Novella: A Mind for Winter

May 28

A Mind for Winter

Constantine von Hoffman

1

February 6, 1978

The blizzard arrived with a crack so loud Safina could almost see it.

She let out a startled yell and ran to the cafeteria windows, along with all the other students. Before it hit there were only a few fat snowflakes falling slowly like ashes from a fuse, after there were so many and the wind so strong, they became horizontal streaks in the air.

Looking out, Safina – tall, thin, 15 – watched the kids who’d been outside for gym in shorts and t-shirts run to the school screaming, dropping field hockey sticks as they did. It made her think of soldiers dropping their weapons as they ran from battle. Such an odd thought it made her suspect there was something other to this storm. She was convinced of it when, a few minutes later, she noticed the anxiety which had dogged her for the last few days was gone.

She hadn’t expected a blizzard and neither had anyone else. No warnings on TV or radio or in the papers. This was long ago, 1978, so different a time it’s hard to believe this world came from that one. So different a time that huge storms – even normal ones – could surprise cities and big states – New York, Minnesota, Wyoming – entirely unawares. And, if normal storms could surprise them, what chance was there for Rhode Island, a tiny state carved out of the coast of nowhere, facing a storm with intentions?

Fifteen minutes after the storm began a voice on the school’s PA system announced school would be let out early. This was followed by the joyful chaos of voices loud with excitement, students running to lockers, slamming their metal doors, and running to get away. Safina, carrying a different excitement, walked – her deliberate manner at odds with all the teenage energy crackling in the halls. She had a slight smile on her face, happier now that she knew this was a day for looking and listening, keeping watch for metaphors and memories, omens and deceit.

She was dressed as usual: Thrift store old man’s suit, brown wing-tip shoes, white button-down shirt with top button undone, and a black tie with the knot pulled down, because that’s how Bayard Rustin wore it in a photo she saw one time. Dressed that way since about half way through eighth grade. First time her mother saw it she said, “Oh, honey girl, the world’s gonna be hard on you.” Shook her head not quite approving but then, a little while later, offered to drive Safina around to thrift shops to find more suits.

Got to her locker and put on her old, black overcoat and the fedora with the extra-wide brim.

Closing her locker door, Safina thought of standing there a few months earlier and wondered if what happened then, and everything that happened because of it, had anything to do with the storm.

Her clothes meant she didn’t look like anyone else – boys or girls – at her new school. Neither her teachers nor the administrators cared – her appearance was far less visually disruptive than the two students who had punked-out with mohawks, battered leather jackets, torn jeans, and safety pin earrings. However, most of her fellow students did care, the attitudes ranging from ignoring her with intent to forthright hostility.

The social dynamics of a high school being what they are, the antagonisms quickly went past insults and isolation. In October, two white boys – considerably bigger and a couple years older than she was – cornered her at her locker. First came taunts about her clothes, then all the worse words she’d heard before, then pushing and grabbing at her.

At that, she flattened herself against the locker. A phrase came to mind from her magic book. She had no idea why it came to mind then nor what the result would be when she said it. That was the way of it. The choice to speak it was hers. She said it three times:

The blackbird is involved
In what I know.

Then the boys were inside a cage that was also giant raven. The bars bone and sinew and veins and iridescent black feathers. On top a raven’s head with shining gold eyes examining the room. The air around the boys was thick with misty blood. The cage was there for no more than a minute, but Safina suspected time passed much more slowly on the inside.

It disappeared but the boys remained – standing, breathing, not frozen but not moving either. She gathered up her things, spit in their faces, and walked away.

Two weeks later at her locker something much better happened.

Again, it was the end of the school day but this time a girl who came over. Older, maybe a senior, wearing a white button-down shirt like Safina’s but hers was untucked and worn with jeans and sneakers, all totally acceptable.

“Hey,” the girl said, friendly shy.

“Hey,” said Safina, suddenly feeling 50 tons of awkward on her shoulders.

“I'm Brigid.”

“Hey, I'm Safina. Seen you around.”

“Oh,” Brigid said, a little smile turning up the corners of her lips. “So, I heard you might have maybe had something to do with what happened to Chuck and Johnny?”

“Who?” said Safina.

“Big guys, one’s a blond. Like to get girls alone and do ... stuff.”

Safina looked into the other girl’s eyes and they silently acknowledged they both knew about “…stuff.”

“Oh, yeah, them. What's up with them?”

“You didn't hear?” asked Brigid.

By then Safina had a total of two friends at school: Ron and Ronnie, drama club kids, swept down on her at lunch one day, loudly proclaiming their love for her clothes – which they called an outfit, and insisting she had to be their friend. Because they were drama club that was their whole world at school. Nearly all they talked about was the casting of this semester’s play and the attendant intrigue, heartbreak, and histrionics. Safina wasn’t involved in theater at all but was totally there for hearing about it. Better than soap operas.

“They are on the football team, you know?” Brigid said. Safina nodded but her attention was split between listening and trying to scope out this girl without staring. Auburn bangs, pale skin, curves in places Safina wished she had curves.

“They are?”

“Were,” said Brigid. “Johnny’s a quarterback and he just quit, the same day as Chuck.”

“He's a quarterback, too?” asked Safina, honestly confused.

“No,” she said and Safina thought she’d said something dumb until Brigid giggled like her question was funny funny, not stupid funny.

“I don't know much football.”

“I can tell,” Brigid said, giving another smile.

“Why’d they quit?”

“Said they were afraid of getting hit but they've been playing for years and there were only a few games left in the season. So everyone’s wondering what it’s really about.”

“Birds,” Safina said so quiet it almost didn't come out of her mouth.

“What?”

Safina cringed.

“Birds. Might be afraid of birds now.”

“You're so funny,” Brigid said, with an honest laugh. Safina, who’d been staring at her shoes, looked up at Brigid’s face and got the feeling being so funny was a good thing.

“I am?”

Brigid nodded.

“Anyway, my friend told me that they quit right after trying something on you and so I wanted to say thanks, if you had anything with them becoming afraid of... birds.”

They both giggled.

“Well, I don't know if I did, I mean, no offense, a lot of white boys look alike.”

Brigid gasped and Safina got nervous.

“It's true. But I never knew anyone who’d say it out loud.”

“I have trouble telling them apart,” said Safina.

“The boys,” said Brigid.

Long pause.

“But not the girls?”

Safina had been looking at her shoes again but at that she looked up. Brigid was blushing, her eyes sparkly, eager, and a little afraid.

“Not the girls. No. No. No. Definitely not the girls.”

And they stood there some more, a little awkward but not as much as before. Silent until they caught each other's eyes and giggled.

“So, um...,” Safina started but Brigid interrupted, “Want to hang out sometime?” Another blush.

“Yeah, yeah,” Safina stuttered trying to get the words fast enough. “That would be cool.”

“Could I call you?”

“That might be …uh… difficult,” said Safina.

They shared another look of knowing, this one about things that you didn’t talk about at home where someone might hear.

“Could I call you?”

Brigid nodded and fumbled around looking for something to write on and then for something to write with. Took Safina a moment to stop thinking she's so cute long enough to help out. Then they got that sorted and there was another awkward because they couldn't figure out how to say goodbye because neither really wanted to.

2

Before stepping out into the blizzard, Safina stood in the high school’s front doorway, looking for something but not knowing what. All she saw was students leaving and snow piling up fast in corners and against walls and then spreading out, taking dominion everywhere.

Classical was an exam school so its students came from all over Providence. On a usual day there would be buses out front, heading to different parts of the city. Today even the few city buses still running quickly filled up, leaving most of the students to walk home, heads tucked in to shoulders to protect themselves from snow being blown by the thuggish wind.

Even as she stepped out into the storm Safina wondered if they all wouldn’t be better off staying at school. Made of concrete slabs with windows and doors framed in roughhewn rock, one of her teacher’s called the style “Mid-Century American Bomb Shelter.” It was surrounded by a lot of not much. Across the streets were mostly empty store fronts with one or two stories of intermittently occupied apartments above. The playing field ended at a chain link fence and was indistinguishable from the empty lot on the other side of it which ended at a highway frontage road.

Past that was Route 95, which cut the city in half, some parts elevated, some at the same level as the city streets. Only here it had cut through a hill and sat at the bottom of a concrete-walled canyon. Safina peered over a guardrail at the traffic, heavy and slow because of drivers who couldn’t see past the car in in front of them, so slow it was close to not moving at all. While she was looking another phrase from her magic book came to mind but this time, she had a sense of what it would do. She’d said it once before and it had let her see into hidden places. That hadn’t turned out well, but she decided to say it anyway.

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing.

A scrim seemed to clear from in front of her eyes, letting her see through the snow in the air and on the ground.

She looked out, across downtown which has hills on three sides and Narragansett Bay on the fourth. Most of the hills have names, even the one Safina was standing on – although its name, Christian Hill, was forgotten as the neighborhood sank into slum. It was on the west side of the city, directly across from College Hill, an obvious name because that’s where Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design were. They were nearly the city’s only going concerns still making money. Because of them there was actual demand for nearby homes and apartments, which also set it apart from the rest of the city.

