by Leslie Edens
Number one. Never let them see you chant.
Magic is undignified in practice and involves a number of embarrassing and bizarre rituals, but highly magical people don’t make this widely known. A great deal of being successfully magical involves covering for all the embarrassing odors and awkward arm waving by dressing the part. Highly recommended: Drape for Dominium for the witch, wizard, or warlock.
Kataklysm Johnson had to admit this seemed like sound advice. She’d had one humiliating accident after another when she first attained a wand with real power. While the actual bewitching only involved rigorous practice and the ability to follow recipes (something she nevertheless struggled with), it was far more difficult to do any of this with dignity and style. Magic was a messy, inconvenient, unstable business, a fact that accounted for so many of her people living in distant ramshackle castles where their accidental dismemberments and occasional explosions were less likely to attract casual observers.
Then there were the inevitable magical creatures attracted to any person who practiced the arts. These showed up regularly and could be inconvenient to conceal. Ever since she’d set up shop in her parents’ basement and designed her own impromptu dungeon, she’d encountered a half man half goat (apparently called a faun), a floating crocodile without legs (a monodile), and a two-foot-long thing that insisted on hanging from the ceiling called a primonodus. It consisted almost entirely of nose and could warn her of danger but only by sneezing. So it was helpful but incredibly disgusting–and occasionally, the danger turned out to be pollen.
Kata, who did not like to be called Kat, had only set up shop last year, and her nonmagical mom still believed she was engaged in photography in the basement, that she had a dark room and was developing photos. She wanted to get her own place, but rents were high, and her job delivering packages for a warehouse retail store did not pay well. Currently, she was preoccupied with attempts at two kinds of spells. First, how to turn lead into gold. Second, how to levitate small objects to exact locations that she could pinpoint using Google Earth. If drones can do it, I can too, she would tell herself encouragingly.
She really didn’t know where she could get lead anyway, but she figured it would be easier to find than gold. In the meantime, she kept working her day job and practicing on aluminum, which was in great supply because of the leftover cans from all her energy drinks and sodas.
In her efforts at alchemy so far, she had managed to conjure up a large quantity of cheese cubes and levitate them six inches above her hand. She could levitate things further if she threw them, but no one could really prove that was levitating and not a good pitching arm.
It would help the delivery so much if she could do it from afar. Too many people reacted badly to her appearance, both quirky and Black, and they came cautiously to the door if they came at all. It meant her delivery times were slow, and she often didn’t meet quotas. She was on the brink of being fired if she couldn’t speed it up.
Number Two. Choose your familiars and other companions with care.
The primonodus hanging from her basement rafters was not a wise choice, but she didn’t choose the critter, it chose her. She’d sent the faun on a long quest to keep him at bay. He seemed a bit of a lech and kept glancing at her suggestively. When she caught him elevator gazing at her through a reflection in a bit of crystal she’d hung, she knew he had to go. Besides, he made the nose sneeze. Maybe it was an allergy to goat hair, but Kata had a sneaking suspicion the faun was not a safe companion in the least for a young witch.
So, she’d cast a simple quest incantation. He would fetch for her all the unknowable elements, of which there were nineteen, and so far, he had brought back two. She designed a contraption at the doorway to her lair–the real lair, not the outside space that appeared to be a dark room–that entrapped magical beings and held them until released. The faun could leave behind any items he found, and the trap shouldn’t be a problem for anyone with honest intentions.
As for the monodile, he’d been easy to get rid of by simply throwing some fish as far as her levitation could send it. Like a large and toothy dog, the monodile had zipped after it, never to be seen again. Kata assumed it had gotten lost on the way back. She removed everything with a fishy smell from her quarters and sprinkled some anti-reptilian herbs about the perimeter.
Beggars could not be choosers. She didn’t know anyone else who practiced magic in her neighborhood. There was maybe one weird old white guy who lived in a real dump of a shack surrounded by apartment buildings. But he scared her, so she didn’t want to ask him if he was a warlock.
Her brother, Kenneth, might be a magical person, too, but he only wanted to play basketball and try to prove he was cool. The other guys kept ignoring him. He was her half-brother and might just as easily not be magical. All the tests she’d attempted on him had proven inconclusive.
Maybe he hasn’t come into it yet, she thought.
He treated her like she was a geek even though she was five years older than he was, and he wouldn’t be seen with her in town. Kata figured she’d make a basketball spell for him one day, and then he’d finally respect what she did.
That was if she got around to telling anyone.
Number three. Respect your elders and honor your mentor in magic.
