Hennie’s store was on the last populated block of Heard Street. Beyond it there was just a single house, dark green and crumbly, pointed and strange. Strange to be a house in a congested city and have no neighbors. On either side, straw-colored weeds sprang, and across the street ran a long, abandoned warehouse, its small, tough windows cracked and shattered, graffiti looping across its corrugated walls. The pavement here gave way to packed dirt, and dust hung in the humid air. The city never repaired the street since the block’s sole resident never complained. The few times Sophie had walked that block, to dodge a gang of boys or take a quicker route to the park, she felt creeped out and confused. How could this be the very same street she lived on? It seemed like she’d crossed over into another region entirely, perhaps another era. She saw a snake slithering on the edge of the weeds, and a big German Shepherd on the porch of that one weird house, a big pink tongue hanging sideways from his mouth. Sophie didn’t like such big, not-cute dogs. She liked dogs that were tiny and funny looking, or else she liked larger dogs that were mellow and friendly and brought you things. She did not like big dogs that stared and panted, or drooled. She had wondered, seeing the Shepherd, what would happen if the dog attacked her. Weren’t they attack dogs, terrible police dogs? She supposed she’d simply be mauled, as there was absolutely nobody to help her on this strange strip of Heard Street, nobody but whoever lived in the crumpled, green house and they clearly did not like people enough to care if one was getting eaten by their dog in the street.
That day Sophie didn’t continue on to that abandoned block. She stopped at the corner, noting the way the dust yellowed the air down the way, like looking at a sepia picture from another time. The place that marked the crossroads was Hennie’s Grocery. She turned and entered the store. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The bright sun outside struggled to cut through the layer of grime on the grocery store’s windows. Sophie thought that probably some people didn’t shop at Hennie’s because they thought the place was closed. As for the rest, they just thought it was nasty. Sophie’s eyes came to rest on the glass countertop. Arranged on its center, a carton of orange juice, a box of instant soup, a lemon, and a jar of amber honey. Behind it all, Hennie, her thin scarf containing her hair, her eyes lit like a magic piece of sea glass.
“Hello, Sophia,” she greeted the girl. “At last, my niece.”
HENNIE SWUNG A bolt of rusty metal, locking the door of her shop. “Not that anyone comes.” She winked at Sophie. “Right?”
“I have always wondered how you stay in business,” Sophie admitted.
“I stay in business for you,” the old woman said. “I know when you come. I peek at your mother, I read what she wants, I make it be here for you.”
Sophie thought about the loaves of bread she’d brought back, eaten as baloney and cheese sandwiches at school. The ground beef her mother fried up with Hamburger Helper. The gallons of milk and fizzy liters of soda. All magical, conjured by Hennie. A glance around the shop and Sophie could see there was no deli case, no fridge stocked with colorful cans of soda. Even the glass candy jars she’d seen when she first entered had asserted their rightful existence as great glass orbs of dried herbs and flowers. Hennie eased up on her illusion, and the grocery store relaxed into the witch’s workshop it really was.
“But the food,” Sophie insisted. “The food was real.”
“Magic is real,” Hennie said. “Illusions are, in their way, completely real.”
“Was it bad for me to eat it?” Sophie dug. “What was it?”
“I care very much about your growing bones,” Hennie said. “I make sure it have all the nutrition. Charmed food maybe the very best food.” She winked.
“Did it make me even more magical?” Sophie said hopefully.
“You don’t need Hamburger Helper to make you more magic.” She chuckled. “Now, Sophie—where do I even begin with you?”
* * *
THEY BEGAN WITH an altar. It was a relief for Sophie to lay her mother’s heavy purse onto the counter next to the magical groceries. She unloaded the heavy white candle Angel’s mother had dressed for her. A sweet smell filled the dusty room, a smell of flowers. The inside of the glass was dusted with what looked like glitter and pencil shavings, and Sophie thought she could see the letters of her name dug into the soft wax.
“Angel—you know Angel?” Hennie nodded. “Her mother made these for me. She’s a curandera.” She tried to say it like Angel had said it, with a roll to the r, and felt embarrassed, like she was trying to sound like someone she wasn’t. But she didn’t want to disrespect the pretty word by butchering it with her rough Chelsea voice. “Are you a curandera?”
