ANSEN
Copyright©2007 by Ed Howdershelt
ISBN 1-932693-32-7
9781932693324
Chapter One
After mowing the lawn I soaked up some tea to cool down, then went to clean up a bit. The phone rang just as I stepped out of the shower. Thinking it might be the repair shop calling to tell me my car was ready, I wrapped a towel around myself as I hurried to beat the answering machine.
The phone slipped out of my hand and clattered to the table, then I got a better grip on it and said, "Hello? Sorry about the racket, there. I dropped the phone."
A honey-soft female voice asked, "Uh, is this WiccaWorks?"
"Yes, it is. Sorry again. I've been expecting a call about my car."
The woman's voice solidified a bit. "I see. Should I call back another time?"
"No, I'll call the fixit shop later. Hi, I'm Ed. What can I do for you?"
After a moment's hesitation, she said, "A friend said that you might be able to repair a stoneware bowl."
When she said no more for a couple of moments, I said, "Well, we have several flavors of mud and a couple of kilns here, so maybe we can help. How broken is it?"
She then told me how her new kitten had been exploring and had knocked the bowl off a dresser, describing the kitten's panic and how it had hidden under the bed, her efforts to console the kitten, and then her search for all the bits of bowl.
Interesting. She'd comforted the kitten before worrying about the broken bowl. I liked that, but she hadn't really told me what level of damage to expect.
"Ma'am, how's the kitten?"
"What?"
"The kitten. Is he over the incident yet?"
"Uh, well, yes. I guess so. He seems to be."
"Good. And how's the bowl? How many pieces are there?"
"Oh. Uh, five big ones. And some chips. I think I found them all."
"Also good. Are you here in Spring Hill?"
"No, I'm in Crystal River."
"That's not too far. When can you bring the bowl here?"
"Could you look at it today?"
"Sure. It's only one o'clock..."
"I'll be there in half an hour. Thanks!"
She hung up before I could reply. Odd. No 'how do I get there?' or anything like that, and WiccaWorks hadn't been in the phone book since a bunch of harassment calls in the nineties. I got dressed and opened a can of soup, then worked on adjusting the company website's new product pictures.
A bit more than half an hour passed before I heard a car pull into the drive. Looking out the window, I saw a tallish brunette in jeans and a flannel shirt get out of the car with a paper bag and head toward the house.
She wasn't what I'd expected; she wore no jewelry that I could see, not even a wristwatch. In my experience, Wiccans and witches -- not automatically the same thing -- liked wearing jewelry, sometimes quite a lot of it at once.
Moocher, my black cat, beat me to the front door and hopped up on the three cat carriers I keep by the door in case of emergency. I gave him a chin rub and opened the door just as the woman rang the doorbell.
Opening the screen door, I said, "Hi, I'm Ed."
The woman scanned me from toes to hairline and noted Moocher peering around the door's frame before saying, "I'm Ingrid. Pleased to meet you."
Holding the screen door open and containing Moocher atop the carriers, I invited her to come in. She glanced past me into the house, then stepped in and stood to one side as I closed the door, picked up Moocher, and faced her.
She was about five-ten, maybe one-thirty. Almost forty? Close, one way or the other. Attractive, but not due to makeup; she didn't seem to be wearing much, if any.
Her big draw was in the shape of her face and her eyes. Very nice, indeed. She had the kind of face that would make an excellent art deco mask if she'd let me make a plaster cast to work from.
Extending a hand, I said, "Hope you don't mind cats. Moocher thinks everybody comes here to see him."
She hesitated before taking my hand, I noticed. She let go quickly, too.
"So does my Daphne," she said as she patted Moocher, "Are you alone?"
An odd question.
"Yup, but I have ol' Mooch for protection. His name is actually Mucha, as in Alphonse Mucha, but if he thinks you have food, he's right there instantly."