Now this one really burned her up. If those last two tidbits of sage advice had been nearly impossible for her to follow, this one just . . . hurt. She had no elders, no mentors. She didn’t know where the magic gene came from. Her father? He was somewhere in Africa working for Doctors Without Borders. He was brilliant but every bit the man of science. She didn’t know what country he was in since the situation changed often, and they got moved around. The last she heard, Namibia. Maybe now, Cameroon. He was no warlock, although he was a healer. That thought gave her pause. Was he her elder that she should be respecting? Could he be her mentor? She hardly heard from him, he was so busy and dedicated to his cause. And she respected what he did. She respected the leader he was trying to be, how he was working to be an example for any African American man or woman who wanted to prove themselves and give back . . . she respected all that. She just wished she could talk to him.
She wished she could ask him, “Daddy, do you know anything about magic?”
She was sure he would laugh, but it would be nice if she could ask him silly things and he would entertain the question. He wasn’t like that, though, and would probably break into a lecture that ended in trying to coax her back into college.
Her mother was definitely, certainly, absolutely not magical. She was a practical and strong woman, twice divorced, raising two kids on her own. There had been a stepfather when Kata was growing up, Kenneth’s father, but their mother had, in Kata’s view, not made space for him. It was as if Kata’s father had pushed her mother away, and her mother had then gotten revenge on the stepfather by pushing him away. That was how Kata saw it.
Kata had liked the stepfather a little bit. He was a mild-tempered man with a good sense of humor and not very tall. Kenneth was disappointed that he had inherited his father’s stature. But Kata, whose father was tall, and from whom she had inherited her own height of five feet, ten inches, thought it made the stepfather nicer. He didn’t lord it over other people or try to push his weight around. He really didn’t push at all but was patient, and the few times she talked to him, he listened. Like a friend.
That is why, after considering all her options for elders and mentors and even searching online where bizarre witch groups with kinky tendencies were listed–all of them white, too, that didn’t help–Kata decided that her ex-stepfather was going to be her mentor. He was the best person she knew for something like that, even if he wasn’t magical.
She called him Fred. Well, that was his name. He’d said from the start that he was just fine with that, and it felt comfortable to her too. So, Fred it was.
She just had to tell him about magic first.
He was sympathetic to her call, even with his own household of three young boys yelling in the background. Kata wasn’t sure if they were all his. She hadn’t kept up with his life but knew he had remarried and lived across town. Not too far to visit Kenneth. He hadn’t gone across the globe like Kata’s father. He’d taken pains to stay in the area and visit his eldest son.
“Kata, you know I’m here for you,” he said over the yelling. “Can I call you back in fifteen minutes? I’ve got something on the stove.”
He called back in ten, and Kata was relieved that he was focused now, fully listening and with no noise in the background.
“I sent the boys to the neighbor’s house,” he said. “What’s up? Are you in trouble?”
“Nothing like that.” She told him she knew she hadn’t always been the most forthcoming, but she had something she couldn’t discuss with either parent. “For some reason . . .” She stopped, unsure what to say, her voice faltering.
“You thought of me. Well, I’m glad, Kata. I always wanted you to think of me as . . . not your father, certainly not.”
“No, not that,” said Kata. She didn’t think of her father as a comfortable person anyway.
“More like a pinch hitter,” said Fred, and Kata remembered. That’s right. You’re a baseball guy.
She wondered why Kenneth didn’t try out for baseball then. But basketball was the cool sport; everyone knew that.
“Okay.” Kata laughed a little. It was so awkward. She almost hung up then but took a few breaths and held on.
“And you know, you can always pray to the Lord any time you’re in trouble,” said Fred.
“Ah. Hmm,” said Kata. She had forgotten Fred’s religious streak too.
But that wasn’t a bad thing, she reasoned. He meant well. She just wasn’t sure how to broach the topic of witchcraft with him.
“Speaking of the Lord,” she said, “you know how in the Bible, they had those miracles?”
“Yes, in ancient times,” he said.
“When they had those miracles, how do you think they figured out what was going to happen with them? Did they have a book of miracles, or did they have some place where they sat down and waited for one? How do you think they got them to work?”
He was silent a moment, but then he spoke, and Kata was relieved to realize he’d only been thinking the question over.
“Most of the time, they prayed,” he said. “Are you trying to get something to work out, Kata? Is it boyfriend troubles?”
“No, not anything like that,” she said. “But you know, Fred, I think that might be the answer. Thank you. That’s just what I’ve been looking for.”
Number four. Commit to your pantheon and develop a relationship with your chosen patron deity.
Kata slammed the book shut and flung it into a corner where the nose’s used Kleenex had been building up. She almost made a small fire out of it to heat her cauldron. Patron deity! Pantheon! It was bad enough that, according to Fred, she had to pray. She had tried several times. She was not good at it.
