Jamieson Wolf
Number-one bestselling author
Claiming my Shadow Self – On Writing Disabled
Years ago, a friend of mine asked me if I would ever write a novel with a character who had Multiple sclerosis. I gave him a definitive no. When he asked me why not and pointed out that people would want to read a book with a character that looked like them, I said that writing my blog was enough, that I would never write a book with a disabled character.
That was saying a lot as I live with both Cerebral palsy and Multiple sclerosis.
I was born with Spastic Cerebral palsy and I’d had relapse and remitting Multiple Sclerosis for a couple of years when my friend asked me that question. For a few years, writing my blog was enough. I was able to tell people about my story and my life the way that I wanted to. Though I’m a writer, I didn’t put any disabled characters into my books. I told myself that was because I wanted an escape. Reading should be entertainment and writing should be an escape.
To my mind, writing about characters who were disabled would be like escaping into myself and I didn’t think that it would be very therapeutic. Indeed, I read and wrote books in order to escape myself and the predicament that I found myself in. Who would want to read a novel with a disabled character?
I had read one back when I was a child. It was a novel called Mine For Keeps by the author Jean Little about a young girl that has Cerebral palsy. It had been a revelation when I was a child to read a book with a character that lived with the disability that I had. I read that book until it fell apart and pages were lost. Still, I read the story wit its missing pages, able to fill in the missing story. I read it every time that someone made fun of the way I walked. I read Mine for Keeps every time I felt that I didn’t fit in because of my physical disability.
Why then was I so hesitant to write about a character that had Multiple sclerosis? I thought about it for a long time, the question was always in the back of my head and I wondered why I didn’t want to write about characters who were disabled. In the end, the only reason that I could think of was that I was still coming to terms with my life as it was now. In reality, I was ashamed of having multiple sclerosis, thinking that it made me look weak despite the work I had done to try and fight against it. The more I wrote characters who were not disabled, the further I got away from myself.
By this point in my journey, an idea had begun to take form in the back of my head. I wanted to write a book of positivity for others that might be going through what I was going through. I wanted to inspire people somehow and hopefully inspire myself. I had taken a lot of great strides in my journey with MS, so it was my hope that I could help others live a better life. However, when I tried to sit down and write it, I only had twelve pages of writing. I was left with a title that I liked and little else.
I wrestled with the idea of writing a memoir. I knew that if I was going to write my story that I would have to write all of it or nothing at all. My mother asked me why I wanted to revisit all of those moments that had left me scarred and at times broken. I had to think about my response before I gave it, mostly because I was trying to figure out the why of it for myself. “I think it’s because if my story could help just one person, then it will have done its job. It will be therapeutic for me, too. I can’t carry all of this anymore.”
I had no idea how much like therapy the book would be. During the writing of my memoir, I had to reach deep into myself and talk about things that I had thought would remain a secret. I had to examine why I felt shame when I looked at myself in the mirror, why I thought that having multiple sclerosis made me weak when everyone always told me how strong I was. I knew that writing the book would take me into the darker part of myself, the shadow self that I tried to hide but it still lived within me.
Years ago, I had given names to my disability and my disease: my multiple sclerosis became Max Shadow. I felt the name suited him as he was an unknown as he hid in the shadows and liked to change the way he behaved, moving and shifting and changing in the shadows. Never seen but so very present. I named my cerebral palsy Cybil Paulsen. The name was based around Sybil, a 1973 book by Flora Rheta Schreiber that I had read about Sybil Dorsett who lived with multiple personalities. When I had named him, I felt like he was a personality living within my body that I couldn’t see but affected so much of what I did and how I engaged with the world. I knew that I would have to go deeper into my journey with Max Shadow and what he, Cybil and Max had all become together.
The book took me over a year to write. During the writing of Little Yellow Magnet, I thought I would come to understand my disease better. What I didn’t count on was that Max’s voice would become so clear to me. More than an idea or a phantom shape within my mind, the more I wrote about my journey with MS, the clearer that he became in my mind. He was no longer a shadow of a spy or someone that had stolen something from me. Writing Little Yellow Magnet showed me what I had gained and what I had to be thankful for. The writing of the memoir showed me what I truly had to be grateful for.