Hennie nodded, smelling the candles. “Yes, but we call it different. I am znakharka. That is how we say curandera. Here, you say witch. Is all the same.” She brought the candles to a low shelf already holding bundles of herbs, some rocks and feathers, what looked like a piece of an animal pelt, a chunk of fur. “Znakharka,” Hennie spoke the word like taking a chomp out of it. It sounded like a powerful word. In general, Sophie liked words that began with z, because they were unusual. “You are znakharka,” she told Sophie, taking the candle from her and bringing it beneath her nose for a sniff. Sophie pulled a strand of hair into her mouth and began biting the split ends. Her hair tasted salty, and she realized that though she had bathed an entire flock of city pigeons, she had not taken a bath since puking creek water all over herself. Gross, she thought, and spit out her hair. She hadn’t chewed her hair since she was a kid, anyway. But something about the way Hennie watched her made her feel like a child.
“You light this candle. You pray for clarity and protection.” Hennie gave Sophie a box of wooden matches. Of course Hennie wouldn’t have a damp pack of paper matches, or a plastic Bic like the ones Kishka lit her cigarettes from. Her matches were hardy little torches from another place and time. Sophie pulled the tip down the rough wooden wall, and the tang of sulfur filled the shop. She lit the candle, wondering who she was praying to. She recalled what Angel had said about lineage. Teresita, Gandhi, Jesus. Was it blasphemous to pray to Teresita and Jesus at the same time? She knew the nuns at school would think so. But the nuns would have a lot to say about Sophie hanging out with Hennie, an actual znakharka. Sophie hadn’t ever paid much mind to the nuns and wasn’t about to begin now. Hi, lineage, she thought inside her head. Please look out for me, okay? Please help me pay attention and not space out. She thought for a moment. Is that it? I don’t know. Thanks. She opened her eyes. Hennie, who’d been clutching at her own hands, reached out and clasped Sophie’s.
“Sophie,” she said. Sophie flinched, but did not pull away her hands. It startled her to be touched by the woman. She realized she was still a little bit scared of her. Even though everyone had said she was good—and she was good, Sophie could feel it—she looked so much like a witch from a fairy tale, it was hard for Sophie not to think about Hennie pushing her into an oven when she wasn’t looking. Her nose even had a mole on it, for god’s sake. A mole sprouting a hair. If you did an internet search for witch, Hennie’s picture would pop up.
“Sophie, when I say you are my niece, I mean, you are my niece. You are my blood. I wait to meet you a very long time.”
“But—but I’ve come in here before!” Sophie exclaimed. “I bought hamburger meat and soda and butter. You have met me before. You could have—you could have met me then.”
“It was not time,” Hennie said, simply. “Now is time you know all. There is much to know, I tell you everything. Much is bad. There are many bad things to know, I am sorry to tell you. But maybe good, too.” She tightened her grip on Sophie’s hand, giving it a squeeze. Hennie’s hands were cool and plump, like a mound of dough being chilled for cookies. Sophie squeezed back.
“I am your aunt,” she said. She tugged a copper-colored necklace out from her blouse, a strand of thin links. For a moment Sophie anticipated sea glass, but it was an oval-shaped locket on the end of the chain. A disk of porcelain painted with faded roses was affixed to the metal. Hennie pulled it over her head, taking care not to knock off her head scarf. “Oh, my babushka,” she laughed. Hennie had a big laugh when she laughed, a big smile when she smiled. Sophie could see a missing tooth at the edge of the woman’s mouth. She held the locket in the palm of her hand and flicked it open to two tiny pictures of two tiny babies, one on each side, mirror images.
“That’s me?” Sophie asked. She recognized the photo, her mother had copies of it stuffed into the plasticky photo albums. The joke was that Sophie, whose unruly head of hair taunted Andrea with its wildness, had been born bald as a marble. The nurses had to stick a pink bow on her head with a piece of Scotch tape. I don’t see what the big deal was anyway, who cares if I’m a boy or a girl, I was a baby! Sophie would grumble, slightly humiliated by having a bow taped to her head. In the photo on the other side of the locket, Sophie wore no such demeaning bow. In fact, she had hair on her head, a dark little cap. Sophie blinked and peered closer. The picture was small. The face was hers, but like she was wearing a wig, a baby toupee.
