by Alex Bledsoe
Three Tales
Of The
Firefly Witch
Alex Bledsoe
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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THREE TALES OF THE FIREFLY WITCH
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2012 by Alex Bledsoe
http://www.alexbledsoe.com
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Also by Alex Bledsoe:
The Eddie Lacrosse Novels:
The Sword-Edged Blonde
Burn Me Deadly
Dark Jenny
Wake of the Bloody Angel
The Memphis Vampires:
Blood Groove
The Girls with Games of Blood
The Songs of the Tufa:
The Hum and the Shiver
A Wisp of a Thing
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Marlene Stringer, Anne Newkirk Niven, Dianne Conn Darling, and the late Lucy Mogensen
INTRODUCTION
Many years ago, I read Barbara Paul’s 1979 mystery novel, The Fourth Wall, about a murderer picking off members of a theatrical troupe. But not every crime is the literal murder of a human being; instead, each event is calculated to do the most damage to the victim. The playwright, Abby James, has her carefully-maintained files destroyed: years of drafts, notes and potential scenes scattered and splashed with paint. I no longer own a copy of the book, but I recall a distraught Abby wondering something like, “How do you recapture a thought process from a dozen years ago?”
At the time, I had to accept this plot point on faith, since my own “files” were decidedly less substantial. But recently I dug out some old stories that I wrote in the middle Nineties; suddenly I understood exactly what Abby James meant. Here before me were stories that were so different from what I write now, that they might as well have been by another person.
The stories tell the adventures of Tanna Tully, a Wiccan priestess/college professor/parapsychologist with a magical tie to fireflies; in their presence, her psychic powers increase exponentially. I wrote them in first person from her husband Ry’s perspective; as a small-town newspaperman with a decidedly mundane perspective, he, like Dr. Watson, gives us a way into his wife’s mysterious adventures. The stories I dug out included the very first short story I wrote after deciding to become serious writer; it was also the first story I sold, in 1996, which I took as a sign I was on the right path.
So I was relieved to find that, sixteen years on, they weren’t terrible. I expected them to be, or at least to be appalled at my technical ineptitude. But for the most part, they were solidly constructed and pretty well-written. I did some touch-up work, clarifying things and taking out hopelessly dated references (does anyone remember the Deadeye Dick song, “New Age Girl”? Nope, didn’t think so). Since I’d anticipated needing to rewrite them from scratch, this was all a pleasant surprise.
So if they weren’t badly written, what was so different about them? They embodied a quality of innocence that the past fifteen years may have permanently driven out of me. These are essentially love stories, and my idea of what constituted “love” was a lot simpler back then. I had no trouble imagining characters drawn magically together, who easily filled the gaps in each other’s lives and met danger as equals. Even then I suspected this was wishful thinking, but I could at least countenance the possibility. Now, as the long-term husband of the smartest woman I know, and the parent of two rambunctious, vaguely sociopathic little boys, I recognize that the relationships in these stories were almost total fiction. Maybe even science fiction. The real world doesn’t work that way, at least in my experience since then. But of course we wish it did, which is why we read, and write, stories like that.
They were also ahead of their time by about ten years. Now they fit comfortably into what’s known as urban fantasy (maybe even paranormal romance, if a married couple counts), but like so many things I’ve written, at the time they were impossible to classify. The more hard-edged ones were picked up by some horror ‘zines, and the ones with heavy neopagan plots found homes in New Age magazines (especially PanGaia, which took several of them over the years). But many simply didn’t fit anywhere, and were relegated to the “unpublished” files. It took this long for a genre to develop that could comfortable encompass them.
Now I’ve spruced them up, packaged them, and now present them to you. I’m not sure what will happen next. But like Abby James, I’m sure I could never fully recapture what made those stories work, although I am looking forward to coming up with new adventures for the characters.
And now let me introduce you to Dr. Tanita “Tanna” Tully, Lady Firefly.
~I~
THE CHILL IN THE AIR
WAKES THE GHOSTS OFF THE GROUND
I met my wife in the fall. When the ghosts come out.
This all happened a while ago, in a time when cell phones only existed in California, tablet computers were found only in science fiction movies, and Bret Easton Ellis was considered literature. The neo-Pagan movement had not yet become so prominent that reality shows could be based around it; hell, there were no reality shows at all. Our TV series were fiction, and we liked it that way.
We’d both just finished our four-year degrees, her in Atlanta and me right there in Weakleyville. She’d come to town to get a master’s degree in psychology, and from there on to a doctorate in parapsychology. I’d given up on the academic life: I wanted to be a journalist, not study about it. We had nothing at all in common.
