by Les Goodrich
With the circle cast, Jordan returned all items, picked up her wand for no reason other than it seemed to have become her way, and walked around the circle for a moment. Inside it she felt calm, and connected, and safe. The energy in the circle was the coolest feeling she had ever experienced and some times were more powerful than others, as with all things.
The idea was that the circle could protect the witch’s psyche as she allowed it to be opened to the subconscious mind that is also the mind of the intelligent Universe. As such, the magick ritual was sort of a walking meditation for a purpose.
On this night, Jordan's purpose was to consecrate a small mirror with the duty of reflecting any malicious energy directed toward their customers, and in specific, their customer’s credit cards. She called upon Morrighan to bless her efforts and to know that this was an act of defense for her store. She said that she wished no ill will toward The Poison Apple nor it’s witches. But only that the way of balance is for those who earn money to be allowed to spend it of their free will. She asked that the mirror represent the energy of that notion and reflect away all else.
Jordan also gave her thoughts to other things that she believed to be needed, for herself and others, and she gave her attention to many things that she was grateful for as they were. She imagined all of her thoughts and the thoughts for the mirror and it’s purpose to be concentrated within the circle. She stood in the center, looked up, raised her wand and poured the energy of all of those thoughts through her entire body and watched as they ascended through the cone above where the circle opened there and she released all claim to them and allowed them to fly away and to live.
***
Brit had coffee in her room and looked over her schedule for classes, projects, and work for the week. She should have just traded shifts with Jordan. She stood near the kitchen counter in jeans and a tee shirt with her warm coffee cup steaming. She kicked the heel of each tennis shoe against the heel of her standing foot a few times to loosen the shoes in the cold. She added a short dash of milk into her halfway drank cup, filled it with hot coffee, and sipped.
“Perfect,” she said aloud and took her coffee to the bench at the end of her bed where she set the cup and finished dressing. She shook out a sweatshirt without a hood and looked at it then put it on.
“These are so hard to find these days,” she said to the room, or to the ghost bride if she were listening. Brit had seen the girl in the far end of the upper passage as she crossed to her staircase the night before and she wondered if she was around. She pulled on her royal blue, nylon, fleece-lined jacket, her favorite jacket, and with her things trundled down her staircase. She rolled her bike from its spot at the bottom of the stairs and wrangled it out through the door into the cold grey morning.
It was about a four block ride for Brit from her Flagler College room to the shop and there were a few ways she could go that were about the same distance but on this day she stuck to the broader and more populated King Street as she headed east. When she turned onto that road she was riding toward the sunrise but it was a few blocks yet before she could see the water or much of the sky and few cars passed in the failing dim under streetlights still on. When she crested the slight hill and met the wider view she coasted into a sunrise that held the promise of a day’s warmth. Laminated shades of light lay in colored bars above the tree-tunneled horizon like the rose and purple casts from a tinted prism.
Jordan slung her backpack on with both straps as she moved down her stairs. She pushed her bike out to the neighborhood road then rode down Water Street and out around the gate where the street’s car traffic dead-ended to the south. She rode along the angled sidewalk across the wide green lawn north of the fort and headed toward the Huguenot Cemetery. Her bike was a boy’s mountain bike and she had zip-tied an old witch broom to the crossbar so that the handle stuck forward under the handlebars and the round twig bundle stood out behind the seat. She rode through the old city gates and as she did she said, “Hello Elizabeth,” to the famous ghost of a young girl who was often seen there, but she did not see Elizabeth on that day, nor had she ever.
Jordan rode straight down Saint George Street, which was pedestrian only all the way to King Street, but at that time there were no pedestrians anyway and the way she figured it, if anyone said anything she would already be gone. She crossed Cuna and looked toward The Poison Apple but no one was on the street. When she turned onto King Street she saw Brit, ahead of her, turn right onto Charlotte.
Jordan rounded the corner into Artillery Lane as Brit was unlocking the shop door, her bike locked at the metal fire escape stair rail. Jordan locked her bike behind Brit’s and the two were turning on lights in the store.
Brit opened the drawer, counted the money, and wrote the amount in the book. Jordan had turned on one dim lamp on the main floor bookshelf table between the chairs, and one switch that lit a back hallway and she ducked into the back room to turn on the music. She started the dark ambient playlist and went to the front.
“This?” Brit said, “Im trying to wake up, not go to sleep.”
“Yes,” Jordan whispered, “But we wake up slooowly.”
“Okay just until it gets light though, then we’re picking it up.”
“Deal,” agreed Jordan and she swung behind the counter and put her backpack on the front table. Brit stood at the register. It was eight fifty-five a.m. The store would be opened in five minutes.
“So whaddya got?” asked Brit and Jordan opened her backpack and pulled out a hand towel and unwound it. She put the towel back and held up a small aqua plastic hand mirror, larger than a dolls, but like a child’s toy. She held it for an extra two seconds and Brit looked from the mirror to Jordan in those seconds and Jordan hung the mirror from a piece of dental floss in the as yet unlit orange silk flower branch in the front window. She looked at the mirror for a second as one might look at a newly installed Yule tree ornament, then she bent and plugged in the little orange LED arrangement and it brought electric sundrops into the room. Jordan pulled the curtains back and tied them. She flipped the open sign outward and she turned to Brit who was watching.
