Do
you remember where you were on the day Disney World disappeared?
Edwina Puckle does. In fact, she still believes it was all her
fault.
Edwina was a librarian, but in her secret heart she yearned to
be a witch. At age forty-two, she was resigned to spinsterhood,
and what better way to spend her next forty or fifty years than
as a practicing witch? And Edwina had even bigger plans. She knew
there was money in magic, if you did it up big and splashy.
There had never been any history of witchcraft in Lyletown, Georgia,
but the library was full of books on the subject. After studying
for fifteen years, Edwina felt ready. One day she decided it was
now or never, and sent the following ad out over the Internet:
WANTED: witches. Come out of your broom closet and show the tourists
what magic really means. Join me in creating Witch Kingdom, the
South’s newest theme park, and we’ll make Disney’s
place look like a church carnival.
Three people answered the ad. The first to show up was Annalee
Belch, a nineteen year old from Hazelnut, Kentucky. She stood
on Edwina’s doorstep in her bare feet, her liver-colored
eyes darting around furtively.
“What’s your specialty?” Edwina asked, shooing
the girl inside and sitting down opposite her with a pencil poised
over her clipboard.
“Specialty?”
“Yes. For heaven sake, girl, what do you do? Some witches
do curses and spells. Others raise the dead or make things fly
or spit fire. What do you do?”
Annalee shifted her skinny bones on the chair. “I’m
a whistler.”
Edwina sniffed. Annalee was obviously some poor hayseed child
with no education. Edwina had read every book ever written on
the subject, and there were no whistlers. What was a whistler,
anyway?
As if in answer to that question, Annalee took a small reed from
her purse and placed it behind her front teeth. Softly at first,
the melody began, a strange tune with little ups and downs and
backs and forths. As the music continued, things began to move.
Edwina watched the lamp lift from the end table and slowly turn
in the air in time to the music. The vases on the mantelpiece
floated down and fell in behind the lamp, forming a sinuous procession.
From the kitchen came the cups and saucers, and from the bedroom,
Edwina’ s nightshirt and slippers joined in. Everything
danced past slowly and sensuously, and the lilting tune pulled
Edwina’s eyelids closed.
*
* *
“Miz
Puckle?”
“Hm?”
Someone was shaking her. “Miz Puckle?”
Edwina came awake and found herself staring up into the liver-colored
eyes of Annalee Belch. “Do I get the job, Miz Puckle?”
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