The Witch's Guide to Magical Combat

by Lari Don

  As he held the last cube above the wooden floor, Molly saw Innes frown and take a deep breath. He laid the sugar down and she felt a chill in the air. He’d made a boundary.

  Molly dashed forward, resisted the temptation to gnaw the sugar, and leapt the boundary.

  She crashed into Innes and Theo, her sudden human weight knocking them both onto the floor with a clatter and a thud.

  “What are you doing now?” yelled the woman. “You’d better leave, before you break anything else!”

  Innes scooped up the sugar cubes, dropped them in the bowl and put it on the table, then all four of them walked along the corridor to the front desk.

  “That was very interesting,” Molly said to the woman in tartan. “Thanks so much.”

  Then she noticed a rack of keys on hooks, behind the woman’s head. She nudged Innes and pointed to the rack, then she smiled at the custodian. “Can you answer a few questions for me? What colour was the pirate’s beard, and how did he break his sword? Do fairies drink herbal tea or ordinary tea from their acorn teacups? And does the twenty-five-volume story in the library have a ‘happy ever after’ ending?”

  While the tartan-clad woman was trying to answer Molly’s quick-fire questions, Innes slipped behind the desk and grabbed a key.

  Molly asked one more question: “Is your cat any good at catching mice? Because we think a mouse has been nibbling the sugar cubes in the dining room, so maybe the cat isn’t doing his job properly?”

  Innes walked out the door. “Come on. Stop annoying the nice lady with silly questions.”

  “Sorry!” Molly ran out of Ballindreich House and caught up with the other three, as they walked across the car park.

  “Thanks for saving me from the cat, and for making a boundary.”

  “I should teach you how to make a boundary,” said Theo, “then you can choose where and when you shift back to human.”

  “Could you? Could I? But I’m not magic.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re currently filled with so much curse magic and shapeshifting magic, you could make an effective boundary circle the size of Wales.”

  They’d left Atacama in the shadows behind the bike shelter, and that’s where they found him – curled up, black cat’s tail round black human nose – snoozing in the grass.

  Innes said, “So much for keeping watch.”

  A familiar voice said, “I kept a lookout.”

  Beth stepped round the side of the shelter and over the gently snoring sphinx. “But now I see that you took a dark dangerous curse-hatched into the house with you. I certainly haven’t seen anything darker or more dangerous than her this morning.”

  “What are you doing here?” asked Innes. “I thought you were staying with your trees.”

  She sighed. “They torture the trees on this estate. I’m here to do some gentle healing.”

  She walked over to the trees that were bent and wound together like a giant’s toast rack at the edge of the car park. She laid her hand on the nearest trunk. “They’re so domesticated they don’t have their own dryads, so I visit sometimes. I can’t change the way they’re forced to grow, but I can remind them that they’re trees, not ornaments. If you’re doing something that will annoy the tree-torturing owners here, I might help you.”

  “We’re going to steal a rock from them tonight,” said Molly.

  “Is it in there?” Beth looked up at the tower.

  “On the top shelf of the cabinet at the top of the tower,” said Theo. “It’s the glitteriest rock in there, it won’t be hard to spot.”

  “We don’t have to wait until tonight,” said Innes. “I checked the opening times. In the quiet season, before Easter, they close at noon. If we wait a couple of hours, the tartan lady will go home.”

  “What about the cat?” asked Molly.

  “There’s no need to be scared of the cat,” said Theo, “if I can teach you to make a boundary.”

  “You can’t teach Molly magic!” said Beth. “She’s not a witch—”

  Atacama snuffled, stretched and looked up. “Oh, there you all are.” He yawned. “I just… closed my eyes for a minute…”

  Innes smiled. “You fell asleep on duty, sphinx. Perhaps you need a cat nap before we break into the house.”

  “Didn’t you get the star iron? Do you need to break in?” Atacama stood up and flexed his claws. “I’ll join you this time. I’ve always thought I’d be a wonderful cat burglar.”

  Theo said, “If I’m going to teach Molly how to create magical boundaries, I’ll need somewhere with flat earth or gravel, but not as public as this car park.”

  “There are clear flat spaces in the walled garden to the east of the house,” said Innes. “Let’s go there, if everyone is awake.”

  Molly looked round for Snib, who’d been very quiet since Beth called her dark and dangerous. Snib was stretching up to the roof of the bike shelter. She saw Molly looking at her, and smiled. “My back’s a bit stiff after that blow-up mattress. Just getting the kinks out.”

  Then Molly walked towards the walled garden, to learn her first deliberate magic spell.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Molly sat cross-legged inside a circle scratched in the grey gravel of a garden filled with sad roses and regimented herbs.

