Running errands

It was winter and this was a wet one that came with very strong winds. The major highway was cleared of the most recent storm and the temperature moderated. The guys in shorts and hoodies were out again, never failing to amaze Pale. The drive through the woods between her cottage and the graveled road was still littered with small branches that peppered the air with their evergreen blood. The witch knew it was disrespectful to leave them there, and promised to gather them before night. From her door Pale watched as Jacque pulled up her leathers and buckled the silver helmet in place.

"How did I miss this?" Thinking aloud the image of Raven brought him to her.

"You were preoccupied," Raven answered. There was always that part of their relationship that made privacy blur, unless she screened her thoughts specifically, the silver-haired birdman would always meddle.

"Preoccupied was I. Well, that's probably true." So many things interested the octogenarian it was a full time every time life. But now she was looking at the young woman who had cut and styled her cowlicks and that was a measure of intimacy that would count. Jacque was climbing onto the seat of what looked to be a vintage motorbike. A YAMAHA, with a sidecar.

"The motorbike is a 1980 Yamaha XS 850 and Dnepr sidecar," the birdman loved black flying things. He kept track of them and was also very good at Google. "I'm looking at a photo of just such a Yamaha on this Smartphone. Someone has a not-so-secret passion for vintage, and speed." Over the years what Pale once mistook for a verbally conservative Raven had stepped more firmly into verbosity. Along with being naturally nosey the pair had indeed created quite the fiesta of a life.

The sidecar and bike were matte black. The helmet mercurial silver, shiny lettered with her logo. Pale wondered whether the twins rode alongside. Maternal instincts wished the answer was no.
The wooden tool box must have been tucked into the sidecar, and was a great place to carry groceries. The practical checklists ticked off, Pale watched and waved from the front door then ran her hand through her nearly shorn hair pausing to feel the swirls Raven said, "I love the new look. Perhaps you're getting ready to join me now. Flight." The possibility existed. 

Potholes slowed Jacque down, there were lots of potholes so she eased through the ones that were too big to drive around. Once out of the woods she stopped and made sure the ferry traffic had run its course before entering the highway. The low winter sun was making a late afternoon showing turning the clouds over the Olympics a tangerine and pink neon. Like some kind of Neo-European handbag the purse like shape opened and closed as the wind played with sky and Jacque's imagination. 

Holiday shoppers had landed on Salish. The market parking lot was full, but space enough for a motorbike gave Jacque just enough room to angle safely at the edge. She locked the ignition, pulled the key and helmet off, but carried the helmet into the market. Avocados and toilet paper. "Hey Jacque," her friend Maddy was checking. "Hey yourself." Maddy was her mother's age and the only cashier who liked to function in the slow lane. The store was busy, the tiny aisles bustled with tourists oogling at the amazing choices stocked in a market one-eighth the size of  a Whole Foods. Salish was an eclectic and wisely diverse community. Earth, the market was aptly named. Organic, local, funky lay the base for the business. Decades of experience with service helped keep the inventory lively. The avocados, organic were on sale. Jacque squeezed the palm-sized leather shapes and found four to her liking and put them in her helmet. Single rolls of toilet paper, two would fit in the helmet. She put them on top of the fruit. Resisting her temptation to add-on, she thought about the rent. But at the check stand a bag of fired Plantain chips beckoned and she tossed them on top of the single rolls.

"I love those things. Addictive you know!" Maddy was also one of Jacque's clients. "I'm gonna need a little trim. How about next Wednesday, my day off?" 

"Morning, or afternoon?"

"Morning's better."

"Elevenish?"

"Perfect. Eight dollars and sixty-nine centavos."  With her change in hand, Jacque pocketed the coins and blew her friend a kiss. "She you Wednesday morning."

The sky was already darkening. The colored purse gone, Jacque emptied her helmet into the unzipped sidecar arranged her purchases into a canvas bag and tore open the plantains. She hadn't had lunch, not a good thing for someone with diabetes. Her habits were usually a lot more disciplined, but sometimes she lost herself. "Not often little sister." She knew the voice, and nodded. "Not often." The crunch and the taste of salty fried banana calmed the hunger and raised her blood sugar just enough to level her. A small handful did the trick. Okay? "Okay."

