Small Town Witch

by Kristen S. Walker

  He smiled and hugged me.

  The search for the spell continued as I tried to think of every possible location. Over the weekend, I began to search around the outside of the house. There was the shed where my mom kept her gardening supplies, the trees in the front and back yard and around the edges of our property, the crawl space under the house, and the garage. One thing that I would say about my mom: she was very thorough in her spells for repelling bugs. Going through a crawl space is never pleasant, and neither is digging around in a garage full of junk, but I was grateful that I never ran into any spiders.

  Maybe something could be buried in the garden, but if it was, how could I tell? Mom was constantly digging things up and planting new things, so I couldn’t just look for spots where the dirt was disturbed. And if it had been there for a long time, maybe since before I was born, then it wasn’t going to be in a new hole. For a while I tried to figure out where the most likely location could be, based on which plants might help strengthen the spell and which direction they were facing, but after spending an hour poking into likely spots in the dirt, I had to give up. There were just too many possibilities there and any serious digging would certainly get my mom’s attention.

  On Sunday, I snuck into my dad’s study for a quick look. There was a spell to protect his books and medical journals, but how much else could my mom find to mess with in there?

  I was giving his desk a quick look-over when I realized that one of the drawers looked shallower than the others. I checked the outside—yes, it looked like it was built the same size as the other drawers, six inches deep, but on the inside there was only half of that space, with a few pens and paper clips. That was odd.

  I took the drawer out of the desk and dumped it upside-down on the floor. The pens and paper clips fell out, but I could still hear something rattling around inside. I shook the drawer. The bottom fell out of it, and with it came a small notebook.

  I picked up the book and flipped through it. The pages were full of notes in my dad’s scrawling handwriting—not as bad as the stereotypical doctor’s, but still difficult to decipher. I squinted and tried to make out a page, dated in March of this year. It read:

  “I wish that I could stand up to her better. Akasha told me again today that she’s scared to go to the magic school. I looked up the transfer requests for the school district to get her into a better public school, but when I showed them to Rosmerta . . .” There were some words that I couldn’t make out. They looked like they’d been crossed out. It continued, “She convinced me to drop it. I love her, but I wonder if she really has the girls’ best interests at heart. The guys at work tell me that I’m whipped. I believe in compromise, but I think I just give in.”

  My eyes widened. Until our conversation two days ago, I never would have suspected that my dad had feelings like this. I flipped to the date on the first page. The diary went back several years, and it looked like he didn’t write in it very often, but still, it was a key into my dad’s inner thoughts that I’d never had before.

  I hesitated about reading it. I’d yelled at my mom for reading Akasha’s diary without her knowledge, and it would be the same kind of betrayal of trust, but this could give me clues that I couldn’t get any other way. But if my parents found out, they could get really mad at me for invading their privacy.

  I had to think about this some more. I replaced the drawer’s false bottom and its other contents, then put it back in the desk, but I took the diary with me back to my room. Hopefully, he wouldn’t go looking for it for a few days, at least. I hid it in the middle of one of my schoolbooks until I could decide what to do with it. Thankfully, the next day was Monday, so I wouldn’t be grounded anymore, and I could get more help from my friends.

  By Monday of the following week I only had one potential location left: my parents’ bedroom.

  I had avoided searching there before. It was a private, personal space for both of my parents and I felt weird going in there. Mom was always very strict about no trespassing in her room. She didn’t let me or my sister sleep there even when we were very young and had nightmares, she kept the door closed all of the time, and she was especially harsh about no snooping in her closet, which was where she hid any Christmas or birthday presents at certain times of year. Snooping in my parents’ room felt like breaking a lot of rules.

  I tiptoed in and closed the door behind me, just in case Akasha came upstairs. I looked around, trying to decide where to start first. There was the furniture: two dressers side by side against the wall nearest me, a bed to my left, two small bookshelves on the other side by the window. There was the window, which looked out over the garden in the backyard across from me, and on my right was the wall with the door to the bathroom and the door to the closet. I’d have to check the furniture, and behind the pictures, but I expected that the real hiding places would be in the walls.

  I decided to work around the room starting with the dressers on my left and continue from there, leaving the closet as the final place to search. Oh—I almost forgot the door. I turned around and reached up on tip-toes until I found the loose board. As I expected, I found another one of the protection spells up there. This one had a piece of my dad’s hair inside.

  This time, I was going to try something different. Instead of just digging around in every nook and corner of the room and hoping that I didn’t miss anything significant, Glen had suggested a technique that I could use to try searching for anything magical. I pulled out a scrying crystal that hung from a cord and held it out in front of me, trying to keep my hand very still. If I concentrated properly, it was supposed to start swinging faster the closer that it got to the source of a spell, and if it was a strong spell, the crystal might even start to glow.

  I tested it out first by the doorway. Sure enough, the crystal pendulum swung faster the closer that I held it to the hiding spot for the protection spell. I moved on to the left.

