Sophie entered the bustling restaurant out of the Georgia heat. The room was enormous and filled with Charleston’s wealthiest patrons. In the corner, a quartet played classical jazz.
Head high, shoulders back, Sophie waited to be noticed. The late morning sun beamed through a tall window and illuminated the skin of her swan-like neck. Her gold hoop earrings twinkled patiently.
A sharp dressed host with a thin mustache whipped to her side and gave a polite nod.
“Welcome Mademoiselle, your guest has already arrived. Right this way.” and lead her through the main room. Sophie nodded and followed, but behind the sunglasses and airy elegance she was sweating bullets. She had spent a fortune on her dress, a gleaming white gold Bottega Veneta that fit her like a glove. And she would need to return it before the weekend. The man led her past rows of old, white faces. A few looked at her strangely, but she disregarded them immediately. She wasn’t there for them. One face came into view. Electricity jolted through Sophie’s body but she held her composure. This was the moment she had been waiting for, thirty years in the making. She had brought a photo of Andre folded in her dress, next to her heart.
Minerva lounged at a table by a bay window overlooking the garden. Her dress was black velvet, a bit old fashioned but fitting for a witch of her standing. She could wear whatever she wanted, she answered to no one. And Minerva preferred the traditional look.
Sophie approached and to her surprise Minerva rose from the table. Her long white hair was done up in a Gibson girl style, with delicate wisps floating by her ears. She dipped her nose and looked at Sophie over her dark glasses.
“Hello, darling.” Minerva said in a deep, resonant tone. Her voice was like a warm blanket on the coldest night of the year. She took Sophie’s hand and greeted her as a friend. Sophie hadn’t expected this but was hardly thrown off. She had a precise approach to social situations, especially with other witches.
She flashed her brilliant smile- confident with just enough humility to not appear smug. The maître d' pulled out her chair and left them. Sophie sat across from Minerva in her $2,000 dress, poised to make her case with precision. No easy feat.
Witches are introverted by nature. Brilliant, but single-minded and eccentric, real witches often struggle to live up to the legends as sensual agents of chaos. Most prefer to stay home reading theory or running their own experiments to bother being sensual. The idea to live in covens had been disastrous, and abandoned hundreds of years before Sophie was born. But she had a gift. Not magical, but a fortunate blessing of her birth, that gave her a tenacious and loveable appeal.
A sharp-dressed waiter came to the table with a porcelain teapot.
“Today, we have a high mountain Oolong tea, from Yu Shan.” he said and poured the two women a light amber tea into floral tea cups. The two women assessed each other as he poured. Minerva smiled at her. Her energy was warm, not quite casual, but disarming. This set Sophie at ease, perhaps this would be easier than she thought. The waiter left them.
Sophie took a slow sip of the fragrant oolong tea, gathering her thoughts. She had rehearsed this conversation endlessly, but now, facing the legendary Minerva across the table, she felt her resolve falter.
"Come, tell me the news from New York." Minerva said, her dark eyes twinkling. “Have you been keeping yourself occupied these days?"
"Oh, much the same as always," Sophie replied lightly. "Reading, study, the occasional experiment here and there. The days seem to blur together now that I'm on my own."
She let her gaze drift toward the window, hoping Minerva would take the hint.
"Yes, you must get lonely in the city all by yourself.," Minerva said sympathetically. "I imagine you miss having company."
Sophie turned back to her, affecting a brave smile. "At times, yes. But it's the joy he brought that I miss most of all. No one could make me laugh like Andre could." She allowed her smile to fade.
Minerva nodded. "It's never easy losing a husband, dear. Especially the first.”
"No, it isn't," Sophie agreed, a quiver in her voice. "I still expect to see him every morning when I wake up." She looked down at her hands. "The house feels so empty without him there. Sometimes I imagine I can hear his footsteps, or his voice calling me from the other room. But there's no one there when I go to look."
It was part real and part theatre. She had been devestated by Andre’s death. But her grief hadn’t been so picturesque. Mostly she’d been sleeping, with brief interruptions to eat, piss, and occasionally brush her teeth. But that wasn’t the wistful sad image of a grieving widow she wanted to evoke. She wanted Minerva to see how painful it all was. If she could only know how hard it had been. Surely then, Minerva would approve her appeal.
She raised her eyes back to Minerva's, full of sorrow. "It's as if his spirit still lingers, unwilling to completely leave me. If only there was a way..." she trailed off meaningfully.
Minerva took a slow sip of her tea, her expression unreadable. "Grief can play tricks on the mind," she said carefully.
Just then the waiter appeared with a silver tray laden with delicate finger sandwiches and petite cakes. He slid the dishes silently onto the table between the two witches before disappearing again.
Sophie selected a tiny sandwich, feigning nonchalance. "Of course, you're right. Only..." She took a small bite, dabbing her lips delicately before continuing.
