Start with a cup of coffee

''I came...''

'' Louder, please, I can not hear you. Don't worry, you have nothing to fear. "

"I...I came for ...I have a..."

" You have an appointment with me, as I understand it. You are Melissa, are you not? "

" Yes, " the woman said, visibly relieved " yes, that is my name. "

Amanda just had to sigh. She didn't call herself Amanda in here, of course, but lady Gwendolyn, although most of her customers called her just "Lady" as they were not sure how to pronounce Gwendolyn. The woman sitting in front of her was trembling, her wrinkled hands and sunken eyes making her look like a strange doll made of yellowish paper, a child` s toy with a bobbing head and astonishingly red lips and long lashes. One of those customers. If you are afraid of the dead, why come here to commune with them? Or was she scared they would not answer?

"The sooner we begin, Melissa" said lady Gwendolyn in her most soothing, summer-sea-over-rocks voice "the sooner your spirit will calm, I am sure. As will the one you wish to speak to. "

" I am ready to begin, Lady" said the woman eagerly, even though her hands were still shaking. She was dressed all in black and even had small black roses, made of some silky fabric, arranged in her dark hair. Her lack of control was clashing with the meticulous details of her attire.

"Alright then".

Amanda was keeping it simple. Candles on the table, plump and yellow and generously spilling their wax on the wooden surface (a fire hazard, but can a woman raising the dead be afraid of little fire?) Dead flowers and herbs arranged on the floor - if nothing else, they were giving quite the pleasant smell.

Her own clothes were very plain, a long and flowing robe - no stars, no glitter, no bright colours; no need to look cheap, she was but a background to the whispers of a thousand skeletons.

And, finally, a necessary piece of mountain crystal set amidst the candles. It was rather large and unpolished and she` d never change it for a standard crystal ball. The touch of its rough surface under her palms really set her in the mood.

She placed her hands on the transparent, seemingly fragile surface and almost felt the stirring of something - the shadow of an embryo, the kiss of a ghost..

"Who are we calling today?" she asked in a whisper. She didn't want the woman to think about her voice, her body, her intentions - only about the flickering image that pulled her from this world towards the next.

"She....she was my daughter..." Melissa coughed, then she tried again. "Her name was Rosemary. She was ten. She died only a week ago"

A tear trickled from her long lashes down her cheek, soaked into her skin. Amanda closed her eyes - as much for concentration as for not looking at the tear. This had nothing to do with her and her work.

"Rosemary..."

She tried the name on her lips. It felt bitter and dry, but it had a sweet smell to it at the same time - like a field burning under the August sun. And it was light, so light she couldn't hold it in her lips for long. 

"Rosemary..."

She dragged the name now, made it into a chant. She left it hovering over the candles, the dead flowers, the clutter in the room - light as the wind is light, sharp as the cutting edge of the breeze. Even with her eyes closed, Amanda could feel the candles flicker in the wind.

She was pressing her hands into the crystal now, trying to bury them into the unyielding surface.

"Rosemary."

That one was barely a tentative whisper. Amanda was not kidding herself; the dead never answered to her. Yet she was trying, really trying. It was important to her to try this wholeheartedly, to want it more deeply and desperately than any of her customers, to want it with such passion that it consumed her present and left her empty of the passage of time. If she wanted it so much, she couldn't really be a fraud... She was standing on the edge of a cliff, calling, calling. The dead were the sea - roaring and powerful, almost touching her and yet so out of touch. She was standing on the cliff like a lighthouse, beckoning, calling. What could she offer to the waves? Did she have the power to drag them towards her like a blanket, make them touch her?

"Rosemary!"

This was not a whisper, but a command. She was not asking now, she was insisting.

But Rosemary was not answering. Rosemary was stuck under the ground; her mother, on the other hand, was here. It was time to do something more.

Amanda took a single, ragged breath, removed her palms from the crystal and with one unerring movement placed them both over an open flame.

She heard Melissa gasp and asked in in her most listless voice, before lifting her scorched palms:

"Tell me something your daughter loved. Tell me something your daughter feared. Tell me something your daughter kept secret."

"I..? Yes. Of course. Birds. She loved birds. Her birdhouse was the first thing she would go to in the morning." Melissa didn't really supress her sob, but kept talking, determined to get it out. " And she was afraid of fire. Burned herself when she was five. As for her secret...I didn't mean to pry, but one of her little friends told me that...and I laughed! I thought it was so childish. She told me my daughter believed she was a witch. A real one, you know...Turns out she had all this chamomile potions and whatnot in jars under her bed and I...I found them and I....I threw them away because they were so filthy..."

She was sobbing again, but Amanda had what she needed. She touched a candle with her fingertip , took a bit of wax and put it in her mouth. She didn't mind chewing wax, it helped her concentrate.

"Rosemary." she called in her most listless voice. "A bird calls you to life. Fire chases you towards me. Chamomile sprig binds you to me. Rosemary, can you her me?"

Melissa stopped sobbing, she even stopped breathing by the sound of it. A hushed silence fell over the room. Amanda gulped, like she was drowning in air, and said through her teeth

"She hears me."

"Oh! Oh, Rosemary, I...."

Melissa was choking on her own unsaid words.

"Tell her that...ask her...does she blame me? For what happened? Ask her if she hates me. Do you hate me now, Rosemary?"

Her voice was becoming more shrill with every word.

"She asks you to be calm." Amanda intervened quickly. "She is beyond blame now. But she never blamed you."

"But how could she not? She must....Tell her she should blame me! That she should haunt me! Tell her..."

