The Twilight People

☽☾

        I get home on a Friday afternoon as the sun is setting. The front door is translucent with a wooden frame. A sign through the glass shivers in a draft and spins. First it reads OPEN, then CLOSED, then OPEN again, around and around and around. When I push the door open a bell jingles, high-pitched and dream-like.

        And there is the store, just as I left it last week. Rows of cluttered wooden shelving. Rugs hanging from the walls like tapestries. Candles everywhere, making the walls flicker as if on fire. There's jars of bones, jars of herbs, jars of liquid and mush I never want to identify. There's crystals of all sizes, shapes and colours. There's books, more books than I could ever count, piled on the floor, crammed into shelves, left open on tables and chairs and on the single staircase.

        And in the centre of the mess, my mother, sitting cross legged on a pillow, leant over a bowl of water and staring at the stagnant surface like it can tell her the future. She's told me it can. It can't.

        "Mum." I drop my duffle bag to the ground, my shoulder breathing a sigh of relief.

        Her head snaps up, brown curls dancing around her face. "Oh, honey, it's good to see you. How was the journey?"

        "You mean the train and 2 buses I took to get here?" I walk across the room and plonk down opposite her, my skirt fluttering. "Fine. Wouldn't mind a lift next time."

        "You know I don't believe in vehicles. How's your father?"

        "Mopey, as always. He misses you."

        She snorts and looks back down at the ever-unchanging water. "I'll never understand that man. We've been separated for years."

        "Maybe he needs to be sent a clearer message. Like divorce papers?"

        "Divorce is a very negative process. I won't associate with it."

        I sigh and let my eyes fall to the scrying bowl. They land on the water.

        "I don't know why we don't just try the spirits," Dad said once, after hours of scrying with Mum and seeing nothing.

        I, too, had had a scrying bowl before me – smaller than my parents', as I was younger then. "But just as potent," Mum warned me. Not that it felt potent. It felt like a bowl of water.

        Mum shook her head as the candlelight shook on her face. "I don't trust them."

        "What do you mean?"

        She hesitated then elapsed into speedy explanation. "You can't rely on them and they're fickle and sometimes they don't even have the answers."

        Dad is a medium by profession. He gave her a wounded look. "You don't trust me."

        "That's not it. Scrying is just more..."

        "Independent?"

        "Solid," she said forcefully.

        Mum takes the towel from my hands and mops up the spilled water. The scrying bowl lies upside-down. "The pillow will need to go in the attic," she says, holding it my general direction while she continues to limit the damage.

        "Why? It was just water."

        "It was scrying water. There could be all sorts of nasty energy in it. I don't want it anywhere near me."