Chapter 9
I didn't so much as wake up the next morning, as open my eyes from a sleepless, tumultuous night.
Needless to say I hadn't slept a wink. Between the wind, the rain, the lightning, and my own thoughts, there was no peace to be had.
Though I fancied lying in bed for the rest of the day, I didn't get the chance; at 7 o'clock sharp there was a knock on my bedroom door.
“It's a new day, time to make a new you,” my grandmother called out, her tone and voice at odds with what they usually were. Gone was the crazy woman, in its place the one I had known from childhood.
“There's a lot to do today, a lot of you to rebuild,” she added through a light cough.
I brought my arm out from the covers, even though my room was cold and my skin quickly prickled, and I reached it behind my head.
She sounded like an infomercial. Hell, this entire thing sounded like a bad new age spiritual quest. But the problem was, it was real.
I could also appreciate what would happen if I didn't manage to go through with what my grandmother suggested.
We had to shore up my defenses, and those of the house, before we both were attacked.
Wincing, I climbed out of bed, grabbed my dressing gown, gently pushed the stack of magical tomes that had been protecting my door all night away, and opened it to see my grandmother.
She was dressed not in her usual garb of fisherman pants and a tie-dyed top. Rather she was in a pencil woolen skirt, a white blouse, and pearls. Yes, you heard me correctly, pearls.
She looked completely at odds with the woman I had been living with for the past five years.
She obviously saw me checking out her appearance and she raised an eyebrow as she patted down her hair. “It's serious business ensuring that your granddaughter is not attacked and that your house is not assailed by magical vigilantes,” she assured me.
I believed her.
Pouting to myself I walked downstairs to the kitchen expecting to find the mess I had left last night.
I did not.
The tree branch was gone, and leaning to the side I could see what had happened to it out the view from the French doors. It had been chopped up into neat piles and the chainsaw was sitting on top like a cherry on the cake.
As for the wall, some hasty boards had been nailed over the top, and a little bit of plastic taped over them to ensure that no more rain made its way in to ruin my rug.
I knew enough about my grandmother not to ask whether she had gotten up at 4 o'clock in the morning to chainsaw a tree in her dotage.
She was a witch. I understood what had happened here. I also understood what was happening to the wall. Taking several steps towards it, squinting my eyes, I could see the various objects crowded behind the wooden boards. Mud, leaves, some of the shards from the oak tree, some of the dirt from the dishwasher, some food pellets for pot plants. All tied together in a jar.
A growth spell.
“I thought you didn't like using magic to fix the house, I thought you said it gave it a life of its own and we couldn't afford to have this old place getting any more cheeky than it already is?” I turned to ask my grandmother, gazing pointedly at the dishwasher after I did. The dishwasher was a prime example of what happened when you used magic too often on ordinary objects.
“We don't really have the option at the moment, dear. We are on the cusp. On the precipice. Standing over a cliff with hands pressing into our backs,” her words were lyrical, and her pearls glinted as she spoke, even though the sun was still tucked firmly behind the clouds and the light was not on in the kitchen.
I frowned at her description. Very comforting.
“Yes, this may give the house more license to act like a loon, but we will deal with it. If it is whole, it can help us, if it has a wound in its side, it may let the night and its shadows in.”
Nodding, I wrapped my dressing gown tighter around myself and made my way over to the fridge. Before I could rummage around and grab something suitable for a young witch about to lose her life and everything in it, my grandmother grabbed my wrist.
“Not today, today you must have a proper breakfast, one fitting for a witch, a powerful witch.”
I just looked nonplussed. “I'm hungry,” my stomach chose that exact moment to give a growl.
“Today is a new day, the beginning of the new you,” she let go of my wrist and pushed me out of the way as she started to rummage through the fridge on her own.
Seriously, she sounded like an infomercial, it felt like she was about to start selling me some revolutionary face cream, or a self-help book that would change my perspective, change my figure, and change my bank balance.
“Have you forgotten everything about magic, Esme, that you do not understand what I am doing?” She grabbed at some watercress I swear we had never had in the fridge, some herbs, an orange from the fruit bowl, and several other ingredients I didn't recognize.
“No, grandmother, I haven't slept so soundly that I have forgotten I'm a witch,” I grumbled, heading over to the kitchen table.
It wasn't covered in dishes. It was the first time I had paused to notice that fact. Narrowing my eyes, I actually leaned down and checked under the table just to ensure that the dirty plates and pots and pans hadn't been nailed to the underside of it.
Nothing. It was clean. I sat down, crossed my arms, brought my legs up, and stared glumly out of the French doors.
