Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (30 page)

“Which pair do you want to try?” Baba Yaga asked.

Boris stared. “But . . . ” he managed at last, “they’re miniatures.”

“One size fits all,” Baba Yaga said. “That’s something I learned in the twentieth century.” She dragged a pair out of the closet on the tiny stand. Plucking the hands from the stand, she held them in her palm. The hands began to stretch and grow, inching their way to normal size. They remained the color of custard scum.

Boris read the script on the stand to himself. “Lover’s hands.” He hesitated.

“Try them,” the old woman said again, thrusting them at him. Her voice was compelling.

Boris took the left hand between his thumb and forefinger. The hand was as slippery as rubber, and wrinkled as a prune, He pulled it on his left hand, repelled at the feel. Slowly the hand molded itself to his, rearranging its skin over his bones. As Boris watched, the left hand took on the color of new cream, then quickly tanned to a fine, overall, healthy-looking beige. He flexed the fingers and the left hand reached over and stroked his right. At the touch, he felt a stirring of desire that seemed to move sluggishly up his arm, across his shoulder, down his back, and grip his loins. Then the left hand reached over and picked up its mate. Without waiting for a signal from him, it lovingly pulled the right hand on, fitting each finger with infinite care.

As soon as both hands were the same tanned tone, the strong, tapered polished nails with the quarter moons winking up at him, Boris looked over at the witch.

He was surprised to see that she was no longer old but, in fact, only slightly mature with fine bones under a translucent skin. Her blue eyes seemed to appraise him, then offer an invitation. She smiled, her mouth thinned down with desire. His hands preceded him to her side, and then she was in his arms. The hands stroked her wind-tossed hair.

“You have,” she breathed into his ear, “a lover’s hands.”

“Hands!” He suddenly remembered, and with his teeth ripped the right hand off. Underneath were his own remembered big knuckles. He flexed them experimentally. They were wonderfully slow in responding.

The old woman in his arms cackled and repeated, “A lover’s hands.”

His slow right hand fought with the left, but managed at last to scratch off the outer layer. His left hand felt raw, dry, but comfortingly familiar.

The old woman was still smiling an invitation. She had crooked teeth and large pores. There was a dark moustache on her upper lip.

Boris picked up the discarded hands by the tips of the fingers and held them up before the witch’s watery blue eyes. “Not these hands,” he said.

She was already reaching into the closet for another pair.

Boris pulled the hands on quickly, glancing only briefly at the label. “Surgeon’s hands.” They were supple-fingered and moved nervously in the air as if searching for something to do. Finally they hovered over Baba Yaga’s forehead. Boris felt as if he had eyes in his fingertips, and suddenly saw the old woman’s skin as a map stretched taut across a landscape of muscle and bone. He could sense the subtle traceries of veins and read the directions of the bloodlines. His right hand moved down the bridge of her nose, turned left at the cheek, and descended to her chin. The second finger tapped her wen, and he could hear the faint echo of his knock.

“I could remove that easily,” he found himself saying.

The witch pulled the surgeon’s hands from him herself. “Leave me my wen. Leave me my own face,” she said angrily. “It is the stage setting for my magic. Surgeon’s hands indeed.”

Remembering the clowns in their make-up, the wire-walkers in their sequined leotards, the ringmaster in his tie and tails—costumes that had not changed over the centuries of circus—Boris had to agree. He looked down again at his own hands. He moved the fingers. The ones on his right hand were still laggards. But for the first time he heard and saw how they moved. He dropped his hands to his sides and beat a tattoo on his outer thighs. Three against two went the rhythm, the left hitting the faster beat. He increased it to seven against five, and smiled. The right would always be slower, he knew that now.

“It’s not in the hands,” he said.

Baba Yaga looked at him quizzically. Running a hand through her bird’s-nest hair and fluffing up her eyebrows, she spoke. But it was Uncle Boris’s voice that emerged between her crooked teeth: “Hands are the daughters of the eye and ear.”

“How do you do that?” Boris asked.

