Chapter 5 -- raw and unedited

Note: I was laughing to myself over how awful some of this writing was today, but here it is anyway, for your entertainment. ;)

Susana arrived the next morning with a packed bag in one hand and a knapsack slung over her shoulder. She slid the key into the lock on Tic's front door and let herself in. 10am and she was just getting started with her day. What the hell, she thought to herself. It was Friday, and it's not like she had anyplace else to be.

Lily would be finishing her shift at Dogwood Diner after lunch, so she had a few hours in the house all to herself. She was definitely glad she had Baird around to keep her company, and to ward off whatever else might be lurking about.

"Puppy! Puppy!" she called out into the empty house, but no dog appeared. "Okay then," Susana said quietly to herself, deciding to try a quick experiment. She set her duffle bag down on the floor beside her and closed her eyes. She saw Baird's face in her mind, and tried to picture him standing in front of her. In her mind, she told him what a good dog he was, and she reached out in her vision to pat the top of his head. Susana smiled.

She heard a slow gait moving across the floorboards above, and when she opened her eyes, Baird was moving cautiously down the stairs.

"Good boy," Susana cooed. "Did you hear me calling you?" She shifted the weight of the knapsack as she stepped toward the bottom of the staircase, meeting Baird as he descended. "I'm glad to see you." Susana rewarded the old dog with a scratch behind the ears.

"Well," Susana said as she stood upright and took a look around. "Would you like to go outside with me? I've got some work to do."

She turned to heard toward the kitchen, with Baird following behind her. Susana enjoyed the dull thud of her hiking boots on the bare floor. She had definitely chosen the right shoes today.

Out in the garden, Susana put on her sunglasses and flipped through the encyclopedia of herbs that Lily had given to her. She stopped when she got to the page on rosemary, then double-checked the list Lily had written out on a piece of notebook paper. "Okay, there's supposed to be some rosemary around here somewhere." Susana scanned the different gardens, trying to match up the plants growing around her with the pictures in her book. There was just so much growing in all the different gardens, and when Susana again glanced at the long list in her cousin's handwriting, with so many plant names that she'd simply never heard of before, she wondered how long it would take her to make sense of it all.

"So much for starting with an easy one," she mumbled to herself.

Lying on the back porch, Baird rested his head on his front legs, watching her.

Looking up again, Susana spied a collection of shurbs at the back corner of the property, close to an ornate but worn garden gate. Looking back and forth between the bushes and the pictures in the book, Susana made her way over to the plants in question. She dropped her knapsack on the ground beside her. Standing next to the shrubs, taller than her waist, Susana frowned. "Is it supposed to look like this?" She again looked to the reference book for help, then remembered a sure-fire way to make a positive identification.

Susana reached into her knapsack and pulled out a collection of spice containers she had picked up at the grocery store. Choosing the one marked "rosemary," she opened it and sniffed at the contents, looking back toward Baird as she did so. "It's not cheating," she told him. "I've got to start someplace."

Then she leaned down and smelled the needle-like leaves of one of the bushes. She sniffed again at the container, and then turned her face toward the plant. "Okay, I think we have a winner," she congratulated herself as she closed the container and tossed it back into her bag. "And I know what they mean now," she commented to no one. "Fresh really is better." Susana placed a check mark on Lily's list, then turned the paper over and drew an approximate sketch of the backyard. Making big boxes to represent the different garden plots, she drew a large circle to mark each of the rosemary plants she had just identified. "A quick reference guide will never hurt."

* * * * *

Lily stood on the back porch, grease-stains on her jeans and the smell of the grill in her hair. She saw Susana crouched over a group of plants in one of Tic's new plots, a couple of books strewn across the grass beside her. Lily smiled. "You have to give her one thing," she confided to Baird. "She is really throwing herself into this. That takes guts."

Lily shielded her eyes and then pulled a baseball cap onto her head. "What have you got there?" Lily called out to Susana, nearly a half-acre away.

Susana put down the book she had been balancing on her knees and stood up, staring down at the plants and resting her hands on her hips, frowning. "Hey, could you come over here a minute?"

Lily jogged down the stairs and strode across the yard. Susana was digging the toe of her boot into the dirt in her frustration.

"I can't figure this one," Susana told her cousin. "It's not in any of the books, and I can't find it on the list you gave me."

Lily bent down to pick up the piece of paper she'd given to Susana. She scanned the list, noting Susana's check marks next to the plants she had identified. Lily looked back down at the plants growing in the ground before her. It was a lush species, with variegated leaves of forest and sage green, spread out and upwards toward the sun. Lily knelt down in the dirt to get a better look. The leaves weren't waxy, as she would have expected, but were soft, and felt like felt in her hands. She reached in, beyond the leaves, to get a sense of the stalk -- it was hard, with a bark-like covering, but was surprisingly flexible. She could tell without looking that the roots ran deep.

