Feeding Grandmama's lodestones

In my dresser drawer there's a red flannel bag that used to live in my grandmother's. Inside, a pair of lodestones. Lodestone is natural magnetite, a stone that pulls, and in rootwork we keep them for drawing good things close: steady work, good luck, people who mean you well.

You feed them. Fridays I take them out, say a few words over them, sprinkle a pinch of magnetic sand so it bristles up on them like little whiskers, and dress them with a drop of oil. Then back into the flannel.

Grandmama said a fed stone is a working stone, and a hungry stone gets lazy. I've never once let them get lazy.