"Hello! What seems to be the problem?" I greeted my next client with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. It was starting to get late in the day, and the shadows in my office were getting longer. He was middle-aged, but well-muscled, with black hair just starting to grey.

"Tore my rotator cuff at work. Unfortunately I'm a machinist, so I kind of need it. Doc says I need to basically not use it for the next three months before it heals up, and even then they might have to operate. I can get by on workman's comp, but I really want to get back to work, and..."

"And you're hoping I can fix it. Well, you came to the right place."

I gestured to the man to take a seat in a large, comfortable overstuffed armchair next to my desk. My office was a hole in the wall, made more so by the clutter that goes with my line of work. Bouquets of dried plants hung from the ceiling, icons and sigils covered the walls, and the shelves and tables were covered in vials, books, figurines, and tools. A portrait of Biddy Early, the grand dame of Cunning Women, oversaw the place. I went to the nearest shelf and picked up a length of fine cloth. This was my Brat Bride, my Brigid's Mantle, which I had left outside so St. Brigid could bless it when she passed by on the eve of her feast day, January 31st. I hadn't had to use it yet, and I hoped the blessing had taken.

I wrapped it around the man's shoulder, as tightly as I could. Then I recited a charm in Gaelic:

"Brigid went out in the early morning with a pair of horses

One broke his leg, with much ado that was apart

She put bone to bone, she put flesh to flesh

She put sinew to sinew, she put vein to vein

And she healed that. May I heal this."

And I prayed to Brigid, hard. Suddenly I felt a tingle in my fingertips, and warmth spreading through the cloth. Then I felt the muscles and ligaments in the man's shoulder move uncannily, as they knit themselves back together. The man grimaced in pain, but I breathed a sigh of a relief.

In an instant, it was over. I unwrapped the Brat Bride, and stood back. The man stood up, flexed his shoulder, and rolled it about, testing it. "That's incredible," he gasped. "Thank you so much, miss. It's better than it was before. This is..."

"Magical?" I finished his sentence. "That's what I do here. Glad I could help."

"What was that you were muttering? Was that a spell?"

"Sort of," I said. "It was a charm, a prayer to St. Brigid asking to heal your shoulder." It was also originally meant for horses before I modified it, but he didn't need to know that. "It's actually based on an even older, Germanic Pagan charm called the Merseburg charms."

I could see this was probably more than he wanted to know, so I left it at that. "Ah," he said. "Are you a pagan, then? Do you worship the old gods?"

"Me? Nah, I'm Episcopalian."

****

After he paid and left, a woman came in. She closer to my age, in her late twenties if I had to guess. She walked slowly and unsteadily before securing herself in the chair. She told me she had developed some sort of chronic illness a few months back. The doctors had diagnosed it as some form of CFS, but were unable to narrow it down beyond that, much less treat it. Desperate, she turned to alternative means. Could I help her?

Even before she sat down I had an inkling what might be wrong with her. I picked up my hag stone, a round stone with a hole worn through it, and peered at her through it. Sure enough, just below her ribs on her right side, invisible to normal sight, was a dark red blotch. I asked if she could pull up her shirt so I could get a better look at it. She revealed a bleeding wound that no doctor would be able to detect, but that was definitely there. I nodded solemnly, and opened a drawer and pulled out a black wrought-iron set of pincers. Her eyes got wide. I dunked them in a vial of holy water mixed with Foxglove juice, before grabbing a leather strap from another drawer.

"I can fix this. It will only take a moment, but you'll want to bite down on this. I'm sorry, but it's going to be very painful."

She gulped and took the strap and but in her mouth. I put the pincers on the mouth of the wound and started pulling. The skin around the wound swelled, and the woman started screaming through the bite guard, her knuckles white as she gripped the armrests. I gave a yank, and the pincers jerked back. She immediately relaxed, and wiped the tears from her eyes.

Held in the pincers was a tiny obsidian arrowhead, obvious made by hand. It was covered in blood. I dropped into a smaller vial of Foxglove juice, and it instantly hissed and dissolved.

"Elf-shot," I said. "Been seeing a lot of this recently. Have been through any particularly wild looking woods, near any fairy rings, anything like that?"

The woman told me she went jogging through the old forest near her house. "Ah, bad luck then. You ticked off some Fae, Lord knows why, and they shot you. This should fix your problems, but I'd stay away from those woods. If you do decided to keep running through there, a cross made of rowan and red thread should hopefully keep them at bay.

