It begins with the pink moon in spring. It begins with fireflies in the hedges and falling in love for the first time.

It’s passion, but it’s also revenge. It’s fire and water. It’s everything you dreamed of and every regret. It’s what you lose and what you gain. It’s the time of year when you find a love letter that’s not addressed to you right there on your bureau. You tell yourself not to read it, but you do. What’s done cannot be undone, unless you make it so. You walk through the dark and listen to the cicadas calling. There are frogs on the dirt road and you’re crying. All the leaves are green. You feel the green inside of you, twisting through you like a vine.

You remember old curses and a spell your grandmother taught you. You would need coriander and black string. You would need a black candle and sage. You remember that your grandmother warned you to be careful. Revenge always comes back to you in unexpected ways. She said that if someone betrays you, he might be doing you a favor. They’re setting you free. The birds outside the window are singing. The birds remind you that you’re alive. How can you ignore summer, your favorite time of the year? How can you not rejoice? What’s done is done, what is to come is unknown. All around you the world is beautiful. Sorrow is unavoidable, but this is the time of year to start over. Make a crown of flowers. Celebrate the light. Let go of the darkness. Wear citrine and carnelian for energy, warmth, and strength. Wear silver for protection, and passion, and love.

A summer night is the best time to let go of what you’ve lost. Say the betrayer’s name three times. Look for black feathers on the road. Swim in a pond of dark water and look up at the stars. What ends will begin again. This is the season of roses, the time of year when the wild grass grows so tall you disappear into it as you walk into the meadow. It’s the time of the year to paint, or write a story, or dance under the moon. It’s the time to be brave in all that you do. Summer feels like a waking dream. You sit on the front porch, you drink lemonade, you look over at your neighbor who you’ve never noticed before. In the morning you find he’s brought you wild raspberries. Love begins this way in the summer. A glass jar of sunflowers left on your front steps. A note left taped to your door. You find yourself drawn to someone you’ve been acquainted with for years but have never really known. It’s the time of unexpected happenings.

On the hottest night of the year, when you can’t sleep, you walk through a garden filled with ten varieties of tomato plants, you receive a phone call from someone you used to know and talk until dawn. This is the time of year when you visit places you’ve never been before. You wear long skirts and the earrings your mother gave you for luck. When you were a child, summer lasted forever, but now you know how precious these days are.

Do all that you can to make it last. Put out bowls of water for the birds in your yard, go to the sea, sit by the shore of a deep blue lake, be grateful for all that you have. Read books in a hammock, leave your shoes at home and go barefoot, collect shells in a dish that you keep by your bedside so that you hear the ocean in your dreams.

By midsummer you no longer remember what was written in that letter you found on your bureau. That’s what happens when you live day by day. You take the paper and the envelope and place them in a bowl. When you pour water over the ink it runs off the page and disappears. It’s summer and you’re starting over. It’s the best time of the year. There’s rosemary growing outside your door. You’ve planted what you know you’ll want in autumn—squash and pumpkins—but don’t rush through the days. Say a blessing for slow afternoons, for Saturdays when you have nothing to do but lie in the grass, for long conversations with your oldest friends. On Midsummer’s Eve open your windows and make a promise to give back to the earth with gratitude for all she has given to you.

Blue skies, the birds in the trees, your own beating heart. That’s all you need.

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Article from Issue #40 Subscribe | Single Issue

Every few years they came searching and this was the year they found them. Three sisters living at the edge of the forest. The youngest sister was at the river when it happened. She had long black hair and ember eyes and was so quiet it sometimes seemed she could disappear into the night. She knew something was terribly wrong because the fish stopped swimming and the birds fell from the sky. She felt whatever her sisters felt, but because she was the youngest, she felt even more. Her heart was thudding against her chest, like a bird in a cage. She felt as though she had been torn from home, wrapped in chains, thrown into a dungeon. She ran as fast as she could, but it was too late. The witch hunters had come and gone. Her sisters had been taken to the city. There they were trapped in a jail cell whose lock had no key.

The youngest sister had always taken her sisters’ advice, now she had no choice but to make her own decisions. She packed her bag and set off through the woods. She took what she thought she might need: a black dress, her knitting needles, a loaf of bread, a mirror. Halfway to the city she came to the house of the oldest witch, one who was so wise she had never been caught. In exchange for the wise woman’s help, the youngest sister gave her the mirror. Whoever looked in the glass would see herself as she was when she was young. Pleased by what she saw, the wise woman gave the youngest sister instructions. She was to take pieces of the night and knit them into long gloves before she went through the city gates.