  Even searching with the crystal to help me, it was slow going. I found lavender sachets in my mom’s clothing, which just kept her clothes fresh. There was a dream pillow under the pillows on the bed to drive away nightmares. I was surprised to find a spell to prevent conception under the bed, too—it wasn’t the same as mine, though, because it was missing sweet pea for chastity and hemlock to decrease the sex drive. In fact, right next to it was another charm that had the opposite effects. I tried not to think too hard about that one, and I went into the bathroom to wash my hands off immediately after I put it away.

  Moving past the bed, I discovered something that I’d missed in previous searches: the window had its own ward for protection. When I checked the bathroom, I found the same thing. At first, I was confused because there didn’t seem to be a specific object creating the spell; the ward extended equally around all sides of the window. Then I leaned closer and I caught a faint whiff of something spicy. I remembered the oils infused with herbs that my mom created, and realized she had spread them around the frame. There was probably the same thing around all of the windows and outside doors in the house.

  There was another spell in the bathroom that I hadn’t found before, either. This one discouraged mold and soap scum from the bath and shower. My mom was very practical about magic. These were the kinds of boring spells that she was always teaching me, and she claimed that I had to master them before I could learn anything more powerful. I thought that she didn’t take my powers seriously, but maybe she’d distracted me with routine spells so I wouldn’t be interested in learning more magic.

  I glanced at my watch. I’d been searching the room for more than an hour. How much time would I have left before someone came home and noticed what I was doing?

  Then I heard something scraping against the bedroom window.

  I whirled around, my heart pounding.

  There was a tree branch blowing in the wind outside. As I watched, it moved again, scraping along the glass.

  That freaked me out. I couldn’t imagine trying to sleep in a room with that
noise going on all night—why hadn’t my mom just flown up and pruned it?

  But I didn’t have time to let myself get distracted. I had to keep moving and find the spell.

  The only thing left to check was the closet. I opened the door, reached inside to turn on the light, and looked around.

  It was a large walk-in closet with clothes hanging up on either side, most of which were my mom’s. There was a dim light in the middle of the ceiling. There were boxes of junk on shelves above the clothes—it looked like my mom hadn’t started collecting Christmas presents yet, since it was only the middle of October—and a few more boxes on the floor at the far end.

  The crystal in my hand started glowing bright red. I looked up and saw a magitek alarm directly above me. It made no sound, but no doubt it had been triggered the moment I opened the door.

  Uh, oh. While I’d been careful not to leave any physical signs of disturbance when looking for my mom’s spells, I hadn’t thought about the possibility of leaving behind magical traces or looking for any spells that would let her know I was snooping. Now it was too late.

  I left the room in a hurry. Then I went into my room and hid the scrying crystal in the bottom of my school bag. My mom would be coming home soon, and when she did, I was probably going to be in big trouble.

  I sat down at my desk and tried to concentrate on my homework, but I was nervous and my mind kept calling up gruesome images of what might happen when my mom confronted me. Would I be grounded again? Would she know what spell I’d been looking for and check it—and then would she be able to realize that I was wearing a charm to block it from me? Would she come up with an even worse spell to control me and keep me from disturbing her illusion of a peaceful family?

  I needed to warn my friends in case she erased my memory. Thankfully, Mom had ungrounded me that morning and given me back my phone. I pulled it out of my bag and sent a text message to Heather, Glen, and Ashleigh: “I was looking for the control spell. I’m pretty sure I set off a magical alarm and so now my mom probably knows that I was looking where I wasn’t supposed to. I don’t know if she’ll be able to find out how much I know or how much trouble I’ll be in, but if she casts a new spell on me, I hope you guys can find a way to fix it! I’m really scared right now!”

  A minute later, Heather sent back, “Good luck! I’ll check to make sure you’re not acting weird tomorrow.” I thanked her.

  Glen’s message said, “Do you need me to come pick you up? You can always stay at the castle if you need someplace safe!”

  I had to stop and think about that one. What place could be safer from hostile magic than a castle protected by Faeries? But I sent to him, “Thanks, but I don’t think I can get Dad and Akasha to go with me, and I don’t want to leave them behind. I’ll try to stick it out.”

  “Okay. Tell me if you change your mind,” Glen said.

  There was another wish for good luck from Ashleigh. I thanked her, too.

  Well, now I’d warned them so they’d help me if something happened later, but for now I had to face this alone.

  It was two hours before my mom got home, and during that time I got almost none of my homework done. I watched her nervously from the top of the stairs, trying not to let her see me. She came in with the grocery shopping for the week, put the food away, and started making dinner as if nothing had happened.

  A little while later, my dad came home, too. “That smells delicious,” I heard him say. “What are we having?”

  “Tacos. I don’t have the energy to do anything fancy.”

  While I hid behind the corner of the wall in the hallway, I overheard him talking to Akasha about her day. She asked him for help on her math problems, so he sat down and they went over the equations together.

  Soon the taco meat was done cooking and my mom told my sister to put away her school work and set the table. “Then go get your sister,” she said.

  I hurried back into my bedroom, leaving the door open, and sat down at my desk to look like I was working on my own assignments. A few minutes later, Akasha came to the doorway. “Mom says dinner is ready,” she called in.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” I said.

  I went to the hall bathroom and washed my hands, then went downstairs. I tried not to look anyone directly in the face as we sat down to eat.