“What’s this?” Sophie asked. She tapped the photo with a grubby fingernail. “How’d I get so hairy? That’s me, right?” She laughed a stilted laugh, like she was foolish. Her head was buzzing with questions. One thing at a time, she thought, trying to calm herself. She cleared her mind. The heat of the burning wax intensified the scent of the oil the curandera had dressed the candles with, and the smell of warm, white flowers was thick inside the room. She stared at Hennie. She still couldn’t trust this woman, but she trusted the pigeons and she trusted Angel. “Will you explain to me how you are my aunt? Why you have these pictures of me in a locket?”
Hennie grabbed a couple of lumpy mugs that looked to be made from the mud of the earth. She filled them with a steaming beverage that tasted like the mud of the earth. Sophie made a blech face, sticking out her tongue, sputtering. “This tastes like dirt.”
“Come, sit with me,” Hennie said. She was reclining on the floor, on a pillow stuffed with straw. Beside her was a fireplace, alive with a glowing orange fire. Sophie knew there hadn’t been a fireplace when she’d arrived at Hennie’s. She was also fairly certain that outside of the shop Chelsea was in the throes of an insufferable heat wave. To drink a hot drink before a roaring fire was insane, but Hennie’s shop felt cozy. “I make like winter in here, sometime,” the woman explained. “I miss my old land. I am winter witch. I feel most powerful when there is snow, and cold.” She regarded her niece as she settled down into a puffy hay pillow, folding her legs beneath her. “You, I think, are summer witch. You are most powerful now. Kishka too, is summer witch. When she was a girl like you, maybe little older, in Poland, she run around with Poludnica. Nasty girls. Very beautiful, like Kishka. Poludnica wear pretty dresses and walk around fields where farmers work, make them sick with heat and sun, make them crazy even, sometimes.”
“Were they were, like, a gang?” Sophie asked. “A Polish girl gang?” The thought sounded sort of cool.
“No, no girl gang, not real girls. Poludnica are, how to explain— ghosts? Not real. Magical girls. Their magic bad, like Kishka.”
“Is Kishka a znakharka?”
“Yes, dearie. Bad znakharka.”
“Did she learn magic from the… Poludnica?” The heavy Polish words felt cumbersome in Sophie’s mouth.
“No,” Hennie laughed. “Poludnica probably learn from your grandmother. She is much more powerful. She was, how you say, slumming, running around with the Poludnica. She being rebellious. They are small magic, but mean magic. But, Kishka is summer znakharka, big magic. As are you.”
Sophie listened to Hennie talk about Kishka as a young girl, in Poland. Hadn’t Kishka come over as a baby? Who was Kishka’s mother? Why didn’t Sophie know anything about her family? In Hennie’s eyes she saw a shard of Kishka’s blue; in the hair beneath her babushka, a streak of Kishka’s yellow. “Are you my grandmother’s sister?” she asked, and Hennie nodded.
“Yes, we are sisters, and enemies. We hold opposite magic. We do not speak.”
“Does my mother know? That you are her aunt?”
“Yes, Andrea knows me. I loved Andrea very much. A little baby, I watch over her. I babysit when Kishka and Carl go dancing.” Hennie sighed. “Those were nice time. Kishka very beautiful, more so than the Poludnica. With red lipstick, and she make her eyebrows like so,” Hennie moved her finger in an arc above her eye. “She wear such good dresses. But still, she have her powers always, she run with the bad ghosts, she become mora very young, she leave her body and fly around. That’s mora, ones that fly. She do it without out the flying herbs, without zagavory.”
“I don’t know what you’re taking about.” Sophie was overwhelmed.
“Zagavory is magic spells. But Kishka need nothing to fly. We were children, she just leave body, she fly around, she come to America, she come back to Poland. Whatever she like. In the morning, she tell me wild story, and I believe.”
“Who is older, you or Kishka?”
“We are same,” Hennie said. Sophie was shocked.
“I know, you shocked,” Hennie said. Sophie quickly drew up her shield around her emotions. “No, no, I do not read you, dumpling. I know you shocked because every person shocked. Also, your mouth hung very open. Kishka look very younger than me, no?”
It was true that Hennie looked like a very old woman, her face folded with wrinkles, while Kishka, though old, had a spry youthfulness about her. Her skin was tighter, it caught light and hurled it back at you—a miracle really, considering how much the old woman smoked.
“One of her powers,” Hennie said, with a tone of acceptance. “She has the glamours, I do not. But still, I look good when you think. How old am I to you?”
Sophie hated these questions. There would be an insult buried in whatever answer she gave.
