The Enchanted

Andy stood over Cassandra’s open casket and surveyed her pale white face for the longest few minutes of his life. The traffic accident that had ended her life unexpectedly had not affected her beauty at all in Andy’s eyes.

In death, her face was a shadow of what it was in life. To Andy, as he looked down at her lifeless features, the face he was looking at did not look anything like the person he had known all his life. The figure that lay in the casket did not resemble Cassandra, the girl who had charmed and captivated him for the last three years. The body before him now looked unreal, a facsimile and a poor imitation of the real thing.

Cassandra’s body lay in a coffin made of polished rosewood and her body was dressed unexpectedly in white. This was incongruous to Andy because in all the years that he had known her, she made it a point to regularly dress in black and purple. These were “her colours” she had told him again and again because “they reflected who she was.” Now, as Andy looked down at her body, dressed in white, the scene that met his eyes looked somehow wrong.

There was a time when he had been fixated by Cassandra, and he literally would have gladly died for her if necessary. Such was the power that this thin, pale and mysterious girl had over him that even now, in death, Andy found himself wondering what gesture of remorse she would have wanted or expected from him.

Andy turned from Cassandra’s casket and went to take a seat amongst the mourners in the chapel. He walked past Cassandra’s family seated in the front row of seats and nodded an acknowledgement to Mrs. Blackmore, Cassandra’s mother, as he passed her.

Andy moved on to the rear of the chapel, past people he had known all his life including a few of the people he and Cassandra had been at school with. Andy could see in one pew, Charlie Ash, who Andy had heard was dating Cassandra after he broke up with her. Charlie was a big guy, more muscle than anything else, who had been the school football hero all the time Andy and Cassandra had been at the school in town. In a way, Andy was surprised when he heard that Cassandra had gotten together with Charlie because, in the time he had been with her, she had only spoken about Charlie in often disparaging terms. Cassandra had said to him again and again how little she thought of Charlie’s low level of intellect and lack of character. So, when he heard that the two of them had started dating after he departed from town, he was mystified by the development of their relationship. How was that possible? The fact that Cassandra would get together with someone else was to be expected, but the fact that she would start a relationship with Charlie was shocking to Andy knowing what Cassandra had consistently thought about him over the years.

Andy had always thought he could never leave his small hometown for any reason. This was where his family had always been since time immemorial. But, fate intervened, and Andy’s draft number came up about two years ago, and he was conscripted into the army. At a stroke, Andy had to leave whether he wanted to or not. So, he had to put aside his plans for trade school and reported for basic training several states away. There was no choice involved in this momentous move in his young life.

Andy’s family and friends had been devastated by this development when he had to leave for basic training. They threw a party for him the night before he had to leave for basic training and just about everyone from town was there to give him a sendoff. Everyone, apart from Cassandra and her close friend Wanda. The two girls were not at Andy’s farewell party, which surprised him because he had been convinced that both would be there. He had known both Cassandra and Wanda all through high school, and all through the time he had dated Cassandra, Wanda had often accompanied them when they went on dates. So, they formed a strange sort of threesome over the years. Nevertheless, on the night of Andy’s departure, the two girls were absent from the party, and Andy felt hurt and bewildered because they were not there. No explanations were ever offered and despite Andy’s many letters to Cassandra, she never answered his requests for an explanation nor an apology. In her single letter in reply to his many pieces of correspondence, she stated that she and Wanda had something else to do that night. That was all that had been offered as a fait accompli and the whole matter had been closed with a finality that was beyond challenge.

Andy walked all the way to the back of the room and sat down in an empty seat of unoccupied chairs. He was the only one in the row of seats as he quietly contemplated the mourners in the chapel, lost in his thoughts and memories, until all of a sudden, he sensed rather than felt the presence of someone else in the seat beside him. Andy turned and saw it was Wanda who occupied the seat next to his.

“Oh, hi Wanda”, Andy said awkwardly

“Hello Andy, glad to see you back”, Wanda replied resplendent in her black and purple outfit, “are you still playing solider?”

“Yes…I finished basic training and so I still have a full year of service before I can get out of the army”.

“Pity…”, Wanda replied laconically, “pity you can’t be back sooner”.

“Why?” Andy smiled weakly, “miss me?”

Wanda’s gaze back at Andy was steady and direct, “of course because you’re so much better than Charlie at what we need him for.”

