Chapter Two
Ceci woke hours later. She didn’t know what time it was, nor did she care. She felt like she had just been to a massage parlor and gotten the works…twice, hot lava rocks and all. Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, too numb to even turn her head, she heard the sound of Ludmilla’s voice growing louder from somewhere in the labyrinthine maze of her apartment. It was daylight and she had missed two appointments already, she was sure.
Suddenly appearing in her vision, towering over her with a silver tray, laden with food and dressed in a black komono, Ludmilla said, “Ah! You are back veeth the pipples, the child-man has gone. Hees beeper vent oof.”
“What?” Ceci asked, extremely confused.
“Pipples.” Ludmilla answered. “Us, not zee cheeldreen; zee man-child, zee woman-child. Vee are pipples, zay are cheeldreen.”
“Oh,” she replied, unsure of what to say next. She thought back to the events of last night and tried to remember Johnny but could only recall the scarf sliding all around her body and smiled.
Picking up a plate with a small patty of green matter, the black witch offered it to her guest. “Eat.”
The two sat in bed and consumed a hearty meal of strange cakes that they dipped in sauces, neither of which Ceci had ever seen or tasted before. Ludmilla was very forthcoming with information though her accent made it difficult to understand her. They talked for hours, mostly with the blue witch listening raptly to every word uttered by the other and trying desperately to understand the true meaning of what she was trying to tell her.
The shadows in the room had changed direction by the time their conversation dwindled. Ceci surmised it was late in the afternoon. From what the other woman had told her, they were living near a vortex, a cosmic anomaly in the fabric of the universe and that witches tended to make their homes near such places because their power increased with proximity.
Ludmilla warned her about having sex before encounters with her enemies, of which there were many, her abilities would be dampened considerably. The black witch explained that several days were necessary to recover from such events but sometimes witches experienced urges they could not control.
She also told her there were others; Ceci could not understand what she meant by ‘the others’. She understood that Ludmilla referred to non-witches as The Children and to witches as The Peoples.
To her great joy, her new friend gave her a checkbook and a couple of credit cards that were drawn on the account of a late husband, of which the black witch had quite a few. She would not have to work anymore but she would have to concentrate on her spells; now that she had begun exercising her powers, she was visible to not just other wickens but also to ‘the others’, whoever they may be.
Ceci could not believe her good fortune or the generosity of her new-found friend. Her therapy business had been suffering, not because she was deficient at her craft, but rather, she was too good at it. Her clients always recovered much too quickly for her to make as much money as others in her field of practice.
To her amazement, Ludmilla asked for nothing in exchange, only for her friendship; Ceci was more than ready to give it.
Ludmilla went on to tell her why they existed; how women had an intuitive ability that allowed them to draw on certain cosmic forces unknown to men and how this ability seemed to manifest itself in certain women more than others. These women were of those whose fathers were unknown to them and she speculated it might be possible there were no men involved in the conception but she had discovered no proof of this in her seven hundred and sixty-three years of existence.
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