The spell let her see College Hill better now than if the weather had been clear. Even make out the type of cars moving on Benefit Street, which ran horizontally about half-way up the hill. Its downhill side was all small old, colonial homes filled with faculty families. Uphill had Victorian mansions, newer but filled by old money.

Only college students called it College Hill. It was the East Side if you were a local, even though the East Side continued north, following Hope Street a couple of miles to the city limits. Money got thinner on the ground the farther you were from the colleges. Safina lived on Camp Street, which was on the East Side but not part of it. A separate place all its own, where Black people lived, and money sometimes got so thin as to be invisible.

After a while she looked down near her feet and almost shrieked. A dozen or more translucent blue maggot-looking things, an inch or two long, squirming around under the snow. She stomped on them which didn’t have seem to cause any harm but got them moving away from her which was enough. As horrid as those things were, they proved she was right. There was something more to this storm.

She looked up and saw the bridge across highway was being covered in blue ice – not snow. She didn’t need magic to know there was something wrong. So, tucking her head down, she ran for the bridge then hopscotched across on spots that were still clear.

Once on the other side, she heard a scream coming from a large, brick church to her right. Safina ran toward it and, turning a corner, saw a man encased in bright blue ice on the ground.

She gasped, started to step back, and fell, tripping over a giant ice maggot, four- or five-feet long. It was wrapping a strand of something thin and white around one of her ankles. She kicked and screamed, and it began to pull, making her scream even more. No quiet place for magic to find its way into her mind, only panic. She thrashed about, rolling left and right. Motion. All she could think of was motion. She hit the thing, which felt as cold as it looked, but this didn’t do any good.

In all her flailing her left hand got caught in an overcoat pocket and found a pocketknife she’d forgotten about. A gift on her 10th birthday from an aunt she’d never met. When she got it, it was a small knife for a small hand. With the blade out it barely reached from the base of her hand to the top of her pinkie. What she hadn’t noticed, because who would, was that the knife was always that long – no matter that her hands had gone from little girl’s to grown woman’s.

This time it was impossible not to notice how it changed because this time it became a sword. It had a rusty triangular blade about two feet long, with a slight, orange glow coming from its pocked surface and a handle made of animal horn.

She tried stabbing the maggot, but the point of the blade skittered across the shell, sliding between two bands of carapace. Safina pushed the blade in, and the thing stopped moving. Gas a color she’d never seen before and never wanted to see again, leaked out and drifted up to be shredded by the wind.

Cutting the strands off her ankles, she skittered backwards on her hands and feet until she came to something to lean against. But, as she was about to let out a long breath, she saw it was the man’s ice-covered body. She got up screaming and ran to a snow-covered wall where she sat, put her head down between her legs and threw up until long past the time when anything came out.

Finally able to stand up, Safina was shaking so much she was scared she might hurt herself with the sword. At that it folded back into the knife, and she put it back in her coat pocket. Then she stumbled more than walked towards a place she hoped would be safe.

Leaning on buildings for support, she headed to Westminster Street and a club called Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel. There, on one side of its main entrance, was a painting of a Janus-like Elvis, with two faces and a single, merged body. One half the King when he was young and pure sex, the other when he was old and pure fool.

She’d met them in September, on a Friday afternoon when she walked home and stopped to look at the painting, wondering what the Kings would say if it/they could talk.

“Hey baby,” two voices in her mind said in harmony, with a sweet, slight, Southern drawl and she smiled. From then on, she’d stop and hang with the Elvii whenever she could.

Today she staggered past them and into the long hallway that lead to the club’s door, almost falling as she got out of the wounding wind. If rationality and physics had counted for anything it would have been filled with snow, but they didn’t, not here and not now. Instead, it was warm and dry, as she’d hoped.

Going all the way to the back, she sat, pulled her legs to her chest, wrapped them with her arms, and shivered. Shivered because of the cold and much more. Shivering with fear was a normal reaction, and normal felt good right then, like home and the real world. She said thanks and got a feeling of welcome.

Magic was a bitch.

Miss Logan said that a lot and there had been several incidents that got Safina to say the same. None like this, though. None with killing and dying. Today magic had gone far beyond bitch.

She looked through the locked club doors which she and knew they’d open for her if she wanted. She could go in and stay, ride out whatever this storm was. The kings – old, powerful creatures pinned like butterflies by a magic painter – would keep it safe. But while the safety was tempting to Safina, it wasn’t inviting. It would be only her in the giant room meant to hold a hundred people or more, a room smelling of old beer and cigarette smoke. She thought of a book she’d loved when she was younger and the moment when “Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.”

She wanted to be home.

3

July 1975

Safina was an explorer right from the start.

“As soon as you could walk you wanted to go and see more,” her mother would say. “Always wanting to know what’s on the other side of the hill.”

She got her first bike when was 10. A purple Schwinn Stingray with tassels she put on the rubber handlebar grips because she loved how they looked going fast. She'd ride as far as she could whenever she could. Her mom told her it was dangerous because she was a child, because she was black, because she was a girl, because all of those. But her mom worked two jobs so Safina would be home by herself a lot of days.

She learned quick what streets and neighborhoods to avoid, ones where she’d be yelled at or kids would throw rocks or people set dogs after her. Later she wondered if she could tell this because of magic or because that was just a part of being Black or maybe both. Fortunately, she could also tell the streets where no one would pay mind to a little Black girl on bicycle who didn’t look like she was going to stop there anyway.

Several times men in cars pulled over saying they wanted to talk to her. Each time she shouted “NO!” at them with so much anger it made her dizzy. And each time they drove off looking scared. One time a woman driver started speeding toward her. She yelled and the inside the car suddenly filled with smoke, spun out of control, and hit a light post. Safina burst out laughing when it happened. Even now thinking of it made her smile.

The exploring was why, on a day of the summer before she started eighth grade, Safina came to be at the far south end of Benefit Street, near Gano Street which was Fox Point and definitely not the East Side, and where the Portuguese and Cape Verdeans and lived.

She had stopped her bike in front of The Lightning Splitter House, which had a roof three stories tall shaped like a sharp angled, upside-down V. Been by it many times before but today she really noticed and wondered about it. She wondered why everyone knew about it. Friends she knew had never been near here would say things like, “Oh, you mean over by the Lightning Splitter?”

By the front door there was a historical society sign that said, “Bushwick-Balustrade Lightning Splitter House, 1825.” Nothing special about that. The houses on either side had historical society signs too, as did most of the buildings in the neighborhood. Other than the roof the biggest difference between it and its neighbors was it wasn’t painted. The whole building was smooth, polished wood.

Safina reached out to run her hand along the silky wood but her hand passed through it into someplace. How much time passed before she pulled her hand back? She didn’t know but when she did a white lady came out of the front door and over to Safina.

“What did you feel?” she asked with respect in her voice, like she was talking to a grown-up who’d done something special.

“It felt like I touched … old. Really, really old.”

The lady nodded.

“For me it felt like the skin of a creature that couldn’t exist.”

Safina nodded because that made sense to her although she couldn’t have said why.

“Oh, how terribly rude of me,” said the lady, holding out her hand. “How do you do? I’m Joan Logan.”

“I’m Safina Miller,” she said, shaking hands.

“Delighted to meet you, Miss Miller. I was going down to the store to get a soda. Would you like one?”

Which is how Safina came to be sitting on a sunny set of steps across the street from the Lightning Splitter House with this woman she’d just met. Miss Logan was about a head shorter than Safina, black hair pulled back into a bun, glasses, and no jewelry. Safina, at 13, put all adults into one of two age groups: Grown-up and grandparent. Joan Logan, 35, was in the grown-up category.

“When did you first do magic?” Miss Logan asked as casual as talking about TV shows.

Safina stared back at her, a little shocked.

“Oh, sorry,” said Miss Logan. “Me, too. I mean I do magic, too. I’m not being very graceful today, am I?” Then she hummed a little something and her soda can floated over to Safina’s, knocked gently against it, like clinking glasses for a toast, and returned to her.

Safina nodded approval and then a smile came to her face.

“Am I a witch?” Safina asked, a slightly dizzy, happy look on her face.

“Witch, mage, magic user, wizard, sorceress,” said Miss Logan, stretching out the sound of the last word to make fun of it. “Maga, sorcière, gwarch, mágissa, hexe, sòsyè, boszorkány, strega. Whatever you want.”

“The first time, like the first I was able to do something I shouldn’t have been able to do? That was a couple of years ago. We were sharing an apartment with another family. Their oldest boy, he’s seven years older than me. One time when no one else is home he starts tickling me. Then he starts putting hands where I didn’t want them. Well, instead of trying to push him away with my hands I pushed him away with my thinking. He went right up to the ceiling and stuck there. Started screaming stuff at me, so I said, ‘Shut up,’ and he couldn’t make a sound. I went to my room and read awhile, forgot about him. Maybe an hour later I came back through and saw he was still there. Let him down. Three days later he got his parents to sign papers letting him go into the Navy before he turned 18.”

