Dias left a gift on my doorstep, wrapped in a brown paper bag tied with fancy purple shoelaces with stars and spirals. I chewed my lower lip. I sent him away: I chose someone else. Yet he brings a present. I shook my head. What’s wrong with him?

“Tis present season,” he said. “Here’s one for you. Open it. So we can be done.”

“No! I’m done now!” He went away, sad in his shoulders. This morning I found a box at my door. I left for work.

I know that was stupid. Dias can be many things. Not easy to end an affair with a Mage or Shapeshifter.  Curiosity could kill a cat, but I was curious. I left it. Someone might steal the box before I get home. I suppose it should come with a warning.

This box may contain Magic.

But then, no one would stay away from it, would they? People love magic. What can magic do? Can it hurt me? Yeah, maybe. Magic is invisible unless you see ghosts. Magic does anything the magician conjures. It’s neutral, winding itself from his soul. If he means well, magic is good. It heals sick people, though understand death is also a healing. It blesses with abundance which comes from someone else. Like energy, magic isn’t created or destroyed. We move it around like cash. I take some of mine and purchase groceries. The grocery clerk tucks it into the cash register. The grocer gives some back to the clerks and keeps the rest. It’s called cash flow. Abundance when magic flows to you. Poverty when it does not. See how it works? I was given a box by a skilled magician I tried to send away.  I left the magic box in plain view to tempt a thief. Is that bad? Maybe.

If the magician does not mean well, then the gift must stay shut like Pandora’s Box. She couldn’t resist a present and opened a box full of troubles that flew out like buzzing insects to infest the world with nasties. At the bottom of the box was HOPE, but I think she had to shake it out and encourage it. After being shut up with nasties for eons, I expect Hope has PTSD. If I chance opening my box, what will fly out? Where does it settle? I carry a burden here. Did Dias give me an empty box and leave me alone to fret?

I stopped at the pub on the way home, but I wouldn’t call it happy hour.

I pulled into my driveway in the dark. The automatic porchlight shone brightly on the packages, two of them. Very funny. I parked my car in back, entered through the kitchen. Maybe I wouldn’t use my front door anymore. Not until a porch pirate steals the boxes. Morning arrived. I hadn’t slept well, imagining there would be three boxes at dawn. I was wrong. He left four. One and one are two. Two and two are four. Four and four…he wouldn’t. Surely not. Or was he multiplying them? I could have eight boxes or sixteen when I returned. I left my breakfast on the kitchen counter and drove out the rear alley. No sense looking at my porch clutter.

My mind wandered away writing a Yule feature on Mistletoe and Druids. Mistletoe is magic growing on oaks, but not like an air plant. It strikes an umbilical cord into the tree, sucking out sustenance. People say it doesn’t hurt the oak, but I wouldn’t want a parasite plant stuck on my shoulder that grew berries poisonous to my cats. Druids use it for….. Love Magic. What the hell is in those boxes? I couldn’t write. My editor asked why. What could I say? I have scary boxes on my porch! I mumbled “I dunno” and shuffled to the street. I’d be on that street if I didn’t come up with an article.

“Please, boxes, go away,” I begged. They said, “Stand in your power.” That’s right. If I wait for porch pirates, Dias will simply start another day. That’s what Dias means. Day. It could be today. It could be the last day, the final day, someday. Dias. I can’t beat Dias over the days.

I parked behind my house, but couldn’t stand it. Were the boxes gone? Had they doubled or quadrupled? After a glass of red wine with brie and bread, I decided I should look. Crazy I know. My phone rang. Nguyen, the gentleman I threw Dias over for.

“Noel, what’s going on?” he demanded. I fumbled around for something to say, but he didn’t notice. “My car wouldn’t start this morning. My boss wants to relocate me to Portland, Oregon, clear across the country, and my landlord said he’s renovating the building. All of us in section M must leave by New Year’s. Is this your stupid mage? I’d fight fair, but this magic! I don’t know you well enough.”

I mumbled, “I’ll fix it.” How? Open the boxes. Open the damned boxes!

I looked to see how many. One. One large box. In his handwriting it said Boxes 1-8. Trust me.

Trust him? At least he doubled them. Against my better judgment, I brought them in. The boxes stared at me. I know, boxes have no eyes. They cannot stare. These boxes stared at me. “Trust me”, he said. “Trust me.”

I drank most of that bottle of blended cabernet and finished off the wedge of brie. Around midnight, I gathered my wisps of rational thought and opened the first box. Nothing. I scanned it carefully, looking for a trick, but nothing. Nothing! Except of course another box labeled boxes 1-7. More nothing. Boxes 2-6, the same. I opened them all, tearing the wrapping, strewing it around the couch. Nothing! The bastard. Except for the original box. That sat on the coffee table, tied up with purple shoelaces dotted with moons and stars. I laughed, remembering the diamond tie-tac given for his first birthday with me. Diamonds are my birthstone.  I tied those laces around the little box and hung it from the rearview mirror. I wrote, “Don’t look back.” I hoped we’d always be together. He never put the laces in his shoes. And here they are again. Truth be told, I might have done a candle spell to underscore forever. Damn. He could break it. Is this my fault?

I sat on the couch, laces wound around my fingers, when he tapped on the door and walked in.

“Hi.” He sat next to me as if nothing had happened. I stared hard to read his dark, sparkling eyes.

“What’s in the box, Dias?” trying not to sound like anything. Not mad, not glad, not accusative.

He smiled. “Exactly what you think is there.” He kissed my cheek, then relaxed against the pillows. “Aren’t you opening it?”

“Why, if I know what it is?” I challenged him. He was wrong. I didn’t know between two possibilities.

“Because you have to take or give it back once you’ve opened it.” He smiled. “I know what you did. It’s the same box, same shoelaces. Different paper. Same spell.”

It would be stupid to deny what he knew. I was quiet for a long time. What’s in the box now? The diamond tie-tac returned to break any wisps of magic from years ago? Or newly charged to begin again?

“It’s a present, Noel. Trust me.” Did he deserve trust? Did I? If not his tie-tac, it might be a ring. We fought over a ring. He thought we needed no rings or weddings. I thought we did. What do I think now?

“Trust me to love you, Noel.”

“What do I tell Nguyen?”

“Let him tell you. He’s moving to Oregon. He’ll go without you.”

I hissed and opened the box.

For more details: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/dorothy-abrams

Dorothy Abrams, known as Anemone Webweaver in the magickal community has practiced and taught Witchcraft, paganism, and core shamanism since 1984. Co-founder of the former Web PATH Center, a pagan church and teaching center in Clyde, New York USA, Dorothy served as priestess and teacher weaving the Web of community among local pagans as they celebrated the solar and lunar sabbats. Material for Identity and the Quartered Circle and her other non-fiction titles on pagan thought and practice are compiled from her original seminar materials in eclectic Wicca I-IV, healing, tarot and shamanic intensives. The Wiccan seminars guide students from the introductory level through initiations as healer, storyteller and sage. The shamanic intensives guide students through the practice of drum trance journeys all the way to soul retrievals. With her partner late Merlin and other members of the Web PATH she practiced Reiki and chakra healing. She taught an introductory course on A-mazing Tarot at the local community college When Merlin crossed to the Summerland in 2022, Webweaver moved to a small village in the Finger Lakes and gathered some friends together to celebrate the seasons. . They have called themselves the Brookside Witches.