didn’t. Or I did it so fast in my mind that it wasn’t necessary. But Charlie, I’ve been doing this for decades. It takes practice. This is to help you start off doing something that will seem strange at first. Understand?”
“Yeah,” he said, not sure if he did understand. But he was eager to try.
“So,” she continued, looking at the ball, “it’s easy for the ball to do this. It’s made of light material. It’s designed to be hit by a Ping-Pong paddle. What I’m asking it to do is ‘imaginable,’ if you will.
“But,” she said. “If I wanted to turn the ball into tea leaves, that would be much harder.”
“Why? I mean, that guy turned himself into a dog, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but first of all, I bet that’s one of his unique abilities. Not all of us can do that. Second and most importantly, the ball can’t quite ‘imagine’ itself - and I use that term loosely - as tea leaves. I’m not suggesting the ball has a brain. I mean that its material is far from being a singularly organic substance. It’s made of a polymer. Those things are very different. It’s doable, but takes a much longer spell, and a lot of concentration. It’s not the kind of thing you want to try in the beginning.”
“Okay. I think I get it.”
“Good. So why don’t you give it a go?”
He watched as Beverly’s white ball floated back down to the table. He decided to concentrate on one of the others, so he picked the one closest to him.
‘Just clear your mind first,” his aunt said, her voice soft. “I’ll turn the music off so it won’t distract you.” She looked over her shoulder, and the music faded away.
‘Clear my mind, clear my mind,’ he repeated to himself.
Instead of clearing it, his mind flooded with thoughts: Did he pick the right ball? Would he be able to make the ball lift off the table? What if he never figured it out? How long did it take most witches to do this? Would he be faster or slower than everybody else? Did Beverly think he was remedial?
“Maybe picture the inside of your mind as completely black, as you take a deep breath,” she suggested.
He saw a cave, a dark cave, and imagined it expanding, until the walls were the borders of his brain.
But was the cave somewhere in the Northwest? If so, it was probably wet inside. So he made moss appear.
But that might not be the right kind of cave. How about a dry cave? That would be better.
But were there bats?
“Or just emptiness,” his aunt offered. Just let there be emptiness.”
This was a lot harder than he’d thought it would be. Ever since he’d activated the broomstick on Saturday, and performed correctly some of the other tasks Malcolm had given him, he’d thought he was home free. Why wasn’t it working today?
He concentrated on listening to the ball. He heard nothing, except for some kids shouting to each other outside. Could he feel the ball inside of himself? That had been a suggestion from one of the adult witches up at Malcolm’s.
The suggestion hadn’t worked then, and it wasn’t working now.
“Deep breath in and out. In and out,” Beverly said.
He didn’t
know he’d been holding his breath. He exhaled through his mouth. The air hit the three balls on the table and pushed them toward Beverly.
“Well, that’s certainly one way to do it,” she said, stopping the balls from rolling off the table with her hand.
He laughed. “You sounded like Randall when you said that.”
“Well, after you get married, you become your spouse. You knew that, right?”
“Wait, so he’s now a beautiful woman with long hair who makes lotions in the basement?” Charlie said, surprising himself with his bold comment.
“Charles Creevey! That’s the first compliment you’ve paid me about my looks. You are so sweet I could kiss you!”
“Ew, gross, no way. Wouldn’t that go against the teacher-student relationship thing?”
Beverly’s held tilted back as she issued a deep-throated laugh.
“Right, right. I forgot about that. Okay, no more buttering up the teacher to get out of your studies.”
Charlie smiled, enjoying the teasing and the easy banter.
Then he took a deep breath, focusing again. The laughter had relaxed him. His mind felt emptier than before. He listened to see if he could sense anything. At first, nothing. But slowly he began to notice what seemed like a sound coming from the white ball closest to his wrist. It was like a humming sound, perched almost beyond his range of hearing.
Then he began to feel the material of the Ping-Pong ball, the lightness of it. While he wouldn’t have known what a polymer was, he could sense the smooth plasticity of the ball, as well as the empty space inside it. It was made to be light. He sensed a part of himself, from somewhere in his chest, or maybe his forehead, extending out, almost like it was leaning forward. This part of himself carried an idea of flight, of floating, of lifting into the air.
And, unlike anything he’d experienced at Malcolm’s cabin, he felt the thing respond to him. My God! It wasn’t like it was talking to him, but there was a form of interaction going on between him and the ball. Charlie grew excited. He’d conveyed the idea of flying to it, had extended an invitation, like his aunt suggested, letting it know he wanted it to fly. And it had done something to the ball. Now the ball was responding.
He remembered learning about Venn diagrams in school. The template his teacher drew on the board showed two circles next to each other, slightly overlapping. She shaded in the part where Circle A and Circle B converged.
“The space shared between the two circles is part of a set, or internal to the set, while the space not shared by the two circles is external to the set,” she’d explained. He’d had trouble grasping the concept at school, but now it made sense to him.
He and the ball seemed to be creating something internal to the set of them both, as if he were Circle A, the ball were Circle B, and now there was something shared between them.
As he maintained connection to the Ping-Pong ball, he waited until he could feel the lightness of the material, what it was made for, its essential purpose, meeting with his his invitation, and even possibly what he was made of.
He sensed the two sides melding together. It felt exciting, normal, and satisfying, all at once. The space between two overlapping circles. That part of the ball’s purpose, melding with the part of him that wanted it to fly, blending together, becoming a fixed set.
Now. Now’s the time.
He opened up his mouth, letting the Words come to him, feeling the odd way they moved his lips and mouth.
Charlie watched as the ball quivered, leaning toward him and the invitation he held out to it. It lifted up off the table an inch or two, then hovered, quivering again.
