Read Online Petty Magic by Camille Deangelis - Free Book Online
Authors: Camille Deangelis
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more in hindsight. I would never have known Jonah without him.
Nibble, Nibble, Little Mouse
9.
By one of those contradictions so frequent in the Satanic realm it was the oldest and most hideous and repulsive witches who knew the recipes for the most efficacious love-liquors.
—Grillot de Givry, Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy
M ORVEN’S PETTY magic is as selfless as mine is not. My sister spends most of her afternoons with her friend Elsie at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they wander from room to room looking out for pairs of lonely people whom they might bring together by “happy accident.”
For instance, one rainy Saturday afternoon two students were sketching the same gilded statue of Saint-Gaudens’s Diana in the courtyard of the American Wing. Each was seated on a bench in good view of the statue, but perhaps ten or twelve feet from one another; they were clearly unacquainted. The girl was checking her mobile at frequent intervals (in hopes that a particular someone might have called her, so much seemed plain), and she grew more and more dejected each time she tucked the phone away. In aspect the young man was as kind—and as sad—as she. They looked to be roughly the same age but too absorbed in their own private woes even to notice one another, let alone make any overture of friendship.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” said Elsie to the girl as my sister was speaking the same words to the young man. Both gave each jolly old dame a distracted “Not at all,” and went on with their work.
Several minutes went by, during which time both ladies gazed up at the statue of Diana the huntress in idle appreciation. Then, with a few silently mouthed words, Elsie proceeded to break the charcoal stick in the girl’s hand, and each stick following it. The girl huffed in frustration as she rummaged through her knapsack.
“Pardon me,” Morven murmured to the man beside her, “but I believe that young lady over there has just broken her last stick of charcoal.” She nodded to the full box of charcoal vine at his side. “Do you think perhaps you might …?”
“Oh?” he said, momentarily confused, and then: “Oh! Of course.” And as he ventured across the way to offer the girl a spare stick of charcoal Elsie slipped away under some silly pretense, a coughing fit perhaps. Both ladies watched from behind a nearby statue as the boy complimented the girl on her sketch, she thanked him graciously, and they inquired as to their respective places of study, and how she smiled when he asked if he might sit beside her.
They have hundreds of stories like that one. I’ve been up to the Cloisters with them on sunny summer afternoons and watched as my sister stimulated three pairs of pheromones with a few carefully chosen words in the gallery of the Unicorn Tapestries, then instigated a cordial debate on the best method for the restoration of egg tempera between two pasty-faced academics—and that was only in the first five minutes.
Helena disapproves of these excursions, says it’s meddling and that most lonely people have nobody but themselves to blame for it anyhow. Morven has invited me to come along again today, but I’d rather make my own mischief back in Blackabbey.
I’m not used to prowling in the daytime. The sun feels so nice on my smooth bare arms and I feel positively giddy. I shift the cake box from hand to hand as I amble down the mews, sundress flouncing round my calves. I pass Dymphna coming out of her shop and she gives me a vague smile, thinking me one of Helena’s progeny, though she knows what I get up to well enough.
Picture Fawkes and Ibis in the gloom of early evening: the steamer trunks and Wunderkammers , the bronze busts of forgotten statesmen and voodoo poppets fresh off the bayou, the danse macabre carousel that plays “In the Hall of the Mountain King” when wound. The walls are cluttered with English portraits and Renaissance engravings, lords and ladies in stiff white ruffs
Nibble, Nibble, Little Mouse
9.
By one of those contradictions so frequent in the Satanic realm it was the oldest and most hideous and repulsive witches who knew the recipes for the most efficacious love-liquors.
—Grillot de Givry, Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy
M ORVEN’S PETTY magic is as selfless as mine is not. My sister spends most of her afternoons with her friend Elsie at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they wander from room to room looking out for pairs of lonely people whom they might bring together by “happy accident.”
For instance, one rainy Saturday afternoon two students were sketching the same gilded statue of Saint-Gaudens’s Diana in the courtyard of the American Wing. Each was seated on a bench in good view of the statue, but perhaps ten or twelve feet from one another; they were clearly unacquainted. The girl was checking her mobile at frequent intervals (in hopes that a particular someone might have called her, so much seemed plain), and she grew more and more dejected each time she tucked the phone away. In aspect the young man was as kind—and as sad—as she. They looked to be roughly the same age but too absorbed in their own private woes even to notice one another, let alone make any overture of friendship.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” said Elsie to the girl as my sister was speaking the same words to the young man. Both gave each jolly old dame a distracted “Not at all,” and went on with their work.
Several minutes went by, during which time both ladies gazed up at the statue of Diana the huntress in idle appreciation. Then, with a few silently mouthed words, Elsie proceeded to break the charcoal stick in the girl’s hand, and each stick following it. The girl huffed in frustration as she rummaged through her knapsack.
“Pardon me,” Morven murmured to the man beside her, “but I believe that young lady over there has just broken her last stick of charcoal.” She nodded to the full box of charcoal vine at his side. “Do you think perhaps you might …?”
“Oh?” he said, momentarily confused, and then: “Oh! Of course.” And as he ventured across the way to offer the girl a spare stick of charcoal Elsie slipped away under some silly pretense, a coughing fit perhaps. Both ladies watched from behind a nearby statue as the boy complimented the girl on her sketch, she thanked him graciously, and they inquired as to their respective places of study, and how she smiled when he asked if he might sit beside her.
They have hundreds of stories like that one. I’ve been up to the Cloisters with them on sunny summer afternoons and watched as my sister stimulated three pairs of pheromones with a few carefully chosen words in the gallery of the Unicorn Tapestries, then instigated a cordial debate on the best method for the restoration of egg tempera between two pasty-faced academics—and that was only in the first five minutes.
Helena disapproves of these excursions, says it’s meddling and that most lonely people have nobody but themselves to blame for it anyhow. Morven has invited me to come along again today, but I’d rather make my own mischief back in Blackabbey.
I’m not used to prowling in the daytime. The sun feels so nice on my smooth bare arms and I feel positively giddy. I shift the cake box from hand to hand as I amble down the mews, sundress flouncing round my calves. I pass Dymphna coming out of her shop and she gives me a vague smile, thinking me one of Helena’s progeny, though she knows what I get up to well enough.
Picture Fawkes and Ibis in the gloom of early evening: the steamer trunks and Wunderkammers , the bronze busts of forgotten statesmen and voodoo poppets fresh off the bayou, the danse macabre carousel that plays “In the Hall of the Mountain King” when wound. The walls are cluttered with English portraits and Renaissance engravings, lords and ladies in stiff white ruffs
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