The Catalain Book of Secrets: Embracing Uncertainty
Embracing uncertainty, also known as entertaining negative capability, is a useful skill. If you don’t come by it naturally, here’s a spell to help:
First, gather three votive candles and a match. Also, collect a pinch of dried chamomile, mugwort bud, and pansy petals. If you have tarot cards, remove The Star. If you do not have cards, simply draw a five-pointed star on a piece of paper.
Set the star in front of you.
Set the candles around you, within reach.
Light the candles. Dust the first candle with the chamomile and say, “patience.” Dust the second candle with the dried mugwort bud and say, “resilience.” Finally, dust the third candle with the dried pansy petals and say, “knowledge.”
Study the star. Inhale calm, exhale worry. Inhale calm, exhale worry. Inhale calm, exhale worry.
Close your eyes once you feel centered. Picture the uncertainty in your life. Hold it in your mind and heart as close as you would a lover. Feel the white light of gratitude surround you. Embrace it until the candles have burnt down. When you lose sight of your passion for the uncertainty, vision the candle and hear these words in your head “patience, resilience, knowledge.” Regather the uncertainty when you’re able.
Once the candles are no longer burning, you will be full of peace and assured the best possible outcome.
*If you like, keep the star out where you can see it to remind yourself that you’re in good hands.
Chapter 4
A light giddiness washed over Helena when she spotted Meredith outside Seven Daughters the next morning, picket sign in hand. Three other women were at her side, their signs exhorting people to “Shop with Your Conscience!” and “Support Families.” The last one was vague, certainly, but familiar. And how serious could Meredith’s visit yesterday have been if she was still following her same routine? Her entering the store and making vague threats must have been a fluke.
Hence the relief Helena felt, which was perfectly in line with the sweet hope of this spring morning. The sun was a trembling lemon, fighting to ship its heat to the town below. By noon, it would be at least 60 degrees, and the bright buds on the oaks and maples lining Main Street were paying attention. They shivered and stretched, waiting for the perfect moment to unfurl in a symphony of green. The only businesses open this early were the Homerun Café and Willmar’s Drugstore, but at least a dozen people besides those outside of Seven Daughters were out and about, enjoying the lovely fresh air.
Helena hadn’t been spotted by the picketers. She ducked into the entrance of Ren’s Watches, Unique Timepieces Sold and Repaired, which wouldn’t open until nine, to collect herself. She’d been in Seven Daughters until the wee hours, training a gifted Claudette in the art of candy-making. The woman was such a natural that Helena would have been jealous if she’d been anyone else. She was looking forward to working with Claudette again today, though Claudette refused to say whether or not she would come back. At least no more tattoos had etched themselves onto her since the tumor.
A familiar word danced down the street and caught her ear—Helena. Meredith and friends were talking about her, and the clear morning breeze was carrying the words. She was trapped. It was bad to eavesdrop, but it was even worse for people to think you were eavesdropping, which Meredith would surely do if she caught Helena coming out from the entrance where she was hiding. She considered covering her ears, but she heard her own name again.
She leaned forward. She was only human, after all.
“…is so nice. Are you sure?”
“Sure she’s a witch, if that’s what you mean!” Helena recognized Meredith’s voice. It was a gust blazing the brushfire, the latter fueled by the betrayal present since the moment Eva and Ennis had deserted Faith Falls, and coaxed even hotter by the open sexuality of the remaining Catalain women.
Helena recognized the next voice as belonging to Gladys Chanter, an accountant who used to take care of Seven Daughter’s books until Ursula had screwed her husband. “Ursula is supposed to be out of town for a week. Did you all hear? Xenia and Helena can’t possibly dodge this one without her.”
An unfamiliar voice picked up the outrage. “I heard that Ursula is on a recruiting mission across Minnesota, searching for young women to teach the dark arts to.”
“I believe it,” Gladys said. “And Xenia? She was holding hands in public with another woman. She’ll be the death of decency if she isn’t already.”