After writing Little Yellow Magnet, I no longer hated Max. Yes, he was my shadow, but not one of malice or misdeeds. If I closed my eyes, I could see a large rock standing in the desert. This was my cerebral palsy. It cast a shadow along the sand and this was my multiple sclerosis. I stood atop that rock. He also became a stronger presence in my mind. The less I feared him, the more he helped me to accomplish. Cybil and Max had stopped battling with each other so much, though I could still feel them occasionally knocking heads with each other.
Writing the memoir seems to have opened a flood gate of words where disability is in full representation. I went from writing nothing that was inclusive to disability everything containing pieces of me and the representation that I needed to see in the written word all along. I had thought that including disabled characters would be difficult to do and would take a lot out of me. In the end, it’s been a very freeing experience. I’ve been able to examine different parts of my journey with my MS and with Max through the guise of fiction.
In my award-winning novel Love and Lemonade, I wanted to look at all the different kinds of love there were in the world. I knew that I wanted to include a disabled character of some kind and at first I was tempted by the idea of having a character that used a wheelchair. Max gave me a mental talking to. I don’t know anything at all about being in a wheelchair. What I do know is what it’s like to have multiple sclerosis. I wanted to really show what it was like to date when you are not only gay but disabled. I wrote my own experiences into the novel using the character of Zack. His passions are my own as are his dating mishaps. Dating in the gay world is difficult enough, it’s almost impossible if you are disabled. I really wanted to look at that angle of Max and what it’s like to date disabled. Thankfully, Zack got his happy ending with Will, but only after a few false starts. It was cathartic to examine my own journey with love in this way and the happy ending that I’ve found with my husband, except it’s not an ending. It’s only the beginning.
Nothing Without Us is an own voice anthology of stories by person’s living with disabilities. It is diverse and wonderful and when I saw the story call out, I knew that I wanted to write a story to submit for it. It could be any genre, so I fully intended to write about a wizard who has MS. I wanted it to be a fabulous story filled with humour and all things magical. What it ended up being was an examination of my fears and my relationship with Max. In the story, the wizard Jefferson goes to visit the oracle to try and find a cure for his multiple sclerosis. In the story, he has to descend hundreds of stairs to find the oracle. I worked my own fear into the story. One of the worst memories with my MS was from the very beginning. I was at work and there was a fire and they wouldn’t let me ride in the disabled elevator. I well remember going down sixteen flights of stairs, holding on to the railing and my cane for dear life. It was the most frightened I have been, before or since. I tried to put that experience into the story and really to examine my love hate relationship with Max Shadow and what that relationship means to me, how it has shaped me.
In my novel Beyond the Stone, which is coming out soon, my disabled character is the main protagonist. Bane is a rough and tumble kind of guy who is also a Rook, a race of supernaturals that are usually shape shifters, except that Bane can’t shift. Though he looks normal to the mortals around him, he is viewed as disabled and half a man by the supernaturals that live around him. Though his issue can’t even be seen, he is shunned by a lot of different people in the supernatural race. I wanted to take a deeper look at what it was like to live with an invisible disease and the experiences that I’ve had with that. In the novel, I even used one memorable date that I went on. I didn’t tell the man that I had MS before we met. I didn’t want it to be the first thing he would know about me. When he arrived, it quickly went downhill. When I finally did tell him about having MS and CP, he said that I was on medication and so I was cured, right? I explained to him that I would live with cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis for the rest of my life. He then asked me what it felt like to live as half a man. To say that the rest of the date didn’t go well is an understatement. I wanted to write some of that pain into the character of Bane and hopefully let some of it go.