“No, for true, please tell me. I throw away my vanity long time ago.” Hennie smiled, and the dark space where a tooth once was seemed to wink from the cave of her mouth.
“I don’t know, my grandmother is, what, fifty? So you must be, too? But I guess I would think seventy.”
“You are very good,” Hennie smiled, nodding. “You could feel a seven. I think I am seven hundred years old.”
“Okay.” Sophie sat, thinking about seven hundred. It was too large for her to grasp. She imagined seven hundred dollars—too much money, couldn’t grasp it. Seven hundred people. What was that, everyone in Chelsea? Seven hundred years. Sophie was thirteen. Seven hundred years was outer space, it was science fiction.
“I am, how you say, blowing your mind? Yes. Sophie. We are not regular people, Kishka and I. We are Odmieńce. Magic creatures. First creatures on whole planet. Before humans, Odmieńce.”
“So, you’re not human,” Sophie said flatly. She didn’t know why this was harder to swallow than grumpy mermaids or pigeons who spoke, but it was. Maybe because of what it implied.
“No, not human, Sophie.”
“Am I… I’m human, right?” Sophie wracked her brain for proof that she was human. She breathed air. But she breathed water too, didn’t she, that night? But that was a dream, a vision! But who brings back a lungful of water from a dream? She slept and ate, she cried tears, she got her period, and she was a human, a thirteen-year-old human girl. Who could read minds and talk to pigeons and stuff.
“You are part human,” Hennie said. “And you are part Odmieńce. Kishka is all Odmieńce, your grandfather all human. Andrea half Odmieńce, half human. Your father, human. You, some and some. A little less every time.”
“Wait!” Sophie felt insulted. “My mother is less human than me? Does she have power, too?”
“It skip generation,” Hennie explained. “Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. Kishka very angry. Wanted Andrea to have much power, Andrea have none. Kishka very cruel to your mother. Your mother, she run away. She come back with baby in her belly. That is you. She come back with a man, too. Your father.”
“You knew my father?” Sophie felt awkward. She had come to rest in a certain feeling, the feeling of not having a father. It was hard to miss something she had never had, so she had decided it was no big whoop. Fathers were something that other people had. She had Andrea. She’d had Kishka. Now, she had Hennie. Hennie, and an entire mythology. She felt scared at the thought of having a father. It made her feel vulnerable, and embarrassed. Would she meet him? Would she be expected to cry, to have feelings? Would it be a sentimental reunion, like a cheesy television movie? Sophie loathed situations where she was expected to have a feeling. She feared she would have the wrong one, or have none at all, and then what?
“I know your father,” Hennie said. Sophie noted the present tense. “But we talk of that later. So much to tell, Sophie. Are you okay?”
Sophie nodded. The mug in her hand had gone cool. “Your drink,” Hennie said, “is whatever you like. What you like it to be?”
Sophie looked down at the cup, confused. The liquid was dark in the dark earth color of its vessel. Watermelon juice? she thought, remembering the heat outside. But she realized it was a hot chocolate, hot chocolate with a twig of cinnamon and a striped peppermint stick inside it. Teeny puffs of marshmallow bobbed on top. It was the perfect winter drink. She took a chocolatey gulp. “Wow.”
“Is nice to have fun with the magic, too,” Hennie said, nodding. “Can’t always be, Read minds, remove zagavory, cast zagavory, become mora, yadda yadda yadda.”
Sophie closed her eyes and thought, Watermelon juice. She could smell the fresh, summery smell of the melon before her eyes were opened.
“Sophie, your grandmother very bad.” Hennie’s eyes were intense, the play gone from them as quickly as it had come.
“I know.” Sophie nodded. “Everyone has told me. The pigeons, Angel, they all think she’s the worst person in the whole world.”
Hennie nodded. “She pretty bad. Always drawn to the bad magic, ever since tiny baby so long ago. Spending so long in the bad magic, it takes hold of you. Soon, no way to come back. Darkness claim you.”
“What about you?”
“I pure good.” Hennie smiled, and the pure good was in the smile, and it made Sophie smile, too. “Always good girl. Drive Kishka crazy. But good take hold too, good can claim you. Kishka and me, we sisters, but not sisters. Is different from human way. All Odmieńce related, descended from the first creatures, all Odmieńce are sister and brother. Because Kishka most bad and I most good, we were placed with humans together, side by side. The Boginki bring us. Boginki, how you say…” Hennie thought about it. “Fairies, maybe? Water fairies, from rivers? They steal human babies, they replace with Odmieńce. Me and Kishka, we placed with family in village outside Warsaw, so many years ago.”