That was exactly enough. Helena marched out, fully intending to give the four women a piece of her mind. They didn’t spot her until she was almost on top of them. She was going to do it. She was finally going to give someone a piece of her mind, and it was about time.
“Helena,” Meredith said, a superior smile creeping across her face. Her copper hair was yanked back into a severe bun. “I was telling the ladies about the interesting day at your store yesterday.”
Helena opened her mouth. She wanted to tell them that her sister was the kindest heart she’d ever met and above reproach, despite her sometimes prickly exterior, that all that had happened at the store yesterday was a poor woman who’d received more than her share of curses, and anyway, whose business was it if she and her family were witches, and in fact, why didn’t more women try a little witchcraft? But her lips wouldn’t form those words, as much as they wanted to. Instead, she said, “I’m sorry.”
Meredith’s eyebrows shot up. “For what?”
“For how unhappy you are, and for any harm my family has ever done to yours.” Helena felt the tears push up, angry tears at words unspoken, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the rest. But that gives you no right to hurt us.
Helena stumbled toward the front door of Seven Daughters, unlocked it, and stepped inside the cool room. On the other side of the door, she inhaled deeply. She welcomed the sweet dust her chocolates left in the air, the crisp smell of cottons and silks, the bitter undertones of burnt sugar. Nerves settled, she set about getting the store ready for opening in an hour, trying as hard as she could not to think about Gladys Chanter’s words:
Xenia and Helena can’t possibly dodge this one without her.
Which one? What was there to dodge?
When Xenia arrived a half an hour later, Helena accepted the peck on her cheek without her usual smile, but she didn’t tell Xenia about the encounter, or her growing fear that Meredith finally had something on them.
“What is it?”
A smile peeped at the corners of Helena’s mouth. Who had she been kidding? She’d never been particularly good at hiding things from her sister. That didn’t mean she would tell her the worries she had about Meredith, however. No need to borrow trouble. But she could talk to Xenia about something else that had been bothering her.
“Do you ever wish our life had been different?”
The laugh startled out of Xenia’s mouth. “How so?”
Helena set down the spatula she’d been stirring the gelée with. She’d peeled, pitted, sliced, and boiled 3 pounds of fresh peaches to create the base. “That we hadn’t come back to Faith Falls, for starters.”
Xenia dipped her finger in the mix and shrugged. “No changing that.” She studied the stickiness on the tip of her finger—it was as orange as the sun—before tucking it in her mouth. “Delicious! Did you add lime juice?”
Helena nodded. Xenia wasn’t in the mood to talk, which was fine. She at least was no longer worrying about what was bothering Helena. Helena gave her a spontaneous hug and then returned to her confections.
So immersed in candy-making was she that she would have missed witnessing Xenia fall in love for the first time in her life if her timer hadn’t gone off at just the right moment. She’d turned the oven off and cracked the door, marveling at the gorgeous cumulous cloud meringue puffs she’d been baking. They were Xenia’s favorite dessert, so she went to retrieve her sister before the meringues moved past the chewy phase. It was a small window, maybe two minutes
.
She was stepping through the kitchen door, her sister’s name on her lips, when the sight of the gorgeous woman just inside the door stopped her in her tracks. She was an exotic creature, her head heavy with black, gold, and copper dreadlocks laced with jewels and metal rings. Her eyes were amber-green tiger eyes, but one stared off another direction than the other.
Her body curved like a cello, and she moved with a dancer’s grace. If her eyes had treated each other like sisters, she would be so stunning that she’d be difficult to look at. As it was, the visual defect was too pronounced, and such a contrast to her beauty, that an average person would be inclined to feel immediately superior when looking at her, as if it was preferable to be unexceptional than to fly so close to the sun and fail.
Her face wore a lost expression.
“Can I help you?” Xenia’s voice was husky.
