Nutty Magic

A tiny tale of a nutty writer's nutty adventure

Jul 03, 2026

DISCLAIMER: No nuts were actually harmed in the making of this story.

For some unseemly time, I wandered wearily in a lumbering lethargy: my once industrious days muted and muffled to a listless haze; befuddled, baffled and bored of all things logophilic. My love of reading vanished such that I could not bear to stare at a page for more than a moment or two before my eyes would ache from the lines of letters I could not seem to string together into something intelligible; the groupings seem nothing but gibberish.

And writing? That glorious gift of pen-wrought magic, ideas manifested into the tangible consequence of communication eluded me completely. As if putting any thought I might have into comprehensible words on page was not only as unattainable as a diaphanous specter, but as laughable as a joke my ennui couldn’t be bothered to remember.

A parade of practitioners, doctors and quacks, aimed to aid or mend or end my mad, mysterious malaise. They used potions and pills, chakras and shots, mantras and magnets till I thought I would plotz.

And then in the small, weekly local farmer’s market, a vendor I had not seen before beckoned me over to her stall which sat tucked in a corner. I looked around to be certain she had gestured to me and, with no one else in the immediate vicinity, I knew the answer. I came toward her, eyeing her table of herbs and whatnot while risking quick glances at the woman herself. She bore a kind face, wizened with wrinkles and wisps of white hair amidst the indomitable darker strands. She smiled wide as I came near.

“I can see you’re in need of something special,” she said.

I snorted softly to myself, my lips lifting on one side with a wry half-smile.

“That line work for you a lot?” I tossed at her.

Her smile only broadened.

“It only works when it’s true.”

I chuckled, nodding—a genuine smile yanked out of me.

“So, what’s your witchcraft telling you I need?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Witchcraft? How Elizabethan. I’m just a woman who knows a thing or two about nature’s remedies.”

“And you have some tincture or something that’s going to solve all my problems?”

“Not at all. Panaceas are the stuff of fairy stories. But I sense a heaviness around you. Like an invisible cloud weighing on you. Making things less clear than they should be.”

I’m sure I lost my smile. Even if she was just extremely lucky at reading people, the precision of her archery caught me cold.

“Would you like something that might help?” she asked.

Speechless, I nodded.

She hummed to herself as she proceeded to gather ingredients from various containers. Herbs, seeds, nuts, roots, a syrup of some sort: all manner of things. She put the lot in a thick bowl and then grabbed a pestle and ground them up while I watched.

“It’s mostly nuts,” she said. “That’s the main ingredient and what makes the paste spreadable. The rest helps the properties of the nuts to evolve into the active remedial agent that will clear away the cobwebs in which you currently feel caught.”

I could sense my skeptical side reasserting itself as I realized this woman, psychic or not, was selling me the extent of a souped-up peanut butter. But what did I have to lose? Except my lunch if it tasted as bad as it looked.

When she finished, she scooped the goop into a fat little vial, snapped a lid on it, and held it out to me. “Put the paste on as many things as you can today. At least at once at every meal. Or eat it plain, if you like. As long as you eat the entire vial before sundown.”

I took the offering, still feeling like I was somehow getting fleeced.

“How much?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “You will make a lot of people happy with your stories once you get back to your old self. I’m just paying it forward, as they say.”

Chills suddenly ran up and down my arms as my mouth hung open. How had she known I was a writer?

She just smiled even wider.

“Run along, now.”

I turned and walked away, feeling odd and a little spooked. When I got home, I opened the vial and took a sniff. It smelled good. Nutty and sweet. I put some on a banana and the combination proved so delicious, I was looking forward to my next treat. I ended up putting it on almost everything I ate and each mouth-watering bite made life seem a little bit better.

That night, just as the old woman had foretold, the cloud lifted and I found myself at the computer, typing madly, ideas flowing faster than my fingers could fly as I giddily rode a glorious wave of seemingly unstoppable creativity, which included the piece you currently read.

I went back to the farmer’s market the next week to thank her and, it will likely come as no surprise that the woman and her booth were not there. Not that week, nor any other week thereafter.

Was she a witch? Was she even real? I honestly don’t know. All I know is, on those days or nights when I’m having a bit of writer’s block, I long for a little vial of that enhanced nut paste. Because, whether it was real or imagined, literal or figurative, that post-nut clarity was pure magic.