They’ll be your map, the wise woman said. Walk where the night leads you and you will never be found.

The youngest sister did as she was told. When she climbed the tallest tree she still couldn’t reach the sky, so she tossed bread crumbs to the ravens. They came to her with strands of night still attached to their talons. Then and there she began to knit the inky black strands. They were so dark no one could see the gloves she had made, for she was knitting pure midnight. When she was done, she pulled on the gloves and set off for the city gates. She heard the guards say that the witches were kept underground, in a cage without a key. They didn’t notice when she slipped past, for she was hidden in the darkness of her gloves. In her black dress, with her long black hair, she had become part of the night. She knew what she needed. Quickly, she found her way to the locksmith’s house. She knocked on the door even though it was the middle of the night. The locksmith fell in love with her the moment he saw her. He was tall and handsome and kindhearted, but his eyes could not tolerate full sun. Because of this he worked at night. This was the reason he opened the door, and the reason he saw her for who she was, a woman as beautiful as the night.

She needed a key that would open any door, just as she had opened his heart. She waited by the fire while he worked on the perfect key, a simple form made of silver, the one metal a witch can tolerate. He told her that if she didn’t come back he would find her. She left him the key to the house in the woods, made of a single raven’s feather.

To find her sisters she needed a map. She unwound the gloves and the unspooled black yarn cast itself down the street. She followed the path of the yarn as if it were a map. No one could see her, not even the witch hunters celebrating in the center of town, for wherever the night-yarn led it was as dark as midnight. She went into the prison and down six flights of steps. The last of the yarn stopped in front of the cell that had no key. Her two sisters were waiting for her, the one with her pale hair who looked like moonlight, and the one with bright hair who looked like a star. They had been crying and a black pool had formed, so deep they would soon drown in their own tears. The youngest sister hurried. She slipped the key maker’s key into the lock and the door fell open.

The three sisters ran to retrace the path of the night yarn, gathering it as they went. The silver key was melting in the youngest sister’s hand, turning into a silver ring. She felt her heart tugged upon when she thought of the key maker, but she couldn’t stay. All the same, as they were escaping the city, the youngest sister let the ball of yarn fall to the ground. It unwound as she fled, making a path to their door. You had to be acquainted with the night to see the path it made, but the key maker had no problem seeing in the darkest part of the woods at the darkest hour of the night. He saw ravens sleeping in the trees and black roses blooming. When he got to the witches’ house, he used the midnight yarn to surround it so that no witch hunter would ever find it again. Anyone passing by would see only the color of the night. Then he used the key the youngest sister had given him. He never went back to the city after that. From then on he preferred to climb to the top of the tallest tree with his beloved and watch the darkness fall down around them, as they counted the stars in the sky.

The post The Night of The Witch appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

Walk down the path into the woods.
You don’t need a lantern, you don’t need light.
You’ve been here before and so have I.
In my hands I have stars, fish, water, air.
I have three wishes and three stories to tell.
I know you can hear me.
You hear me every night when the branches scrape across the window,
when the dog asks to be let out, when your heart beats too fast.
Look in the mirror, look at the palm of your hand,
look at the black dresses hanging in the closet.
Walk out the door, you don’t need a key or a map.
There are no directions, and anyway, you’re already there.

The post How To Recognize A Witch appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

At first she didn’t know a spell had been cast upon her husband. They had known each other since they were children. They’d grown up together and went to school together and loved only each other and had married young. Their lives had been braided together for good times and bad. For years they were not only lovers but also best friends. There had never been an unkind word or an argument. Then the woman began to notice small changes. They were so tiny, like a moth in the palm of your hand, but fluttering, all the same, full of life. The first change was that he could not sleep. He left their bed when the stars came out and wandered through the woods. He lost interest in their farm. The fields were left untended and the cows came to the barn crying to be milked. Then he did not answer when she spoke to him. He did not even seem to hear her. His thoughts were elsewhere; he seemed to speak another language. He said words she hadn’t heard him say before: betrayal, secret, lie. He did not eat the meals she offered him. He came home from his walks with his boots neatly polished to a fine shine, as if by magic. He wore a sweater she had never seen before. And then one day his pale blue eyes turned green.

Then she knew. Something had begun.

