Awaken, Witch!

I hate magpies, I thought, the minute I walked into the bookshop and it softly cried at me. The place was also a cafe, and though I was pretty certain it was against health department codes to have an uncaged bird inside a cafe, it wasn’t like I was a health inspector or something, so I took it in stride. 

The bird stood on a wooden perch in a corner of the shop featuring a half bookcase, a window, and a furniture arrangement. Its beady black eyes stared at me. The thing was motionless, so motionless I began to wonder if it wasn’t stuffed and that I’d imagined it making a noise in the first place.

The aroma of spices and hot coffee wafted through the air. There was also that faint fragrance of a bookshop. Books were fine and all, but I came for the coffee—though I wouldn’t have minded perusing a few titles as I sipped on a dirty chai latte or the like. Somehow I’d never noticed the shop in all my time living in my little corner of Salt Lake County. It took up the bottom floor of a yellow brick building tucked away in the historic part of Draper at the south end of the valley.

Books and Broomsticks 2.

Where is one, I wondered.

No one should be alone at Christmas, and yet here I was. My first Christmas without my kids, and there was a hole in my heart and my gut the size of Connecticut—my home state. At the moment, I wanted to be back there with my parents as a salve for the pain, but I wasn’t going to fly out for only a few days and then return in a rush to be with my kids on the 27th. This was the first day of the holiday that they were gone with their father, and everything in me ached. Honestly, I didn’t want to be anywhere. If I had to make a choice, I would be nowhere. I would turn off each time they left to be with their dad, powering down, and then I would wake up when it was time to get them again, when the sun came back into my life.

A heavy snow fell outside the large windows lining the front of the shop creating a cozy, sheltered feeling within. The day was dark from the storm even though it was only two in the afternoon. I stood on the rug and shook my peacoat off, then removed it and hooked it on the freestanding coatrack next to the door. Everything was still as I moved. I felt the magpie’s gaze on the back of my head as I took off my scarf.

Had I inadvertently entered the Twilight Zone? Had the rapture occurred, leaving only me and the magpie behind? Would I live out the rest of my sad days carving out a meager existence with the bird as my only companion?

I sighed into the silence, realizing there wasn’t even a hint of music playing. I found myself tiptoeing as I explored, fearing even disturbing the bird whose gaze felt malevolent at this point.

“Is this your shop?” I asked as I got closer to it. I didn’t usually talk to birds, but this one had it in for me.

“Hello!” a female voice said, rising from an open doorway into another room. “Be right there. Make yourself at home.”

“Thank you,” I called, startled by the sudden intrusion of her voice.

The magpie cocked its head, opened its beak and said, “Hello.”

I jumped back, shocked.

“You can talk,” I said.

Suddenly, a woman breezed into the room carrying a steaming mug. The fragrance of spices and cinnamon wafted off it, striking an instant note of comfort in me. My mouth watered and I followed her to the counter, away from the nook where the bird stood on its perch.

“Oh, the music got turned off,” she said, waving her hand in the air. At that motion, music began playing over the speakers. It sounded like Enya. I wanted to roll my eyes but I withstood the urge. I was still under the magpie’s scrutiny and something about that made me feel guarded. Finding myself suspicious about something as innocuous as a bird was a new thing for me. But everything was new for me since the divorce. I had no footing except a few sure things—I was my home now. I could rely on me and no one else. And nothing was as it seemed. The heart held secrets and it was best to never place my trust in something as fickle as another human.

She just waved her hand and music turned on, I suddenly realized. Why wasn’t I more startled by that? I glanced around the shop looking for an interface of some sort. A computer screen or an iPad or anything like that. Nothing jumped out at me immediately, but maybe it was like my ex’s BMW X9 which had gesture control for music. I shrugged and stared at the mug of chai where it sat on the counter with a tendril of steam curling away from it. 

“Oh, that’s for you,” the woman said, waving her hand again, this time at the mug. She’d set it down next to a counter display of Buddha statues.

“Me? I didn’t order it.”

Her gaze met mine. “Are you sure? I distinctly remember you saying, ‘a hot chai latte would be so nice.’” She paused, cocked her head, and touched the side of her chin while she stared into the distance. “Or perhaps you said a hot chair would be so nice. Did you say that?”

“That’s odd. I might have thought that I’d like a hot chai. And a warm place to pass an hour or two.” I cleared my throat. Chills raced across my back and down my legs. I swallowed. “But I didn’t say it aloud.”

She smiled and snapped her fingers. “So, then it was you.”

