The most fundamental drive for the human mind is the pursuit of community. And that is why, on my first showing, I knew that 186 Abacus Avenue was where I was meant to live. The listing was not in any newspapers or flyers, wasn’t posted outside the building, and none of the agents I asked had ever even heard of the place.
So how, you may ask, did I find it?
It found me, of course.
I was doing my usual delivery rounds—only pizza would have had me out of this late—when I came across an address I didn’t recognize. I pulled off where my map indicated, only to find a wide alley mouth and a sign proudly displaying the address with an arrow.
I must have stood there for some time, weighing my options, when a high, raspy voice called out, “Hi dearie, are you delivering to 186?”
She was short and wrinkled and vibrant in her garish yellow rain jacket.230Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmAaS87DTJg
I nodded and held up the slightly steaming black travel bag.
“I live there,” she said. “I’ll show you the way.”
She made it about thirty steps into the alley before turning around and seeing me rooted in place.
“Come now. Come, come.”
I decided if this old lady mugged me, I deserved it.
We walked in silence until she took a sudden left and plunged into the dark. I stopped and looked around, my heart beating in my ears like a gong.
“Apologies, darling, I had forgotten how dark it is to untrained eyes.”
She was surrounded by a sudden ring of flickering yellow light. “I swear it on all things unknown, you are safe with me.”
I messed up. I messed up. I messed up., I repeated in my head.
And amazingly, I trusted her.
And after that, I never strayed even a single foot from her side. Not even when I noticed she wasn’t carrying a light source yet kept glowing all the same.
As we walked, I noticed more signs on the wall pointing the way, and all of them—except for that first one—repeated: Turn left. Only left.230Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdpHzanob0q
Left after left after left, until I was sure I was spiraling.
Then we came across a T-intersection.
“Left or right?”
“Right,” I said instantly.
She nodded, then went left.
I watched her go and be swallowed by the tangible dark. I took a deep breath, turned to the right, and stepped into it.
The blackness parted like a curtain, and the familiar yellow rain jacket stood before me.
“Fun?”
“No,” I said, but I was nodding and couldn’t wipe the smile from my face.
She smiled back and held out her hands.230Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7rg5LaciQT
“My name is Sappho. I believe the pizza is for me?”
Aghast, I checked and confirmed she was correct. I handed over the warm box and she flicked her head toward the glowing courtyard beyond.
“Care to join an old lady for supper?”
I found that I did, and she was my last delivery, so why not?
The building itself was beautiful: constructed from reddish-brown brick in a Creole-style architecture with spacious wraparound balconies and an uncountable number of hanging plants… and rain.
It was raining on the building and nowhere else.
“It’s beautiful, but how?”
“How what?”
“How everything?”
“You’ll figure it out. Come, let’s eat. Food helps.”
I just let her lead the way, still in total awe. The building was bursting at the seams with life. As we ascended the front steps, we passed under a woven canopy arch where squirrels and chipmunks leapt over from branch to branch, pursuing a flittering, flapping flamingo. Wait. Flamingo? The front doors slammed open and released two young girls in a fervent game of tag. And everywhere I looked were benches and tables with people sitting and chatting over tea and colourful drinks.
Looking around, I couldn't believe this was hidden in plain sight in the middle of New York City. Sappho led me through the open courtyard and up a spiralling staircase that wrapped a support pillar, passing many stories of apartments. On the third floor, one door caught my eye. Apartment 3J. There must have been a miniature sun inside, for the door could barely contain the golden glow escaping through the frame, and a fan of glittering light sprawled through the gap between the floor. Still, we walked. We reached the top, where a dip in the tiled roof revealed a tall walnut door.
Her attic apartment capped the building. Each ‘room’ was a hallway with a different purpose or aesthetic, and there were no inside dividers or walls, making her apartment into a square ring; a single, continuous hallway looping around the courtyard.
Stepping inside, the elderly woman directed me to the left. “Two left turns, dearie, and you’ll find some sofas. Have a seat, and I will bring us some tea.”
She walked and disappeared around the corner to my right, and her short heels clicked for a long time as she walked, never stopping but only gradually fading out of earshot. Perplexed, I elected to listen to her and took the left hallway. The next ‘room’ was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves much too tall for a person of my own or Sappho’s stature, and a Burgundy-black colour scheme in contrast to the royal blue of the entry space. I tried to scan the titles, but very few of the books contained text on the outside at all, and some shelves held more scrolls than tomes. Still, I continued along. And as she said, I found myself in a different room upon turning left. This one was painted in peachy orange and yellow and pink pastels, with sunlight so warm-toned it looked almost solid as warmed a divan.
