Thursday's Child Would Like A Word With Management - A Tale Of Workaday Witchery by M. K. Dreysen

This week's story is one more Tale Of Workaday Witchery; after this, I'm out of them for the moment. They came to me in a three-day rush in May.

I had to re-write the Friday story from scratch. Jesus saves, children, and so should you.

Ok, behind-the-scenes moments aside...

The lost come to us on the wind. Voices of desparation. Of terror.

They look for hope. For a place to run to. A quiet spot in the road, really, from there to wherever.

Morgan hears such a lost voice in this week's free story, dear reader. I wonder who needs a little respite and a bit of a hand up?

This one I call...

Thursday's Child Would Like A Word With Management - A Tale Of Workaday Witchery by M. K. Dreysen

The voices should not come in so strong of a workday.

It said so right here on the tin. The one Morgan kept on her desk. One of the actual antique coffee tins, as opposed to the dimestore remakes Maxwell House and Folgers had started putting out to cash in on the nostalgia train. Morgan's tin collected post-its, pennies and nickels through the slot in the top.

Wishes and curses from the ether while Morgan put in the butt in chair time. Such was the tin's purpose. Repository for requests for help. Pause button.

This one bypassed the wish catcher. No screams. Or burning pain. Only "Please," and the salt of a tear.

Morgan's daylight job did have perks. Precious little monotony, that was a big one. Work from home, nice. No particular schedule, glorious. The constant work cell companion had its moments, but all in all Morgan very much enjoyed the way life had worked out. Except for moments like this.

When the twilight job drifted out of the tin. She gave it a good hard look. "What happened, you on vacation?"

The red can ignored her. Huffily. Which it could do. The last time this happened had been because the tin was stuffed way past capacity. So, that time was her own fault, really.

Morgan teased the can's lid open, expecting a flood of plaintive. Only, that didn't happen. No wash of regrets, of hopes tied to lost dreams.

In fact, the can was empty. "You're not exactly soothing my mind here," Morgan told the can.

Which ignored her. The can's job was to hold the requests. Anything outside the slot, and Morgan could figure it out herself. Who's the witch here, anyway, the can didn't ask.

She drummed her fingers on the can. Then on the desk. When neither of these sufficed, Morgan sighed. "Maybe this is just the universe telling me I need to get up and walk around?"

The request came around again. No tear this time. Just, "Please." A child, maybe? Teenager?

Under normal conditions, a request caught in the tin could be traced. Well, more easily traced, anyway. Morgan had had more than one reason on her mind when she'd put the charm together. Wishes, in her experience, didn't come with well defined backtrails.

There were far too many for that. Playoffs gave Morgan headaches. And the one time she'd visited Vegas, she'd spent the night on her hotel room floor, in tears, carpet fuzz ripped from the pile and threading her fingernails.

Humans generate wishes the way a dolphin blows bubbles, in Morgan's experience. Thus, the tin.

Still. She had the old ways.

Any city would have been a vast, echoing storm in Morgan's head. Distance matters naught, not to hopes and dreams. So when the tiny little brass cross (she'd guessed correctly), faint green tracing the knotwork she'd always been too fearful of polishing, rotated south, and not north into Houston, Morgan sighed in relief.

Not downtown, not east or west or southwest, but true south. Which, sure, if she got to Galveston and the cross still wanted her to keep going...

She didn't go so far. Just to Friendswood. Or, almost.

First time she'd passed the skate rink, Morgan had ignored it. Kind of like the bowling alley a few miles north of it, the skating rink couldn't have still been there.

The rink and the alley had, of course, ignored Morgan's ideas of anachronism entirely. As they should have, she admitted. One thing she enjoyed about her job, the twilight one, and that was the way the spirits went about their lives. Adapted, fed on, endured the humans that dreamt and then forgot them. Mostly.

The child, and yeah, he was a teenager, had been drawn to the rink by something he didn't want to admit to. Not to Morgan, anyway.

The rink shared its parking lot with another little shopping center; probably the same owner, Morgan figured. Given the way both buildings fought the battle with age and minimal updates.

A canal bound the back side of both buildings. A cooperative canal, between Pearland and Friendswood; the skate rink sat on the one side of the boundary, the little shopping center just to the south on the other.

The towns had split the costs of upgrading the flood canal, expanding and restructuring it, after the last hurricane. Which had reminded every one of the area's residents that there would be another.

The rink whispered to Morgan. Of relief. That the subdivision on the other side of the canal could go no farther. No canal, and the developer would just have bought out the rink's owner.

She parked in front. Still well before lunch time, well before any self-respecting teenage wheeliac would come anywhere near the rink, so Morgan had her choice. The car would broadcast meanings, though.

September. Still hot enough to bite and press when Morgan stepped out.

The whisper repeated. "Please." Morgan looked to her dashboard; the cross, just a brass form with no figure bound to its face, lay there on its back. Balanced on the head of a needle pressed into the dashboard's foam. The cross pointed to the trees that bound the canal.

"Ok," Morgan whispered. "Where are you, kid?"

She didn't send a charm. Not if she didn't need to. Like with the car, she didn't want to spook the kid. That the kid's plea had bypassed her catcher told Morgan she should be patient.

And, a little wary. Which, it turned out, was a good thing.

This one was a planner.

"I haven't seen a suitcase like that one in years," Morgan said through the willows.