Miss Logan let out a long, low sigh.

“What a stupid piece of shit.”

“Amen,” said Safina. “So, would you teach me about magic?”

“Honored to,” she said. “But to be fair, it’s more like I’ll be a tour guide pointing stuff out to you. Then it’s up to you to figure what to do with it.”

“Is there like spells and stuff?”

“No. Well, maybe. Sort of. But probably not like you think.”

From then on, they’d get together somewhere maybe once a week, usually at the Fox Point library where Miss Logan worked, and just talk. Not about anything in particular though. Safina enjoyed it but she didn’t see what any of it had to do with magic. That’s because Safina was thinking about magic like she read about in books. This magic, real magic, she slowly figured out was about other things, like trust, which turned out to be about magic in the same way a tree is about paper.

She enjoyed the time with Miss Logan but… her being white and a grownup made her different in big and small ways. Safina kept waiting for her to say “the thing,” whatever it might be, that would make all the differences huge, and then the friendship would end and she could leave.

Safina waited for that to happen until the first time she wore her suit to one of their meetings. When Safina walked in to the library Miss Logan saw her and smiled and said, “Now, it’s you! You’re here. For the first time, you are completely here.” Safina started to cry right then. Happy crying.

Books were most of what they talked about. They both loved fantasy because of course they did, but even so Miss Logan didn’t understand why they were so wrong about magic.

“No recipes – I mean spells, no putting the right ingredients together, saying the right words, and getting the same result every time,” said Miss Logan, who kept trying to get Safina to call her Joan. “That’s baking.”

Magic was wild, unpredictable, and would never do as it was told, she said. But, if you knew its ways, it might do as asked. Or might do as it wanted, sometimes that was better and sometimes not. You had to get to know magic and let it get to know you, then the two of you sort of came to an agreement.

“Magic is a lion and it’s like we’re mice trying to be lion tamers. We can’t and we never will, but we try. The more you understand of its ways, the more likely it will let you scratch its ears or maybe even come when called. Always, always remember that you are the pet and if you aren’t careful magic can play with you to death.”

The first definite thing she taught Safina was the power of “No.” Until now magic had been jumping through her whenever it wanted. In time, if it continued to do that, Safina would become a part of magic with no will of her own.

“It must know you are in control of your mind and your body,” said Miss Logan, “just as our entire world should. Fortunately, and unlike our world, magic never takes ‘no’ personally. So, the next time you feel magic pushing at you, stop and do nothing. Stand or sit, it doesn’t matter. I find thinking ‘no’ helpful but whatever works for you is best. Do that a few times and it will understand.”

August 1976

Olneyville is far west as Providence goes which to Safina meant anything past it might as well have been labeled “Here Be Cowboys.” It was also where the Fountain Royale was. The Royale was special to her because for a quarter you could get an enormous ice cream cone and they never charged extra for jimmies.

One Saturday she was sitting on her bike outside the Royale, finishing a cone and wondering where to go next when a car honked at her. Looking up she knew it was her Uncle CiCi because he drove the ugliest car she’d ever seen.

It looked like a regular car with the back cut off at an angle so anyone sitting in the backseat had to be OK with chewing on their knees. Called a gremlin by the car company which irritated Safina who by now had seen real gremlins. It wasn’t just ugly, it was a piece of crap, too. CiCi's was just three years old and already rust was eating away at the green paint.

“Hey Safina! Wow, you bike all the way over here?”

“Yeah,” she said and shook her head a little. What was she supposed to say to that? Didn't want to be rude but like, she's here and she's on her bike. That much was obvious. A lot of grown-ups were like that, saying something like “You sure have grown a lot,” and waiting for her to respond. She never did because what’s there to say to that? “That must be why you look shorter”? She really hoped when she was grown-up she’d remember what it was like being a kid.

“Just had an ice cream cone, right?” CiCi asked.

Safina wanted to roll her eyes but knew she had to say something.

“Yeah, wanted something after the ride.”

“Chocolate,” said CiCi. “Bet it was chocolate. Kids love chocolate.”

“Vanilla.”

“Wow,” he said. “Always being different. That's you Safina.”

This time she did roll her eyes but looked away first to be polite.

She wasn't sure exactly how she was related to Cici. He wasn't really an uncle but in her family the kids called all the adults not old enough to be grandparents aunt or uncle. She remembered CiCi wasn't blood-kin – he’d married a cousin, but it hadn't lasted. Must have been a friendly breakup because he still showed up at family get-togethers.

“So, you in 7th grade?”

“Eighth.”

“So, you go to Hope for high school?”

That got her to roll her eyes where he could see. Best she'd ever heard anyone say about Hope was that it was easy, and no one hassles you. CiCi had gone to Hope.

“Classical,” she said.

“Wow. Think you can get in? Hard exam. Think you're smarter than me? Not much chance of that and I didn't get into it. You think a lot of yourself, don't you?” CiCi smiling like he's being funny when he knows he's not. “I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You'll get in. I'm just kidding.”

Safina looked at him, shook her head a little. At the same time, she felt a little magic nudge in her head saying, “Let’s show him.”

“Hey, you want a ride home? Put your bike in the back. I'll give you a ride.”

She looked at the car.

“Not enough room for the bike.”

“Sure there is. You're tired from pedaling all the way here, right? It'll be cool - I've got air conditioning.” He said it like air conditioning was something she'd be impressed by.

Safina shook her head no but the nudge in her head got a little stronger.

“Come on. It'll be fun. Take you out for Cokes or lunch or we could go down to Rocky Point Park? Bet you don't get there too often.”

Right then was when she went from suspicious to certain. She knew him and his type, every girl did. Could be anybody, a teacher, a coach, a crossing-guard, or you’re walking down the street and a man you’ve never seen before starts talking all nasty to you. One of her friends, you didn’t go over to her house if her dad was there.

The magic pushed at her again, showing things she could do to CiCi – from making his car crash to his teeth falling out to shitting his pants. Safina smiled at those thoughts, enjoyed how they made her feel, and got closer and closer to saying yes but then she knew she didn’t need magic for this fool.

“No. Besides, you got a flat tire on the passenger side.”

“Do not,” he said and went to check. When he looked up Safina was gone.

She went to her grandparents’ house in Fox Point, as far east as you can go in Providence, and told them all about what happened. CiCi wasn’t around the family after that.

Vanished.

Almost like magic.

November 1976

The most certain thing Safina learned from Miss Logan was that a book of magic can be anything, including being not a book.

On a cold afternoon late in the month, she went to the library to see Miss Logan who was busy with something. So, Safina curled up in one of the big chairs and pulled out her algebra book to review for a test. But it was very warm in the library, the old, cast-iron radiators were knocking and whistling – not too loudly – giving out a comfortable, damp heat.

With the book unopened in her arms, she leaned her head against the big, broad leather chair back, and thought she would close her eyes for just a moment. When she opened them, she was in the same chair in a different room in a different library.

The room was so long that she couldn’t see an end in either direction. The walls angled in, like the roof of the lightning splitter house, going up a couple of stories. Shelves from floor to the top of the ceiling, filled with books which should have been falling out but didn’t. Both walls also had incredibly tall, wheeled ladders, that hooked on brass rails attached to the shelves.

Safina immediately ran as fast as she could and jumped on one and, while it rolled along the shelves, she leaned off it as far as she could. Did it three more times because it was so much fun. No matter how far she went, though, her chair was always only a few feet away from where the ladder stopped.

Then she went back up the ladder to look at the books with the feeling that no matter how far up she went, even with the slant of the walls, she wouldn’t fall.

She would stop at a shelf and look at the books in front of her as if they were a single thing – the different heights turning into the skyline of a city or a range of rectangular mountains. She imagined she could feel their weight and the pull of gravity on them. Then one in particular would catch her attention with its color or title and she’d open to a random page, read a bit, put it back and see what other books were near it. They weren’t arranged by Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress but by some set of affinities and ideas whose rationale was just out of her reach, like a word you’re trying to remember.

After a while she came to one with an intense yellow dustjacket and red lettering. On the cover was the word Harmonium and beneath that “poems by Wallace Stevens.” She opened it near the middle and read a poem about putting a jar on a hill in Tennessee and, though it didn’t make a damn bit of sense, she liked it. So, she took it and went back to her chair. There were poems about snowmen, black birds, and an emperor of ice cream. No idea what any of them meant, she didn’t even know all the words, but liked the images, rhythms, and how the words sounded. A strange, white-man’s type of jazz.

She got tired and closed her eyes, again for just a moment, and when she opened them she was back in the library she knew. The only thing at all different was the poetry book on top of her algebra book in her lap.

Miss Logan pulled up a chair.

