Magic and myth, p.1
Magic and Myth, page 1
MAGIC AND MYTH
SHORT STORIES
KATHRYN TRATTNER
Copyright © 2023 by Kathryn Trattner
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Ebook ISBN: 979-8-9872112-0-5
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9872112-1-2
www.kathryntrattner.com
Editor: Jeanine Harrell - Indie Edits with Jeanine
Cover Designer: JV Arts
The ache for home lives in all of us.
MAYA ANGELOU
CONTENTS
Tornado
Blackberry Baby
The Deer Woman
Fire Watch
The Black Cat
About the Author
Also by Kathryn Trattner
TORNADO
I invited the Tornado inside because, really, where else could he go? He growled, like a train vibrating in the distance, and I shivered, remembering summer nights with bugs so thick they fogged the stars, a shrill whistle calling out.
Maybe he just needed a good dinner, a second helping, and he sat, joining Winter at my table. Winter drank coffee, black and bitter, two days old and reheated in the microwave. This was the last cup, he said, before the long drive north. Spring lurked, seen in the neon green buds, but had not yet come in, not stopped by, not while everything throbbed with heat and that newness seeped up from red dirt.
I made pasta, only good at boiling water and heating up the contents of a jar, with no patience for anything else. We ate, and in my mouth, the taste of tomatoes and burned coffee lingered.
The Tornado complained, desirous of something solid to suck up; brick and stone, two-by-fours and good vinyl siding. But I shoveled a third and fourth helping on his plate. By sunset, he’d eaten a second pot, and I rolled him through my front door, slow and satisfied, into a night containing a sharp chartreuse that I wanted to bring to bed and fall asleep beside.
Inside, Winter promised to leave after one more cup of coffee.
BLACKBERRY BABY
Summer had a way of holding on in the South Carolina backwoods. Clinging to the edges of the low country and remaining strong. It came—saltwater on the air when the wind blew in from the coast, scents of pine and kudzu as it sighed through inland woods from the West. Languid or blustery, Summer always carried birdsong and distant voices. But when it swirled to a stop—the air died down and gave up, and the sun hovered high in a clear sky over my house—it smelled like blackberries.
I watched the woman pick her way down the dirt track to my house one early evening—golden skies hinting at violet, a thin sliver of moon suspended like a cutout, a window to a bright, calm place. The drink in my hand sweated, ice melting slowly, watering down the bourbon and mint. I rocked back in the chair, letting it carry me forward, knees creaking with the rattan.
She had brown hair and pale eyes, a shade borrowed from the throats of morning glories—a true pale, clear blue rarely seen. When she spoke, hesitant and wary, she clasped her hands together to keep them from taking flight, to keep her thoughts ordered. I could see it all on her, feel it even ten feet away.
“Are you Gwen Simmons?” she asked.
“I am.” I swallowed the last drink, the bite diluted, flecks of muddled mint sticking to the glass. “And you are?”
“I’m Emily Madison. I was hoping to talk to you about something.”
“You want to come in and tell me what’s on your mind?”
I stood, gesturing to the front door, holidng it as she stepped inside.
With a nod, she looked around as if she’d expected it to be darker, gloomier. I smiled, glancing at the white walls covered in photos—gaggles of distant family, past and present, every relative you could imagine. The carpet was a patterned tangle of green vines and roses, worn down in the middle, well-loved and irreplaceable. Little tables stood here and there, knickknacks on display, porcelain figures and bud vases holding sunflowers from the backyard.
The house curled in on her, walls and floors, the crystal chandelier over our heads tinkling. It was as curious as I was about the question she carried here with her heavy, a weight pulling us all toward an unknown vortex. In the kitchen, I had a clearer picture. Her desperation tasted like gasoline and lit matches, a hint of burning plastic thrown in.
“You want a glass of water?” I asked, heading for the cabinet and grabbing two glasses before she could respond.
“Sure, thank you.”
“Ice?”
“Yeah, please. That would be great.”
I nodded, moving slowly, the room gently spinning around this woman and her unspoken request. It was coming. She was fighting to hold it in, to keep from blurting it out and being rude. She didn’t want to offend me; I could tell that by looking at her. She had a hopeful expression over pain.
Ice tumbled into the glasses piece by piece, the refrigerator groaning—appliances, house, and myself all aging gracefully together. She watched me openly, staring, searching my face for the person she’d been expecting to find.
Maybe she’d expected a young woman covered in tattoos with black nail polish or a middle-aged flower child with a flowing skirt and hemp sandals. Instead, she’d found a woman in her early sixties with salt-and-pepper hair and gold-rimmed glasses hiding dark eyes. Neither fat nor thin, comfortable in skin worn in and wrinkled, maybe a little too much sun, a mole on the corner of her mouth; a beauty mark on an aging beauty, signs of a life well-lived, the hint of something other in the way the woman moved, the way the air crackled around her.
