Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Back in their bedroom, Fern burst through the door.
“Four twenty exactly,” she said. “And four twenty-three. And the last one was four twenty-six.”
Rose looked at a piece of paper.
“Those are our times,” she said. “Lemon juice, Pine-Sol, and Lysol. Four twenty, four twenty-three, and four twenty-six.”
They all turned to Zinnia, sitting up in bed.
“I didn’t feel a thing,” she said, quietly, like she couldn’t believe it.
None of them knew what to say. They had given Dr. Vincent Zinnia’s morning sickness. They had done magic.
Witchcraft was real.
Fern felt the world reorganize itself around them, shifting into a new arrangement, pushing them center stage. They had done this. What else could they do?
“Oh my God,” Zinnia said. They all turned to her, worried. She looked up at them. “I’m starving.”
She started to laugh, covered her mouth, and bounced with hysterics.
“I’m really, really, really,” she said, and giggled. “Really, really, really, really, really, really…”
“She’s lost it,” Rose said.
“…really, really, really hungry.”
Holly rooted around inside Precious Pup and emerged with a pack of salted peanuts. Zinnia snatched them so fast Holly almost lost a finger. She tore them open and put one on her tongue.
“They’re so good ,” she said, and poured the pack down her throat.
“Y’all,” Fern said. “We did this! We can do anything!”
Zinnia made a noise around the peanuts.
“He might have been going to get sick anyway,” she said, licking her finger and sticking it in the empty peanut bag, hunting down bits of salt.
“Not like that,” Fern said. “He was a fire hose. He blasted everything! It smelled like rotten cheese.”
She found a Kleenex in one pocket and began scraping out her nostrils.
“We can’t jump to conclusions,” Zinnia said.
“Should we stroll to them?” Rose asked. “Skip to them? Strut? Fill out a form in triplicate and file it with the appropriate department that we desire to reach a conclusion in six to eight weeks? Zap! This is happening. Wake up and deal!”
Zinnia pressed the heels of her hands against her eye sockets.
“Why do you keep talking like that?” she asked. “I know you can speak proper English.”
Rose inhaled, about to say something, but Fern talked over her.
“You didn’t see him,” she said. “That wasn’t normal throw-up. It was supernatural vomit from beyond the stars.”
“Keep it down,” Zinnia said. “If Miss Wellwood hears, we’ll all be in trouble.”
“The book worked,” Fern said, lowering her voice. “How did it work? I don’t know. Why did it work? I don’t know. But it worked and when that librarian comes back next time we can ask her, but until then we’ve got the book, and it’s full of spells, and they actually work.”
“The important question,” Rose said, picking up the book, “is how does this let us overthrow the System?”
“What system?” Zinnia asked, sucking her finger. “What are you even talking about?”
“The System that put us here,” Rose said. “The one that makes Fern drink a liver shake every week, and has us all on salt restriction, and told you getting sick was all in your head. Y’all want to sew layettes and bitch about the food for the next two months? Or are you sick and tired of getting pushed around? The revolution starts here.”
For once, Rose had a point. For the next three ticks of the clock they felt very aware of themselves: four pregnant girls sitting in a stuffy room on the second floor of a home for unwed mothers who had just used witchcraft to make their doctor sick. Whatever they said next would shape everything. They could turn around and go back to their everyday lives, do their time, have their babies, and go home. Or they could run toward something new.
“Well,” Zinnia finally said. “It would be nice to have salt back on the menu.”
Rose’s face lit up with a jack-o’-lantern grin.
“Right on!” she said, and opened the book and sat down.
They crowded around her, Zinnia over one shoulder, Holly and Fern over the other, like witches around a cauldron. Rose held the book out so they could all see and started turning pages.
“Eternal secrets, ancient wisdom, blah, blah, blah,” she read, then stopped flipping. “Charms for Beginners. That’s us.”
In “Charms for Beginners” Eth Natas told them about Turnabout, which they already knew, and then she proceeded to tell them how to stop bleeding and cure warts. How to remove freckles by making a face wash of morning dew, how to brew a healthy hair rub by stealing a few strands of the hair they envied, adding a drop of their own blood, and trapping it in a jar of salt water buried beneath the full moon. She told them how to prevent wrinkles and remove age lines.
“This sounds like a beauty manual,” Zinnia said.