She went across the meadow to her dearest friend’s house, a friend so dear she was called Darling, for she was so sweet and good. The woman told Darling of her fears. She was losing her husband a little more each day. “It’s the witch,” Darling told her. Darling was plain- looking, but she dressed well. She always made certain her black leather boots were polished to a fine shine. “The witch has enchanted him. You must go to her and beg her to let him be.” The dear friend gave her a small bottle. “Drink this when you’re in the witch’s presence and it will protect you from harm and force her to tell you the truth.”

So the woman went to the twisted tree where the witch had lived for a hundred years. Everyone knew the witch was best left alone. Witches are easily angered and one never knows how they will react to an accusation, but the woman who was losing her husband was desperate. She knocked on the oak door. When there was no answer she let herself inside. There was the witch at her spinning wheel. The yarn she spun first appeared to be the color of the earth, then it shifted to the meadows in spring, then at last it became the color of the tree where the witch lived.

“Who asked you to come here?” the witch said.
“Please,” the woman begged, “let me have my husband back. Don’t take him from me.” “You can have him,” the witch told her. “I never wanted a husband. How dare you accuse me!”
The woman reached into her pocket and took out the bottle that Darling had given her for protection. When she opened it the room smelled like almonds. Just as she was about to drink, the witch threw a knitting needle that shattered the bottle. The liquid burned everything it touched. Sparks of the poisonous fire of envy sparked around her on the earthen floor.

“Whoever gave that potion is the one who is enchanting your husband,” the witch said. “She wished to do away with you so she could have him for her own.”

The witch and the young woman sat at the table. They had become allies. The witch mixed up a tea made out of the leaves of the tree that was her home. The fragrant green tea would make the husband sleep for as long as Darling’s spell was upon him. “While he sleeps this is what you must do if you still want this man. Knit a circle and do not stop. Knit it as long as infinity, for love that is true never dies, and love that is meant to be cannot be stolen.”

The young woman took the yarn the witch gave her. It was the color of the earth and the trees and of the sort of love that could defeat envy. She gave her husband the tea and he fell into a deep, untroubled sleep. Then she set about with her knitting. On some nights she heard footsteps outside. They circled the cottage. On other nights someone beat her fists against the door. She heard her dearest friend’s voice calling to her husband, but she didn’t answer. She kept knitting. She knit through the summer and into the fall and through the winter, and when she was done she looped the cowl around her throat and woke her husband. When he saw her he recognized the way she loved him and he remembered that he loved her in return. They never spoke about the friend again, and they never saw her either, nor did anyone else in their town, although the old witch sometimes comes to the market wearing good black leather boots, polished to a fine shine.

Article from Issue #34
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The post Love Never Ending appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

So they stayed behind the walls of their village. This was the season when people shut themselves into their houses, had only soup to eat, and trembled when they heard howling. When the beast came to circle the walls they tossed out what little they had. Crusts of bread, onion skins, a pot of beans. Still, they shivered and lived in fear. They could not go past the village gate to go into the fields to gather more potatoes and onions. Children had nightmares about teeth and claws. Girls saw no future and refused to fall in love. Young men cursed themselves for having so little courage.

They wrote their names on stones and rolled them out on a tabletop to choose their hero. Her name came up. Ada. She was the bravest among them, and the strongest. When
she shot an arrow she always met her mark. When she came upon a mountain, she would swing a rope and climb to the top. Everyone knew she was the only one who could save them. The truth was, her name had been written on every stone.

Her grandmother gave her a meager packet of food, mostly crusts of bread. She dressed Ada in layer after layer of clothing, sweaters, jackets, coats, hats, gloves, mittens. Then she slipped a ribbon around Ada’s neck. It was the amulet that would allow her to speak the beast’s language and enable him to understand her.

Wearing it, Ada felt no different.
You will, her grandmother told her. When peril is near you will hear what you have never heard before, and you will be heard, even by those who have no ears.

Ada left when the snow was patchy. The farther she went into the woods, the deeper the snow became. It was rough going, even for a girl who climbed mountains. She grew exhausted. She was a girl who rarely cried, but she was nearly defeated.

How do I go on? she said. The amulet allowed the oak tree she stood beneath to understand her language. Take my branches and strap them to your feet. Ada quickly did so. With her snowshoes she could go forward. To thank the oak, she removed the axe a woodsman had left in its bark, carrying it with her so the tree couldn’t be chopped down.