It wasn’t like Charlie was lifting something heavy. But he was straining anyway. He could feel something inside him resisting, as if it didn’t want to connect with the ball. He could also tell that the ball needed more imagination from him. He needed to provide more possibility. He wasn’t sure how he knew all this, but he knew it nonetheless.
His head began to throb; he heard himself gasp out loud. He felt himself pushing hard. But the ball only rose an extra half inch before bouncing back down on the table, then rolling off and landing in Beverly’s hand.
“Oh my God, Charlie! Look at that! You made it move!” she declared.
He blew out his breath.
“But yours stayed up forever. It floated there. Mine just…”
“Hey, that was amazing. That was your first try since the weekend, right? It worked!”
He sat back, rubbing at his forehead.
“Head hurt?”
“No, not really hurt. It just felt like I was trying to, I don’t know, hold a heavy door open or something. But, I…I could feel it, the ball, like it was listening to me or something.”
“That’s right. You hear each other. I mean, not really, since the ball can’t really hear anything. But you get the idea.”
“Yeah, and when it came forward a bit, it seemed like it was touching me inside my brain. Is that weird? Or is that how it is for you?”
“Something like that, yes,” Beverly nodded.
“But the door was really hard to pull open. Like something was holding it from the other side.”
“Ah yes. Resistance. Your mind doesn’t like it when it thinks that something else is trying to control it. That Ping-Pong ball wasn’t controlling you, but your mind doesn’t know that. It’s such a strange feeling at first, isn’t it? You have to learn how to calm your mind, to let it know that nothing bad is going to happen. That it’s not being invaded by enemies. It’s just strange and new, but not dangerous. That’s where practice comes in.”
Charlie nodded, remembering what Randall had told him in the parking lot at Costco, about how hard it was to have your mind be blown open, and about how much it fought to hold on to reality.
“Charlie, you did it. You did it you did it you did it.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“No, not, ‘I guess so.’ It was an experiment. Most all other spells operate similarly. Clearing your head, sensing that thing, picturing it in your mind, and then offering the invitation. Or at least, that’s how I like to think of it. If you asked a hundred witches, you’d probably get a hundred different answers as to how it works for them.”
In spite of himself, Charlie smiled. He looked at the mason jars above Beverly’s head, filled with their bright contents. He smelled the fruity aroma from the tea in front of them. He heard a crow squawking just outside the room’s high windows. He felt pleased with himself.
“Whew, that was a lot of work! Moving that little ball and all,” he said.
“Class is over for the day, young man. You get an A-plus!”
Chapter 59
That night, as Charlie was finishing up his homework, he heard a knock on his bedroom door.
“Come in!”
Beverly walked in, dressed in layers of polar fleece. She wore a knit cap on her head and gloves on her hands.
“Charlie, in celebration of your fantastic progress with the Ping-Pong ball earlier today, I thought we might take a spin together,” she said, jutting her chin toward his bedroom window.
“A spin?” he asked, at first not understanding what she meant. “You mean…you mean on broomsticks?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. What do you think?”
He set his pencil and protractor down on his geometry book. “Yes!”
“After you finish your homework. How much more do you have to do?”
“About thirty minutes or so.”
“Great. Come downstairs when you’re ready. I’m going to take Amos for a walk right now. Dress warmly. The air gets really cold.”
He could barely concentrate on his work. He had been thinking about his maiden voyage and hoping he could ride a broom again soon.
“Concentrate,” he said out loud, trying to get his brain to focus again.
He finished his last math problem, then reviewed a few Chinese sentence patterns and copied the five new characters he had learned yesterday. Ch
en Laoshi was probably going to give them another one of her impromptu quizzes tomorrow. He would cram some more in the morning before class.
Charlie slammed his books shut and put them in his backpack. He threw on a sweater and a hat, then ran downstairs and grabbed the fleece-lined leather jacket that Randall had bought him, hanging in the hall closet. He hadn’t had the chance to wear it because the weather hadn’t turned cold enough yet. He caught a glimpse of himself in the foyer’s mirror. His mother’s voice, unbidden, ran through his head. “Two leather jackets, Charlie? One from Beverly and one from Randall? Isn’t that just a tad bit excessive?” Her words were icy with sarcasm and contempt.
“No, it’s not. And you aren’t going to ruin my evening, either,” he said to the image of her face that he pictured in the mirror next to him. “You left me here. It’s out of your hands now.” He felt a thrill as he talked back to her, even though he knew she wasn’t really there.
Randall was reading the newspaper in the dining room when Charlie walked in.
“You sure you’re ready for Air Beverly? It’s a suspect airline.”
“Yeah, I think I’m ready. I, uh, I heard the pilots are better than Alaska Airlines.”
“Those are fightin’ words, buddy,” Randall said, grabbing for Charlie’s arm.
Charlie yelped and jumped back, laughing.
“Ready?” asked Beverly as she walked into the dining room.
She slipped a small backpack over her shoulders.
“Yep.”
“Good. Rand, you and Amos hold down the fort. We’re going to go for a real flight, not like you do in that huge metal, gas-guzzling jetliner you call an ‘aeroplane.’”
“Ooh, witchy witchy. Just because you float around on a little twig you think you’re greener than the rest of us.”
“That’s right. We are model green citizens. See ya, love bug,” she said, giving her husband a kiss.
Beverly motioned for Charlie to follow her, then walked down the stairs to the basement, her voice echoing off the walls as she descended. “I brought you a pair of gloves. Your hands can get really cold flying at night.”
She unlocked the door into her workroom and released the wards. Then she opened the closet door on the right-hand wall. Charlie saw several tall broomsticks inside, next to long raincoats, hats, and some more white boxes with labels on them.
The Boy Who Couldn't Fly Straight (The Broom Closet Stories) Page 34