Threads

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

A New Career

            Alice blinked at the woman standing in front of her.

“What’s happening? Are my eyes going?” She put her hands over her face, blocking out her surroundings. “Oh, my gosh…I’m…seeing things. I’m losing my mind. I’m going to be the bag lady that talks to herself and lives on the street in a cardboard TV box.”

     Azura eased her hands down gently. The woman was studying her with soft brown eyes.  She had very long, dark lashes.

            “You’re not crazy, Alice.  I’m sure you must have thought I was the crazy one, pinching you like that, but you’ve had a spell on you for a very long time and I’ve just removed it.”

            Alice squinted at her in disbelief and finally choked out, “A spell?  What…why did the shop suddenly change?”

            “The vacuum shop is what most people see. You are not most people. Your Aunt Ruby saw that about you when you were very small, and she cast a spell on you so that you wouldn’t see the magic. It doesn’t do to have non-magical parents raising a magic child; they tend to think the child is unstable or possessed.”

            “Magic?” Alice repeated dazedly.

            “You never believed in magic, Alice Cunningham? Not even as a child?”

            “I…I suppose when I was a child.” Alice continued to gawk at her surroundings, waiting for them to start flickering again, to turn back into the vacuum shop.  Nothing changed. The cat in front of the fireplace uncurled with a sleepy “mew”, and observed her disinterestedly before sauntering towards the back room and out of sight. 

            “This isn’t possible. Magic isn’t real.”

            “True - to anyone who doesn’t have magic, it isn’t real. They won’t hear it or see it.  Anyone else who walked into this shop right now would see a very dull store full of over-priced vacuum cleaners.”

            This was ridiculous. It had to be a joke of some kind, or she was hallucinating. This happened to people in movies, not in real life. And it most certainly didn’t happen to her. “I’m not magic. It isn’t real,” Alice insisted. “It can’t be.”

            “Why not?”

            “I don’t know! It just isn’t!” Her voice squeaked a little. She was beginning to sound hysterical.

            “It took a while for you to see through the enchantment on the store,” Azura mused.

            “It’s not real,” Alice whispered, trying to convince herself. She blinked again, wishing this new shop would go away, wishing for the boring vacuum cleaners. “I’m not going nuts. I can’t be crazy. There’s no history of mental illness in my family, so it wouldn’t make sense…wait, crazy Aunt Ruby, Oh no!”

            “You are not crazy,” Azura said. “The denial will last for a few minutes until you get over the shock.”

            “This is crazy.”

            “You seem to use that word a lot.”

            “Oh no! That’s a symptom of being crazy, isn’t it?”

            “I wouldn’t think so.”

            Alice tried her best to calm down. It occurred to her that this might all be a strange dream, and maybe the best and simplest thing would be to play along.