“Meetings,” she sighed. “Perfect when you don’t want anything actually done.”

“Can I borrow this?” Safina asked, holding the yellow-and-red book out.

“No,” said Miss Logan. “Because it’s not a library book.”

And now Safina saw that it didn’t have a label on the spine or a paper pocket inside the front cover to hold a checkout card.

“I don’t think many libraries would have a copy of this and if they did you still couldn’t borrow it. It’s quite rare, as I recall. His first collection. Never read Stevens but he’s quite famous, for a poet. We’ve got a copy of his collected poems, well, main branch does. This book you must keep. It’s probably your book of magic.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I suspect you will find things in it that will grab your attention or hide themselves in your memory. You will think of them or be reminded or something and then something will happen. And somehow you will understand … er … something.”

“Wow,” said Safina. “That did not clear up anything.”

“Just a tour guide,” Miss Logan said with a shrug and a smile.

“What’s your magic book?”

Miss Logan went over to where the albums were kept, pulled one out, and the two of them went off to the library’s listening room which had a record player. Miss Logan put the record on and handed the sleeve to Safina.

A Love Supreme by John Coltrane.

The music began with a shimmer of cymbal, then a saxophone welcoming the day, and under it all piano chords like an opening flower. Next a serious bass for walking down a street to, then everything started to split apart and come back together and then on again into places Safina had never heard before.

“Could be any Coltrane,” she said. “This is just my favorite. Pieces of melody, a bass line, a drum section. Every time I listen something new grabs me. Sometimes the music creates an image or an idea…”

“And then something something?”

“You’ve got it.”

Safina carried the book with her everywhere, the impenetrableness of the language drawing her in as she read it over and over. She made lists of all the words she’d never seen before and looked them up in the library’s giant dictionary. She felt like she was stalking something through all those definitions, some creature no one had ever seen before. Sometimes a phrase would stick in her head, like a song, and she’d chant it over and over and over and over to herself, until the words dissolved and became nothing but sounds, eventually reassembling in her mind into meanings no dictionary would ever have. This jazz getting stranger and stranger.

February 1978

Safina sat with her back against the wall and watched the snow beat against the magic barrier put up by the Elvii. Maybe she would stay here, the storm looked too fierce, she thought, and started to cry. Right then three things appeared beside her: a pair of rubber galoshes, thin leather gloves, and a thick, gray, wool scarf.

The galoshes she put on right away, anything to keep her feet dry. Once on there seemed more to them than there should be – they felt like they went about half-way up her calf. She stood up and walked in them and it was like wearing hard, thick boots. She tapped one toe against the wall. The shoe stopped about an inch away from the wall even as it made a solid thumping sound.

Something similar with the gloves. The back of the hands and fingers felt padded and hard on the top, the underside was thicker than it should be but flexed and moved easily. The wool scarf was, as far she could tell, just a wool scarf and that was great because she really needed one.

Those weren’t the only things that had appeared, though.

In the center of the hallway was a long table covered in a black velvet cloth edged with gold tassels and high-backed chairs that looked like thrones. There were blue crystal plates and wine glasses with silver rims and an enormous chandelier holding dozens of lit candles. On both plates were white bread sandwiches and chips and a bottle of soda was next to the wine glasses. In the middle of the table was a platter stacked high with something in a cellophane wrapper labeled “Moon Pie.”

Sitting down she saw the soda was RC Cola, which she’d never heard of before. She ignored the wine glass and drank from the bottle. Like Pepsi, but sweeter.

Took a bite of the sandwich – definitely Wonder Bread. Peanut butter, okay. Bananas, good and ... Bacon? Old dear Lord, why had she never had this before? It filled her and seemed to warm her, but she couldn’t tell if that was magic or that she’d been really hungry before.

Across from her, the Elvii sat invisibly, and she watched as their sandwich vanished in bite-shaped pieces.

The Moon Pies looked delicious, but she was too full to eat anymore. Just as she was about to ask if she could take one with her, a voice insider her head said, “Take a bunch, you might need ‘em.”

“Why all this?” Safina asked.

“Cuz we deserve it!” she heard, but behind that she felt something more.

“And…?”

“The storm is up, and all is on the hazard,” she heard. “An old friend told us that.”

Safina had read Julius Caesar in English class a few months ago and wondered who the old friend was. A question for another day, now was for getting home. She put on her coat, scarf, and other gear, said goodbye to the Elvii, and headed back out into the blizzard, which was going just as strong as before. The street lights were on even though a bank clock said it was just past one in the afternoon.

Back when Providence was still a someplace, Westminster Street was where people went to be seen, drawn to the wide boulevard by fancy department stores, jewelers, furriers, haberdashers. Now it was a pedestrian mall with a Salvation Army, a place selling porn magazines, a few bars, a used bookstore, and bail bond place – all of them haunted by the remains of the grand signs advertising the former occupants. On the narrow streets running off Westminster a few small shops were still in business, a locksmith, a typewriter repair place, pawn shop.

Some of the shops you couldn’t tell what the business was. Behind their filthy plate-glass windows were things that didn’t really go together. Like the one which had a book with a title written in some language that didn’t use anything that looked like the letters Safina knew, a baptismal gown, a few cheap Timex watches, and a sign reading, “By Appointment Only.” None of these places seemed to keep regular hours.

Even her favorite, which sold fresh roast nuts, opened whenever the nice old Italian lady who ran it felt like showing up. Never saw anyone else in there. That store, at least, she understood. There was one or two like it – shops that didn’t seem to need customers – in neighborhoods all over the city. They were Mafia stores, places that existed because someone needed to explain where their money came from. Actually, Safina thought, that’s kind of what the whole city was. No secret that all of New England’s Mafia was run out of Federal Hill and Silver Lake. Mr. Patriarca, the boss, lived a half-mile away from Safina’s home, on a block with no Black people or burglaries.

Next to the peanut roasters was a club called The Safari Lounge. She’d seen old men and women outside waiting for it to open on her way to school. At night it was some sort of punk club, where acts that couldn’t get booked anywhere else could play as long as everyone in the group bought two drinks. The Elvii said an old, yellow snake lived in a terrarium behind the bar, deaf from years of bands that played loud because they couldn’t play at all. The Kings told her it was really an Aztec demon hiding from whatever might scare an Aztec demon. Whenever she went by Safina would reach out with her power and nod. What she got in return was always the same: The feel of a wall made of the strange, cold shapes she assumed were its dreams. Still, she nodded just the same. Couldn’t hurt.

Now that she knew how, she discovered there were creatures tucked away all over the city. She didn’t know what they were but could feel them emanating magic, each in a different way. Having never been anywhere except Providence, she’d assumed the entire world was like this until Miss Logan said there were only a couple in Baltimore.

The last block of Westminster was occupied by the grandest of all the empty department stores. A building done in style Miss Logan said was art nouveau, with copper lilies gone green from the weather vining up the walls and around the windows and over the front door was a stained-glass sign that read “Mannerfield’s.” The doors and windows had metal grates pulled across them and the first floor was also wrapped with a thick chain-link fence that had barbed wire on top. She and Miss Logan both thought it wasn’t for keeping people out but to keep something in, despite neither one of them ever seeing or feeling anything there.

Turning left, Safina headed toward the city hall a block away. Old, ornate, and almost collapsing, like the rest of the city. What she noticed was what wasn’t there: Harbor Brothers’ diner. A dull silver box on wheels, the diner was rolled out a couple of hours before sunset and taken away before sunrise. It served burgers and fries and the like, which were mostly eaten sitting on the steps of city hall, as inside it only had seats for four and the ceiling was too low for anyone to stand except for the staff, short people with strangely long arms. They also had light purple skin and green eyes, but only those who touched magic could see that. It had occupied that spot for nearly a century, going from horse drawn to truck drawn, likely serving the same menu the entire time.

Thinking on that she realized Providence didn’t change, not much, and even when it did it took its time. For example, off to her left, between City Hall and the State House on Smith Hill, was a train station and rail yards with nothing in it but rusting freight cars that she couldn’t recall ever moving. The station was huge, built for a time before jet planes and everyone having a car. It had marble floors, high ceilings with big, white-frosted lights hanging from the ceiling that were never turned on anymore. Made so hundreds of people could be in there at the time, now there was nothing and no one inside except a shoeshine guy dreaming of days when. Pretty much anything would be better for the middle of a city than that mess but there it was, same as it had been as long as she was alive. Maybe everything staying the same was why it’d become a retirement home for the weird creatures, she thought, or maybe it was the other way around and the creatures had slowed time.

Opposite city hall, about a football field away, was the Post Office and in between a big wide plaza of empty. Only thing happened there was transferring from one city bus to another, which meant it was empty and unused for all but a couple minutes each day. Could’ve been parking if there’d been any need for it.

Not a third of the way out on to the plaza the wind hit Safina hard and suddenly, knocking her on her back. This wasn’t normal gusts, it was personal, blowing harder at her than everywhere else.

