The Binding Witch and The Fortune Taker

The Little Victories

While we were busy cleaning up, the door closed with a soft sigh behind us and Mom shot me a knowing look.

I nodded. We had an illicit audience, it seemed. No one, besides the mother, was to witness the Binding. We would have to wrap up that loose end before we left.

We gathered our supplies. Clea removed all evidence of the binding: a copper bowl with the remnants of the charmed herbal infusion that inoculated the mother against any residual magic her child might have passed on to her in utero, and the roll of charmed silk used in the binding of the infant's powers.

These she packed in her carpetbag that looked about a hundred years old. It was one of those bottomless deals, where she could fit whatever she needed in it, as long as it would fit through the generous opening. I got lost in there once, as a child. But that's a story for another day.

I gathered the bloody sheets and towels and wished I had looked more closely at the box before I bought white garbage bags for this job. Nothing like the sight of blood against a white plastic before dinner to really whet your appetite.

I sighed and shook my head before I snapped off my latex gloves with a practiced movement that caught one inside the other, then turned them inside out so the bloody sides were tucked away. They went into the trash in the adjacent master bathroom. The other birthing paraphernalia got packed into a regulation stainless steel wash basin for sterilization at home, then into another garbage bag, then into a small cooler with handles.

The almost translucent garbage bag with the gory sheets and towels would go into the family's laundry room on my way out. I was sure we would hear about that later but what could I do? We were not to leave with their blood. Even the Bindan, who eschewed magic for a human life, knew what we could do with it. Not that we would, but they didn't trust us that far. Just far enough to bind their babies of magic every generation.

Mom slipped out of the room first. I followed her and closed it behind me, as if we were never there. That's our role in the Bindan Colony: to be silent, effective and almost never there. If we did our jobs right, which we always did, we never had to go back and re-bind a baby for this strange group of witches-who-did-not-want-to-be-witches.

Clea crept up and down the hallway, her peasant dress swinging on her small frame. "I think it was those two Bindan girls, Ella and Lily," she said, under her breath.

"Mom, they're my age," I said, in a conversational volume. If they were hiding, why should we be the ones who whispered? I glared down at her, which I could do at my height of five-ten.

"Excuse me, then," she glared back and continued to whisper. "Those two Bindan young women. Even if they're your age, they sure don't act like it."

"Thanks." I rolled my eyes. "But that probably has something to do with the fact that I grew up talking mostly to adults at the Renaissance Festival."

"And the fact that you're just not a whiner," she said.

"But Mo-om!" I whined.

She glared at me.

"Okay," I said, and smiled. "So tell me this. How do you know it was them?"

"I can smell them," she said.

I wrinkled my nose and took a deep sniff, then shook my head. "Nope, I got nothing."

"Oh, come on, Kate," she said, still in a loud whisper. "I saw them hanging around downstairs earlier, eating a bag of fruit chews. It smells like a candy shop exploded out here."

"I'm not getting it, but whatever," I said, and pointed to myself. "Hedge witch here, remember? I don't have your super senses." Someone with my heritage ought to be able to do actual magic - the real kind that comes from the inside. I do have a stronger than usual sense of empathy, which has no real connection to the practice of magic, in my opinion, and literally causes me headaches.

Clea glared at me and yanked open the upstairs linen closet door opposite Jessica's bedroom. "Being a hedge witch," she said, and secured the carpetbag's handles at her elbow before she plunged her hands into the dim closet, and withdrew two sullen and blond young women, "does not mean you get a free pass not to use the senses you were born with. You're being lazy, Kate."

I glared at her. Then the fruity candy on their breath hit me as they protested and I raised my eyebrows. I guess I could try harder to reach those stretchy goals.

The sound of female visitors flooded up the stairs to join the new mother and celebrate the birth of another almost human baby. I say almost human because, while the Bindan didn't want the magic that accompanied being a witch, they certainly didn't mind that the binding retained the hearty constitution that went along with it. Witches just weren't susceptible to the same kinds of colds and flus that afflicted humans. Me either, actually. So I guess there's that.

The muffled sound of footsteps on carpet grew louder as the Bindan women climbed to the second floor. Just outside the closet, Ella and Lily grew frantic.

"Don't let them catch us up here!" Ella said.

Clea glowered in her best threatening witchy glower. "You shouldn't have been watching." She was surprisingly strong for such a small woman and her little fingers tightened their grip on her captives as they tried to get free. "You know it's against the rules. Not my rules, but your people are very attached to them and I'm very attached to my job. No watching the witches work."

I rolled my eyes. As if the Bindan would fire us. Who else would bind their babies? Apparently, that reality was lost on the Lily and Ella.

"Please!" Lily pleaded. "We didn't see anything - "

"Much!" Ella chimed in.

Lily elbowed her. "Shut up!" she hissed.

The waves of fear that rolled off of Lily all but smacked me in the face and I sucked in a breath. Underneath, I felt their struggle against the life of quiet obedience to their god and families and their pain at such a restrictive life. A slow ache formed behind my eyes. Crap.

I don't normally get this much emotion off of others, as I'd learned to lock it out because of the accompanying migraines. Sometimes when I connected with someone, it just happened, regardless of my efforts to avoid it. Then, all those long practice hours carefully constructing mental walls? Poof. Empathy sucks.

Now I just wanted it to stop. "That's enough," I said, and broke my mother's hold on them. "Just let them go."

I shoved them both back into the closet, yanked Mom away, and closed the door just as the welcoming committee breached the top of the steps. They froze when they saw us. We were usually gone by now. This little detour cost us our stellar record of being invisible to the Bindan.

My mother's mouth fell open, then clamped shut at the sight of the women.

I winced as the pain stabbed at my frontal cortex, like tiny gnomes picking for gold, except in my brain. I wrapped a hand across my forehead.

Mom's eyes darted to my movement. She'd noticed my headache.

"We were just leaving, ladies," she said with a gracious smile. "If you'll excuse us."

Through the stabbing pain, I saw thinly veiled sneers at our presence and couldn't help but mess with them. I held up the bag of bloody towels and sheets that I (technically, my mom) could very well take home and use to extract their souls from their bodies.

Then, I winked.

Their eyes grew wide and they all pressed themselves against the walls to let us pass.

It's the little victories, really.

*****
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