by Jess Webster
“Do you still think I am a witch?” Blythe demanded upon her return.
James shrugged again. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what’s going on. And you still haven’t told me where we’re going – except that it’s going to take 24 hours to get there.”
“I am not a witch, and we are going to London.”
Another thing struck James as odd, as they passed through the teeming Departures crowd at the international airport. “Miss Pritchard? Why aren’t any of these people staring at you for talking to me? I mean, I’m invisible, aren’t I? Shouldn’t they see you talking to thin air, and think you’re a bit nutty?”
“I’m not the sort of person that ordinary people feel the need to notice.”
“How do you mean?”
“In my line of work it is often advantageous to induce in the people around you a sort of… lack of interest.”
“You mean like being invisible, but not?”
“Precisely. That lady that just walked past – did you see her face?”
He had. Actually, ever since they had exited the car he had been taking the opportunity to look at anything and everything but Blythe Pritchard. Not that Blythe was unpleasant to look at, but James believed he had memorised every feature of her face already. The lady in question had looked at Blythe and then proceeded to look away, with a rather blank look upon her face.
Incidentally, as they walked along James also noticed that he could see thousands of secrets flitting about people’s heads – and most of the people looked well over 21. He did not even bother to ask Blythe about it; she had clearly been lying, and if she had fibbed once she would probably fib again. Anyway, James thought, it was probably some sort of non-witch-magical-person trade secret.
“She looked like she was ignoring you,” James finally observed.
“That’s exactly right. I have that effect on people.”
“But how? If you’re not a witch, then what are you?”
She pursed her lips and looked down at him, her face pensive. “I am a magician, if you must know.”
“But don’t magicians all have long white beards and pointy hats?”
“Ever since equal opportunities became the thing, women were allowed to be trained as magicians too,” she replied. “And not all of them start out as old men, James.”
“And girl magicians aren’t called anything else? Like a magician-ess?”
“If you realised how incredibly awkward that word sounds, you would already have your answer.”
“I guess that’s a no,” James said.
Soon they reached their departure gate. Blythe approached a hostess, held up a serviette and pointed to it, saying, “My boarding pass.”
“Right then, on you go,” the hostess said, smiling cheerily at Blythe and oblivious to the fact that Blythe was flashing a serviette at her. “Enjoy your flight.”
“But that’s not a ticket!” James exclaimed.
“As far as she was concerned it was a ticket,” Blythe said smugly, as she was ushered to an entirely empty row. She happily claimed a window seat, and James positioned himself in the aisle seat beside her.
“But how? You didn’t even say any magic words. You just said ‘my boarding pass’ and she let you onto the plane with nothing but a crumply old serviette. And don’t you have a wand?”
“Goodness gracious, James-”
“Stop saying ‘goodness gracious’ and getting mad at me when I ask questions!” James suddenly blurted out. “Maybe if you actually explained some things then I wouldn’t have to keep asking!” He felt a bizarre and unfamiliar surge of empowerment as he spoke – he wasn’t whispering, he wasn’t afraid of Blythe being mad at him, and he wasn’t afraid of any ensuing physical abuse. Despite all the eventual drawbacks of being invisible, in the short term James had to admit that he quite liked being half-cursed.
“Fine!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms up in resignation. “No, I did not say any magic words – it’s not necessary. And no, I do not need a wand, I’m not a fairy.”
“So why do magicians in stories always speak funny and have a wand and long white beard and pointed had?”
“Because of that old half-wit, Bob.”
“Bob? The magicians in all the stories are based on a person called Bob?” James was incredulous, but Blythe looked angry enough to be telling the truth.
“Most magicians like to work in the background, making things go the way they want without anyone even knowing. Bob–” (Blythe Pritchard had the most violent scowl on her face that James had ever seen) “– was an attention-seeker.”
“Was he the one that started all that ‘abracadabra’ stuff?”
“I suppose you mean all that Latin-sounding rubbish? That’s a dirty kind of magic.”
“Did he–”
“Yes, he used the dirty kind. There are different types of magic, you see, which depend upon the words you use. Bob liked to show off, with his dirty ‘magic words’ and his wand and his starry pyjamas. It’s much more subtle to use the same language as everyone around you, which is what most magicians prefer to do. Except Bob.”
“So your kind of magic, it speaks English?”
“I guess you could say that,” Blythe replied, appearing somewhat amused.
“And dirty magic speaks Latin?”
Blythe nodded.
“But English isn’t the dirty kind of magic because the English are…” (James struggled for the right word) “… posh?”
Blythe was actually smiling now. “In some bizarre way, James Winchester, you are actually quite correct.”
“So…” James wondered out loud some more. He did not even notice that the plane had now taken off. It was much easier to avoid getting ‘lost’ on the plane – the windows were much smaller, so there was less view of the outside world to distract him. “So how come, if a normal person tells a lamp to move, it doesn’t move? I mean, you could use magic to move a lamp, couldn’t you?”
“Yes, you could.” Blythe nodded again. “Think of it this way, James. If you want me to get you a glass of water, would you ask me to get it, or just ask the water to come to you?”
“Is there magic involved?”
