Winning the Witch

Eliza

“What does this one do?” my best friend, Lily Jane, asks. She holds up a double-poured black and orange candle, sniffs it, and looks to me for an answer, her eyes wide like she’s expecting a simple homemade candle to give her enemies herpes or make world peace.

“It smells good.”

She places the candle back on the display table. “That’s just plain boring, Eliza,” she says, lifting another Halloween candle, smelling it, and haphazardly returning it to the sale table without thought to its proper placement.

“I’m sorry I’m not entertaining you,” I chuckle, checking candle scents and colors off my inventory clipboard.

Lily Jane has been my best friend since third grade when my mother and I showed up at her house to help her mother with a small problem. Lily Jane and I were banished to the basement while the older women talked in hushed tones and looked through my mother’s “house call” bag, as she called it.

Lily Jane showed me her Barbie camper that day, and that was that. I thought she was the cat’s meow with her doll-sized pink camper, complete with slide and Ken doll without pants in the swimming pool. It was little girl heaven compared to the cauldron and spice bottles of dried frog parts I was given to play with. In return, she was happy that her father came home a week later after taking up with his mistress. We never really talked about it as adults, but we both know why my mother was called to her house that day, even if we didn’t know as children.

My mother was the town witch. If you had a problem, she solved it. Did your husband run off with his mistress? He’ll come home and even beg on his knees within one moon cycle. Did your sister take your half of the inheritance? Not to worry. She’ll soon lose all of her money, and you’ll gain your portion and then some. Bad skin? No problem for Lonnie Owl.

Our area was studied by the state university a few years ago because of the low invitro fertilization and fertility drug request rate in the county. They found no link to the high fertility and low sterility rate that they could explain. They were dumbfounded why women in our municipalities weren’t seeking traditional fertility treatments when it’s on the rise in every other county. Water was sampled. Power lines were inspected.

Then again, you can’t explain that the town witch is on speed dial for half the women in the county. Most women were too shy to look at a scientist and explain that the local witch put a spell on their ovaries.

My mother died two years ago, unable to save her own life when her cancer hit. Many in town thought she was invincible and could never die. Unfortunately, that’s a truth about my family’s magic.

We can’t use it for our own benefit. It’s never worked that way.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” Lily Jane asks, pulling me out of my thoughts of my mother. “Pouring candles that liven up the sex lives of everyone in town?” she asks, nodding to my storefront.

“Come on. You know I can’t leave the house on Halloween. I’m lucky to open the door to children and give them candy. Even that scares the absolute crap out of me. I shove individual packages of Twizzlers into their bag and shut the door as fast as I can. I think it scares the kids, too. I have a feeling that I’m that house. You know, the one kids dare each other to go up to.”

“Have you turned a child into a toad and didn’t tell me?”

I laugh and roll my neck. “Not yet. But from the greenish looks on their faces when they ask for candy, they consider it an option.”

“Haven’t you learned how to control your issues yet? Your mom embraced Halloween. She walked around town with weights around her feet in homage to all your descendants being drowned as witches in Salem. She never had any problems.”

I pull a box out from under the cash register and start stocking a nearby table with Christmas candles for the shoppers that will come the day after Halloween is over. “I’m sorry I can’t control my power as well as my mother.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Lily Jane says, leaning against the nearby table and crossing her legs. She pulls her brown ponytail tight and tilts her head to the side. “Your power is controlled when you make your potions and candles,” she says, gesturing around the room. “Why can’t you control it otherwise?”

She’s right. I’ve never been able to control my power except to focus it on the potions I make in my shop. As sad as it is to say, I became the town witch when my mom died. Except for some candles people can light to wish for a job promotion or to avert baldness, I’ve been the town disappointment ever since.

“I don’t know,” I grouse, not looking at her. “When I figure it out, I’ll let you and everyone else that shows up at my doorstep wanting me to cure their husband’s impotence or make their school board campaigns successful know. Until then, I’ll just be over here in the corner, making my potions, melting them into the candles I make, and hating myself.”

“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Sorry,” she says.

I wave off the apology. “It’s fine. It’s hard, you know? It’s like if a father would have been a famous basketball player and got a son that couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Not only do I feel like I let down the entire town, I feel like I let down my mother. And she’s not even here to judge me.”

“You know she was proud of you.”

“Was she? On top of that, I’m scared the town hates me.”

“It’s 2022. Do you really think people will chase a witch out of town with pitchforks and torches? Not only that, but if the town hated you, they wouldn’t buy your candles. You do well here.”

I blow out a breath that moves my hair as I stare at her for a moment. She’s not wrong about my business. In fact, it’s booming. Sure, most of that is on account that tourists like our quaint main street shopping area with homey ice cream stores, flower shops, and places that sell homemade soaps and bath bombs. The townspeople come in often enough, though, mostly around Christmas. Christmas candles account for twenty-five percent of my annual income. They also come when they desperately need something, ever hopeful that Lonnie Owl’s daughter can do the same magic.

“Let’s change the subject from my shitty witch abilities.”

“Awesome,” Lily Jane says, clapping her hands and smiling her grin that means she’s up to something. “Want to help out the kids this year?” she asks.

“I always want to help out with the kids, but what did you have in mind?”

“You know how I was put in charge of the hospital’s charity fundraiser and bonfire tomorrow night?”

“Yeah,” I drawl. Lily Jane is a hospital administrator and tasked with things like charity events for the pediatric cancer ward. She’s been planning the annual pediatric cancer research Halloween gala for months. “What’s that have to do with me?” I ask.

“Well, we thought it would be fun to have a date raffle at the party.”

“What’s a date raffle?”

“You find women that want to volunteer for dates, kind of like a date auction. When guys come in, they buy a ticket for the date raffle. If the numbers on his ticket match yours, you pair up.”

“That’s both sexist and barbaric. I expected better from you,” I snap.

“How is it sexist?” she asks, furrowing her brow and ignoring my question. “It’s volunteer. Nobody makes a woman offer a date as a raffle prize, and the winning numbers are matched randomly. It’s no more sexist than that speed dating event we signed up for last year. It’s not like a guy gets to decide or bid on which woman he wants like some sort of meat auction. It’s just a spot of fun to liven up the night and meet new people.”

I place the last candle on the table and break down the box, punching through the paper packing tape and folding the box down before winging it behind my sales counter. “Let me understand. A guy pays for the opportunity to win a date with a woman that he won’t even find attractive. Let’s not even talk about what the poor woman ends up with. She could end up with a creepy stalker or a guy that’s nineteen and covered with pimples.”

“The hypothetical woman could also win a date with a handsome billionaire.”

“A handsome billionaire that has nothing better to do than to come to the small town of Rose Bluff, Ohio and take a gamble that his dollar raffle ticket will lead him to the woman of his dreams?” I ask, fake smiling.

“Technically, it’s ten dollars per ticket.”