Big little spells, p.4
Big Little Spells, page 4
Felicia Ipswitch is standing on the front porch, looking as officious as ever and worse, holding a stack of white binders.
Hi, welcome to hell, I think. All your enemies are here.
“Rebekah. Ellowyn.” She manages to say our names like they taste bad, then looks beyond us. Pointedly. I assume she’s looking for Emerson and Georgie, or evidence of unsavory behavior that will convince her that Ellowyn and I are the delinquents she’s always thought us to be. Both, probably. She continues to peer past us, but when we don’t do anything but stare back at her, she lets out that sniff. “Here you are.” She hands me a binder, then gives one to Ellowyn.
I’m not the only one who takes it automatically, but I hate myself for it.
“What is this?” I ask, but dread settles into my stomach at the sight of St. Cyprian High’s familiar logo on the cover.
“It’s your syllabus. Your work will begin in May if you have the faintest hope of readying yourself for Litha.” Felicia makes it clear she has no such hope that I’ll be ready for anything.
And still I laugh, because what I know is that laughing at bullies is one of the strongest weapons there is. Felicia, bully extraordinaire, is not moved to join me. I’m surprised that Ellowyn doesn’t laugh along the way she usually does, but she’s flipping through her much smaller binder. I decide not to give Felicia the satisfaction of opening mine.
Felicia sniffs again, then hands Ellowyn another slim volume like the one she’s already holding. “You’ll give this to Ms. Pendell.”
“Will I?” Ellowyn returns, sounding like her old, insolent self. But she takes the second binder anyway.
“And you’ll give this to your sister,” she says to me, somehow making sister sound like criminal, which is hilarious when aimed at Emerson, of all people. Still, I notice Emerson and my binders are much thicker than Georgie’s and Ellowyn’s.
“You’ve been given a great opportunity here, girls,” Felicia says sternly. Girls. When we are nearly thirty. “The Joywood have been kind enough to give you the time and space to prepare, to prove yourselves, little as some might think you deserve such consideration. I suggest that, for once, you two take that opportunity seriously and prepare for your test with the weight and gravity it deserves.”
I flick my wrist, and the door slams shut in Felicia’s face, leaving her huffing on the porch. “How about that for some weight and gravity,” I mutter. I look over at Ellowyn, expecting a conspiratorial grin, but she’s got her nose in the binder again.
I feel the faintest little trickle of foreboding, right down the length of my spine.
“It’s like an assignment notebook,” Ellowyn says, making a face. “A list of things we have to do as penance for our many infractions.”
I look down at my binder, afraid to open it and find out why mine is thicker. Much thicker. Apparently, it turns out that proving you have magic when you’re supposed to have none is not the boon you’d think.
Ellowyn is flipping through pages. Loudly. Then she makes a yelping sound. “Holy shit. Rebekah, we have to go to Beltane prom.”
I don’t open my binder. I’m still stuck on the whole SCH logo on the cover, a symbol of the confluence I always thought looked suspiciously like a butt, like they wanted all that teenage sniggering. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“I’m not joking.” She holds up her open binder and shows me the page. “It’s listed in big, bold, underlined letters. ‘For all who aided the exiled and mind wiped. Attendance mandatory to remind you of the importance of your place in the witch community.’”
I blink at the words, sure if I blink enough times it’ll all go away. Or I’ll wake up. But no. I can read the same words she does, complete with time and date. “I’m not reliving that horror. This is...” I struggle to find words beyond the renewed buzzing in my head. I expected, like, public hangings and blood rituals. Proper witch shit. Not reliving the torture of high school. “This is just petty.”
“Yeah, funny how pettiness is damn effective in ruining my day,” Ellowyn says darkly.
I’m forced to wonder if this is what keeps the Joywood on top around here. I spent years in exile turning over things like this in my head, wondering why the magical center of the world always seemed to devolve into petulance and spite and figured it was just people.
But now I wonder if the endless pettiness that is the Joywood’s specialty isn’t despite their power. The pettiness is their power.