In the forest, night fell like a curtain. Ada slept beneath some hedges until she heard an owl. She understood its language when it called for her to wake. She could see paw prints as large as a man’s hand circled all around her. The prints made a path that had tamped down the snow. To thank the owl, she left the snowshoes she no longer needed so that the branches could be of use for the owl’s nest. She went on through what she thought was a field of ice, not realizing that she was crossing a pond. She fell through the ice and might have drowned, had a huge fish not come to her. Because Ada could understand its language, she followed beneath the ice, swimming through the cold water until she reached the shallows; she used the axe to break through the ice. Before she went on she reached into her pockets for the crusts her grandmother had given her so she could thank the fish.

At last she came to the deepest part of the forest. She heard the beast that so terrified the village. But when he howled she understood his language. All at once she knew how lonely it was to be a beast. Save me from myself, he said. She followed the path and there was the beast, a huge wolf.

I’ve come for you, Ada said.
You? the beast snarled. Your kind wants to destroy me.
Ada placed her bow and arrow on the ground.
The beast laughed. Leave me be, he said. Leave me to the misery of being a beast.

From the east came a group of hunters who began to fire their weapons. The beast was fearsome when he defended himself, even though he was surrounded. Ada grabbed her bow. When arrows flew, the men scattered, back to where they’d come from.

This is what hatred is like, the beast said. It never stops.

He led her to the edge of the forest, past the icy pond where the fish had shown her the way out of the ice, past the hedges where the owl had spoken to her, past the oak tree where they now slept sheltered from a storm. When they reached the outskirts of the town, the beast began to cry. Ada sat down beside him. She thought about her grandmother’s advice, how the amulet would make a difference to someone in peril. She slipped it off and strung it around the beast’s neck, and from then on they understood each other perfectly, for he was a man who’d been under a spell, ruined by hatred but restored by her love.

Photography by Steve Parke Model: Crystal Chandler

Article from #38 Print

The post Amulet appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

Red Ice
I was walking through the woods when I heard some-thing behind me. I was a woman alone now. I walked through the world in a different way. I quickened my pace. The snow was so deep it made for difficult going. I cursed my skirts and my boots with their fancy laces. I didn’t dare look over my shoulder. There were wolves that lived here, and I might have preferred them, for I recognized the sound of men. I ran to a cave where the wolves made their den. I knew they would be out hunting until nightfall. I made certain to leave before the dark sifted down. I found my way over the stained snow, over the frozen pond colored blood red. I shut my eyes when I passed the fallen men who had been following me but would follow no more. In every story the wolf is killed, but not when the winter is so deep, when the ice makes men with ill intentions stumble, when there is a single star in the sky.

Memory Ice
I lived in my small wooden house with the dog and the cat, but in every corner there was also the memory of the man I had loved who had gone to war or run off to another woman, along with the ghosts of the fallen men out on the frozen pond, and the howls of the wolves in the woods, and the image of my garden twisted beneath ice. My dreams were dark, frozen things that made me sleep too deeply. When I woke I often didn’t know where I was or whose life I was living. I went to stand on the porch and breathe in cold air. I happened to break off a piece of ice hanging down. I saw things inside of it, moments that had taken place long ago and yesterday. I took the icicle inside and stirred it into my tea. I drank it all and wept, surprised by how sweet it was. In the empty cup I could see the first time I had spied the man I loved; the first time he kissed me; the first time I kissed him back. I saw the sunflowers he brought me and the lilac seedling I’d planted in the yard that had frozen into purple bunches. I wanted more of this. I stood on the porch shivering and ate one icicle after the other. I was freezing from the inside out. My neighbor came by with a pot of soup and found me eating ice. I was maddened and addicted to the past. I shouted for my neighbor to leave. She was an old woman, but still strong enough to lead me inside. She fed me soup made of onions and leeks. It melted me inside. I couldn’t go back to what used to be. I thanked my neighbor and walked her home so she would not slip and fall. After that I stopped eating ice. But I remembered all the same.

Labyrinth Ice
It was snowing great bunches of flakes on the day the dog went missing. I called for him, but heard my own voice echoing back. Nothing more. I put on my beloved’s clothes so I could run if need be. No more skirts and ladylike boots for me. I took the gun from the closet in case I needed protection. It was early in the day when I began to search. But at dusk I was still out in the same fields of ice. I was going in circles in a place where there used to be sunflowers. Now ice covered everything. There were walls made of it. I stumbled inside the maze. The bright sunlight reflected until the ice was a mirror and all I could see was myself. But because I was dressed in my lover’s clothes I grew confused and began to follow the image as if I were following him. When the sky grew dark I was back at the place I had started from. Why would I want someone who had left me? Why did I do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result? My blood was so hot I didn’t feel the cold anymore. All at once I was myself again. I heard barking then. I followed the sound as if it was a map. At last I saw my front porch. There was the dog, waiting for me. That night I took off my lover’s clothes and burned them. The smoke rose up into the night. I went outside and saw that the smoke had frozen solid in the air. It shattered like a mirror, every bit as sharp as glass. After that I didn’t get lost again.