The wind circled her, gusting from different directions, and suddenly jumping at her when she was even slightly off balance. Something really didn’t want her going in this direction which meant nothing was going to stop her from going in that direction.

Safina thought about turning back and taking a different street, but they were all narrower and likely to make the wind even worse. So, she tucked her head down and kept walking toward the post office, now and then hanging on to the signs and lamp posts that sprouted out of the traffic islands.

Even with her hat pulled low and the scarf wrapped around her head, the wind stung her eyes and made it hard to see much, which is why she didn’t know she was on ice until she fell face down.

It was blue like the ice on the bridge and slowly spreading out in a circle from where Safina was. Below it wasn’t asphalt but a deep pit lined with sharp, craggy boulders. Here and there she saw things like a reversed mermaid – human legs sticking out of giant fish heads with bright, purple eyes.

Then she heard the sound of slowly cracking ice.

Small fissures were forming around her feet. Hoping the laws of physics were still working, she stretched out flat, spreading her weight. The cracking sound stopped but started again when she pulled a leg in trying to crawl. Then she noticed her gloves were sticking to the ice like Spider-Man on a wall, but they let go when she lifted her hand up. So, slowly and carefully she pulled herself along until she was back on asphalt.

There, ahead of her on the ground and next to her left hand, we're a bunch of the snow maggots. She hit them hard with her fist and heard a wonderful popping noise.

“Thank you, Elvis!” She shouted and ran the rest of the way to the post office.

Catching her breath, Safina noticed the wind had died down, then looked around the corner of the building to where she was going next – the bus tunnels under College Hill.

College Hill isn’t tall, but it’s steep. Steep enough for houses at the bottom of some streets to have thick granite blocks in front as protection from runaway cars. Too steep for city buses in any weather which is why two tunnels run under it, from Thayer Street down to South Main, staring out on downtown like shotgun barrels. With no buses moving on the streets Safina decided it would be the easiest way to go.

She stepped out around the corner of the building and something grabbed her wrist, something strong. She tried pulling her arm away but held on. When she looked to see what it all she saw was a gray blur. With her other hand she punched at the area holding her wrist. That got it to let go and she ran.

The thing was fast and right behind her, but it hadn’t spent years playing schoolyard tag and basketball. Safina faked to the left, then jerked right and the thing went several yards past her before stopping and circling back, getting between her and the tunnels.

A whirlwind type thing with snow-maggot blue lights in it, maybe 10 feet tall. Safina took a deep breath and listened to the wind. It was a way she used to calm her mind, letting it drift along thinking about nothing much. Miss Logan said it was meditating but Safina called it letting her thinking get watery. Whichever, it was how she found magic when it didn’t come looking for her. Ideas and shapes of things she might do swam by in her thinking at the same time she kept watching the whirlwind. None of them felt right to her.

When she stopped thinking of magic, she realized this was just a game of tag. Maybe not even that tough a game, she thought, but then looked at where the thing had grabbed her. The glove had burn marks and the cuff of her coat sleeve was yellowish-gray and flaking off.

“You’ll never touch me again,” she said. Trash talk was always part of her game and now it got her anger up, too. “Protect the goal or cover me. You can’t do both. Bet you can’t do either.”

She ran right, going from standing still to full speed in three steps. It chased and she let it get close, then cut around on the inside to the left. That was her plan, basically tacking her way toward the tunnels. Problem was the route was four times longer that way and she had to go her fastest while wearing suit, coat, overcoat, hat.

The next to last cut across Safina was almost out of gas. Lucky she’d noticed that as much as the thing didn’t want her to get to the tunnels it wasn’t going too close to them either. So, she did a triple fake and dashed straight for the tunnel.

She was so exhausted she dived into the tunnel. Once in she rolled over and saw the thing was still out on the street, unwilling to enter.

Then, looking up, she saw why.

The top of the tunnel was the neck of a dragon. Not a dragon from books or fairy tales. Not magnificent or glamorous. It was a beast to give Death nightmares. Skin the dead green color of dried-out seaweed hung off its body in long, layered strips. In places she could see what lay beneath, muscles black and pitted as cold lava.

If the dragon had a hoard it was filled with plague, famine, and madness. If it breathed fire, it was a fire so hot your blood would boil away before your skin burned off. All she could see of it was part of a neck and some of a jaw, so the dragon was immense. Its body likely being beneath all of College Hill and more. It had to have been here a long, long time, long enough for mountains to have formed over it and then for them to be worn down to hills. Even though it must breathe with geologic slowness, Safina could feel it was alive. Sleeping, but how long does a dragon sleep? Had it rested all the millenniums it needed? Was it done with its dreaming? She kept imagining she saw it starting to move.

The idea that this may just be how dragons look in their sleep was no comfort to her.

Nothing was.

She’d never been so terrified in her life.

Out of energy, she slid down the side of the bus tunnel, reached in her pack, and got out a Moon Pie, wincing at each sound the cellophane made as she opened it.

November 1977

For their first date Brigid picked up Safina at a Dunkin’ Donuts. Her car was a ’68 Chevy Nova in shades of green and rust. When Safina got in Brigid’s right arm was up on the back of the bench front seat. Not knowing where the boldness came from, Safina slid all the way over next to the older girl.

“Well, hello,” said Brigid, draping her arm over Safi’s shoulders.

“Hi,” said Safina, with a big smile.

She didn’t ask Brigid where they were going. She didn’t care.

There was snow on the streets and sidewalks and some coming down slowly from the sky that night. Either the car tires didn’t have much tread or Brigid wasn’t a good driver or both because they were sliding all over the roads. Neither girl cared much because Brigid was driving really slow and there weren’t any other cars on the roads. Finally, going down a very gentle hill, the car wouldn’t brake or turn, and they slid, slowly and gently, into a snowbank.

More laughter and then a pause and a look and Brigid leaned in for the kiss that Safina had been thinking about all week, a kiss with intent, with passion, with fun, a kiss that entirely lived up to expectations.

Brigid wasn’t the first girl Safina had kissed, or even second or third. Those were all with girls who “wanted to but weren’t sure.” There was always hesitation in those kisses, even with the girl Safina was “going out with” for three months at the end of eighth grade. What Brigid gave Safina was the first kiss with no doubts about it.

They did that a while until Brigid said they should go for a walk because the snow was so pretty. Safina didn’t know where they were, except it was a fancy neighborhood, with big houses. They walked down the street under trees heavy with snow, talking, laughing, and holding hands, like it was no big deal. Safina couldn’t imagine getting to do that any other place or time.

They went by a wrought iron gate to a huge garden surrounded by tall hedges.

“C’mon,” said Brigid, opening the gate and pulling at Safina.

“I don’t think we should,” said Safina, but all it took for her to change her mind was Brigid giving a tiny pull on her hand.

Inside the only light was from a pale, happy moon and they couldn’t see the street or even whatever house the garden might belong to. Safina was looking around in wonder and then Brigid flopped down on her back into the snow and pulled the younger girl down on top of her. Both had their coats open and Safina pulled her arms out of the sleeves, creating a warm space all their own.

After a time – a magic time of confidences and a shared dream – they’d kind of staggered back to the car and worked it out of the snow. Brigid drove Safina back to a block from home, sometimes asking the car to do its best not to crash into anything while Safina said a phrase from her magic book three times to herself and made sure the car did as it was asked.

February 6, 1978

From the top end of the tunnel Safina saw a bus, half a block away, with its doors open, nose deep in a snow drift. Looking in the side door she saw the snow in the bus was as deep as it was on the street. Then, at the front door, she saw two people encased by blue ice. One was the driver, waiting for the fare, the other an old lady looking into her purse for change. The roof above them had been torn off.

She turned away fast, wanting to both cry and throw up but instead screaming, “NO!” When she did some snow blew off the seats and out the doors. “NO! NO! NO!” she kept screaming until all the snow was out of the bus.

A cold, familiar feeling came over her, one that had nothing to do with the blizzard. Her thinking became sharp and clear as the point of an icicle. It was an old friend. It had let her laugh when the lady who’d tried to hit her crashed into a tree; let her forget about that boy she’d magicked to the ceiling; let her spit in the faces of those two boys after the raven’s cage.

She got out her knife and watched as it transformed into the hard-worn sword. Easy to see it came from long ago, before blades were civilized with lies and polish. It wasn’t long, sleek, and silver, like you need for parade-ground glory to inspire soldiers with. Too crude and honest to ever serve as a rich man’s toy. It was for blood and death, for horrible battle with men begging for life as they tried to stuff their guts back in their bellies. It fit her mood perfectly.

She looked left up Thayer Street, due north, the way that would take her to the warm apartment where she hoped her mother was waiting. Safina wanted to go home so much it felt like a stabbing in her heart, but then ice cold came over her and she crossed the street and headed northeast, the way the wind was blowing.