The day I met her, a note on my desk summoned me to my editor’s office. He looked up from his keyboard and handed me a piece of paper. “Read this.”
It was a typical West Tennessee University press release, the kind we ran as filler. It told of Tanita Woicistikoviski, 25, the newest psychology department graduate assistant. It mentioned she’d been published in numerous journals already, but otherwise said nothing special. There was no photograph.
“Relative?” I asked. We were always running articles about employees’ relatives.
“Nope,” he said. “Witch.”
“You know her, then?”
“No, Tully, I mean, she’s a witch. A real one.”
I looked at the release again. I saw nothing about a witch. “How do you know?”
“Read this,” he said.
This time he handed me an article from Psychology World. It was about Tanita Woicistikoviski and her apparently phenomenal psychic powers. The article was titled, “Meet the Firefly Witch.”
I scanned it quickly. It outlined her belief in the Wicca reli
gion, and how it helped her deal with her psychic abilities. It also said she was blind, but had some other kind of “sight.” No photos.
“Sounds like a weird chick,” I said.
“Glad you like her. You’re interviewing her today at four.”
“I am.”
“Yep.”
“I don’t think I can even pronounce her name. Why me?”
“Because that’s your assignment. Unless you’d rather cover the Greenville City Council meeting tonight--?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “That’s fine.” The Greenville City Council met with no agenda, no time limit and a transplanted Cajun mayor with an indecipherable accent. Last time I was there until 2 a.m. for a three-paragraph story.
I drove to West Tennessee University (“WesTN” for short) and thought about witches. I vaguely knew they had a religion, that a lot of hippie chicks were into it, and that none of them had much of a sense of humor about it. I figured Tanita Woy-whatever was an overweight granola girl with hairy legs and a dislike for men.
Dr. Lawrence Wellman, chairman of WesTN’s psychology department, remembered me from his freshman psych series. It was his idea to have an article on Tanita Woicistikoviski in the local paper, for reasons beyond her inherent news value. Since she’d spent most of her life trying to have no news value, she wasn’t real thrilled. Which, of course, no one told me.
Tanita Woicistikoviski wore a sleeveless black jersey dress that came down to her calves, accenting her slim and, surprisingly for a redhead, tanned body. Long red curls cascaded down her shoulders, and round sunglasses covered her eyes. A shaft of afternoon sun struck her like a spotlight, bathing her in amber. I stood in the open doorway, hand in mid-knock, momentarily breathless. She had a presence that could stop a waterfall.
Dr. Wellman waved me inside. “Hello, Ry. Good to see you again. This is Tanita Woicistikoviski. Tanna, this is the gentleman from the local paper.”
I stupidly offered my hand, but of course she couldn’t see it. So I settled for an friendly grin (yeah, yeah, I know).
Tanna turned in my direction. The movement made the neckline of her dress gap a little, and I glimpsed the upper curves of her breasts. Behind the sunglasses, I saw her eyes had a very slight Asian-like slant. I caught a whiff of her perfume, a fresh summery smell that reminded me of country fields at night. Her voice was deep, strong and with only a slight Southern accent. “So. Have we got Woodward or Bernstein here today?”
I remembered that part of my job was to put the subject at ease, so I joked, “Nah, today I’m just Carl Kolchak.”
I sat in the chair next to her, and waited for someone to speak. When it became clear no one was going to, I said, “So. I hear you’re a witch.”
Tanna sighed. “Yes, Mr. Tully, I am. I do happen to practice the Wicca religion. Are you familiar with it?”
“Ah... not so’s you could tell it, no.”
“Great. You know, I came to this redneck college town to get away from publicity, so that I could continue learning to manage my abilities. Without someone trying to cash in on it,” she added for Wellman’s benefit.
“Tanna,” Wellman said patiently, “as I’ve explained to you, this is the local paper, nobody reads it but the local people.”
She put on a parody Southern accent. “Oh, then all he wants is my favorite recipe for pecan pie? Or maybe who danced with me at the cotillion?”
“No, but if they realize your talents aren’t somehow Satanic, they’ll be more likely to accept you, and that will make it easier for everyone.”
“Whoa, whoa, what ‘talents?’” I asked. University condescension to the townies had always bugged me.
Tanna took off her sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She turned toward me, and her icy blue eyes made my chest tighten. In retrospect, that was the moment I fell in love with her; ironically, she told me later that this was the moment she had the most contempt for me.
“This is just grand. You don’t even know why you’re here, do you? Just go do a story on the freak to calm down the Baptists, right?”
“Now look, Miss... ” I stopped when I realized I couldn’t pronounce her last name without spraying spit around the room.