Toad Ice
I found the toad in a bucket of frozen water beside the house. The toad looked like a shiny black rock that had fallen from the moon. The ice was black as well, mixed with mud. When I touched the toad with a stick, it didn’t move. Ice crackled on its back. I knew this was a bad omen, but I didn’t believe in omens. I knew I could outsmart bad fortune and change my fate. Right now it seemed I would live in this cottage with the dog and the cat until I became an old woman like my neighbor. I brought the bucket inside, sat in front of the fire, and concentrated. After an hour the water in the bucket melted and the toad turned green. I tossed in some bits of onions and potatoes. In the morning when I woke a man was sitting on my porch. He said he was my neighbor’s grandson and had come to ask me to dinner. He said he’d been lost for some time and didn’t know where he’d been. He had green eyes. There was ice on his coat, which was black and shiny as a rock. My dog sat beside him as if he’d known him all his life. I said yes, I would come to dinner. I would be happy to.

Desire Ice
Everything was hot to the touch. The ice steamed. Mist rose in the woods. It was a hot day in the middle of the darkness of winter. It was a reminder that I was alive. I came upon the handsome man in the black coat out collecting wood for his grandmother. He didn’t have gloves and his hands were bleeding and blistered. He said something had fallen out of the sky, a bit of a star, which was why it was so hot today and why the ice was a gold dusty color. He had reached for the star and burned his hands. Why did you do that? I asked. Because it was beautiful, he said. Then he reached for my hand. We both laughed then, because I wasn’t beautiful, or at least that’s what I had thought until I looked in his eyes.

Silent Ice
No birds sang. I found a deer in the woods. It was trapped in the ice. I knelt down and dug until its hoofs were freed. It trotted off, then looked back at me, wanting me to follow. I realized things were alive beneath the ice: I could hear the sap in the trees, the cry of the wind, my own pulse pounding. The deer brought me to a field. Beneath a shimmering bush of witch hazel there was a little girl. She was so cold she could not cry. There was a note pinned to her coat. She is the last child and we cannot feed her. I carried her because she had no shoes. Without anyone telling me I knew she was four years old. I had been four years old when my parents abandoned me. I’d stood in a cornfield and waited and eventually a farmer came who put me to work. This would be different. I understood that the best cure is kindness. I could hear the girl’s heart beating. I stopped to ask my neighbor if she knew who the little girl belonged to. She said it appeared that she belonged to me. So I called her Winter. When she spoke her first word and called me Mother the silence was broken.

Radiant Ice
Winter and I went out to set traps for rabbits. We always hoped we didn’t catch them and we never did. We ate soup made of ice and weeds and potatoes. We were starving. We envied the cat the mice she caught. We envied the dog the bone he found in the woods. On the blue day we went to the edge of the lake. The lake ice went on for as far as we could see. Then Winter tugged on my sleeve. Beneath the ice there was a rainbow that glittered. When we walked upon it the ice glowed. I had a knife in my pocket. I knelt down and chipped away at the ice. It flaked off in illuminated color: first pink, then yellow, then red, then orange. When I reached the frozen water I saw a rainbow trout had frozen into the ice and was still alive. I could not bring myself to kill it. But Winter leaned over and held it in her small hands until it stopped breathing. We had it for supper and invited my neighbor and her grandson. After we ate, we began to glow. We were infused with color. When we spoke puffs of cold color rose came out of our mouths and stained our lips. At the door I kissed my neighbor’s grandson, a cold pink kiss that made me shiver and laugh at the same time. In the morning, Winter and I swept up all the puddles of color on the floor.

Last Ice
It was May and the only ice remaining was deep in the woods where shadows were stronger than sunlight. We went there looking for berries, spring cabbage, mushrooms. Winter could find things no one else could, for instance she had found my heart. I wasn’t the same person I had been when I sat in my garden to watch the first ice creep along the green leaves. Winter found a handkerchief filled with gold near the place where she was abandoned. We went to town and bought flour and tea and a feather quilt. We bought apples and dried apricots for my neighbor and a pair of leather gloves for her grandson who had such cold, shivery kisses and who told me I was beautiful every time I saw him. I had begun to think he was right. I wondered if everything good I had discovered would disappear when the last patch of ice vanished. Each day it grew smaller until it was the size of a pea. I took that piece of ice and swallowed it. It tasted of wood fires, snow, orange rinds.