But it was just me.
I didn’t mind surprising her; it was funny, after all these years, to still be confronting whatever people’s expectations might be. There had been one or two visitors who’d been convinced I might cackle and ride a broom at midnight. Maybe I needed to figure out how to make that happen. I smiled, setting the water in front of her, glass clicking against the scrubbed table, condensation already gathering.
“So, tell me,” I said, easing into the chair across from her and sipping water, rinsing the taste of gasoline from my tongue. “How do you think I can help?”
“I don’t know if you can,” she spoke softly, reaching out to touch the glass without picking it up. “But my friend said I needed to talk to you.”
“Friend?”
“Oh,” Emily looked up, smiling for the first time. “Anna. Her name is Anna. She’s come to see you before.”
I sucked in a breath, caught off guard by the beauty of her smile, the way it changed her face, lifting the gauntness of her cheeks. Not only a physical smile but a mental one, spiritual. A smile to light up any room. My kitchen felt brighter with her in it.
“Anna is lovely, isn’t she?”
Anna had come to me to bring some peace into her life, lay old hurts to rest, and open the way for love and happiness. But that was a years ago, before Danny had died, before the world shifted around me.
“She said you were able to help her and it changed everything.”
I listened to Emily’s tone and the emotion behind the words more than the words themselves. There was genuine kindness in this woman, the way she spoke of her friend, the happiness at her finding peace. No secret jealousies or harbored grudges, nothing dark clinging to her, trailing her movements through the air like fine-spun spider silk.
“But why are you here?”
Keeping my voice gentle, I glanced out at the curious dusk watching us through the kitchen window; violet sunset faded, hints of deep gray around the treetops, the warm light from the house holding it all off. When she didn’t respond right away, I set my glass down and leaned toward her, elbows on the table, as close as I could get. I watched the muscles in her face shift, eyes turn down. She reached for the water glass and took a sip, hand shaking the whole time.
“I want a baby.”
Sitting back, surprised by such a large request, I shook my head.
“Before you say anything,” she said, holding up a hand. “Let me tell you the whole thing. Please.”
“Okay.”
I held my breath against the smell of desperation now, the sorrow, all of it so overpowering I wanted to move the conversation outside. But she seemed fragile, needing the protection of the kitchen table, the security of the water glass. If I moved her, she might not share her story, and I wanted to know how that want had brought Emily through the woods to my house.
“I’ve seen every doctor. I’ve tried every treatment. Whatever the doctors offered, whatever a natural healer offered. I’ve changed everything about my life, all of it, and nothing. It’s not happened for me.”
“What about your husband?”
Tension coiled through the space between us, a snake rattling its tail and poised to strike. I knew from the way she held herself what the answer was, and I was sorry I’d asked.
“Gone. He was tested too. He wasn’t the problem.”
“Were the doctors able to tell you why you couldn’t conceive?”
“No. In every way they can measure, I’m healthy.”
My insides twisted for her, an ache settling like stones in my heart.
“Can you help me?”
“I can’t change anything about your body, the way you’re made.”
She was nodding, already expecting the no. It was on the tip of my tongue, there at the back of my throat. A single tear ran down her cheek, and she swiped it away. I swallowed the negative response, swallowed it whole without a second thought, and reached across the table, hand outstretched, palm up.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, taking my hand. “I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
Her hand in mine was warm and soft. It had been such a long time since I’d touched another living person. And then it had been mourners offering me condolences and love, caring expressed through contact, arms and hands and shared tears. I offered that to Emily, all those things that had been fed into me I returned, passed on, to someone else in need.
She nodded. “Thanks. I didn’t really expect you could, but Anna said I should ask.”
“I can help you.”
“What?”
Incredulity lit up her face, crazy hope and surprise mixing and flowing into her expression. The room changed, the taste going sweet like cherry pop rocks and apple blossoms, bubbled like sparkling water, fizzing between us.
“But there has to be an exchange, one thing for another.”
“I understand.”
I wondered if she really did. If I did. I would have to give something too; something of mine would have to be in this spell to see it into being. The offering would have to come from both of us. We would be forever bound together. I pushed back in my chair with a squeak, nodding and already thinking about what I might need.
“Come back in a week,” I said. “Bring three things that speak to you, that bring to mind the things you want to welcome into your life.” I tapped my lip, considering what else it might take—ritual, spell, or potion. There were other things, physical things, I would need, but not yet. Those could wait.
“I will,” she said, rising with me, eyes shining.
“Good.” I walked her to the door and touched her shoulder briefly on the front porch as she went down the steps—a blessing as I sent her out into the lengthening evening, down the dirt track to where her car waited. “I’ll see you in a week.”
The pressure in the house changed. I tasted curiosity, sour citrus, and clover honey. I knew the question before it left his mouth, though I didn’t have an answer. Not even for myself. I couldn’t bring myself to put those words out into the world.
