Poppet
Her mother was a radical. Second wave feminist and a half. A career woman, an innovator, raised her daughters to do the same. Her mother said they had to change. Said that if they didn’t, who else would? Inevitable, then, that she rebelled, stormed back to more traditional values.
Of course, it ended up the same way. Marriage, one kid (ever a daughter), no time for more before the no-good husband left for a younger model. Although they dealt with it in different ways. Her mother tried therapy, then, when that didn’t work, called in a few favours from friends, worked a hex that brought down an entire bank. Cleaned him out. The model left him.
Her mother was pagan, wiccan – all Earth Mother and Moon Goddess. She was C. of E., and a plain, old-fashioned witch.
She got out her pins.
It wasn’t voodoo. Her daughter came back from gap year, all fired up about “Vodou, mother, not voodoo. It doesn’t have any of that silly sticking dolls with pins. And the zombies aren’t dead, either.”
As if she didn’t know. The pins were old magic, old when she learnt it at her grandmother’s knee. (Her husband had died in the war before he could be unfaithful. She used the pins on local gossips; a tweak here, a twinge there.)
Not that voodoo wasn’t decent magic, in its way. Though it left a terrible mess of chicken blood and feathers when her daughter proudly showed off her new skills. A little rich for her tastes, she’d told her daughter. Like the food. Made your hair curl, certainly, but a little too spicy.
Her mother liked to experiment, find new ways to do old, old tricks. She didn’t see the point. Why waste time finding a replacement for eye of newt – a pinch of this, a spatter of that – when they were swarming in the pond at the bottom of the garden?
And why search high and low for the right words to curse a man into fiscal ruin? When all you needed was a switch of hair, a lick of spit (or the sweat on a strip from one of the shirts she’d ripped to shreds when he left), a half-stuffed, button-eyed rag doll, and a half dozen pins.
Only, the pins weren’t enough, this time. A twinge, a tremor, what was that?
So she took up a knife, and made a cut.
Her mother, of course, had her coven, meeting for tea and home-baking, or maybe a little wine it they were feeling bold, every new moon.
“Your bridge nights,” she’d snapped. “My book group,” her mother had mildly replied.
Her newly voodoo daughter fell in with Goths, more a posse than a coven, chasing recalcitrant spirits across uncharted spectral planes, ruining the carpet.
Her mother said they had to change. Said that if they didn’t, who else would? But she ignored her mother, and scooped up the newts in the pond, and made another little cut.
Her mother was wrong. Nothing changed. And the newts, and the pins, and the little, little cuts, they all worked, better than the hex and the voodoo. All the same, she reflected, as the pins began to melt, her mother never burnt at the stake.
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