The Witch's Promise (3 page)

Jillian somewhat reluctantly put her cards away. "You're in luck. It's not far at all, and there's a bit of a path that heads that way. I can show you."

"I'd rather not impose ...."

"Don't worry. I know this area like the back of my hand, and I usually take a walk after dinner."

"Okay, thanks. But I'm driving you back here once we get to my car."

"Deal."

Jillian spent a few moments hunting through her closet for something John could wear against the cold, but nothing was going to fit. She was tall but thin, and John was a big-chested man with long arms.

"There is the cloak," she said with a smile. "It might do you good."

"Now that I've dried off a bit, I don't think I'll be cold."

"C'mon, John. As a favor to me?" This was clearly fun for Jillian, and embarrassing for John, which spurred her on. John didn't want to fight about it. Besides, no one would see them in the woods. He laughed, put on the cloak and the two of them headed out into the night.

The damp, cold air brushed against his face as sudden gusts rattled the trees. John was thankful for the cloak.

The woods were almost completely dark, but Jillian picked her way through several bits of trail like a forest ranger. At one point they had to stoop through a thicket of Laurel and Jillian led John by the hand to the other side. Something about the cool air, and the events of the night, and wandering in the woods with a ... was she a witch? He wasn't sure. And wearing a cloak! It conjured the strangest images in John's mind.

They emerged from the thicket in a clearing, or perhaps just a very wide path. The moon suddenly shone from a patch of clear sky and fell on Jillian's face. She was still holding his hand.

They kissed. John felt every cell in his body light up like some phosphorescent creature of the sea, but at the same time the world seemed to slip away into a haze, as if he were living in a dream.

CHAPTER THREE

"Ah, Susan. Just the person I was looking for," John said as he stowed his bag lunch in the office refrigerator.

"That sounds promising, but it's not even close to quitting time?" she replied in her typical manner.

"Uh ... right," John said, always trying to keep from sounding even remotely flirty with Susan. "What do you know about tarot cards."

John expected a reaction to such an off the wall question, but Susan acted as if it was just as natural as asking about lunch. She fingered the pentagram medallion that hung around her neck, as if searching for inspiration, then said, "And what makes you think I know anything about tarot cards?"

Because you're the office flake,
John wanted to say, but he was momentarily distracted. He suddenly noticed a superficial resemblance between Susan and Jillian. He hadn't seen it last night at Jillian's house, but it was plain now. Susan was slightly shorter and ever-so-slightly more attractive, but they seemed to be built from the same model, and their faces had some common characteristics.

Susan misinterpreted John's gaze.

"So what's got into you today?" she said, relishing the attention.

"Sorry." He shook his head as if recovering from a daydream. "I just noticed how much you look like a friend of mine. No, not a friend. Someone I met last night."

"This is getting better by the minute," she said. "And she's got you interested in tarot cards, huh? Did you go visit Madam Matilda for a palm reading?" Susan laughed. John couldn't help comparing her laugh with Jillian's, which he could still hear in the back of his mind. Jillian's laugh sounded innocent and almost childish. Susan's laugh seemed artificial, as if a habit of forced, unnatural laughter made the spontaneous guffaw sound awkward.

"Almost," John admitted. "So what can you tell me?"

"Nearly nothing. The serious folk use them for lots of different things, but most people don't have a clue how to read them. It takes a lot of practice. I'm not into the card thing myself. Sorry. But what's the story here? John, the office skeptic -- the serious guy who wears a tie on casual Friday -- is suddenly interested in tarot cards. I've got to hear more." She hoped a slightly seductive smile would add persuasiveness to her plea. It had the opposite effect on John. He wanted to end the interview as quickly as possible.

He shrugged and gave her an uninspired and woefully inadequate account of his evening. Susan took the clue, made a cursory good-bye and headed down the hall. John hurried back to his office, finished up his morning work early, loaded some internet articles on Wicca onto his iPad, then took his bag lunch to the park.