“What happened,” asked Sophie, “to the stolen babies?”
Hennie looked sad. “The Boginki, they love human babies. They bring them into the river.”
“Into the river?”
“They drown them.” The story had been in Hennie for hundreds and hundreds of years but still, the thought of the human babies dying in the water, their fat and tiny fists flailing, their futile struggle, it brought her to tears. Hennie cried. She cried like the Boginki had cried so long ago in Poland, underneath the river, shaking the tiny babies, floating them in their hands, pulling their lifeless eyelids open, howling thunderous howls that pushed through the water like currents. “They do not know,” Hennie tried to explain. “Each time they believe the baby will live, be their little human friends. They are like children, the Boginki. They do things again and again and every time it is the same bad way. They are a little mad, from so long of this. A little crazy. But without the Boginki there would be no Odmieńce among the people. It is like strange system. We need Boginki.”
“Do they still exist?” Sophie asked, scared.
“Oh, yes. You meet Syrena, the mermaid?”
“Yes.” Sophie nodded.
“She have terrible Boginki problem in her river, she tell you. She is very concerned to return to Poland and have Boginki everywhere, and crying mothers on the riverbanks, police officers—this is her fear. Because now, less and less Odmieńce babies. Boginki just take the babies, no replacement babies. They are so bad.” Hennie shook her head, a sadness still on her face. “But so sweet, the Boginki. They only want love, the special kind of love you have with baby. Anyway.” Hennie pulled a fistful of straw from her pillow and tossed it into the dwindling fire. “I can make fire with mind,” she said. “I can make anything with mind, but then is like—what point is life? You do everything with mind all the time, is like having no life. Who cares? I get very, how you call it, depressed. So now, I do things. I put the straw in the fire, like a human would do. Then you feel straw, you hear crackle, smell good straw smell. It is nice, to work with the world in such a way. I want tea, I take the herbs, I measure them, I watch the water become hot on the fire, I smell the tea opening its smells. You know? Otherwise, I go, Tea! and I say my zawolanie, and poof, tea! But when life is too simple it feels wrong. Like talking. I can make you hear my English perfect. It would be a zagavory, a spell. Or, another zagavory—I just make you hear in mind what I think to you. I do this many years, hundreds, hundreds of years, never bothering to learn any language. Is why my English so bad. I not try. Now, I try. I save zagavory for emergency. Or for fun, like drink.” She gestured toward Sophie’s magical mug. “You want cookie?”
Before Hennie could answer, a pile of cookies appeared on a hammered metal tray beside her. They smelled amazing. She touched one; it was warm from an oven, the chips gooey in the dough.
“They are perfect chocolate chip cookies,” Hennie said.
“Yes,” Sophie agreed, eating them. It made sense that Hennie, made of goodness, would bake a cookie that tasted like pure love. Sophie could feel that all her fear of the woman was gone. “Hennie, are you sure you’re not my grandmother?” she asked hopefully. “If I’m good and you’re good, how can Kishka be my grandmother? Did the Boginki mix me up maybe?”
“Child, you might as well be my granddaughter. You might as well be my daughter, you are so close to my heart.” Hennie’s eyes looked like cookies in her face, warm and full of tenderness. “But is not how goes. Kishka have Andrea, Andrea have you. You part human, you raised with human love. You have many influences upon your heart. Kishka Odmieńce, she is only what she is meant to be, she is badness. It is how it is.” She looked hard at her niece. “All human, like you, have choices. Many choices. You could be bad, too, Sophia. But it is not your destiny, I think. Not what you wish for.”
“No!” Sophie exclaimed, horrified at the thought that she could have a bit of Kishka’s badness waiting inside her, like a cell that could grow into a tumor. “I don’t want to be bad!”
“Well, most humans don’t. But then—” She shrugged. “So many sadnesses pile up. Partly this is the curse. You will undo much such badness. And yes, you do have bigger ability for bad inside you, as Odmieńce.” Hennie smiled. “But you have bigger ability for good, also. Tremendously bigger. Human would say—supernatural. But that is only because human does not understand nature.”