In my new novel, The Book of Lost Souls, I wanted to try something different. This novel took a while to figure out what it wanted to be but when it finally decided, I was surprised to be writing a gay erotic romance. I’ve written over fifty gay romance novels and not one of them have a character with a disability. In all those pages filled with so many men, not one of them live with a disability or a disease. I’ve never read a romance novel with a disabled character. I decided to change that, not only for myself but for other people who read romance novels and hope to one day see someone like them reflected in the pages. In the book, Xavier is a wizard who was born with Cerebral Palsy. He walks with difficulty but he uses a cane that is covered with runes. Once again, his journey is my own. I remember at the beginning of my journey with Max how I thought I would never find anyone to love me as I am. I thought that I wasn’t worthy of love because I was disabled and living with a disease. I was dating someone before the MS hit and when it did, he called me broken. After that, I believed that I was broken, that there was something wrong with me and because of that, I didn’t deserve love. Thankfully, I realized that everyone deserves love, no matter what they live with on a daily basis. I can’t wait until Xavier realizes that for the first time and hopefully, he will let Felix love him completely. It’s been thrilling to write a romance novel with a disabled character and to explore what issues that Xavier deals with. One of them will be one that I have, being uncomfortable with how he views his body because of his disability. Again, I’ve written in my own voice and Xavier will have my disabilities because they are the only ones I know.
Through all of my writing lately, I’ve tried to look at the different facets of how Max Shadow, and my multiple sclerosis, has shaped my life. By writing about my multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy in all of these different ways, it’s helped me to claim my disability, to really own my MS, to see them both as friends as opposed to the house guest who won’t leave. What I’ve come to discover is that this journey is just beginning and Max, Cybil and myself still have a ton of adventures ahead of us.
All I need is an open mind and a blank page in front of me and the rest will write itself.
Still Unbroken – A Poem
There are still times
when I feel broken.
I am walking on a path
covered in sand
and I can look back
at each step that I have taken.
Though the ground
may look flat to you,
I see mountains,
peaks and valleys.
I see the cliff edges
that I had to hang off of,
mountains that I had to scale
during tumultuous storms,
valleys that blocked my path
when I was unable to get across
and I can see the blood
that I have left behind.
I know that I have lost
parts of myself along the way.
Sometimes, I look in the mirror
and I do not know
who I am anymore.
Then the light shifts
and I can see that the parts of me
that I left behind are the ones
I no longer needed.
Whenever I feel broken
or I have become lost within myself,
when I don’t know where I end
and where the pain begins
or when my symptoms
raise their ugly heads within my body,
I turn around and look into that mirror
so that I can look back
at every step that I’ve taken
and every drop of blood I’ve left behind.
I look into that mirror
and see the person
that I was meant to become all along.
I am still unbroken,
I am still whole.
I shine as brightly
as the stars.
Thrum – A Poem
You cause a thrum
to run through me.
With every touch
a continuous humming
fills my skin.
The thrum runs over me,
revealing all of me to you.
You look at me with open eyes
and I can see myself
within your gaze.
You don’t see the faults
that my eyes can see.
Your eyes only see me
as I truly am.
After a few moments,
I realise that the thrum,
that gorgeous continuous hum,
has grown even louder.
It is because
every time I look at you,
each time I run my fingers
along your skin,
I am seeing you
as you truly are
and the thrum that we create together
is a song as loud
as the stars.
Then, Also, After, Now – A Poem
Then,
I was lost within myself,
surrounded by the dark,
trees and forest
pressing in against me
as I looked for a way out,
a way through the veil
of constant sadness and fear
that I carried within me.
When the doctor gave the diagnosis,
part of me died,
that light called hope,
carried within me since January,
went out with a small
poof!
Also Then,
after months inside the forest,
I could tell you the differences
between all the trees,
spot the glint of black water
that ran throughout,
show you some of the creatures
living within the branches of the trees.
Sometimes, it was the birds
that would draw blood,
other times if was the trees themselves.
They had taken so much from me,
blood and spirit, magic and bone,
it was a wonder I had any
left.
After,
I began to hate the trees
and what they had taken.