  There were several minutes of small talk and passing bowls back and forth as everyone assembled their tacos on their plates.

  But it was inevitable that my mom would turn her gaze on me and ask me about my day. I mentioned a few things that had happened at school, keeping my eyes down on my plate.

  “And since then, you’ve just been up in your room?” she said.

  “Yeah, um, I’ve got a lot of homework.”

  “I see. No plans with your friends, then?”

  I shook my head. “No, they’re all busy.”

  She left me alone after that. A few minutes later, I glanced up at her to see if she knew that I was lying, but she looked as calm as ever.

  For some reason, that made me even more nervous. Maybe she wanted to confront me alone.

  When we’d finished cleaning up after dinner, I went back up to my room and sat down at my desk. I actually only had a normal amount of homework—some reading for English and a set of math problems—but it was taking me longer than usual to finish it because I just couldn’t put my mind to it.

  I also saw that my phone was blinking with a text message from Ashleigh. “Has anything happened yet?” she wrote.

  “Not yet, I think she might be waiting to talk to me in private,” I wrote back. “I’m still scared. I wish I knew what she was going to do!”

  Somehow, I got through the rest of my homework assignments. There was still no sign of a lecture from my mom. I flinched when I heard her coming up the stairs once, but she just went into her own room across the hall and closed the door. After a few minutes, she left again and went back downstairs.

  Once I was sure that she was gone, I pulled out a notebook and started making notes about what I’d learned. There had to be something that I was missing. I sketched out a map of the house and marked every spot where I knew that there was a spell. On another page, I noted what I thought every spell did and how she’d put it together.

  I sat there staring at the finished product. There wasn’t really a lot of information. Worse, I wasn’t any closer to finding this spell than I had been when I discovered it the week before. It was tempting to think that I might have imagined it, but Lavender had shown me proof—I still remembered the sight of the thorny vine wrapped around me. So it had to be real, right? And I could trust Lavender when he told me that my suspicions were true—right?

  Then I thought about how surprised Glen and Ashleigh had been when they met Lavender, and the suspicious questions they asked about who he was. They hadn’t said anything since then, but I didn’t really have any proof that he was worth trusting or knew what he was talking about. He was just a Fae who showed up at parties, flirted with me playfully, and played chess against my sister. I was comfortable talking with him about my private life and he gave me advice—but why? I considered him a friend, but as I got older, he kept pushing for a romantic relationship. Wasn’t that kind of creepy?

  But I never had any reason not to trust him, either. I must have been jumping at shadows. I was getting too nervous and stressed about all of this. I couldn’t deal with my immediate problem until I knew more about it and second-guessing everything else wasn’t getting me anywhere.

  I put on headphones and listened to music until it was time for bed. Although I kept looking for her, my mom never came by to talk to me about what I’d been doing in her bedroom. Eventually I fell asleep.

  When I woke up the next morning, my head felt weird. It wasn’t a headache, because there wasn’t any pain, and I wasn’t lightheaded or dizzy. The best way that I could think of to describe it was that the back of my head had been hollowed out in some way.

  I touched the spot, but I did
n’t feel anything besides the usual mat of tangles in my hair from sleeping. When I brushed out my hair, I checked my head in the bathroom mirror, but it looked the same as always.

  I hoped it would go away as I woke up more. I made myself black tea with breakfast, thinking that caffeine could help with a tension headache, and ate a big breakfast: toast with jam and scrambled eggs with cheese.

  When I got to school, my friends approached me with looks of concern.

  “Did anything happen last night?” Ashleigh said.

  I shook my head. “My mom never came to talk to me, and I don’t think she did anything.”

  Heather squinted at my face. “Do you feel any different?”

  I touched the back of my head. “No, just this weird head thing. It hurts a little.”

  Glen frowned and began to quiz me on the details of the control spell that my mom had put on my family.

  My memory was fine. I answered all of his questions, then reached into my bag and pulled out my notes from the night before. “Actually, I started writing things down to see if that would help me find any holes in my search. Maybe you guys can help me look them over.”

  “Wow, these are detailed,” Ashleigh said when she got a glance at the map.

  Glen nodded. “Save it for now and we’ll talk about it at lunch. We don’t have enough time or privacy before class.” He looked pointedly over my shoulder.

  I turned and saw Kai trying to peek at my notes.

  He smiled. “Hey, what are you guys looking at?”

  I closed the notebook and stuffed it back into my bag. “Just some stuff. Gee, it’s a nice day out, isn’t it? The temperature is finally going down but it’s still sunny.”

  I looked up at the sky, and my friends chimed in with other comments about the weather, but I felt like an idiot. I wasn’t trying to make Kai feel left out by not talking to him about my problems, but this one was really big and we were just starting to get close. I didn’t want to dump all of my family drama on him before we were even dating. A little voice in my head said that Heather hadn’t been my friend for very long either and I hadn’t hesitated to confide in her, but I argued to myself that that was different. Heather and I had gotten close quickly because of all the time we spent together and she confided her problems in me, too; I’d just kissed Kai. Even though I’d known him for years, I didn’t really know much about him except for how he acted at school.