At first I thought I was witnessing myself going crazy. I knew it was going to happen sometime. It is probably my greatest fear. I'm seventy-four in a nursing home. Chances are dementia or Alzheimer's or senility are going to set in soon. So when I wished the curtains would open when I was still laying in bed, and they did, I understandably freaked out. It's not something that can happen by chance or be explained by science. One minute they were closed, the next, they slid open right before my eyes. The problem with these occurrences, these "ghastly" experiences, is they all sound so insane, until it happens to you. Suddenly you go from a sound skeptic to a fearful dissenter in the space of a heartbeat. As I laid there, silently astounded, I truly didn't know what to think, for maybe the first time in my life. Every strange probability, every wild speculation, became potential. It's a small wonder I didn't have a heart attack after that shock.
Still, I couldn't let my worldview be shaken. I was old and set, and I was resigned to my position, weird happenings or not. I still had my faculties, I said to myself, feigning a semblance of dignity, but really shouting into the wind. I wouldn't realize how jolted I was until that night.
I had a dream. Have you ever had one that seemed so real that when you woke up, you confused it with real life? Well this was beyond that. So far beyond that I would go as far as to say it *was* real. I was sitting in a chair, in an entirely black chamber. There were no walls, no endings, no perimeter, but it felt like a small box of darkness. Then out of it came a middle-aged woman. She couldn't have been older than 40, dark-haired and hazel-eyed. She was shocked to see me. I found out later it was because I was so old. She briefly talked to me, but I remember every word, and I know I will until the day I'm gone. Her brevity was astounding, considering the situation. She told me that she has powers, but she was passing on. Those powers would come to me now. There are forces beyond our control and comprehension, a sovereign momentum, that puts forth a wave of action that we can fight against and be dashed against the shores of cause, or succumb to it and flow into destiny. I thought the whole thing was very obtuse.
After my incident with the curtains I began to have more things happening to me daily. Some familiar, and some against the curve. A black cat wandered in from my window one day. I was sure I had closed it the night before, but as soon as I swung my feet off the bed, it hopped up onto the sill and sat there, staring at me. It was still there when I came back from lunch, and it spoke to me. It told me it was here to guide me. That's when I knew I was going crazy, and I went to sleep in the common room, because I knew they would put me to bed and I wouldn't have to face the talking cat in my bedroom.
The cat began to follow me, and I continued to exhibit behaviors not unlike the minor miracle of me opening my curtains.
I'm an old woman but I like to keep my room tidy. Sweeping is a comfort for me, and I was casually collecting the dust from around my room. One of my sweeps missed and I was astounded. You old fool, I thought to myself, you actually missed the ground. But then I missed again and I looked around and realized why. I was gripping the broom tight, and it was suspending me a few inches in the air. When I noticed, it was as if I reminded my mind that I can't do that, and I slowly drifted back down to earth.
This isn't one of those storybook nursing homes where I hate it and everybody sucks. I like it here and there are a lot of good, nice, and earnest people. When word got out I had been talking to my cat, thankfully they just thought what I initially thought. That I had gone crazy. It was extremely nice to know that they thought I was a literal crazy cat lady and nobody treated me any differently. Sure, I had a very weird reputation afterwards, but Greg still played ping pong with me after lunch and didn't say a word about it. Tina still knocked on my open door every other day to get me for coffee (although she did start drinking it black because "all the milk here goes sour fast.") Marie would actually ask how my cat was, and I think she believed me when I said that it talked to me. Didn't bat an eye. I don't know if it's a testament to old people in general, or if they were just good friends. Maybe a little bit of both, but I was happy for it. Things were getting weird, but still looking up.
I'm a quick study. I'm old, but I'm still right of mind and quick-witted enough to pay attention to what is happening around me. I've read stories about this growing up. I watch it in popular media. I wasn't as dumbfounded as most would have been. The curtains, the cat, the broom, the bad milk, the dream. I knew what it all meant. I had become a witch. At seventy-four.
