"I have always allowed the wind to blow me in the right direction." 

― Jessica Marie Baumgartner, Walk Your Path: A Magical Awakening

☽★☾

The early August sun was hot against Brynn's face as she walked beside her mother, her new stepbrother and stepfather on her other side. The chestnut-haired girl put a hand to her face as she cringed away from the blinding sunlight. Their group stepped into a patch of shade a moment later, and the girl sent out a silent thank you to the swaying oaks that had blocked the light for them. Their auburn leaves rustled in a light breeze.

Their tour guide, a cheerful woman by the name of Emily, was chattering pleasantly as they strolled down the stone streets of Salem, Massachusetts. Brynn wasn't paying much attention to anything she was saying — the buildings were too old and run-down for her to appreciate, not to mention that she had nearly fallen flat on her face after tripping on a rough piece of rock — and she couldn't wait for their vacation to be over. She didn't understand why her mother had insisted on coming to the old city for her honeymoon, or why she had wanted the kids to come with them.

"I'll bet that store has some cool souvenirs!" Her stepfather's gravelly voice interrupted. Their tour guide paused, crossing her arms with a slightly impatient expression. Brynn turned with a raised eyebrow to see what he had pointed out. The man was grinning enthusiastically, gesturing with this thumb to a store they had just passed. It was clearly meant to attract tourists such as themselves, with the words "Witch's Wares: Voodoo and Sorcery" on a broad sign out front. The windows were too deeply tinted for Brynn to see the interior of the building, but when the door swung open to emit a customer, she could see that it was lit by a variety of warm-colored candles. 

Brynn's mother paused, tilting her head with an amused expression. "Terry, do you really want to go in there? I know you're going to be sucked up by whatever strange findings you discover." The woman laughed. Her laugh lines made her look ten years younger. Even though Brynn wasn't a fan of the man her mother had married, she could tell that he made her happier than she had been in a long time. It was nice to see her that way.

"C'mon, Ann," Terry pleaded in a playful tone. "It might be a cool place to look into. And I'm sure the kids would love a little something to take home with them."

Brynn's mother looked far from convinced. She turned back to their tour guide, who shifted her weight from foot to foot. Brynn managed an amused smirk. That woman was probably so used to walking around Salem that she couldn't stand still anymore. "I wouldn't want to hold up Emily. I'm sure we'll have time to look around on our own later." The tour guide nodded eagerly.

Terry sighed, rolling his eyes but still smiling cheerfully. "Alright. We'll come back here later." At that he offered Brynn and her stepbrother a grin. Brynn didn't especially like her stepbrother either. His name was Derek but he went by the nickname DJ, and he was two years younger than Brynn. His blonde hair was so heavily gelled that it stuck straight up like a pitiful mohawk.

Brynn's mother smiled and took the man's arm. Brynn barely avoided the desire to gag. DJ snickered and gave her a shove as, up front, Emily began walking again. The young woman's perky voice once more filled the silence, and Brynn returned to once more wishing she was anywhere but Salem, Massachusetts.

☽★☾

When the tour finally came to an end as the sun began to set in the west, Brynn and her family were once more on their own. Terry seemed to remember exactly what he had promised about looking inside the tourist trap of a store, because as soon as Emily bid them farewell and returned to her office, the man quirked a smile and led them  back down the road. Brynn was surprised that he had remembered the way. She thought all of the streets looked the same — symmetric layout, same cobblestone, no street signs — but Terry must have had a good eye for these sort of things.

"Wow, look at this! Really cool, right guys?" The man commented as they approached the store. It smelled like nothing Brynn had smelled before, a mixture of incense, candle wax, and sage. The store didn't appear large from the outside, nor did it seem like it was an especially popular store. As if to prove this point, a small flyer on the door announced discounted herbs because, according to the scrawling font of the paper, "we must not allow them to spend all of their time on a shelf."

Brynn's mother only rolled her eyes with a soft chuckle. "Let's not spend too much time in here. We still have to find somewhere to get dinner." She pulled the door open to allow her family to step inside. A rusty bell noisily announced their arrival.

