A Witch's Speech

Her mother rounded the corner, holding homemade honey cake, a recipe passed down through generations, decorated with edible purple flowers and almonds.

"Feliz cumpleaños mija", she said, setting the cake onto the wooden table, "Make a wish".

Rosalia closed her eyes, visualising the family's problems, which always had something to do with money, disappearing before puckering her lips and blowing out the candles. Imagine what a world without money would look like. How it could be if they didn't have to scramble to make enough to cover rent. And pay bills. Food. Clothes for growing siblings. Replace her mother's worn in shoes that she'd been wearing and repairing for the last decade. If there was enough for community college or to finally go on one vacation as a family. Rosalia sighed, opening her eyes when the lights were switched on.

Her younger siblings had already cut the cake, impatiently stuffing themselves with the decadent treat. What she hadn't expected was to see her mother, a gift wrapped in newspaper resting in her outstretched palms. "Your grandmother told me to give this to you on your eighteenth birthday, mija." Rosalia studied the gift as it was transferred to her hands.

Although it was small, it was heavier than anticipated. The room became silent. Her mother had not encouraged a tradition of gift giving on birthdays. A nice meal followed by their family's traditional birthday cake was enough celebration for her having birthed one of her seven children. She carefully peeled back the tape on the gift, sliding its contents out smoothly.

Immediately, Rosalia became transfixed. Underneath the wrapping was a small, black notebook, its covers embossed on one side with a Phoenix breathing fire and rising from ashes surrounded by glyphs and the other with several varieties of plants, including those which were garnishing her cake. When her siblings saw it was 'just' a book they lost interest, the youngest ones trying to grab for more cake. But Rosalia wasn't hungry anymore. Something told her she should open the book alone in bed tonight, with the moon lighting her page.

She looked up at her mother, their glimmering eyes meeting and culminating in a small nod, as if her mother knew what she was thinking and had silently agreed. "Amor, proceed with caution. The answers are within you. She wished she could be here to give it to you too." Rosalia had no idea what her mother meant regarding answers, but the pang in her heart grounded her imagination immediately. Her grandmother had been the reason Rosalia liked to read, the reason her whole family knew how to cook, to grow their own fruits, vegetables, flowers, teas, medicines and herbs. Her grandmother Rose, whom she was aptly named after, had told her fables of ancient Egypt, the land their ancestors had inhabited many moons ago, how her family had ventures across orange deserts to trade crystals, herbs, and spells. Rose recounted how their ancestors had crossed an ocean against their will, how they settled in islands and cured illnesses, practiced in secret and passed down rituals. Her ancestors who had once commanded armies, guided spirits, and controlled empires had also cut sugar canes, picked cotton, and were disallowed from studying beside the same white children whose ancestors had ripped them from their legacies. Her grandmother made sure to tell them how Spanish had only been taught to them by their colonial overlords. Rose made sure that the history the school forgot to teach was fresh in her progeny's minds. That being said, Rose never seemed to tell a story twice, and her daughter's seven children were encouraged to interrupt her stories as soon as they could finish her sentences.

Rose passed away earlier this year. She hadn't strayed too far, Rosalia found, hiding in birds, butterflies, cats, bats, fish. Whenever you really needed her she was there. She was only in her 50s. It was racial injustice, their neighbourhood one of the most polluted in their city for decades. The air pollution paired with poor water quality, the asbestos in the walls and the rats had led to her untimely demise. It didn't help that Rose continued to work through the first and second waves of the pandemic in her job as a nurse, helping to introduce patients to herbs prior to pharmaceutical medication.

Rosalia's mother had never been the same. She was on her own now, Rosalia's father was unknown, or at least not admitted, and the father of the rest of her children had been locked up for a crime he didn't commit. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time meant his skin was proof enough. Despite finishing her final year of high school, applying to community colleges with no plan of being able to afford it, working several part time jobs, and taking care of her younger siblings (the eldest being 12), Rosalia was all her mother had to rely on.

They washed the dishes together, Rosalia scrubbing the honey off the plates and her mother drying. The apartment was quiet again. The festivities over. "Goodnight mija", her mother whispered after they had brushed her teeth and braided each others' hair, "be careful in your dreams, I have faith in you. Make me proud." She kissed her on the forehead and retired to her bed on the couch. Rosalia tiptoed into the room she shared with her twin sisters and youngest brother. Fast asleep, they stirred when the floorboards creaked under her weight as she slipped into her bed. She nestled into the blankets, watching as the moonlight illuminated the cover art.

And then she opened the book to the first page.

