The August blog is another short story featuring Jasper and Shelley as children, up to shenanigans, as usual.
Witchery in Blue
“What do you think of this color?” twelve-year-old Shelley Tanzer asked her best friend, Jasper Howison, as she clicked on a square to make it bigger. He squinted at the computer screen, wrinkled his nose, and shook his head.
“I don’t know. Colors don’t always look right on the computer,” he complained. “And you haven’t even decided if you’re painting your entire room, or just a wall, or just the window sills and trims….” he trailed off and shrugged.
“I can’t be a hundred percent sure what to do until I get some idea of the right colors,” Shelley argued. She clicked another colored square on the home improvement store’s paint color chart.
“There are just too many variations of blue,” Jasper declared. “Why don’t you pick something easier, like gray?”
Shelley pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. She moved the cursor slightly and double clicked. Another page came up, filled with varying shades of gray paint swatches. “Like this?” she asked sweetly. Jasper glared at the computer screen.
“Can we look at furniture instead?” he asked. “At least I know you want natural wood grain there.”
Shelley grinned and relished Jasper’s flinch. “Sure,” she said. “I’m torn though – light wood? Dark wood? Cherry? Oak? Walnut? Should I choose a natural stain, or something with a tint of color?”
Jasper groaned and threw himself across Shelley’s bed. She spun in her desk chair and surveyed him, no sympathy evident on her face. “You were the one that said you wanted to help,” she reminded him.
Jasper grabbed a polka-dotted pink pillow and put it over his face. Shelley thought it clashed horribly with his strawberry blonde hair, and was glad that she’d decided she’d go with darker solid colors for her new comforter and sheet sets. But she’d also decided not to tell Jasper that quite yet.
“I should have known you’d make it complicated,” he muttered. He tossed the pillow aside and sat up, eyes alight. “You know, we could just….” Shelley held up a hand and he stopped talking. She pointed at the far wall, where a muddy discoloration marked a large, irregular spot.
Jasper sighed. “We don’t talk about that,” he muttered.
“You were going to suggest we work the walls to try different colors,” Shelley said. “And that is what happened when we worked one of my mermaid posters to turn it into a mural, remember? Mother isn’t totally sure that new paint will cover it. Granny might have to come do a cleanse on it.”
Jasper gaped. “She can do that? Why didn’t she do it when it first happened?”
Shelley just rolled her eyes at him.
“Yeah, okay,” Jasper muttered, eyeing the offending blotch with great venom.
“You need to help me,” Shelley said. “After all, when Daniel goes to college this fall, you’ll be moving into his old room. Surely you’ll need to do some redecorating.”
Jasper pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Not so much,” he admitted. “Daniel will share the room with me when he’s home on breaks, so I can’t change it all that much.”
“Hmph,” Shelley snorted. “Well, it’s not like your instruments leave a lot of room for stuff anyway, but new paint might be nice. Though you probably can’t even see the walls if – hey, is Daniel taking his guitars?”
“Some of them. The rest have to stay, and he said I need to leave them in their hanging racks.” Jasper frowned and shook his head. “And I’m only allowed to play one.”
Shelley grimaced. “That one?”
“Yeah. That one.”
“I still think he over-reacted about that,” Shelley said, as she always did.
Jasper shrugged. “Daniel says it’s never been the same since the snowstorm, and since we conjured it….” He trailed off and shrugged again. There really wasn’t any more to be said, Shelley knew. Daniel would never back down on this topic. Suddenly, Jasper’s eyes brightened. “Hey, do you think Granny would be willing to do a cleanse on the guitar, too?”
Shelley cast a look at the top drawer on her nightstand. “Somehow, I doubt it,” she said. Jasper followed her line of sight, and shuddered.
“I am not going to miss those at all,” Shelley declared, referring to the contents of the drawer. Jasper got up and wandered over, sliding the drawer open. “Hey, do you have some new ones?” He started to count. Out loud.
Shelley resisted the urge to pull all the water from the air and dump it on her best friend’s head, especially since that trick had gotten her one of the new bottles when she did it to her brother. The second new bottle had come when her mother told her to pull the water out of Kevin’s hair and clothes – and off the floor and out of the sofa – which she did. But then she condensed it into a cloud and set it to follow Kevin and rain on him when he went outdoors.
Shelley stalked over and shut the drawer. “You are supposed to be helping me make decisions, and then Mother is taking us to get the paint. So, help.” Shelley pointed at the computer.
Jasper scrunched up in his face. “I don’t want to. This is boring,” he complained. “All the colors look the same.”
