Nan Sylvester dreaded the end of her final year at Changemire Boarding School for girls. She vowed that unless she found a way to stay on forever, she’d jump off its roof and haunt.
It was eleven thirty, three weeks before graduation day, and Nan stood in the kitchen larders stealing the teacher’s stock of Brie and Chianti. A loaf of brown bread tucked under one arm, and wine under the other, she sliced at the cheese with a large knife. The quiet kitchen consoled her. She hadn’t been able to fall asleep, she felt too nervous and uncertain. Nan sipped from the wine, determining the scene ripe for spell writing. Waxing moon, wine, cheese, a night kitchen. Still, her spells sprung from the unconscious and she couldn’t order it around. For the past couple of years Nan had filled composition books with spells, but lacked the one she needed most. The spell that could ward off the past. She bit into the sticky cheese and told herself, “I’ll find a way.”
The school sat on a hill, overlooking a dark lake and expansive green forest. Built of red brick and marble, it differed in everyway from the ranch buildings of her native California. She didn’t miss the sun or the heat, and mostly she didn’t miss her family.
Here, it stayed cold.
Take the longest piece of hair from your head and pull both ends until it snaps. Throw the piece in the toilet and flush. In this way you break free from your past.
She liked ending her day in a scalding bath with a good book and a smoke and then wrapping herself in her warmest robe. To be surrounded by her classmates in the dining room, drinking black, black tea. She pretended they were all orphans rescued by the house itself, collected together like especially powerful stones. Nan felt like herself inside the school. Just the self she wanted to feel, safe and unlimited. She liked her friends, she liked the teachers, she liked the classes, the woods, and the lake. The high ceilings of the buildings, and chandeliers gave Nan the impression that she lived somewhere with history, somewhere Things had happened and could happen still.
Upon a time, up, up in time, upending & suspending time. Approach an attractive clock and tell it your biography. Be honest but shake things up a bit. Tell the clock the time you want to see, and dance in circles until you fall down, dizzy. When you stand back up you’ll see a new time.
Returning from the kitchen without inspiration and a very full stomach, Nan unlocked the door of her shared bedroom. It smelled like her roommate, Maggie and Maggie smelled like wet rabbits and peas. Nan wished she had a room of her own tonight, to have a smoke and finish her bottle of Chianti. She was beginning to feel the spell would never come to her and she’d be shipped back to her old life. Such a terrible thought made Nan shiver and blink back a tear. She lifted the covers of her twin bed with a histrionic sigh. Hoping to rouse Maggie with the noise. Though stinky, Maggie thought logically and might possess more practical ways of NEVER going back. But Maggie slept like the dead and she only sighed and twitched her round, little nose.
A few days later Nan read over one of her older spells for tracing bloodlines through time and space. She didn’t believe that her family in California was really her family. She determined that one day she would discover her true ancestors. Perhaps they were gypsy troubadours, rural seed savers, or Art History professors in a remote European village. Her true family would never dream of forcing her into doing anything she didn’t want to do, or of being anyone but her self.
On a rainy day in spring you might find some burgundy flower petals plucked, and placed on a book’s cover. If you do, that’s a sign that this spell has begun. Always heed signs. Always heed burgundy petals and books.
Brush off the petals into a handkerchief for later use. Take up the book and…this may sound strange…open to page fifty-five. Put your mouth to it. I don’t care if it’s a math textbook or the bible. Put your lips and teeth against the paper and bite.
An old, wizened man will appear. This might be your father or your uncle or your drunk older brother. You must follow him. Give him a glass of water and five drops of nettle tincture. This man is important so be nice to him even if shadows hide his face.
Nan closed her notebook and sighed. Two weeks left until graduation and all the Changemire upper level girls sat in the Church pews waiting for the arrival of their poetry teacher. He led each class in a different location to provoke new tones and accentuate the week’s theme. Nan could tell the church was a good choice because all the girls looked scared and cold. Fear bred the best poems, Nan had learned.
“I think it’s wrong of Mr. Gibbons. Poetry and god don’t go together,” whispered Victoria Hilbert into her friend Jacqueline’s ear. They sat just behind Nan.
“Everything goes with God, Tory,” Jacqueline said and her voice sounded injured. Nan didn’t believe in the Christian god but she admired Jacqueline’s piety. She scribbled the start of a spell in her notebook.