Basking in the sunlight, I could no longer deny the feeling of rightness, like being red-cheeked and holding a mug of hot chocolate after playing in the snow, or curling up in your parents' bed after a nightmare. Something biological in me screamed I was where I needed to be, and my worldly concerns suddenly seemed trivial.
After a short time waiting, I decided to see if Sappho needed any help. So, standing, I walked over to make a third left turn to the room she went to. After all, the fourth hallway could only be the kitchen. But when I turned left, the room that greeted me was not a kitchen. Art and paintings littered the walls and the ceiling in places; some in gilded frames, others loose prints. But no Sappho, and indeed no tea. The art was arranged in nearly concentric radiating patterns, overlapping in places but mostly separate, like gradually expanding fireworks. As I looked closer, I saw the groupings were of similar art styles and techniques, like an abstract piece surrounded by pieces of nonsensical colours and shapes that gradually focused into identifiable objects and scenes the further you stray from the centre. Some depicted the same place or person. One grouping I was sure was the same ivy-coated castle from different vantages and proximities.
So, geometry has broken.230Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5zubJFQpss
I tore my eyes away from the almost-schizophrenic art and briskly walked to the end of the hall to make the final left back to the entrance door. I turned left
And it was a large bathroom. A white-tiled rectangular tub filled most of the space, with several large faucets protruding from the walls. The smell of lavender was noxious. But there was no door out. This wasn’t the same room I entered from. And Sappho is nowhere to be seen
How…? I ask myself again.
Four left turns. I repeated them in my head. It wasn’t possible. I peeked around the right corner I had just turned. Still full of weird paintings. And after running to the other end of the bathroom hall, I held my breath and peeked around the left corner.
It was a sun room, a long hallway with no walls and an arched glass ceiling leading all the way to the next turn. There were no bookshelves. No burgundy. No scrolls. Just glass. And it was midday.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. NOPE.
I ran through the bathroom, skidded around the corner and avoided looking at the art, but I nearly smashed my shins on a table in the pastel sitting room as I skidded to a stop. A familiar clicking-walk was approaching. I looked around for a weapon of some kind. Ceramic dishes tinked together. I steeled myself, hoping I would be wrong.
Sappho emerged…from the left hallway ahead of me. We stared at each other.
“I thought I said two lefts, my dear. Not five.”
“Where is the kitchen?” I asked harshly.
She smiled and set the tray down on a small table. “You saw which direction I went.”
I didn’t wait for anything else, running past her down the hallway of bookshelves and around the right. My heart skipped as I saw the familiar walnut door, but I ran past it and around the first right turn.
Three large fires raged in their hearths, and each with something cooking or boiling above. An island countertop ran through the middle, with racks of pans and dishes hanging from the ceiling. And bundles of fresh herbs submerged in wooden barrels of war. Spanish tile climbed the walls in a style I had only seen in photos. My breath caught in my throat.
This is real then.
I turned back, but Sappho was out of sight. Sighing, I padded back through the bookshelves and into the pretty sitting room. The elderly woman — no, she was no longer elderly. Older perhaps, but not old. Her hair was silver at the roots and transitioned into thick black waves. Grey eyes like glass. And high, prominent cheeks on her round face. Unmistakably the same woman. But I knew I was seeing her now as she wished to be seen. She sprawled on a divan that wasn’t there before, and blew over the surface of her steaming spicy tea. She stared intently.
I took a seat opposite her, and picked up my saucer with rattling hands. Blue and white porcelain. Questions buzzed through my mind like flies. All worth asking. But.
“How did you get me here?” I took a sip of an unfamiliar-tasting tea and slowly stilled inside now that the ice was broken. “The pizza order. Me delivering it.”
“Simple attention to detail.” Sappho mused. “Placing orders to different parts of the city at key times.”
“Then you’ve been watching me.”
“For a time. Does that frighten you?”
“Yes.” I considered the question. “Because despite my efforts, I didn’t notice.”
“You are careful indeed.” She sipped. “As am I.”