Nodding slightly, she glanced around the house, then seemed to study me almost critically. It occurred to me that she might be man-shy or even a lesbian. I stepped past her into the kitchen, set Mooch down on the floor, and offered her coffee or tea.
"Sweet tea in a can or instant coffee," I said, "Coffee you assemble yourself to your own liking. The cups and fixings are by the pot."
"Coffee's fine," she said.
She handed me the bag and took the cup I offered, then she approached the coffee pot as I set the bag on the table and opened it. Five big pieces and a plastic baggie of smaller bits. Yup. Very broken.
Sipping my own hour-old coffee as I lifted a piece out of the bag, I studied the chunk for a moment, then said, "Ingrid, this isn't stoneware. It's real stone. Someone carved it."
I couldn't immediately identify the type of stone, which surprised me. Its surface felt almost like alabaster, but not quite, and the broken edges were too coarse for alabaster. Intricate designs covered the piece between my fingers.
Without turning around, Ingrid asked, "Can you fix it?"
Shaking my head, I replied, "Doubtful. I don't think this kind of stone would survive a trip through the kiln at three thousand degrees."
Turning away from her half-completed coffee, she walked over to the table and quietly gazed at the piece I was holding, then took it as she said softly, "Well, it was just a thought. Thanks, anyway."
Ingrid's tone was one of disappointment so deeply felt that it surprised me. I looked at her and saw tears welling in her eyes as she set the fragment on the table.
Raising a hand, I said, "Wait one. All is not lost, milady. We might be able to glue it back together, you know."
She shook her head. "No. It has to be whole."
Whole. Right. I grabbed a paper towel and handed it to her. She stared at it for a moment, then took it. I left her to dabbing her tears and went to see how far along she'd gotten with her coffee. There were two sweetener packets to one side of the cup.
"What else needs to be in here?" I asked, holding up the packets.
Her voice was raspy as she said, "Nothing else. Just coffee and a couple of sweeteners."
"Have a seat, then. Tell me about the bowl."
As she sat down and I put her coffee together, she asked, "What do you want to know?"
Moocher hopped up and into her lap as I said, "What you did with it. Stuff like that. Why some other bowl won't do."
"I... uh, I'd rather not discuss that. Sorry."
I stirred everything together in the cup and turned around.
"Ah, yes'm. Of course. Magical stuff. A secret. Got it."
Her gaze narrowed. "Are you making fun of me?"
Stirring her coffee some more as I delivered it to her, I said, "Maybe just a little, to try to jar some info out of you. Did you burn incense in it? If so, I could make you a bowl that would throw heat a little better and wouldn't crack."
She watched me set her coffee down, then looked up with an expression of barely muted displeasure and said, "No. I didn't burn incense in it."
"Cookie offerings? Ritual drinks? Ceremonial salt and water? The usual stuff?"
Her gaze narrowed at 'usual stuff'. In a cool tone, she said, "No. I really think I should go now."
Grinning slightly, I said, "Okay. But why not finish your coffee first and think about where else you can get that bowl fixed? I was just wondering why another bowl wouldn't do, Ingrid. Couldn't you put your symbols on something else?"
After a moment, she said, "They aren't 'my' symbols. I don't think they'd... belong... on anything else."
"Why not? Somebody decided to put 'em on this bowl."
"I'd rather not say."
"Uh, huh. Okay. What if I could glue that bowl back together and make a good replica of it? A whole bowl, as you put it, but one made of another kind of stone?"
Ingrid seemed to freeze solid as she stared at me. Her gaze narrowed again and she picked up the bowl fragment to study it for a moment.
Very softly, she asked, "You could do that?"
"Oh, yeah. Sure. No biggie, just some time and effort."
"An exact replica?"
I shrugged. "Pretty damned close. I'd mold this one to make a copy. The color might be a tad different, and we'd lose some of the size, but..."
Her tone was still soft, but nonetheless almost sharp. "How much? Size, I mean? How much would you lose?"
"Hm. Seven to ten percent, I'd think. The clay replica would shrink as it dried, then shrink some more in firing..."
