Page 102 of The Wolfing Hour
“I know, but she’s also separate.”
“But that’s just it. It’s not that you’re three different people in one body, it’s that you’re fighting the three sides of yourself. You say you chose to put the demon in charge and hide the witch away. Why didyouget to make that choice? Why didn’t your demon side just take control? Why did your witch, a powerful creature in her own right, allow you to send her away, as you put it?”
“I … don’t know.”
She set the broom and dustpan back by my workstation and sat beside me on the chaise, holding the object she'd picked up off the floor.
“Years ago, I visited a potter who specialized in the traditional Japanese art of mending broken pieces of pottery with varnish and metal powder. He created these strong and imperfectly beautiful artworks with things that had once been broken. When he put them back together, they weren’t the same as before, but they were very strong and even more beautiful.”
“You’re talking about kintsugi,” I said. “I had a little kintsugi jewelry bowl veined with gold. I lost it in the trailer fire.”
“Yes, that’s it.” She handed me the object she’d picked up and dusted off. It was Mom’s mirror. The one I’d punched and dumped soil from the thyme plant on.
The wooden backing had been repaired. Not perfectly, there were pieces missing, but it was intact. Slowly, and with more than a little apprehension, I flipped it over.
A sob broke free of my ravaged throat.
If I’d conventionally glued the shards together, there would’ve been obvious cracks, bits of glass missing along the seams. You could never restore a broken mirror to its original smoothness, no matter how careful you were. There were always signs of breakage left behind.
The thyme soil—the Siete Saguaros soil—had restored it in an extraordinary way. It had filled the empty spaces between the shards, creating a glue that effectively held the broken pieces together.
“Your magic still loves you, Betty.” Ida smiled at me. “Sexton was right about one thing. You do need to communicate with your demon side. Your witch side, too. Not because you’ll lose your magic, but because they’re all a part of you.”
“Thank you.” I drew in a long, trembling breath. “Did you intentionally make that rhyme?”
“I can’t help it if I’m a natural poet.” She stood, headed for the door. “I’m going to go inside and make a pot of coffee. I’ll beback out to check on you, but if I happen to see a pile of clothes on the front lawn, I won’t worry.”
She winked at me and left.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror. The demon stared back at me.
I’d rejected everything about my demon side, tried my best to cram her in a box to be chained up, chucked overboard, and cast to the bottom of the deepest sea, where I couldn’t ever reach her again.
Until you needed her darkness. Then it was the earth witch who was locked away.
“I’m sorry.” Demon?Betty’s voice mingled with mine, weaving into a sultry, haunting timbre. She sounded like I did after screaming my head off at Cecil to stop setting the Siete Saguaros dumpster on fire.
Not bad or evil. Just hoarse. Frustrated.
Demon Betty spoke up in my head, her voice a little less sure than before.I protected us. You want me gone, but I protected us. I did what you wanted.
“I know. But when one side takes over completely, we do regretful things.”
I regret nothing.
“Yes, you do, because I do, and you’re me.” When she didn’t respond, I continued, “My elemental side must accept that my demon magic is an asset, not a liability. Likewise, my demon side has to accept that deadening my emotions and going on a brain-melting rampage usually isn’t a net positive. There are times when the apathy comes in handy but use it sparingly. Emotion isn’t weakness; it’s what makes us who we are. It allows us to feel love. It’s how we survive.”
I sat up. Pushed to my feet.
What now?
Holding it in my hands as if it were a baby sparrow fallen from a nest, I carried the mirror to the nail on the window wall above my worktable. My soil magic had even reattached the hanger, though it hung a little crooked now.
Imperfect, but beautiful.
I stared into the mirror, watching the revolving visages staring back at me.Betty-demon-Betty.
“Now we find out if my witch side will forgive me.”