December 1977

Mundane magic can be just as powerful as the other kind. Three weeks after their first date Brigid invited Safina over for dinner.

Brigid shared an apartment with two roommates. She’d had to live in her car for a while after her parents caught her kissing a girl and kicked her out. But then a grandfather started giving her money on the sly and that, along with whatever she could make from odd jobs, covered rent and food.

“You think your mom knows?” Brigid asked Safina one time.

“Maybe,” Safina said. “I don’t think so.”

She couldn’t imagine talking about with her mom. Never a word by either of them about Safina and romance or dating. Closest was the time a guy her mom was seeing teased Safina about how she dressed and what boys she probably liked. Next day her mom said they’d broken up and she didn’t know why she’d ever gone out with him in the first place.

Next closest was that afternoon. Before going over to Brigid’s, Safina ironed her shirt, jacket, and trousers, and forgot to put the ironing board away because she was in her room obsessing over what tie to wear. Her mother walked into the room and was going to say something about it until she saw the concentration on her daughter’s face.

“Going someplace … special?” she asked, gently.

“Um, yeah,” said Safina. “There’s this … thing.”

Her mom nodded.

“A fun thing?”

“Should be … I hope.”

“Oh,” her mom said. “That’s good. Going with friends?”

“Yeah,” Safina said. “Well, one. I’m meeting them there. Over near Fox Point.”

“Think it will go late?” her mom asked but didn’t wait on an answer. “Because if it does, and the buses aren’t running, you can stay over at Aunt Maria’s.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea. Thanks.”

They looked at each other, afraid of all the words they didn’t know how to say, separated by a chasm of caring.

“Well, you look very nice,” her mom said, coming over to straighten Safina’s tie and putting $10 in her hand.

“Date?” she asked so quietly that Safina could’ve pretended not to hear if she wanted but instead nodded just a little and looked away from her mom’s face. Her mom stood on tiptoes and kissed her daughter’s forehead. Safina started to walk away but turned and looked at her mom’s face and nodded again.

Two bus rides later she walked up the stairs to Brigid’s building, a New England three-decker that wasn’t being kept up which meant it was like every other building on the block. As she was reaching out to the doorbell a phrase came to her.

It was evening all afternoon.

First time that one had ever come up. She said it three times without a thought to why, then pressed the doorbell. Brigid met her with a kiss – right there in the doorway, which scared Safina a moment – and pulled her inside, where the lights were down, and music was up.

“Got the place to ourselves,” Brigid said. Slow song came on the radio, Be Thankful for What You Got – which Safina loved, so she pulled Brigid to the middle of the living room, put her arms around her, and they grooved slow and tight to it. Safina leaned her head against Brigid’s shoulder and closed her eyes. When she did, she saw something. It was blurry and slowly coming in to focus, but the song ended, and she opened her eyes before she could tell what it was. Next song was Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing and the two of them boogied apart and back together at speed. Then the radio was commercials for a while, so they went to the kitchen.

“Making my super-special spaghetti with extra special sauce my roommate Tony made and said I could use,” Brigid said. “Want something to drink?”

“What you got?”

“Tab and … Tab.”

“What was that second one? I’ll have that,” Safina said.

That set them both to giggling because the mundane magic called happy does that.

Once the meal was out, they sat and stared at each other and then ate and talked a little and did it all over again. When they held hands across the table Safina’s vision got weird and, while she could see Brigid, the rest of the room moved in and out of focus.

They moved to the couch and to kissing and the focusing thing continued, so Safina cuddled up in Brigid’s arms and closed her eyes and the image came back from before – a door, like one you’d see inside an apartment.

Brigid got up and pulled Safina toward her room. Safina stumbled and Brigid grabbed her and they fell on the bed and as they did Safina saw the door to Brigid’s closet. It was the one she had seen in her mind.

Even magic, though, must give way to adolescent lust. No thoughts but desire in Safina’s mind as, legs entangled, they kissed for a good long while. Then, at some moment they both instinctively understood to be right, Brigid’s shirt was unbuttoned and Safina’s was pulled up and off. They paused, bras still on, and had a long adoring look at each other, their eyes bright with happiness.

“Is this all OK with you?” Brigid asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Safina in a long, low purring way. “What was that? I never made that sound before!”

Giggles broke out.

“You’re so funny,” said Brigid, slipping out of her shirt. “And so beautiful.”

The older girl lay back on the mattress, moonlight and shadow falling across her body and time seemed to slow as it often does for young lovers. Safina reached out and cupped Brigid’s face with one hand, then slid her fingers lightly along neck and shoulder and down the left arm.

There were several bumps on the forearm and Safina felt a shock through her eyes as her fingers touched each one. She knew more than saw a needle, spoon, and rubber tubing, behind a balled up sock in a clean white sneaker way at the back of Brigid’s closet. She jerked her hand back and moved away like touching a live wire.

“What’s wrong?”

Everything, Safina wanted to say but couldn’t say anything at all. Instead she sat there, almost crying and slightly rocking back and forth, feeling all of her fifrteen years suddenly upon her, knowing how few they were. A few moments ago she’d been feeling strong and grown-up and now she was scared, wanting everything to be different, wanting to not know so much.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she said, now really crying. “I’m sorry. So, sorry.”

Brigid put her arms out to hold her but Safina backed away, put her shirt on, grabbed her coat, and ran out of the apartment, the whole time saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She kept running for a couple of blocks, then ducked down a walkway between two buildings, past some garbage cans, then lay down on the cement and curled herself into a ball.

“Fuck magic,” she said, still crying. “Fuck it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.”

February 6, 1978

Safi walked across a shuttered city; past old houses ragged from decades of college students living in them. No movement except her and falling snow, no sound but wind and her breath. Plows abandoned in the streets, one at the head of a line of now-empty cars it was supposed to free. The snow would soon bury them all. Here it was, just a few hours since the blizzard began and already drifts were piling up three and four feet deep.

She crossed Hope Street and came up against the campus of Moses Brown, a prep school founded by an abolitionist, but did Black people go there? She didn’t know any. Gates closed and locked which told Safina someone was worried about more than the storm.

She stood still a moment, then raised the sword up over her head for someone or something on the other side of the gate to see. A moment, then the lock clicked, and the gate swung open as if there was no snow at all.

Once in, Safina stopped and listened past the wind, listened for the silence beyond sound, the quiet that carries noise like a blank canvas carries paint. Then she worked at listening even beyond that, like squinting your eyes to make out something far away. That’s where she heard it, the sound of the slow, ancient thing living deep beneath the school grounds. Huge and strong, Safina knew the storm would leave nothing but snow here.

She nodded to it and felt a nod in return. As Safina walked across the campus the snow moved away in front of her. When she came to the gate on the far side of the school it swung open and somehow, she knew it wouldn’t close until she was out of sight, in case she wanted to come back.

Past the school was a neighborhood Safina knew from bicycling through. Now and then a white face stared at her from a window. With her scarf wrapped around her face and hat pulled down she didn't think they could see her skin but that didn't matter.

Everything she’d learned about the world told her she didn't belong here, it wasn’t safe. Then she remembered she was more than Safina. She was also a witch with a killing sword – and knew it wasn’t her who needed to worry about safety.

The storm was locking people into their houses, keeping them separate, easier to attack. Apartment buildings were safer. On Camp Street the buildings were separated by nothing more than a walkway. Mostly all three stories tall with six apartments -- some with two or more families. No space for yourself and always someone to be with. Lonely was a word Safina read, alone was a place she made in her mind.

Here, where the cars were all new and two to a house, there was plenty of space. How many people in a family to use all those rooms? Not enough, judging by how many empty ones she. Also, the houses were far apart from each other, separated by wide driveways and lawns. It cost money to isolate like that.

She sensed a fire somewhere nearby, one with wrong blue flames and waves of cold coming off it.

Right now, with those blue ice fires, they were paying the cost. Safina felt that the best protection was having people around you. Whatever was behind this storm didn't like the energy made by big arguments or laughter or even the quiet of a lot of people together.

Suddenly, she heard a melody. Heard it in a place between her head and her ears. A melody she almost recognized. She stopped and focused on it, trying to think where she heard it before. It was only slightly familiar, which told her something. Safina lived with the radio on, falling asleep and waking up to WPRO, the top 40 radio station which played hits over and over. She knew all the songs – even ones she hated – by heart. Could sing or at least hum of most of the different instrument parts, so only slightly recognizing a song meant it wasn't one of those, meant she'd been somewhere unusual when she heard it. That was a clue, the start of a trail of memory to follow. She remembered being around other people, a lot of people, when she heard it. She was in an auditorium and she was young because her feet didn't touch the floor. Watching a movie, a movie with white people singing and dancing and she hadn't seen a lot of those. Why were they singing? Because they were running away from Nazis? Yeah, because she hadn't known before there were different types of white people and they hated each other. Sound of Music! The song was ...

The song was...

Horrible.

Rainbows on roses

And whiskers on kittens…

... Those are a few of my favorite things.