Maybe she was a fruitcake. That was probably it. I sat down on the stool, cupping my hands around the mug. The heat from the ceramic moved into my bones and up my arms. I sighed and closed my eyes. Something strange was going on, but it was most likely just me and the weight of sorrow in my heart about my kids being with their father for ten nights and the prospect of spending Christmas Day alone. It shouldn’t bother me since I wasn’t even Christian—but we had always celebrated it as a family.

The woman busied herself behind the counter.

“Pie,” she said, stopping suddenly and pointing at the magpie over my shoulder. “None of that, now.”

I twisted on the stool and looked at the bird. It bobbed its head up and down.

“Not yet, Pie. Not yet.”

I turned back around. “I’m sorry, but are you talking to the magpie?”

The woman looked at me for a few seconds before clapping her hands together. I finally took in her appearance, realizing that I’d not really paid close attention to what she looked like. That was due to several factors, one being that I wasn’t in a good place. My heart felt like a candle burned down to the end of its wick. One soft gust would blow it out, and I would likely crumble into a pile of tears. Keeping it together was taking all my mental power. As I studied her, I found myself making judgments based on her attire—she wore a Black Sabbath T-shirt, black jeans with intentional tears, and lots of rings. Her raven hair was spiky and short, and honestly, she belonged in a heavy metal shop more than a cozy cafe full of crystals and Buddhas and books.

But… I kind of liked her so far.

“The magpie is talking to me,” she answered, winking at me.

I didn’t know if the wink meant she was pulling my leg or if it was meant to be conspiratorial. But a chill swept over me for some reason. I shrugged it off, though I could still feel the malevolent glare of the bird right between my shoulder blades.

“So, it’s not?” I laughed, taking a sip of the dirty chai. It tasted as good as it smelled, the fresh pressed espresso mixed with milk and invigorating spices, leaving a trace of warmth down my throat that caused chills everywhere else in my body.

She gave me a puzzled look and began steaming milk at the espresso machine, making another drink. “No, it is.”

I blinked and sat back. I listened to the music for a moment, neither of us saying anything.

Maybe she was crazy.

“What brings you in, then? Do you have nice holiday plans?” she asked, pouring the milk into a mug.

I thought about my answer before giving it. “I was just driving by and had nothing else to do. Nowhere else to go.”

“Well, I’m glad you came in.” She looked at me like I’d said something else, and then she nodded toward the back of the shop. “Would you mind? Just hop through that door and on the inside to your right, there’s a shelf. Grab a package of sugar off the shelf and bring it out here?”

After staring at her for a moment and wanting to say no, I got up and walked back between the waist-high bookcases toward the door. It was strange being asked to help out, as though we were old friends. I’d never met the woman before in my life and her trusting nature was getting to me.

At the back of the shop, the door she’d indicated was open just a crack. I pulled it all the way open and glanced around with trepidation. A hallway lined with a utility shelf greeted me. I breathed out in relief and stepped through. Down the corridor there were doors with light seeping through their cracks. One of them was ajar, just a hair. I turned my attention back to the shelf, but as I searched for the sugar, I heard a booming voice emanating from the nearest room, the one with the open door. “Before me, Uriel,” it said.

I picked up a four-pound bag of sugar and then, against my better judgment, tiptoed toward the open door. Peeking around the corner tentatively, I saw into the room.

A man stood in the center of the space, which was barren of most furniture. There was only a slab-like table near the wall covered with a black velvet cloth. The walls were adorned with what I could only call flags, and the flags were marked with ancient-looking symbols and letters, some of them Hebrew letters.

The man wore burnt orange and indigo robes. His salt and pepper beard reached to the top of his chest. Beneath the beard hung an amulet of gold and a clear quartz crystal.

“For about me flame the pentagrams,” he said, lifting his arms out like Moses parting the Red Sea. His voice boomed and—once again—chills skittered across me like I’d fallen into a pit of insects. His face was weathered, but there was a timeless aura to it. Whoever he was, this man was powerful and strange. Fear twisted through my guts and spiraled up my stomach, coiling around my throat. I wanted to turn and run, but I found myself trapped as though my feet had stepped into quick-drying cement. “And within me shines the six-rayed star.”

He raised his arms higher until they touched above his head. Then he lowered them, sweeping them down where he clasped them together before his thighs.

He took several breaths and then said, “It is done.”

Something all around him flickered—white light, blue lights that left an impression of stars, and winged figures. All of it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

I backed away from the door, trying to be as quiet as possible, but my foot scuffed against a doorstop I’d not seen and the man’s piercing blue eyes found me immediately.

I turned and ran back the way I’d come, opting to not try some kind of explanation for why I’d been spying on him.

Besides, what the hell strange kind of ritual had I just witnessed? And what was that flicker?

I planned to drop off the sugar, grab my coat, and put fifty miles between myself and Books and Broomsticks 2 as fast as possible.