Eternity Ice
I carried Winter with me into the village. I went to a dance with my neighbor’s grandson. We walked home with Winter asleep on his shoulder and my hand in his. He had never told me his true name, and now he whispered it to me, and in that way he came to belong to me. When we reached my neighbor’s house, we found that the old woman had passed away in her sleep. We had to bury her. We let Winter go on sleeping in a small bed in an extra bedroom. The ground was still cold, but my neighbor’s grandson was strong enough to dig through the ice. I washed my neighbor’s hands and feet and wrapped her in a white sheet. I kissed her forehead and thanked her for the soup she had once brought me and for the man who wept as he dug her grave. After we buried her, my neighbor’s grandson took my hand and placed a gold band on my finger. It had belonged to his grandmother and now it belonged to me.

Every year I return to the tiny house in the woods where I once lived. It is covered with vines. In winter, the vines turn to ice and the house disappears from sight. I am the only one who remembers where it is. I still know how to get there, but now I only stop there for the lilacs, and then only on summer nights, when there’s no ice in sight.

The post Nine Types of Ice appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

This is the way she knew he was gone: The door was open. His boots were missing. The cage where he kept a hawk was empty. He’d never said a word. The night before he went missing he’d gathered the firewood, cleaned the pots, fed the hawk.

She ran out the door, barefoot, crying his name so loudly that all the birds in the trees rose up in one achingly blue cloud. She went to the edge of the lake and saw him on the other side. The water was black that day. His boat was on the shore directly across from her. The hawk was on his shoulder, but it flew back to her. The hawk, at least, was loyal. He, however, did not answer her calls. And he wasn’t alone. There was a woman waiting for him. That was when her heart broke into two pieces that fell into the grass. She went home, her heart in her hands. She kept her broken heart in a glass jar on her bedside table. In the dark, the glass glowed with pale red heat.

She shared her dinners with the hawk. Bones, turnips, onions, only bitter things. One night she dreamed the man who had left her told her he’d never really loved her. When she woke she took a knife and cut off her long hair. It was the part of her he’d said he loved best. He insisted she wear it long, and she’d done as he asked, even though it was often tangled and difficult to comb. Now it was in a pile in a corner.

People started to talk about her, so she stayed away from town. Everyone knew she wasn’t the same. If you looked at her carefully you could see the space where her heart should be. It was empty, like a cloud inside her, the color a dim gray. To hide what she was missing, she took two sticks from the kindling and then reached for the pile of her own hair. She began to knit a vest so that no one could see what was missing inside her.

Without her heart she could no longer feel and she was grateful for that. She had felt enough when she lost her heart by the black lake. She worked in the garden in the hot sun all day long and was never tired. She stood knee deep in the ice-cold lake to catch fish and didn’t shiver. When she knitted, her fingers never hurt even though the needles were made of splintering sticks. When it was dark she curled up in bed to knit by the light of her own heart. Moths were drawn to the red light. But she felt nothing.

Her heart was like a caged bird. It called to her, but she didn’t answer.

The vest was done in no time. She wore it day and night so no one could tell how empty she was. Then one day the hawk flew into the woods and she followed. She found a man in the woods whose legs had been broken when he fell from a tree. She helped him home. When he leaned heavily on her, she didn’t feel any pain. He was a carpenter who’d been looking for wood he would make into tables and chairs. She let him sleep on her porch and she didn’t feel a thing when he thanked her and took her hand in his.

But the pieces of her heart encased in glass burned even more brightly through the night.

The doctor came and set the carpenter’s legs and said he couldn’t walk for four months. He would be a burden, but she didn’t mind. She had no heart, she didn’t care about anything, not how handsome he was, or how kind. When the hawk ate from his hand, nothing bitter, only berries, the carpenter said nothing should be kept in a cage. She thought of her heart, that bird in a glass cage.

The carpenter ate supper with her, and in the evenings he made a set of beautiful wooden bowls as a gift. He fell in love with her when the snow began to fall.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she told him. She showed him her heart in its glass container. She said it could never be put back together. But he was a carpenter, used to fixing things. He shook his head and smiled. He vowed he’d find a way.

