An Ordinary Fairy Read Free Page A

hermit, exactly.” He paused for a moment, squinting at the bright sun. “She just likes her privacy is all.”
    “Do you know her well?” Noah asked.
    Louie shook his head. “No, no. Well, a little. I do jobs for her every now and then. But she don’t care to talk much to me.”
    “Do you think she’ll talk to me?”
    “Yeah. I think she’ll like you.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    Louie shrugged and grinned. “Just a hunch. You have a lot in common.”
    Hermit, photographer … sure, lots in common.
    “Do you think she would allow me to shoot the pond?”
    “Don’t really know. Worth a try though. Beautiful place. Just beautiful.”
    “How do I get there?” Noah pulled out his notebook and scratched notes as Louie gave directions, including a shortcut through the woods to the woman’s house.
    “The lane’s hard to find,” Louie said. “She’s never had a car, so the road’s pretty much growed over. There’s several spots that look like they might be a road but they peter out. You want the one where the sign’s missin’ on the right. The Big House is a fair distance from the paved road, to the south. The cottage is farther even, down a little path to the west, unless you take the shortcut.” He glanced toward Henning’s. “Well, I’d best be goin’. We’ll be seein’ ya.” He turned to leave.
    Noah placed a hand on Louie’s arm. “Louie, why did you tell me all this? You haven’t said ten words since I came to Hoopeston.”
    A sly grin spread across Louie’s face. “You’ll see.” Without another word, he strode away toward downtown.
    Noah removed his ball cap and scratched his head as Louie walked away. “What was all that about? Does he want me to see the pond … or the woman?”
     
    Noah drove east on Maple street to the post office, where he mailed an expense report to the magazine office, and then drove north to Main Street and turned west. As he traveled through downtown, he perused a store located on the first floor of an old whitewashed brick building. He had driven past this place many times since he came to Hoopeston. Noah knew about it long before the old boys at Henning’s told him its story. In fact, he chose Hoopeston for his base of operations because of it.
    Named The Broom Closet, the store, a source for all things magical and mysterious, specialized in witchcraft supplies and paraphernalia. That’s what drew Noah’s interest.
    Noah was a witch.
    His devout Lutheran mother didn’t like the term witch; he wasn’t comfortable with it either. He preferred just Wiccan.
    The store’s name appealed to Noah. In Wicca circles, people like him who kept their beliefs private were “in the broom closet.” Wicca’s witchcraft and magic aspects drew fire from conservative folks, so Noah preferred the low profile. It amused him that those people were unaware of the practice of magic in every major culture for thousands of years in various guises. Noah thought the conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus in the middle of a church full of people quite magical, though many of the partakers would be shocked to hear him say so. He preferred to avoid controversy, however, and so lived by the number one Wicca philosophy, harm none , and remained in his comfortable, magical closet.
    During his numerous Internet investigations of Wicca, he’d run across the story of Hoopeston and its witch school and store. When his current assignment arose, the town popped into his head. Noah heard all about the “crazy witch people” one morning from the Henning’s Gang. He hadn’t let on that he already knew all about it, and certainly not that he was a crazy witch person.
    He slowed as he passed the store, but did not stop.
    Noah, when are you going to grow enough balls to come out of the broom closet and go into The Broom Closet?
    He reached the end of Main Street where it intersected Route 1, and sat for a moment.
    “Okay. Right to Milford or left to Jones