"It's a network of roots," Susana commented, not realizing that she had just read Lily's mind. "As near as I can tell, it's a single plant. Kind of like the way mint grows."

Wiping the dirt from her hands on the knees of her jeans, Lily smiled up at Susana. "You've picked up a lot your first day."

Susana smiled shyly. "Yeah, I guess. Do you have any idea what it is?"

Lily stood up next to her cousin. "It's not on the list, that's for sure. Must be something new Tic was trying out. It wasn't in any of the books?"

Susana shook her head. "I looked through them all, a couple of times. I can't find anything like it."

"Well, there's nothing like learning from doing," Lily smiled as she pulled a leaf-shaped piece of metal, the size of her palm, from her back pocket. "At least, that's what O'l Tic used to say." Lily sprang a clasp on the leaf, and unfolded it into a curved blade. She knelt down, touched the silver blade to one of the leaves, and closed her eyes. "For the gift of yourself, for this blessing to me and my art, for the benefit of this sacred work, I give thanks." Then, in one swift motion, Lily sliced off the leaf at its base.

Lily stood back up and handed the leaf to Susana, then closed the knife into its deceptive leaf shape, and slid it into her pocket.

"Okay," Susana ventured. "You wanna tell me what you just did? And what kind of knife was that?"

Lily took the leaf from Susana's hands and smiled. "It's called a boline, and it's for gardening, gathering of herbs and such. That's a small one I used, something that's easy to keep handy." She turned and headed toward the modest greenhouse at the edge of the property, with Susana on her heels. "And it's a good idea to give thanks to the plant before you harvest from it," Lily explained, turning the leaf around in her fingers. "You preserve the best qualities of it that way. Besides, how would you like someone coming 'round and slicing off bits of you without even asking?" Lily looked sideways at her cousin and winked.

Susana followed Lily into the greenhouse, filled with seedlings that had yet to be planted. In the center was a large worktable, and an old desk was pushed up against one wall, next to a filing cabinet that had seen better days. Lily laid the leaf on the table and sat down at the desk. "Nothing ends up in Tic's garden by accident," she said as she began pulling open the desk drawers and leafing through Tic's old notebooks. "There has to be some documentation on this someplace."

Susana leaned against the table and looked down at the leaf. All day long, she had been reading about how to identify the different herbs in the gardens, what particular healing properties each offered, and how to harness those energies. She always knew she'd been a sponge when it came to absorbing new knowledge, but she was feeling pretty tapped out. It had been one hell of a week! And here was one more plant she had to learn about.... Tentatively, she reached out to touch it, and just as her fingertips made contact with the soft surface, a slight tingle spread up her fingers into her hand and wrist. She pulled her hand away in surprise, though it had been a pleasant feeling.

Lily pulled a file from the cabinet beside the desk and opened it up to a collection of drawings and notes. "I think I have something here..."

"Hey, Lily...?" Rubbing her hand at the tingling feeling that still remained, Susana stepped up behind her cousin.

Lily flipped through the pages quickly, scanning them for pertinent information. "Yes, here it is. Mystery solved." But then some of Tic's writing caught her attention, and she leaned forward over the papers, frowning. "Oh, gee...."

"Umm, Lily? There's something about that plant...."

"There sure is," Lily replied without even looking up at her. "It's something called Aengus Wort. At least, that's what Tic thought it was." She studied the document in her hands. "What he hoped it was."

"Aengus what?"

"Wort." Lily turned in her chair to face her cousin, but she kept reading. "Wort is just another word for herb, or plant. It looks as though this was some kind of sacred plant brought over from Ireland by early immigrants, but it was thought to have disappeared entirely."

"Sacred plant?" Susana gazed back toward the leaf on the table, when something beyond the table, on the other side of the greenhouse, caught her eye. Not something. Someone.

"Yeah, with particularly potent healing powers." Lily looked up at her cousin. "Tic was going to do some serious mojo with this plant." Lily noticed that Susana was holding her wrist. "What's with your hand?"

"Lily? Who's that?" Susana asked, motioning to the other side of the greenhouse with her chin.

Lily followed her gaze, but didn't see anything except more plant racks and garden tools hanging on the wall. "Who's what?"

"That woman, standing over there." Susana studied the figure that stared back at her with large, sorrowful eyes. She was small, her dark skin almost black, dressed poorly in heavy wool and wearing a dirty kerchief on her head.

Lily shook her head, then realized what Susana must be seeing. "Ah, that must be the ghost!"

Susana looked down at Lily in shock. "The who?"