She interrupted me with, "Can you do it today?"
Her intensity startled me a bit and my short laugh startled and irritated her when I yelped, "Today?"
Looking in the bag, I examined the pieces, considered the details of remanufacture, and shrugged again.
"Ingrid, I can reassemble the bowl and plaster it, but the final applications of plaster would need time to dry thoroughly before I could use the mold. Two days or so. Then I'd..."
With obvious dismay, she blurted, "Two days?!"
"Sorry 'bout that. Some things take as long as they take, y'know. Then the slip would have to solidify enough to be taken out of the mold, the casting would have to dry completely, and I'd have to clean mold marks off the piece and make sure it matched the original as closely as possible before I fired it."
Raising her hand to stop me, Ingrid said, "Look, this is important or I wouldn't ask. Could a replica bowl be finished by Thursday night?"
It was Tuesday. That was really pushing things a bit, but I could use the oven and a hair dryer to hurry things along in the clay stage...
"Maybe," I said. "If all goes well every single step of the way. It's possible, anyway."
In a firm voice, Ingrid said, "Do it. We should at least try."
Sipping my coffee, I thought, 'We should, huh? Maybe this would be a good time to discuss money? She might not be so eager when she finds out what it'll cost.'
"Ingrid, dropping everything else to take on something like this is worth about a hundred bucks to me. Time, plaster, slip, matching the detail, cleaning, firing, and all that. Dunnit before, ma'am. Replications can be a royal pain with this much detail to get just right."
Ingrid's expression didn't change as she reached in a pants pocket and pulled out a money clip, peeled two fifties from her stash, and slid them across the table to me.
Hm. Well, there it was, said and done. I hadn't really wanted to hurry that kind of project, but she hadn't backed down from the price.
With a small sigh, I pocketed the money and said, "Well, in that case, I'll get the glue."
As I retrieved the glue from my house-tools tackle box in the hall closet, I thought I heard the front door open and close quietly, but when I glanced into the kitchen, Ingrid was sitting at the table, studying a piece of the bowl.
When I returned to the kitchen, something was subtly different about the room. I glanced at the counters and cabinets, then at Ingrid and the stuff on the table.
Except that Moocher was no longer on Ingrid's lap, no changes seemed to jump out at me, so the feeling wasn't coming from anything being particularly out of place.
But I had a sense that Ingrid and I weren't alone. It was that 'being watched' sensation that raises the hairs on your neck; a sense of an extra presence that put me on quiet alert, and I guess it showed.
Ingrid asked, "Is something wrong?"
Shaking my head, I looked toward the archway to the front door alcove with a short laugh. "It just feels as if there's someone else in the house all of a sudden."
She gave me a raised eyebrow. I shrugged and took the glue to the table. While sorting the bowl pieces, I couldn't help a few glances over my shoulder and around the kitchen.
Reconstructing the shallow bowl was easy enough. Setting it upside down on some newspaper, I stuck the last few chips in place, then used a hair dryer to set the glue quickly.
The base of the bowl was perhaps four inches in diameter and the mouth was close to a foot wide. The inside of the bowl was perfectly smooth, but odd spiral and angular patterns carved about a sixteenth of an inch deep covered most of the bowl's exterior surface.
I asked, "Any idea what these patterns are all about?"
Ingrid shook her head and said, "No. No idea."
When the bowl seemed solid enough, I lightly sprayed the exterior surface with clear acrylic, dried it with the hair dryer again, then painted the bowl with green soap and began mixing plaster in a plastic bucket. Ingrid sipped her coffee and watched in silence throughout the procedure.
"Any questions so far?" I asked.
She glanced around and said, "Just one. Where's your bathroom?"
"End of the hall. Can't miss it."
As she went to the bathroom and I let the plaster mix thicken a bit, I used my digital camera to take pictures of the bowl from all sides for reference, then measured the bowl and took notes of the average depth of the designs.