But what she was hearing wasn’t what she heard in the movie. The same melody but it was being picked apart then put back together in a way that found something more in it. Right then the sound coalesced around one instrument … a saxophone.

Coltrane!

Miss Logan!

Safina followed the sound and it led her to where her friend was sitting against the wall of a garage whose roof had been burned out by magic. She was wearing a full-length black snowsuit, good boots, and thick mittens. Next to her were cross-country skis. She smiled when she saw Safi emerge from the snow but didn’t stand up.

“You alright?” Safi asked. The face around Miss Logan’s smile was exceptionally pale and her arm shook as she put out her hand to Safina.

“Had better moments.”

Safi knelt down, took off her gloves and held the other woman’s hand, which was covered in frost, despite having been in a mitten. A phrase came to mind, and she said it immediately.

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind

At that the frost began to melt off Miss Logan’s hand and color began to return to her face. Safina got a Moon Pie out of her pack, unwrapped it, and gave it to the older woman who ate it with delight.

“That sword, where did you find it?” Miss Logan asked.

“It was in my coat pocket,” Safina said.

“Well, that explains why no one could find it.”

“Find it?”

“That’s the sword of Akachukwu. People been looking for it for centuries.”

“Well, if anyone had asked me, I would’ve told them.”

Miss Logan’s laugh echoed off the walls of the garage and out into the falling snow.

December 1977

Brigid didn’t come to school the following week, and no one answered the phone when Safina called. So that Saturday she found more courage than she thought she had and went over.

It was around 5 pm when she rang the doorbell. She wasn’t sure which would be worse – if Brigid came to the door or if she didn’t.

She didn’t. A man did. Short, slender, black hair, and wearing a full-length, red silk dressing gown with matching slippers.

“Hi,” Safina said. “Is Brigid home?”

“I’m sorry but Miss Brigid packed up and left a couple of days ago. Didn’t even say good bye.”

Safina stopped breathing for a moment and then started to cry.

“Oh honey,” the man said with a sympathy that made Safina cry harder. “Are you the girlfriend?”

She nodded and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

“I think you should come in for some tea, don’t you?”

She followed him to the kitchen where he guided her gently to a chair, put out a box of Kleenex, and turned the kettle on.

“I’m Tony,” he said, putting his right hand on his chest. His fingers were long and beautiful, and each nail was a perfect iridescent pearl oval.

“I’m Safina,” she said. “Your nails are gorgeous.”

“Oh, thank you! They take forever but beauty is never easy.”

“Are you from the Philippines?”

“Yes! Right on the first try! How could you tell?”

“My father is a sailor, and he works cargo ships with a lot of people from there. He writes to me every week but because he’s on ships sometimes the letters come in the wrong order or I get a bunch all at once. He tells me where the ship is going and I write back to him every week…” Safina yammered on and on, which she never did, talking about anything to avoid talking about why she was there.

All the while Tony made the tea, put out mugs, placed a box of tissues next to her, then left the room, coming back with a bright red wig which he brushed out until finally Safina slowed down and cried again. Finally, the tears stopped.

“Petit four?” Tony said, offering her a plate with little iced pastries and a small silver spatula.

Not knowing what else to do and feeling more embarrassed she moved one onto her plate and tried to be dainty as she took a bite.

Tony shook his head and picked up one in an exaggerated, butch way, putting the whole thing in his mouth and then eating too quickly to taste it.

“I think that's more your style,” he said, and she giggled. “This is how a lady would partake.” Moving slowly and gracefully, he picked up a little desert fork, sliced off a small piece from a tiny cake, and demurely moved it to his mouth.

“Yeah, I could never do that,” Safina said.

“You never should. It would be wrong for you.”

“Are these from that place, way down Hope Street?”

“The most wonderful bakers,” he said, then talked about brioche, croissants, and baguettes – delicious words she'd never heard before.

Finally, Safina got up her courage and asked where Brigid had gone. Tony didn’t know. He told how earlier in the week he told her she had to move out by the end of the month and then two days later she was gone.

“Why did you tell her to leave?”

“She's a junkie,” he said. “Hid it very well but once I figured it out … well, all junkies do is break your heart. That and steal your stuff and lie about stealing it, and then try to con you into believing you're better off without it. I've known too many to go do that again.”

Safina was shocked. She wanted to say you just don't throw someone out with no place to go but she didn't. She thought about it instead and realized Tony knew what the magic had told Safina: Brigid was a trap.

“Junkies aren't bad people,” said Tony. “They can be wonderful if they aren't using. But dope is a demon. It takes them over.”

Safina thought about Brigid and wondered if anything she knew about her was true. Too many questions in her head all of a sudden, many with no answers, so she asked one that did.

“Why are you dressing up like that?”

“There’s a drag show at The Eagle Bar and Grill and Betty Wont is the star!”

A confused look on Safi’s face, “What’s drag?”

“You are a new lesbian, aren’t you?”

“Been one my whole life,” she said, mostly to herself.

Tony looked at her in the mirror, then at himself and nodded his head.

“Touché,” he said. “You’re right. I apologize.”

Safi didn’t understand why he said that. This happened with a lot of grownups. She’d be talking to them and they’d say something that didn’t make sense, or only made sense to them, but would assume it made sense to her, too. Usually it irritated her because she wanted to know what they meant and at the same time didn’t want to ask about it because that would show she didn’t know. This time she was more interested in what she wanted to know.

“So, what’s drag?”

“Le drag, c’est moi!” Tony said, throwing his arms straight up as if he was in a spotlight. “It’s when the boys become the girls making fun of what boys think girls are.”

Safi looked at him and blinked twice, like a cat dismissing a human.

“That didn’t help.”

He handed her a business card that read:

BETTY WONT

Female Impersonator / Chanteuse Extraordinaire

“The houselights go down, the music comes up, the mirror ball starts spinning, then the star makes her grand entrance and… Heaven!”

That did help.

He’d said it so much feeling and love that a scene conjured itself in her mind, one with sweaty boys in shiny clothes and platform shoes dancing to the beat of desire. She could almost smell the cigarettes and hear ice cubes in glasses. Another kind of magic, she realized. One made from real things – attitude, make-up, lighting, romance, rhythm – and the fire of a fabulous freedom. Safina smiled because now she understood.

“It sounds wonderful,” she said.

“You should come! Especially on Sunday nights! That’s lesbian night and they would eat you up!” He paused. “Wait, how old are you?”

“Almost fifteen.”

“Never mind. You must come in three years.”

Safina giggled.

“I wish I could. It sounds fun.”

“You are the sweetest thing,” he said. “Alright, Aunt Betty has to finish getting ready. I’ve loved having tea with you. Will you come back?”

She nodded.

“You promise?”

She nodded again, excited because he wasn’t just being polite.

February 6, 1978

Once Miss Logan was feeling better, she started digging around in the burnt-out garage, finally pulling a pair of cross-country skis and poles out from under a pile of junk.

“I knew there had to be a pair here,” she said. “Oh, but you don’t have the boots to wear them.”

Safina had a suspicion she didn’t need any and sure enough her invisible boots slid into the clips perfectly. Before they left, she saw an old, rusty flashlight in among the rubble. It didn’t work but she stuck it in her backpack without wondering why.

Heading out they kept going northeast, following the storm track, the skis making it so much faster and easier Safina started smiling.

About half-way down one street she saw an iron gate and fence around a garden and came to a stop. She’d only seen them once before, but they’d been covered by snow then as well.

Stepping out of her skies, Safina opened the gate and walked in. Somehow, even in the middle of a gray stormy day, the snow on the branches and bushes sparkled just as they had that night. She found the place they’d kissed and cuddled, recognizing it more by feeling than sight. She stood in the spot and felt warm for the first time since she walked out of Classical, understanding that the last horrible night at Brigid’s apartment didn’t have to destroy the wonderful of the rest of their time together.

Once she was done, they kept going, coming at last to Blackstone Boulevard, a broad road split by a wide, tree-lined midway. They crossed it and turned left, across it, following a tall fieldstone wall to a wide driveway where they turned in. The sign out front was buried in snow but Safina didn’t need to read it. This was the entrance to Swan Point Cemetery.

The driveway was lined by leafless trees whose branches, weighed down by snow, looked like they were reaching out to grab something while the evergreens had become huge white mounds swaying in the wind. All but the tallest headstones had vanished under drifts so all they could see were half buried mausoleums, and a few statues of Jesus, hands reaching toward the sky as if hoping for rescue.

“Really?” said Miss Logan. “A cemetery? Do magical things have no imagination?”

“Right,” said Safina. “It’s like bad writing. All that’s missing is shrieking ghosts.”

“Well, that would be surprising. They usually go south for the winter.”

Safina stared at the older women and then they both started laughing.

“Had me going there,” she said.

“I try,” said Miss Logan. “Tell you the truth though, it worries me that there aren’t any ghosts.”