Shelley gaped at him. “Are you whining?”
“No,” Jasper said. Shelley cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “Maybe a little,” he amended. “But really, the computer doesn’t give us a good idea of colors.”
“So? That’s what we have, so that’s what we have to use.”
Jasper turned to face the discolored wall. “You know, you’re going to paint this wall anyway. Plus, Granny’s going to do a cleanse. Why can’t we experiment with color on it? Do you still have that paint set Granny gave you for Yule?”
“Yeah, but it’s acrylic art paints, not wall paint. And it’s really pretty basic colors,” Shelley argued, though her resolve began to waver. The computer really didn’t give the best color definition.
“Basic colors are best. We can mix our own colors with the primaries,” Jasper declared, sounding very sure of himself, though Shelley knew quite well that he had no background in color theory.
“Mmm,” she said, noncommittal, though she was wavering even more. While the workings (and results!) rarely went exactly as planned, their joint workings were some of the best they’d ever accomplished, and they both knew it. While they would most likely evolve into quite powerful witches as they matured, for the moment, their power manifested best when they worked together.
Jasper put his hands on his hips and faced the wall. He pursed his lips as he studied it, fingers already tapping out a rhythm against his thigh. Shelley’s feet itched to start dancing. Then he said, “Doing the whole wall might have been ambitious.”
Shelley repressed her urge to snark and let him continue. He obliged. “But swatches are quite a bit smaller. I bet we could do some swatches.”
Shelley shrugged. “We could swatch in the sketchbook.”
Jasper shook his head. “Nah, that’s little swatches. We need bigger swatches and we need to see how it’s going to look on the wall.”
“But the paint set is really small,” Shelley argued. “We’d use all of it trying to make big swatches. And then we wouldn’t have enough left to mix some different colors.” She paused. “Unless…” she eyed her friend. Jasper was grinning. “Exactly. That’s where the working will come in. Now, where are those paints?”
“In the closet,” Shelley said, leading the way. She opened the door and rummaged around in the small cupboard tucked beneath a row of hanging clothes. A few minutes later she emerged with the set of twelve small tubs still in their box. She also held a bag of assorted sponges and brushes. “I found these, too.” She showed Jasper the clear plastic box that contained twelve colored tubes. He wrinkled his nose. “What are those? They look like lipsticks.”
Shelley snorted. “They’re gel sticks. You can color with them or mix them with water and use them like watercolor paints. They blend together really good. You did say something about making our own colors.”
“I did,” Jasper agreed. “Hm. Let me see one.” He reached for the box. Shelley allowed him to take it and select a blue tube. He uncapped it and rolled out the crayon. She flinched a bit when he leaned over and scribbled an irregular blob onto a section of the wall. He paused and surveyed his work. “Huh. That’s neat. How do they blend?”
Shelley leaned over and chose a green tube. Mimicking Jasper, she unrolled a bit of the crayon and scribbled a neater circle on the wall right next to Jasper’s blue. Then she took her fingers and smeared the colors together, creating a blue-green gradient. “Like that.”
Jasper wrinkled his nose at the color left on her fingers. “Messy. Let’s swatch them all out and then see what we can do.”
“Acrylics too?” Shelley asked.
“Sure. Let’s do it all!” Jasper grabbed another gel crayon while Shelley took a couple of steps and uncapped one of the acrylic paint tubs. “I’m going to swatch over here. I don’t know if we can mix the gel with the acrylic.”
“Good thinking,” Jasper replied. He rubbed the crayon on the wall, humming as he did so. Shelley swayed in time with his humming as she painted neat squares of color on her section of wall.
“I’ve got them all on here,” Jasper said, after a while .
“Me, too,” Shelley answered. She looked at her tubs. “I used most of the paint, just like I thought. What should we do about making some new colors?”
“Come look at this,” Jasper said. Shelley stepped closer and looked where he pointed. The colors were spreading, sending out thin rivulets into other colors.
“Did you put water on those?” Shelley asked.
Jasper shook his head. “No, look. See? The color is moving sideways into the other colors, not dripping down like it would if we’d put water on it. Are yours doing it, too?”
Shelley returned to her section of wall. “Yeah, it is! Wow. But we haven’t done a working yet. How is this…oh.”
“Oh what?”
“You were humming while we swatched. I bet that started it.”
“Mmm,” Jasper agreed. “And you were swaying in time and doing little tappy steps. That gives me an idea.”
Shelley grinned. “You have your whistle? Because I have an idea, too.”
Jasper matched her grin and pulled the whistle from his pocket. He put it to his lips and began to play the same tune he’d been humming while painting Shelley’s wall. She nodded along, catching the beat, then turned in place to face the wall.