I looked out at the mountain
that had become my life
and I knew that I would have to
learn to climb it, scale it,
conquer it.
I knew that I would have to
Rely on my strength and courage,
I would take back every last breath,
every piece of my chalice,
and I had given the forest,
so that I could find the
light.
Now,
I stand on top of the mountain
looking at how far
that I have come.
The mountain is surrounded
by those I love,
everything that I have created,
all the paths that I have followed
to bring me to this moment.
As I am blessed by the sun
and caressed by the wind against my skin,
I realise that the light I was craving
comes from within and shines outward.
I look to what will come next on this journey,
knowing that all I have to do is sparkle on.
I begin the descent towards the people who love me,
knowing that I am no longer
alone.
The Magic of Words – A Short Story
“I have never seen anything like this.” He said.
Véronique looked at her doctor and blinked. She had been so certain that he would have answers or that he would know what would know what was happening to her. She had been so certain. Trying to speak, she found that she had no voice for a moment. When she did find her voice, it came out in a hoarse whisper.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite, I’ve never seen anything like this. I could run some tests, but there isn’t any way that I can take a sample; that would involve taking a piece of your skin. I really don’t I would find anything.” He ran his hand over the patch of skin on her arm. “It may be an allergic reaction to something.” He wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “Here, call this number. They are a naturopath. Her name is Sonia. I sent a lot of my patients who have problems like yours.”
“But…” Véronique tried to make her voice louder but it reflected the worry that she felt. Like her, Véronique’s voice was afraid. “But what about the burning?” She asked. “It hurts so much.” She held out her arm and his gaze was drawn to the marks there.
The doctor gave her a kind look then went to his desk and opened a door. He came back with some packets of Tylenol. “Here, this should help with the pain at the very least.” The doctor gave her a small smile that Véronique knew was supposed to be reassuring and led her from the examination room.
“What will I do if the pain doesn’t stop?” She asked.
“Then we’ll have to see what we can do. In the meantime, go and see the naturopathic practitioner. She’s very good and a lot of my patients have gone to see her.” He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and that was it. She was dismissed.
Véronique walked back to her car and the frustration built within her. She had been waiting for the appointment for a few weeks and had expected some kind of an answer or a solution, maybe even a pill that would take the burns away and she had ended up with a few packets of fucking Tylenol. She felt cheated. It was her own fault for telling herself that this would all be over today. Véronique was so sure that she would come away from the appointment with a solution. Now all she had was a fucking phone number and she still had to solve the riddle that her life had become.
She drove home and wondered what she was going to do. The pain was getting worse. While she drove, she tried not to look at the marks on her hands or the red welts that had risen on her wrists. If it wasn’t an allergic reaction, what else could it be?
The doctor had almost laughed at her. “No one is allergic to water.” He said.
She knew that there had been cases where people broke out in rashes when they submerged themselves in water, but the doctor has pointed out that they had been allergic to something in the water, not to the water itself. Well, she thought, there was a first time for everything.
Pulling into her driveway, she walked to the front door and let herself in. Her dog Bella and her cat Zoé came running towards her and Véronique felt a moment of joy despite the panic that wanted to take her over. Bella was a rescue dog that she had adopted from the local shelter. She had a multi-coloured coat, with shades of caramel, gold and brown. The people at the shelter couldn’t even tell her what breed Bella was, but Véronique didn’t care. She only knew that Bella belonged to her.
Zoé had found her a year ago. She was an orange and white cat and had reminded Véronique of a creamsicle. She had been sitting on her front step one morning and when she had returned home that evening after work, the cat was still sitting there. Véronique had looked for a collar but hadn’t found one. “Well, you better come in then.” The cat had seemed to understand her and followed her in. She had worried that Bella wouldn’t take to the cat, but they had become fast friends.
It was a joy to come home to them. While she had been dealing with this allergic reaction, she had kept herself contained to her home. She didn’t know if it was spreading or if what she had was contagious. Véronique hadn’t been out of the house for a while now. She had used up some vacation time with work while she tried to figure out what was going on with her skin. Bella and Zoé were her world right now.
