The Honey Witch

Chapter XXV





Landing at Boston Logan, I immediately secured a train ticket to Baltimore, and took a cab to my sister, Nina’s, from the station.

“You look a shamble,” Nina informed me, spreading out her Rider-Waite deck in precise order across the Formica table, eager to read one’s journey whether one desired the information or not.

I have always found my sister’s kitchen an oddly comforting place, with all the charm of post World War II collectible nostalgia.

“When was the last time you shaved?” she wanted to know. “And you smell like a tramp. Go and shower.”

She is a pretty woman, my sister, Nina, in a folksy sort of way, with wide brown eyes and long sandy blond hair, which tends to lighten under the summer sun. She likes to read the Tarot and listen to jazz with her rather philosophic husband, Devlin, at a neighborhood bar not far from their brick townhouse.

“Thanks,’ I said. “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

“And throw those filthy clothes out!” she called from the kitchen.

“I didn’t have time to change!” I yelled back. “I left rather abruptly.”

And with extreme prejudice.

“What happened to you anyway?” she wanted to know.

“I can’t hear you!” I shouted, turning on the shower. “I’m running the water now!”

The hot water stung against the cut on my chest, a reminder that the night before had not been, in all its parts, some mere illusionist’s trick.

Don’t think of it. Don’t think of it. Put it away. Put it away or you will lose your mind.

In a fit of attempting to deny how truly wretched I felt, I quickly dried my skin with a machine dried towel, noting only momentarily how soft it felt, yet aware of an absence of sun and air in the weave.

I inspected the blackening discoloration beneath my right chest wall with cautious fingers. Perhaps I had only bruised the area and not cracked a rib in one of the several mishaps that occurred during the last 48 hours.

My jeans were stained with mud, my shirt torn and bloodied. I would toss them, as Nina advised. Changing into clean clothes, I flushed the remaining tranquilizers into the Baltimore septic system. I wrapped the empty prescription bottles in wads of tissue and stuffed it in the rose printed garbage canister. Looking in the mirror, I faced the full evidence of aftermath: bleary, bloodshot eyes and unshaven, pale fatigue. I brushed my teeth and used a good swish of the spearmint mouthwash from Nina’s cabinet. I helped myself to four aspirin tablets.

“Well, it’s an improvement anyway,” remarked Nina when I returned to the kitchen and sat down wearily at the table. “You’re not thinking about growing some kind of beard, are you?’

“I’m not planning to, no,” I told her, drinking in the sensory lull of the amaretto she poured into a coffee cup. “I’ll shave when I get back to Boston.”

“Are you returning to Prague, then?” she asked.

I leaned my chin in my hand. “In a week or two, maybe.”

“Where did you get the scratch over your eye?” she wanted to know, her eyes remaining on her cards.

“I don’t recall,” I said. “A missed tree branch, I suppose.”

She glanced up at me and laid down another card. “You don’t look well. Tired.”

“I am tired,” I agreed. “You still have the package I sent you?”

“On the side door of the freezer,” she affirmed. “What’s in it?”

“Just some random specimens,” I replied. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Curious, perhaps. I want Alan Hughes to take a look.”

“There is a woman,” said Nina, tapping her finger on the Empress card. “She appears three times.” Nina indicated the High Priestess and the Queen of Swords.

“And see the Moon card?”

“What about it,” I stated with a sigh.

“What happened while you were away?” she asked, holding up the card of the Hanged Man.

“Not a whole lot,” I lied.

“Did you find anything of note?” Nina then inquired.

“Not really,” I said. The amaretto tasted good, not strong, but good. “I did find an unusual root, though, and want Alan to look at it.”

“Why do you want Alan to look at it?” she asked. “Why don’t you look at it yourself?”

“Because, Nina, I want him to and because I’m tired,” I told her. “No great mystery.”

“No matter where you go, Ethan,” Nina said insistently, “you will never detach from whatever it is you won’t say.”

“I think your cards are a little off today,” I responded. “I have to go lay down. I really don’t feel well, as you say, and I want to catch a train back to Boston tomorrow morning.”

“Why don’t you stay a couple of days?” Nina offered. “We hardly see you anymore.”

“I want to get that package to Alan,” I said, “but I’ll see how I feel, ok?”

“Who is she?” Nina asked again. “She must have had a strong effect on you or you would talk about it. It’s me, remember? We’ve always told each other everything.”

“Not everything, Nina, surely,” I replied. “And I’m telling you, there is no woman. I didn’t have some clandestine affair, if that is what you’re getting at. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I’ve been on these brief sabbaticals countless times, some more interesting, some less, and this one was no different.”

“Some secrets are carried at great cost, Ethan,” said Nina earnestly. “The cards tell much.”

“Give it up, Nina,” I complained. “I need to go lay down. When is Devlin coming home?”

“After six,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “I’ll try to be up by then.”

“Mother sent some down covers from Denmark,” she informed me. “I put them in the spare room. They’re real soft.”

“That’s great, Nina,” I acknowledged exhaustively, finding the door to the spare room and falling face down on the plush Danish bedding.

“In the morning,” she called out, “We can all go out to breakfast.”

I was confident in my trust that Nina would fulfill my simple request in refrigerating the package sent to her unopened. After all, we had always been confidants, but not in everything. We have always trusted each other, but some things were unutterable. I would carry my secrets alone, despite oracles and disquieting intuitions.

But in my dreams, my subconscious mind replayed scenes of hidden groves and mystical filaments in dramatic, lucid display.

With a sensation of being restrained, I fought against the dark soil and the creatures tunneling there, until I awoke to find Nina and Devlin shaking me into consciousness.

“Ethan, it’s all right,” I heard Nina’s voice speak through the haze of images. “Ethan, wake up!”

I sat up straight, aggressively disoriented until my vision settled on the soft amber glow of a painted chimney lamp on the bedside table and the comfort of familial surroundings.

“What time is it?” I blurted out.

“Almost eight,” said Devlin, peering over his lowered reading glasses and who, like all aspiring academicians, favors the serious stance.

“Ethan,” Nina pleaded, sitting at the edge of the bed, “what happened to you while you were away? Who is Ana? Who is she?”

I felt an electrical sensation slide up my spine. “What?”

“You repeated the name, Ana, quite a few times,” explained Devlin curiously.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking off the residue of the dream images that mercifully faded with full consciousness. I fell back against the soft down comforter again.

“Is she the woman you won’t talk about?” asked Nina.

“It’s just dream babble, Nina,” I dismissed dully.

Although appearing doubtful, Nina smiled and said: “Devlin is opening a bottle of wine. We saved a late dinner.”





~*~