She put out a hand, fingertips touching an orange square of paint. She stepped – in time with the tune, always following the beat – trailing her fingers from the orange to its complementary color, blue. The paint flowed like liquid, mixing into a new color. Jasper nodded his approval. Shelley paused, still swaying, and put her hand out to touch the red paint. She repeated her dance, trailing her hand into the green. Again, the paint flowed, and a new color was created. Jasper kept playing, Shelley kept choosing colors and dancing, until the wall was covered in swatches. Finally, Jasper dropped the whistle from his lips, and Shelley stopped moving. She sighed, and dropped into her desk chair.
“So, what do you think?” she asked, gesturing at their work. Jasper bit his lip and didn’t say anything about the colors staining her fingers and hands.
“Hm. I see quite a few interesting possibilities,” Jasper responded. He pocketed his whistle and dropped to the floor beside her chair. “That one,” he pointed at a shimmering blue that looked like water under a bright sun. Shelley cocked her head. “I like that. It looks like the ocean, right when the sun hits the waves. What colors did we use to make that, do you remember?”
And then the flaw in their working hit them both. Jasper lolled his head back to meet his best friend’s eyes. “Whoops.”
“Oh no,” Shelley moaned, dropping her head into her hands before Jasper could stop her. “We have no idea what we combined, do we?”
“Ummmm…Sea-shell?” Jasper poked her ankle. “Shelley. Your hands.”
“What?” Shelley looked up, then registered what he’d said. She glanced down at her paint-smeared fingers. “Oh, crap!”
Jasper didn’t say anything, just stared. Shelley groaned. “How bad is it? Is it all over my face? At least acrylics are water soluble. It’ll wash off. Eventually.”
“Um…Sea-shell? I think you need a mirror.” Jasper’s eyes were wide and wild. Shelley was pretty sure that she did not, in fact, want a mirror, but also knew that she’d probably better look before her mother saw her. She rose to go to her dresser and the large mirror attached to the back.
She expected to see the clear marks of her fingers on her cheeks where she’d touched. What she did not expect to see was that the colors were continuing to flow and combine, just as they had done on the wall. Shelley looked up and yes – just as the paint continued to flow and combine on the wall.
“If we don’t do something, it’s going to turn into mud,” Shelley said. “And we’ll never be able to figure out a color for the wall.”
Jasper nodded, eyes still wide. Shelley turned back to the mirror, and realized that the color was flowing into her hair, down her neck, and up her arms. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed Jasper’s wrist. “Get out your whistle, quick! We need to stop this!”
Jasper’s gaze darted to where her hand touched his wrist. Gasping, Shelley let go and stepped back, but it was too late. The color had flowed from her fingers onto Jasper’s skin, and was expanding. She wasn’t even sure what color it was now. It was just…color. All colors. Swirling like a kaleidoscope.
Jasper brought the whistle to his lips, but the tune just seemed to make the color swirl more and move faster.
“Stop!” Shelley yelled. Jasper dropped the whistle from his lips. The color on his arms had disappeared under his sleeves. Shelley didn’t mention that; she didn’t want Jasper distracted. “Think,” she said. “What did Granny make us do to fix the hex after the snowstorm? Do it all backwards?”
Jasper nodded, then shook his head, his face pained. “Shell, I don’t think that will work. We spoke the hex, remember? We just played and danced for this one. You might could dance backward, but I can’t play this tune backward because it didn’t really have a beginning or an end. I was just…playing, making it up as I went.”
Shelley sighed and agreed. “Same for the dance. But we have to figure something out before Mother sees us. Or before the colors bleed onto the other walls.”
Jasper frowned and checked their handiwork. So far, only the one wall was compromised. “Whew. That’s something,” he said.
Then their luck ran out. The door opened and Shelley’s mother stood in the doorway, with Granny peering over her shoulder. “So have you made a decision….” her voice trailed off as she stared at her daughter.
Granny didn’t bother to smother her laugh. “Oh hottentots, what have you done this time?”
Shelley grimaced. “We were just trying out some colors for the walls,” she explained. Her mother kept staring, eyes tracking from Shelley to the wall to Jasper and back again. Shelley watched her mother and stuttered as she continued. “We did some swatching, then mixed some colors up to see what we could make. We used the paint you gave me for Christmas last year.” Shelley bit her lip and stopped.
Granny shook her head. “Did you sing or dance?”
“Jasper might have whistled some. I did dance a little bit,” Shelley admitted. Jasper nodded in agreement.