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Call me cliché, but I came to calling the cat Renaldo. It's the name of my favorite cat from the Miyazaki film The Cat Returns. I never had one before, but I remember thinking how much I liked this cat when I saw it, so it felt natural. He told me he already had a name, but that he didn't mind. He smiled at me. Cats don't smile with teeth, and they always do so with their eyes closed. It's really comforting. Until now I didn't know much about witches, and I still don't. They use a very strange vernacular for everything and it feels quite obtuse. I find myself hesitating to use the terms. Renaldo is supposed to be teaching me, but I just call him my cat, or my cat buddy, or Renny or Renaldo. He says he is my familiar, and that's one of the terms I won't latch on to. When you hear "witch" and "familiar" and "spells" you think only of malevolence. I'm the same person I have always been, I've just gone through something. Furthermore, something entirely out of my control. I am the same. Only now I can do different things. Magical and perhaps mystical things, but it doesn't change the personality I have come to know as myself for the entirety of my life.
I would have been lost without Renaldo. It turns out most of what we know about witches has been carefully cultivated and delivered by witches themselves so as not to reveal secrets or something all cloak-and-dagger like that. I don't subscribe to the idea myself, but they apparently give witches a lot of autonomy so I'm allowed to just be. Magic is far more powerful and esoteric than you can ever guess. It is more a feeling than a power. You alter the world around you with mental prowess. It is completely beyond comprehension to a non-witch.
The most favorite trick that Renaldo showed me I can do is read tea leaves. It's quite wonderful. I can tell a person's fortune. The mediums you see doing this in stores or for friends are all crazy people or party tricks. That stuff is most assuredly made up. But I can tell. The same way I can levitate on a broom or bend the wind to my will or make a drink that will change how you act. I get this feeling when I read the leaves that is what I think is really and truly magic. To be able to divine.
I was and still am unsure about this whole thing, but it has brought me connectivity, at the very least. I can hear the wind, and blades of grass whisper to me. Ebb and flows of waterways bring news to my window. Animals look at me and they know I can control things. They look at me as if a stranger would when you both see someone slip on ice and look around for acknowledgement.
What I didn't realize until it was beyond morbid, was that with each passing moment I became more forlorn. Suddenly I had all I ever dreamed of, and nothing to do with it. Renaldo told me that witches live longer. I have at least 100 more years in me, most likely much more. For what? What have I got? I'm in a home. I have friends here but nothing solid. Nobody to truly depend on or form a connection with, or even someone that I like more than an acquaintance. Even the things I at first thought were fun and neat have fallen to the wayside very quickly. I don't even use my magic anymore. There is no point. I'm wasting away.
It went on like this for a long time. At least I think it was a long time. I don't keep track of the days, I just sort of try to change my routine so it doesn't feel like I'm a caged animal. I suppose most caged animals don't mind it. The dumb ones. When you cage a smart animal they go crazy. Birds and dolphins and rats. They only have four walls and their thoughts, which eventually leads to the same thing. The bad thoughts. Focusing on your mortality. Your essence. Your being trapped.
I suddenly had all the freedom in the world and I have never felt more confined. I was alone in the world and in a place I didn't know I hated until I was given another option. All the stories I knew about witches say they found out when they were a teenager. They usually did two things: they used their powers to impress a boy, and they ran away. I haven't tried to impress a boy in 50 years, so I did the only other option.
I forced out a cryptic goodbye to the people I thought might miss me. I didn't want them to worry, but I think they thought I was talking about dying. About my own death. Oh well. I can't control how they think. And so there I was, an old witch on a broom, flying in front of the moon with her talking black cat. About as typical as it gets.
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My search for wisdom, answers, and the witch who could give them to me was brief, by all standards. I didn't get any sort of witch intuition or radar, but I think I did inherit some luck, so there is that. I would fly at night, along the countryside, until I got hungry, and then I'd find a farm or a cabin or a house with no lights on and I'd take some of their food. Not the most noble of deeds, but I couldn't even think properly at this point. I didn't know how to be a witch and I didn't have the tenacity to be creative. I would stockpile food when I could and I'd fly into open third story barn windows and sleep there. It would have been enjoyable if I didn't feel like a homeless wreck. After what I would guess was a month and a half of this I landed at a cabin with a light on. I had never done this before but there was an actual lantern sitting on the window sill and there was a white cat sitting next to it. I could feel it following me with its eyes and I couldn't tell what it meant but I could feel that it meant something. I circled around a few times and then decided to land directly at the window. The cat immediately spoke to me and I fist pumped on the inside for being totally right. I must have not entirely hidden my excitement because this cat raised it's eyebrow at me. What it said was:
"You know you're not very inconspicuous."