Lily stood up and walked to the table to pick up the leaf of aengus wort. "Yeah, this place used to be part of a small farm. It wasn't a big fancy plantation like you see in the movies, or like those place where they give tours still. But the kitchen where the slaves worked used to be located where this greenhouse stands now." Lily looked again at the far wall, but still couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"Are you, were you.... a slave?" Susana asked the incredibly vivid shadow standing across from her. The woman didn't move, but kept her eyes on the two cousins.

"Tic told me this place was haunted, though he never actually saw anything himself. Just something he felt," Lily explained in a matter-of-fact tone. "I think he said her name was Maimie."

Susana saw the woman's face darken at the mention of the name. "My name ain't Maimie!" she told Susana bitterly.

Chapter 1: raw, unedited, rough draft (please forgive me!)

Tic sat alone at the breakfast table in the early morning hours, as was his custom. The sun had not yet risen, but was threatening over the horizon. Monday morning, and most of the neighbors wouldn't be up for awhile yet. This wouldn't be such a long day after all, he well knew.

The old man slowly stirred his tea -- an herbal concoction of his own design -- and pushed away the toast and jam he had prepared. He simply wasn't hungry any more. So this is what it feels like to disconnect, he thought to himself, watching the loose tea leaves swirl in the small cup in front of him. Might as well get on with it, then.

He waited for the tea leaves to settle in the cup but soon lost his patience. He raised the ceramic to his lips and swallowed all of the tea in a single gulp, careful not to let the tea leaves past his lips -- that would defeat the purpose of the exercise. In one swift motion, he turned the cup upside down and rested it in its saucer, where the last drops of tea meandered down beneath the rim. He waited a bit, picking a few stray tea leaves from his gray mustache. He chuckled to himself, remembering how many times his appearance had been compared to Walt Whitman.

A fine fellow, Ol' Tic thought this himself. And not so different from me, in the end.

Satisfied that the divinatory cup was ready, Tic picked up his tea mug, turned it right-side-up, and peered down into the tangle of leaves decorating the interior. He brought the cup closer to his face and then stretched his arm far away again, trying to get the best vantage point to understand what he was seeing. Finally, he rested the cup on the table before him. He knew what he was seeing. There were no two ways about it.

He was torn between relief and remorse. His long struggle would finally be coming to an end, but had it really been a life-long battle? He wasn't proud of his past, but that one dreadful chapter had long since faded from contemporary memory. And that unfortunate fork in the road had led him down a most unexpected pathway, one that he couldn't now say that he regretted. But still, the pain he had caused, the mess he had made. He leaned his elbows on the table and held his head in his hands. "Ah, Simone," he lamented quietly, with no one to hear him but the gently swaying branches outside the window. "Who's to say we would have ended up any differently?"

Tic wiped a stray tear from the corner of his eye and sat upright in his chair. He looked down at the tea cup oracle, unchanged. Yes, this would be a short day after all. He reached for the file folder across the table from him, confident that everything was in order. Just needed to make one more telephone call. Still, something in the tea leaves had troubled him.... not so much troubled, perhaps, as caught his interest. A storm. A literal storm? he wondered, pausing to look out the window over his shoulder. Dawn was approaching. So was change. Big change. Something coming that would set this city on its ear.

"It sorely needs it," Tic muttered to himself as he pulled out the deck of Tarot cards he'd been keeping in the breakfast table draw for decades. The box had long since disintegrated into dust. The ancient rubber band holding the desk together came apart in his hands. Tic managed a quick laugh. "Just as well," he murmured, beginning to shuffle the cards, his old friends. "Mmm," he rattled, deep in his throat. "Let's see what you have to say today."

Shuffling done, he placed the deck squarely on the table in front of him, face-down. Tic took a deep breath and lifted a single card from the top of the deck. Turning it over, he placed it back on the table, next to the deck, and stared down in amazement.

The Tower. The burning castle tower, people falling head-first to the ground, their hair and clothes in flames. Lightning and hail raging from heaven above, striking the tower, crumbling what had once stood so tall and proud.

Tic shook his head, a strange smile playing across his lips. He knew well what this card foretold. Dramatic upheaval. Sudden reversal of fortune. A card of change, but certainly not the gentle, slow-paced change most human beings prefer. "Humbling," Tic mumbled, his mind racing. "Sudden realization of the truth." Truth? What truth might that be? He looked down at the card again.

"There is going to be a reckoning," he sighed at last. "Richmond, you're going to pulled screaming from the darkness of your own making." Ah! If he could just be there to see it! This was the storm he had been waiting for, the blessed turbulence that would finally free and thousand voices, and more. It was almost too good to be true. He knew the city was strong, and stubborn.