I crack open the cover and begin to flip through my pages, and Ellowyn stands next to me, comparing. She’s required to attend many of the same things I am—the hideous Beltane prom chief among them, to atone for her sins. But I have more things listed than she does—classes, practicums, all leading up to the grand pubertatum in June at Litha.
Worse, I remember all of this. It’s exactly what they made us do as seniors.
Like...exactly.
I can only assume Ellowyn is spared the full scope of this humiliation because she already passed the test once. While us spell dim get double the punishment for being anything but.
“Looks like we’re going back to high school,” Ellowyn says, but then lets out a laugh. A bleak one. “Does that mean I have to dye my hair black again? I’m going to need to stock up on the eye makeup that makes me look like I’m bruised, I guess. I gave that up in celebration of my twenties.”
I want to throw out my own joke in response to Ellowyn’s, but I’m having trouble finding the humor here. This is meant to embarrass us. Humiliate us. Just because they can. At least if they wanted to kill me it’d feel like we were equals. Or at least like we were all adults.
Again, I think—if a bit distantly as I contemplate the horror of witch prom—that maybe that’s the whole point.
But I really don’t like it.
“You okay?” Ellowyn asks me warily.
I have no idea what face I’m making, but I can feel that dark black rage choke me. Worse, I recognize it. It’s the same righteous fury that had me facing down the Joywood when I was seventeen, ready to prove to them exactly who I really was—and who Emerson could have been if Carol hadn’t mind wiped her. Just like that. Cutting her down to size in a single, brutal second, not even waiting for the usual ceremony.
Emerson bustles in from the kitchen, followed by Jacob. He’s holding a slim binder like Ellowyn’s and Georgie’s. His face is grim.
Emerson’s expression is one of bouncing excitement. “Jacob said Felix Sewell stopped by and brought him a binder that—Oh, is that mine?” she asks, practically rubbing her hands together at the prospect of the thick binder.
I hold hers out to her. “Apparently.”
She takes it like it’s a baby, smoothing over the cover and then opening it to gaze at the pages. She begins to flip through it—magically—frowning slightly like she’s committing all the information to memory. Right now. She looks up at me, eyes bright and shining with excitement. “Isn’t it great?”
“Great?” I echo.
Ellowyn just glares, as if too offended by the smiling to speak.
“It’s a very clear to-do list of what we have to do to win.”
“Em.” Ellowyn shakes her head. “The enemy doesn’t supply you the tools you need to beat them. It’s almost certainly a trap.”
Emerson looks wholly undaunted. “If we do everything to the letter, they can’t punish us. It isn’t about beating them.” She considers, then amends. “Not necessarily. It’s about proving we were right all along—not just to them, but to the next generation.”
Now we are both staring at her as if she’s lost her mind.
This is familiar ground, though. Maybe too familiar. Must everything feel like high school?
Except there’s something to what she’s saying that gives me that strange...disordered feeling. Like when my visions are fractured. I push the odd feeling away as Emerson waves a hand.
“We don’t have to discuss it now, of course, but I think it’s clear the Joywood can’t go on. They’re broken. Corrupt, maybe. At the very least they need some competition. Why not us?”
I can think of approximately twenty million reasons it shouldn’t be us, and especially not me, taking on the Joywood in Ascension—the ritual that decides the ruling coven. Ascension has always been a boring affair as much as I can recall, and the Joywood are never challenged. But I know that look in Emerson’s eye. There’s no talking her out of this current crusade, or any other wild idea she has, so we need to shift the topic. “And how do you feel about all this?” I ask Jacob, waving the binder at him.
Jacob clears his throat. “I think it’s meant to embarrass us, so in that way, I think Emerson has the right of it. We shouldn’t let it.”
“And in what way does Emerson have the wrong of it?” Ellowyn demands. Earning a frown from Emerson and an uncomfortable look from Jacob.
“Well...”