“What made you change your mind?” Danny asked.
Because you swore you’d never practice again.
The rest of the sentence hung in the air between us. Those were part of the things I wouldn’t say aloud, and he knew better than to speak them into existence. Even now, we danced these careful steps around each other, cautious despite the lack of living flesh.
“She had kind eyes,” I said, pouring over the book I’d pulled down from the shelf above the kitchen sink. The stepstool wobbled beneath me, one leg a hair too short. I didn’t look down. Didn’t have to. He was always there.
Danny, cool as fall breezes, bringing juniper and the translucent gray swirl of woodsmoke. He would forever be that crisp fall morning, heart a stuttering muscle I couldn’t calm or restart, the distance growing between us in his eyes as he moved beyond my reach. He’d died there, hooked up to all those machines, the threat of early snow in the weather forecast that morning.
But when I’d finally come home, passed over our blue threshold, beneath my fading summer besom, he’d been waiting for me. Danny had remained with me since, a shade of himself but still somehow alive as ever. Never solid, never a man I could pull to me, wrap my arms around, but seeing his face and hearing his voice was enough. I would take him any way I could have him.
Ghost or spirit, husband or lover, my constant companion.
I’d asked him once why he’d come back, in the hours between three a.m. and first light, that in-between space that belonged to the writers and painters, the singers hearing secret songs, the ambrosia hour when anything is possible. His response had been simple, four words, I made a promise. We’d face what came after death together. A sworn blood oath given beneath a fading quilt, a pattern called wedding rings, fitting our new marriage, our new life—a thousand promises tying our souls together.
Emily had been full of promises too. The desperate kind born in the dark, staring at empty cradles and motionless rocking chairs, with the slide of headlights through the open nursery windows, the early morning hours dragging out as a grandfather clock ticked in the hall.
I’d seen it all so clearly when I took her hand.
I couldn’t let anyone go back to an empty room like that.
“Kind eyes,” he repeated.
“Exactly.”
He came to stand below me, reaching out a steadying hand even though he couldn’t stop me if I fell. Old habits, I guess. I had them too. I still stood up on tiptoe to kiss him in the mornings, made enough coffee for two, and bought two toothbrushes at the store when it came time to replace them. Living was like that, so hard to give up.
I met his eyes, finding a smile and knowing in his gaze, not reproach or disappointment. Not that I’d really expected either of those. But a small question had bubbled up, tiny as mustard seeds, to touch the surface of my mind the moment after I’d told Emily I would help her.
“I want to do it,” I insisted. I tapped the open book, full of knowledge and hints of what might be possible. “I can figure it out, and I can do this.”
He nodded, grin widening.
“What?” I asked, corners of my tips twitching, a smile curling into my cheeks.
“Nothing.” He shook his head, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. “It’s just nice to see you working at it again.”
“I never really stopped.” I closed the book with a snap and eased down from the stepstool, knees popping loudly. They didn’t hurt so much as ache around the clock. All my joints did at this point, a dull throb that I’d grown accustomed to and come to expect.
“No, but you slowed down.”
“Everything has slowed down.”
The response was tart, and he chuckled.
I set the book on the table and turned to a cabinet. The door squeaked as it swung open, underlining his point about it being a while. Which it had. He was right. The last time I’d opened this door was when he’d been dying, pale in a bed, blood collecting beneath his skin, dark smudges beneath his eyes. I’d opened it and found nothing inside that could save him, nothing in me that could change the way the world was turning.
Three years? Almost four? Long enough, doubt shooting through me with the thought, would it all still be there, waiting for me to come back? Hello, remember me? Remember how I called your names and brought you shape and form? Remember the way the moon shines in a clear sky and hazes with humid spring nights? Remember the taste of fresh rosemary and chives, the orange-yellow nasturtiums tossed in salads and gracing kitchen tables? Do you remember blackberries warmed beneath bright suns?
Blackberries.
I stopped, holding myself so still that I stopped breathing, motionless so the thought wouldn’t shy away. It was there, in the word and taste, the memory of summer sunshine and the buzz of insects.
“Blackberries,” I said. The image was so clear in my mind—tart and sweet, fingers dark with blackberry juices, skin prickled from brambles.
“What?” he asked, coming around the kitchen table to look over my shoulder, inspecting the cupboard for brambles. “In here?”
“No, from along the tracks, the crossing down the way a bit. You know the one?”
Of course, he did. We’d picked blackberries from along the train tracks most of our married lives, a ritual of freezing and baking pies, cobbler with broken buttery crusts, the quick jam boiled on the stove and eaten the next morning, sticky lips and tangled kisses.
“I’ll make the baby out of blackberries.”
“And the sacrifice?”
My heart stuttered, the question shattering the elation. There would have to be a trade, an exchange. It was a balance, the right amount of give and take, and all petitions required a sacrifice. As above, so below, in this world and the next, I would have to even out the scales.