Granny turned to look at Shelley’s mother. “It’s not a hex, at least. And the paints were acrylics and watercolors, so they’re washable.” She paused and tapped a finger against her bottom lip. “We might use water to cleanse all this mess, including that,” she indicated the large blob from the mural working, that actually looked less terrible with the new paint swirling over it. Shelley gulped. She hadn’t looked at that part of the wall, just assuming that the new working would not encroach on the old. She’d been wrong, obviously, but Granny didn’t seem worried that the layering would make the old mess harder to clean up.
Granny clapped her hands. Shelley jumped at the sharp sound.
“First thing is that I need a pretty large clamp-sealed jar with a gasket. We’re going to have to make sure it seals pretty airtight. I only brought smaller hex jars with me, so if you don’t have anything on hand, Audrey, we’ll need to get something.”
“I have a gallon-sized one that I used to keep bath bombs in,” Audrey said. “Would that work? It’s been washed out.”
“That would be perfect,” Granny said. Audrey nodded and went to fetch it.
Granny turned to Shelley and Jasper. She bit her lip and Shelley knew that the paint had progressed. She peeked at Jasper to see that tendrils of swirling color were moving up his neck. She heroically avoided a glance in the mirror; she didn’t want to see.
Audrey returned and handed the large, squarish jar to her mother. Granny took it, nodded, then turned to Jasper and Shelley. “Okay, you two, let’s put this to rights.”
Shelley’s mother nodded, stepped back, and closed the door, leaving Shelley, Jasper, and Granny in the room facing the compromised wall.
“Now, my girl, do you have any permanent, fast-drying markers or paint pens?”
Shelley nodded. “In the closet, in the art supply cabinet. Let me….”
“No, let me,” Granny interrupted. “We don’t need you spreading the contagion any more than you already have.” She glanced at Jasper and Shelley nodded, conceding the point.
Granny opened the closet and retrieved a set of paint pens from the cabinet. She chose white, black, gray, and blue. She shook them well, and proceeded to mark the sides, top, and bottom of the jar with the white, black, and gray paint. “There,” she said, surveying the sigils she’d drawn. “That should hold it all. Now, hottentots, come here and show me your hands.”
Obediently, Shelley and Jasper both extended their hands, palms up.
“Other way,” Granny ordered, and they flipped their hands so that their palms faced the floor. Granny took the blue marker and drew signs on the backs of their hands. “Blue for banishing,” she told them. “White, gray, and black for sealing and blocking negative energies. Now, Shelley girl, pull that paint off the wall, and dump it into the sealed jar.”
Shelley nodded, and faced the wall, eyes screwed up as she concentrated. “Not so hard, my girl! We just need you to call the moving paint, not every speck that’s ever been splattered on this wall!”
Shelley nodded, squinted her eyes, and relaxed her mental grip just a bit.
“Little more,” Granny encouraged. “Jasper, get that whistle out and play her song to help her concentrate.”
Jasper obliged, and as always, his music calmed and focused Shelley’s ability to manipulate her Element. She swayed and twirled her fingers as though she was running them through water. She called, and the paint came, a swirling, glimmering stream, straight into the marked jar.
When the wall was clear, Granny clamped the lid shut. When she heard the noise, Shelley opened her eyes and risked a glance at her hands. She sighed, relieved; her hands were clean, except for the blue sigils Granny had drawn, now much faded.
“This is going to be useful,” Granny said, and Shelley glanced over to see the glass jar filled with swirling paint.
“You can use that?” Jasper asked.
“Oh, there are many uses for worked paint, my boy,” Granny assured him. “Now, we still need to deal with that.”
Shelley looked and grimaced. They’d cleared the new paint, but the discoloration from the failed mural working still remained.
Granny patted Shelley’s shoulder. “It’s going to be fine. The original working is weakened both from the new working and the cleanse we just did. All we need now is some sage and salt infused water, and elbow grease.”
Shelley sighed. “I’m glad you’re here to help, Granny.”
Granny quirked an eyebrow. “Me? Help? You two did the working, you two do the cleaning. I’ll be right back.” And she whisked out of the room.
Jasper eyed the window. Shelley elbowed him in the ribs. “Don’t even think it. She knows where you live.”
Granny returned, carrying two buckets – one empty, one full of sage-smelling saltwater – some sponges, and a couple of painting drop cloths. She helped spread out the cloths, then took a seat in Shelley’s desk chair and pointed to the wall. “Elbow grease. Jasper, if you could hum or sing, and Shelley-girl, you need to pull the water and the residue of the old working off the wall and deposit it in the empty bucket. Let’s go, hottentots.”
