I flicked through the deck of cards in my hands, not suspecting that this worn pack of fortune-telling cards was about to change my life.
It had all started when I agreed to check out a small new age shop that had just opened in my town. My best friend Emily (a practicing Wiccan, though I wasn’t sure I believed in any of that stuff) had been desperate to go look since it opened a week ago, and insisted on taking me along.
Hidden between two larger buildings, the little store looked out of place - almost as if it had sprouted up overnight. Weirdly I can’t remember what the little building was used for before the new owner took over, maybe that’s part of the magic? I’ll get into that later. The outside walls were green with plant life, creepers had seized every inch and window boxes full of flowers greeted us as we walked in.
Inside the shop was dimly lit, but somehow cheery. Dripping stubs of candles were dotted here and there, and an iron candelabra hanging from the ceiling filled the room with a diffuse sunny glow. Every available space was occupied with knick-knacks and occult paraphernalia: crystal balls sat alongside jars of herbs, pendulums and amulets hung from a rack, and books were stuffed in a merry jumble onto a solid wooden shelf.
To be honest it looked like ‘The Craft’ meets middle-earth, and I wasn’t sure how much of it was new age posing and how much was in earnest.
Behind the counter, a willowy woman with a tumble of curling black locks was washing crystals in what looked like a bowl of water with a sprig of some sort of plant in it.
Seeing my stare, Emily added her commentary “that’s a sprig of sage, its a very cleansing herb”
“Uh-huh” I nodded, wondering how dirty a crystal could get, but not wanting to offend one of my only close friends. That’s something you should know about me: I’m weedy, pale and gay to boot, with an unruly mop of dark hair. To jocks I practically have crosshairs painted on my head. School life is a struggle, I’m lucky to have friends like Emily there who I can trust, I don’t have that at home. My older brother, Dan, is everything my parents wish I could be: well built, good looking, athletic, popular and straight. He could even call off the relentless attention of the meathead jocks at school, if he wanted to, but he’s actually the worst of them. He just seems to resent how inferior I am to his ideal, and reminds me of that fact regularly. My brother is charismatic and outgoing I’m more the sensitive bookish type.
While Emily made witch-talk with the shopkeeper, I took my time to check out the merchandise. After looking through several items that caught my interest but I couldn’t make a lot of sense of, I found a worn pack of cards. They were unlike any playing cards I’ve ever seen, they were hidden away in a carved wooden box, covered in mystical symbols (Emily would probably be able to understand them) each card consisted of a name and a picture. They mostly depicted metaphysical concepts like