The kid sat in the middle of the copse; the towns had encouraged the trees, one of those rare times when the wildlife receive, if not a say, at least a passing acknowledgement. Morgan saw it, the kid's realization she was coming his way: his shoulders twisted, bunched.

Like he'd prepared himself for the yelling, and now the time had come to brace himself. "I've had it since I was a baby," he told her.

A blue pasteboard case, brass locks, the suitcase was barely outside the carry-on limit. Morgan sensed books in it. Smelled the dust and the binding of favorites well worn. Maybe a change of clothes, jeans and t-shirts carrying a similar feeling as the books.

Comfort.

She waited until he felt like talking about it. Worked through... fear, that one, the big one. "He doesn't beat me," the young man started.

Morgan acknowledged the truth of his statement. So far as it went. "But..."

He drew. Played trumpet. Listened to Mozart, preferred Liszt.

He wanted to be an engineer.

"Mechanical?" "Electrical. Mostly. Circuits, micro-machines."

She nodded, waited a little more. This one didn't quite fit, yet. So she just had to be patient.

He played with the handle on the suitcase. In his mind, Morgan viewed pieces, memories of the day a week and a bit ago when he'd packed the case and walked out of the door. Three in the afternoon, when they were both still at work. "He says, if I was as smart as I thought I was, I'd go to business school. 'Hell, even law school. At least that way you'd make some real fucking money.'"

"Wants you to move and shake?"

"'We fuck engineers for breakfast. Steal their shitty ideas and sell them before anyone knows whether they work or not.'" The kid shrugged. "I put Purdue, A&M, on my test forms."

The list of five; the memory of it flashed through the kid's head, and Morgan's. The way his stomach turned, filling out the computer's request: Which schools do you want us to send your results to? Forcing himself to make the butterflies go away, deep breath deep breath, because he kept having to go back and correct his answers until the nerves finally quit screaming.

The kid had filled his list with engineering schools. The list was private, he'd told himself. He won't ever find out.

Except the kid didn't anticipate the number of flyers. The box full of the damned things; A&M started mailing them in December. By March, the maroon-decorated envelopes came three times a week.

Sometimes five. The kid's father loomed in his mind, again. "I didn't raise a goddamned Aggie. I'm gonna have me a motherfucking bonfire in the front yard with all that maroon shitkicker puke."

And, of course, he had. A week and three days back. The kid remembered more than anything old man Brannegan, three doors down, passing by in his ancient Volvo and shaking his head.

The kid had sent the acceptance letter just that same morning. Through the school counselor's office; Mrs. Lopes wasn't exactly sure what was going on, but she'd happily conspired anyway.

As best Morgan could tell, the kid had made it about twelve, fifteen miles. If the compass in his head was accurate.

The acceptance letter had been for a full ride.

Morgan had listened to the plea. Downstairs to the fridge, bottle of water and a note for the better half, in case Fayela got home before she did. "Please," whispered in her head, in the car. Now.

He just needed a few weeks. And maybe a ride to Bryan-College Station.

****

Morgan had vowed to herself, years ago, "No more strays."

Which lasted about a week. When Trelasia Princess Tux, Mistress Mousecatcher and Chief Desk Nuisance, had shown up in the backyard, and remained yet as the Only Home's most important cat.

Most other strays they managed to get to the adoption centers, or the shelters in case of the human lost, before anyone had the chance to impress the couch cushions. Fayela loved Morgan's ethic, but she'd also posted her limits. "Two cats, two little dogs, and no more."

Which Morgan had, mostly, stuck to. The kid didn't come into the list; he wouldn't be taking up the spare room.

Well. Sort of.

Ten years in residence and there could be precious few nooks and crannies Fayela didn't know of. The door to the attic certainly did not qualify.

Normally. Morgan talked to the house. No flattery. No false promises of new caulk, new paint. Morgan knew her limits, and those of the bank accounts.

She had to promise a new flower bed. Tulips in February and maybe a chrysanthemum. No more roses, the house declared.

They both of them knew that might be pushing it. But the house accepted her promise, and expanded just a little in return. "It's basically a dorm room," she told the kid.

"Warren," he said. "Warren..."

"Stop there."

"Oh," he continued. "Um." He looked around the attic room that hadn't existed before. "Good thing I'm kind of short."

Morgan swallowed a chuckle. "I know it's a bit like you're spending the summer in jail." Or one of those summer camps. The kind A&M would be hosting in late July. So he wouldn't have to stay in confinement all that long. "I've got a laptop you can use. And my library."

Warren smiled. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Fayela did find out. Teenagers having the appetites they do, the extra pizza gave Morgan and Warren away. "You could have just asked. I'm not a complete monster."

Morgan tried to head that off before the argument could really get rolling. "This way, he's not actually in the house."

Fayela smirked, pointed at the second cardboard Mario's box sitting on the kitchen counter. "Really?"

Morgan attempted, badly, to not laugh. The half-contained snort hurt when it passed through her nose and threatened to peel her eyelids. "Ok, you got me."

"Engineers..." Fayela muttered.

"Hey, now."

"Did you finish that new unit drawing?" Fayela asked.

"Oh, Christ." Morgan ran back up to her monk's cell.

"I'm keeping track!" Fayela yelled up the stairs. "That's three Friday's since January you owe me!"

The lady on the tin can hid her smile behind her hand. "Now don't you start," Morgan muttered.