The Binding Witch and The Fortune Taker

Gearing Up

The trailer was lit up like Christmas in the dim light of early evening and I sped up my increasingly clumsy steps. My sudden lack of coordination concerned me. Was this a symptom or was I just tired?

I pounded up the trailer steps and burst through the door. Something delicious and chicken-smelling bubbled in the crock pot, but otherwise the trailer was silent.

"Mom!" I yelled.

No answer.

Crap. Was she back in her tent, telling fortunes? I should have checked there first.

The trap door in the small living room was closed and covered by the colorful braided rag rug, which is how we leave it in when no one is in the trailer. My eyes rested on a note in an empty bowl next to the crock pot, so I grabbed it.

Kate,

Sorry about the 'childish' comment earlier. You can pick at the table all you want. The Bindan have me on edge, but that's no excuse to snap at you.

Elder Wright called. Ella and Lily have a fever. I took Gringo with me. Be back later or I'll call. Chicken and dumplings in the crock pot. You're my life, Kate. Don't forget that. Everything I do is for you.

Love, Mom

For the second time today, I felt the blood drain from my face.

The note fell to the floor.

But Bindan women don't get sick. They aged and died like normal humans, but they just didn't get fevers. That confirmed this was definitely not your garden-variety virus.

Mom took Gringo because she suspects foul play and Gringo is great at sniffing out things that have latent magic. Things like the Madame Miri's talismans. The ones that are here, not miles away at the Bindan compound.

I grabbed my phone out of my back pocket, flipped to my favorites and tapped the number for the Bindan colony and left a voicemail message. Mom doesn't carry a cell phone, so this was the only way I could get a message to her. The Bindan Elder rarely answered, but always returned our calls. My heart raced.

A minute later, my phone brayed like a donkey. It was the ringtone I had set specifically for Elder Wright's number. I was not his favorite person and he barely tolerated me because I 'set a bad example' to the other young women, what with my jeans and T-shirts and opinions.

If he only knew what Ella and Lily were up to.

I tapped Answer. "Hello?"

"Wright speaking." A cool, deep voice answered.

"Elder Wright?" I hoped this was the one time I could have a civil conversation with the man who ran the colony. "Hi. Sir. It's, ah, Kate." I silently cursed myself for still being intimidated by him. "I need you to send my Mom home when she gets there."

"Why would we do that?" he said, his voice was stern and unyielding. "We just sent for her to help two girls who have fallen ill."

"Because what they have fallen ill from is right here!" I said. "She needs to get back here and-"

"You make no sense, girl," he said. "This is a simple cold."

I rolled my eyes. Did he not understand even the basics of how this worked? "Well, they're going to die from a 'simple cold' none of you has ever gotten, by the way, if you don't send her home immediately!"

"Young lady, you will-"

"I will kick your ass to Tuesday if you don't comply and you know I can, you big...big...jackass!" I yelled into the phone and hung up and stomped my foot.

It didn't matter if he didn't know I was only a hedge witch and the worst I could do was charm him to fall in love with his dog. As long as he thought I was a full-fledged witch like my Mom, well, hopefully he would be intimidated enough to pass on the message.

I flipped back the rug covering the trap door and threw my entire weight as a balance to pull it open. The thing was easily a hundred pounds. It creaked open and I set it down gently and ran down the steps to the workshop.

I needed supplies, for sure, but what? I followed the practice my mother used when working out a spell to solve a problem. I pulled a yellow legal pad off the cluttered shelf and listed what I knew:

One: My mother can detect other witches, and she didn't detect Miri, therefore M. Miri is not a witch.

Two: If M. Miri is not a witch, she has to be using a talisman to do whatever it was she did to Lily, Ella and me.

Three: M. Miri has a talisman: the silver coins.

Four: M. Miri may have killed four people with her talismans.

Five: There might be a whole lot of dead people here soon.

Me included.

I gulped.

My stomach churned as I ticked off the symptoms I observed in the humans: weakness, confusion, and general craziness. Lily and Ella had nausea and fever. Were their symptoms different because they were witches, albeit bound ones? Which symptoms would I develop?

Why would Madame Miri do this? I scanned the bookshelves for anything that shouted, 'I have the answer!' but nothing jumped out at me. There could be information in Mom's journal, where she kept all of her important notes on magic, but I knew I'd never find it. That thing was triple-charmed from prying eyes and even if I stumbled across it, it would probably just show me fish sauce recipes or something like that.

I flung the yellow notepad across the room. If Mom were here, she would know exactly what to do. I don't even know if my destroying the talismans would stop the progression of symptoms...sometimes that made the change permanent.

This was a waste of time! I needed to know what the talisman did and how to undo it before things progressed beyond the point of no return.

After all, nobody uses a talisman to impart sunshine and unicorns. They are usually made to guard and protect against evil, but they can often be twisted to be offensive in nature or to achieve a certain goal for those who wielded them. What was Madame Miri's end game?

Before I lost my nerve or developed a weird tick, I scrawled a quick note to Mom and started to gear up to find my answers.

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