“I remember when I used to have normal conversations,” Safina said. “Honestly, it was kind of boring.”

They’d only gone a little way into the cemetery when, in the distance, they saw the thing raging in the heart of the blizzard. Safina’s eyes couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. It was like a pillar but curved and angled and everything in between all at the same time, so tall it reached into the low clouds over head. Colors – dark purple, ice blue, and sepia, rolled across and into the surfaces of the thing like clouds. She couldn’t even figure out how close it was.

“Don’t look at it!” Miss Logan said, shaking Safina. “It must be from somewhere with more dimensions than we have. Trying to make sense of it… that’s going to fuck you up.”

“You swore,” she said, once her eyes started focusing again.

“Please don’t tell the children,” Miss Logan said, then opened the box she’d been carrying and took out an instrument like nothing Safina had ever seen before. A wooden, tear-drop shaped body with a rectangular box on top, a crank at one end, tuning pegs at the other, and buttons on a side. As Miss Logan turned the crank a wheel spun and out came a high keening crazy sound and a deep droning, like Death humming on its way to work. Pieces of melodies emerged from a flurry of notes, staying only long enough to be noticed when they were gone.

Safina got out the big flashlight with no batteries in it. Ever since she got it, the magic had been swirling and pushing her. She’d figured out the phrase to use even before the magic told her. It was from the only poem in the book that made sense to her the first time she read it.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Clicking it on, she pointed it at the thing, and a beam of something utterly and completely black came out. Snowflakes disappeared into its beam. She pointed it toward the thing with no idea what it was doing, only that it was.

“That’s it?” she said. “This is what we’re doing?”

Miss Logan nodded.

Magic never explains itself. Miss Logan said that right before the first time she said magic is a bitch.

A girl with a broken flashlight and a crazy lady playing music like from some monster movie you’d watch on Saturday afternoon on TV. She laughed at the craziness and once she started, she couldn’t stop.

Miss Logan held Safina’s face with her hands.

“Listen, listen,” she said.

In the place beyond earthly noise she found new sounds, strong bold tones, so bright it was like hearing colors, and so clear she could place where they were coming from, as if she was looking at a map. Fifteen sounds of magic forming a wide circle around the thing. Now she understood it wasn't only her and Miss Logan, they were part of something, they had allies. She started to calm down.

They had something to do, so they did it.

Safi kept the light on the thing, while Miss Logan played the hurdy gurdy. No idea if they were doing any good or anything at all, but they understood it had to be done. It was boring, until suddenly it wasn't.

A ferocious screech then the flash light flickered, and the music came and went like a volume knob was being turned up and down.

“FUCK!” Miss Logan shouted. “We lost somebody. The barrier’s been broken.”

Safi looked out in the direction of the thing and saw what looked like a rolling wave of light blue snow moving toward them. A moment later she heard a noise like hundreds of insects scratching away at a giant piece of wood coming from the wave.

“Maggots!” she screamed, and Miss Logan jerked her head up and saw what was happening.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Miss Logan yelled. “Get your skis on!”

“I'm not leaving without you.”

“Good, because I'm not staying.”

Miss Logan kept cranking the hurdy gurdy while Safi got her skis. The music, when it came out, confused the maggots and they tumbled around like a wave breaking on itself without moving toward shore. But there was more silence than song coming out of the instrument now. When the flashlight worked its black light killed swaths of maggots and the others scrambled to get away, but it flickered and faded, too.

Magic was running loose in other ways, warping the landscape. Now the headstones and mausoleums were all enormous – fifteen to twenty feet high. So, they picked a direction and fled. While skiing was faster and easier than running through the snow, it was still exhausting, and Safi knew she couldn’t keep going for long.

Worse, the maggots were slowly herding them into a corner created by two mausoleums.

For all that, Safina wasn’t scared. Her thoughts were fast, cold, and calm, considering then discarding things she might be able to do. She stayed that way even after realizing they were trapped. She took out her sword, the only weapon she had left, and was pleased to see it still glowed with power. She swung it side to side in front of her and even at a distance the maggots shied away from it. But it was the wrong weapon for this battle, made for a time when it was enough to kill one thing at a time, when war still depended on the personal touch. The maggots avoided the sword and poured around the two women turning where they stood into an island. Like a flood surrounding a small, low piece of land, the creatures inched closer and closer.

Miss Logan was throwing little round things that let out orange smoke which stunned the maggots until the wind blew it away.

“No, no, NO!” Safi screamed and that made the maggots hesitate. When they did she dashed forward and swung the blade, killing them by the thousands and the tens of thousands, which barely made any difference in their number.

Then came drumming and footsteps and more like out of a dream. An avalanche of sounds: Rattles, shuffles, slurps, clops, booms, bangs, trumpets, slide whistles, sleigh bells, bass notes so low they were more rumor than noise, roars, hisses, caws, screeches, and barks.

Less than a minute went by before they were able to see the cause. A long column of creatures was careening towards them.

The cavalry, unlike any seen before, had arrived.

At the head of it was the Harbor Brothers diner, pulled by six skeletal red horses, dripping cerulean sweat. On the roof, unbothered by jolts or bumps, were seven of the light purple creatures that operated it. No aprons or sweat-soaked t-shirts now. They were dressed in tough, black three-piece suits – looking like butlers going to a very formal war. All wore stove-pipe hats each with a great, tall feather that looked like they were from a gold peacock. One drove, the other six were for the fight, carrying large silver things as if they were weapons but so unlike anything Safina had seen before she couldn’t even guess at what they might do.

Following them came a great number of creatures ranging in size from giants to maybe a few inches tall, some draped in animal pelts and carried spears with stone points, some well-dressed ladies and gentlemen in styles at least a hundred years past. There were one-, two-, four-, seven-, eight-, and hundred-legged things; those with no legs at all slithered on the ground, floated in mid-air, or were carried by comrades; they were covered in, fur, feathers, scales, gems, and one in flowers.

Above them all, a thirty- of forty-foot-long, chrome-yellow snake with a turquoise ruff near its head, slithered through the sky. Even though she had never seen it before, Safina knew what it was. An Aztec snake demon.

The strange parade plunged close by the women, scattering the maggots, and then heading on toward the terrible pillar, kicking up a great cloud of snow behind them as they went.

“The locals are all riled up,” said Safina, relaxing for the first time in hours.

“I didn’t know there were so many locals,” said Miss Logan.

“Me either,” said Safina. “Glad there wasn’t a dragon in there.”

“Very, very, very glad.”

It seemed to both of them that their part in the battle was done for the moment, but they might be needed again. Miss Logan whistled something, and snow formed into a half-open shelter. Another whistle brought a ball of green fire to warm them.

How long did they wait? How long had they fought? Safina thought the answer to both was too long and not long at all. Time stretched and collapsed as it wanted to and, in her experience, even the best clock would lie to you about it. And that was normal time. Add magic to it and for all Safina knew it might run backwards.

“No sign of dusk yet,” Safina said. “So, can’t be past about 4.30. What do you think is happening?”

“No idea,” Miss Logan said. “I’ve read that’s what battles are like – you never really know what’s going on. All you know is the part you can see in front of you. Might not even know if you won or lost until someone comes along and tells you.”

“Reminds me of my first girlfriend.”

Miss Logan nodded and stayed quiet, listening if Safina wanted to say more but not prying, then she pointed towards the pillar, “That looks like a good sign.”

There were cracks in the bottom of the pillar, cracks that grew larger and made pieces fall off it which flashed for a moment then vanished. Soon the entire pillar was gone, leaving nothing behind but the roaring of the blizzard.

“Any idea what it was?”

“Nope,” said Miss Logan. “Lot of folks going to be trying to find that out.”

The cavalry returned, quietly and slowly, with far fewer creatures than before. Of those that remained most were injured in some way, there were missing limbs and eyes, a lot were helping each other walk and a few were carrying comrades. At the front was the diner but with only three on top of it now.

It pulled up near the two women. The door at the back opened and a set of stairs were lowered, but they weren’t ready to go in. They stood there as the afternoon turned to evening, faces bare to the wind, and watched to honor all the creatures as they went by. They went slower now, giving Safina time to recognize a few species – gargoyle, wyrm, troll, gremlin, fairy, jubjub bird, banshee, wyvern, centaur – but most she’d never encountered in books or her imagination. When they had all passed Miss Logan went and sat at the counter, where cheeseburgers, fries, and coffee were waiting, but Safina waited a while, looking up into the sky, hoping to see the huge yellow snake. When she knew it wouldn’t she wiped the tears from her eyes and went and sat next to Miss Logan. The stairs pulled up, the door closed, and they headed back towards Hope Street and home.

In Memory of

Wickersham “Wicki” Stamps

Last of the stone-cold butches

And

Tony Chiong

“On the wings of victory, queen.”

Constantine von Hoffman

Novella: A Mind for Winter

1

2

3

Short story: The Fading Moon

The Residue

Constantine von Hoffman