“No magic. Just me and a glass of water. And you.”
“Well, you of course. That’s just silly. A cup of water doesn’t have ears, so it wouldn’t know that you wanted it. And even if it did, it doesn’t have legs, so it couldn’t get to you.”
“Exactly,” Blythe replied, leafing through an in-flight magazine, speaking as casually as if they were conversing on the topic of horticulture. “Someone who tells a lamp to move is disappointed that it doesn’t move because he was talking to the lamp, not to magic. You have to know who you’re talking to.”
“So magic is a person?” James exclaimed.
“I didn’t say that.” Blythe shook her head, momentarily confused, searching for the words to make the subject accessible to James’ nine-year-old mind.
“Yes you did, you said–”
“Oh for the love of– it was a figure of speech, James. Are you always this infuriating?”
“No,” he replied with a shrug. “Only since being half-cursed.”
“Well, I suppose I deserve everything I’m getting then, considering it’s my fault you’ve been cursed in the first place.” Blythe avoided his gaze, and looked almost ashamed of herself in that moment.
Esther Mason-Smith was having a hard time. Being relentlessly good and kind, Esther was bound by certain moral and civic scruples that her twin, Blythe Pritchard, had no qualms in tossing aside. It was not that Esther thought her sister devoid of all goodness; but she knew that once Blythe had a certain goal in mind, she would plough through anything and anyone to reach it.
An absolute nightmare had developed at the airport almost immediately prior to Esther’s arrival. (She shrewdly suspected her sister’s involvement.) All the planes were grounded except for one, which no one could seem to contact. And it
was this plane, Esther believed, that carried her infuriating twin sister, with an unwitting James Winchester IV in tow. She considered forcing a pilot to disobey the grounding orders, but he or she would of course be fired, fined and possibly gaoled if Esther did such a thing. Whilst Blythe might uncaringly carry out such a plan, Esther Mason-Smith could not. This, of course, left her with a rather complex dilemma – how on earth could she get to London before her sister, and prevent James from doing anything foolish?
Suddenly Esther recalled a private airport further down the road from the international airport. There was, as it happened, a very good reason that this recollection took some time to surface. Esther had had the misfortune to meet a certain pilot, maybe five years back, who had been ‘enraptured’ by her ‘enchanting eyes’ – or so he had declared in an awful sonnet entitled ‘My love, my love, look my way’, which he’d given Esther only one hour after he’d met her, at an ill-advised social outing with Westcott’s teaching staff to a bar in the city.
Being naturally very sensible and not the least bit romantically inclined, Esther had thought the man a ludicrously silly human being for whom she would never feel anything more than a vague disdain. His extremely forward behaviour had made her feel very uncomfortable, and Esther Mason-Smith did not at all appreciate being made to feel uncomfortable. Yet perhaps if he recalled her ‘enchanting eyes’, she now thought, she might be able to persuade him to fly her to London. It was a little nasty, perhaps, to take advantage of his infatuation, but it was better than causing an innocent international airport pilot to be fired[44].
And yet Esther Mason-Smith felt terribly uneasy as she returned to her Mini and drove the quarter of an hour to the private airport. Cheerily emblazoned in red lettering on the small main office were the words: Byron Gables, Private International Flights. Sweeping out into the deepening darkness of evening was the runway, and at its beginning, the hangar, which reflected the bright floodlights directly into her eyes.
Esther had not realised that the nitwit owned the place – or perhaps he hadn’t owned it, years ago, and had risen up the ranks. Perhaps he wasn’t such a nitwit after all? Even if he did write dreadful sonnets. Yet the fact that he wrote sonnets at all suggested nitwit-ishness, so she purposely recalled her disdain of him and pushed it to the forefront of her mind[45] as she entered the pleasant-looking establishment.
She hardly knew what she hoped for as she entered. Would he remember her? And if he did, would he spout more awful poetry? And if he didn’t, would she be able to convince him to fly her to England on such short notice?
“Pardon me,” Esther Mason-Smith said, after standing, conspicuously, within sight of a bleach-blonde, nail-filing receptionist for at least 15 seconds, “but is Mr Gables around?”
“Mr Gables is out in the hangar at the moment,” the blonde replied absently.
“Doesn’t filing your nails make you shiver?” Esther asked her, mystified as to how any person could stand to do such a thing. Even now the hairs on her own arms were rising as she watched the blonde file away.
“Nope,” the receptionist replied. Evidently not one to make polite conversation with potential customers, a few moments of awkward silence passed, until finally she added, “Mr Gables will be checking in with me eventually. You can wait in here and help yourself to some coffee, tea, cookies, anything on that table over there.” Her eyes momentarily flickered across to a table on Esther’s right.
“I think I’ll go see Mr Gables in his hangar,” Miss Mason-Smith decided. “And you needn’t worry. I am allowed to see Mr Gables without appointment, of course.”
“Of course you are…” The blonde looked a little confused. “You’re… you’re…”
“Who I am isn’t important,” Esther interrupted, with a strange manner of soft authority that hushed the receptionist immediately. Halfway out the door she looked back at the woman to say, “And I wouldn’t file my nails anymore if I were you. It’ll only make you shiver.” As Esther left the building she heard the blonde let out a violent shivering ‘brrrrrr’, and allowed herself a small smile.