She gave them both pets and some treats and took her coat off. She dropped her keys in the bowl by the front door and looked at herself in the mirror. Her dark hair was gathered up into a lose knot on the top of her head. Behind her glasses, her green eyes looked tired. Véronique hadn’t been sleeping well for a few days now as worry over what was causing this was keeping her awake.
Right now, she would love nothing more than to take a bath and read a good book, but she was afraid of the initial pain the water would bring. “Fuck it,” She said out loud. Her voice sounded loud in the silence.
She went about getting a proper bath ready in her bathroom, complete with a glass of red wine and a candle and the book she was currently reading. Turning on the water, she poured in a few drops of lavender oil and while the bathtub was filling up, she went to her room and undressed. Looking at her body, she noticed that the redness had spread since the shower this morning. That’s when it had been really bad. A portion of her wrist and left foot had felt as if they were on fire.
The fire dulled after a time, she just had to wait it out; but the dull throb of pain and redness remained. Though it looked like a rash, it didn’t itch like one. Despite lots of different treatments with calamine and aloe vera lotion, the redness and the throbbing pain remained. Her body looked like it was angry with her, as if she had mistreated it somehow.
Looking at the water filling the tub, the scent of lavender filling the air, she knew that many people would not be taking a bath when the water brought so much pain. Véronique was not most people. She had experienced a lot of pain in her life and she was incredibly stubborn. She would not let whatever was wrong with her take away one of her pleasures. She knew that she could only tolerate a short time in the bath, but it was the principal of the matter. Pain had taken so much from her; she would not let it take this simple pleasure as well.
When the water was done, she took a sip of her wine while she looked at the surface of the water. It looked so calm and welcoming and Véronique wondered how something that looked so soothing could cause her so much pain. She knew that she was being incredibly stubborn now; prior to this, she had only taken quick showers. She went to the bathroom counter and ripped open two packages of Tylonol that the doctor had given her and swallowed the four pills with her wine in preparation for the pain that she knew would come. She set the glass of wine down on the floor beside her book and her towel and took a deep breath. Bracing herself on the edge of the tub, Véronique put one foot gently into the water.
The pain was almost instantaneous. It ran screaming up her leg and she saw the redness begin to slide up to her right thigh as if the water had infected the veins within her skin. Gritting her teeth, she slid her second foot into the water and stood, the pain intensifying. The rash spread across her left leg and she watched it with a fascination that competed with the pain she felt. She stood for a moment, waiting for the intense pain to lessen for a moment, before she lowered herself into the water.
The scream she released didn’t even sound as if it were coming from her. Véronique thought that the scream was being made by a sick dog or a wild animal. Even in her haze of pain, she looked for Bella and Zoé; they were at the doorway watching over her. Bella normally tried to drink the bath water and Zoé loved to walk along the edge of the tub. However, neither of them did that today. They merely stood by the doorway looking in at her, watching and waiting to see what would happen.
The scream continued and Véronique tried to get up, to flee the bath tub, but she could not move and could only feel the pain growing instead of lessening. The redness covered most of her body. She looked down at it as the scream stated to lessen and thought that the rash looked like contour lines from a map, snaking their way along her body.
She let out a sob and though Zoé came to her, Bella remained by the door of the bathroom. Véronique knew why. She had just heard the front door open and close and there was the click clack of high heels on the hardwood floor of her foyer and kitchen area. Then she heard the steps slightly muffled as they made their way upstairs.
Véronique couldn’t have called out if she had wanted to. The pain had temporarily taken her voice from her. She wanted to reach for her wine to chug the rest of it and then to have the glass in hand to throw it at whoever was approaching her bathroom, but she remained frozen in place, the pain making a momentary mockery of her strength.
