Chapter Three (That Woman is Mad)

Chapter Three

As Julian was sitting at the dinner table that night eating the delicious stew her mother had made, she couldn’t stop thinking about what the frog had said to her. The only reasonable explanation that came to her mind was magic. Julian turned toward her mother who was standing in front of the stove.

“Mom, is magic real?” Asked Julian.

Julian’s mother stopped mid stirring of the stew in front of her. She slowly turned toward Julian with her eyes closed as if she was trying to not get angry, and counting to ten. Then, finally as she slowly opened her eyes.

“Julian. Magic is not real. What have you been reading? Don’t talk such nonsense to me!” Yelled her mother as she threw the ladle towards the table.

Like so many other times her mother had shown signs of being a lunatic, Julian simply stood up and walked out of the kitchen. Don’t get it confused, Julian’s mother loved her, she just acted crazy at times. Like for instance when Julian walked into the house one time to find her mother chopping celery, and stopping all of a sudden. She just stood there staring at the knife for an extensive amount of time. Julian eventually got the courage to walk over and very carefully shake her out of the trance.

It seemed as if over the years it had just gotten worse. It was especially bizarre, when her mother would spend countless hours down in their greenhouse-like basement. Julian was never allowed to go down there. The two times she got caught trying, she was made to eat habanero peppers from the huge garden in the back of their home. That will most certainly make a girl stop trying! But even with that as a future consequence, Julian was going to try again. She knew her mother was hiding something, and after the unusual experience in the woods, Julian was willing to bet her mother had something to do with it.