She cuts

"It's so funny what happens when cowlicks join." The woman was a recent acquaintance, a hair dresser. Pale thought back to the times when she would regularly have her hair, still ink black, cut. The sprite of a woman had the sharpest scissors and the most amazing sense for how to make a cut fit. The Witch missed Masuzu. Never once had her old hair dresser mentioned the cowlicks. Seated on the kitchen stool Pale tuned back into the cowlicks.

"What's funny about cowlicks joining?"

"Double-edged storm fronts. Cowlicks swirl at the base of the hair, at the roots." She gestured making waves in the air with her scissors. "One cowlick goes that way. The other one, in your case goes the other. Sometimes they go in the same direction. But on your head it's the double-edged storms."

"Life was a whole lot easier with hair down to my hips or twisted into a braid. No cowlicks noticeable. Of course, the cowlicks were always there, but lots of hair could be a real asset when you're trying to keep your truth under wraps."

The hair dresser, Jacque, was young, ninety-nine and a single mom with twins. "Living on a small island you have to be very inventive to keep cash and family in good supplies. There's almost nothing I keep secret, and I'll try my hands at most things as long as they don't end up with the 'stinks'. " She was the Winged Clipper, mobile and specialized in styling and caring for folk with chemical sensitivities. "My mom has been sensitive to smells and chemicals since me and my brother were in high school. She's an artist, my mom used to paint with oils until the turpentine really tripped some switches in her. You know that ... Anyway, she'd always cut her own hair after she got really sick. Kept it simple and blunt. But then when the gray starting settling in in a really big way her hair changed. Texture changed."

Pale knew exactly what her mom discovered. The time of the Wild Hares! Without asking Jacque offered, "She doesn't have cowlicks but you know how wavy mom's hair is. Holy crap her hair doubled in size and then." Jacque was an animated creature, hands no where near Pale's head she exaggerated the volume of hair finger-painting the air around her own head. "Then she just wanted to have some fun with it. And. And. She made me an offer I could not turn down. Offered to send me to Barber School. Not 'Beauty School' Barber School for men. I jumped at it, right out of high school. Signed up and haven't looked back since. Well, there were the twins. That took a little time." Jacque laughed. She had an easy laugh and a dimple the size of a small plum in her right cheek. "I learned to be a barber, licensed, and added the styling bit once I had a dozen steady men to round me out. I don't do product and have friends who do the colorist thing. I am strictly the Winged Clipper. I CUT!" It's what her business card said Jacque Bacon, Barber and Stylist "The Winged Clipper. I CUT!" A drawing in silver like Mercury blazed diagonally,  with a dimple and one eye that winked back at you from the corner of the matte black card.

Pale liked this woman. The dimple didn't hurt either.

"How short do you want me to go with this Pale?" This experiment was a re-shaping of what started as a DIY trim that went cock-eyed. One end of the trim had loped way too much off the right side. Maybe that was what created that double-edged storm front.

"It's still winter, so I want some cover. You know not so short that I chill every time I go out the door without a hat. Could you shape it up enough to be fun, but not so short to expose those cowlicks to the wind." The Witch knew instinctively that would be too short.

"Got yah. Three to four inches on top and shorter in the back. If you don't like it this cut's on me."

"No way, my dear. The lopping was my error and besides I've been wanting to go short. So you're doing me a great service and you get to know my hair, cowlicks included. That's a good thing. I love having the young and mercurial on my side." A witch needs allies, and this young woman with scissors could come in very handy. The Elementals, the Atmosphere in particular was making this winter very unpredictable. Skill with scissors would be well worth the thirty dollar investment.

"Deal." The agreement felt good. Jacque Bacon grew up on Salish and knew her client's reputation as witch. It fussed her not to be in Pale's company. In fact, The Border Witch's trust was cool, very cool. The money would make rent for the month and it was only the fifteenth of the month. Her luck was holding, she knocked on the wooden box with the brass handle she used to hold her scissors and combs. Pale noticed.

"How about you step into the shower and wet your hair down, and I'll dry it enough to get to it?" The small room tucked against the old garage had a shower stall and sinks. The heaters on either end warmed the long narrow room into a toasty log. Pale did as directed. Jacque pulled out her cellphone, "Hay, Mom. Just checking in. Yup, I'm at Pale's and she's wetting down before I get to the clip. I'll be another hour and then I can pick up the kids...My next appointment's not under five so we can have dinner before I head out again...Stuffed chicken soup? God that sounds great. Need anything? Avocados, and toilet paper. That's basic, okay see you a bit after two. Thanks Mom ... love you. Pale says hi!"

