The Trick

The Trick

My name is not important. I am a daughter of Western Civilization; a person nurtured by loving parents, who quickly rose to what I believed was the pinnacle of happiness and power. And now, after 29 years here on Earth, a new day has dawned.  I have finally found life’s true meaning, and just like that, I realize it is not all about me. 

Another heart beats inside.

I descended from money and privilege. My mother was a French - Haitian beauty who had done everything for her husband, my father, and everything she could do with him to keep their unity, and later, their family, together. Mother dutifully relocated to Jamaica for my father, a French diplomat posted to that island nation shortly before my birth. I was to be their only child. Me, the “adorable baby” entered the world on New Year’s Day.

A product of the finest European boarding schools, a Harvard graduate and post-graduate Georgetown alumna, I earned my PhD and MSc.D by age 24. With those credentials, this powerful witch and enchantress (both traits inherited on my mother’s side) became a licensed Ontologist. I set up what was to become a highly successful private practice near the Georgetown campus. 

Love and lust and sinful pleasures ruled over me. I traveled the world freely and frequently. I sought comfort in all the wrong places, and usually for the wrong reasons. And among the many ‘Blessings’ I counted, more than a few I can see now were curses.

In time I gathered my belongings and my degrees and packed my bags (and my books) for New England where, at the time, the target of my most amorous lusting lived.

I still had a sense of duty and purpose in these times, though warped and imperfect as those qualities often were. And when the invisible hand of an evil Seventeenth Century witch used a young girl (also a witch) to conjure her back to the present day, I learned quickly that the only way to defeat such evil was to confront it in her own time.

It was the Trick that changed my life forever.  Hidden within the pages of the ancient Great Book, handed down by my mother’s mother, the Book contained the Trick among magical spells without number. To what extent I ever loved it, or that it loved me, the Book gave me a sense of supremacy and belonging, in the tradition of the great Haitian mystery schools. The Book, which I swore to protect, is rooted among the lost souls that survived the slave ships from West Africa. 

With all that was important to me now suddenly in grave danger, I readied myself, starting with the expert workmanship of a dear friend. The authenticity of her period garments offered a promising entry to the Past. I speedily reviewed the period history and geography, and ‘brushed up’ on my Early Modern English. Languages had always come easily for me. I prepared and hoped for a safe journey to the Salem Village of 1692.

I cast the Trick, untested and unproven as far as I knew. And just as suddenly I found myself in pre-colonial Salem, Massachusetts, though in the unexpected company of a young boy, a Seer, who had brazenly followed me through the time portal. Still, the Trick gave us the chance now to prevent what had already happened. My diligence and drive, my inner strength and powers, as well as the purity and common sense of the boy, all proved to be of great advantage in that strange world. 

It seemed the passage had neither affected me nor the young traveler. There were no visible effects; the transit itself was remarkably smooth and swift.  Except for the setting (from a lighted house interior to utter darkness), nothing had changed, or so I thought. 

That first night, guided by the dark light of a less than half full moon, we proceeded warily along the edge of a path.  Once the monotony of darkness fully set in, our movements grew less short and deliberate. Through the darkness of our surroundings, we eventually heard the sounds of chants and words that went on unabated.  We froze. We had not been detected. We had not disturbed those strangers nor their strange incantations. And so ended that first night.

And while battling the evil one to eventual victory, I had not left my old habits and predilections in the present time. And what I did not know when I returned to the present, I learned soon enough. I had changed. Gone was my exterior beauty. My luxuriant black tresses were now gray; my once beautiful bronze skin was wrinkled and no longer aglow. And I was pregnant. Despite my exterior traits, interiorly my body remained that of a 29-year-old, healthy woman. 

My adventures in the Past still allowed ample time to pursue my usual interests, and with no fear. I was already battling evil, so my amorous romping through the Past brought me a measure of comfort in an otherwise strange and hostile environment. “Whose seed,” I wondered? The list of candidates included an angry Indian, a ship’s captain, a farmer, and possibly a gummy-smiled inn keeper who may have taken unauthorized liberties; I do not recall. But why would paternity matter in this case anyway, when the father was most assuredly dust?

Then I saw the world in a very different light. There was another heart beating inside of me. And for the first time in my life, I knew there was more to life than just me. There was a tiny somebody in my belly who probably loved me with all its tiny heart and soul, even though he, or she, was too little to know.

I looked to the heavens and wondered a while before I shook this all off and resumed my former twenty-first century routines. Although I had habitually violated five of seven Deadly Sins, I learned soon after that something else had changed. I was certain. But what was it? 

And then I knew. I knew I was truly loved. Though only a tiny thing myself in God’s universe, I knew I was truly loved! And I knew I really am special! I suppose I always knew that, but I really did not. So, it is time now to grow up and share my life with purpose. I shall do it with all the zeal of my former self, learn Wisdom and Truth and Faith, with the knowledge that life here on Earth is simply a temporary assignment.