*              *              *

That Friday night, Jillian directed John to her favorite Chinese restaurant in Bowie, which was on the outside of Freestate Mall. John's expectations for decor in a Chinese restaurant were fairly low, but this one was actually quite pleasant. A small rock garden, complete with a waterfall and several goldfish, sat next to the entrance. The water poured over a small figurine of a Chinese gentleman at work in the fields.

Next to the garden sat a pair of marble elephants. A little girl tried to ride one while her embarrassed father attempted to get her off. The frazzled parent finally thought to distract her with the salt-water aquarium a few feet farther into the restaurant. The anemones, urchins, corals and several beautifully colored fish of different varieties kept the human urchin occupied for several minutes.

John noticed another aquarium just behind the bar, through which he could see the back part of the restaurant. A minute later the hostess ushered them in that direction. He admired the large, Chinese urns placed conspicuously around the room -- on top of the piano, on a pedestal, or on other flat surfaces. Two colorful Chinese gowns were suspended on the wall, like tapestries, next to four-stringed musical instruments. It seemed that wherever he looked he saw something unexpected, but it fit together perfectly and created a nice atmosphere.

The hostess seated them in the smaller, raised, back room of the restaurant; the one he had seen through the aquarium behind the bar. The walls in this room were decorated with huge fans, not unlike the hand fans you might win at a carnival by knocking down three milk cans, except that these were exquisite.

John ordered a Chinese beer; Jillian a glass of plum wine. After she ordered a tofu dish, John wondered aloud if she was a vegetarian. She shook her head and poured them each a cup of tea.

So what do you talk to a witch about? he wondered. He wanted to ask her about Sean. What had gone wrong, and why? But that wasn't good first date material. Although he knew the received wisdom that it wasn't wise to talk about current events or politics -- on the theory that you might mess up a perfectly good date by finding you were incompatible -- John considered that theory exactly backwards. If she was some kind of a nut -- beyond being a witch, that is, he suddenly realized .... Well, in any event, he wanted to get it out in the open from the start. No sense getting attached to somebody only to find out that it's a dead end.

So John brought up some of his favorite topics: zero-tolerance policies in the schools, extreme feminist ideas -- which, in John's opinion, accounted for almost all feminist ideas -- and radical environmentalism. He pushed some of his rhetoric a little further than he actually believed, just to see how Jillian would react. He was particularly surprised that Jillian shared his conservative views on sex and marriage.

She passed his tests with flying colors, neither politely demurring -- John hated that --
if you're not willing to discuss opinions, what good is it to have a brain,
he thought -- nor agreeing or disagreeing too much. She had her own opinions, wasn't afraid to defend them, and, best of all, wasn't offended when other people didn't share them.

Through dinner and a couple drinks they perused the cultural landscape and found a lot of the same demons: sitcoms and hip-hop music and those weird adolescent gestures that had worked their way into every commercial. John would have liked to stay longer, but he knew the table was a source of revenue for the restaurant, and it didn't seem fair to monopolize it. He picked up the tab and they stepped out into an unseasonably warm evening.

"Can we take some back roads and lower the top on your car?" Jillian asked as they got to John's convertible. "We won't have many more warm evenings like this."

John smiled and offered Jillian his arm.

*              *              *

They wended their way back to Jillian's home and she invited John inside.

"Can you get some wine and glasses from the kitchen? Thanks," Jillian said. "I'll put on some music."

As John tried to guess where the wine glasses were hidden he heard a haunting tune softly playing in the other room. It was instrumental, and reminded him of Medieval churches and frolics in the woods and King Arthur's court all at once. 

"That sounds like something from the 'Thistle and Shamrock Hour,'" he said as he left the kitchen with the wine. "What instruments are they playing?"

"Hmm. I think there's a harp, a violin, a lute, a hammer dulcimer. Various percussion and a 12-string guitar. Some of the other songs have a flute or a recorder. It's one of my favorite CDs. It helps me relax and puts me in a good mood."