Everything goes with God* Everything goes with God* So the next time you see someone who looks or sounds, smells or tastes like God*, don’t leave their side. Grab them and everything around you—feathers, empty cups, dirty underwear. Pretend you are a magnetic force field so you can help bring everything and God* TOGETHER. Also, fill a bucket with seawater and a sack of flour. Pour these ingredients onto what you’ve gathered, soon your vision will clear—grow sharp as crystal. Things shall begin to make sense.
Things made sense from the moment Nan arrived at Changemire. She had changed here. In California she didn’t know about spells or being alive. Here she was a witch and being alive felt different every moment. She read her new spell in a low whisper. The other girls had begun to chat loudly about the draft making them grumpy, or guessing why Mr. Gibbons always arrived to class late. Was he guzzling vino? Or canoodling with the art teacher? Nan chanted her magical lines. She felt rooted. She let her bones sink into the wood of the pew, morphing a little.
Seawater, seawater, seawater, buckets.
“Good afternoon, Class,” said Mr. Gibbons to the small group of shivering girls. He carried a large silver pot and his usual book bag. Nan admired Mr. Gibbons because he didn’t remind her of anybody she had ever met before. He was a new type, and he had shown her how to sneak into the larders.
His writing experiments enhanced her spell crafting. After last week’s class, held in the stables she wrote an incantation for the sound of horse hooves on cobblestones. Mr. Gibbon’s didn’t care what people thought of him and that was Nan’s goal. He never walked in straight lines, but swayed as if possessed at all times, by art. Nan observed this characteristic in the teachers at Changemire—even the mean ones loved what they taught. Mr. Gibbons had a small, round belly and his eyes sparkled. Nan thought that if she were to marry, it would be to Mr. Gibbons. He would always respect her magic.
“Good afternoon,” the class answered in sullen unison. Nan decided to write a spell to incite tremulous energy. Tremulous energy invigorated the unconscious thereby producing more spells.
“Today I’ve brought a pot full of apples. I want you each to take one, and write an ode to sin.”
After class, Nan found Stratty leaning against the stone wall of the Church, smoking. “Sinner!” she said when she saw him. Her English teacher’s thirteen-year-old son spent most of his time by the chicken coop, sketching eggs. He was Nan’s favorite confidante.
“Good lecture today? I peeked in and saw you all devouring bright red apples.”
“Yes, I got a nice spell but not The One.” She threw her back against the wall beside him. “I just know I can’t leave here yet. Today I could feel gravity pull me down. And the pews kind of said, You can stay, Nan, you can stay. They won’t make you go back.”
Nan suspected Stratty would make an exceptional witch but he preferred life as a visual artist. He was very wise and very tall for a thirteen-year-old boy. If not for his large freckles and gapped teeth he’d look and seem like a full-grown man.
“Hmmm. You’ll get it. You always get your way.” He laughed and handed her a hard boiled egg from his pocket. They often traded an egg for a cigarette.
“Well, Mr. Gibbon’s says poetry depends on images. I think my spells do too. Usually I imagine the day I left my parents’ house and watched it shrink as we drove farther and farther away, and then I see the Changemire forest, and the lake, and sometimes Maggie in her ugly mustard nightie. The heads of all the girls bent over steaming breakfasts.” Nan peeled the shell off her egg. “But I don’t think those are the right images. I think I need something more shocking. Sinful, maybe, or scary.”
Stratty batted his lashes and made kissing sounds, “Sinful, you say…”
The next week Nan sat at her desk and opened her spell book. Exasperation and anxiety were giving her constant eye aches. Wine, chocolate and cigarettes helped a little but she needed a sign, divine inspiration, a splash from the spirits. She needed a whole new conception for her homing spell… her staying spell… her…Changemire spell. Nothing was working. Soon she’d be packing her suitcases, taking down her posters, saying goodbye…
“Nan, someone left you a note,” Maggie said. She stood in front of their shared wardrobe, her mustard nightie scrunched in with a bright red belt. She was rummaging through her clothes, throwing blouses over her shoulder and into a pile.
“I hate all my clothes,” she muttered throwing a ruffled, pink skirt over her shoulder, “they all make me look fat.”
“Where is it?”
“Where is what?” Maggie asked, pinching her stomach with a horrified expression.
“The note,” Nan said.
