“Oh, you’re still below twelve! So lucky!”


“Why?”

“Your magical powers, silly! They haven’t yet dwindled ... unlike mine.”

That’s how I befriended Alice, who reveled in queer words and in exclamation marks. We attended the same afternoon art school but had never talked before.

She read my age while I scribbled an “11” next to a family name I hated. Wholeheartedly. I liked the painting it went with today, though.

“In for a break?” asked Alice in a more civil tone.

“Yup,” I replied and set aside my cherry blossom still-life. (I got the drapery so right.)

We slipped out into the school garden. Alice climbed on top of a hollow metal globe, the last remnant of a playground long lost to bushes of wild roses, and dangled her legs like a first-grader. The iron bars felt cold to the touch.

“Come on, time for instruction!” declared Alice with self-importance. “This is serious! You now know that you possess magical powers. I want you to close your eyes, think about nothing …” Out of curiosity, I gave into the game. She handed me a pencil and a piece of paper. “What is the first animal that comes to your mind? Write it down.” There was something about Alice that made me actually, honestly try. Soon after, my scribbling turned into a word: CAT.

“Wonderful! Very classy!” Alice exclaimed excitedly. “Mine’s a rabbit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Guardian animal! You’ve just found it. It’s like a guardian angel, but better. Don’t laugh, this technique works! Now for the magic skills ... you can start with the easy stuff. Like never missing a bus or avoiding a surprise test. Soon, you’ll figure out your own tricks. Don’t fret, the cat will help you experiment.”

“If you say so …”

“You should have more faith in yourself,” Alice replied.

“So we’re like witches or something?” I changed to a more comfortable subject.

“You can say that. I like the ‘Awakened’ word better,” said Alice. She really enjoyed her complicated words, Alice.

“Anyway, why me? How did you know I could do magic?” I asked.

“Most people could, just many aren’t fit to be told. You seemed all right.”

“Oh,” I blurted. This was not the answer I was expecting. It felt strangely comforting, the idea of not being that much special. But it also made it sound like Alice actually thought magic was a real thing, not just pretend.

“What did you mean earlier, what’s with the age?” I asked.

“Well, after twelve, your magical powers diminish. Can wither into nigh if you don’t practice them. I mean when you get really old, like twenty-five.” Alice looked even more serious now, if possible. “When’s your twelfth birthday?” she asked me.

“Next month,” I said. “I’m a Christmas child.” It sounded somewhat cringy to say it like that.

“Good gracious! We initiated you just in time!” Alice exclaimed, and I wondered what her parents did or where else she’d picked up all those grown-up words.

The bell rang.

“Meet me thirty minutes before next week’s class, so we can continue. And try to practice, ’K?” said Alice and ran off.



Mom was late to pick me up. As usual. She shot a quick glance at my painting.

“Nothing exceptional. I mean, it’s all right, but you shouldn’t think too much of it, you’re not that talented.”

Yes, yes, mom, I know, you say that all the time, I answered in my head, trying not to cry.

“Anyway, what did you get on the biology test today?” she asked.

“B+.”

“What?!? Really, why can’t you get an A for once? Honestly, I sometimes think they’ve given me someone else’s child at the hospital.” Mom taught biology.

“Hana had a B-.” That always worked to shut mom up, mentioning the neighbor girl’s score. Hana’s folks were ostentatiously richer than we were, and mom liked it when I got better marks than Hana. I have to ask Alice if you can change your parents using magic. Or grow up faster.

*     *     *
The following week, I was early for the meeting with Alice, so I dragged my feet along the street leading up to the art school. It was lined with villas. Old villas overgrown with ivy, not the marshmallow-colored gingerbread houses of the suburbs. There was a chair on the pavement, and on it stood a vase full of cherry twigs.

“Barborky, two crowns each,” read a cardboard sign.

I hesitated. I wanted to get some barborky this year. According to the custom, you’re supposed to cut them by yourself. But I also hate to vandalize trees at random. And it felt nice to support the granny who sold flowers from her garden like that ... actually, it just felt right to get them here, from this particular vase. Call it instinct. So I took one branch and left a two-crown, hoping nobody would steal it.

“You could’ve put less, just to look like you’ve paid. Or fake it entirely and take a branch for free. Nobody would know.” That was mom’s voice inside my head. She did those kinds of things, like cheating on trust-based stuff. She called it being thrifty and that communism had taught her that. It made me burn with shame every single time.

“No way! Put it back! That’s dangerous!” That was Alice’s voice. In reality. She’d just come and was staring at me in horror. “It’s from the old hag! I wanted to warn you about her, she’s a witch—”

“Aren’t we too? You told me we had magical powers ...”

“But she’s evil! She might—I better tell you about all those who dwell here, in the Phantom Alley.”

*     *     *
The crone, the cannibals, and the soul-devouring demon in a yew tree of the Phantom Alley were nothing compared to mom’s laughter when I came home with the barborky.

“Looks like someone wants to get out of the house, here. Keep dreaming, you’re not me ... me, when I was sixteen, grandma thought she might need a shotgun to keep all the handsome guys at bay, haha. We won’t be needing one for you, though.”

The usual rant.

Anyway, the cherry tree branch is called barborky, “the Barbaras,” because you cut it on St. Barbara’s Day and hope it’ll bloom by Christmas. If it does, you’ll marry off within the year. Of course, nobody actually believes that now, it’s just the kind of thing you do in Advent time.

“Plus, don’t you think you’re too young for something like that?”

“Whatev’,” I slammed my bedroom’s door shut.