I retorted "Who cares? Is there a witch in there?"
"You're not very well mannered either. I'm Marlo."
"Hi Marlo. I'm going in."
I didn't have time for pleasantries. Cats are mostly aristocratic it turns out. All pomp and etiquette and grace and no flavor or zest. I think it makes the witches more uptight but they can't train me. I already know who I am.
There was a witch inside with a cauldron brewing. I immediately started laughing. The whole thing is so fantastically monotonous. Witches act like they've all been taught to act, it seems. She had some mild potion in there to help mushrooms grow or something silly like that. I spoke at her as soon as she noticed me.
"Hey can you tell me what this is all about?"
She was taken aback at my candor and age, but to her credit she forged ahead very gracefully.
"What *what* is all about, deary?"
I didn't like being patronized so I called her out.
"Deary? I could be your mother."
"Oh. You really are new to this. The agelessness hasn't set in yet. Do you have a name?"
"Meredith. You?"
"Charla."
"Did you rename yourself?"
"Born with it. If I had to guess, Meredith, I'd say I was at least 85 years older than you. No matter. Ask away, we'll get this over with quickly if you please."
She looked young and exuberant. She explained a lot of the basics. The magic will smooth me out and make me feel youthful. There is no real code to follow, but if you step out of line you will be reprimanded. They can't take your powers, and you don't lose them until you pass. You choose a successor before then. People will show me the way.
With all the boring stuff out of hand we got into my important questions. The stuff that was really bugging me. The stuff all the stories gloss over. The meat of it.
"I don't want it." I said, matter-of-factly.
"Too bad. It happened. Why not try making the most of it?"
"I'm an old woman. My family is gone. I'm all alone. I was ready for the final steps of life.
Now I'm all twisted. I'm going to live for a very long time with very annoying rules and I'm still alone. I was done. That was it. I don't want to do this. I want to feel more connected with the world, not apart from it. I don't want this."
"But you are more connected. Literally. The wind is at your beck and call. You are not bound by gravity. You can see things others cannot dream of."
"But how? Why?"
"That is not for us to say. Who knows why or how anything happens, truly? This is your chance to be part of something bigger than yourself. To connect to the world around you in a way most people will never have a chance of achieving. And I don't mean the planet. I mean your whole world. Your body and your entire sense of being. You don't have to make sense of it, you just have to live it. Do your best."
"I don't know how. What am I going to do? Conjure spells and make potions and fly and talk to a cat? It's a young person's game, I'm not equipped."
"You are younger than me."
"Maybe in numbers but not in mind. I lived my whole life like a regular person, not a witch. You don't think about things the same. I had a husband, I had a kid. I worked my whole life. I was wasting away in a home. I don't want a second lease, there is nothing left for me. I'm beyond all that."
"You are beyond nothing. To squander something like this would be to spite the less fortunate. You cannot live your life dwelling on your past. They are just things, like anything else, and they fade in time, as all things do. If you allow yourself to be controlled by your past then you are a fool, and if you are willfully a fool, then you have already given up, and death will most assuredly come for you without you supplying effort."
"Jesus you're forward. And morbid."
"Oh? More morbid than you? Please leave."
"Hey wait a minute. Just tell me how to stop being a witch."
"Listen closely, I already told you. You can be aware of the past and not be a slave to it. You have been chosen. It happens at random. The same way a spore does not choose its host. The same way a snake does not choose its next meal. The same way a leaf ages and is sent on the wind. The same way a cloud fills the space in the sky. Opportunity has arrived, and you must embrace it."
"I was ready for the end. I can't do this. I'm all alone. I'm old. I'm.... scared."
