Rowan Blaize and the Hand of Djin Rummy, Jonathan Kieran [the reading list book .txt] 📗

you was really looking at a burnt-up old piece of broccoli you never bothered to scrub outta that fry-bowl. The Broccoli Incident was more than a bit embarrassing, if you want to know the truth, especially since you got me all worked up about it and we ended up calling the entire fire department down on the south side of the city. When the fire chief asked you exactly where you’d first seen this ragin’ brush fire, you were so overexcited you forgot yourself and told him you saw it in the Chinese cooking pan! Gah. We had to employ actual Memory Dissipation spells on the poor fellow, or else we’d never have been able to live that one down!”

Gert pursed her lips and pretended not to be bothered too much by Letty’s dour skepticism, or by remembrance of the admittedly unfortunate screw-up with the broccoli floret that was supposed to have incinerated half of North Florida. Witches who are brave enough to pioneer hitherto unexplored expeditions into the paranormal possibilities of common cookware are bound to make mistakes once in a while, Gert figured. That was the price one paid for being a maverick. Besides, the wok had worked wonders for her on past occasions when she had peered into its smudgy depths to perceive any number of pertinent secrets unjustifiably withheld from her deserving curiosity.

Why, there had been the time only last year when one of the sweet old sisters of St. Joseph had wandered away from her room at the majestic convent just down the street on St. George and no one could find her. The entire town had been beside itself, seeing as Sister Mary Eusebius had a slight touch of dementia and was a frail thing no sturdier than a water lily. The wind might have blown the dear old soul most anywhere, but Gert had yanked the wok out from under the sink the moment she heard the news and muttered a particularly incisive spell in which the word “nun” was craftily paired with “on the run” and, not a few moments later, there was Sister Mary Eusebius, plain as plain, wedged between a chipped, life-sized statue of St. Anthony, with her habit snagged on a spoke of St. Catherine’s wheel, way up in some discarded statue room of the convent attic.

No one had ever entertained the notion that eighty eight year-old Mary Eusebius could make it up all those stairs into the most forgotten junk nook of the convent, but she had done so. Gert had promptly called the authorities to inform them that they could call off the citywide search, because Sister had somehow wafted upward on breezes unknown to be with the saints … the dusty wooden and plaster ones, anyhow. At the time, the whole city considered Sister Mary Eusebius’s rescue one of the feel good stories of the month, if not quite a miracle (little did they know), and even Letty had paid Gert a compliment, saying that it had been “a very ecumenical thing” for her to do, “what with helping out the Catholics and all.”

Gert now reminded her friend of that stir-scrying success and a couple of other select examples from past spellcraft involving the fryer. “I think this could solve your conundrum lickety split,” she said while pouring a stream of crystal clear water from Tarpon Springs out of a vial she had also brought from the kitchen. The liquid made a happy little splattering sound against the cast iron surface of the pan. Gert licked her lips with anticipation. Riddle solving was great fun, especially when she was the one using power to do the solving. Given the pain Letty was in, however, and the volatility of her moods even in the most tranquil circumstances, Gert was careful to explain that this was going to be a joint magical venture.

“Letty, you got the gift of Catastrophic Foresight,” she burbled pleasantly. “Anything disgusting, vile, and hideous ends up in your head when it comes to that.”

“Gee, thanks,” sneered Letty, adjusting her compress and peering doubtfully down her nose into the quivering little pool inside the wok.

“I don’t mean no offense, of course,” explained Gert. “But here’s where the two of us can use our powers in tandem to accomplish something crucial. Your head gets saddled with all manner of evil and filth, whereas my vision is occupied with things of beauty and day-in day-out practicality. If we combine our magic, I can pierce through the veils, as it were. I can work my side of things with what you’ve got to give me.”

Letty blinked, wearily. “What sort of spell are you fixing to cast in this particular instance?”

There were literally dozens, as both witches were aware—a slew of spells that could potentially be employed to achieve the desired effect.

“More to the point,” added Letty, “what sort of spell am I supposed to give you, so that our magic can work in tandem, as you say?”

Letty knew a few spells that fell under that description and was a little vague on the particulars; proactive divination had never been one of her enthusiasms, not when harrowing visions and forebodings tended to descend upon her out of the blue, with no extra effort required whatsoever.

Gert bent low over the table and blew gently upon the surface of the spring water. “Oh, you ain’t gonna need to use no spell, Letty.”

“But I thought you said we were going to work magic together to get to the heart of this.”

“We is. Or we are. I’m going to do the spell. Don’t worry. It’s a good one my Aunt Odina learned from old Baba Yaga when she was apprenticing as Baba’s housemaid back in the day. You just have to give me some of your magic to gaze through.”

“And how do you want me to do that without a spell of my own?” pressed Letty.