I placed the twig on my desk and looked at it. What if it bloomed on time? What would happen then, now that I could do magic? There was something about Alice, indeed, I realized. Her enthusiasm was so contagious that I caught myself giving in to the game even when she wasn’t around.

That night, my guardian cat visited me in my dreams for the first time ever. We stalked together in forgotten gardens and ran along the winding streets of a city that felt both unknown and familiar, and I was happier than ever before.

*     *     *
When I woke up, there was blood all over my sheets. I panicked. Not because I didn’t know why. I panicked precisely because I knew why. I wasn’t the first in our class, though the queen bee was mighty pissed that even I’d surpassed her in “becoming a woman.” The worst was that I had to tell mom. Eventually. And that was scary. I decided to wait until the afternoon. My stomach crawled for the whole day, and I secretly puked into the pavement-side bushes on my way home.

The upside was, I pulled off the bus trick Alice had told me about. No sheer luck, I was sure of it. When I concentrated, I felt an eerie tingle on my fingertips and then the bus came, completely off schedule. Twice.

At home, mom threw a mother-of-all-tantrums. She screamed. Cried a lot. “Just look at it, daddy, we got ourselves a little princess doll and it has grown,” she told my father. This sounded funny except that it wasn’t. In the end, she shut herself in her bedroom and spent the rest of the evening there, brooding, shoveling down chocolate and smoking. That’s how I knew she was in really bad shape.

*     *     *
The next day found me snuggled in my wardrobe, dialing Alice’s home number. I always took my free fixed-to-fixed calls with friends in there, feeling like nobody would overhear.

“Hi, Alice, it’s me. Sorry, I won’t be coming to art for some time …” my voice trailed.

“My, how come, you sick?”

“Nope, got grounded til Christmas.”

“Goodness, what for?” Alice sounded agitated.

“For coming home like fifteen minutes late. Mom’s nuts these days.”

“Preposterous!” Alice shouted.

I smiled quietly to myself.

“Anyway, I did some real magic today. It was great. It felt like having an extra sense, like being more complete, if that’s possible … you know what I mean, do you?” And I told Alice about the bus summoning. I didn’t doubt the existence of magic now; it was just so subtle most people never noticed.

“That’s amazing! Next time, you should try to figure your own little trick,” she said.

I exhaled. I realized that deep down, I feared Alice might laugh at me, after all.

Suddenly, my bedroom door swung open and in barged mom, throwing clothes all over my carpet.

“Call you later,” I managed to say before hanging up on Alice.

“You iron your stuff yourself from now on, since you think yourself grown-up, I’m not your slave! Do you hear me?” Mom shouted.

“Yeah, yeah,” I answered.

“See you do it, too. It’s time you learned some responsibility, not just living in a mamma-hotel.”

As if I wasn’t helping out with chores already. There was no point saying that out loud; mom just slammed my bedroom’s door shut again.

It took me a while to compose myself enough to dial Alice back.

*     *     *
I followed Alice’s advice and figured out some of my own magic tricks, like getting unnoticed at the ticket control or opening the exact toy I wanted from a Happy Meal. Every time I succeeded, the familiar flow of energy tingled pleasantly at my fingertips. I didn’t look forward to Christmas, though. Christmas meant family. Even worse, my birthday fell on the 23rd. My 12th birthday, when, according to Alice, my magic would start to wane. I felt a strange sense of loss for something that I’d only recently discovered.

*     *     *
It was on one of those nights when I wavered in between sleep and waking when a tall dark figure leaned over me.

“I sacrificed my youth for you and you’re not even grateful!” it said, reeking of cigarettes and wine, filling my personal space with spite.

Making her point, mom departed, stumbling.

Wide awake now, I considered running away, but it was freezing outside … and besides, the police would bring me back to my parents anyway. Because living with one’s parents is the best for the child. Irony sign. I just felt I couldn’t bear being at home much longer, not like this.

I summoned my guardian cat, as usual when I couldn’t sleep in the dead of the night. It appeared, glowing, nuzzling my face with its head, rubbing its cheeks onto mine. “You wouldn’t leave me when I turn twelve, would you ... ?” I asked the cat, and it seemed foolish and natural at the same time. The cat coiled itself in my lap in response. I stroked its iridescent coat.

Sure, the cat had helped me develop my magic skills, but they weren’t enough, just mere tricks, Alice had called them. I mused if we could achieve something bigger. To change my life for the better. I kept stroking the cat’s coat. I didn’t know exactly what should change and how, I just wanted my reality to be different. The tingle and the warm flow. I tried to gather more of it, and it came, making the cat’s coat crackle and the cat purr. I seemed to be on the right track. I dared a faint smile.

*     *     *
My days shrunk into school and long calls with Alice.

But every night, in the small hours when I waited in vain for sleep to come, I tried to gather even more of the tingling energy flow. Night after night, I stroked my guardian cat’s fur while reaching for my magic, concentrating on the wanting of change. I pushed myself beyond hope, determined and slightly desperate. Scared that if I didn’t make it by my birthday, I’d lose my best, if not only, shot.

On the eve of the 23rd, using up the last credit I had, I texted Alice:

came the answer. Funny, I thought, Alice texts abbreviations, before falling soundly asleep.

*     *     *
On the 23rd, my barborky bloomed. I woke up standing leafless in the old lady’s garden, part of my magic gone. Spent.

*     *     *
Every now and then, an iridescent cat comes to scratch its claws on my bark or to rest upon my branches. I don’t know yet what the future holds or how long I’ll stay like this. Meanwhile, I bloom in the Phantom Alley, watching over Alice.