“Oh, yes, Shep. They look like coincidence. There’s always a rational explanation if you want it.” –Gillian Holroyd
This is what witchcraft looks like to me.
I didn’t have to be at the airport until noon, so I spent Monday morning bumming around the lobby of the Mystic South host hotel. I was just about to dive into my newly-acquired, autographed copy of All Them Witches: Folktales & Rhymes, when I randomly glanced up and spotted Tempest and Nathan loading their van in the front drive.
Grateful for the chance to say goodbye, I ran outside to greet them. And they were glad to see me too, although they were also a little stressed out, because Nathan had lost his keys.
The last place he remembered having them was in the parking garage the night before. But the hotel and the attached conference center are labyrinthine spaces, and over the course of the weekend, Nathan had traversed most of the square footage. The keys could have quite literally been anywhere.
It wasn’t really a crisis — Tempest had car keys and house keys, so they weren’t stranded or anything. But Nathan’s key fob was limited-edition merch from one of his favorite bands, and he was saddened by the prospect of never seeing it again.
“Maybe you can divine the location of the keys,” Tempest joked. And under different circumstances, I would’ve pulled out my lithomancy stuff and thrown down (so to speak). But there is a time and a place for sortilege, and that time is usually not when potential querents are exhausted from working a conference and rationing out their last shreds of patience for the 16-hour road trip ahead of them.
So instead, I was like, “Hey, we’re witches. I’m confident the keys will make it back to you one way or another.” They were like, “Fair point,” gave me hugs, then jumped in their van and drove off towards Rhode Island.
And an hour later, I had the keys.
Not long after they departed, someone found a wad of keys in one of the hospitality suites. Realizing that they might be Nathan’s, they called him to report the discovery, then handed off the keys to a security guard, who ferried them to the front desk.
While that was going on, Tempest called me to confirm that I was still at the hotel, and Nathan called the front desk to let them know to be on the lookout for me. I retrieved the keys, sent a picture to Tempest to make sure they were the right set, thanked the hotel staff profusely on behalf of everyone involved, victoriously summoned a Lyft, and caught my flight with time to spare.
At face value, it was nothing but a string of happy accidents: I happened to run into Tempest and Nathan; the person who found the keys happened to know that Nathan had lost his; that person happened to have Nathan’s number; Tempest happened to have mine; I happened to have not yet left for the airport. Good fortune, apparently, all around.
But it’s in those synchronicities — those intersections of good luck and bridled coincidence — where witchcraft lives and thrives. And it makes me very happy whenever I get to live there as well.
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