The Anatomy of Magic

by J.C. Cervantes

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” Unknown

My heart is still beating. Both scientific indicators that, yes, I am technically alive.

I can still feel the cold of the operating room, can still hear the clanking of metal, and the voices. God, there were so many voices. And then came the horrific silence. The kind that stays with you forever. It’s the kind you can never outrun.

My therapist cousin, Dahlia, would tell me that there’s an avoidance message in there somewhere as well but I’m too exhausted (and uninterested) to attempt an analysis.

The closer I get to our family farm, the more the knot in my stomach tightens. Mom only knows what I texted her: Coming home early. Don’t ask or I’ll turn around. I’ll talk when I’m ready.

Easing up on the pedal, I feel that same painful heat winding through my heart, spreading like fire across my chest. I’ve been in denial, pretending that it was heartburn, or stress. I know better. Just like I know when the symptoms began.

It’s my oldest sister, Harlow. Is it normal to weigh a thousand pounds two months before giving birth?

I’m a miserable stuffed potato, Lil. * * * You’re growing a human, I manage to type back. Of course you’re miserable.

She’s not human, I swear! I’m growing a new breed of the kraken.

Favor? I’m too exhausted to explain anything. Shoot. I’m home early and please don’t ask why. I’m still figuring things out. Can you just accept that I’ll tell you later?

I’ve never been a wisher, never wanted to hand over my power like that, but right now, in this fragile moment I wish that I could use my memory magic on myself.

All it would take is the exact right blend of blooms made into a breathable concoction. One inhale, maybe two, and all the pain would be gone.

the women in my family aren’t allowed to use magic for our own benefit, at least not for anything significant or life-altering.

I’m still breathing.

I take a deep breath and then another, filling and emptying my lungs with the oxygen-rich air. The anxiety slowly retreats like a cowering animal, but I know it isn’t gone for long. The January air is crisp, clean… I search for the scents of my childhood: honeysuckle, lavender, rose. There’s nothing. I inhale slower and more deeply

this time, waiting for the floral aromas to reach me.

Why can’t I smell the flower fields?

Magic aside, you can’t keep anything from that woman. Definitely not worth it to be a smoker and a liar.

The flowers, this house, this land, our magic—these are my constants in an otherwise unpredictable world.

I went into medicine to heal, to make a difference in the health outcomes of women, and over the years, I was introduced to a broken

system, one that values profit over patient care.

What I wouldn’t give for another cigarette. Another life.

Reality is so overrated, and all I want to do is sleep, even if the nightmares will come like they have for the last seven nights.

For a single, hopeful breath, I imagine that the shower cleared my sinuses, but still the flowers’ aromas evade me. Even magic cannot fix this.

My mother spelled me. Evidenced by two facts: first, I slept for an obscene sixteen hours straight, something I haven’t done since college, and second, I found a sprig of purple thyme inside my pillowcase, a bloom known for the power of healing and deep sleep.

It was like magic—the way it revealed a different view, a more nuanced image of what the naked eye couldn’t ever possibly see.

I knew then that science and magic weren’t too far apart.

Each form of my family’s unique magic comes down to the delivery. Dahlia uses tinctures and brews because the power of her healing magic must be ingested. Whereas Mom can use her dream magic with a simple spell and a petal under a pillow. Cam’s magic is definitely the most complicated. If she wants to conjure a ghost, she has to not only enchant the right flowers but also bury them at the exact right time, sometimes carving a name into the stems of the blooms.

When I was little, my grandmother Azalea told me that the garden was a special place where time stood still, and if you visited under the light of a full moon, you could reverse time. Or more specifically, you could change a moment in time.

If only, I think as I marvel at the thriving buds even in winter. Here, there are no seasons by which we plant or cultivate. Here, magic is always in bloom.

“Anemone, Flora de Ventana.” The Wind Flower is a complicated flower, and one with many meanings. Abandonment, fading youth, suffering, refusal of love. This flower denotes estrangement. It possesses powers of healing and protection. Wear in an amulet around your neck to cast away darkness, nightmares, and unwanted thoughts.

The small voice inside of me whispers, There is no path forward, no path back.

And now I allow the unthinkable to take form: what if the forgotten spell really does have something to do with all of this?

Grief. Regret. Rage. They’ve all moved in. Unwanted visitors that have made themselves at home, and for the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a next step, or anything close to a solution.

I know I can’t reverse time. I can’t change the moment that brought me here.

I’ve never felt closer to her than I do now.

That night, when I fall asleep holding the Wind Flower, I dream I’m on a sailboat alone, drifting across a placid sea. My grandmother’s voice echoes across the water. Go back to the beginning. What beginning? I ask. There is no answer.

Most of the requests are things like rekindling a lost love, or healing a broken heart, or reliving a memory, or talking to a deceased loved one. We then hold our ritual to prepare the blooms accordingly.

Azalea wouldn’t have referred to an inconsequential something. So I immediately rule out obvious beginnings, like my career, or the something that led me home. But I rule that out, too, because that was a definitive end.

“The heart is a strange vessel,” she says, and for a second, I think she used the wrong word, until she adds, “Whatever we fill it with is mirrored in our lives. So, I imagine that this so-called beginning was a moment when your heart was at risk.”

a yellow coreopsis, which signifies love at first sight, a lavender forget-me-not, for true love and remembering, and a pink camellia.

“Pink signifies longing and desire,”

For my memory magic to work it must be inhaled and that means I need to blend the flowers into a breathable concoction, sometimes powder, other times liquid.

Memories go with you no matter how far you travel. Or how much time passes.

A face comes swimming into focus, one I’ve kissed a hundred times, one I’ve loved

more than any other. One I thought I’d cast out with magic. It’s him. It’s Sam.

The pain and confusion of Sam’s abandonment were unbearable, and the anger that bloomed afterward fueled my desire to reduce him to a distant memory, one that didn’t ignite so much emotion. Which is why I intensified the original veiling spell I had used. So instead of simply hiding our relationship from my family’s prying eyes, I ended up shielding myself from it too.

shielded my heart with a masking spell.

Sam changed into someone I didn’t recognize. He became cold and distant, a storm of chaos that confused me, and when I asked him about it, he told me that he didn’t love me anymore, that he needed to move on.

I felt like the earth was disintegrating beneath my feet, like there was no oxygen left in the entire world. I went against my nature and begged him to reconsider, to tell me why. What about his promise to always love me?