Hennie clapped her big, soft hands together. “I apologize. No time to—what say, philosophize? So much to tell, and you must go, you must. I can play with time, slow down some, but too much and Kishka will notice, it will draw her too us. I will hurry, now. I apologize for that, for all you must hear so quickly. To hear so quickly and then poof, I will push you out my door, I apologize for this. What else you like, what sweets?”
Sophie was going to say banana cream pie when the perfect banana cream pie appeared aside the cookies.
“I am like Boginki!” Hennie laughed. “I wait so long to spoil you, my niece, now I stuff you with magic pastry!”
“It’s okay,” Sophie said. “I didn’t eat breakfast.”
Hennie wrinkled her face at that, and then blinked at the cookies. “Very nutritious, now,” she said. “Eat all you want.”
* * *
“FIRST OF ALL,” Hennie said, “your grandfather not dead. Kishka turn grandfather to dog. She say he killed in dump, by hoodlums. He never die. Kishka turn him to dog, he live with me, in my house, down the street.”
Sophie’s mouth hung open. She tightened her grip on her magical cocoa, because this was the sort of moment people let glasses slip from their hands in movies. Sci-fi movies. Fantasy movies. Of course that house, that spooky, solitary witch’s house, was Hennie’s. And she had seen the dog, the German Shepherd on the porch, looking up and down the abandoned block, its tongue dangling from its mouth in the dust. That dog was her grandfather? “No,” she said.
“Yes.”
“No!”
“Yes, Sophie. Carl is dog. Is terrible magic. He not know he is Carl anymore, he think he is only dog. He behave like dog, he is dog.” Hennie heaved a big sigh and shook her head. “Kishka let him be picked up by, what you call—pound? They have him in cage, would adopt maybe, maybe he become police dog, maybe put to sleep, no one know. I adopt him.” Hennie sighed. “I more cat woman. Not much like dog. But what to do? Let Carl become drug dog in Chelsea? Too bad for such a man. He would not want.”
“What about your magic?” Sophie asked. She felt a desperate anxiety rise at the simple notion that a person can get cursed into a dog. “Can’t you free him? Can’t you do anything?”
“No,” Hennie said, simply. “Is brilliant zagavory. She use terrible magics, things I cannot touch. Some things, you cannot touch and remain good. Kishka, she touch anything she want. She use all kind of bad magic to make Carl dog.”
Sophie took stock of what she had learned thus far: she was only part human, another part was—what was the word—Odmieńce. Hennie the creepy old witch lady was her aunt. Her grandfather was Hennie’s dog. What were the Polish words Hennie was flinging around, a jumbled rubble of language, all these zs? “What are the words?” Sophie asked. “All the Polish words?” Words were practical, unemotional, simple. She could carry a word like a piece of sea glass on her chest, solid and helpful.
“Yes, new words for you. Znakharka. That is witch. You are znakharka.”
“Znakharka.”
“Zagavory. That is spell. Magic spell.”
“Got it.”
“Zawolanie. That is like, special noise only for you. A magical noise, you make it, is yours. You sound your zawolanie when you make your zagavory, and it will be full of your power. Is like you call out to all the universe and all who know you hear, and answer.”
“Can’t you just say, like, magic noise and magic spell?” Sophie asked. “Do you have to use those big Polish words?”
Hennie looked hurt. “Suit self.” She shrugged. “Noble, ancient Polish words. Your tradition. You lose words, you lose power, lose magic. I work,” she said, “to speak in your language. You come for magic, you speak in mine. In my language that is also yours. Even if you don’t feel it.”
Sophie felt embarrassed. “Okay,” she said. “Will you teach me my—”
“Zawolanie?” she asked. “No. I teach you nothing. You know everything. My work is to tell you the stories of who you are.”
“Thank you, Hennie.” Sophie began to rise. “I guess, do I call you Auntie Hennie?”
Hennie smiled, but did not look happy. “Sit back,” she said. “We are not done. I will slow time, Kishka be damned. You do not yet know your story.”