When you purchase a new appliance , Eth Natas instructed them, such as a vacuum cleaner or an electric can opener, perform this blessing to ensure that it functions properly and to remove any malign influences that might cause it to break down before its warranty expires.
“It sounds like home ec,” Rose said.
“Let’s try curses,” Fern suggested.
Rose flipped pages.
“No curses,” she said.
“Try the table of contents,” Zinnia said.
Rose flipped toward the back of the book and Fern suspected she might not know exactly what a table of contents was. Zinnia took the book out of Rose’s hands.
“Let me look,” she said.
She turned to the front and found the table of contents.
“See,” Rose groused. “No curses.”
Zinnia pointed to “A Note on Hexes.”
“The same as curses,” she said. “Page sixteen.”
She turned to page sixteen, stopped, blinked, half turned the following page, then turned back.
“It’s only a paragraph,” she said, and read:
“?‘You will hear some people talk about white and black magic. However, there is no difference between them because opposites do not exist. The universe is full of vibratory forces scientists are only now beginning to understand.’?”
“Everyone knows that,” Rose said.
“?‘One hundred years ago a woman claiming she knew what you were thinking would be called a witch and burned at the stake. Today, ESP is an accepted fact of modern science.’?”
“Oh, brother,” Zinnia said.
“?‘How the witch harnesses these forces is everything. The energy is the same whether she sends waves of well-being and peace in the direction of her friends or dark vibrations in the direction of her enemies. As with everything in our Craft, intention counts.’?”
“So who’re we going to zap with dark vibrations?” Fern asked. “We could make Miss Wellwood so sick she can’t come to work.”
“Miss Wellwood is never going to be so sick she can’t come to work,” Zinnia said.
“We need the biggest spell in the book,” Rose said.
“Blessing the TV set?” Zinnia asked. “A face wash to get rid of our freckles? I’m happy not to be throwing up anymore, but none of this feels real useful.”
“Page forty-two,” Rose said, and pointed. “Everything You Need to Know about Spells.”
Zinnia turned to page forty-two.
“?‘The Four Powers of Familiar Spirits,’?” Zinnia read, going down the list of spells. “?‘Calling Down the Moon. The Invocation…’?”
She slowed.
“?‘Apotropaios…Chthonic and Ouranic Sacrifice…Sigils and Runes’…I don’t know what any of these mean,” she said.
“Necromancy,” Fern said, pointing to one spell. “That’s talking to dead people.”
But that was the only word she recognized. Zinnia turned the page.
“?‘To Summon Him,’?” she read.
“Who’s Him?” Fern asked.
“Who do you think?” Rose said.
“Oh,” Fern said. “Well, that sounds like a crummy idea. What else?”
“?‘Understanding the Language of Birds,’?” Rose read. “Who wants to do that?”
“Talking to birds might be neat?” Fern tried.
At least it was something. She took the book from Zinnia and read the instructions out loud. “?‘Sanctify the space by drawing the invoking pentacle on the Magus with your thyrsus. Form the circle, give the Invocation, and make the Qabbalistic Cross to Ground your Cone of Power.’ What’re they talking about?”
Rose took the book back.
“?‘Make the sign of the Rending of the Veil in the four Elemental Directions,’?” she read. She flipped back a few pages. “?‘Read free…perform the eight sabbaths and twelve esbats skyclad.’ A ‘cingulum’? This book is cracked.”
“We’re probably not supposed to understand it,” Zinnia said. “If this book is full of powerful spells, don’t you think witches would try to keep it secret? If they gave it all away for ninety-five cents, then the skies would be full of people flying around on broomsticks.”
Rose flopped down on the other bed.
“Now what?” she asked the room.
There was a long silence.
“Power’s only useful if you know how to use it,” Zinnia said. “None of us can understand a word of this book. Besides the spell that stopped me from being sick, there’s nothing in here that can’t be done with a bottle of conditioner and some cold cream.”
She was right. Except for Turnabout, they couldn’t make sense of any of the spells. Fern had felt the magic. She had seen it happen. Now it had slipped through her fingers, leaving her more frustrated than before.
Something banged on the bedroom door.
“Oh my God!” Zinnia said, clutching her chest.
“Y’all traded jobs to work in my kitchen!” Hagar shouted from the hall. “Y’all better get downstairs and work!”