The Book of Good Magic

Caddie had been dreaming again. It had been a long time, since she was a child, since her nightmares had been this bad. Well, they weren’t nightmares, exactly, but they weren’t good dreams either. Nothing much happened in them, but they left her feeling unsettled, wary, like something in her brain had disconnected. When she was younger she would dream about witches, old wrinkled faces peering at her from beneath their dark hoods in the forest outside of her bedroom window. She would sit up, her pajamas clinging to the cold sweat beading on her skin, and look, trembling, out the window over her bed and into the darkness of the trees.

There was never anything there, of course, but she had the dream often. Behind the ghastly faces there was always a dim glow in the woods, some light creeping out from behind them. It always seemed to Caddie like something was hidden deep inside, coming toward her, but she always woke before she was able to see it.

Now, though Caddie was no longer a child, she found herself sitting in that very same bed, underneath that very same window, dreaming that very same dream. Maybe it was the stress. She had no idea what to do with her life after graduation. Nowhere to go. No one to be.

She looked out beyond the gauzy white curtains to the woods. It was nearing a full moon, a bright silvery glow casting shadows on the dark grass, and though the woods were dark and daunting, they were empty of faces, empty of light.

In the morning, she put on her hiking boots and poured coffee into her dad’s old green hunting thermos. The morning was her favorite time to be on the farm. Everything was bright green and dewy, glistening and quiet. Caddie’s favorite walking route was through the old dried up creek bed. It wound around the farm, snaking through the pasture and coming up on the hill behind the old barn that her grandfather had built in the 1960s. A little bridge jutted out into the path from the barn loft, the perfect perch, and it was there that Caddie liked to take her morning coffee.

She stopped short when she crested the hill. In the muted light of morning, behind the barn doors, through the creaky old planks of grayed wood, a dim glow peeked gently out from inside. A shiver ran through her, of shock more than fear. No one had used the barn in thirty years, at least, and it certainly wasn’t connected to any electricity. What in the world could that inner light possibly be?

Caddie took a step toward it without thinking. Maybe it was a squatter? A fire? Something told her that it was neither, nothing so sinister, but she couldn’t suppress the feeling that she should open the door to the barn loft and find out. She put her thermos down gently in the grass, and stepped lightly onto the bridge.

The door opened easily, with no more than a creak, and she stepped into the darkness with trepidation. Inside there were mostly cobwebs, and a smell of damp wood, but across from Caddie, in the center of the loft, a face started back at her.

There was a mirror in the darkness, propped up against an old steamer trunk against the far wall, and from it the reflection of the morning sun shone brightly back at Caddie as she looked on. She closed the loft door behind her and walked toward it.

This trunk was old. It had been here for as long as she could remember, but the mirror looked unfamiliar. It was propped purposefully on top of the trunk, as if someone had placed it there, and next to it, angled as though someone had just been reading it, was a small black notebook, weathered but intact.

Caddie reached out and touched it. The leather was cracked and the pages warped. It fell open with the slightest touch.

This book is full of good magic, read the faded ink on the first page, a hand she did not recognize. Fill some of its pages with your own.

She trembled as she picked it up. Flipping pages delicately, Caddie found that it was full almost to the very last page with entries from women dating back to the 1940s. Some of the names she recognized, like her grandmother, her aunt, and some she didn’t.

They were stories. About love, and loss. Some were sad, some beautiful, some angry. But all of them ended with advice for the next.

Caddie sank to the barn loft floor and began to read. Caddie opened to a page in the middle, a short entry, from her Aunt Kathy. It was dated 1969. Hello girls, it began. Caddie felt tears well up in her eyes. She hadn’t seen her Aunt Kathy, who lived a life of adventures she could only dream of, in years, but she remembered her smooth, bright voice, singing out from her prematurely wrinkled face, no doubt a result of constant smiling, greeting her in the very same way when she was a girl and Kathy would visit. She always had trinkets in her big leather bag from wherever she had been to sneak to Caddie, and she always had stories.

The last line stood out to Caddie, the ink looked fresher somehow, like someone had just written it down. Take a good look at yourself, and decide what you want out of this life. Make some stories you’d be proud to tell.

Caddie felt a surge of admiration for her aunt. Kathy had stories worth telling. She looked up from her spot on the floor, wiping tears from her eyes, and noticed one more thing she hadn’t before. The lock on the trunk dangled from its clasp, wide open.

Suddenly she had a feeling that she was being watched over, that Kathy, or someone, somehow, had staged this scene for her to stumble into, to find something meaningful to show her the way. She hopped up, lifting the mirror and propping it against the wall, leaning over the trunk lid.

Inside there was a brown leather bag. It was Kathy’s. She’d know it anywhere, could still feel the excitement of knowing that the bag had been places unknown, and held something adventurous for her inside. She unzipped it slowly, her hand steady now.

Kathy’s bag was full to bursting with cash, thrown in haphazardly in true Kathy style, at least twenty thousand dollars, and on top of the pile, a small brass key on a key ring. She twirled it in her fingers, wondering what it might open up. It caught a ray of reflected sunlight from the mirror, flashing with a sudden brightness in the dark. Caddie glanced up at her own reflection, watching herself in the glow. She was smiling, almost laughing, out of the sheer absurdity of what she had walked into. Alright, she thought to herself, take a good look.