"I swear sometimes I think I'm cursed," Robin complained, sitting at her favorite coffee shop one evening with her best friend Brandi.
"You've just had a couple of bad dates," consoled Brandi, her eyes searching around the nearby tables for any guys who might warrant her attention.
"A couple of dozen bad dates," corrected Robin. Her dark eyes stared down into her coffee while her short auburn hair fell around her pretty face. "And almost as many bad relationships."
Robin's relationships had never worked out. She had a body and looks that had made it easy to date jocks and popular guys in high school and college and now she had progressed to men with ambitious and successful careers like lawyers and stock brokers. But saying that Robin's relationships had 'never worked out' was like saying the Titanic had been a minor boating mishap.
Recently, things had gotten worse and Robin's private life had begun to go from the merely disastrous to approaching natural catastrophes. She kept expecting the Weather Channel to name the next tropical hurricane after her.
"Why is it so hard to find a decent guy these days?" she asked, not expecting a helpful answer from her best friend who considered a long term relationship anything that went past a month.
"Don't look so depressed. I could set you up with that cute trainer at the gym," Brandi suggested helpfully.
"I thought he already has a girlfriend."
"He does but I think he'd be willing to dump her to go out with you."
"Brandi, maybe you think its okay trying to steal guys away from other girls, but did it ever occur to you that if a guy is scummy enough to dump his girlfriend, he'll just turn around and do the same thing to you?" Robin asked exasperated. "I mean, it's only happened to you every time you've done it. When will you figure it out you can't change a guy. There aren't any guys out there who would ever change for a woman."
"That's not true," a new voice spoke.
Robin and Brandi both looked up. A somber young man was standing by their table. He was not that tall and had dark hair that might have been chestnut or even mahogany, Robin couldn't tell which, and he was dressed in plain, nondescript clothes. There was a bookish appearance to him like he might be an accountant or more likely a librarian, but behind his glasses, his eyes were the most piercing shade of green Robin had ever seen.
"It simply takes the right woman to change a man," he was saying to them. "But women always forget that they can only bring out what's inside a man already. You can't turn anyone into something he's not or deny what he really is." His voice was quiet and serious, Robin could clearly hear him through the noisy bustle around them.
"Oh really?" Brandi snickered. She turned her head so she could secretly give Robin her secret 'Loser' sign, but there was something about the librarian's quiet, humble manner that stopped Robin from joining in her friend's giggling.
The sober-faced stranger flushed at Brandi's openly scornful and mocking expression but straightened himself in spite of the trampling of his pride. Robin had the distinct impression he did not talk to women that much, but he seemed determined to speak to them.
"You are not cursed," he said, talking directly at Robin now. "You just have to stop looking for men who only have what you believe you want, rather than what will truly fulfill you."
He placed his empty hand down on the table and when he brought it back up there was a red rose laying there.
He was already walking away from their table and going out the door of the shop by the time Brandi sniggered, "Oh brother, how corny can you get?"
Robin did not answer. She reached out to pick up the rose, its light sweetness wafting over the bitter smell of coffee.
"Could you -believe- that guy?" Brandi said. "And did you get a load of what was he wearing? Not to mention his shoes too! There must have been a sale on at K-Mart! Look at that, he's not even going out to the parking lot. He probably doesn't even own a car!" Brandi was almost busting a bra strap with laughter.
Robin glanced up and saw it was true, the librarian, or whatever he was, could be seen walking across the dark street in the direction of the park. Normally, Robin would have been laughing with her friend, any other night she would have thought the whole incident as completely ridiculous. But tonight, it didn't seem silly.
Robin had been lied to by men wanting to get her into bed, she had been manipulated and deceived so often it hurt. But she had felt nothing but frank sincerity from the quiet librarian, something she had not heard for so long she had almost forgotten how it sounded.
"Hmmm, but I bet -those- two have their own cars," Brandi was saying, having recovered from her bout of mocking laughter. She was pointing at a pair of tall, well-dressed guys who had just come into the shop. "BMW's at least, I'd say."
