Week 10, Storytelling: Sticks and Bones

In a small metaphysical shop in the middle of the French Quarter, there is a woman standing outside her door. Her shop has been here for over forty years and is full of new things and of things older than she is. This is the first place visitors go on their witchery tours of New Orleans. She is known to her friends and customers as Miriam, but her true identity is much more...serious.

After the tour joins her, Miriam scuttles around her shop as the new group shifts about looking at things, picking them up, turning them over in their hands. She stops and talks to everyone that is there. Usually, people only buy one or two things, just to say they bought something at a ‘real Voodoo store in New ‘awlins’, but sometimes she had special visitors show up. Today, that person was in this group and she was a powerful one. The girl wasn’t aware of her full potential, but Miriam could see it right away. As the girl went from shelf to shelf, running her hands over some stones, she stopped in front of a set of bones. She stood there and cocked her head like she was trying to make sense of them. Miriam walked up behind her and stood for a minute and watched. Miriam stepped beside her and touched her arm.

“Those are bones for throwing,” she said softly.

“What is that?” the woman said as she turned her head slightly and looked at Miriam out of the corner of eye.

“It’s a way of telling the future, like tea leaf reading, tarot, or palm reading. What is your name, honey?” Miriam asked.

“Lucy,” she returned with a smile. There was something about this old lady she liked, she thought.

“Well, Lucy, you ought to pick out a pair and maybe I can show you how to work them.”

“Oh, no, I can’t,” she said as she flipped over the bag to look at the price. “Yeah, I can’t,” she sighed as she placed them back on the shelf. “I’ve overspent on this trip already. These aren’t that much, I know, but I just can’t.”

Miriam looked around and turned back to Lucy. “Can you come back later, by yourself?”

“Uh...yes, ma’am. Probably so, why?” Lucy asked timidly.

“Well, you just come back by around nine and we will talk then,” Miriam said as she gave her a little wink.

“Oh, I better get going! it looks like the tour is leaving me,” Lucy said as she started walking towards the door. “I will see you later!” she called behind her as she waved goodbye.

At nine o’clock, the bell over the door rang as Lucy walked in. She looked around at the shop she had visited earlier during the day. It had a whole different feel at night. Candles were lit and there was a thicker incense smell than before, too. She breathed deeply and closed her eyes. As she was exhaling, Miriam walked out from the back of the store.

“Hello, Lucy. I’m so glad you came back,” Miriam said as she walked up to Lucy and grabbed both of her hands.

“Me too,” Lucy said as Miriam gave her hands a squeeze.

“Well, let’s just cut right to the chase shall we. I don’t know if you know it or not, but you are one powerful little girl,” Miriam said as she walked towards the back of the store.

Lucy stopped in mid-step. “What are you talking about? This,” she gestured around the room referencing Voodoo in general. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, I’m not, and I don’t think we have time to ease you into this. Things are a little more...dire than I realized earlier today,” Miriam spat as she grabbed Lucy by the arm and started pulling her to the back room.

The room was small with a little table centered in front of the fireplace. There were small altars all around the room, each one designated for a different deity or ancestor. Miriam gestured at one of the seats.

“Sit down, please. We need to get started,” Miriam said as she sat down and grabbed a bag from underneath her chair. It was the bag that Lucy had been looking at earlier.

“Wow, well, this escalated quickly,” Lucy laughed a little to herself.

“Yes, well, like I said, we don’t have much time to waste. My time has grown…short,” Miriam said as she poured the bones out on the table.

“First off, my name is Miriam. I am a priestess of Voodoo, as you probably already know, but I have another purpose,” Miriam said and looked at Lucy. She wasn’t sure if the child was ready for what she was fixin’ to lay on her, but she didn’t have a choice. “What I really am is death, not like what you think of as death, but that is my role.”

Lucy sat back in her chair and stared at Miriam. This is a dream, she thought, a really bad freaked out dream. Did she get some bad weed from that guy last night or what? But the more she sat processing what Miriam just said, the more right it felt. Why it felt right, she wasn’t sure, but she trusted her gut and it had never steered her wrong before.

“OK,” Lucy said. She inhaled and exhaled loudly. “What does that mean?”

Miriam was taken aback at how well Lucy just took that little bit of information. Maybe she was more capable than she originally thought, which would make the transition much easier.

“Well, that means that every night, I sit down at this table and the outcome decides the fate of the souls on this earth. Have you heard the saying ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones’...? Well, in this case, it’s ‘Sticks and bones’ but the words will hurt you.”

Lucy and Miriam leaned in close over the table and began discussing what would come next. As Miriam grabbed the bones and threw them down on the table, the candlelight touched her smile.

Affaire de Bizoton 1864. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Author's Note: This story is inspired by the tale The First War that is included in the Apache Tales unit. When I read the first paragraph of the story, it mentioned how the Raven was in charge of divining whether people would live or die by throwing a stick and then the stone pestle I thought it would be an interesting and fun twist to the idea of the ‘stick and stone’ to write something that fit in with the saying "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." As I was typing this saying, trying to develop the story in my head, I thought about an old voodoo witch sitting at a table in a dark room throwing bones for divination, so that seemed to be the way this story ended up going. As I was writing the story, it took on a life of its own. Lucy wasn’t even a main character until I had gotten through about a quarter of the dialog. I then had to go back and work Lucy into the first couple of paragraphs to help tie everything together. The name of the main character is the name of a real Voodoo priestess.


Bibliography: Jicarilla Apache Texts edited by Pliny Earle Goddard (1911) New York: Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. VIII.