That sense of unseen presence seemed to leave with her; I took a breath and looked around, wondering what might somehow be different about the room with Ingrid gone.
Something caught my eye on the floor by the dishwasher. A few strands of inch-long blonde hair lay half in and half out of a patch of sunlight.
I knelt to retrieve the hairs and studied them for a moment. None of my cats had golden hair. Ingrid was a brunette and I'd had no blondes in my kitchen for weeks.
That meant we had company. Although I'd seen only Ingrid, my personal alarms had rung and I hadn't been able to shake that feeling of an extra presence in the room.
After putting my camera back in the computer room, I checked my plaster mix. Almost ready. I thought I heard Ingrid talking softly and wondered what she was doing in there that was taking so long.
When I heard the bathroom door open, I tucked the hairs I'd found under a paper towel on the table and pretended to be studying the mold as Ingrid returned and sat down.
Moocher promptly entered the kitchen from the living room and reinstalled himself on her lap. He seemed oblivious to Ingrid's patting as he stared rather fixedly at the alcove archway.
Glancing in that direction, I saw nothing unusual, but that sense of an extra presence had returned with Ingrid. I moved around the table so that my back wasn't to the alcove and started applying the plaster to the inverted bowl where it rested on the newspaper.
Working my way up to the three stubby little legs, I noted that even the legs had tiny designs on them. Damned tiny designs, at that. I began to wonder if I'd charged her enough for the replication job ahead.
When the plaster had stiffened a bit, I used a plastic scalpel to incise lines that would allow me to create a three-piece mold, then used the hair dryer again as I twitched up smears of plaster to look like tiny curled waves all over the mold.
As I began slicing two-inch wide strips from a two-liter soft drink bottle, Ingrid spoke again.
"Now I have a question," she said. "How long will the plaster have to dry?"
"Half an hour or so, then I'll put plastic strips in the slits and add another layer. That's why I made those little wavelets on the surface of this layer of plaster. They're something for the new layer to grab onto."
"What I mean is, how long before you can take the bowl out of the mold?"
"Oh. Maybe three hours if I put it in the oven at one-fifty with a fan aimed at the oven. Can't rush things like that too much. There's a lot of detail to screw up on this thing."
Nodding, she sipped her coffee, then softly said, "I hope I haven't wasted a hundred dollars."
I glanced up from what I was doing to see what expression might accompany those doubtful words. Ingrid raised a hand and shook her head as she spoke again.
"I just meant that I wonder if the replica will... never mind."
"Will what?" I asked as I tucked a plastic strip into a groove on the mold.
"Never mind, please. I wasn't questioning your work."
Without an answer for that, I simply nodded and began preparing the next load of plaster, applying it quickly in thin swipes so it would dry rock-hard. Ingrid continued watching me work in silence.
Once the last of the second layer was in place, I turned the mold right side up and added plaster to the bottom of each segment as needed to form a supporting base. When the mold could stand upright and level on its own, I again used the hair dryer on it for some minutes.
Clearing her throat, Ingrid spoke above the dryer's noise to say, "I'm sorry, but I can't leave the bowl with you."
Turning off the hair dryer, I looked at her for a moment, then said, "Well, then, I can set out some sheets and towels and you can fight Moocher for the couch. Or you can take everything home with you and bring it back tomorrow."
Her surprised look turned to a narrow stare as she said, "You said you could take the bowl out in about three hours."
"Yup. So I did. But the mold has to dry thoroughly before I can use it, and I'll need the bowl for reference while I work if you want the replica to be as precise as possible."
"I'll bring it back tomorrow."
Glancing at the mold on the table, I said, "Then I'll take the bowl out of the plaster tomorrow. Stay put while I find a box."
There seemed to be a vague, glimmering smudge of some sort inside the bowl. No, not a smudge. Something else. Condensation? Seepage from the plaster? It covered almost a third of the bowl's bottom. I reached with a finger to see if it would rub away.