"I've been reading quite a lot about voodoo lately. Fascinating subject." Sophie watched Minerva closely for her reaction over the rim of her teacup. "Did you know their priests have methods for bringing the dead back to life? Raising the lifeless body and restoring the spirit once more?"
Minerva's expression was guarded. "Yes, i've heard, though efficacy is questionable. Those practices delve dangerously into forces better left alone."
Sophie kept her tone light. "Oh I guess you’re right, but then again, what wondrous knowledge could be gleaned!" She leaned in, lowering her voice. "Just imagine if we witches could discover their secrets. Why, nothing would have to be final ever again."
She sat back with a conspiratorial smile. "But then, you and I don't need forbidden rituals to get what we want. If anyone could find a way, it would be you, Minerva."
Sophie left the tempting thought hanging between them and selected another petite sandwich.
Minerva’s face was stony for a moment, and she turned to the window.
“Did I ever tell you that I was married?” She said quietly.
Sophie was surprised.
“No, never.”
Minerva leaned back in her chair and brought her tea cup to her chest.
“His name was Samuel. Beautiful man, pale green eyes, dark hair, so handsome. I met him at an Irish Carnival in 1804. Not the type we have these days- a little local affair. I can still see him there in the lamplight...
When you’re as old as me, you see, you meet a lot of impressive people. Artists, inventors, royalty, eventually, they begin to feel a bit dull. So many of them are so full of themselves. Thomas Eddison- my God! Don’t even get me started. There was something refreshing about Samuel. He was such a simple, loving man. He wants sat out with a lost cow all night in a bad storm. Poor animal was so scared. Samuel had to takeoff his drawers and cover his face to get it back to the farm.”
Sophie smiled at the image. The ambience of the restaurant seemed to dull around them. Muting the conversations and clinking of silverware.
“He was like that,” Minerva reminisced. “it’s the effort he put in. He always did everything with his whole heart… and never worried if anyone laughed.”
Minerva smiled sadly and twisted a jade ring on her index finger. She continued.
“Had I been there I could have done something. The right herbs and purgatives would have saved his life. But travel was slow in those days, and Cholera is a fast death.”
“I’m so sorry…” Sophie said earnestly. She knew the pain well. Cancer had taken Andre in less than a year.
“He shouldn’t have died at all.” Minerva said and Sophie looked up, with a glint of hope in her eye. Minerva studied her face.
“That’s what I told myself.” She continued, “I was a young witch. Like yourself. And the world felt like a blank canvas. That power…” she cupped her hands. “It felt like I could do anything. His death was an insult to me.”
“What did you do?” Sophie asked, eager for hints.
Minerva was silent and stirred a lump of brown sugar into her tea.
“There are ways. As you know.” She said finally.
Sophie played it cool. Her little voodoo story had given her away it seemed.
“Well, of course. But the spell requires permits, it has to be approved by a grand council.” Sophie tried to sound casual.
Minerva waved her hand, “The council as you know it is an invention of the 20th century. Back then, it was up to your local sisterhood to keep things above board. In some counties, a minor offense could lose you a toe. Others were more lenient. We got away with a lot more back then.” She said.
Sophie nearly gasped. “You? Performed Necromancy?” She hissed in a strained whisper. The other patrons didn’t even flinch. The two seemed in a world of their own within the luxury tea room.
Sophie was shocked. Witches Law was clear about the subject of resurrection. Do what you will with the living. If you were hateful, the magic had a way of bringing it back to you. But the dead are off limits. And a witch caught attempting such a sacrilege faced serious consequences. Sophie had heard of a witch in Germany who was found drowned in her own bathtub. Other stories were even more ghastly.
“Yes. And very well if I do say so myself. The ritual itself is a huge undertaking. It takes months of planning. Grave digging, Meridian lines, rare planetary conjunctions, exotic herbs, it’s very complex, but it’s possible. And it worked.”
Sophie pondered how Minerva had managed to arrange all this around what surely would have been an actively rotting corpse but decided the question was inappropriate. Instead she nibbled a tea sandwich.
“His eyes… when they turned from white to green again. He looked at me like he had just woken up from sleeping in the pasture.
“Minnie? Is that you?” He’d said to me. The ruddiness had returned to his sweet face. He was warm and breathing as I held his head in my lap.
I was so happy. And more than happy- proud. I had bent the world to my will. Our love conquered death. Nothing would take him away from me again.
“What an achievement.” Sophie meant it. She was impressed beyond what she thought was possible. “But how did you keep it a secret?”
“Well, under the circumstances, it was best to leave. You don’t want nosy neighbors recognizing a dead man walking about. So I had arranged for us to leave the country and go to England, and for a little cottage on a hill in the Cotswolds.”
