Instructions In The Cauldron - Serena Longhi Gelati

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never had rest when we weren’t there. There were always her friends coming and going to see her.

      “They are always telling me their troubles”, she had explained to us, “sometimes talking with someone is enough to feel better, to break the dikes of the dam we built to protect our ego. While they keep talking, I make a good tea, I knit, I think about what they are telling me and in the end I give them the little work I made. In that way, as if by magic, sadness disappears”.

      “How can you do that?” I asked curiously.

      “I’ve told you, I just have to let them give vent to their feelings and always think about what I’m doing. While I keep knitting and they keep talking, I imagine them at peace, light-hearted, so I can charge my work with a positive energy, instilling these nice thoughts into it. It’s not difficult, but I need to concentrate a lot, so I use the violet so much, it helps me stay more focused”.

      I didn’t understand much, neither did Sarah.

      “Granny, I’ve heard someone saying that oaks should never be cut down. Is it true?” I changed the subject.

      “Absolutely! Just like an hawthorn branch should never be torn, except for May Day”.

      “But how can you do, if the oak gets ill?”.

      “When an oak gets ill, that’s a bad sign…however a part of the trunk must be kept there. Roots are as important as the outer part”.

      “The cut down trunk can be turned into a nice little table”.

      “That’s true, Sarah, an oak should never be completely eliminated, especially when it’s inside a private garden! The family would crumble”.

      Sunday evening always came too fast. When we heard the noise of our dad’s car on the gravel, we were caught by a mix of happiness in seeing our parents again and of melancholy. They usually took us to a nice family pub for dinner on our way home and it was nice to be with them, during those uncommon moments together, but we also knew that we were leaving behind us the magic of the cottage and of our granny.

      Luckily our week went by very fast between school and the various volley ball and dance clubs, we came home tired in the evening, mum gave us dinner, she spent some time with us and then we went to bed.

      II. Passages towards other realities…

      The following weekend was mainly rainy and cold.

      “That’s not bad”, our granny told us. She always saw the positive side in every situation.

      “The new seeds need also rain and I have a lot of work to do. Old Mal invited me to take part in our May Fayre at Higginson Park, I’ll have my own stall! I’m going to sell mainly knitting and some herbal oils I produce by myself”.

      Old Mal was a dear family friend.

      “That’s great, granny! Can we help you sell?”, my sister exclaimed enthusiastically.

      “Of course, Sarah”.

      “Alison’s mother used to have a stall too, when they lived in London, in Camden Town”, she went on in her dreamy way.

      “That’s really a very large market!”, our granny claimed, brushing poor Kiki.

      “They sold stones, amulets, incense…you know, those little sticks which are sweet-smelling if you light them. But she said it has become too commercial now and she doesn’t like it anymore. What does commercial mean?”

      “It means that most of the goods are alike, they aren’t original, they just follow trends. London is a tourist city, people goes to Camden expecting they can find some particular goods. There are various trends: punk, rock, gothic and hippie, but, as she said, they have turned into a commercial style, to avoid disappointing expectations and to be sure they’ll sell. Unfortunately, everywhere is like that…excepting Chalice Well’s gardens and the Tor, of course”.

      Our granny’s family came from there, she always took a dreamy mood when she was talking about her village. We had never been there, mum said it was a den for crazy people and granny always scolded her because she didn’t understand the magic of that place.

      “Is old Mal your fiancé?”, Sarah asked her impudently.

      We had always suspected it, but we had never had the courage to ask her.

      “Absolutely not! He’s just a dear friend, we keep company to each other. We’ve known each other for ages”.

      Granny had told us again and again that she still missed our grandpa; he had died ten years before. A heart attack, he had passed away from morning to evening, without any notice. Our mum was just eighteen, she had never got over the shock.

      We liked old Mal, as she called him. He was tall, with greying hair and a smile which always made you feel well, he could have been the perfect fiancé for granny. He was kind, smiling and he always took strawberry candies for us. He was fond of horses, he had two, Smelly e Shelly, and he was ready to saddle them and take us for a tour whenever we wanted to. I always insisted on not riding Smelly. He was famous in Marlow because he organized the yearly May Fayre with stalls, merry-go-rounds and gastronomic stands. If it wasn’t for him, the fair might not be so nice; at least that was what granny kept saying.

      “While you are knitting, can we watch Harry Potter?”, I asked as I turned on the TV.

      “That’s ok. I’m really curious, everyone is talking about that young wizard”.

      “Great! Dad bought us the first boxed set, we could watch the first one today and the second one tomorrow…”, I suggested.

      “We’ll see…you know, I don’t like letting you stay before the TV set for too long”.

      We crouched down on the sofa for the whole length of the film, spellbound by the story. We knew it by heart, but there was some new detail to be discovered every time. It was absolutely our favourite movie. Granny never stopped knitting, she only got up to make tea. I couldn’t understand if she was either following the story or  thinking about something else.

      “So, did you like it?”, I asked as soon as the film ended; I was curious to know her point of view.

      “If I liked it? It’s great, girls! The author deserves all the success she is having. Absolutely gifted, a fancy worth of a great mind”. Granny was really enthusiastic.

      “And you still haven’t watched the second one!”.

      “I especially liked a detail”, she went on, “The idea of platform 9 and ¾: creating a passage to get into a different reality…neither the usual doors in tree trunks like in “Nightmare”, nor the holes in the ground like in “Alice in Wonderland”. Do you remember, little girls, when Alice is following the White Rabbit? She falls into a hole and, after a nice flight headlong, she finds herself before a door”.

      We had watched that cartoon hundreds of times.

      “Another clever idea is the transformation of Professor McGranit into a cat…really nice. I liked it. But children, that’s not magic, remember that. That’s fancy. Waving a magic wand and saying a formula quickly isn’t enough. Magic is something more: it starts from our work on ourselves to understand what we want to change and why. And above all, it doesn’t hurt anybody. Never! It sends away, but doesn’t hurt. Life, God, Mother Nature, Karma or what you call it will punish the ones who behave badly. Remember that: tit for tat.”

      “You also taught us: don’t hurt, don’t be afraid”, I went on.

      “Exactly.”

      Someone rang the door at that moment. Who could it be? Tea time had passed and it was raining hard outside.

      Granny ran to open it.

      “Oh, Mal! Come in, what’s happening?”

      “Pizza! Pizza for the most beautiful women in the county! Someone should feed

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