A Witch's Word

WE ALL KNOW WHY

Edith was admiring the ideogram that filled the last blank space on her neck. It was a skull with a butterfly wings soaring behind it. Life and death magic was the most complex skill to master. Only through the study of such skills and her own endeavors had she succeeded in excelling in all branches of magical ability. She now had three more ideograms than Mother Maggie — something she was determined to keep from the matriarch of witches. People were feeding off each other’s energy, in a euphoric frenzy in the village. Edith would have loved to have joined in with the celebrations of the twenty-year peace, but Maggie was waiting for her to discuss the meeting. The price for being the daughter of the mother of magic was that she had few friends. Her finger lingered on her new inked addition. It was a fair price to pay in exchange for the skills she had accumulated over the lonely years.

Squawking from the windowsill was a raven made of stained-glass. Edith touched the wings of the bird, and heard her mother’s voice in her head.

“Come see me, immediately.”

It was fortunate that Edith hadn’t made any plans while she had completed her studies. If she had, it would have been hard to leave the revelries and answer her mother’s summons. She walked through the beautiful arch that the trees made as they reached for each other from across the path that directed her through the forest where Maggie’s cottage was to be found.

Pink and purple clouds oscillated around each other, it was the residual energy of the magic not fully used, the wasted amount, as her mother called it. It caused Edith’s mother no small amount of worry. She wanted everyone to be more efficient with their casting, but people’s skills in the use of magic varied for inexplicable reasons and no amount of extra study would fix that. Edith had always found the colour pallet of her home bold and breathtaking. The skies that looked as thick and wild as heather comforted her and the energy of spells gone wrong was always cool and welcoming. She didn’t see failure in the skies as her mother did, she saw the power of perseverance.

Maggie’s thatch cottage was black and always had thick smoke bellowing from the chimney. In her plant boxes she would only grow fox glove, a warning that not everyone could expect a friendly reception on arrival. The door opened of its accord, not unusual for a witch as busy as the mother of magic was, and Edith smiled at the lack of greeting. It was a fair statement to say that Maggie’s children had never been her priority, she had bigger concerns to focus on. Ironically, the mother of magic could never be accused of being a good mother, and her chosen children had accepted that as they grew up. Predictably, Maggie was leaning over the cooking pot that had shadows of future possibilities forming across her dining table. This was the way most magical beings practiced divination magic. A vessel of some description was needed, but it had manifested very differently in Edith, and it was possibly the biggest insight into her relationship with her mother that she had never revealed how her own magic presented itself.

“Take a seat, I’ll be with you in a minute.” Maggie instructed, never removing her eyes from the pot.

Watching the shadows circle the walls, Edith tried to work out what was being depicted. This type of magic had to be heavily interpreted, it lacked the accuracy that her own divination had, but the shape of dragons and fire was easy enough to discern.

“Your meeting was successful then?” Edith asked, desperate to get this get-together over with so that she could carry on with her own plans for the day.

“Very successful. I managed to broker a marriage deal for you. In two days, you will marry Prince Cadmus here, as I knew you would want to follow our rituals for the service, and the festivities will happen in your husband’s kingdom.” Maggie called out cheerfully, ignoring the look of disbelief on her daughter’s face.

It was her sister’s graduation in four months, a day she had hoped for since Tabitha had moved her first flowerpot across the room at five years old, albeit clumsily, and she wouldn’t be here for it. Her stomach churned in a sickening fashion.

“You are a fine witch, almost as accomplished as I.” Her mother complimented.

Edith smiled, knowing that admitting she was more powerful would turn a relationship that was already complex between mother and daughter into one of rivalry. She would be considered a threat. Perhaps that was already the case and a main reason why she had been bartered to their greatest enemy. Edith affirmed that concealing her ideograms from Maggie had been a shrewd decision.

Looking around the room, the smoke shadows were so much clearer now. She would never add her magic signature to the grimoire of matriarchs; no-one would ever know how skilled and powerful she was. She was more than ready to assume leadership, and her mother’s plan was to pack her off to another kingdom to marry a man she had never met, and even worse, everyone would praise her political skills.

“I’m afraid I must prepare for this journey. Thank you for informing me.” Edith politely, expressed through gritted teeth.

“Wait. You will have to hide most of your ink ideograms. I told them you were barely skilled in magic, more like your sister. I want you to take your glass birds, report everything they do back to me,” Maggie instructed.

“Is there anything else you want to take from me before I leave?” Edith asked, spitefully.

“Yes. Your emotions. Nokon is cruel, and if you don’t want to be hurt by his court, then it would be better to leave all your feelings here. The best spies are the blank slates. You are upset, my daughter, and I can indulge you for a moment to pity your situation and I will give you time to accept the decision of your mother.”

Seeing her instruction as more of a challenge, Edith stood up and smoothed out her skirt. She looked at her mother with a blank expression, neither the hate nor the anger appeared on her face.