Only days later, when she still hadn’t burned the book, did she begin to consider the question in a serious way.
“Nesbitt,” she said to the nose (she had decided if it was going to hang around, it might as well have a name), “what do you think of pantheons and deities? What about daemons and spirits? Is there a nose god where you come from?”
The nose snuffled, and she got the feeling Nesbitt could hear her or at least smell some change in her demeanor.
She had studied various pantheons and tried to commit to various higher powers until late that night when, giving up in frustration, she decided to visit the corner store for some Cheetos and Red Bull. She loved cheesy things; her attempts to alchemize aluminum into gold continued to produce not gold bricks but cheddar cubes.
On her way back, shifting the giant bag of Cheetos and the Red Bull in her arms, she almost bumped into a short, squat figure who stood before her.
He eyed her with one blue squint eye, the other covered by some overgrown gray hair. He didn’t move as she struggled to hold onto both the Cheetos and the Red Bull, just stood there with his walking stick braced against the concrete sidewalk like he expected her to knock him over.
“Excuse me,” she said in a piqued voice, and he nodded.
“Wait here for me,” he said.
“What?” She had finally gotten a grip on the bag and clutched it to her chest. “Do I know you?”
“I know you,” he said. “I have a message for you from God. Wait here. I need to buy some beef jerky.”
Kata was still questioning her decision to wait by the time he had come back outside.
“Now then,” he said. “I’d invite you to my house, make tea, and all that, except for two reasons. Walk with me.”
She couldn’t see any immediate danger here under the street light and in public, so she walked along the sidewalk with him as he stumped along with his cane. He ripped open the bag and chewed jerky after offering her some.
“First, I can see you’re a little . . . shall we say, trepidacious about spending time with a person such as myself,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Fear. You have fear toward me, and I don’t blame you. A more powerful wizard there never was on 24th street.”
She couldn’t deny this was true–the fear part, not the wizard part. Who knew about that? So, she just nodded and hummed to herself.
“I assure you I mean you no harm, young witch. To prove it, we shall remain in open air. Also, because of the second reason.” Here, he emitted the most astonishing sound, a squeal that ended in a loud pop. Kata couldn’t see where it came from, but when he said, “The jerky–I’m sorry about that,” and fanned his behind, she groaned.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think it’s important we stay outside.” She grinned.
Balthazar–for that was his name–stationed them on a bench in the park, empty now after dark, and said, “Care to stay until midnight for the full moon?”
He produced from his layers of coats and sweaters and cloaks and lord knew what else, a thermos of hot tea and poured out cups of it for them to drink.
“I’m good.” She showed him the Red Bull.
“Good policy. Don’t drink tea with a strange wizard at midnight,” he said, then slurped his down.
“There’s no full moon out here tonight,” she said. “Also, wasn’t Balthazar a Black man? You’re white.”
“True,” he said, “but there are times, young witch, when a cloud can obscure what is behind.”
He held up his watch. The hands ticked up to midnight, and above their heads, the thick cloud cover swept aside to reveal a perfect golden moon.
“There it is,” he said, “Now, my message. God wants you to look closely where you don’t usually look. See things anew. Look inside yourself.” He cleared his throat, and the clouds swept before the moon again, blocking it out. The hands of the watch ticked to five seconds past midnight. “That is all.”
“Huh.” Kata didn’t know what to say. “Thank you, I guess,” she finally said.
“Not at all. You’re welcome, any time you have a problem or a question, to meet me here.” A mournful toot escaped as he shifted sideways. “I shouldn’t eat this stuff.”
“Meet you here? In the park at midnight? Is that what you’re saying?” Kata had started to come out of her shock, and now, she was merely stunned.
“In the park at midnight. On this bench,” he said. “I’ll bring the tea.”
“Okay . . .” She sighed. “Which god sent this message, anyway?”
Balthazar tore the jerky with his teeth and chewed. “Look inside yourself,” he repeated.
“You said that.”
“Well, try it. And thank you for your patience with me, Kata. I know that I’m old and eccentric and make people uncomfortable. You have been pleasant company nonetheless.”
Number five. Embrace your wild side.
According to the self-help book, she needed to do crazy things in the forest in the dark of night. According to Fred, pray, and according to Balthazar, look inside herself for God. It was all very confusing. Kata was disgusted enough to skip to the next rule since she darn well wasn’t going to dance in that park at midnight naked like the book suggested. Not now that she knew who sat on a bench there every night.
Number six. Establish a well-stocked and functioning lair.
Finally, one she felt on top of. Ignoring number five and trying to forget number four . . . and all the rest, really, she glanced around her lair in satisfaction.
