The Magician's Witch

Reverie

Grumpy and tired, Eilis trudged up the stairs to her above-the-garage apartment, flicked her hand towards the lamp on the table which lit up, hung her damp coat on the door handle of the closet, and proceeded to flop down on the bed with a huff.

She ran through the conversation again, the broken record spinning round and round in her head. Nancy and Eilis butted heads all the time, even when she wasn't unintentionally two hours late coming home. Eilis had given up trying to bridge the gap between her aunt and her years ago. When she had first arrived at the Craven household as a surly ten-year-old, she had made a terrible first impression upon her mother's sister. Since then, they orbited around each other, keeping their distance like planets maintaining their path, never crossing.

Mam.

Nancy and Eilis' mother, Maeve, had been very close as girls. They could have passed for twins, except Maeve had been two years older than Nancy and wild as the wind, while Nancy preferred order and predictability. They had even married men with similar traits—Eilis' father and Uncle Matthew were the kinds of men who were cool, calm, and collected in high-stress situations. He had been her ally against Nancy a number of times and acted as a referee the rest of the time. He chalked up their tenuous relationship to a difference in character, and did his best to temper the situation whenever he could.

Eilis sighed, shutting her eyes. But before she could drift off, her phone buzzed. Groaning and turning on her side, she reached for her phone which lay on the bedside table. The locked screen read DAWN.

Creepy psychic she uttered mentally. She slid the green Answer button across the screen and hit the speaker button.

"Yes?"

"So, I heard you ran away or something," Dawn's voice needled gently.

Eilis rolled her eyes. "No, that's not what happened. What, did you have a vision or something?"

Dawn chuckled. "No, Collin texted me a couple of hours ago. He said you were late coming home, and that Mom suspected that you had defected, running off to join the circus. Is everything ok?"

Eilis sighed. "Yeah. Fine."

"Liar." Dawn could always tell when she was holding back.

"I went deep into a trance and lost track of time," Eilis confessed. The first time it had happened, it hadn't been a big deal. She thought she was having a lucid dream, only to find after she came out of it that she had been half awake the whole time. She had just shrugged it off and moved on.

There was a beat of silence on the other end. Then, "What did you see?"

Eilis gulped, feeling the emotion creeping in. "My mam."

It didn't matter how long she had lived in the United States; some words were too ingrained in her vernacular to change. Most of her brogue had faded with time, only to make itself known when she was agitated...or drunk.

"I saw our house. I saw Da, too. I think my recent visit there exacerbated old wounds."

More silence.

Eilis could almost see Dawn's mind ticking through the possibilities.

"I think you're right. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something," Dawn said haltingly, picking her words carefully. "Your mind is trying to redress and fill in the holes like missing pieces of a puzzle."

"Thank you for that insight," Eilis said, her tone mildly sarcastic. "That was sort of the whole reason behind going back. But, of course, my father's brother was a right twa..."

"Eilis," Dawn chastised.

"Well, he was," Eilis shot back. "He wouldn't even talk to me, except to threaten to call the police on me."