I always knew Grandma Lysa was a bit ... off.
Other grandmothers tell their grandchildren fairytales. Grandma Lysa told me stories about when she was young and traveled the world. She spoke of the wonderful, unimaginable things she had seen and done and a light shone in her eyes, that told you every word was true.
"Cassie", she said, "never trust a Lutin unless you know his true name. Never speak to a Jengu when she can see you. Never eat a Naga's food unless she eats first. Always bow to a Djinn before you open your mouth. And most importantly: always have faith in yourself. For you are born of great and ancient blood."
When I was little, the other kids laughed at me when I told them Grandma Lysa's stories.
When I grew up I laughed at her when she told me.
Then, on a cold and rainy November day, she died and left me the key to a world I no longer believed existed: a hideous carpet.
It had been lying on the living room floor for as long as I could remember, old, a little shabby but also mysterious and fascinating. Just like Grandma Lysa.
And now it was mine. My first impulse was less than enthusiastic. What was I to do was the old thing? I told my mother to keep it where it always had been. She got the house, why not the carpet to go with it?
But she flatly refused. "It is yours", she told me in that tone of hers that brooked no argument. "Throw it away if you don't want it. But it cannot stay in the house that is no longer hers."
But I couldn't bear the thought of throwing away the only thing my beloved grandmother had left me. The carpet was quite heavy, so by the time I had dragged it up to my tiny apartment on the fifth floor of a building with no elevator I was quite exhausted.
After I had moved my mismatched furniture out of the way and rolled the carpet out in the middle of my single room, I lay down and closed my eyes.
"You know", I told it, "at the very least I would have expected a carpet that belonged to Grandma Lysa to fly up here on its own."
I gave a little scream when it rose from the floor and hovered in midair.
"What the hell ...", I managed, holding on to its sides for dear life. As if in answer to my witty remark it flew out through my apartment's only window. That of course opened itself. After having been stuck for the better part of a year. Out it flew through the driving rain and out and out into the world. I didn't know yet, but it would help me become who I really was: Cassiopeia, granddaughter of Lysistrata Willoughby, the greatest witch of the western hemisphere.