Ingrid instantly came halfway out of her chair to ringingly swat my hand away and rather piercingly shout, "No!"
Moocher wound up pinned between her lap and the table briefly before he managed to scrabble free and haul ass into the living room in something of a panic.
Rubbing the welt forming on my wrist and hand, I quietly said, "Lady, maybe it hasn't occurred to you that I'll actually have to handle that bowl while I work on it. I'm going to see if my cat's okay, then you can explain why you did that or you can take your bowl and hit the road."
With a sigh, Ingrid tremblingly lowered herself back into her chair, then covered her face with her hands and shook her head slightly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I couldn't let you... I couldn't let you reach into the bowl."
Heading into the living room to find Mooch, I said, "Oh, hey, I kinda gathered that much on my own, ma'am. Back in a minute." Facing the living room, I called Moocher.
He poked his head out from behind the melodeon, then let himself be coaxed into reach and consoled as I checked him. No damage apparent.
When Ingrid walked up behind me, Mooch gave her a wary stare, but didn't try to jump down. Ingrid asked if she could hold him and spent some minutes baby-talking and petting him before handing him back to me.
Holding Mooch up so we were almost nose to nose, I asked, "How about it? You all better, now? Think you're gonna live?"
Mooch responded, "Yaahhh!"
Patting him again, I set him on the floor and said, "Great. See you later," then turned to Ingrid with, "Now tell me why you smacked me and squashed my cat. What's the big deal about the bowl?"
Ingrid bit her lip and fudged. "Well..."
I waited. She fidgeted, then came up with, "I couldn't let you touch that spot."
"Why?" I shot back quietly.
"I... I just couldn't."
Heading for the flattened boxes behind the couch, I said, "Not good enough. I'll pack it up for you and give you half your money back. Maybe you can find someone else to fix it."
As I opened a box and tucked the flaps together, she sputtered, "B-but..."
"No. No buts. I'll have to handle it just to get it out of the mold and handle it some more while I match up the designs. If I can't do that, there's no point in continuing." As an afterthought, I said, "Tell you what, though; you can pick the bits out of the mold."
Shocked, Ingrid whispered, "The bits?"
"Oh, yeah. Bits. No way will that bowl come out of the plaster in one piece. The glue job was just to get the mold made. I was going to reassemble it while the mold dried."
After taping the box bottom and putting a few layers of newspapers in the box, I took some more newspapers to the kitchen and opened them to begin wrapping the mold. Ingrid followed. As I spread the newspapers over the mold, she stopped me.
"Wait," she said. "Let me see something first."
She tore off a bit of the paper and wadded it tightly into a ball, then let it fall into the bowl. It rolled to the bottom and landed on the glimmering smudge, then the paper began to vibrate wildly.
I chuckled. "Well, damn! How..?"
The paper wad began dancing frenetically around the very bottom of the bowl, never quite leaving the smudged area. I reached for my reading glasses and peered through them at the scene in the bowl, but there was nothing more to see. Just the glimmering patch and a paper wad going crazy.
Looking up at Ingrid, I asked, "That's the big deal? It's interesting, but I wouldn't call it reason enough to mash Moocher, hit me, and cancel the job."
Ingrid said nothing as she poked the bottom of the bowl with a pencil eraser. She then sat down and looked up at me as if intending to plead with me.
"Can I trust you?" she asked. "I mean, really trust you?"
"If you can ask a question like that, you already have most of the answer."
She blinked at me and canted her head slightly.
"What do you mean by that?"
"It means you're feeling predisposed to trust me or not and you'll come to your own decision. I'll get another coffee while you think about it. Want one?"
Discovering her cup was half full, she shook her head. I put together a fresh coffee and returned to the table. The paper wad in the bowl was still dancing like a water drop in a hot skillet. I watched it for another few moments as Ingrid studied me.
"What makes it do that?" I asked.
Shaking her head, Ingrid said, "I don't know."
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