She slowly got out of the chair, but even as she did I could see some immediate improvement. Elf-shot was nasty stuff, could easily cripple or kill someone, and you had to know to look for it. I'd been seeing an increase in cases, as my town expanded and people got closer and closer to nature. It was the sort of thing that kept me up at night.

Still, I was glad I was able to diagnose and treat her. She came to me out of desperation, but then again, they all do. Magic is notoriously inconsistent, unreliable, and unpredictable, and no form of magic worked the same for any one person.  It wasn't reproducible in the scientific sense-you could perform a ritual exactly the same twice and get different results (Something that had driven my sister nuts).  But when it did work, it could work miracles.

And so they came. A cough to be cured, a hex to be removed, a missing item located. A dog with a sprained leg, which also got the St. Brigid charm. A woman looking to attract a household spirit; and a man looking to keep his in line. Fertility charms for the garden, and the bedroom. And a whole slew of witch bottles and other magical household protection talismans on back order. Occasionally I'd have a client who was non-responsive, and I'd refer them to a fellow practitioner who might work better. But I was good at what I did, and for the vast majority I had, well, the magic touch. As the best (and, well, only) Cunning Woman in town I had enough of a clientele to keep me busy and keep the bills paid. Sure, it may seem that being a folk magician is all laying ghosts, exorcising demons, and rescuing children from fairyland. And yes, it is that, some of the time. But most of the time it's mundane stuff like this, the little bits of magic to make life easier. I was equal parts physician, therapist, scholar, agriculturalist, and priest. It could be exhausting at times, but I loved my job. That said, I was glad to close up shop for the day and head home.

****

I walked up to the door to my apartment. There was no way I could mistake it for anyone else's-it was covered in chalked inscriptions, runes, and sigils. Can't be too careful. I unlocked the door and put my bag down. Grimalkin, my cat familar, greeted me and informed me of his desire to be fed, so I took care of that first. Then I went into the kitchen and took out a frozen steak and ale pie before tossing it in the oven and making a cup of tea. As my pie cooked, I settled on the couch with my tea and scrolled through #FolkloreTwitter to see what I had missed during the day.

Suddenly my phone rang. It was my friend Marissa, from the county hospital. I had a sinking feeling as I answered the phone. "Hey Kat, you have a second?" she asked.

"Yeah, what's up?" I said.

"I've got a big problem over here, and it looks like it might be something in your wheelhouse. Got about a dozen people sick with some sort of mystery illness, all from the same neighborhood. Symptoms resemble cadmium poisoning- fatigue, confusion, nausea, dizziness, renal issues, edema, etc- but all their tox screens came back clean. Medically speaking there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with them."

"So you think it might be supernatural?" I asked.

"Yeah, best explanation I've got," she said. "Could you come over here tomorrow morning and take a look?"

I sighed. "Marissa, tomorrow's my day off," I whined.

"I know, but we really need your help. I'm at the end of my rope. And whatever this is could spread," she said, the exhaustion creeping into her voice.

"Alright, alright, I'll come in. What time?"

"Would 9 am be ok?" she asked.

It wouldn't, but I'd go anyway. "Yeah, sure," I said.

"Thank you so much. I'll see you tomorrow," she said.

"Yep," I replied, and hung up. It was going to be a long day

 

****

I arrived at the hospital the next morning and met Marissa in the ICU. After scrubbing up and suiting up in PPE I took a look at the patients. They looked wan, and as Marissa had mentioned, many of them were swollen, sometimes grotesquely so. Like Marissa, I couldn't find anything wrong with them-my hag stone revealed nothing, and none of the general purpose cures I carried on me made any impression. Most of the victims were too comatose or confushe to talk, but the ones who were lucid enough couldn't tell me much. They were fine one day and sick the next, with no real warning signs. I was stumped.

After we'd changed out of our gear she sat me down in the break room and gave me a run down of what they did know, along with all the preliminary reports, which weren't much at this point.

"The outbreak started in the Hearthstone neighborhood, on the north side of town," she said, gesturing to a map.  "Hearthstone-is that that new development they built last year? I remember seeing adds for it," I said.

"Yes," she replied. "So far it's been concentrated on one section, this street here, on the west side."

"That's the side closest to the woods, from the looks of it. Could be a forest borne pathogen. Have you done  any environmental testing?" I asked.