“Easy,” replied Gert with a colossal and sparklingly white grin. “You just have to spit.”

“What?”

“Hold your head back, clear your throat once or twice, and work yourself up the biggest loogie you can. Then give the thing a good ole hawk right into the water, see? But not too forceful that it splashes any liquid out of the vessel. That might damage the framework of the charm. It has to be the right amount of phlegm. Best if you let it just kinda plop gently into the wok, and then I’ll cast the enchantment and have myself a good look.”

Letty looked at her friend as if not quite certain which one of her ears she intended to smack first.

“Have you lost your mind entirely, woman? What kind of half baked, two-bit hedgewitch nonsense are you trying to put over on me? I’ve a good mind to send you out on an evening stroll down St. George wearing that wok for a bonnet, and nothing else but your knickers. Do you not realize how serious this predicament could be?”

“I absolutely do,” countered Gert, who was more than a little offended, given that she was trying to help out of genuine concern for her stricken sidekick. “I wouldn’t be going to all this trouble when my most favorite programs are on, one after another, tonight. Not if I thought this was some sort of joke. Really, Letty, you have always been a regular snob when it comes to using the really good, backwoods nitty-gritty my folks taught me when I was just an up and coming practitioner of the Unspeakable Arts.

“That’s right. You’ve always fancied yourself too good for the meat and potato, down and dirty aspects of the Craft, just because you happened to grow up in a big city amongst the type who sipped their nectar from pretty little cups and kept their pinky fingers stuck out straight in the air like they was ready to poke some poor slob’s eye out, if that slob was fool enough to get close to y’all, get right nearby as you sat around and talked about how much better you was than the rest of us. As you well know, Leticia Beauregard, I grew up in the woods, where we had to scrape and scrounge for every little bit of magical advantage we could get! We didn’t have them fancy spellbooks bound in unicorn leather and decorated with gold leaf made from the dust of dead faery wings. No, ma’am, we did not.

“When I was a tender-horn, we had to learn our hexes the hard way, just so we could keep ourselves from getting chewed up by certain kinds of faeries, swarming thick as mosquitos in them days, as I recall. We had to make our magic work with sticks and stones and scattered bones, while your folk were off fine-tuning your diction, and messing about with the most poetic ways possible to cast your spells. We didn’t have the luxury of poetry in the shadow of those big old broody mountains. We couldn’t waste our breath crafting epic chants when it behooved us to conjure up just enough wind to get our broomsticks off the ground while being chased by werewolf packs! Our ways were rough around the edges in the big woods, and they weren’t very pretty, but you knew you were a sorceress right down to the marrow when you could take a strand of some measly old spider’s web and stretch it out long and fast enough to wrap-up an entire gaggle of Wood Wart Ogres that had you cornered, and was about to club your brains out and scramble them up for lunch.”

“Oh, why was I born at all?” lamented Letty, but Gert was not to be thwarted.

“You make fun of my methods and cluck your tongue at the very notion of using a little sweat, blood, elbow grease, or spit to activate a spell, but let me tell you one thing: Old Baba Yaga didn’t think twice about stuff like that. She would stand up to an Ice Daemon as big as a hillside and you know what she’d do? She’d cackle that awful cackle of hers, hawk a spit-wad right in its eye from two hundred feet, and melt the no good thing down until it was flooding like a river around her boots! Ha! Let me tell you, honey, when ole Baba got to cackling in them deep woods and them beastly black mountains, the troublemakers would make tracks and dare not show their sorry faces again, if they knew what was good for them. Baba lived in a little cabin made of gnarly logs and had but one kettle for cooking, tea, and doing her laundry, and she never so much as stuck out a pinky when she swigged from her jug of liquor. That’s right. Baba never wore much but a tattered rag on her head, either, with burlap sacks for skirts, and she wouldn’t pluck the bristles from her facial moles for all the gold in a dragon’s trove, but she was mightier than mighty!

“You know what else? She stunk—stunk bad enough to clear a forest of every sensitive nosed creature for a two mile radius, but she never fussed with fancy spells. She’d just narrow her one eye, stomp that peg-leg of hers, and cackle. The job got done. My strain of witches didn’t have access to elite forms of magic, but what we did have were the no-nonsense wiles passed down to us through the tender mercies of Baba. She was probably the least fancy witch on earth, but the name of Baba Yaga struck fear into the hearts of rotten old kings who wouldn’t think twice about carving up their own children for supper! When it came down to hex for hex, fireball for fireball, shamble for shamble, and cackle for cackle, there ain’t many witches that live now, lived before, or shall come to live—in this world or any other—that could go toe-to-toe with Baba Yaga, my friend. You’re a skillful witch, Letty, and you’ve come