A woman looked into the bathroom. She had large brown eyes and the were filled with kindness. “Oh now you did do the thing properly, didn’t you?” She said. The woman came further into the bathroom and Véronique saw that the woman had warm honey coloured hair, a gently rounded face and a beautiful smile. “We don’t normally let newbies try this until they are really ready to see what their bodies have to say, but you just went in and did it despite the pain you are in right now. You’re going to be a firecracker, I have no doubt. The light you were giving off, I could see it from a few streets away!”
She held out her hands. “Come on dear, let’s get you out of that water. You’ve put yourself through a lot tonight.”
Still unable to speak, Véronique gratefully took the woman’s hands. Warmth ran through Véronique immediately and though she had been bathing in hot water, the relief that ran through her body was instantaneous. “Th-thank you!” Véronique said. She stepped out of the water and felt calmness take the place of the pain. Her body was rejoicing.
“No thanks needed dear heart.” She smiled at Véronique and turned around to pull Véronique’s robe off of the back of the bathroom door. “Now come on, we have some reading to do.”
Véronique nodded and accepted the robe. “But who are you?” She asked.
“How silly of me! My name’s Sonia. You might have heard of me.”
Shaking her head, Véronique said “I don’t think so.”
“Think now, didn’t that doctor give you a card for a naturopath today?”
A light chill ran down Véronique’s spine. “How did you know about that?”
“Oh, please don’t be afraid!” Sonia said. “No, no, the doctor called me. He recognized the markings for what they were, you see. He called me to alert me to the fact that you were changing. He didn’t have to tell me, I could feel your power beginning to grow. I just wondered what kind you would be.”
“What are you talking about?” Véronique asked. She wasn’t afraid, only very confused and very out of her depth. She felt no malic or ill will from the other woman.
Sonia let out a small laugh. “I’m getting ahead of myself again. Come, lets share a drink together. I brought some honey mead. It’s like wine only sweeter and much more potent. I make it myself in small batches.”
Véronique didn’t have to think about it. “I would love some.”
Pulling a small bottle out of her bag and two glasses. “I never go anywhere empty handed.” Sonia put the glasses on the bathroom counter and poured a generous amount into each of the cups and handed one to Véronique. “Blessed be!” She said.
“Blessed be?” Véronique said and took a sip of the mead. She had never tasted anything like it. It was like drinking liquid sunshine. “This is wonderful. Thank you.” She marvelled at the fact that she was not at all weirded out by a woman who carried mead in her bag and the fact that they were having mead in her bathroom.
“So glad you approve.” Sonia said giving her hand a gentle pat. “Now, let’s have a look at you.”
“You want to look at my rash? Why would you want to do that, I can barely look myself.”
“No dear, not at the rash. I want to look at the words written on your skin.”
“What are you talking about?” Véronique asked. “There are no words written upon my skin. I would have seen those.” She tried to keep the note of panic out of her voice but it snuck out, giving her words a desperate edge.
“You needed to look at them in a different way, dear. Here, this mirror will do find. Just stand in front of it and have a good look at yourself. And don’t worry dear, I was a midwife in a previous life, so it’s nothing I’ve not seen before.” Sonia gave Véronique a warm smile and Véronique felt comforted and warm, much like she had when the woman had helped her out of the bath.
From that smile, Véronique knew that she could trust the other woman. This whole situation is so fucking weird already, she thought. I might as well embrace it completely. She walked toward the large mirror that was above the bathroom counter. Normally, she avoided looking at herself and rushed past the mirror because of the rashes, but now she forced herself to look.
To her surprise, there were words written upon her skin. When she looked down at her arms, she saw only blotches, but in the mirror those blotches were reversed, and she could actually read the words that were written upon her skin in a beautiful cursive script. She leaned in closer to read them but she still couldn’t make them out. “I can’t read them.”
“Close your eyes for a moment.” Sonia said. “These weren’t words a moment ago, were they? You have to let go of how you saw them and resee them as they truly are. Just close your eyes and let go of the image of the rash. Just embrace the idea of the words instead.”