“That’s it?” Brit asked.
“Oh yeah Baby. That’s it,” said Jordan and she dug through a cardboard box under the front table. She pulled out the solar-crystal-magick-steampunk burner Tanner had made for her. She set it up with its tiny pot, filled it, then set it to boil.
“What do we have to do?” Brit asked.
“Nothing. It’s a done deal. So just like something that was finished yesterday, we don’t worry about it.”
“So if someone uses a credit card, it’s gonna work?” Brit asked.
“Doesn’t it always? It only didn’t a couple of times and that’s in the past.”
“You’re that confident in your spell? How was it?”
“You come do magick with me anytime and you’ll see. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s simple. It’s about balance. I know you know because you’ve read it all. More books than many witches.”
“Can I read the spells you did last night?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because to read them here or someplace else is to hold them there and those birds have flown. Even speaking of it now arrests them. So Shhhh. You can read some other things I’ve written for magick. Anytime. What you say in a spell is just part of what magick is anyway. But you know that too.”
“Sure.” Brit said, then she said, “Incense!”
She stepped out with the stick and lighter and set the sandalwood to smolder in the palm tree pot. Jordan thrust the wood flag pole out through the opened door like a spear, her front knee bent. Her way of handing it to Brit, who took it, unwound the flag, and wriggled the pole into the holder above the front window. Artillery Lane grew lighter grey with imperceptible bleed as if the alley walls and paved walk were merely drying watercolors.
Inside the girls waited for customers and Jordan used the boiling water to make two espresso
’s using instant espresso packets she had bought and she added little coffee shop to-go creamers to each and said, “Cheers,” as she handed Brit one and sipped the other.
“Wow, thank you,” Brit said and drank.
Jordan sipped hers again and said, “It’s pretty good. For what it is. Six of these packets cost two bucks.”
“Good in a pinch,” Brit added and the two sipped the hot, impressively strong, coffee.
Brit wanted to ask Jordan about the spell. Was it a protection spell? A counter-hex? How did it work? But she decided to trust and believe Jordan about the whole, better to not talk about it, thing. Brit imagined Jordan doing an elaborate and studied spell.
“So how long would you say an average ritual lasts? Cast the circle, do what you do, a spell. Two. Let it go, close the circle, never talk about it again. All that.”
Jordan laughed involuntarily at the sheer accuracy of Brit’s summary.
“An hour, The longest, two. It’s just about declaring your intentions in a dedicated way. Being grateful for harmony as the default motion of the Universe. Then as you recognize that flowing river of abundance, you just sort of toss your observation into it. That’s all a spell is. Your observation of a more balanced way. You don’t really do anything. It’s like goal setting or the visualization that salesmen do. Of course the pagan way is the more dramatic version.”
Brit raised her eyebrows. “And speaking of drama, we are dealing with The Poison Apple. Are they part of your harmony too?”
“No. But you wish them the same balance nonetheless. Not success in their trouble-making. But balance for,” and Jordan stopped herself, then said, “For whatever it is you need. We aren’t talking about this any more.”
Brit was given pause by the notion. She considered how Jordan regarded even her worst enemy when approaching them with magick, even to stop something they had started. “That’s pure Light Tribe,” Brit smiled.
“Tribe,” said Jordan and the two worked into the morning.
Their three sales went well and the credit card machine worked without a blink and Brit put some lighthearted Irish faerie folk music on around nine-twenty a.m.
When Carol came in at ten it was after her day off. Carol said hi to the girls and took her largest bag to her small office in the very back of the shop. On her way she walked past a customer who stood reading and when she walked past her again on her way to the front the two nodded. Carol took her purse to the front table and said, “So, what did I miss?”
Chapter 6
Conjured Lutin
With Carol settled Brit went to lunch at noon and she brought back a sub for Jordan. The girls did not mention The Poison Apple or the credit card hex business to Carol. Jordan put her sub into the back refrigerator and rode her bike to Monster Coffee. It was a good system the girls sometimes used, where one would get lunch then the other would get coffee, so they could each get both within the thirty minutes they had.
Jordan talked to Emma who ran Monster Coffee. Emma was an artist from Japan and Monster Coffee was part art gallery, part funky gift shop, and part coffee house, and they had the weirdest and most wonderful menu ever. Jordan brought back basil iced coffee and a hot banana mocha in a small plastic crate she tied to her handlebars and kept at the shop. The girls had their coffee and Carol said, “I’d be up until tomorrow if I drank that now,” and the girls shrugged and drank on and Carol smiled at them.
Carol loved to be around young witches and she loved to watch them learn and grow and she thought about Brit and about Brit’s parents, both witches and recently divorced, and she thought about Jordan who, at twenty-four, had stayed with her far longer than any previous employee. Carol was glad both girls were with her and she was also glad for Tanner and she thought of him on his day off and she sent him a smile and some good vibes.