"If you could only choose between being entirely lonesome on the frontier of creation, or being dead, it becomes an easy choice. Some choices are harder, but there is always a choice. Submit to the choices and you can guide yourself. Fight them and be crushed under the weight. A choice within a choice. Either way, life goes on, days continue marching, and you along with it. Will you be a friend to time or be made a simpleton in it's wake? You have always had fear, girl, and look where you stand: triumphant on a pile of dirt and ash and bone. You don't have to learn our ways, you don't have to be a part of anything you don't want, but to be given a wondrous gift and return it for fear of what might be is a crime against nature. Now leave, I wish to conjure spells and make potions and fly and talk to my cat."
After I left her place I looked for emotion, spirits. Awakening. Whatever I could happen upon. I spent months in a forest watching a single flower every day. Keeping an eye on it as it grew, and eventually it's blooming. I watched it the whole process. I drank from rivers and ate berries and plants I happened upon. I started meditating. I would do it for a few minutes, then a few hours. I meditated until time became comfortable. Time altered itself after a while. Not really and truly, but I felt time differently than I ever had before. If I was indoors, it happened after midnight. It no longer felt like a day or a time or a moment, but it was a dimension. A place apart from time that existed with different feelings and emotions. Indoors after midnight was trapped in a library: dimly lit and alone with all the knowledge you could imagine. Overwhelmed with knowledge. More books than there are stars in the sky or drops of water in the ocean. It was a maze of corridors in an empty but lived-in castle. Tapestries and banners only party visible by the light of the candles and lanterns. Shadows bouncing around large brown stones as you can only walk, stunned, through the massive hallways. It was a one room cabin on the edge of a precipice, sat in front of a roaring fire in a cozy fireplace. Wrapped in blankets and the steam of a hot drink straightening your back. If you were outside, this happened at twilight. When the lights in the sky changed from light to dark or when they changed from dark to light, nothing existed except colors and clouds and the imagination of the endless sky and every bit of starlight that touched me. The shimmering dark stretches on forever and you are a smudge of paint on a deep black canvas. You are a drop of ink on a blanket of stars. You are a blinking red light on the top of a mountain in someone's dream. You are the image of some coveted animal, brought to life by the squints and dreams of the hopeful. You are a cascade of swirled colors above and below. You are the moment in between asleep and awake, when your mind isn't sure if it's still dreaming or thrust back to reality.
That was enough for then. It was a brilliant time but there is more to what I want than a dreamscape or a fairy tale or some sort of forced enlightenment. That statement itself made me think. Is there more to what I want? I had a lot already. I had everything I thought I wanted. Then I had nothing.
But....
I have something again. Something really special. I took it for granted because I had given up. My past ruled me for so long. I wasn't living then, I had lived and I was remembering my own story, somberly, bitterly, and without vigor. The past is fickle. The past can be wrong. It's only as strong as we allow it to be. I don't want my past to be a giant glaring reminder of things I wished I had done differently or traumas that altered me forever. They are just things. That's right. I have new things now. Things that, when I think about, make me laugh like an idiot, but also have given me a purpose even before I knew I had one. I was out and moving and doing before I knew why or where or even what.
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"Ms. Alfaro! What does this word mean?"
I couldn't help but laugh at the irony. He was pointing at a word in a book called 'Moon Magic.'
"Bruja means witch, Manuel," I said and patted him on the head. I spun him around gently by his shoulders and urged him back to his desk.
They were sullen and angry today, annoyed by the weather. None of them had opened their textbooks yet, quite unlike themselves.
"I thought you said we could go outside to study today," they piped up in one form or another.
"The weather isn't too great," I retorted.
They all moaned and let out audible disdain and some even slumped down and the worst of it were the ones who put on the grumpiest face they could muster. I looked over at Renaldo, also angry that he didn't have a warm spot to lay in this afternoon, and he smiled at me. I couldn't help it. I'm a sucker.
I reached into my pocket and gripped my wand, as discreetly as I could, and flicked it to and fro. The dark clouds started pushing out of view and before long, big, bright rays of light shone in through the windows. Their heads started to turn and almost in unison they looked at me, full of breath and youth and eyes bright with excitement.
"Well what are you waiting for? Grab your things. It looks like there is Sun beyond the clouds after all."
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