Minerva looked nostalgic and wistful.
“And for a time… we were happy. We would take long walks around the lake at sunset. Picnics in the meadow… those were good days. But it didn’t last.
At first there were little things. Samuel mentioned that he didn’t dream anymore. He became more quiet each day. Like he was lost in thought. We were walking one afternoon back from the little village and I asked him what he was thinking about. He said nothing. It felt like he meant it.
I chalked it up to a side effect and tried to forget about it. But he developed an insatiable appetite. He would eat whole pies with his dinner. Fish, roasts, bushels of vegetables, and would complain he was still hungry. And the problems really began when he stopped sleeping...
The first time, I woke up to him sitting on the edge of the bed. He was perfectly still, looking at the wall. I beckoned him back to bed. But it got worse each night. Sometimes he was staring at the wall, others he would be looking out the window.
Then his mood shifted. He started to become morose. But he could never put words to the feeling.
“Oh my… perhaps there was some sort of lunar interference? Astrofraculation maybe?” Sophie offered.
The waiter glided over with a second course offering of lamb and potato pastries. Sophie accepted, Minerva declined.
“That’s what I thought at first. I spent weeks in my study trying to find answers…”
Minerva hesitated here for the first time.
“One evening, he had stayed out at the pub. And apparently gotten drunk and got in a fight with a local man. I guess the fight was nasty, because Samuel was kicked out and told not to come back. It was so… unlike him. Irishman like to drink, and a scuffle in a pub isn’t shocking. But the viciousness in his eyes when he walked in the door was unnerving… It was around that time odd things began to happen around the village. There were a lot of angry farmers who had missing livestock.
This was the first time I questioned whether what I had done was right.” Minerva said.
“Surely, you couldn’t have known he would change.” Sophie said.
“I suppose at the time I didn’t care.” Minerva answered. "That was the problem. Bringing back Samuel was about me.”
Sophie felt defensive, her own grief rising to the surface, “Yes but surely he didn’t want to die so young!?”
Minerva maintained a composed expression.
“Did he not? What happens after we die, Sophie?” She asked in a lofty tone.
Sophie blinked and closed her mouth.
“I… well, I don’t know.” She said finally.
“Neither do I. Nor does any witch, no matter how old and wise. Baba Yaga herself couldn’t tell you. You could walk the Earth a thousand years, until your bones turned to flint, and you’d still only be a spectator to death.”
Sophie’s eyes sparkled with tears she refused to shed.
Minerva softened her tone, “I know, my darling. You’re a witch after all. We think we must know everything there is to know, it’s our nature. And to have so much power, yet still know nothing, It feels a bit…”
“Infuriating.” Sophie answered in a shaky voice.
“Yes… well, in the end, it was the village that got Sam.” Minerva said quietly.
“The village?” Sophie repeated.
“The trouble with Necromancy, dear, is it’s terribly literal. You want the dead back? You can have them. But is that all he was? Blood and bone?” Minerva asked.
The question felt open. As if “he” was not just Samuel, but seemed to refer to Andre too.
“No…” she replied.
“Indeed. The ritual brought back.. something of Samuel. But it didn’t stay. It seemed to… drain out… over time. And what was left could sense the loss, though he couldn’t explain it.
And one night, I woke to the sound of screaming. I followed the noise to the barn and… found him.” Minerva’s looked away, her voice was deep and grave.
“He was on his knees, crying out in the most horrible way. It was this… wailing like I had never heard in all my years. He was holding a lamb- or what looked like it was once a lamb, and… pressing it against his chest. As if he was trying to push its life into him somehow.”
Sophie put her hand to her mouth..
“I knew then he was gone. Or had never truly been… my Samuel. Soon the villagers followed the noise. I hid in the bushes and watched them haul him out. They took him to hang, and he didn’t fight. And when I cut him down the next morning, his face was peaceful.” Minerva folded her ringed hands in her lap and looked into Sophies eyes.
“Do you understand why I’ve told you this tale?” Minerva asked.
Sophie's face twisted into a sob as she tried to push back the lump in her throat. She nodded.
“It wouldn’t be him, my darling.” Minerva said with a resolute look. “It’s best to let the dead be on their way.”
Her words rang in Sophie’s ears. A horrible, wretched truth.
The two witches gathered themselves as Charleston's elite began to leave. Minerva walked with her into the bright Georgia sun and donned a large sun hat. She patted Sophie's hand and walked down the avenue in her black velvet dress. Despite failing at her mission, she was feeling lighter than she had in months. She had come to Minerva for help, hoping to find a way to move on from her husband's death, but she had realized that the answer was not in magic after all. The answer was within herself. She had to learn to let go of the past and embrace the future. She knew that Andre would want her to be happy.
Sophie took a deep breath and hailed a cab.