The woman was wailing now, no mistake about it.

"She can not feel sorrow any more and yet she doesn't want you to blame yourself. Hurt yourself. Destroy yourself. She... wants to lend you part of her strength."

"Of her...strength?" Melisa gasped and then suddenly laughed a forgotten laughter. "My daughter. Always the stronger one. Always lending me strength, even now."

"But you must be willing to accept it. She will stand beside you and she will place her palm upon your shoulder, and what courage she has will pass on to you."

"But she..."

"She doesn't need anything anymore. You do. Close your eyes and it will be done in a second."

Amanda finally opened her eyes and saw Melissa was already sitting there with her lashes closed taking long, deep breaths, like she was about to meditate or give birth. She looked like a paper doll more than ever, a paper doll put to sleep with her hands upon the table. Amanda studied her face and when she decided the poor woman was ready, she told her that if she really concentrates, she might feel a shadow of a presence right about...right about now. And Melissa gasped quietly, even though nothing happened, because she wanted it, she wanted to feel her daughter, the ghost of her stubborn, childish power, the light touch of her little hands, a trace of her voice...

Not as much as Amanda wanted it. 

She let the woman sit there for a while with her eyes closed and her hands caressing the air, babbling about the car crash they were in and how slippery the road was, and how Rosemary was wearing her new cardigan in the car but she got ketchup sauce all over the front and that made Melissa so mad, so mad....

Amanda let the confession pour out. Now there was nothing to do but to wait. In her essence, she was a priest and she had priestly functions: she was to tell people, using the lips of the dead, how to go on forward, distributing not only rewards, but punishment as well.

Ten Hail Marys wouldn't do it. Flagellation wouldn't cut it. Life, life was the only suitable punishment. She was to tell the living: "You have to keep on living".

For the dead want you to. And how do I know? I'm standing on a cliff and they are the vast sea stretching to the horizon and I'm calling them, I'm crying out like a stranded animal seeking help and they are quiet, so quiet..

Amanda had to shake her head to bring herself back to the present moment. The clock was ticking with the reassuring whisper of a bomb about to explode. Melissa` s hour was almost over. Before sending her home, she had to tell the woman that her daughter wanted her to survive this, no matter the cost. A good natured lie, a lie as white as the day was white, a lie paving the proverbial road of good intentions.

A lie nevertheless.

When Amanda woke up in the next morning it was still dark and veils of transparent moonlight were floating in the room above her bed, making her feel like she was lying underwater. Afraid to move, lest a cloud of stinging jellyfish cling to her skin, she remained motionless and half-awake in her bed until a small voice called somewhere from the shadows:

"You awake then?"

Amanda sat up abruptly. Nobody had any business being in her room, not even a cat and cats don't speak, at that...

"I don't mean to scare you," the voice spoke gently "but you have work to do."

A silhouette stepped to the centre of the room. With her big eyes and upturned nose and bony knees she had the look of a curious and restless child, but now she was standing so still it was unnatural. Her fair hair was running down her back and her snow white cardigan was speckled with blood. Or was it ketchup?

"Rosemary?" said Amanda. Her voice was so unstable it made her flinch.

"You called me yesterday." The girl reminded her ever so gently. "Are you surprised I'm here now? You dragged me towards you. You bound me to you by my love and fear. You..."

"But it never worked before!"

Amanda jumped out of her bed. The room was still swimming under the sea and at first her reflection in the cracked mirror looked like a great stingray, floating serene and white in the dark, but then it was just good old Amanda in her shimmering nightgown. She was always a slim girl, but now she was turning into a bony, sharp-edged woman. She thought of her own body as bony and stubborn, commanded by its own mysterious inner works, and even her hair looked bony and stubborn...

"You never had help before. Now you have me." announced the girl proudly. "I am a witch, you know."

"Your mother told me. She said she threw your chamomile potions away."

"Poor mom. The jars really disturbed her. They had to be filthy, you see..." Rosemary sighed. "But never mind. A witch doesn't need potions. A dead one, even less."

Now the girl was standing just next to her, all neat in her white cardigan speckled with red, every hair in place, her hands clasped on her chest like she was about to offer her heart to somebody. By comparison, Amanda's tall and bony frame looked clumsy and devoid of divine mystery.

Rosemary gave her an angelic smile.

"But you have work to do now, don't you see? You called and I answered. Now others will answer, too. You will be mighty busy soon enough. Oh, so busy! You and I won't be getting any sleep, probably, but then I don't need any sleep, do I? It's a pity I never tried coffee. My mom wouldn't let me, of course. I hope we can see her again, so I can talk to her properly. So, you must take more customers now... But what can I do? Oh, I will be like a secretary, won't I? Getting appointments and such, like a..."

"Rosemary."

Amanda tried to keep the panic out of her voice. For some reason, the right words were simply not forming.

"It's true that I called. I called and I waited, and I wanted...I hoped! My desire to reach out, to call something beyond this world was as vast as the sea. As cruel as the sea, as well. But this...I..."

"You just need a cup of coffee" said Rosemary in a reassuring voice. "My mother always used to say that I` m not to talk to her before she has her morning coffee."

"Ah." Amanda cupped her face with her long, bony fingers and spoke through them, her voice muffled and slightly desperate. "Lost is the word, I think. I` m quite lost. It's like being in a strange city, in a strange world...What will I say to the dead? What can I give them?"

"What can you give them?" asked Rosemary in an incredulous voice. "The same thing you give every day to the living. Come now. I tried to start the coffee machine already, but it seems I have a lot to learn about being a ghost."