eshusplayground:
At first, Regina thought Mama Odie was joking.
Then, she was certain that Mama Odie was out of her mind.
When Mama Odie held out the composition book (“Go ‘head and take it. You know I’m blind!”), one of those cheap kinds you get for a dollar, the kind she’d bought for Henry many times, she said, “What’s this?”
"Dis how you gon’ learn mo’ ‘bout magic than you thought you ever could."
She carefully took the speckled tome from Mama Odie’s wrinkled brown hands that made her think of the shells of Brazil nuts. All of Mama Odie’s secrets were finally being passed down to her. This is what she’d been working for. This was why she’d come here.
She reverently opened the cover.
It was blank.
She turned a few pages.
Blank.
She shut her eyes and emptied her mind. Perhaps this could reveal the hidden magic within the book.
Still blank.
"Mama Odie?"
"Uh huh?"
"This is blank."
"Sho’ is."
"How is a 99-cent composition book with nothing in it going to teach me more about magic than I ever thought I could learn."
Mama Odie smiled wide, showing her pink gums.
"E’ryday ‘fo you go to bed, you gon’ write down what you learn ‘bout magic dat day."
"Wait, wait, wait. You want me to keep a journal?"
"Da’s right. And no cheatin’ and writin’ down the same thang you wrote befo’. E’ryday it betta be diff’rent."
Mama Odie, despite being blind, somehow knew Regina had rolled her eyes.
"Just for that," said Mama Odie, "You gon’ help me skin the gators for my stew."
It took her a week to finally get the smell of alligator guts off her.
In the beginning, she wrote in what she called her magic journal only in the most perfunctory sense. She simply repeated things Mama Odie told her, disjointed phrases with no coherent thread binding them.
A couple of weeks into her assignment, she began writing commentary between paragraphs and in the margins. It started out as her way of quietly rebelling against the being told what to do (“This doesn’t make any sense. Why is she making me do this?” “I should write in the same gibberish she’s teaching me, but somehow I know she’d know that’s what I did.” “How am I supposed to write what I learned about magic when we haven’t even said the word ‘magic’ in three days?”). Somewhere along the way, she started adding notes about the rest of her day to amuse herself (“I smell like fish guts.” “I miss my shower.” “I hate okra.” “I found Mama Odie’s dentures. I wish I didn’t.”).
But then, something shifted. A door opened. A light turned on. A fire was lit.
She’d been skinning swamp rabbits—they were actually huge rats, but Mama Odie calling them swamp rabbits did make eating them less unpleasant—and watching the scenery. As moments passed, and her mind slipped away, she felt It. A presence, an energy, surrounding yet penetrating. Moving, always moving, flowing from one thing into the next as easily as water or air. Sky and stars, wind and water, trees and soil, birds and beasts, insects and earthworms. The skinless swamp rabbits, the knife in her hand, herself. Then, as if a veil were being lifted, the boundaries between worlds went away, and she could see shapes, colors, lights, and shadows that had no discernible source, and then she knew that they were beings in themselves. There was no yesterday, no tomorrow, just an endless now.
It was like magic, but bigger somehow, deeper. Perhaps magic actually came from it.
Then it was gone.
That night, she filled an entire composition book. When she read her words the next day, she barely recognized herself in all the talk about energy beings and deeper mysteries of consciousness and magic as the union of science, art, and religion. She would have thought all of it had been written by someone else if she did not recognize in the handwriting the quirks of her own penmanship and a small note in the margins that read, “Jeet Kun Do.”
With the exception of Kiki and Mama Odie, no one knew how much she loved Bruce Lee movies, how much she admired his philosophy and his unique approach to martial arts, how much she would’ve loved to be able to learn from him.
Could there be a way to combine principles of Jeet Kun Do to magic?
A dozen composition books later, Regina was still trying to find out.
Oh woooooooow! I’m reading through all of them chronologically right now and this one really stood out to me. Beyond going back and forth between being in awe of the storytelling (especially Regina’s relationship with Mama Odie and her recollections of her life before coming here) and humor that had me outright giggling, how you describe magic here and Regina learning it. It’s perfect. Regina’s frustration at how mundane it all seems is such an interesting thing to see. I’ve seen you make some posts about wanting to explore a different kind of magic than is usually presented in fantasy, and it’s neat to see it being put into the context of a story. And just… the whole “union of science, art, and religion” YES YES YES!!!!!!! I looooooove that so much!!!! Ahhhh I can’t wait to see this all explored more in later fics!