Carol went to lunch at two p.m. Jordan floated and helped customers while Brit ran the register. With Carol out a few customers drifted through and Brit made three sales. She breathed a sigh of relief each time a credit card went through and all of them did. Jordan thought about Darkspell following Brit and about seeing Datura at Coastal Coffee. She was worrying about Brit being out around town while refusing to learn any practical magick, whatever her reasons were, and she remembered that she had brought something for her. Between customers Jordan slid behind the line and dug into her backpack. She pulled out a pink, tri-folded, one-page pamphlet and spoke as she put it on the table.
“I brought this for you. I’m just going to put it right here. You can do whatever you want with it, but I’m giving it to you. I just want you to be safe.”
Jordan went about her business in the shop and Brit moved to read the pamphlet’s front cover.
Concealed Wands Class.
First Saturday Each Month.
The Civic Center.
Reasonable Rates and Experienced Instructors.
Licensed and Insured.
Brit knew that Jordan cared for her and she put the pamphlet into her bag and from the back of the store she heard Jordan say, “I’ll go with you if you want,” and Brit smiled but didn’t say anything.
Jordan helped one guy who was looking through books on familiars and conjuring and he decided on a book and was paging through it as he slowly walked to the front. The guy was in his thirties and Jordan looked at his well fit khakis as she walked behind him. His runner’s frame. He glanced at illustrations as he placed the opened book on the front counter glass and Brit lifted the back cover, scanned the price, then left it opened the way the customer had placed it. The opened book showed two illustrations, one on each facing page, and he pointed to them in turn.
“This says the left one is a banishing seal, and the right one is a conjuring seal,” he said with a tone of uncertainty.
Jordan looked to the pages. “Yep,” she said and Brit handed the man his receipt and also looked.
“But they look identical,” the man said and he looked to each girl.
“It’s not how they look,” Jordan assured, “It’s how they’re drawn. See the arrows.”
The man looked at the book, turned it a quarter turn to the right, then straightened it again, and looked up.
“I still don’t get it,” he said, “if they’re the same.”
Jordan pulled the email sign-up sheet from its clipboard, turned it over to the blank side, and pulled a pen from her tight jeans back pocket. She bent over and drew as she explained with her hips cocked a notch higher than necessary. Brit rolled her eyes.
“The banishing seal is drawn to the left. Counter-clockwise. Like this,” Jordan said and she drew the round seal and the symbolic sigil inside it then looked to the guy who was watching. She returned to the paper. “And the conjuring seal is drawn like this, clockwise,” she continued with the pen and drew the symbol in the opposite direction. The man closed the book and took it up.
“I see,” he smiled and watched as Jordan completed the last line of the diagram.
When she lifted the pen from the last mark the lines began to fade as if the ink were evaporating and the three stood watching the seal fade and then it grew darker again and when it had returned to its full inked darkness the lights in the room dimmed then relit and with the abrupt popping sound of a ballon bursting and the attendant rush of air a creature stood blinking on the page and looking around furtively.
The little goblin stood upright, about the size of a house cat, in a red headscarf tied like a pirate’s, and a white suit that looked like a jumpsuit of linen. Its head was slightly feline with almond shaped ears and it was covered in short grey fur like a raccoon. Its face not unlike a monkey with a slightly more human composure due to the big wide eyes. Jordan reached to grab it but it jumped with shocking speed and distance to land on the glass wand cabinet at the far counter end. The hand-drawn page of seals curled into the air as it leapt.
Brit jumped from behind the counter and caught the paper before it hit the ground. Jordan lunged through the gap in the counter to the
front table behind the line and came out with her wand as the shop door closed, the customer long gone with his book and at a run.
In one swift motion Jordan turned and extended the wand with the shout, “Hinder-Ice!”
An inch of ice covered the glass cabinet, top to bottom, but the little creature was in mid air by then and it landed on the floor and vanished into the shop.
“Dammit,” Jordan said.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Brit said in astonishment. Exasperation.
The ice on the wand cabinet immediately began to melt and Jordan dried the counter with paper towels and pulled ice from the cabinet in sheets and tossed the chunks into the trash can with various levels of thud.
“That was a Lutin,” Brit said.
“Yes that was a Lutin,” Jordan agreed and she continued to clean away the melting ice.
“Hinder-Ice,” Brit said. “That was cool Jordy. Literally.”
Jordan gave Brit a blank look. She went back to cleaning up. “Too bad I missed. Too slow,” Jordan said and she pulled the last of the ice from the case and wiped away the remaining water where it beaded on the glass counter. She had tied the garbage bag into a knot and lifted it where she stood watching it drip into the trash can for a second when the door opened and the girls looked up to see Carol come in.
Carol closed the door behind her and as she turned into the shop she watched a candle fall from the shelf midway into the store and then a book fell from the jostled case across the aisle and Jordan put the dripping bag into another bag while Brit arranged some papers on the front table.