“Magic,” she answered, smiling. She moved her fingers mysteriously, then turned and closed the cupboard doors.

Boris smiled at her back, and moved his own fingers in imitation. Then he went out the door of the house and fell down the steps.

“Maybe you’d like a new pair of feet,” the witch called after him. “I have Fred Astaire’s. I have John Travolta’s. I have Mohammed Ali’s.” She came out of the house, caught up with Boris, and pulled him to a standing position.

“Were they jugglers?” asked Boris.

“No,” Baba Yaga said, shaking her head. “No. But they had soul.”

Boris didn’t answer. Instead he climbed into the mug and gazed fondly at his hands as the mug took off and headed toward the horizon and home.

The women in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s tale inherit their magical powers, but they also pass acquired knowledge of proven spells down through the generations—much as the rest of us pass on family recipes.

Genetic witchcraft or witches as a separate species is a popular—and varied—fantasy trope. L. Frank Baum
’
s witches of Oz were born as such, and chose to be either good or evil. On the
Bewitched
television series, Samantha’s family were all witches and “warlocks.” The Sanderson sisters are sibling witches in the film
Hocus Pocus
(1993). In both the book by Alice Hoffman (1966) and movie (1996)
Practical Magic,
the “craft” is passed down through generations of Owens women. The sisters on the television series,
Charmed,
are descended from a powerful line of good witches. Kelley Armstrong
’
s The Otherworld books have both an all-female witch breed and an all-male sorcerer one. Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
’
novels feature a female-only species of witches. Witches in Philip Pullman
’
s His Dark Materials trilogy are a female race who mate with human men; their daughters are witches, but not their sons. Witches in Kim Harrison's The Hollows novels are not human. J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world is based on those with inherited magical abilities living among mundane magicless muggles.

Bloodlines

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Elena flipped the picture of San Antonio de Padua on its head and placed thirteen coins before him. She split a coconut, bathed it in perfume and whispered his name. When neither worked, she phoned Mario. Five minutes later she was yelling at the receiver. My mother was shaking her head.

“She should have given him her menstrual blood to drink. Now there’s no way she’ll bind him. He’s out of love.”

“But they’ve had fights before. He’ll come back to beg her forgiveness before next week,” I said, and wished it true even though my wishes don’t count.

“Not this time.”

“Maybe there’s something you could do.”

“Ha,” my mother said.

The screaming stopped. Elena stomped through the living room and went to her room, slamming the door so hard San Antonio’s portrait fell to the ground and cracked.

Come morning, cousin Elena’s door was open. She stood before her vanity, applying lipstick and humming. She looked especially nice that day, long lustrous hair combed back and high-heeled boots showing off her legs. Elena was the prettiest woman in town, and she knew it.

My whole family was filled with beautiful women. Black-and-white photographs, old Polaroids, and even painted portraits testified to a lineage that gave way to the most ravishing beauties in the region. It also gave the women magic and an explosive temper. That temper had driven my great-grandmother to insanity, made my grandmother shoot her husband, and caused my Aunt Magdalena to stab her boyfriend three times. They got back together after each one of those times, but, nevertheless, a stabbing is a stabbing.

I had no beauty and little talent for magic. My mother assured me I was a late bloomer. I didn’t believe her.

Short, fat, and pimpled, with hair that never stayed in place and crooked teeth decorated with braces: I was potato bug ugly. Like most bugs, I was in constant danger of being squashed. My cousins did not like me, abhorred the genetic joke that I was, and went to play hand-clapping games by themselves. My schoolmates did not know spells, but didn’t enjoy my company either. My only two friends were Paco and Fernando. The only reason they walked me home some afternoons was so they could ogle my cousin when she danced through the living room wearing her leather mini-skirts.

It sucked because Paco was a nice boy with dimples and a good laugh. He always looked through me, like I was the Transparent Woman, you know, like that anatomical plastic model I put together the year before.

