Two of Swords

Wilder is trying to YouTube their problem away, as if they’re trying to reset a mousetrap or patch a hole Andy accidentally made in the wall. They Google Learn Japanese instantly, which nets them a good many ads for Rosetta Stone. Wake up speaking Japanese gets them the same. They have no idea what search terms to try. Everything they type seems too far-fetched.

They’re embarrassed to even spell the real thing—is it a real thing? Andy saw Quibble, too, and Wilder is not close enough with Andy to share a hallucination. Wilder is not even close enough with Andy to share a half gallon of milk. Which brings them back to the feeling they had before, the one that says having made no friends before today they’re now doomed to no friends forever.

They Google solitary witches.

Books on books, one by someone with a very stupid name, another about casting spells while staying at home without any friends. They click, but in this case “spell” means some kind of physical prayer that’s popular, they think, with queer people who, deep down, miss church.

“What to do if you have magic.” An article about how the best magical power is being kind to yourself. Fourteen ways to have a magical life. A teenager who wrote all about how to know if you have “magic in your blood” and appears to believe every single word of it in earnest.

Wilder clicks on that one, hoping, but it’s just about feeling really chummy with the moon and liking animals, mostly the cute ones. This they do not understand. Where are the really intense snake people? This seems like a community for the really intense snake people.

Witch Tumblr—oh no, it’s worse. Art witches, kitchen witches, financial witches that call money to themselves and their clients magically (Wilder wishes this were real), and, in one memorable case, a tie-dye witch.

Witch Reddit. This is—well, not more like it. But also not Tumblr. A thirteen-year-old asking if they need to be a lesbian or a woman or older to be a witch. And people are—actually nice? Actually helpful? Someone asking ChatGPT to make a prosperity spell and the AI chatbot declining. “I’m just a language model,” it says. “I can’t create spells or give spiritual advice.” So many of these are questions. Question: “Is my neighbor practicing witchcraft on me? We see him lurking outside our door through the peephole.” Question: “My friend accidentally gave a vial of his own blood to a witch.”

Wilder pauses. They look at the clock. They’ve been Googling all morning and the sun is well into its downward swing. They could go to the library, they think, and they could try that before resorting to their own desperate Reddit question. They pull up the New York Public Library website, which yields mostly children’s books about women with large warty noses. One book about herbs, academic analyses of different folk tales, research about burning people in Massachusetts. They pause again. Flip back to the Reddit tab.

Question: Woke Up With Magic Powers

Hi everyone, long time listener, first time caller. Well, not long time listener really. I just found this today because today’s the only day I’ve needed it. I woke up with magic powers. Like real magic. Not like herbs or crystals or whatever, like real, honest to god magic. What do I do?

Post.

Wilder curls up for a nap. They feel impossibly exhausted. This will not change.

Wilder wakes sometime later. It is dark, but it is winter, so that doesn’t mean shit about time. They reach for their phone meaning to check, but whatever arbitrary clock number they see with their eyes dissolves before it reaches their brain. They feel compelled to immediately tap Reddit. To see if their question got answers.

It had. So many.

what do you mean *real* magic? our magic *is* real

this man is coming in here and shaming us for our intuition, but we are teh daughters of the witches who wouldn’t burn

fuck you.

Wilder doesn’t have any coping mechanisms to deal with disappointment like this. Or rather, so much of their life until this point would have been a disappointment if Wilder had ever allowed themself to want anything. The way they’d handled it until right now was to simply never desire, never wish, excise all their longing with the grapefruit spoon of first-world poverty. But today—not even God’s own melon baller could scoop the want out. There is not one person in the world who they could ask to hug them, and they need a hug.

They see the red number one next to their SMS app. No one texts them; it could only be one person.

come on, bud, we have better answers than Reddit. They read Quibble’s response and the friendless sorrow they slept on is immediately hip-checked by anger doing the cha-cha.

No, they type back. How did you get this number?

google.

Wilder is horrified. Please stop texting me.

it was better than, like, waiting at your window. i could do that instead if you want, i’m chilling in the neighborhood, i just figured that would be creepy. why are you doing this?

Doing what?

refusing help. like very obvious help.

Because I don’t WANT help. That’s what Wilder types, but what they actually mean is: because you are now the only person with whom I can achieve any kind of earnest intimacy, you are now immediately terrifying because I both crave and am repulsed by the kind of mutual witness that creates friendship because then you will discover that I’m a horrible person or you will use what you know about me to hurt me on purpose, one of the two, and then I will be even sadder and angrier than I am at present.

okay. well. i’ll leave the ball in yr court. don’t ask me what kind of ball or court, i don’t understand sports. but if you feel like hitting the soccer puck into the endzone or whatever, we’re very easy to find.

Shouldn’t witches be secret?

you asked about real magic on Reddit

As much as they don’t want to admit it, Wilder figures Quibble has a good point.

we’re not easy to find because we’re witches. we’re easy to find because we have a regular hangout spot. Cowboy Jacqueline’s.

What?

don’t tell me you’ve never been to Cowboy Jacqueline’s. it’s the last good queer bar on the whole ass planet.

Wilder forgets they are mad for exactly the length of time it takes to type, do I look like I have beer money? And they are mad again because it should be obvious; they can’t have queer community because they can’t go out because they are poor and “outside” costs a minimum of two hundred dollars.

if you meet me at Cowboy Jacqueline’s, i will buy you whatever drink you want. not just beer.

Wilder considers a free drink. Or at least, that’s what they consider on the surface. What they’re actually considering, though they wouldn’t be able to tell anyone, is the longing for a friend, any friend. You’re there all the time? they type back.

In response, Quibble’s face appears at their window, which is high enough off the ground that, even though he is tall, Wilder can only see his eyeballs. “Yeah, man. We’re gay.”