We locked eyes. I could see the cogs behind her eyes, but not what they said. I took too big a sip and the hot tea scaled my tongue. Everything disappeared in a single instant, and for a moment, there was only pain. Upon the return of my senses, the reality of my current situation came crashing down on me with alarming alacrity. The apartment itself is entirely too good to be true, and somehow impossibly nestled away in the middle of a dense city. And I’m sitting in a stranger's reality-defying apartment drinking her tea. What kind of tea? I nearly dropped the saucer in my haste to be rid of it. I was on my feet, and the lightning beneath my skin almost had me running right then and there.
“Not that. Never that.” Sappho said, also lowering her cup. “But you have forced my hand. In five minutes' time, you will fall into a deep sleep that only I can wake you from.”
Saliva flooded my mouth, and my tongue felt swollen and tensed.
“We are a coven of witches, and some wizards occasionally. Most have lived in this building for centuries—some millennia. You would have a place among us. An apartment of your own, should you choose. But we will not allow anyone here who could be a threat to our secrecy. So we must see if you are a threat.”
My heartbeat thundered so loud I could hardly hear her. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve already done it.” She said, glancing down at my tea. “You will have no memory of the last twelve hours—of meeting me, of finding this place, even this attic. Following this conversation, we will take you back home, and you will continue your life as is. If we deem you worthy, we will contact you again and welcome you back. And you would never know you had already been here. But we would know you.”
I feel as if you already know me. “I’m not a witch.”
Sappho raised an eyebrow. I began to wonder. No. Of course not. How could I be? Witches do magic and brew potions in big cauldrons. I don’t do that. I don’t care about nature; I live in New York. I don’t even own a broomstick.
I raised my eyebrow back at her. She narrowed her eyes at me. I narrowed mine. “Oh, very well, very well,” she muttered, checking her watch. “Yes or no: you’ve always had an eerie sense of events yet to come?”
“Like seeing the future? No. No visions lately.”
“I didn’t say seeing with your eyes. Your gut feelings are strong. You always kind of know what to expect entering any room. You aren’t easily startled.” I rolled my eyes at her. She pursed her lips. “You have been a successful matchmaker; probably played with dolls representing your friends as a child, and then later those people get together.” I breathed in sharply. “Seeing someone and knowing that is going to be the last time your paths ever cross. Seeing someone cry and yourself feel like your heart is breaking.
“You are a witch historian in the making—a scholar of people and the multicoloured experience of life. Meant to stand like a rock in the streams of time, watching all who rush past her and writing their names down to be remembered.”
My jaw was slightly open, and I was staring past Sappho out the window behind her head, at the top of a tree, blowing in the wind. “Apartment 3J. That’s mine isn’t it?”
“Yes. You have been accepted.”
I looked down at the tea. “So I’m not getting knocked out?”
“Heavens no!” She laughed sweetly. “I don’t need tea to do that.” I balked slightly, and she giggled once more before standing and holding out a white-gloved hand. “Come, your sisters have been itching to be formally acquainted.”
“I haven’t accepted yet.”
For the first time and last time, Sappho’s omniscient, likely ancient, mask cracked. Like a cloud momentarily obfuscating the Sun’s full radiance. She stared at me apprasingly, much like before. But this time, it was not from a position of preternatural knowledge. She was reevaluating me once more.
What did our first interaction look like? I wondered.
And stood, extending my hand to shake hers, and stopping just before we made contact. “I do accept, of course. But I am now painfully aware of the skill and knowledge divide between us. So forgive me for wanting transparency before I commit fully.”
Sappho’s strong jaw flexed, and then behind her eyes, the cogs settled and she lowered her hand. I must have been right. Something in that handshake was fishy. Or witchy, I suppose. Her voice was mellow and careful. “Conscientiousness is the foremost quality of a witch. I am reassured you will be a fine addition to our numbers. Now, you must let me introduce you to Tanaquil and Valeria before they start making deja-vu missiles.”
Her voice faded out as she dragged me through the nonsensical hallways of her apartment (“...no idea, Valeria and Tanaquil have been waiting a long time! Tanaquil especially, she…”) and back to the walnut door that separated my new life from the past.
A feeling I’ll have to get used to, I suppose. Still, a witch? Will I get paid? Do I even need money anymore?!
“Ready, dear?” Sappho asked, and I realized she was holding me upright. “I can delay them longer if you need a moment.”
I smiled at her weakly, but there was resolve somewhere in my chest. “I want to meet my sisters!”
230Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ74QE7gF6Jx
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