erin's emporium of discount dreams & well-worn wonders

up to interpretation

She doesn’t call them tests, but that’s what they are. She tests me all the time, pulling single cards out at unexpected moments and holding them out to me, impatiently waiting for my interpretations, making me think on my feet without giving me time to consult dictionaries full of meanings.

It seems like one card at a time should be easier than complex layouts, but it’s hard for me to be concise. To pull out words and distill a symbolic image into coherent sentences. I was never all that good at coherent sentences.

Today the card that appears suddenly in front of me is The Lovers, and my heart feels heavy before my head can come up with a proper response.

It’s not about love, I say when I manage to untie my tongue. It’s about choices.

Good, she says as she puts the card back in the deck, a soft, sad smile tugging at her lips. Though if it is about love, there are no choices.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

new to the neighborhood

My parents made a big fuss about moving like I would find it traumatic to have to put all my stuff in cardboard boxes but it really wasn’t that bad. My room is bigger now and the window has a seat in it. And the new neighborhood is pretty much the same as the old one was except here the squirrels can talk.

They don’t stay in trees, they come up to the porch and sit on the steps. They’re terrible gossips, I knew the peculiar habits and naughty secrets of all the neighbors before they even started coming over with welcome-to-the-neighborhood pastries and casseroles.

The squirrels are pushy, too. They nag me about keeping my shoelaces double-knotted and they pull them loose if I forget. One of them tried to take my donut this morning and when I wouldn’t let him have it he swore at me and muttered something about reporting me to the magistrate and stormed off in a huff. I watched his fluffy tail disappear through the leaves while I ate my donut, which was chocolate-frosted, and wondered if I would have shared if he had just asked politely.

I told my mother about it and when I got to the bit about the magistrate she sighed and said we’d probably have to move again.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

coffee & pie

He went in because of the neon sign in the window advertising both coffee and pie but careful study of the printed menu revealed neither. There were lattes and macchiatos and cappuccinos but nothing listed as simple coffee. Tarte tatins and cobblers and even flan but no pie. His hopes lifted when he noticed an additional list written in chalk on the wall but it contained only a selection of cakes ranging from cup to cheese, food for devils and angels but still, no pie.

He shifted anxiously on the faux-leather bench as he waited for the waitress to approach and when she did he was relieved to see she carried a silver pot in her hand.

“Tea?” she asked, holding out the pot and he shook his head slowly, raising a hand to indicate the backwards neon letters in the window.

“Oh, we haven’t served coffee or pie in ages,” she said. “I don’t know why no one bothered to change the sign.”

He nodded once, sadly, and then started to cry. The waitress stood by silently for a few moments before moving to another table to refill someone’s tea.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

still waiting for prince charming

I found a princess in the woods.

I was pretty sure she was dead, but she’s asleep. She looks dead, with wrong-colored clammy-slimy skin and a decaying gown, but she has a pulse. It’s faint, but it’s definitely a pulse.

I know the proper thing to do in such situations is to wake her with a kiss and I don’t want to, her lips are covered in dirt and moss and she looks like she’s been out here for a good long time. There are bugs in her shoes. She’s clearly been rained on. Her hands were probably folded at some point but one arm has fallen to the side and the fingers are mostly buried in the mud.

I shook her and yelled but that didn’t work, not that I expected it to. I could try to drag her out of the woods, but she’s heavy.

I should probably just call the police.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

poor unlucky lucy

When Lucy died—at that precise moment—everything changed.

She used to say she was just a k away from lucky, that was always the joke though all things considered it wasn’t particularly funny. No one ever wanted to point out that what she really meant she was unlucky.

I had a three AM conversation at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey with someone who told me in a whisper her theory that Lucy’s death unleashed all that unluck out on the rest of us again. It sounded reasonable at the time but questionable in the hungover morning light.

Other people say she’s a classic vengeful spirit, bitter and annoyed by her passing to the point of harassing the living about it out of spite.

It probably doesn’t matter what the cause is, though, since there doesn’t appear to be a solution.

We leave her notes and pearls and almond cakes, but nothing works.

There’s talk about needing larger sacrifices. It must be done, they say, but so far no one has volunteered.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

written in the leaves

Leaf reading is a skill not easily learned, as there is such a limited time to practice it each year. It is a temporary thing. Glimpses of image and pattern carefully translated into meaning.

Traditionally it is taught, passed down from reader to student through years of autumns spent in intense instruction, calling attention to the variety of the leaf, the level of decay, the size and shape of each void and the way their meanings impact each other. All layered over to form their messages, their last cries to the world before the wind takes them away with a sound like mice scampering across the pavement.

But now the students, when there are any students, do not have the patience for it, becoming frustrated with the wind rather than working with it, easily distracted by less arcane methods of communication.

Their instructors try each year with slowly diminishing effort, but the teaching time is fleeting. The patterns stay for only moments before they are lost, messages in brief whispers that require straining and concentration to hear.

Every year there are fewer teachers, and even fewer students barely receiving passing grades.

Another language almost lost.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

character reading

“Are you sure you really want to know your future?” he asks as I dig through my bag in search of appropriate amounts of loose change for the rather mundane looking machine hanging on the wall.

“No,” I answer honestly. “But I’m curious and it’s cheap.”

“That’s because it’s just a trick to steal your money.”

The coins make a hollow clicking noise as they fall through the machine, followed by something like gears turning though nothing moves, and then a small piece of paper like a faded business card falls into my hand.

Someone close will betray you.

“Well, it won’t be me,” he says, reading over my shoulder.

I flip the card over to see if it has anything else to say.

He is a liar, it tells me. He already has.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

clandestine coffee

Suburban witches meet in secret. Or as secret as suburbia allows, with its nosy neighbors and their curious, narrow-eyed stares. Jokes are made about broom closets, but it is easier this way.

No Sabbat circles on soccer fields. They turn the wheel of the year in living rooms and basements, under the guise of book clubs or knitting groups. (Though they do have a proper book club that meets on alternate Tuesdays, and several of them knit.)

In October, post-trick-or-treating, when sugar-sated children are tucked in bed, they wander through the veil-thin night in ironically worn pointy hats. Using disguises to be themselves.

Though circles and spells are kept at home, concealed behind closed plastic window blinds.

Punctuated by spice cake and candy, gossip and mugs of coffee.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

witness to the crime

They took countless precautions, accounted for every possible variation. Everything was meticulously plotted down to the last detail and after that they even waited until the weather was absolutely perfect. Clear and bright, with no wind to carry screams and convenient rain forecasted for the evening to wash any remaining evidence away.

Everything went according to plan, so smoothly that there were jokes made about the ease of the thing, that perhaps they over-planned. There were no mistakes, no missteps. The crime was carried out so quickly that there was not a single scream left hanging in the air by the lack of wind.

Of course, they also thought there were no witnesses, but the pigeon saw everything. No one saw the pigeon, as the pigeon was not an accounted-for variation in the weeks and months of planning.

Pigeons have no loyalties, and they keep no secrets. Before the rain came every bird in the city knew what had happened, their own plans already formulating.

glitter never fades

She was warned, so many times. Cautioned in soft-spoken admonishments and harsh annoyed cries.

It is dangerous to play with such permanent things. Temporary matters make better playthings, providing no long-term damage.

But she was always an impulsive child.

The easily popped soap bubbles held no appeal, nor did water-soluble paints or erasable markers.

Only glitter served her purposes. Shiny, shimmering glitter that sticks and holds and never, ever lets go.

Now she is older and wiser and more conservative in her glitter usage, when she dares use it at all.

It makes one cautious, having a past permanently dusted with sparkling regrets.
 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.