Charms & Clouds

by Emilia Spring

  “Grab one of the winds,” Marguerite instructed before I could ask anything else, nodding to the three I could see circling us now.

  Apparently we were going to skip meditation. I closed my eyes, mentally preparing hooks in my hand. It was like trying to snag a moving target, but I managed to hook the smallest of the three.

  “You can keep asking me questions,” Marguerite said, and I opened my eyes to look at her. “As long as you can keep control of the winds around us.”

  I stared at her.

  “Yes, all three of them.”

  I had a lot of words to say about that, but none of them felt particularly smart to say to Marguerite’s face, so I said nothing. Instead I closed my eyes, keeping the wind I did have a hook in secure. The second wind was bigger, but calmer. Like a toddler fresh from a nap. It made me wary of the third one.

  I kept my hooks in the breezes, shifting to focus on my breathing and sinking into the count. If I could get more of my magic under my skin, keep it from escaping, maybe it would be easier to keep control of them.

  “Open your eyes,” Marguerite said, her ever-present cane tapping my chin.

  My eyes flew open. I almost choked when I realized she hadn’t moved, just her cane, which was now zooming back to her hand. It was always strange when people did stuff like that.

  “Why?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “Do you think the bad guy is going to stop and be like ‘Well, I’ll let you do your magic with your eyes closed since that’s how you practiced’?’”

  Okay, I had to give her that. “I doubt it,” I muttered. I wasn’t really fond of this game, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. I kept my eyes open, even as I looked at the ground near my feet. I could almost feel Marguerite’s exasperation, but I ignored it.

  First I re-anchored the two hooks on the winds I had caught, ensuring they were leashed securely. Then I turned my attention to the third breeze, the troublesome one. The other two winds were stable now, continuing their slow circuit. Absently I wondered if I could use this to build a windstorm.

  I stopped that train of thought, because it I’d already learned that thinking could get you in trouble. Especially with this type of magic.

  “I'd stop you before you turn it into anything dangerous,” Marguerite said, clearly amused.

  She really needed to stop this whole mindreading thing. It was creepy.

  “Why didn't you like Clara?” I asked, my eyes flickering up to her. I almost shouted when I finally got my hook into the third wind, adding its magical leash to the others. It was spinning fast. Marguerite wasn’t answering, so I took a few deep breaths, my fingers spreading out on the grass. Gradually the winds spun slower, less frantic and easier to be heard over.

  “There was a lot she did that I didn't agree with,” Marguerite said. “She was against humans being integrated into our village. She is part of the reason we have a split.”

  I blinked, gritting my teeth when the largest breeze decided it wanted to fight. I’d read something briefly about it in a history book when I was looking into the background of dark magic for Emmaline's death. But I hadn't actually heard a lot about the actual history of the town.

  “How long had she been head of the Council?” I asked. I glared the breeze into submission. I was feeling a bit shaky now, but there was a satisfaction to it, too. I felt like I was making progress.

  There was a devious tilt to Marguerite's lips. “She's older than she looks,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We all are.”

  I looked down at myself. I didn't quite agree with that, but maybe when I was her age, whatever it was, I would look that good.

  “She's been there at least forty years,” Marguerite said. “She was head of the Council when my daughter disappeared.”

  It was a tangent not related to the investigation, and Marguerite knew it, too. It was the easiest way to refocus my attention. She was talking about her youngest daughter, Nichole – who we were fairly certain was my mother. She had disappeared when she was 19, almost thirty years ago.

  I swallowed thickly and stuck those thoughts away to think about later. It was something I wanted to know more about, and I would ask Marguerite about it at some point. But I wanted to solve Clara’s murder. And if I was avoiding looking into my birth family – proving their thoughts right or wrong – I could deal with that later.

  “Everyone hated Clara,” Marguerite said. “Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.”

  I thought of running into Diane the night before, her seeming reverence of Clara. I didn't want to tell Marguerite about it, mention that we’d broken into the Council House. I wasn't entirely certain she would've approved.

  I sat there for a few minutes longer, thinking. “Who found the body?”

  “Me,” Marguerite answered matter-of-factly. “You're losing the third wind.”

  My attention was rudely shoved back to my magic, and true enough, that pesky third wind had started untangling itself from my hold on it. I wished it was like a piece of paper I could nail to the wall, but sadly, winds didn’t work that way. I took a few more deep breaths, slowing the other two winds that had started speeding up. I could feel my magic settling, my concentration firmer. What did the books always say – the witch’s will made the magic, or something. I was probably wrong.

  “Satisfactory,” Marguerite grunted.

  I wanted to ask about the apprenticeship exam, about when all of that would happen. It was also a question I didn’t want to know the answer to. I had seen how freaked out Sam was about her exam – did I want to go through that?

  “Is there a book on magical theory I can read?” I could have probably asked Charlotte, but Marguerite was my teacher.

  “You're not ready for it,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  I wanted to scowl, but one of the winds decided to try and speed up so my attention was distracted. It was starting to become fun, almost, trying to juggle everything at once. Mad, but fun.

  “What did she look like when you found her?” If that wasn’t weird to ask.

  “Dead,” she said matter-of-factly.

