Mrs. McDuff

Real Magic

Mrs. McDuff was sixty years old and she still loved magic—not that Wiccan voodoo crap or Ouija board nonsense, but the real kind that makes sentient vines creep into your bedroom and announce in the existence of fauns and fairies; that the old stories have come true; that legends have come to life; and that adventures are afoot to make your blood boil with all the best kinds of emotions like courage and wit and freedom—while ignoring the jeers and eye rolls of the more mundane folks about town who read their newspapers and drink their beers (or wines or rums or what-have-yous) in the peace and quiet of normality without once considering that crazy old Mrs. McDuff might not really have lost her marbles when her husband left her back in ’62 for his secretary, but instead lost the one thing that was keeping her back from true magic of the sentient vine sort, and created a new way for her, one in which she was free—when the sky was clear and the moon and stars just right and the breeze slipping between grey strands of hair—to smell the possibilities in the air and turn her face to the east.