* * *
THERE WAS A special hush in Hennie’s shop. It felt a bit like being passed out—things felt enchanted, a sort of slow tingle, like she was on the inside of a slow globe, an aquarium, a crystal ball. The very air around her seemed warped. Hennie had taken great handfuls of salt and tossed them into the room’s four corners, speaking in Polish. She’d taken a stick with a beautiful rock tied to its tip, long and sharp like a dagger, she’d cut a wide circle in the air with it, still murmuring in her native tongue. Then she spoke her zawolanie. It was a surprise to hear such a beautiful call come out of the old woman. Everything about her felt gruff and rough to Sophie, her heavy voice with its chunky English, the warts, the babushka pushing her gray hair flat, her wide face, the bulk of her. But Hennie’s zawolanie was a chime. It enchanted Sophie and it enchanted time itself. The hush that followed was like a first snowfall, untouched and glistening. She thought about how Hennie was a winter witch.
“You did it,” Sophie said, half-expecting to be able to see the steam of her breath in the air before her face.
“You feel it?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “And your zawolanie is so beautiful.”
“The zawolanie,” Hennie said, “is you, only a sound. It is the sound of your essence. It is like the key of your magic, unlocking everything.”
“How do I get mine?” Sophie asked.
“You go to the mall,” Hennie said. “Is zawolanie store. Come in many colors, you buy one you like.” It took Sophie a minute to realize her aunt was making a joke.
“Hennie,” she said, “You can’t. You can’t make jokes. Because you could be like, oh, a talking pigeon will tell you, or a mermaid will bring you one, ha ha ha, and, I’m, like, scrambling over here, because a couple days ago there were no mermaids or talking pigeons, so for all I know some gremlins opened a store in the mall that looks like a computer store but, whoa, it’s a magical zawolanie store! Come on in, we’ll customize you the best zawolanie ever, give you a great deal!” Sophie could feel a certain hysteria rising behind her own joke, the pull of tears straining in her face. Hennie could feel it, too.
“Is true,” Hennie agreed. “Too much weird stuff to make joke. Your zawolanie is inside you. When you make zagavory, you will feel your zawolanie come.”
“Okay. How do I make zagavory?”
“It depend what you want. Many zagavory. You want to be invisible, you want to make person do what you want, you want to make someone love you. Some of these bad magic. Very tricky. Must be clear in heart.”
“Is it bad magic to make someone love you?” she asked.
“Mostly yes. Unless big reason to have the person love, bigger than you just wanting love. Understand?”
“No. So, if I just have a crush on someone I can’t make them love me back?”
“No, no. The Dola come for you, they very angry. Dola like—police. But they police of destiny. You make a person go against their destiny, Dola very upset. They haunt you. And you go against your own destiny, Dola haunt you also.”
“How do I know if I’m going against my destiny?”
“You just know,” Hennie insisted. “You feel.”
“But, like, if I go against my destiny, isn’t it my destiny to go against my destiny?” Sophie’s head was spinning. It looked like Hennie’s was, too. She put her palm to her broad forehead.
“Child,” she said, “You are speaking like Boginki, like crazy this and that. You have destiny, I have destiny, even little Boginki have destiny. You go against your destiny, Dola come, they bother you forever. So, know your own self and do what you know you must do, and stop no one from doing what they must do, understand?”
“Yes,” Sophie said, even though she didn’t, exactly. “What do they look like, the Dola?”
“They look like a bad feeling,” Hennie said. “Hope you never see. Now, more, fast. I don’t like keeping time for long. It makes humans weary. They feel thick in their head from it. Now—here.” Hennie handed Sophie a pouch on a string. It had a cool design on it.
“What is it?”
“Is your magic pouch.”
“Is there a Polish z-word for it?” Sophie asked.
“Just say magic pouch.” Hennie was getting tired. It took a lot of magic will to stop time. “Inside, for you, much salt, good stone, good herbs. Pigeon bones.”
“Ew, why pigeon bones?”
“Pigeon your animal. Everyone have animal, you are pigeon.”
“Wait—are you talking about power animals?” Sophie knew about power animals, everyone did. Ella liked to say she was a parrot, or a dolphin. Sophie thought she might be a cat, she liked cats a lot. She hadn’t even considered a person’s power animal could be a pigeon. She realized she hadn’t been thinking of pigeons as either powerful, or animals. They were pests. Sophie felt sad, thought of her friends on the wire outside Hennie’s shop, waiting for her. She wondered if they could feel the stopped time. If she left Hennie’s house, what would the world look like?
“Okay, pigeons are my power animal.”
“Good animal to have. They fly. Their bones are light, hollow, so they can lift themselves. You are light boned, you can move fast when you must. Pigeon have special magic, no one know they are magic, no one ever think such beast have magic. You are like that, too.”