“Under that pile of orange blazers,” Nan looked at the mess of fabric.
“What about your black coat?” she suggested fishing out a folded paper from the pile of bright clothes, “you look very slim in that.”
Stratty had delivered an illustration to help egg on her spell. Apparently sinfulness had inspired him because the paper showed Nan (impressionistically nude) dancing wildly at the doors of Changemire. The illustrated Nan appeared to be hurling apples from a witch’s hat at her feet, toward all intruders (impressionistically parents) threatening the students of Changemire School.
Nan put the drawing down and closed her eyes. She imagined the turrets of the school, how the night sky showed every star, the clear, free, air, ungoverned by parents. The potted plants lining the windows, the jars of paint brushes on every table, the illuminated books. She imagined herself walking down Changemire halls as an adult, living in a top story room with a view, teaching young women the correlation between moon phases and verb choice. Of course, with Stratty in a room nearby and maybe Mr. Gibbons…
“Nan, can I borrow your purple skirt?” Maggie had a tendency to interrupt the some of Nan’s most promising spells.
“What? Oh, sure, but it tends to billow. I can’t promise it won’t make you look…billowy.”
Maggie hurumphed and continued to rummage. Nan scribbled:
Think of your body. Think of everything you’ve ever put on or in your body. Make a list starting from as far back as you remember. The list will probably be long and start with amniotic fluid or a little pink dress. When you reach the present: oatmeal, jeans and a black sweater, then roll up the list and tell your best friend to blow on it three times. (Don’t tell him what it says.) Hopefully you have a cup of coffee handy and you can pour it on the ground in a circle around yourself. Maybe you’re outside but it doesn’t really matter because magic stains. Then say: I will know, I will know, I will know! Put the list in some unsuspecting person’s underwear drawer. This will allow you to remember what you need to remember without stress. It’s a spell to purify.
Nan believed in the Detox-Retox cycle of living. A clean canvas to make room for her enchantment’s conception could only help. But after performing the spell Nan couldn’t fall asleep. She didn’t feel pure. Hopelessness was setting in. She only had eight days until graduation.
“What will I do? I can’t go back to California.”
“Why don’t you just tell your parents you’re staying? They can put money in your bank account. That’s what mine do. They don’t want the bother.”
“My parents don’t like me but they’re used to bother.” She respected the teachers too much to fail on purpose in the hopes of repeating a year.
“Hmmm….”
Nan couldn’t stop thinking of her parents’ house and the bright, bright sun around it. She thought of the dinner table and the silence. She thought of how sad she felt there. After Maggie fell asleep Nan tiptoed out of her room and down the hall. The only light came from the bathroom nightlight, which seemed very far away but she knew the hallway well and found her way to the stairs.
It was dark in the hallway and long past curfew. Nan crept along, imagining herself as a stealthy cat, avoiding the sound of footsteps in case someone asked where she was going. She didn’t know exactly where. She wandered through empty classrooms and study nooks, around the opulent dining hall and into the library, letting intuition lead her. She looked out windows into the still night. Soon she found herself climbing up a flight of spiraling stairs toward her favorite tower attic, where Mr. Gibbons often composed his lectures. Nan felt more alive than ever. She wasn’t in the least bit scared or worried. She’d brought her spell-book and her favorite purple ink pen and had adorned herself in a deep green dress with ruffled sleeves and a black robe.
When Nan reached the top she smelled something familiar, spicy and fresh. The only light came from the tower’s small window where a tiny red candle stood flickering. She couldn’t see much but it was a small, bare room. This was the highest tower at Changemire School. It faced the back gardens and the entrance to the forest. In the day, everything below the tower looked lush and inviting. Nan walked toward the window, inhaling, feeling ready. She moved the candle and opened the casement. She felt a breath of air against her cheek.
Go to your favorite spot. A spot that gets light and faces a garden or a bench where your friends sit. A spot that gives you a friendly feeling. Where music is played, or stories told. Stretch out your arms to hug someone. Even stretch your fingers and toes, so that every part of you is ready to grab hold and embrace. Move close to the epicenter of the spot. Closer. Closer. Closer. Until you are right against it and feel every part of it ALIVE, ALIVE, ALIVE. It’s texture and it’s pulse. Shout a secret you’ve never shared with anyone living. Declare that you will stay. Whatever the way. Jump.
Written in 2011ish