“Impossible,” she said. The carpenter’s legs were now healed enough for him to leave. “Go before I’m awake. Don’t say goodbye.”

Instead he stayed awake all night. He’d often watched her knit in the evenings, and now he took up the needles. In the morning she saw what he’d done. He’d cut off all of his hair and used the strands to knit a pocket on her vest. Into that he’d placed the pieces of her heart. The longer she wore her heart in the pocket, the more it mended, until one day it was a whole heart, inside her once more. She still wears that vest, even though she’s a married woman now, and her husband knows all there is to know about her heart. He gave it back to her, and no matter what happens, she doesn’t intend to let go of it again.

Short Story from Issue #35 Summer 2016

The post Brokenhearted: A fairy tale by Alice Hoffman appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

Article from the Autumn Issue #40 – Subscribe or Buy Issue

The most glorious hour in Manhattan was when twilight fell in sheets across the Great Lawn. Bands of blue turned darker by the moment as the last of the pale light filtered through the boughs of cherry trees and black locusts. In October, the meadows turned gold; the vines were twists of yellow and red. But the park was more and more crime-ridden. The Owens siblings had ridden their bikes on the paths without adult supervision when they were five and six and seven; now children were forbidden to go past the gates after nightfall. There were muggings and assaults; desperate men who had nowhere else to go slept on the green benches and under the yews.

Yet to Franny, Central Park continued to be a great and wondrous universe, a science lab that was right down the street from their house. There were secret places near Azalea Pond where so many caterpillars wound cocoons in the spring that entire locust groves came alive in a single night with clouds of newly hatched Mourning Cloak butterflies. In autumn, huge flocks of migrating birds passed over, alighting in the trees to rest overnight as they traveled to Mexico or South America. Most of all, Franny loved the muddy Ramble, the wildest, most remote section of the park.

In this overgrown jumble of woods and bogs there were white-tailed mice and owls. Birds stirred in the thickets, all of them drawn to her as she walked by. On a single day waves of thirty different sorts of warblers might drift above the park. Loons, cormorants, herons, blue jays, kestrels, vultures, swans, mallards, ducks, six varieties of woodpeckers, nighthawks, chimney swifts, ruby-throated hummingbirds, and hundreds more were either migrating flyovers or year-round residents. Once Franny had come upon a blue heron, nearly as tall as she. It walked right over to her, unafraid, while her own heart was pounding. She stayed still, trying her best to barely breathe as it came to rest its head against her cheek. She cried when it had flown away, like a beautiful blue kite. She, who prided herself on her tough exterior, could always be undone by the beauty of flight.

Near the Ramble was the Alchemy Tree, an ancient oak hidden in a glen few park goers ever glimpsed, a gigantic twisted specimen whose roots grew up from the ground in knotty bumps. The tree was said to be 500 years old, there long before teams of workers turned what had been an empty marshland into the groomed playground imagined by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1858, giving the city a form of nature more natural than the very thing it imitated. It was here, one chilly night, that the sisters dared to unearth the abilities they had inherited. It was Samhain, the last night in October, All Hallows’ Eve, the night when one season ended and another began.

Their parents were out at a costume party, having dressed as Sigmund Freud and Marilyn Monroe. It was a night of festivity, and troops of children were scattered along the city streets. Two out of three little girls were witches with tilted black hats and rustling capes. Halloween in New York City always smelled like candy corn and bonfires. Jet and Franny cut across the park to meet Vincent after his guitar lesson. As they were early, there was time to sit on the damp grass. The summer had started them thinking: If they were not like everyone else, who, then, were they? Lately they’d been itching to know what they were capable of. They had never tried to combine whatever talents they might have.

“Just this once,” Jet said. “Let’s see what happens. We can try something simple. A wish. One each. Let’s see if we can make it be.”

Franny gave her sister a discouraging look. The last time she had said Just this once, two boys had been struck by lightning. Franny was definitely picking up something; Jet had an ulterior motive. There was something she desperately wanted. If there was ever a time to make a wish, it was now.

“We can find out what Mother has been hiding from us,” Jet suggested. “See what we’re really able to do.”

If there was a way to get Franny involved, it was suggesting an attempt to prove their mother wrong. They joined hands and right away the air around them grew heavy and dense. Franny repeated a phrase she had overheard Aunt Isabelle recite when one of her clients had asked for a wish to be fulfilled.

We ask for this and nothing more. We ask once and will ask no more.