Byron Gables looked as disarmingly handsome as ever, even in mechanics’ clothing streaked with grease. Nitwit, Esther thought repeatedly. In fact, he perhaps looked better than he had some years ago: his shoulders had broadened a little and his face held a look of easy confidence, which he had once lacked. And yet that awfully familiar slack-jawed, moronic expression appeared on his face as soon as he saw her, and Esther felt the need to turn heel and run.
One moment later (Esther could not think how she had ended up this way), she was being held at the small of her back by the smitten pilot as if they had been in the middle of a dramatic ballroom dance.
“Let go of me!” Esther demanded.
“One thousand apologies, my dearest love!” Byron Gables righted her and let her stand alone. A moment later he was kneeling before her. He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Esther Mason-Smith seized the piece of paper from his fingers and threw it aside. As she did so, she thought she saw something… something in his eyes she had not quite seen before…[46]
“But dearest,” he implored, “I have been composing that poem for so long now – perfecting it, shaping it, lovingly–”
“Be quiet and hold still,” Esther said shortly. Instantly he complied. She had endless tolerance for the antics of children; yet the often bizarre behaviour of adults had the effect of grating her patience to tiny shreds in a matter of moments.
She looked intently into the pilot’s blue-green eyes… the world around them darkened as she suddenly seemed to have been immersed in that same sea-like colour… unintelligible whisperings flew into her ears… and a dark, fluttering thing crouched behind his eyes, in the blackness of his pupils. She wondered that she had not seen it before: Byron Gables had been cursed! Of course, Esther had not been a fully-qualified magician for very long when she first met the man, but still… She felt very amateurish in that moment. It was probably one of the many practical jokes Blythe had sent out into the world as petty vengeance. The poor man had come into contact with something (probably a seemingly innocuous piece of junk-mail that Blythe had mass-produced and sent to random locations in the world) which had imparted upon him a curse stipulating that he must act like a complete and utter goober (by, say, spouting the most awful, saccharine sonnets ever created) whenever he saw Esther, and which caused him to develop an infatuation that, cruelly, could only be ended by a kiss from Esther’s lips.
Well this, at least, was what Esther guessed, from the look of the curse she had glimpsed behind his eyes. Though she was violently opposed to kissing the man, she knew that he was effectively useless whenever in her presence, and that in his current state he’d probably be more interested in doing a tango with her than, say, steering the plane clear of a mountain. So, awkwardly, she raised his chin and brushed her lips against his, hoping fervently that a small peck would be enough.
Thankfully, it was. Something like a haze seemed to lift from Gables’ eyes, and his cheeks immediately turned beet red. He stood, knee caps cracking loudly as he did so, and scratched his head, evidently feeling the need to ruffle up his hair a little. “Umm…” He frowned. Esther believed she had never seen a more embarrassed expression in her entire life.
“Look, before you go apologising for anything,” she said, “it wasn’t your fault.”
“Whose was it, then?” Byron Gables asked, his frown deepening.
“My sister, I believe,” Esther replied. “She cursed you, and ever since you’ve been writing me the most awful poems and trying to dance with me every time you see me. Which, granted, hasn’t been very often after your disastrous debut at the pub a few years ago. Anyway, the only way for me to rid you of the curse was to kiss you. That being done, you should be fine.” Esther had tried to sound as business-like as possible during this speech, hoping not to betray how awkward she felt about the whole thing
.
“Er…” he said, putting his hands behind his head. “You guys really do take sibling rivalry to a whole new level, don’t you?”
“Look, I’m very sorry for the… humiliation… my family bickering has caused you,” Esther said, grimacing a little. “I’d like to do some business with you, if that’s okay, perhaps to make things a little better. I need to get to London immediately, and I’m prepared to offer you double what any of your current jobs are offering.”
He looked surprised. “But aren’t you a school nurse? I remember asking some of the staff from your school about you before I tried to… you know…”
“Before you tried to tango with me along to the tune of ‘If You Wanna Be My Lover’[47]?” Esther said, one eyebrow raised. “Yes, I am a school nurse. But you should also know that I am a nurse because I enjoy being a nurse, not because I need the money.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough. You got your passport on you?”
Esther nodded.
“Well, you’re in luck,” (he beamed at her, evidently quite forgetting the mortally embarrassing curse at the prospect of being paid double for his services) “as I’ve already permissions and everything to fly to London tonight, so we can be ready to head off in about half an hour. We’d arrive late morning, what with the time differences and a short stop-over in Bangkok.” He suddenly chuckled, adding, “The Winchesters won’t be happy, but hey, business is business. And you do know how to make an attractive offer.”
Had he just put a slight emphasis on the word ‘attractive’? Esther wondered, worried. Perhaps she had not removed the curse quite as thoroughly as she could have. But then again, she could accept this watered-down version of the man if it meant she did not have to kiss him again.
Then suddenly the meaning of the rest of his words caught up with her. “The Winchesters?” Esther exclaimed. “Yvette and Walter Winchester?”