The Wrong Cornfield

Originally written Saturday, December 24, 2005

“Probably.” I could hardly believe I was having this conversation with someone I barely knew, but there have been so many loose ends back at home that for someone with clues to fall into my lap, however vague those clues may be, seemed like an opportunity I had to take advantage of. I’d take her words with a grain of salt, but damned if I wasn’t going to take them. “But hey, OK… I have a really annoying question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“I’ve always wondered this about psychics. If it’s possible to tell the future, then how can you give advice about changing it? I mean, how can anyone make predictions about a future that’s open to revision?”

Again her wrinkles deepened, this time first around her eyes and then spreading to her chin, as she laughed loudly. “Oh, I love it. Oh, hon. I don’t read the future. I read energy. And sometimes—it’s kind of like meteorology—energy has predictable patterns. But you can’t change weather, all you can do is prepare for it. And energy—you should know—sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.”

“What about Liz getting work on a water movie? How’d you read that in her energy?”

“Oh, I didn’t. Chalk that one up to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. There was rain in the forecast. The submarine movie was just good luck. Sometimes I like to toss in a fortune teller zinger if I think it’s a sure bet.”

Oh, for Ian to have heard that. I sure wasn’t going to be able to tell him myself. But as for the more important things, the energy reading made sense to me, and as I said already: opportunities. Taking advantage. “So does that mean you could read the charm, too?”

“Charm?”

“That’s what I’m protecting.”

“Oh yeah, you bet. When can you bring it over?”

“I… have it here,” I said. I’d assumed she’d already sensed it.

She looked skeptical. “You have it here?”

I took it from my bag (I hadn’t let it out of my presence since Tuesday) and passed it over to her. “This isn’t it.”

The blood drained from my face, and I felt like a teenager in a horror movie who’d just fornicated in the wrong haunted cornfield. “Huh?”

“This isn’t the charm.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m not being vague here. It’s not the charm you think it is. It has no significant energy.”

I took it back and held it against my wrist. No pulsation. I placed it against my chest. Still none. Neither did it change in weight or temperature, no matter what I did with it. My irritation began to build. How could I have ended up with the wrong one? Finally (after asking Medusa’s permission, it being her store), I threw the black crescent hard against the wall. It cracked into several pieces, sprinkling dust across the floor from between the fractures. Indeed, it was clay and not enchanted coral.

The events of this day to be continued...