“If you want to be a powerful witch, you must start acting like one. You must do all of the things that a powerful witch would do. All of the things a witch who could never be threatened, who could never have her life broken and turned upside down, all the things such a wonderful woman would fill her life with.”
I understood what she was talking about. Seriously, I wasn't a kid here. I'd read my fair share of magical tomes, I’d even been to magical high school. But eating the type of breakfast a powerful witch would eat surely wouldn't be enough to fix my problems.
“Don't frown at me like that; don't challenge the magic, just go with it. We will fill your life with everything we need to transform you into something new,” she began to peel the rind off the orange, chopping the watercress, and ripping the other herbs as she set them in a bowl. The fragrance was startlingly pleasing; I wasn’t usually a girl who ate greenery, I was more of your eggs and cheese kind. I liked my fare to be fatty, rich, and luxurious.
Still, the scent of those herbs and that orange rind reached in and made my belly grumble.
“After breakfast, we will visit your uncle, Vincent. He will give us a new car. Something fitting for a powerful witch.”
I snapped my head around, no longer letting my gaze be drawn in by the glum view of the grey sky above. “Vinnie? Are you serious?” A light but scared lilt of laughter filtered through my voice.
Uncle Vinnie was the black sheep of the family. Which was frankly incredible considering who our family consisted of.
Vinnie was a car dealer. Not a witch, not a wizard, not any kind of magical creature, just a car salesman. A used car salesman.
He always wore beige suits with these horrendously vivid blue bow ties. In his front pocket would be a scrunched, dirty, handkerchief. He had a single gold tooth that always glinted, no matter what light he was under. And his black hair was so slicked back it could be used as a grease mine.
“He is a good boy, he’ll give us a good deal,” my grandmother assured me.
A good deal? All of his cars were trash. Complete and utter junk. And yet somehow he managed to sell them. I drove past his car dealership on the way to work, and everything I saw always made my stomach turn. Old cars, dents in the fenders, actual junk on the front seat. Somehow the man kept up a living though, somehow he kept on selling his wares.
I say somehow, I actually knew exactly why. Despite the fact he wasn't a witch or wizard technically, he still came from a magical family, and it gave him certain advantages where persuasion was involved.
Woe betide if you were
a careful shopper who frequented Vinnie’s used car dealership. Despite the fact you had very much wanted a nice, compact, new, affordable hatchback, you would be driving away in a 1970s low-slung thing with a dent in the back, rips in the front seat, and a ridiculous noise emanating from the engine.
But somehow you would be smiling as if you’d just won the lottery.
“Isn't there some other way?” I tried desperately.
My grandmother didn't bother to answer.
Because there was no other way. Neither of us had any money, I no longer had a job, and the only people who were going to sell us a car were going to be family.
“Okay, now eat up, and straighten up while you're doing it. Do you think a powerful witch sits at the table playing with her knees and staring with a depressed look on her face out at the grey clouds above?”
I didn't answer.
“Of course she doesn't. Take it from me,” Granny thumbed her pearls one after the other, “you sit straight, you have a mean look in your eye, you have brushed hair, you have a silk, not flannelette, dressing gown,” she said with a growl. “In short, you look like a regal queen.”
Rolling my eyes, I plucked up my fork and started my salad. Salad. Yes, that's right, it was breakfast, my life was breaking down, and I was eating something green.
I would never get used to this.
But unless I fixed my life, shored up the defense of this house, and managed to stay away from the trouble that would inevitably follow a witch down on her times, I wouldn't have to get used to it; I wouldn't live through the week.
After breakfast I got dressed, though, I say I got dressed; Granny picked the clothes.
I was usually a sensible girl. Not stylish, but very practical. An ordinary black skirt, a white shirt, maybe a splash of color if I felt like wearing a necklace. Everything fit, everything was comfortable, and nothing made me stand out.
Well now, as I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, one of my eyes twitching, I didn't know what to say.
Somehow Granny had conjured up clothes that I was damn sure hadn't been in the house previously. I was wearing a dress. I hardly ever wore dresses, especially not in weather like this.
“Stop looking at yourself like that, and don't play with the hem.” Granny leaned on the bathroom door, crossed her arms, and shook her head.
“How exactly am I going to wear a summer dress today? It's almost winter,” I locked my hands on my hips and turned to face her. “And this dress has such a big skirt, the first breath of wind is going to send it flapping over my face and everybody is going to see my knickers.”
At the word knickers, one of her perfectly arched eyebrows twitched up. “Do you think a powerful witch says the word knickers?”
I sneered at her. “Who cares, my point is, I'm not going to wear a summer dress whilst its freezing outside, it's gusty, and it's bound to rain at any moment. I'll be freezing. Everybody will look at me like I'm mad.”