Neither woman noticed Helena, who smelled something spicy and secret with a hint of primrose. Xenia, who had stood up from her sewing machine, must have smelled it, too. Helena swallowed the gasp when the amber-colored perfume visibly worked itself like a kiss up Xenia’s spine, to the small of her neck, under her earlobes, caressing her nose and lips.
“I was supposed to meet a friend here,” the woman said. A line developed between her gorgeous tiger eyes, one staring around the store in concern, the other aimed at Xenia. “I’ve been waiting outside for fifteen minutes, and she still hasn’t shown. Those picketers are making me uncomfortable. Could I use your phone?”
“Of course.” Xenia indicated the front counter where the old-fashioned black dial phone rested. Helena worried they would see her standing feet from the phone, but both were oblivious to anything but one another. A heat built in Helena’s heart and pushed out through her mouth as a smile. Here was true love, happening right in front of her.
How lucky am I!
The woman dialed, her eyes peeking into every corner of the store at once, skittering over Helena but not stopping anywhere save on Xenia. The whirr click of the dial returning to rest after each number sounded to Helena like a timer counting down to the beginning of something. The woman held the phone to her ear for two minutes before hanging up.
“I’m sorry,” she said, to no one in particular.
Xenia set down the empire-waisted, knee-high dress exactly the shade of tawny green as the woman’s eyes. “No answer?”
The woman shook her head and continued to gape around the store as if awaking from a dream. “Can you believe I’ve never been inside here before? I’ve walked by a hundred times, and I never even entered.”
Xenia walked forward and held out her hand. “I’m Xenia.”
The woman held out hers. “Cleo.”
When their skin touched, a snap of electricity jumped between them, raising Xenia’s short hairs and making the brass clasps in Cleo’s hair hum.
“You sell dresses and candy?” Cleo hadn’t let go of Xenia’s hand.
“That’s it.”
The woman kept one eye steady on Xenia, and the other kept spinning. “Did you design your own dress?”
“I did,” Xenia said, glancing down at the simple batik shift she wore over leggings and a pair of leather ballet flats. She preferred her clothing comfortable, and in jewel tones. “I could sew you one. If you’d like.”
Cleo pulled her hand from Xenia’s and put it to her throat. She seemed sad. “I don’t think I was supposed to come inside.”
“You don’t have to stay. I have something I’d like to show you, though.” Xenia held up a green-gold dress. She had been working on it for over a week, longer than she spent on most. She’d confessed to dreams about it, lucid memories of a woman wearing the dress like a mermaid, shimmering and swimming, shades of deepest green and sea blue mixing with the fine flow of sunlight.
Cleo grabbed the rack of dresses nearest her for support. “It’s lovely.”
Helena felt a little faint herself. She was used to the brilliance of her sister’s work, but this dress was something else, something so alive it felt like a proposal. She wasn’t surprised when Cleo walked backward toward the door, hands feeling behind her. She could neither take her eyes off the dress nor stay this close to the glory of it. She stumbled outside without another word.
Xenia watched her go, unmoving.
“The dress is stunning,” Helena said. “So beautiful it blinded her.”
“She was beautiful,” Xenia whispered, almost as if she was talking to herself. “This dress is meant for her.”
Helena nodded. That much was obvious. “Are you going to ask her out?”
Xenia set the dress down as if waking from a dream, but when she turned to Helena, her green Catalain eyes were laser-focused. “Certainly. If you agree to go out with Artemis.”
Underground, the snakes stopped rumbling for a nanosecond, shivering with something akin to laughter.
The Catalain Book of Secrets: Accepting Good Love
Most Catalain women are born with skew-whiff pickers. Specifically, when it comes to choosing lovers, they are attracted to the unhealthy and put off by the open-hearted. If you find your picker is off, follow these steps to reset it:
Purchase two rose quartz hearts and two pink candles, votives preferred. Also, place a white pillowcase on your favorite pillow and obtain a single red rose, removing the petals. Discard the stem.