"You've been your own jailer," he spoke to the world outside the window, watching as the first morning light played and danced upon the new leaves of the weeping willow tree. The dew glistened on the young plants in the garden, and the robins were already in the yard, digging for breakfast. Such a pretty place, he thought to himself, trying to see his neighborhood through the eyes of outsiders, but he never succeeded. Then that new plot caught his eye, the patch of dirt where that plant had sprung up of its own accord. Tic smiled.

"Good then." He left the cards on the table and got up to go to the telephone on the wall. He pulled the business card from his trouser pocket as he lifted the receiver. He had to squint at the card to make out the numbers, and sighed. "It's just as well," he teased himself as he began to dial, enjoying the weight of the wheel against his finger and listening to the clicking noises it made while rotating back into place. "Never underestimate the simple pleasure of a good telephone," he said to no one.

Listening to the line ring, he checked the clock on the wall and winced. No matter, he reassured himself. After all, this couldn't wait, not another day, and quite possibly not another hour. Suddenly, there was a racket at the other end of the phone, followed by a groggy and irritated voice.

"David?" Tic spoke patiently into the receiver. "I know it's early, son, but I have a rather urgent matter to go over with you, as soon as you can get here. I'll be waiting for you at the house." He replaced the receiver, not waiting for the inevitable, argumentative reply issuing from the other end of the line. He took a breath, cut short by the familiar tightening in his chest. Tic leaned both hands against the wall to keep his balance, breathing as deeply as he could; it was the only way to truly hold it off. He reached into the breast pocket of his shirt for the small prescription bottle he always carried with him, even though it contained yet another herbal remedy he had made with his own hands. Popping off the top of the bottle, he shook two small capsules out into the palm of his hand and slid them into his mouth, swallowing them easily.

Looking down at the bottle as he replaced the cap, he smiled. Let others see what they want to see, he thought to himself as he returned the bottle back to his pocket. Slowly, he slid his suspenders down over his shoulders, to help him breathe a bit more easily. No, it wouldn't be long now.

He took the few steps back to the breakfast room table and sat down. Tic pulled the file folder in front of him and opened it. Staring down at the legal document, he knew that everything was in order. This visit from his lawyer -- a young, well-meaning fellow, if not so bright -- was merely a formality. Tic took a deep breath and sighed, glad to feel the tightness in his chest loosening its grip. Letting go was going to be easier than he'd expected.

the day one experience

Day 1
Total Word Count: 5704
Percent Complete: 11%

Today is kick-off day for NaNoWriMo!

Though I'd considered staying up late last night to begin writing at the stroke of midnight, I ended up in bed around 10:30pm, hoping for a good night's sleep so I could begin in earnest this morning. Of course, I ended up dreaming that my little tabby cat was using a small scythe to try to insert flat and uninteresting characters into my story.... When I saw him this morning, snoozing on my pillow, I told him to back off.

I fell into my usual routine of general procrastination this morning, but then got my butt in the chair and started writing. Surprisingly, it wasn't even 7am yet. I was sure that it would take hours to reach my daily quota of 1667 words, but I was shocked to find that I was nearly there a mere 45 minutes later. Huh?

I'm lucky in that I'm a freelancer-type with not much on the schedule for the month of November, so I kept at it. Just as I was beginning to think about lunch, a neighbor showed up on my doorstep with fresh, homemade split pea soup. Not even letting me get the door all the way open, she handed me the container and said, "It's hot. Take this upstairs with you right now. Keep writing!" Then she ran off in the rain. That was a happy surprise. It was incredibly good soup, too.

Though I kept writing, I took some decent breaks during the day -- I even took a nap with the plot-busting cat, and later went on a 4-mile "urban hike." I grilled up a sausage in my new George Foreman grill and caught an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." While the afternoon's work didn't match the same level of focus or output as those early morning hours, I still managed a word count of 5704 today.

I am astonished.

Can I keep up this pace? I doubt it, but if I did, I'd be done with my 50,000 words next Monday. Then I could hammer out three more 50,000-word novels before November 30th. Ha! I don't think so.

Tomorrow, I imagine I'll be watching the election returns more than I'll be writing, but you never know. I feel good after today's effort. I'd love to keep at it this evening, but I just don't have the energy. Pacing myself has never been my strong suit, but I've also never written a book this way before, and it's going well so far.

I'll be starting Chapter 4 when I next sit down to work on Witches' Brew. Is this my best writing? Hardly. I can usually put together something pretty good even when I'm half asleep, but this isn't even at that level quite yet. But that's the point of the exercise, to generally write crap while working to simply get the story on the computer screen. I don't think that first chapter was so god-awful, however, so I might consider posting that.

Or maybe I'll just stick to the commentary. ;)