“Thank you for your final lesson, mother of magic.” She stated and left the home she never felt at ease in, and the mother she never felt affection for and wished, not for the first time, that she had never been chosen by her.

Storming through the city of Sourcero, she could feel her magic pushing at her from the inside out. Looking for a way to surge out of her and join the other violet clouds, it was responding to her grief. Gritting her teeth, she focussed on pulling it back into her center like a drop of water in a lake, magic shouldn’t ripple without control. People welcomed her, waving as she passed, and trying to gain favour with who they assume will be their next leader. How wrong they were. Each commoner was given a job that best suited their magical skill, no matter how powerful or weak that may be. Consequently, Sourcero was a state of security, there was no abject poverty, everyone was provided for.

“You want me to provide you with a sleeping potion for one loaf of bread? Make it two and we might have something to discuss.”

Edith laughed at the woman’s haggling. She would miss this when she was banished to Novtexo. There was no currency in her homeland. All magical beings traded their skills for what they needed. Everybody had something, so nobody went without it. In Nokon’s kingdom, everyone used coins, but there wasn’t enough made for all to have. Maggie had always pointed out that this was the biggest cruelty of dragons and lycans. For some to be rich, others had to be painfully poor. Two days was all she had left, and Edith planned on filling every last second with all the things she had always wanted to do, but put to one side so that she could be the leader that they all deserved.

Running to the meadow, she desperately hoped that her sister hadn’t returned to her cottage yet. There was a five-year difference between them, with Tabitha only recently celebrating her twenty-first birthday. She wondered if her husband would be kind enough to let her return to celebrate the twenty-second. They were closer than sisters, even though they had been selected from different families, and always comforted each other in the absence of maternal affection. She had never missed the birthday of her younger sibling, and it broke her heart that she might have to now.

Appearing dismal, Edith could see her sister’s blond hair poking out of the long, pink, plump grass. Hunched shoulders were the first indication that Tabitha had had a bad day, and the little puffs of pink energy swirling from her nose implied that she was struggling to control her power. Sitting down next to her, Edith put her arm across her sister’s shoulders and waited for the potential to stop spilling out of her.

“Are you struggling with something, dearest Tabitha?” Edith asked.

“Warlock Cliff asked me to turn a quill into a flower, and I stared at it for ten minutes, willing it to turn, and repeating the incantations, but then he knocked his knuckles on the desk, asking if anyone was home, and pointed out that I should be embarrassed that such simple magic evades me. I’ll never graduate.” She recounted her day, holding back her tears.

“Warlock Cliff is a fool, and you are not to listen to his nonsense. Besides, he taught it to you incorrectly.” Edith soothed her and plucked one of the long grasses from the ground.

“Hold this in your hands, and before you start the spell, I want you to imagine in your mind it is turning into a beautiful rose. Replay it in your mind repeatedly.” Edith instructed and waited for the suspicion she always had to reveal itself.

“Open your eyes, Tabitha.”

Balanced across her palms was a beautiful rose, almost as beautiful as the look of pride on her face.

“We don’t need in the incantations. For a long time, I’ve wondered if we were similar, but time has run out for us. In your classes and with mother in the future, don’t fixate on the incantations too much, just picture what you want to happen. Listen for the information you want people to tell you. We are different from mother and the others, but don’t tell anyone. You must pretend to be naturally progressing. I won’t be able to protect you if they find out.”

Fear stretched across Tabitha’s face, her singular success forgotten as the rose wilted back into the long grass.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

By the time that Edith had explained their mother’s plans, the sky was a plum colour and the evening was turning bitter.

“You know why she is really doing this, don’t you?” Tabitha asked, enraged by the unfairness of it all.

“She is afraid that with my popularity she will have no more excuses to delay my ascension. By doing this, she is setting you up to be her heir and knowing about your reports from college, she has deemed that you are not a risk. She is clutching on to power while making the greatest power union that anyone has ever seen,” Edith answered, knowing the confirmation was what her sister needed.

“She’s a b***h!” Tabitha cursed.

“She’s our gifted mother; we have always known her nature,” Edith affirmed as diplomatically as he could.

“Our ancestors would revolt from their graves if they knew what was being done to you. You might have to carry the children of a dragon lord who murdered our grandmother,” Tabitha raged. “She’s no mother of mine. I wish she would have left me with the family I came from…I bet she does too with how useless I am.”

Standing up and stretching her stiff legs, Edith reached down and linked her sister. She wasn’t to know that Edith had already planned the many ways she would be preventing that particular fate from coming to pass. In fact, if Edith was patient, she was sure she could make Prince Cadmus as repulsed by her as she was of him, if he wasn’t so already. Eventually, they reached their separate cottages and kissed each other fondly.

“I promise that I will keep your advice close to my heart and excel in my studies. If you don’t return before I graduate, I will become the mother of magic and make you come back home,” Tabitha promised.

Edith smiled and wished all dreams could come true.