On the night of the next full moon, slide the rose quartz hearts under your pillow and sprinkle the rose petals on top of it. Light the pink candles at the foot of your bed, making sure they cannot tip or burn anything around them.
Lay on the rose petals. Watch the candles flicker. As they burn down, feel the warmth of true love in your heart. See yourself in the flames, with an anonymous lover, feeling valued and cherished. (*Caution: do not envision a specific person. This is dangerous if you possess a cockeyed picker because you risk binding the bad seed to yourself. If s/he enters your mind, push them out, using two fingers to make a snipping motion over your heart as if a scissors is cutting a rotten bind. Repeat as often as necessary.)
Fall asleep naturally, either before or after the candles burn out.
When next you wake, your picker will no longer be cockeyed. Unfortunately, your brain will test this like your tongue worries a sore tooth, so be on your guard for a bad seed to make one last attempt to burn your heart.
Chapter 5
“Shall I?”
Artemis X. Buckley stood on the front porch of the Queen Anne. His hair was slicked back and his moustache and beard were trimmed. He wore a pressed white cotton shirt, dark green slacks, and polished shoes. He clutched his fedora in his right hand. A tourmaline breeze rolled over his shoulders and kissed Helena on the earlobes. It smelled of thawing earth and cherry SweeTarts. The caress made her smile, as did the wrist corsage he held out to her. The centerpiece was a hothouse lily, white and honeyed, surrounded by daffodils the color of lemon pie and tiny blue hyacinth buds.
“It’s beautiful.” Helena held her hand out. Artemis slipped the band around her wrist. When his warm hands brushed hers, she yelped.
“Did I give you a shock?”
“Something like that.” She hurried ahead of him so he wouldn’t see her blush. So what if his touch had shot electricity to every tip of her? That was no reason to act like a schoolgirl. In fact, it was crucial that she keep her head and heart on straight. She wasn’t going to fall for Artemis, certainly not. He was dating her mother. She was simply eating a meal with him as it was the only way Xenia would agree to ask Cleo out.
“I mentioned I am only interested in a friendship?” Helena asked. She could be forthright when it involved respecting someone else’s feelings.
“Three times,” Artemis said agreeably, “and that’s only since I showed up on your porch.”
Helena searched for sarcasm in his words and found none. In fact, if she was pressed, she would say the only discernible emotion had been humor. He’s welcome to think it’s funny. I don’t believe people’s feelings
are a laughing matter.
Still, the smell of the lily on her wrist was intoxicating, and when Artemis placed his hand in the small of her back to guide her into his vehicle, she just barely bit back a second happy squeal. His car, a perfectly-preserved 1954 green Cadillac Eldorado, was as clean inside as out, the leather seats a pale cream color that hugged Helena and made her feel even prettier in her pale blue Angora sweater and loose white slacks.
As if reading her mind, Artemis complimented her as he slid behind the wheel. “I’ve never seen you look better.” He paused, and Helena swore she detected a chuckle in his next words. “For a friend, that is.”
“Thank you.” She rested her purse on her lap. The night was glorious, with a full moon glowing the crisp-cool edges of the evening. This warm and early spring had the plants and the bees thrumming with excitement, and it was contagious. Helena felt a thread of warning running through the hope, a distant memory of something dark that came hand-in-hand with this unusual weather, but she pushed the sensation toward the back. Why worry about something that wasn’t here? How could such a thing even be possible with the people of Faith Falls lining the streets of downtown, laughing, holding hands, and smiling at anything that moved?
Artemis drove toward downtown Faith Falls, steering the Eldorado into two parking spaces in front of Amore Buono, the Italian restaurant that had opened on the corner behind Hobbes Theater three months earlier. Helena’s eyes widened. She’d heard the food was wonderful, but that it was impossible to secure a reservation. She’d also heard it was expensive.
“I don’t mind burgers,” she blurted. She slapped her hand over her mouth. She suspected Artemis was not a rich man, and she didn’t want him to put himself out. She hadn’t intended to be so blunt about it.
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