A bright purple light, the same shade as the flowers on her cake engulfed the room. Sparkling lights rained down on her and solidified into stars. She blinked. Her surroundings had changed and she was standing. The grass tickled her calves and a gentle breeze rustled her now untamed curls.

In front of her was a Marula tree, light only by the moon. A figure sat in its branches, its cloak swaying in the light wind. "Rosalia?" It called out. She could tell in a second that the voice belonged to her grandmother. She approached and the figure disintegrated, now standing right in front of her. She could make out the smile lines and crow's feet embedded into her skin. It really was Rose. There were now many more figures on the tree.

"Mi corazón." Rose said, "Our ancestors were once magikal kings and queens of empires you and I have only seen in our dreams. But this is not a dream. This is your opportunity to change the world we live in, so use it wisely. The book of shadows you have received as your mother's first born on your eighteenth birthday has been given to you by every ancestor that has set foot in this realm, across all of time. You may now decide which ancestor you want to return to, and embody them until your mission is complete. Think back to every story I have told you."

Rosalia's mind was scattered with information. The orange deserts, the ships and chains, the fields of someone else's crops, the armies. "Take me back, Abuela, to become the warrior princess in West Africa. Take me to the moment I address my army."

Rose disintegrated once again into the wind, piece by piece disappearing right before Rosalia's eyes. In her place, the orange desert grew out of the moonlight bush. Her black skin felt the scorch of the sun. She was adorned in a magnificent golden crown paired with bracelets with gemstones and a heavy necklace with more crystals. She was clothed in silk fabric, threaded by tradesmen from silkworms in China. She stood on a great structure, built by prisoners of war and dissident members of the empire. Rosalia looked over thousands of people looking to her in complete silence.

"We must stop."

If anyone had been whispering, the crowd hushed the second she began to bellow her message.

"We reject the 20,000 pieces of gold given to us in exchange for our finest gems. We must stop the concept of riches; the idea of trading in exchange for gold or cowrie shells must be eradicated immediately. The spirits advise against it. We are no longer middlemen. We will no longer be driven by profit and greed the same way as the men we meet who trade from around the world. We will teach them our ways, of bartering, of fair trade, of people before profit, as equal good for the both the giver and the receiver means no one will ever suffer. We are equals. Work is precious as it requires time and resources. We will teach them how to exchange, not buy, and should they not learn we shall destroy their malevolent methods. Being rich is an insult to anyone who cannot afford their next meal. We are all men of this earth. We must all protect our time and our resources. We must live in symbiosis. We must care for our brothers and sisters and Mother Earth who provides for us all."

She paused, allowing the words to sink in and wash over the legions of gold miners, fighters who were protecting and transporting the goods of those who mined, tradespeople who sold goods for a profit, the poor and the sickly; all of whom is someone's child.

Slowly, the poor who were starving began to clap. Then the sickly, who couldn't work even if they wanted to. Then the miners who did not receive the wages they deserved. Then the soldiers who were tired of bloodshed. And lastly, because they realised that they were the only ones left, the tradespeople, who knew it was only a matter of time before they must pay their dues joined into the waves of celebrations.

And then Rosalia's surroundings began to disintegrate again.

She felt herself waking up to the sun in her eyes, lying down on a bed much more comfortable than the one she had fell asleep on. She smelled tea, the same kind Rose had made every morning since she could remember. Her eyes finally opened. She was in a different home, in a room alone. Her younger siblings and their beds nowhere to be found. This room was sun-drenched, the walls constructed from living trees moulded into rafters and flooring, her bed made of branches lashed together and padded with banana fibres. Her walls covered in paintings of purple flowers, Marula trees, the moon, and the same desert she had just seen herself in. She made her way to the door, a beaded curtain of cowrie shells into the main room.

The window across from her overlooked a field bustling with the calamity of a market filled with fruit, vegetables, herbs, teas, and medicines she had never seen before, steam and smoke erupting from some tents, gleaming gemstones and paper crafts on display, children (she recognised some as her siblings) running around playfully. She turned her attention to the smell wafting through the room of the tea she had grown accustomed to since birth.

There sat Rose, pouring her a mug of the ginger, turmeric, honey, and lemon verbena concoction.

"Is this real?" Rosalia asked, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could choose them.

"Mi corazón," Rose said, her voice the exact same as she remembered it, "You made a better choice than I could ever imagine. The world, since your speech abolished money, greed, riches, and injustice towards Mother Earth."

"What?!" Rosalia sat down across from her grandmother in shock. Rose took Rosalia's hands into her own, gripping them firmly as a promise that she would not disappear.

"Rosalia," Rose whispered, "Your wish came true."