The people who really looked at me were my cousins Jacinta and Elena. Jacinta was born with a bad eye and the others teased her about it. Her father was of our lineage, which meant she was destined for the maquilas: magic can’t go through the male bloodline. If you couldn’t spin magic, you’d have to bend over a sewing machine and make pants for a few pesos an hour.

Even worse for Jacinta, she was a bastard and we couldn’t recognize her as one of the bloodline. My mother had taken pity on her but when she turned sixteen we’d chase her out of the house.

With such low prospects, it made sense that Jacinta would keep me company. It was more difficult to understand why Elena stomached my presence, since she was one of the brujas chicas. I think she enjoyed having me run around, doing her errands, crushing beetles for the spells, kneeling in the dirt to pick glass that could be made into bracelets. I was never going to be an important witch, but I made a decent assistant.

Plus I could read Latin, German, and French, a feat Elena never achieved. She relied on spells passed through oral tradition, but I liked to pore over the old books and flip through my great-grandmother’s grimoire. It gave me a thrill to excel at one thing, even if I could only muster weak spells.

“You going out?” I asked.

“Just heading downtown. I got to do some shopping. I’ll be back before supper.”

“Can I go with you? I want to watch a movie.”

“Some other time,” Elena said flashing me a smile and putting down her lipstick.

“But if you’re heading there anyway . . . ”

The smile turned sour.

“Another time.”

I knew better than to push, so I looked for Jacinta. I found her playing behind the house. She was drawing with chalk on the wall, copying the symbols I traced over the bricks. Her marks had no power, so it was a waste of time for her to bother making circles and crosses. But she did it anyway to imitate me.

“Want to ride to the movie theatre on your bicycle?” I asked.

“It’s hot outside,” she said.

It’s always hot. At least the movie theatre had air conditioning. Inside our house we only had the fans.

“Come on,” I said. “You got money for the ticket?”

“Yeah,” she muttered.

“Then let’s ride.”

“Why doesn’t Elena take us in the truck?”

“Elena’s gone.”

“Okay, but I’m hungry.”

I sat behind Jacinta while she pedaled. She didn’t let me pedal. I didn’t blame her; she was afraid I’d damage the old bike. It was the only thing her shit father had left her before he hitched a ride to Guadalajara three years before.

We ate gaznates and watched a movie about aliens and then this lady killed them with guns and stuff. It was all right.

When we went out I saw Paco walking down the street, hand in hand with Patricia Espinoza. My heart took a tumble. I thought about cousin Elena, and how she must feel like she’s the Transparent Woman now that Mario doesn’t return her calls.

For her birthday, my mother took Elena to eat at the Chinese restaurant with the tank full of carp. Jacinta and some of my other cousins came along with assorted uncles and aunts.

Jacinta and I looked at the carps tapping our fingers against the glass, while the rest of our family was lost in conversation. They were so busy toasting, making jokes and chatting between themselves that none of them saw Mario and his new girlfriend walk in.

I did. Jacinta noticed and she also stared in their direction.

Slowly, everyone at our table turned their heads and the laughter stopped. Cousin Elena, who was holding her chopsticks in the air, watched the merriment die and her face grew pale. Finally, she turned.

She looked at Mario. Mario looked at her.

Mario stepped out of the restaurant, girlfriend in tow.

I thought Mario was an okay guy, even after he dumped Elena. I owed him one for that time he didn’t tell my mom I was sipping booze and smoking dope behind the factory with Jacinta. And overall, well, I thought he was harmless and charming despite his flaws.

But right then, I thought he was an ass for shuffling out like that with a fresh piece of arm candy, just weeks after breaking it off with my cousin.

I’m sure Elena thought the same. Her hand remained suspended in mid-air. Suddenly, she crushed her chopsticks with a flick of her fingers.

The tank behind us exploded, shards of glass flying through the air, water splashing our feet, dribbling across the red and gold carpets. The carp flopped on their bellies. Dying fish mouthed for air.

On an impulse, I grabbed one and rushed to the bathroom. I tossed it into the toilet.

I closed my eyes and wished it would live.

It twitched, then floated up to the surface.