"Yeah, we've had people from the EPA and FDA come out and look around. They found nothing, just like us. Whatever this is, it's not moving through normal, observable processes. That's why I called you. What are you thinking, some sort of hex or spell?"

"Could be, though it would be awfully powerful for that wide an area of effect. I haven't heard of any witches nearby with that much power, unless someone is practicing in secret. But I'd really rather not go down that road until I've got some solid proof, for obvious reasons."

"Right, don't want a literal witch hunt on top of whatever this is. Any idea on how to treat it?"

"No, I'll have to consult my books. I'd also really like to take a look at the site itself, see if there's anything I can find."

"I can arrange that. In fact, there's another investigator heading up there as well. Let me introduce you to him."

She took me to her office, and then had her assistant buzz someone in. A young man, younger than me by five or even ten years, walked in. He had tussled mousy brown hair, soft brown eyes, and a look of nervous excitement about him. He was wearing a slightly ill-fitting button down shirt and khakis, and had a name badge and lanyard on. Everything about him screamed government.

"Kat, this is Thomas Whitley. He's the new county liaison to the magical community."

I reached out and shook his hand. "Kathleen Fitzgerald," I said.

"Nice to meet you, miss Fitzgerald." His voice had a slight twang to it that I couldn't quite place.

Marissa proceeded to give Thomas the same lecture she'd given me. He listened intently but didn't ask any questions.

"Well, then I'll leave you two to it," said Marissa, and she escorted us out. 

Thomas and I hung about awkwardly in the lobby. "Well, miss Fitzgerald, any ideas on what might be causing this?" Thomas asked hesitantly.

"No, not yet," I replied. "I'm going to need to a lot more research and investigation."

"Well, between the two of us, I'm sure we can lick this," Thomas said.

"Wait, when did I say we were working together? Is the county hiring me? Because I'll be billing my usual rates," I responded.

"Well, you are the only Cunning Woman in town, or so Marissa tells me."

"Only licensed one, yes," I clarified. "So, can you get me a consulting gig on paper? This isn't just a favor to Marissa anymore."

"I suppose so," Thomas said, sounding unsure. "I'll have to call my boss, though."

I sighed internally. I got my accreditation renewed every year, but other than that I tried to avoid dealing with the county, much less taking on cases from them. On the other hand, it'd be a steady income until we solved this case, and I would be doing my civic duty.

"Fine, get it done, and then meet me at my office in an hour. If you're set on helping, I could use a research assistant."

*****

Sure enough, Thomas appeared at my office an hour later, contract in hand. I signed off on it, and then started getting to work. As I pulled books off the shelves, I made some small talk.

"So, you new around here?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said. "I just graduated with a degree in Pow-Wow and American magic. I'm a Braucher. This is my first job in the field."

It figures, I thought. Still, I kept it to myself.  On the other hand, Pow-wow was a magical tradition originated by the Pennsylvania Dutch, and practiced by a wide variety of people in the Appalachian mountains. Old World vs New World. This could be interesting.

"Oh, did you go to the Wellman School?" I asked.

"Nah, Penn State had a program," he replied.

"Nothing wrong with that," I said, putting a stack of books down on the table. "I went to a state school."

"Oh really? I thought Marissa said you studied over in the UK," he responded.

"Oh, yeah, I did do a year abroad, studying under Dr. Francis Young at Bury St. Edmunds."

"Ah, so you mainly studied British magic, then."

"Well, yes, I'm a Cunning Woman. Though Dr. Young has gotten really into Baltic stuff as well, so I spent a good chunk of second semester hanging out with sun-worshipers in Lithuanian. Oh, and I also was able to take a couple seminars with Professor Gunnell at the Icelandic College of Magic, that was cool."

"Aw man, I've always wanted to go to Iceland. It looks incredible there," he said.

"Eh, the tourism board makes the elves and other beings look really cute and twee, but the place is still pretty wild. There are parts I visited where you literally couldn't go out at night."

"Oh," he said, looking slightly dejected.

"Anyway, we need to get to work," I said, dropping another stack of books in front of him. "From what I've heard, the Pow-wow tradition has a pretty strong medicinal bent, so why don't you start looking at these for possible treatments. I'll start seeing if I can figure out a cause," I said, and I settled into my office chair and started flipping through A Field Guide to the Little People, looking for potential culprits.

