Chapter 14 Books and Beans
Books and Beans
Lydia Brown
For the past seven days and nights, Birdie Rocas has tugged at my heart, and I’ve stayed away for fear of offending her.
The next time our paths cross we won’t be strangers.
Conversation will be easier. Answers may be forthcoming.
In the meantime, on Saturday I pursue two mysteries that need tending.
Books and Beans in Little Switzerland has enough creaky steps and hidden niches to be a bona fide destination for bibliophiles and explorers.
Its eclectic shelves hold some new but mostly vintage books on three rambling floors.
The curious will also find compasses, sextants, old pocket watches, magnifying glasses, binoculars, spyglasses, and weather instruments to satisfy anyone finding their own way in life.
It smells of rich coffee, endless mystery, and ancient ink, and it sits at the end of a line of board-and-batten buildings with stone foundations and wandering vines that burrow their way inside.
It’s where I have my office, which legitimizes my work for Special Collections and gives focus to my weekdays.
But today I don’t go up the stairs to my rented room.
“Is Professor Covey in?” I ask Nancy behind the counter. She looks at me over her reading glasses, annoyed that I interrupted The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the Chronicles of Narnia. “I’ve got that one on my bedside table,” I say.
She doesn’t react but says facetiously, “He’s in his office,” for the proprietor’s wooden desk is wedged in a slice of space beneath steep stairs.
On his scarred desk are a black telephone, a cracked mug holding pens, and a green banker’s lamp.
Boxes of used books line the hallway to be recorded and classified.
I knock on the wall. “Professor?”
He turns stiffly, takes off his readers, and smooths back thinning white hair.
“Lydia Brown.” His voice is gracious as he rises, shuffles from under the soffit, and extends his veined, slender hand. “A delight to see you again. Have you found that old graveyard on your property? Was the family named Morrison or was it Morrigan?”
“I’m not sure. Morrison, I think, though it’s been a long time since Jack and I stumbled upon it. One day soon I’ll find it again and take rubbings of the headstones. But today I bring two fascinating topics for us to discuss: shapeshifters and the night lights near Burnsville.”
His eyes light up. “Excellent topics that go well with a rich cup of coffee, don’t you agree?
” He heads down the hallway with a bounce in his step, and I follow.
At the coffee station he grinds fragrant beans for the two-mug French press, pours in boiling water, and hands me two oversized cups with thick handles and a small pitcher of cream.
We settle at a round table beside the stone fireplace where hot coals have worn down to embers.
At this elevation, there’s always a chill in the air that needs chasing.
Even in June. He throws on a fresh log and it catches flame. The coffee steeps.
“Let’s start with shapeshifters, shall we?” Professor Covey’s voice compels me like a seasoned actor on stage.
“It’s an idea as old as mankind. Proteus is the Greek god who was a shapeshifter.
His name has come to mean ‘capable of changing form between man, animal and spirit.’ It’s referenced in Homer’s epic poems. There’s also an article I recently read that described a twelve-hundred-year-old Coptic text discovered in a cave.
Controversially, the text referred to Jesus as a shapeshifter because he appeared to different people in different ways.
It’s completely refuted by religious scholars, of course, but it made for interesting reading. ”
He pushes the plunger in the French press then fills our mugs. He cocks his head to the side while studying me. “And you’ve seen one.”
“I have.”
“How marvelous,” he exclaims with a flush of joy to his craggy face.
I say, “Romi Harker is a shapeshifter.”
“I’m not surprised. Please go on.” He adds a dollop of rich cream to his coffee then leans back in the chair, settling in for a good tale.
“I went to see her at your suggestion for an article I was writing for Folklore. I couldn’t have found her without the guide you recommended.
We drove as far as we could then walked another hour, and when we arrived, Romi appeared to me as someone I used to know.
I think it was the rose-colored smoke from her fire that cast a spell. It was strangely enchanting.
“My guide, Tonto, stayed back in the tree line and didn’t risk getting close.
He was afraid of her magic. At my request, he left me there overnight and came back the next day, but it was the twenty-four hours I was with Romi Harker that make no sense.
What appeared to me was a dear friend from my past living in an enchanted place; Tonto saw a frightening hag. ”
Professor Covey listens intently to my retelling, including the odd dream of women dancing in a meadow, each with a trigon mark on their right palm. When my story ends, he says, “Interesting, the triangle. It’s sometimes called a psychic triangle, and in palm reading, it symbolizes good luck.”
I hold out my right hand, palm up. “Like this one?” He reaches out and gently rubs the raised mark.
“Usually the triangle is made by lines in the palm. This one is special. It appears that you might belong in Romi Harker’s world, and if so, does that frighten you?”
I shake my head. “It was a strange comfort.”
“Lydia, will your magazine article include the details you told me?”
“No. I withheld much of it.”
“Good, good.” He pats the back of my hand.
“Some readers of the supernatural think they understand what it is to be a witch or seer or psychic, but they haven’t a clue.
And the curious reader, in his hunger to possess more knowledge than he’s entitled to, could plunder her sacred world.
I’m glad you protected Romi’s way of life—”
“Which leads to the lights north of Burnsville,” I say.
He gazes out the window with woeful eyes and surprises me when he says, “I wish I’d never written that story.”
“Why? Rudy says it’s the most popular article ever printed.”
“That’s precisely why. Some things are meant to stay a mystery, to exist in peace, to be left alone.”
“Professor, you talk like those lights are living things that could be hurt.”
“Regrettably, I didn’t see them, but I heard enough from witnesses who could not have coordinated their stories.
They all said similar things. That there was something alive in the way the lights responded and connected to their presence.
After swirling in a dervish dance, their movements looked intentional, and they lined up to watch the watchers.
The people back in those hollers are either used to them or afraid of them, but either way they leave them alone. I wish I’d done the same.”
He drains the last of his coffee, then looks at me and stops, prepared to ask the question he should have asked first. “But you’ve seen those as well?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Saturday, the 31st of May, at 7:52 in the evening.” I grin.
His face once more lights with joy. “Last Saturday. Where?”
“In Baines Creek. When I went to interview the medicine woman, Birdie Rocas. We only said a few words before she turned me away. The lights lived above her place.”
He holds up his hand and impishly grins. “Hold the story there, my dear. Let me fix a fresh pot of French roast in hopes you will tell me everything.”
And I do. Including the part where I behaved poorly and overstayed my welcome, until I was dismissed for thinking too loudly and disturbing her rest. What I don’t confide is the assurance I felt in her presence that I was where I belonged.
That Birdie’s ways and wisdom held answers specifically for me.
That the lights were signs and I’ll return at the first excuse I can muster.