Terry and DJ hurried off together to look at some of the flashy displays, leaving Brynn behind at the entrance with her mother. The girl let out a sigh; it didn't seem like they were integrating her into their new family at all. Her mother set a hand on her shoulder, seemingly understanding what Brynn must have been feeling.

"How about you go browse? This stuff is pretty interesting, hm?" Or she just wants me to go off on my own so she can go join them without making me feel guilty, Brynn guessed instead.

The girl simply nodded and walked further into the store, hazel eyes darting this way and that as she took in everything being sold. A variety of incense, crystals, tarot card decks... They were all intriguing objects, but Brynn didn't understand the purpose of any of them enough to look into them further. She paused beside a glass cabinet displaying expensive incense holders and pretended to study them with interest.

"Need help with anything?" A voice asked from behind. Brynn flinched and turned around to find a girl with a tousled bob of brown hair wearing an all-black outfit that advertised the store's name. She was several inches taller than Brynn but appeared to be around the same age.

"Oh! I... um, no. I don't need anything. I'm just looking around." Brynn turned her gaze back to the incense holders as a blush heated her cheeks. She couldn't help but think that the girl was pretty hot, especially with that deep voice of hers.

"Well," the girl continued, stepping around her so that she could fully look at Brynn. "You've been staring at the same cabinet for a while, so I just wanted to check. Are you sure you don't need any help?" She wore a sly smile, raising an eyebrow as if to challenge her.

Brynn sent her a sheepish grin. "If I'm being totally honest, I don't really know what any of this stuff is for. I'm not really here to buy anything. We're here on vacation and my stepdad just wanted to come in and check it out." She quickly shut her mouth as she realized that she had been talking too long, completely absentmindedly spilling out this information.

The girl didn't seem to mind. "I understand. Perhaps I can interest you in a tarot reading, then?"

"I... have no idea what that is."

"Alright," the girl replied thoughtfully, letting out a laugh. "How about we at least go back to the tarot table, and I can try and tell you a bit more about witchcraft? And I can give you a tarot reading, if you're at all interested. Free of charge, of course. I could just use the practice."

Brynn didn't know what else to say — and her family was on the opposite side of the store, so she couldn't turn to them for help — so she simply nodded and followed the girl past the different shelves to the back of the shop, where a rich purple curtain sanctioned off a small makeshift office space. As the curtain drifted closed behind them, the girl came around and sat down in one of the chairs, motioning for Brynn to sit in the one opposite her.

"I'm Joan by the way," the girl told her as she took out a deck of cards from a small cloth blag. Their backs were decorated with an artistic rendition of a nebula. She began to shuffle them, riffling through them in her hands and dividing them into different piles. When Brynn didn't respond, she raised her dark-eyed gaze and offered a small smile. "This is usually when you'd say your name."

"Oh, right! Sorry. I'm Brynn." She answered. To avoid the awkwardness that was settling in the air between them, Brynn took a moment to study the space they were sitting in. It was about the size of an office cubicle, shaped by silken curtains instead of office partitions. There was no other furniture other than the chairs her and Joan were sitting in and the square table sitting between them. Two stout candles flickered on the table before her, one being a deep purple and the other being mute shade of white. A few crystals lay beside them, glimmering in the candlelight.

Joan nodded as she continued to shuffle the cards. "These are tarot cards. Each card has its own meaning, as well as a reversed meaning. They're used to acknowledge any conflicts that might exist in either the present, past, or future, and to provide guidance as to how to approach those problems. You can do different spreads depending on what you're looking for, but we're just going to do a real simple three-card spread to get a general feel of where you're at right now." She seemed to be satisfied with the shuffling and settled the cards into a single pile once more. Then she spread three cards in front of her and flipped them over one by one.

As Joan stared at the cards, Brynn felt herself growing nervous. What does she see in them? "What does it say?" She asked at last, having become too antsy to tolerate the silence any longer.

Joan glanced up at Brynn, studying her for a moment before turning her attention back to the cards. She pointed at the first card, the one on the left. "For your past you have the hermit, reversed. It means you lost your way at some point. Maybe you lost an important figure in your life and you felt really lonely without them. You didn't know where to go without their guidance."

