Funk-N-Fiction

In our second story for day five of the 2026 Halloween Flash Fiction event, author Kiernan Kelly delivers us a delightfully quaint magical tale of “granny women”, told by a surprising storyteller.

Sweeping Magic
by Kiernan Kelly

Come closer, come closer. Let me tell you a story as you peruse the wares in this delightfully quaint store.

I was born, for lack of a better term, in the thick mountainside woods nearby, fashioned from the sturdy plants and trees that grow there. My stave is ash, my bristles, broomcorn, tied tightly with strong strands of jute.  I look eerily similar to the dozens of my brothers and sisters, all hand-tied, who hang as stoic soldiers lining the walls of this small shop in this equally tiny village sitting in the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains.

Sweeping Magic is the name of the shop.

Well, one of us has magic. The rest? They can sweep, but magic is beyond them.

You see, my appearance is where any similarity between myself and the other brooms ends. I am here in this shop by mistake. While all the others were crafted by local artisans with decades of experience in the craft of broom making, I was made by the hands of a granny woman, a practitioner of the Craft, back when she was just a girl. A granny woman who eventually lived to see more than the turning of two centuries.

A witch.

Well, nobody in the hills much likes the term witch. They much prefer to be called granny women.

Anyway, she was a hoot, the old woman, always causing a little mischief, just to keep things interesting. True, most of her time was spent dispensing her herbs and tinctures and potions to the local population who sought out her mullein for coughs, or catnip tea for colic, or black cohosh for women’s troubles, but in her spare time, she grew bored and sought to liven things up a little with a well-aimed spell.

I watched her from a corner of her cottage near the threshold and was silently amused by her antics. Once, in the nineteen twenties, she sent a huge knot of toads to plague the tax revenuers who seemed determined to bedevil her customers. Soon enough, those men were discovering toads in places only God should know about.

Another time, in the sixties this was, Herman McKinney, an avowed lifelong bachelor and a man who could pinch a penny until it hollered uncle, tried to cheat her out of payment for a tincture he needed. She set a love spell on him. He went and fell for Almira Combs, whose family detested the McKinneys with a passion that rivaled the Hatfields and the McCoys. Oh, the fireworks that love spell caused! I don’t recall if she was ever paid for the tincture, but it seems to me she got full compensation in the laughs she enjoyed at poor Herman’s expense.

Oh, there were dozens and dozens of other incidents like these over the years, but the one I am sure you would be most interested in is the latest.

Last winter, while the granny woman doddered around the cottage, too old and fragile now to tolerate going outside in the brutal Appalachian cold even for a short while, Death lurked right outside her door. Her magic had grown too weak to keep him away much longer. Housebound and bored, regardless of her frailty, she set her sights on me. Me, the enduring besom with which she’d swept a century of ill intentions from her doorstep, who’d protected her cottage from malicious energy, and turned aside the spells of sister witches who were not overly fond of her, became her final and greatest project.

Using the last of her charms, and almost the last of her strength, she imbued me with self-awareness, magic, and all her knowledge.  I am no longer an inanimate object doomed to watch silently from a corner of the room. I am aware of myself as a being, a creature of magic and mystery. I can interact with the world, use enchantments to my advantage or to the benefit of whomever I deem worthy. Heal or hurt, they are two sides to the same coin.

Case in point, damning Herman McKinney for all eternity for stealing me after the old woman’s death and selling me to Sweeping Magic.

I, of course, fought him with all I had in me. Herman is very shortly going to go bald, develop boils, cataracts, and a case of the backdoor trots that will rank as legendary, but it was all for naught. He still handed me over along with a boxful of other items he stole when he discovered the granny woman dead in her bed. His ill-gotten gains amounted to the princely sum of ten dollars.

I got the last laugh, though. I believe, due to my age and backstory of belonging to an actual Appalachian granny woman, I am priced at one hundred and fifty.

Well worth the price, I say.

Buy me.

Come closer, and closer still. Examine the small plaque explaining my history. Ooh and ahh over my age, and how cool – your words not mine — it would be to have a broom that belonged to an actual granny woman in your home. How it would make your dinner party conversation so much more exciting than listening to Paul Deerfield drone on and on about last week’s town council meeting.

Buy me and give me the respect due to a besom of my vintage and power, and I will keep your home free from malicious spirits who would do you harm. I will guard your door and watch over you when you sleep. I will whisper in your ear how jewelweed cures poison ivy, how witch hazel reduces swelling and inflammation, and how ginseng fights off fatigue, and teach you how to spot and harvest these plants and roots. I will tell you how to talk the fire out of a burn and give you the secret of the powerful blood charm, which stops bleeding. 

Turn away from me, leave me behind to wither away on this wall and I assure you Herman McKinney won’t be the only one afflicted with the green apple splatters.

Heal or hurt, two sides of the same coin, remember?

No, forget it. I can’t fly. This isn’t Salem, and these aren’t the Witch Trials. First of all, I’m real magic, not like the dozens of old women and poor people accused of witchcraft by their jealous neighbors. This is Appalachia, home of backwoods magic and lore. I am rooted in white magic…with a bit of a devilish flare, just like the granny woman who made me all those decades ago.

Buy me. You know you want to. Wonder about the financial practicality of the price later, when we’re all at home, snug and secure, and you’re deciding how best to display me. Think of me as an investment.

If money is a problem, I’ll tell you how scrubbing your threshold with boiling water with a pinch of salt and fresh basil will bring money to you.

See? Problem solved.

Buy me.

No cash? No problem. Sweeping Magic takes all major credit cards, Apple Pay, and Zelle.

Buy me. You won’t regret it.

Unless I get bored. Then all bets are off. Like the granny woman who made me, I might cause a little mischief.

How do you think the IRS feels about toads?