Emerson glares at him, but he shrugs. “I agree with Ellowyn. They’re not after helping us. They don’t want you and Rebekah to prove you have power, to take your rightful places in witch society, or wield your magic openly. They’ll find a way to make it not happen. This is—” he holds up his binder and shakes his head “—a distraction.”
Georgie appears on the stairs, her curly hair in a messy red halo, wearing a thick, bright red robe with the bored-looking Octavius, her big orange cat familiar, following along behind her. She stops on the landing and blinks at us for a moment before she decides to come the rest of the way down. I note that she rests her hand on the creepy dragon post and clearly doesn’t get a shock. “What did I miss?”
Ellowyn hands her a binder with far too much relish. “Felicia dropped this off for you.”
Georgie looks intrigued at the prospect, but her smile dims as she opens it and begins to read. “This is insulting.”
“But we can do it easily,” Emerson counters. “I think we should look at it as an opportunity.”
“An opportunity for what exactly? Abject humiliation?” I demand, wondering how my sister can be so...herself sometimes.
“Wait. If we all got one...” Ellowyn trails off.
As if she knows it’s coming, when that’s supposed to be my thing, she looks over at the front door as it flies open. I half expect Felicia, but it’s Zander who storms in—and it is a whole storm. He’s holding his own binder. He’s also wearing black sweats and a black T-shirt that look like he slept in them. His eyes are bloodshot and a little wild, and his hair is a crazy mess. He looks more feral animal than the easygoing witch he pretends to be. “What the fuck is this?” he growls.
“I’ll make breakfast!” Emerson offers brightly and then takes off toward the kitchen.
“I’ll help,” Jacob mutters. Georgie follows them, looking back at Zander once before disappearing. I make as if to go too, but Ellowyn glares at me and I stay put.
“I’m not going to Beltane prom,” Zander belts out. “Someone must be drunk.”
He doesn’t look at Ellowyn when he mentions the prom, so I try not to either. But obviously all I can think about is what happened at Zander and Ellowyn’s actual eighteenth-year Beltane. Which is still manifesting itself in all the ways they snipe at each other.
I push my free hand through my hair while Smudge does little figure eights between Zander’s legs as if she’d like to comfort him, when shouldn’t it be her job to comfort me? I sigh. “We should eat something. Let Emerson rah-rah us into complacency.”
Ellowyn snorts. Zander does too, and again, they don’t look at each other. “Yeah, you’re real complacent, Rebekah,” he mutters. “You’re known for that.”
As if ten years hasn’t changed a thing. Maybe for us it hasn’t. Maybe it never will.
Ellowyn and I move in tandem toward the kitchen, Zander grumbling as he trudges behind us. When we get into the kitchen, Emerson is already magicking breakfast ingredients through the air. Jacob is acting as some sort of witch sous chef while Georgie sets the table.
I wish I could just be happy that we’re all together. Instead, I feel full up on dread. I only glanced at that binder and I already want to forget this whole thing. Especially with a St. Cyprian High Beltane prom hanging over my head like a guillotine from hell.
Emerson murmurs spells, and as she does, a perfectly appointed breakfast begins to arrange itself on the old, scarred table where I used to sit and watch my grandmother weave baskets for her flowers with spells that made the air brighter. But I’m not ready to let myself think about Grandma just yet.
When Emerson sits down, she’s so pleased with herself I can’t help but smile. Then I remember that magicking a whole meal must feel completely new to her, still. Because it’s only been a little while since she found herself. I feel the enduring ache of what the Joywood have done to us all over again. And maybe Emerson and everyone else sat here and had breakfasts while I was gone, but not like this. Not with magic, not with me.
The Joywood stole even something as simple as breakfast from us.
They stole us.
Somehow we’re here anyway—the way we should have been all along—and it makes me think there’s more hope to be found than there seems in the whole humiliation of it all.
I frown down at the binder in my lap and the offensive St. Cyprian High butt lettering, and think about Emerson wanting to prove to everyone, not just the Joywood, who we are. With a little revolution thrown in, just for fun.