“I am?”
“Yah. You dirty, snarly-haired girl, full of magic.” Hennie laughed. “You wise like pigeons, stick with people, and help people like the pigeons. You have noble history, like pigeon. They are really rock doves, quite lovely, and you are really Odmieńce. Half Odmieńce. Brings me to next, final story, quite bad—”
“Wait, what do I do with this?” Sophie shook her magic pouch, hearing things rattling softly inside the cloth.
“Just keep it. Wear it, put it in purse.”
“I don’t have a purse, that’s my mom’s.”
“You teenage girl, should have purse and brush hair, yah?”
“I guess.”
“Is your life, what do I know?” Hennie shrugged. “Anyway, just keep on you.” Hennie paused. “Really, think about a purse. You will be accumulating much magical object.”
“But what does it do?” Sophie asked.
“You want to make zagavory, everything you need in pouch. Is perfect zagavory kit! I make myself. Very thorough.” Hennie looked proud. “You need more, you come here. Or, you think of it, say your zawolanie, poof, you will have. But, come see me, please. I like you very much.”
“Oh, Hennie.” Sophie was not accustomed to feeling this affection from an older person, a relation. Family. She was embarrassed at how badly she wanted it. She pushed herself into her aunt, hugging her tight. Her wide, soft body smelled like cookies and tea and herbs and flowers.
“Wait, Sophie,” she said. “I have more bad to tell. Your father. Your father is man you know. Name is Ronald. You have met him, yah?”
Sophie shook her head. Ronald. Pathetic Ronald, drooling, drunk Ronald, gross filthy stinking Ronald was her father? She wasn’t ready for this information. Unlike the wild revelations of talking pigeons of creek-dwelling mermaids, there was no magic in it—just sadness and disgust. She suddenly felt overwhelmed and pulled away. “Hennie, I heard enough. I have to go; I’ve been here too long.”
“Time is stopped,” Hennie said.
“I just can’t hear anymore. I can’t take it!” She could hear her voice, too loud in the cozy room.
“You must, Sophie. You have to know everything. And there is more—”
“No!” Sophie dashed to the counter, where her mother’s purse sat. She stuffed her magic pouch inside it, and then the orange juice, the soup box, the lemon and the honey.
“Sophie, you keep Syrena waiting. The mermaid. She waits for you, but you must know everything before you go with her—”
“Go with her? I’m not going anywhere with her! I’m thirteen years old, I live here, in Chelsea!”
“You are Odmieńce.”
“That means nothing to me.” Sophie had hit overload, and Hennie had more? Sophie had a witch for a grandmother, a dog for a grandfather, a drunk for a dad. What more could there be? “I gotta go,” Sophie said. “I’ll come back some other time and you can tell me everything.”
“Sophie, there is an order. It is time. You must stay.” Hennie’s open palm held something grainy, heavy. She flung it into the fire, and again Sophie heard the gorgeous call of Hennie’s zawolanie. It almost made her stay. The sound of it fluted through her, calming her. Why was she in such a hurry? Time was stopped. She looked at Hennie, sweet Hennie, her stricken face. She only wanted to show Sophie who she was.
“Argh!” Sophie hollered, her voice echoing off the wood and stone of the small shop. Hennie had charmed her! She could feel the zagavory stunning her mind, enacting its will upon her, making Sophie doubt herself. She should stay—no, she was being enchanted—no, she should stay, it wasn’t a bad enchantment—that’s not the point!— Sophie’s will flailed inside her. She didn’t want to stay! How dare Hennie! “How dare you!” she thundered at the old woman. And Sophie felt something rising inside her like a thing alive. It was her, had always been within her, and it flexed itself suddenly, like a muscle that ran the length of her body. From the soles of her feet to the top of her head, Sophie tingled and burned as the sound surged upward, escaping her mouth in a noise so pure, so sharp and fierce it exploded the glass in Hennie’s shop, filling the room with liquids and herbs. The glass of candles shattered, releasing blobs of molten wax. And Hennie. Poor Hennie, her hands plastered to her ears to keep the sound out, Hennie was hit by a wave of sound dense as brick, flung backward onto a shelf of books. All of them—znakharka, paper, wood—tumbled together to the floor. Hennie’s eyes remained closed. Sophie looked with horror at all she had done, all she had not intended to do. With her mother’s purse on her shoulder, she tore out of Hennie’s Grocery.