“I’ve got this handled,” she said. “What do I need with deities and looking inside, and what is wrong with a dysfunctional familiar, anyway?”
Then her alarm went off, a red glow that lit up her entrance, and she knew something magical was in the external passage. When she checked, the faun sneered at her from his entrapped position. He held up a carved stone. “Don’t trust me?” he snarled. “I brought what you asked for.”
“Leave it and continue the quest,” she said in a stern voice, and he dropped the stone with a snort. As he turned to leave, the force lowering to allow him egress, he shot back, “A little trust between magical beings wouldn’t hurt. Then I would not have to share with your mother what I know.” And he winked.
Kata cursed after he left and wished she’d thought of something better to say when the faun was still in the trap. She picked up the stone and tried to read the scratches, but they were in an ancient sorcery language she hadn’t studied. She spent the rest of the evening studying memory erasure spells in case the faun made good on his threats to tell her mother.
The next night, she visited Balthazar in the park. She brought him a bag of beef jerky just in case he considered her disrespectful. He was her elder.
When she sat down, he handed her a cup of tea without a word. She took a giant swig and sighed.
“I’ve got problems,” she said and handed him a copy of the book she had been reading.
He went over it in silence for a few minutes before responding, “You’ve got problems, all right. This is an old edition. Most of this advice is out of date. I suggest you read Wizards Are from Jupiter, Witches Are from Uranus instead. That is, if you’ve got a thing for mid-90s self-help junk.”
She grinned at him. “You just made that up.”
He smiled placidly. “Yes, and I’ll probably make a bad joke about the Uranus part later as well.”
Kata decided she could tolerate it. The tea made her feel unusually calm, and as she peered upward, she thought she saw the midnight full moon peeking out between the clouds a little bit. Balthazar farted gently into the night.
“Here.” She handed him the black stone with the unreadable markings. “A faun gave me this. It’s one of the unknowable elements, but I can’t read it, so . . . you might as well have it.”
“Ah, yes.” He turned it over and over in his hand between taking bites of beef jerky. “I see. Did you look closely at this element, Kataklysm?”
She had to admit she had not. “What’s the point? It’s unknowable. I only sent him after them because they’re so difficult to find.”
“You should look at this one,” he said. “Look here instead of in the out-of-date book. And you keep it. I’ve got the jerky, which is more than enough.”
At home in her lair, she really scrutinized the stone, the scratches, the markings. She looked up the meanings of such markings but couldn’t find anything similar in her reference books nor on the internet. She held it before Nesbitt, but he didn’t sneeze once or even snuffle.
“Apparently, the answer lies in this stone,” she said and set it down on her spellcasting book. She looked aside into the book that Balthazar had rejected. There was that one last habit, and even if he said not to pay attention to the book, she wanted to know what it was. Maybe it said, “It’s fine not to know everything,” or “Mistakes are the best part of magic,” or something equally encouraging.
As she was opening it up to the last chapter, she glimpsed a flicker of movement on the lectern and turned absently to look. There, upon her book, in the stone’s glossy surface, she caught a perfect reflection of herself. The scratches surrounded her image perfectly, although a peaked witch’s hat had been outlined above her head.
“I’m the unknowable element,” she said in revelation. She thought it made a lot of sense. After all, who could understand the reason she kept conjuring cheese cubes out of old aluminum cans? If ever there was an enigma, Kataklysm Johnson was sure she was one.
So, she looked very closely into the stone. She didn’t know if this counted as looking inside herself. All she saw in the stone after that was her own dark brown eye, luminous in the center and slightly red from lack of sleep around the corners.
“God, are you in there?” she asked.
All that happened was she heard a flump behind her. The out-of-date book, The 7 Habits of Highly Magical People, had fallen open to the last chapter.
She stared at the last habit, the subject of this chapter, and started to laugh, deep and mirthful, at what it said. She laughed and laughed. She had a new mentor, she was handling her familiars fine, her lair was a good and solid lair, and everything was going to be all right.
Number seven. You make the rules.
Leslie Edens (she/her) grew up in New Mexico and lives in Bellingham, Washington. Usual hobbies include drinking coffee, hobnobbing with other writers, playing D&D, and riding a tiny ebike really fast. She writes far too much supernatural comedy, fantasy, horror, and science fiction, many self-published on Amazon. She is a freelance editor of genre fiction when she is not delivering packages all over Whatcom County. She’s currently writing a supernatural sci-fi horror series she likes to call Stranger Things meets Twin Peaks, entitled Above & Beyond.
Leslie’s short story “Old Punks Die Hard” was featured in Summer Solstice Issue: Life Expectancy.