"Well, before I start on that..." Thomas said, and whipped out a book from his coat pocket. "The Long Lost Friend," he said, displaying the book to me. "Ah, of course," I said. The one thing I knew about Pow-wow practitioners is that they mainly relied on just one book, The Long Lost Friend. The book had just about everything, from medical cures to house blessings to charms for legal success to a recipe for pretty good beer. I don't think I could manage with just one book, but it seems like most Brauchers could. "Well, let me know if find anything useful," I said, and I went back to reading.

Several hours later, my office looked like a bomb had gone off. Books were stacked haphazardly everywhere, many with markers where we found something potentially useful. Greymalkin was scampering about the stacks, pawing at books he thought might be useful, or maybe just so he could knock them over. I finished another volume (Mark Norman's Black Dog Folkore), placed it on the stack,and rubbed my eyes.  Thomas had demolished all the stacks around him and was scrounging through my bookshelves to find anything else of use. "Ummm, oh, did I grab Lecouteaux's Protection and Healing?" I said.

"Lecouteaux, that name rings  a bell," said Thomas.

"Well, yeah, he's the chair of the Magic Department at the Sorbonne. He's written like 15 books, pretty sure I have all of them," I said, somewhat tersely. "Go check that shelf at the bottom, it's in there somewhere.

He bent down and started going along the shelf. "Letseehere, Household Spirits.....The Wild Hunt....Talismans...The Return of the Dead....Ah, Magic Spells for Healing and Protection." He started flipping through it. "Got one for 'Illness in General'....and one for 'Poison or Venom.'"

"Bookmark 'em. We'll give them a shot, can't hurt.

I absentmindedly thumbed through The Book of English Magic for the second time, before putting it down and gingerly making my way over to where Thomas was squatting. Despite my care, I still managed to trip over something and almost brain myself on my copy of Carmina Gadelica. I stumbled over to Thomas and sat down. He looked concerned. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Maybe we should take a break," I said, trying to sound casual despite desperately needing an actual break.

"Yeah," he said, much to my relief. "Though I'm not sure how much deeper we can keep digging. We've looked through every relevant book here, and a bunch that weren't. And while I've got some ideas, I'm still no more certain than when I started."

He looked at me. "What do you think it is?" he asked.

"Best guess? Revenant of some kind. Person dies, comes back to life, spreads illness wherever he goes. A mysterious plague confined to a geographic area is a classic revenant sign. But..." I trailed off.

"But what?" he asked.

"Revenants are almost always the newly dead. And there's no active cemetery near this place, or even an old one. It's not near...anything, really, just woods. There's no bodies buried anywhere nearby."

"That you know of," said Thomas with a dark smile.

Well, he had a point. I paused and thought about it. "Yeah, true. Though if someone had been murdered or gone missing, we would have heard about that too."

"Maybe, maybe not," said Thomas. "Just because they're buried here doesn't mean they died here."

"Wow this got morbid fast," I responded. "Fair point, we'll just have to take a look around on the ground. A grave won't stay hidden for long, especially if someone's getting in and out of it on a regular basis. What do you think it might be?"

"Well, cliche as it may be, I'm thinking witchcraft. This looks like a particularly potent hex, against the neighborhood in general. You said the place was surrounded by woods, right? I'm guessing someone was living in those woods and got displaced, or at least disturbed. Hexed the whole neighborhood indiscriminately in response."

"You think so? But I don't know of any witches in those woods, and we almost certainly would have heard of someone that powerful."

"Yeah, but someone that good could also be able to hide in plain site. Besides, it may not be an active witch, could just be a cursed boundary marker or something. The original witch may be long gone. The Moll Dyer stone in Maryland is still affecting people, and she's been dead for 400 years."

"The who what now?" I asked.

Thomas continued on, oblivious. "I'd have to take a look around and see if I can pick up any traces of spellcraft, and examine the victims again. If I can figure out what kind of hex it was, and what the materials used were, I can reverse-engineer it and reverse the spell, maybe even craft a counterspell and-"

I interrupted him. "Hang on, we still don't know what it is we're dealing with, let's at least get the site inspection done first. Would tomorrow work? I can close the place down for a bit."

He thought for a second. "I'll have to check if I've got any more cases in my docket, but I think I can tell my boss this takes priority. I can meet you here tomorrow mid-morning, would that work?"

"Yeah," I replied, grateful for a slightly later start time. "But first, it's been a long day, and I think a trip to the Ember is in order."

"The Ember? What's that? A bar?" Thomas asked innocently.

"Oh man, you are new around here."