“Here’s the Cliff Notes version. I hope you’ve got your pen ready. Technically, I’m blind. The lights are out but somebody’s home. But every summer, when the fireflies come out, I can see. A physical impossibility. I’m also psychic in a lot of ways, and that also gets stronger when the fireflies are around. We figure it’s all connected somehow. If I were the kind of witch who wore a pointed hat and ate children, I guess the fireflies would be my familiars.”
“So you don’t like children?” I asked.
“I like children,” she snapped in annoyance.
“Me, too. But I can’t eat a whole one.”
For a moment I thought she was going to come out of that chair and tie my tongue to my genitals, but then an absolutely adorable giggle burst out. She choked it off almost at once, but the smile remained.
“I do sound like a bitch, don’t I?” she said. “I’m sorry, Mr.--?”
“Tully. Ry Tully.”
“Ry? As in ‘Catcher in the’?”
“No, as in Cooder.”
“Mr. Tully, you have to understand, I’ve lived in Memphis and Atlanta most of my life, and they’re not quite as provincial. I could go to the grocery store without people whispering behind my back, which is not the way to keep secrets from a blind person. But while I was in Atlanta, it seems like I always had some newsman following me around, wanting me to do a naked witch dance or perform some psychic trick on command, and it just doesn’t work that way.”
She sighed so eloquently I wanted to either hug her or buy her a puppy. “I know I’m odd, Mr. Tully. It’s been driven into me every day of my life. I guess I should be used to it by now, but I’m not, and when somebody comes along and says they want to splash the freak across the front page again, I just... ”
She trailed off and stopped. She stared in my direction. Her eyes opened wider. “By the Goddess,” she whispered.
“What?” Wellman said, concerned.
“I don’t believe it,” Tanna said.
She reached over and grabbed my arm, followed it down to my hand and tightly squeezed my fingers. “Mr. Tully, have we ever met before? I mean, ever? Even casually?”
I shook my head, then caught myself and said, “No.”
“He’s got brown hair, a gold stud in his left ear and a scar under his left eye. And his eyes are green.”
“What?” Wellman gasped.
“I saw him,” Tanna whispered. “Just for a second, but as clearly as I’ve ever seen anything in my life.”
Wellman looked at her, then at me. “Ry, do you have any history of psychic experience?”
“Who, me? I can’t even win the football pool at work.”
Tanna squeezed my hand again. “Mr. Tully, I can only see when the fireflies are out. At night, in the summer. This is broad daylight in September. But I just saw you.”
Wellman reached for a pen and paper. “Was it a precognitive--”
“No, dammit, I saw him, how could I have a premonition about something while it’s happening?” Her eyes filled with tears. “I saw you... and I felt... ”
I concluded the interview as quickly as possible. In other words, I ran. I was a nice, normal guy and I didn’t need that kind of weirdness. No matter how pretty she was, she was too far out on the fringe for me. The damn press release would have to do.
But Tanna Woicistikoviski seldom left my thoughts for more than a few minutes at a time. She was beautiful, brilliant, tortured, and she’d laughed at one of my jokes. It was inevitable that we’d be together.
***
The ghosts awoke in the fall. I didn’t notice.
I was oblivious to the way the leaves died, the way the animals disappeared into hibernation, the way autumn got ready for the metamorphosis to winter. I didn’t sense the shadow of the seaso
n.
I dreamed about Tanna a lot, though. That tangled mane of red hair, those electric-blue eyes, that voice both throaty and ethereal, all haunted me. I’d wake up sweaty, aroused, and determined to call her the next day. But dawn always brought me down to earth, and I remembered how weird she’d been. That broke the spell, at least until the next night.
A month after I first saw her, I looked up from my desk at the paper and saw her in the doorway.
She wore a brown leather jacket over a flannel shirt and blue jeans. She had on round, mirrored sunglasses, and her red hair was pulled back in a ponytail; a few loose curls hung down one side of her face. She folded a collapsible cane with practiced efficiency. Amazingly, she looked as beautiful in real life as she did in my dreams. I’d just assumed my imagination had embellished her.
I had to consciously generate spit to make my dry mouth work. “Can I help you?”
She smiled. My whole metabolism stuttered. “Mr. Tully?”
I jumped up. “Hi, Miss....” I wasn’t about to try that last name.
“Tanna. Listen I know we got off to a bad start before, and I’d like to apologize. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure.”
She didn’t move. “Could you give me a hand?”
I didn’t know what she meant at first, then guided her to the chair opposite my desk. Thank God she couldn’t see the idiotic look on my face.
“Now,” I said, “what can I do for you?”
She bit her lower lip slightly. I damn near melted. “I need a favor, Mr. Tully.”