There followed a somewhat awkward moment of silence between the two of them, and just as Andy was about to say something when Wanda looking around at the religious trappings of the room said, “I want us to get out of this place…I feel uncomfortable here.” Her tone of voice was flat and not open to negotiation, so without another word, they got up and left the chapel.

When they were outside, Andy could see Wanda more clearly in the dim sunlight of the cemetery. She was as Andy remembered her, a very tall girl with a full head of wavy red hair and skin that was unnaturally pale. She wore a dress that was black with a purple sash draped over her shoulders that reached down to the ground. She cast, like Cassandra when she was alive, a striking figure that defied casual description.

Andy realized that Wanda caught him examining her so he quickly complimented her saying how good she looked.

Wanda took the compliment as one that was both unremarkable and not open to doubt or discussion. She in turn surveyed Andy, handsome and resplendent in his uniform. She ran her finger down his shoulder and around the outline of his unit patch.

“Are you sure you can’t be back from the army for another year?” Wanda asked.

“Yes…I’m certain I can’t be…in fact, I’ve received my posting to Germany already. I leave for Europe in about a week. I only got special leave to be in town on account of Cassandra’s funeral.”

Wanda nodded and replied shortly, “As I said pity with Cassandra not being physically here, I could use you close to hand.”

Andy was confused. He did not understand what Wanda was referring to about being close to hand, but beyond that, he could not understand why Wanda seemed so indifferent to Cassandra’s passing. So, Andy asked, “I don’t understand you Wanda, why are you so unmoved by Cassandra’s death. The three of us were so close and yet you don’t seem to care she’s gone.”

“She’s not gone,” Wanda replied without emotion, “she is just physically not here… she can’t go…she cannot leave this earth.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Andy asked bewildered, “She’s dead…can’t you see her body in there?”

Wanda smiled back at Andy and looked away towards the woods to their left, “she might not be alive but that does not mean she’s gone. You of all people should know that.”

Andy was now both confused as well as angry, “what are you talking about Wanda? You’re not making sense.”

“She’s not gone because she anchored to this earth. She made sure you cast a spell to ensure her spirit did not leave this world and that she cannot pass on the next one.”

Wanda paused and turned to look at Andy gazing at him with her piercing green eyes.

“The night she cast the spell to anchor her spirit to the earth you were the one to chant the spell that enabled it to happen, remember?”

Andy was about to ask what she meant and to dispute what she was saying when he stopped himself. He recalled that one night, just before he left for the army, Cassandra and Wanda had taken him to their “secret place” in the woods and they had given him a script with a load of Latin-looking words to read out loud in a ring formed by lit candles. Andy had been drinking and had done as the two of them insisted because although he thought the whole thing was stupid, he was drunk and kind of horny. He went along with what they wanted hoping to score but as things turned out he passed out after he read out what the girls had asked him to do.

When he woke up the next morning, he was alone and in bed at home. The girls were nowhere to be seen, and he had wanted to talk to them about what went on in the woods at his going away party that night, but they never showed up at the party, so it was a conversation he never got to have with them.

Now, with what Wanda said to him it all came back to him about what happened that night in the woods. Nevertheless, he still had no idea what the words in Latin were that he read out loud that night so long ago.

“There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you about…why did you two get me to read the script in the woods that night?”

“To cast a spell, you have to speak it out to make it happen,” Wanda replied in a tone of voice that a mother would use to her foolish child, “the law in the natural world is that for something to be created, it has to be spoken into being.”

“I…okay…but why did you and Cassandra insist on me reading the Latin words?”

“Silly boy,” Wanda smiled, “if you were not so ignorant you would know that the rule is whoever speaks the words of a spell pays the price for the power it contains. You were always so much better at the chants than Charlie who had trouble pronouncing everything.”

“Price? What price are you talking about?”

Wanda did not answer. She just smiled and walked off towards the woods.

As Andy moved to go after Wanda, because he wanted more answers from her, he caught sight of something that stopped him in his tracks.

Andy saw a fox had been sitting beside a nearby tree, observing the two of them without any movement or sign of fear.

As he looked at it, the animal stared directly back at him. The fox was sitting in the open, still and exchanging unbroken eye contact with Andy.

Then after an eternal minute, the fox unhurriedly got up and walked at a steady pace down the path to the woods, stopping only for a moment to look back at Andy.