  I risked a glance at the sky, exasperated. It wasn’t a game I wanted to play, but I was going to. “Was she missing anything that she had been wearing earlier?”

  Marguerite looked thoughtful for a moment, and for a second I thought I saw a spark of recognition in her lips. Then she shook her head, her face bland. “Not that I remember.”

  I was quiet for a few seconds, acting as if I was checking on the winds when in reality I was trying to think over what she’d said. There were so many things that pause could have been for. Was she remembering something else? Had she thought of something else? Or had something genuinely been missing, and she’d just remembered it? Why didn’t she want to say? Was it incriminating?

  I tugged at my lower lip with my teeth, and the wind started picking up. This time, no matter what I did, I couldn't slow them. Sweat was starting to bead across my forehead, and I could feel it dripping down the small of my back.

  “Make them go faster,” Marguerite said.

  I stared up at her, panic widening my eyes. She looked entirely unaffected, because of course she did.

  I took a deep breath, and focused on spinning them faster, feeling the wind send my hair flying everywhere. That sweat that was on my forehead started cooling, sending a chill through me. It was like spinning wool, urging them on to a frenzy. I felt dangerously close to losing control.

  “Here.” I felt Marguerite's gnarled hand on my shoulder. “Stand up.”

  I didn't jump at her touch, but it was a close thing. I could tell she was helping me, because she kept the hooks in the winds while I stood, feeling a bit wobbly. I settled myself as strongly as I could, legs slightly apart and angled and my shoulders facing forward.

  “Raise them up,” Marguerite said, and I felt a warm sort of tingly thing spread from where her fingers were. It was almost like that same slow, homey feeling I go
t when I felt my magic go through me. Was she lending me her strength? Given how weak my legs were, I would take it.

  “Raise them up,” she repeated.

  I kept my eyes open, even though I wasn't really looking at the winds. Whether somebody would attack me or not, I had to be able to focus right now. It was strange, telling the winds to rise vertically instead of controlling their horizontal movements. It was almost like trying to walk while laying down.

  I kept raising them until Marguerite gripped my shoulder tighter, seemingly satisfied. The winds were going just above our heads, to the point that our hair was standing up like we’d been shocked. It made my eyes water.

  “Start spinning them faster, while simultaneously bringing them together.” Marguerite squeezed my shoulder gently.

  An image popped into my head. It was a basically a circle shrinking in on itself. The smart thing to do was to say no and run screaming. If I had to guess, this was part of that magic that I wasn’t supposed to be learning until I was a lot more advanced. But I was giddy, too. I was always happy to learn more.

  “Okay,” I said. I made sure I had my hooks in the winds, that I could feel the thread of my magic in case I needed to secure something in an emergency. I told the winds to go faster, using the hooks to spin them. They started swirling, still above our heads.

  Next was shrinking the circle. It was almost like it was starting to compress my head. “Up a bit more,” Marguerite said with a wry tone.

  I took a deep breath, almost choked on it when the wind caught me off guard. But I raised it that last little bit, to where it was above us, still messing with our hair, but no longer making my head hurt. Marguerite squeezed my shoulder, almost kindly.

  “Don't screw it up,” Marguerite said, and it was reassuring. She hadn't suddenly gone sappy after all.

  I focused on the shrinking circle, my hands and body shaking, my legs going numb. Was I going to make it? The fear of failure made my heart race.

  Then another jolt of warmth flew through me, leaving my limbs loose, giving me the strength to reset myself, finish shrinking that circle that one last bit. Then the winds disappeared, and Marguerite extended a hand. In her hand sat a tiny, wind-blue disc.

  I stared at it, and then stared at her.

  “This disc contains the winds you just harnessed,” Marguerite told me, showing it to me.

  My shoulders were heaving, and my mind was spinning, like I couldn’t get enough oxygen.

  “As you get older, and stronger, it will come easier for you,” she said. “Would you like this?”

  I looked at her, trying to figure out if it was a trick question. She rolled her eyes. “I'll have Avery make it into something for you.” She flipped the small disc between her fingers like a magician. “Riley says Clara was poisoned.” She pointed to a small little indent, like the disc was hollow and you could see inside. “See this?”

  I nodded.

  “Once you compress it, it's essentially a container,” Marguerite said. “Release the winds, and you can fit something else in it.”

  Presuming you could compress something via magic, the container could hold a whole host of things. The crime shows I watched for stress relief provided plenty of examples.

  Yeah that was probably not something I would tell Riley.

  “They found one of my wind discs with her body,” Marguerite said.

  “Is that why they think you did it?” I hadn’t heard that at the police station, but it didn’t mean Marguerite hadn’t talked about it with Riley.

  “Forensics says that it's the same poison found in Clara’s system.” Marguerite sounded doubtful.

  “You don’t agree?”

  Marguerite nodded. “I disagree with the autopsy.”

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. I really wouldn't have been surprised if Marguerite considered herself an expert in medicine on top of everything else. She did know everything.

  “We all returned to our rooms, we all ate the same thing. There's not a good vehicle, or moment in time, for her to have been poisoned in a way that the rest of us weren’t.”