"Music is amazing. It's magical the way it can change your mood," John said, hoping a positive reference to magic would win him some points.

"It's not magical," she said, surprising him. "It's sacramental."

"What does that mean?" he asked, showing a little too much frustration in his tone.

"A sacrament is a physical thing that carries an invisible grace," she said. "At least, that's what I mean. There's more to music than sound. People say that music is the language of the soul. It conveys emotions, paints pictures to your mind, and excites the imagination."

"I don't know enough theology to talk about sacraments, but isn't that just psychology?"

"Now what does that mean?" Jillian said, trying to imitate John's tone of voice in a mocking, playful way. "You can't explain something away just because you name it. Of course the effect of music is 'psychology,' but that's just to say that music affects your mind, which is what I was saying. If a psychologist finds some equation to calculate the effect, he hasn't explained it, he's just described it."

John raised his eyebrows in surprised approval at her monologue. She's a thinker, anyway, even if she is a nut. He distracted himself with the wine bottles while his favorite stereotypes wrestled for dominance. Contestant One didn't believe in the brain power of religious people. Contestant Two said the same in spades for New Age devotees.

"All of life is sacred," Jillian went on. "It's mysterious and 'sacramental,' and I like it that way. It makes water and air and wind and rain and food and music that much more enjoyable."

"Okay, I see," he said, not sure he wanted to get any further into it. His materialism was tugging at his mind. Wind is moving air, he thought.

"I don't think you do," Jillian said, pressing the point. "I'm sure you've heard people argue about mind and body -- mind over matter, and that sort of thing. I think the whole argument is wrong. People aren't 'mind' and 'body,' they're minds in bodies. What you do affects what you think, and what you think affects what you do. All of life is inter-related. That's one reason why I like Wicca."

Oh no. Not a pagan Billy Graham presentation.

"Wicca emphasizes wholeness. I want to coordinate my actions with my feelings, and vice versa. And it's not just feelings, but health, ethics -- your whole personality."

John looked away to avoid giving her a blank stare and struggled to find something decent to say.

"I guess people get tied up inside by trying to be what they're not, or by putting on a face," he said, when he couldn't bear the silence any longer.

"Or they get sick," Jillian added.

"Would you like some wine?" John asked. He was afraid she was going to ask him what he was feeling, or what kind of a tree he would like to be.

"Please."

John poured two glasses and leaned back on the sofa. He put his arm around Jillian, and she leaned into his chest and rested her head on his shoulder. After a few moments of contented silence, Jillian asked if John was genuinely interested in her ideas about mind and body, or if he was just being polite.

"Do you want an honest answer?"

"Of course," she smiled.

"Then I'd have to say that I'm half intrigued, half embarrassed, and half uncertain."

"That's three halves."

"That's the point," he chuckled. "I'm not all together on this."

Jillian was silent for a long moment, then said, "John, I had a very good time tonight. It wasn't a typical 'date,' in the bad sense of that word. You know, avoid anything serious and aim for the zipper. You have some interesting things to say, and you listen well. I like that."

John didn't know what to say, so he just pulled her in a little closer and continued to sip his wine.

"Can I choose our next outing?" Jillian said suddenly.

*              *              *

A week later, returning home after a long evening with some friends from work at a downtown watering hole, John sorted the daily junk mail into the trash can while kicking his shoes into the closet, anxious for sleep. As he trashed the last of the credit card applications he noticed the red light on his voice mail. He pressed the play button and continued undressing.

"John, it's mom," came the familiar voice over the tape machine. "I was just calling to see how you are. Call back if you get in before, say, eleven o'clock. It's nothing urgent. Bye." Beep.

Ever since his father died when he was in high school, John made sure to set aside time for his mother. After he moved out, he called her regularly. Her call reminded him that he hadn't spoken with her for over two weeks. He picked up the phone and hit the first speed dial button.