For the next two hours, Jasper and Shelley scrubbed the wall. Jasper hummed, Shelley shuffled and swayed a bit while she cleared the water and the old working off the wall. It was stubborn, but finally, it came clean. The room smelled of salt and sage, but the effluvium in the now-filled bucket was a gray-green color, like ancient mop-water. Shelley and Jasper both peeked in.
“Ew. So gross,” Shelley declared. Jasper agreed.
Granny stood. “Dry those sponges out, Shelley. Pull the moisture out until they’re completely dry.”
Jasper whistled and Shelley pulled until the sponges became small and hard.
“Perfect,” Granny declared. “I’ll take them now.” She gathered up the sponges and the bucket. “By the way, Shelley, paint your walls ocean blue. Your affinity is stronger with salt water.”
###
Three weeks later, Shelley and Jasper sat in her newly-redecorated room, chatting about everything and nothing, as they often did.
Jasper surveyed the walls – one painted the blue of the water near the shoreline, the trims and frames the darker blue of deeper waters. Shelley had chosen curtains, sheets, and a duvet in shades of blues and greens to complement the water colors. “I think Granny was right,” he remarked. “This room seems to suit you better now.”
“Mmm, yeah,” Shelley agreed. “I feel much more comfortable in here now. Calmer. Peaceful. Most of the time, anyway.”
Jasper opened the doors of the new nightstand – Shelley had gone with lighter, natural woods that resembled driftwood – and raised an eyebrow. The space was filled with books and pens.
Shelley laughed. “Granny said no more paint for us.”
“Can’t say I blame her,” Jasper said. “But what did you do with your hex bottles?”
“Oh, Mother got rid of them for me,” Shelley said, waving her hand. “I don’t miss them.”
Jasper frowned. “That’s not fair. Could she get rid of mine, too?”
“Dunno,” Shelley said. They both turned when they heard a knock on the door. Jasper, being closest, opened it to reveal Shelley’s mother holding a large box.
“This just came for you,” Audrey said, stepping past Jasper to deposit the box on the bed. Shelley bounced up. “A present! Yay!”
She looked at the address, “Oh! It’s from Granny!”
She grabbed a pair of scissors from her desk and slashed her way into the box. Inside, there were a couple of large, bulky parcels wrapped in paper and bubble wrap, a smaller box, and an envelope on the bottom addressed to both Shelley and Jasper in Granny’s handwriting.
“Hm. It looks like one of these is for you,” Shelley said, handing Jasper one of the large parcels. Together, they tore through the paper and unwound the bubble wrap to reveal two carved shelves. Shelley’s was driftwood, chosen to match her new furniture, carved with waves and sea creatures, while Jasper’s was a medium cherry wood, carved with musical notes and stylized instruments.
“Oh wow! These are beautiful!” Shelley exclaimed. She lifted out the smaller box and opened it to reveal her missing hex bottles, with fresh wax seals, and neat labels showing the date and a summary of the hex contained inside. “What? I don’t want these! I thought you got rid of them!” Shelley turned to face her mother.
“I did. I just never said it was permanent,” Audrey replied. “Read your grandmother’s letter.”
Frowning, Shelley opened the letter. Jasper crowded close to read over her shoulder. She read it, then read it again. Beside her, Jasper muttered, “She can’t be serious?”
“She can,” Shelley’s mother affirmed. “Your Uncle Harlow carved these, Shelley, and you’re both to hang them and keep the hex bottles displayed. As your grandmother says, a witch must acknowledge and learn from their mistakes.”
Shelley grimaced, but knew that the shelf and bottles would be displayed in her room, no matter her objection.
“Oh,” Audrey said. “I almost forgot. She left these for you two as well.” Audrey reached into her pocket and came out with two bottles, each one stuffed with a dry, desiccated sponge.
James says: This is another good look into the lives of some of our characters long before their college years and the formation of the Perfect Coven. And again, we see Jasper and Shelley getting into trouble by attempting more than they’re actually capable of doing. This time, at least, they’re a bit more able to deal with the consequences of their working. After some of the stories we’ve written about these two, I have one serious question: Why do their parents let them remain friends?
Note from Sid: I honestly think they’ve determined that it’s safer than the alternative!
Mickie says: Well, I needed this laugh after the month I’ve had. I think we need to have college-aged Shelley and Jasper get up to more trouble than they have so far (not that they didn’t have a couple of doozies already). Who would get caught in the middle? And who would fix the mess? There’s no way they’ve matured that much by college! This was fun!