Katie MacAlister - The Art of Stealing Time

“Ticket, yes. Passport, right here. Boarding pass . . . dammit. Where did I put that? I know I printed it out.” I did a little dance peculiar to people arriving at an airport, the one where you slap various pockets and juggle luggage, magazines, and purses in order to peer into every easily reached receptacle. Finally, I found the sheet of paper I’d printed before leaving my mothers’ flat. “Gotcha! All right, I think I’m set. I just hope the security line isn’t too long.”

People streamed past me out of the tiled corridor that led to the airport tube station, hauling luggage, children, and parcels of every size as they traveled the moving sidewalks, escalators, and plain old stairs into the airport proper.

A woman next to me, pausing to wait for two bickering teenagers behind her, yelled in a flat American accent that she would happily leave them behind in Wales if they didn’t get their asses in gear. She caught my eye as I was rearranging my travel documents to be readily available, giving me a grimacing smile. “I swear, I’m never traveling with kids again. Everyone said I was crazy to bring them along with me, but I thought they’d be old enough to appreciate seeing another culture.”

I glanced back to where the teen girl and boy were arguing over what appeared to be a carrier bag filled with magazines. “Didn’t work out as you planned, eh?”

“Lord, no! And we still have Amsterdam and Germany to do. How I’m going to survive another week is beyond me.” She gave me an appraising look as I finished tucking away my magazine, stuffed my purse (denuded of travel documents) into my carry-on bag, and pulled out the handle of the monstrous wheeled suitcase that housed the bulk of my possessions. “You’re American, too?”

“Actually, I was born here in Wales, but I’ve lived so long in Denver that I pass for American.”

“Ah. Here on business?” the woman asked. If she had been British, I’d have wondered what was up, but many decades of living in the U.S. had made even the most personal of questions seem totally natural when asked by a relative stranger.

“You could say that. My mothers live in a small town near the coast. I visit them every six months or so.”

“Mothers? Plural?” Her forehead wrinkled for a moment, then smoothed out quickly with an “Oh! You mean your mother is . . . How . . . interesting.”

My mouth tightened. If she was going to be one of those people who hated on my mothers, I would have a thing or two to tell her.

She shrugged, turned back to warn the still-arguing teens that they had exactly three seconds before she would abandon them to the airport staff, and said simply, “It takes all kinds.”

“It certainly does. Good luck with your trip,” I said politely, and gathering up my things, I moved off before she could say anything more. The experience had left me feeling a bit prickly, which in turn made the inevitable delays at the security lines all that much more annoying. But a memory of my mothers’ teaching about tolerance got me through it without once wishing I could remember the spell to give people ingrown toenails.

I had just settled down in the waiting area with all the other people who would be on the flight to Orlando (my connecting flights to Chicago, and then Denver would extend the trip by another seven hours) and pulled out my tablet computer to see if there was any news in the alchemists’ forum, which I frequent, when my cell phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.

The number displayed on the phone didn’t ring a bell. I ignored the call, figuring it was just another solicitation to try some service or buy something that I didn’t want, so when the phone buzzed a second time, I started to turn it off.

Mom Two, the text said above the photo of a face almost as familiar as my own. I frowned. I’d had somewhat hurried good-byes earlier with both my moms, hurried because of some bizarre notion they had that I was in danger and the sooner I got out of Wales, the safer I’d be.

“Hi. What’s up?” I asked, answering the call. “You can’t be missing me already, Mom Two. I left you guys less than . . . what . . . four hours ago?”

“Of course we miss you, Gwen. We always miss you when you leave. But that’s not what I wanted to say, although I do, in fact, miss you despite having seen you earlier this afternoon before you went to the airport. Your mother misses you as well, although just at the moment she’s a bit busy with Mrs. Vanilla. I just wanted to warn you to keep your eyes peeled for that besom in a cherry red dress.”

“Besom?” I tried to dredge through my mental dictionary. Mom Two, aka Alice Hill, my mother’s partner for longer than I’d been alive, had once been a headmistress at some posh girls’ school and frequently used words that most people didn’t recognize. “A woman? Wait, you’re not still talking about that woman who you claimed was chasing me at the shrink’s office yesterday, are you? Because I thought we worked that out.”

“We didn’t work it out. We simply decided that since we lost the besom in the mad dash from the psychologist’s office—which, really, was a complete waste of time since Dr. Gently couldn’t cure you of that wild notion you have that you died and went to heaven and came back to earth—we decided that we’d just stop talking about it, which would placate you. Your mother felt strongly that your last day with us should be a happy one. It was a happy one, wasn’t it?”

“Very happy,” I said, my brain a bit of a whirl with the conversation. Mom Two, when she really got going on a subject, could talk circles around you to the point where you didn’t know which of the many conversational tidbits to follow. I decided to go with the most obvious one. “And I’m not crazy. I did die. I did wake up to find myself in Anwyn, which incidentally isn’t heaven. It’s just an afterlife, like the ones you Wiccans go to when you die.”

“Nothing is like Summerland,” Mom Two said complacently, then evidently clapped a hand over the bottom of her phone for a few seconds, if the muffled voice was anything to go by. “Not even the Welsh version of the afterlife. Especially since your mother tells me that there are all sorts of legends tied up with Anwyn. But we will discuss that another day. I must dash, Gwen. Your mother sends her love. Mrs. Vanilla would most likely send her regards as well, but she doesn’t speak. We just wished to remind you to be on guard. Do not talk to any women with short dark hair and red wool suits! Shun them, Gwen. Shun them with all the power of your shunningness!”

Mom Two was also prone to making up words where they didn’t exist. “Who’s Mrs. Vanilla?” I asked, a faint sense of unease tingeing my amusement with the conversation. I adored both of my mothers, even though they were sometimes scatty when it came to focusing on the here and now, but as a rule, Mom Two was the more reliable when it came to making sense out of confusion.

“She’s our student.”

“Wait . . . I thought you guys were taking the entire summer off from classes so that you could focus on renewing your bond to the craft.” Wiccans varied widely in their beliefs, but most found it necessary periodically to recharge their spiritual batteries through some communing with nature, study, and bonding with fellow Wiccans.