Robin looked up at the pair just as they noticed her and Brandi sitting together, the two men giving her same appraising glance she had seen so many times before. They both wore expensive, stylish clothes and probably did drive costly cars and had high paying jobs. They were like all the guys Robin had always dated, chic and successful, the only ones she had ever thought were worth her notice. On any other night, she never would have imagined herself giving some oddly mannered librarian in unfashionable clothes a second glance or thought. On any other night she might not have been holding a rose that seemed to appear out of thin air.
After a quick strategic discussion, the two newcomers were making their way to their table when Robin rose up to her feet.
"I have to go, Brandi," she said.
Robin drove her car slowly down the dark, deserted street, the librarian in view just ahead on the sidewalk. She huddled in her coat wrapped around her white sweater and dress. Robin didn't know what she was doing. She supposed she was trying to work up the nerve to pull alongside of the green-eyed man and offer him a lift. But her better sense told her that letting a complete stranger into her car late at night, no matter how sincere he seemed, went beyond the realms of stupidity, so instead she crept along half a block behind and continued to wonder why she was following him.
Then she saw a gang of figures suddenly step out from an alleyway and move in front of the librarian, all much taller and burlier than him. Robin felt a sudden surge of anxiety when the largest of the figures reached out to grab the librarian's shoulder.
Before Robin could think to make a distraction with her lights or horn or pick up her cell phone to call for help, the librarian lifted up one of his hands. It was dark, so Robin could not see things very clearly, but she could have sworn something that looked like a leafy vine came uncoiling out of the librarian's sleeve.
he vine took hold of the larger man's arm and there was a audible crack of breaking bone and a shriek of pain. The librarian whipped his arm about and the gang leader was flung halfway across the street as though he weighed nothing. The vine or whatever is was disappeared back up the librarian's sleeve and he said something to the rest of the figures. They all fled in terror, one of them hauling their injured leader away with them.
Her jaw hanging open, Robin watched as the short, bespectacled stranger continue on his way until he turned into the wrought-iron gateway that led to the park. She quickly pulled her car over to the curb and hurried after him, tugging off her high heels so she could move faster even though she was ruining her nylons.
Robin had jogged through the paths winding through park often enough on bright, crisp mornings, but the she had never been there at this late at night. Neither had she noticed the trail the librarian now took into the dark trees. She followed after him and the trees seemed to close around her, shutting off the moonlight and the lights of the buildings surrounding the park. It was suddenly very hushed and quiet. Her own breathing was very audible in her ears as she stumbled along, trying to make out the trail before her.
When Robin finally came to the end of the trail, it opened out into a wide clearing with the moon shining brightly overhead. The green-eyed librarian was standing close by, and in the center of the clearing was gathered a semi-circle of shadowy figures dressed in hooded robes.
"You came," the librarian exclaimed, obviously startled when Robin staggered out into the clearing, his expression torn between relief and consternation. "You should have stayed at the shop. I shouldn't have talked to you, but I didn't have any choice."
"Who are you?" Robin asked. She pointed at the robed figures which certainly looked sinister enough, but for some reason she felt no fear at their presence. "And who are they? What are you doing here?"
"The consort has come," intoned the robed figure in front of the group. "The ritual can commence."
"Oh crap, are you some of those freaky nuts who showed up on Jerry Springer last week?" Robin asked apprehensively.
"No! No, please I can explain. At least, I can try. My name is Hugh."
"I'm Robin," she replied. She could not have said why she was staying there in a dark clearing facing a collection of robed figures that could have come out a B-movie horror flick, but she thought part of the reason for her staying might have to do with the worried, anxious young man standing before her.
"This is going to seem crazy," Hugh said.
"Try me," Robin encouraged him.
He waved a hand at the figures. "These figures aren't real. That is, they are just manifestations of this grove. These are all English oaks, the only ones in the city. And the bushes here are all mistletoe. These guardians only appear on nights of the harvest moon and no one else can see them unless they have druidic blood in them, like me, or wiccan blood in them, like you."
Robin looked more closely at the robed figures and for some reason she was not surprised to realize their hoods were empty with nothing at all inside of them except shadows. For now, Robin decided it was just easier to accept what she was being told rather than trying to deal with the unreality of what she was seeing.
"Wiccan? Waitaminute, you mean like a witch?" she asked as the words sank in.