“I don’t get why I’m being dragged into this,” Zander is saying in the same cranky way, loading his plate with enough food to set a bear up for several winters of hibernation.
“You’ve been a part of this from the beginning,” Ellowyn retorts, using the sharp-edged athame she always carries on her hip to slice an apple. Clearly at Zander. “One could even argue you and Jacob started it, what with the whole hounding people about the imbalance in the rivers and everything else the past few years.”
He scowls at her, but he doesn’t argue. Instead, he nods at the offending binder he threw beside his plate. “Why waste their time slapping us down with pointless bullshit?”
“They don’t think enough of us to pull out the pitchforks?” I offer. “Or even rustle up a decent mob?”
“I don’t think that’s true.” Georgie cups her mug of coffee and looks like she’s filled with less rage and more rational clear-thinking than anything I have going on. “This is a lot of performing if they really think that little of us. The binders. The delivery. The obvious attempt at humiliation, treating us like we’re still kids. Is it really all that different than the stocks? The point is to embarrass—not just for us, but to prove to everyone all the ways they shouldn’t cross the Joywood.”
“It’s performance with a purpose,” I mutter. But it’s more than embarrassment. It has to be. Emerson and I have broken the most sacred of witch laws.
“They don’t want us to win, that’s clear,” Jacob says. “So whatever this is supposed to do, it isn’t to help us.”
“We can’t just think about us. About how it feels for us. We have to think about this globally. They’re performing looking like they’re helping us,” Georgie adds.
I think on that and the words seem heavy with importance. I can’t move past them. It’s about how this looks. It’s about keeping up appearances. That means it’s also about complacency. Around the Joywood. And maybe within us too.
“They want us back in high school,” Zander throws out. “Like we’re teenagers under their thumb all over again.”
He’s right, but there’s something more to what he’s saying. I frown. All that static in my head, all those fractured pieces—it’s like they’re still inside me. Trying to find purchase. Wanting me to somehow rearrange them. I place my hand on the binder, the Joywood’s magic all around it, and try to see.
But I can’t, and my head begins to throb. It’s so loud it drowns out everything else. Beside me, Ellowyn puts her hand on my shoulder. She must say something to Jacob, because he reaches around her and gives my back a little pat and poof. The pounding inside me stops, and my head gets blessedly quiet again.
I force a smile. “Thanks.” He nods.
“I for one look forward to my mother marching down to the school and giving Felicia a piece of her mind the first time Felicia decides to call me a half-wit again,” Ellowyn says. She’s smiling, likely at the memory of her mother barreling into the school with actual flames shooting out of her eyes. Ellowyn certainly didn’t get her temper from the ether. “You know she’ll be only too happy to reprise her role.”
It’s something about the image—both what happened then and how it might happen now, ten years later—that begins to whirl inside me like magic. Like seeing. “They want us back the way we were,” I say, some of those pieces starting to stitch together, maybe. Something finally makes sense inside me, and it feels like a gift. “Powerless. Afraid. Humiliated. So that everyone in St. Cyprian is on board with whatever they do to us.”
“And Emerson wants us to let them,” Zander says darkly. “Because she likes her binder.”
“I don’t want to let them do anything,” Emerson replies steadily. “But I’m also not afraid of their little games. Or their tests. Or what people think. We stopped the flood.” She takes a bite of cinnamon roll, but then continues. Because of course she continues. “Also, I could put together a way better binder. In my sleep.”
I think about games and tests, and Emerson. Who was the perfect student back then and will be again now, no doubt. Who always went above and beyond. Who did everything that was asked of her and then some.
And who failed anyway, just like me, who did...none of that.
Now instead of just hanging us for treason, they want us to go back to the place where they won their unfair fight—where they wiped her mind and I ran away into exile. Because we couldn’t prove what we both knew then. Everyone accepted that the adults knew more than the kids, the teachers more than the students. That those in power always knew more than their subjects.