“Correction, everybody will look at you like you don't care what the weather is, like you don't care what they think about you, like you don't care about the rules, like you wear exactly what you want when you want to. Like you are a powerful, self-directed young woman.”
Letting my hands slip down my skirt as I played with the hem, I stared at my grandmother warily. It wasn't that I didn't want to believe what she was saying; I had to respect she was a great deal more powerful than me. It was just that it sounded too fantastic, too bizarre, too disconnected from reality.
But I didn't have the energy to fight her on this one. Instead I turned back to the mirror and made a face at myself.
It wasn't that I didn't like the dress; it was very pretty, far more attractive than anything I usually wore. It had a 60s style to it, a belt at the waist, pinching the fabric in, and a wonderfully flouncy skirt. It had a delicate floral pattern on it, which seemed to match even my plain tastes.
“Stop looking at yourself, time for action,” my grandmother ordered.
“You mean time to go to Vinnie and beg him to give us a car?” I picked up the brush on the counter and ran it through my hair, teasing out the knots my tossing and turning from last night had caused.
“Beg? Demand,” she corrected.
She was really going full bore on this whole powerful witch thing. It was a testament to how serious the situation must be for my grandmother to postpone her dementia to get me through this.
Despite the fact I had just eaten, my stomach gave a growl. It didn't signify that I was hungry, just a tendril of nerves travelling through my system, disrupting whatever sense of security I'd managed to gain that morning.
“No time to spare, come downstairs and we will begin to get your life sorted out.”
“How exactly are we going to get to Vinnie's?” As I followed her down the stairs, I tried to be extra careful not to put my foot through one of the faulty floorboards.
It didn't work. As I put my full weight down, one of the blighters cracked, and I was flung forward.
Fortunately I didn't tumble head over heels down our ridiculously long staircase and break my neck; my grandmother, quick as a flash, caught me.
“Resist the urge to fall over,” she looked straight in my eyes, her expression stiff and serious.
It hadn’t been an urge; it had been an accident.
“This day, and the days to come, will challenge you. Resist the urge to be challenged.” With that she let go of me, ensured I could stand, went back to thumbing her pearls, and walked down the rest of the stairs.
If only life were that easy. If only you could click your fingers and decide to ignore all your trials and tribulations.
If only I hadn’t just lost my job, my car, and my sanity, and if only a whole bevy of angry and malignant magical creatures weren’t after me life.
By the time we made it to the front door, a frown had settled on my lips. “It's quite windy out there, and if I'm any judge of the weather, it looks as if it is about to rain,” I pointed up at the clouds as my grandmother opened the door.
“If you are any judge of the weather? Don't question your abilities; make a statement and make it right. If reality dares do something other than what you have decreed, wrestle it into the state you want it to be in.”
My cheek twitched at that. Right, of course. If it didn't start raining in five minutes, I would just hop on the nearest plane, head up into the clouds, jump out, and start wrestling them. That would fix everything.
Pushing my hand over my brow, I managed a slight, frustrated smile, and followed my grandmother out of the house. “Seriously though, how are we going to get to Vinnie's? He is all the way across the other side of town. And if we walk, we will get wet.”
“That's the spirit. Not we might get wet, but we will. Take a deep breath, sneer, and tell the world exactly how it will be, and it won't dare do anything different.”
Narrowing my eyes at the back of her head as I followed her down the garden path, I realized it would be a long day. Not only would there be the persistent risk of the rest of my life crumbling in a heap before me, but I would have to put up with my grandmother's new found bluster.
“Now to answer your question, we will get to Vinnie’s via the bus.”
“The bus?”
“Yes, we may be witches, but that does not put us above affordable public transport. We do not have the money for a taxi, the bus is our only option.”
“But the next bus stop isn’t for several blocks,” as I pointed that out, I tugged down firmly on my hem, casting my glance over to the nearest tree as a gust of wind shook the leaves. I really didn't want to walk for several blocks in this dress; I would have to be on constant guard duty lest the damn thing blow away.
“It will give you a chance to practice your powerful witch woman walk.”
Right, of course it would.
As the two of us made our way to the bus stop, I couldn't help but notice all the little details. I was an influence witch, after all. If you wanted to
truly attune to your circumstances, and become truly powerful over them, you had to be aware of everything about them. From the overpowering sense they gave you, to the tiniest, exquisite detail. Today wasn't only windy, but blown along in the gale was the scent of rain in the mountains. If you looked closely, you could see there weren't just leaves and twigs blocking up the storm drains, but paper cups and odd little plastic toys. And the touch of the wind promised a freezing and frantic night.
Not too wild though, I hoped.