Her voice was kind and comforting. Closing her eyes, Véronique was surprised to find that instead of the blackness that normally waited for her behind her eyes, she could see light that was filled with a million other points of light reflected outward. She hadn’t known that she could contain so much brightness. Opening her eyes, she looked as Sonia and even she looked different; her hair was shinier and her eyes were brighter and there was a blush to her cheeks that she hadn’t noticed before.
Sonia smiled. “There now, the light has cleared your eyes, dear. Things will be easier to see now. Go on, take a look.”
Véronique turned to look into the mirror again. Whereas the words had been unreadable before, a swirl of letters was on her skin. Looking down, she saw the redness on her skin moving in the same way and she could actually feel words brushing against her skin. “What do the words say?” She whispered.
“Only you can decide.” Sonia said. “We are all in charge of our own magic.” She held out her right arm. On her skin were the words ‘I don’t merely walk. I fly’. Then Sonia held out her left arm and written upon it were the words ‘My magic comes from within and no one can take it from me.’ She let her sleeves fall and then she held out the palms of her hands. On the right hand was an open eye and one the left one was a closed eye. “Witches can decide how to use their power.”
“Witches?” This word came out in a whisper. “Is that what I am?”
Sonia let out a soft laugh. “It’s what we all are if we claim our magic. Normally, this process happens over time so that when you start to become sensitive to water, you know what’s happening when the words start to come to the surface of your skin and you can prepare yourself. How you’ve gotten so far on your own is beyond me.” She motioned at the mirror. “So go on now. What do they say?”
Looking at herself in the mirror again, Véronique looked at the words again and they slowed in front of her eyes. The sea of words on her skin slowed and then became still. Véronique looked at them and took in what they said: ‘I do not search for beauty. It is within me.’ Once she had read the words, there was a stinging sensation in her abdomen. It lasted for only a few moments and when it was done, the sea of words they had came from faded from her skin leaving it clear once more. However, those words did not. I do not search for beauty. It is within me…. They were tattooed on her skin in what looked like her own handwriting. She ran her fingers over them and felt a thrum of energy run through her.
“Isn’t that beautiful?” Sonia said, giving Véronique a dazzling smile. “It’s so telling of the witch you will become if your first spell is about self love.”
“These words are spells?” Véronique asked.
“Of course, words are spells. How else could a book take you to another world or carry emotion though it has no physical container.” She helped Véronique pull her robe closed and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You have much to learn, but there is always time.”
Véronique’s head was spinning, but in a good way. “Would you like a glass of wine?”
“I would love one.”
They heard the click of nails on the bathroom floor and Bella came to sniff at the hem of Sonia’s cloak. Sonia must have passed the test because Bella promptly lay down and showed Sonia her stomach. Sonia bent down to rub Bella’s belly. “Who’s this lovely one?”
“That’s Bella. The cat regarding you from the doorway is Zoé.”
Sonia stood upright again and looked at the cat and gave it a wide smile. “Well, this explains a lot. It all makes sense now. You have familiars.”
“They’re my family.” Véronique said.
“Exactly. As soon a person accepts an animal into their family, a little seed of magic is born within you. It’s always been this way. Were they both rescues?”
“Yes, I adopted Bella and I just kind of took Zoé in.”
“Wonderful!” Sonia smiled. “There is so much to talk about, but good conversation is always done best over a cup of good tea or wine.”
“I’ll lead the way.” Véronique said. “Come on you two.”
As she led the way downstairs to her kitchen and the bottle of wine, Véronique felt like her life was just beginning, that she was at the beginning of her tale and wondered what magic she could create. Bella chased Zoé down the stairs and Sonia let out a laugh that sounded like the soft peal of bells.
For the first time in her life, Véronique felt free and wondered if it was possible to fly.
Buy Little Yellow Magnet from Amazon and Kobo!
Jamieson Wolf has written a compelling story about navigating multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. His story will touch your heart, make you cry, then laugh, and inspire you. A touching memoir with a bit of magic…and tarot! ~ Theresa Reed, author of The Tarot Coloring Book
Jamieson Wolf 