  “Could the disc itself have poisoned her?” I frowned at the small thing that seemed to have caused so much trouble.

  Marguerite shook her head. “It has to be discharged. When the wind leaves, it does so in a liquid, and you can replace it with another liquid.” She looked at me. “Unless you’re us, in which case we can restore it to the wind form.”

  An image flashed into my mind of the first day I had met her, bracelets spilling down her arms, necklaces, anklets. I looked at her with a bit more caution. If all of the jewelry she wore had some type of element in it, then she was quite dangerous.

  To be fair, I knew she was dangerous. Just apparently more dangerous than I’d thought.

  “What do you think happened to her?” If it wasn’t poison, what was it?

  Marguerite hummed. “I hear you have a ghostly guest,” she said, apparently deciding to switch topics.

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it. There were two people she could've been talking about.

  “Mabel never gave up her house, did she?” Marguerite narrowed her eyes, but there was something smug there.

  “Not really.” I winced. “I'm not sure if I can see her because she wants to be seen, or because Gianna’s there.”

  “How is your young one?” Marguerite tried to sound disinterested, but I could tell she actually sort of cared about Gianna. It was endearing, because even if Marguerite hated me, or was indifferent to my existence, I was more than happy to have somebody in Gianna's corner. Of all of us, she needed it.

  “She could tell Clara was about to die,” I said slowly, not sure Gianna would be entirely comfortable with me telling. But of anyone that could know, Marguerite could help the most.

  Marguerite’s narrowed and turned sharp. “What?”

  I balked, not sure I should've said anything in the first place. “She said when Clara came by the pet shop, that there was a timer on her forehead.”

  “Did you tell anybody about this?” Her words were quiet and almost ominous.

  Mutely I shook my head.

  “Good.” Marguerite seemed to relax somewhat.

  “Do you think Gianna was seeing the future?” Nerves churned in my stomach.

  Marguerite turned to look towards the main house, looking surprisingly serious. “Maybe,” she said. “As Aspen would tell you, time is a tricky thing.”

  I made a note to get to know Aspen better. If Gianna really could tell if somebody was going to die, maybe Aspen could help her, or teach me what to expect.

  “We’re done for the day,” Marguerite said, dusting her hands off. I wasn't exactly sure what she was dusting off them, given that we'd been sitting on grass and there was absolutely nothing to dust, but whatever. I didn't tell her what to do, and she didn't tell me what to do.

  Okay, well, she did.

  “Do try to bring the child around for dinner, once or twice,” Marguerite said before striding off.

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be very impressed with Gianna not wanting to go. “Okay,” I told the empty spot where she had sat, before I started after her.

  Chapter Twelve

  I shut the shop door behind me and leaned against it. I had two hours before I had to get Gianna from school and deal with everything that had happened. I let out a sigh, then reluctantly took the earrings out of my ears. I could almost feel the tingle of Riley’s fingers against my skin.

  One at a time I examined the earrings, looking for the same divot I had seen in the disc. There wasn’t one. Was it possible that they manifested differently? Or were the divots hidden by the earrings?

  They felt so light in my hand, given what they contained. I'd seen the lightning that had struck us, seen its power getting drained. The fact that it all seemed to be contained in these tiny things was baffling.

  Maybe the next step was actually teaching me how to access
them.

  I wasn't sure I entirely wanted that responsibility. Being able to control the weather was a lot more terrifying than I’d expected it to be. It was one of those things that sounded so cool – like in X-Men, Storm could actually control things. And then I actually got the responsibility, and realized I was one bad mood away from striking somebody with lightning.

  That never happened on TV. Or if it did, the person laughed and shook it off.

  It took me longer than I wanted to admit to get the earrings back in, and yeah, I thought of Riley. I’m a sap, I know. “Focus on work,” I told myself strictly. If I actually wanted to open this pet shop any time soon, I had to get it going.

  I went over to the saltwater tanks and grabbed my testing kit. There was a refractometer that I used to test the salinity levels. If I wanted reef tanks, I needed a saltier tank than if I just wanted fish. The first tank was right where I wanted it to be, but the second one needed a bit more salt. I added another half cup of reef salt. I would give it another hour, and then test it again.

  I checked the freshwater tanks and was reassured to see they were at the right temperature, their filters running. Ammonia in all tanks was sinking, nitrites and nitrates rising. They were coming along nicely. To give myself something to do, I had purchased brightly-colored gravel for the freshwater tanks.

  In the future, when the big tanks were the main tanks and these were quarantine, gravel or sand weren’t really necessary. If anything, they caused more work because if the fish got sick, I would have to throw the gravel or sand out. It was worth it. I was more than willing to put a lot of work into the shop to make it succeed.

  I looked at the larger tanks and sighed. “Putting sand in these is going to be a nightmare,” I muttered. Then I slapped a hand across my face. I had completely forgotten about putting the sand in the smaller tanks. The internet had suggested this sort of colored toy sand, small enough that fish could sift through it.

  I looked at the bags leaning against the wall. I would have to have Gianna help me with those. Mostly because based on what I knew, it was going to start a sandstorm. I wasn't exactly sure how to get that to settle.