"I lost my dad a few years ago," Brynn murmured as she looked at the card. It showed a lone man — upside down, in this case — holding a lantern and staring longingly into the distance. The art style of the card was beautiful, full of rich colors and exaggerated shapes, but all that Brynn could think of as she stared at the card was that the man looked so lonely.

"I'm sorry about that," Joan replied, not unkindly. "Would you like to talk more about your past, or would you like to move on to the next card?"

Brynn hesitated a moment before shaking her head. "Let's just move on." Even though her father had been gone several years now, the thought of his death was still fresh in her mind. She was worried that talking about him too much would make her remember it all, and she didn't want to drown in that grief ever again.

Joan nodded and set her pointer finger down on the next card. This card was also upside down, showing a castle in the background and four long poles in the foreground of the image. "In the present you have the four of wands, also reversed. There's some conflict in your family right now. Do you perhaps feel a lack of community with them, or maybe that you don't have a strong connection with them right now?"

Brynn nodded slowly. "Yeah, definitely. My mom married my stepdad only a year and a half after my dad died. It felt like a betrayal, almost. And now she's so focused on her new husband and his jerk of a son that it kind of feels like..." She trailed off as she realized she was saying too much. Why am I admitting all of this to a total stranger?

"It's okay. It feels like what?" Joan pushed in a gentle voice.

Wow, she totally sounds like a therapist. But I don't feel uncomfortable telling her about this stuff, so... "It almost feels like I'm not really a part of the family anymore."

Joan made a thoughtful humming sound to acknowledge Brynn's words. "That makes sense. You're finding it hard to adjust. You still want it to be your family, but it's different now. Different traditions, different schedules, different people." When Brynn nodded, Joan took this as confirmation to move on. "Well, hopefully we'll find a solution to that in the next card." She pointed to the third card and let out a laugh. "Another upside down card! Imagine the odds. This one is the eight of swords, reversed yet again. It means that you should seek to find a new perspective. It shows that, with that different point of view, you'll come to accept all the changes that your family's gone through."

"How am I supposed to just find a new perspective?" Brynn replied with a scoff as she stared at the last card. It showed a person tied up, eight swords sticking into the ground around them. It looked a little strange upside down; the person looked like they were hanging from the ceiling. "I don't think it's as easy as your cards make it out to be."

"I never said it would be easy," Joan corrected, smiling a bit. "The cards definitely don't say it either. If anything, it just shows that you'll have to work hard at it. There's a lot going against you." She traced her finger over the ropes and blindfold that bound the person painted on the card.

Brynn stared at the card a moment longer. "Yeah, okay. Thanks for the reading, I guess." It was definitely a little unsettling, she thought, that these cards had matched her situation so perfectly. 

"Any time! As long as you got something out of it, my job is done." Joan stood up, putting the three cards back into the deck. Brynn got up alongside her and followed her as she ducked out of the curtains.

Before Brynn could return to her family, who were standing in line at the checkout counter, a hand slid up her arm. She shivered at the touch and turned to find Joan standing right beside her. The girl held up a small book and placed it in her hands.

"This is a book all about witchcraft. You know, if you're interested in learning more about it. I realize that I didn't really explain it to you like I said I would." Joan told her, sounding a bit apologetic. "And maybe your brother will enjoy looking at it." She added after a moment.

Brynn smiled. She was sure she looked like an idiot as she stood there, too entranced by the girl's gaze for a moment to even thank her. She quickly forced herself out of it and laughed with a hurried apology. "Thanks," Brynn told her as she flipped the book open for a peek. It opened right to the middle, where she noticed a passage about the history of witchcraft in Salem. Her eyes scanned the paragraph for a moment before she raised her gaze to look back up at Joan. Or at least, she tried to look back up. Her eyes seemed to be stuck in whatever position they were last in. She wanted to cry out for help, or call for an ambulance to get her eyes unstuck, but she found that the rest of her body was immobilized as well. Brynn felt a strange tugging sensation, and suddenly the landscape was transforming around her in a swirl of bright light as she was swept away from the present.

"Blessed be," Joan murmured in her ear as Brynn disappeared from the store entirely.