Pale reached for the towel drawing back the clear plastic shower curtain. The heat lamp positioned strategically outside the stall had warmed the towel. "Ah. That was nice."

"What the shower?"

"That was nice too. But I was talking about checking in with the family. And stuffed chicken soup."

"Yeah, well Mom's such a good egg. We have a great arrangement: she cooks, I wash the dishes and shop." Among other things Pale thought.

When Pale had dried off and had her head wrapped in the yellow towel Jacque enfolded the witch in a bear hug. "That's from Mom." Pale hugged back. "That's from me!"

At the end of the hour a pile of classic salt-and-pepper heavy on the salt covered the small cotton rug. With the two mirrors to view the cut, Pale was well pleased, "It's super natural." The two women laughed, and then roared at the pun that both recognized as a simple ... there was some magic brewed between them. The cut left Pale with just enough hair to keep the cowlicks mild and any residual psychic cords were cut with the skill of those nimble fingers. The witch did her prayers of protection surrounding herself with the silver light. "I love it Jacque, thank you."

"My pleasure Pale," she winked.

"I'll clean up the hair and the rug," Pale said pulling cash from the apron pocket hanging on a hook at the far end of the tiny space. She pulled the fold of bills and put them into a small Ziploc bag. Money stinks. They both knew it, and recognized the irony and the protocol. "A twenty, a ten and a five. A tip for those avocados."

Jacque was at the sink washing her clippers and combs under hot water and a splash of the unscented soap Pale used. A bottle sprayer with the letters H.P. sat on the wooden box. Hydrogen peroxide. "My brand of higher power," Jacque laughed as she finished her cleaning with a good dose of spray. "A Sensitive's Friend! It's nice to have friends in high places. My Mom's brand of humor. Sensitive Schtik. Almost two decades of it, makes sense to be in a business that crossed the borders and comes with a certain kind of class!"

The one, the many

"If you pick up that stick you will become part of it, and it a part of you."

"Like marriage."

"Of a sort, yes that's a good way of looking at it."

"Couldn't it just be a stick that I like? The look of it suits me, makes me stand a little more steady or feels good in my hand."

"That's a good place to start a relationship with a stick. But as I said, once you start to walk with it your bones with come to know the bone of the Tree that is that stick. You are entering a life with the many ... Tree has memory most humans don't remember how to find. The stick that finds you has something to pass along. Over time you will share those lines in your hand or hands with Tree. You will change."

"Like marriage." *



*"Marry your field" from Robert Moss, The Dream Man ... field notes that make marks for me to find as the medicine of story moves, stalls, and prepares for the next flow of MoltenMadam.

Preface

Molten Madam ... never too old for the mischief and the mystery

"She is only an ocean away." The Night Bird was talking in a voice muted only because the rain was so fierce. The Witch was keen to the conversations of po the conversations that fill the night. She was listening while her body rested under the covers pulled tight against her silver hair raging in tendrils that would no longer be tamed. The cowlicks had joined and now she was without doubt the full account of her sacred name. She was the Wild Hare, and in this shape it was always necessary to listen in on the birds of prey. In this form and at this stage it was vital for her survival. So. She remained alert.

The owls spoke of the Goddess who was actively making new land; molten in its formation it was the one who mentored with her uncle the atmosphere. To the Old Ones, all of them, the uncle was simply Lono the Old, Lonomakua. Even here in the land and Islands between the two mountain ranges dense with Cedar, Fir, Hemlock and Pine the ones who flew kept track of the Fire Goddess Pele. She had family here, and many of them have passed long memories of death due the molten madam. So, while she slept The Witch made sure her night ears were sharp. It would be just like Pele to wake the sleeping giants in her region. "I'm really too old for this sort of mischief," Pale only thought this to herself. But, Raven never missed a thing his mate said or did and from the ledge that he preferred over a soft bed, the ancient silver bird said, "You will never be too old for the mischief that wears you like tattoos on your ankles." The story was not yet over. Will it ever be?