A soft fog rose from the ground and the birds in the thickets stopped singing. This was it. Something was beginning. They looked at each other and decided they would try.

“One wish apiece,” Franny whispered. “And nothing major. No world peace or the end of poverty. We wouldn’t want to push it over the limit and have some sort of rebound that does the opposite of the wish.”

Jet nodded. She made her wish right away, eyes closed, breathing slowed. She was in a trance of desire and magic. Her face was flushed and hot. As for Franny, she wanted what she most often experienced in her dreams. To be among the birds. She preferred them to most human beings, their grace, their distance from the earth, their great beauty. Perhaps that was why they always came to her. In some way, she spoke their language.

After a few minutes, when it seemed nothing would happen and the air was still so heavy Franny’s eyes had begun to close, Jet tugged on her sister’s arm. “Look up.” There on a low branch of the tree sat a huge crow.

“Was that your wish?” Jet whispered, surprised.
“More or less,” Franny whispered back.
“Of all the things in the world, a bird?”
“I suppose so. More or less.”
“It is definitely studying you.”

Franny stood up, took a deep breath, then lifted her arms in the air. As she did a cold wind gusted. The crow swooped off its branch and came to her just as the sparrow had in their aunt Isabelle’s house, as the heron had walked to her, as birds in the park were drawn to her from their nests in the thickets. This time, however, Franny was caught off guard by the sheer weight of the bird and by the way it looked at her, as if they knew each other. She could swear she could hear a voice echo from within its beating breast. I will never leave unless you send me away.

She fainted right then and there in the grass.

Article from the Autumn Issue #40 – Subscribe or Buy Issue

The post An excerpt from The Rules of Magic appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

 “They mixed henna with limes, roses, tea, and eucalyptus and let it simmer overnight, for henna’s hue reflects the strength of love of a woman for a man, the thicker and deeper the color, the more genuine the love. Amulets that carried apple seeds were made in the evenings as they sat out in the yard, meant to bring the wearer love, for apples signify the heart. For those who wished to gain willpower, and say no to a lover who would bring only heartbreak, there was a cure of rosemary and lavender oil. Bathe in it, and when you next saw the one you had once cherished, you would send him packing. They now had the recipe for Fever Tea, composed of cinnamon, bayberry, ginger, thyme, and marjoram, and for Frustration Tea, a combination of chamomile, hyssop, raspberry leaf, and rosemary, which Jet brewed for her sister in the mornings so that the day would go smoothly. Aunt Isabelle refused to hand over the formula for Courage Tea. That, she said, was one recipe you had to discover for yourself.”

—Alice Hoffman, The Rules of Magic

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Every Halloween, no matter what the newest costumes might be, there are always little girls who insist upon dressing as witches. You can see them on the street, in their black hats and rustling black capes, in groups or alone. These girls instinctively know it is far better to be a witch than a princess or a queen, for they are self-defined rather than being defined by men. They have no need for a prince or a king to give them worth. Perhaps a friend or a sister may travel with them, but in the long run they are strong enough on their own. There is no mythic female figure that is as powerful. When it comes down to it, on a clear, cold October night, she is the woman we want to be.

The legacy of the witch is in our blood. As girls and women we know that these women were our foremothers, wise women who claimed power for themselves and their sisters. The history of the witch is that of a woman who was an outcast in society, mistreated and victimized, a woman who had to fight for her rights.

Witches were persecuted for having too much land or money, for being independent, for being old, or alone. During the Salem witch trials (1692–93) nineteen witches were hanged on Gallows Hill and 200 were accused of practicing magic, all based on “spectral evidence,” which is to say gossip, half-truths, and tall tales. Witch hunts have existed throughout time, and what they all have in common is that the ruling patriarchy tries to control women who are uncontrollable, punishing them for alleged misdeeds. Perhaps this history is ingrained in every little girl dressed up on Halloween night. The heritage of the witch runs deep. Witches draw their power from nature, the green magic of herbs and healing. Through storytelling they have often been recast as dark, twisted figures, but in fact they are healers, forever linked with midwifery, folk medicine, and magic, all of which have been outlawed at one time or another and all of which are included in women’s traditions. Mystery, power, birth, death, medicine, sexual empowerment, liberation—the witch lays claim to all of these and more. In her realm are the power of the imagination and the doors between reality and creativity.

Mythic stories and fairy tales remind us of a time when women refused to conform to society’s ideas of what they should be. The witch is not a mother or a daughter or a queen, but she’s our sister, a soul sister who resides deep inside each of us.

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