  All her friends stood round her: Theo biting his lip and thinking, Innes on the verge of laughter, Beth frowning, Atacama grooming his tail, Snib looking nervously at the sky.

  “Do I have to be sitting down? The ground’s really cold, and I feel silly.”

  “Magic is not silly,” said Theo. “Magic is serious.”

  “Magic is dangerous,” said Beth.

  “Being a mouse chased by a cat is more dangerous,” said Innes.

  “So she shouldn’t be learning magic, she should be searching for Mr Crottel and forcing him to change his mind,” said Beth.

  Molly glanced at Snib, who shrugged slightly, but didn’t say anything.

  Molly said, “We don’t have time to look for Mr Crottel now. We have to break into the house in a couple of hours. There’s just time for a beginner’s guide to magical geometry. Theo, tell me how to make a boundary.”

  “The principle of a boundary is the dynamic tension between the shape created and the intent of the creator…”

  Innes yawned, but Theo continued “…so we need to utilise the perfection of the circle and the motion of—”

  Snib interrupted, “She won’t have time to draw a perfect circle. You saw her. She was a shivering little mouse. And that cat was fast and vicious.”

  “I see what you mean… Perhaps we don’t need the absolute power of the circle. We can probably use a line.” Theo drew a line in the grit with his foot. “A straight line isn’t as satisfying as a circle, but it will work. So, Molly, first mark a line. As you draw it, place a tiny bit of magical power into the line, a fragment of the magic inside you. Innes, when you made the sugar cube circle, what did you put in?”

  Innes grinned. “I thought about the thunder of my hooves on the earth.”

  “Excellent. Molly, that’s the sort of power to place in the line, a strong feeling or image from your own experience of magic. Then consciously recognise that this side of the line is here and that side is there, so the line separates one place from another. That makes the line into a genuine boundary. Then leap over it. Finally, remember to break the line. Don’t leave random magic lying around. Do you understand all that?”

  Molly made a face, then nodded.

  “So find a clear space.”

  Molly stood up and walked to a gap between beds of lavender and rosemary.

  “Now, draw a line, putting the power of your own personal magic into it.”

  Molly bent down and drew a line. As she moved her index finger through the grit, she thought of sprinting in a straight line, the wind pushing her hare ears straight back.

  Theo said, “That’s good. I can feel that. Don’t lift your finger yet. Now concentrate on the line, and be aware this side i
s here, that side is there and they are very different. Then lift your finger.”

  Molly looked at the tiny sharp stones at her feet and the tiny sharp stones on the other side of the line. She saw that they were all slightly different and the line separated those differences. She lifted her finger.

  Everyone around her sighed.

  “Perfect,” said Theo.

  “Even I felt that,” said Innes.

  “You’re a natural,” said Snib.

  “She’s not a natural,” snapped Beth. “She’s simply following Theo’s precise instructions. And stop talking about her ‘own personal magic’. It’s not her magic, it’s dark magic.”

  Theo smiled. “We’re all a mix of light and dark. Even you, Beth. Even your gentle trees.”

  Molly stepped away from her first magical line.

  “Break it,” Theo said. “Always tidy up after yourself when you’re doing magic.”

  Molly rubbed her hand across the middle of the line and felt a sudden slight sadness. She’d broken something perfect.

  “Well, that was fascinating,” said Innes. “But no use at all.”

  “What do you mean, no use?” said Theo. “I thought it was rather good, for her first time.”

  “Yes, but she needs to do it as a hare or a mouse, not a girl.”

  So Molly shifted into her hare self and held out her right paw. Could she draw a line as a hare?

  She touched the ground and swept her paw left to right, but the line was shallow, curved and wobbly, rather than firm and straight. Molly placed her paw on the ground again and backed away, dragging her paw behind her. This time she made a deeper, clearer line.

  But she’d forgotten to put anything magical into it. So she broke that line with her tail, ignoring Innes’s snort of laughter.

  Molly drew another line, thinking about the finish line of a race and how it felt to win as a hare. Then she looked at the grit, on one side and the other, fixing the difference in her mind. Finally she lifted her paw.

  She leapt over the line.

  And landed on the ground as a girl.

  She rolled over and stood up, to a round of applause.

  “Wow,” said Innes. “That’s amazing. You can now shift into a hare and shift into a girl, entirely by your own choice. You’ve made the curse magic your own, Molly Drummond. Wow.”

  Molly smiled. And smudged the middle of the line with her heel.

  She turned away from her friends and leant against the chilly grey wall of the garden, staring at, but not really seeing, a small pale mushroom growing between two stones.

  She could become a hare whenever she wanted, by choosing her hare form; she could become a girl whenever she wanted, by drawing a line. She wondered what else she could do. But first she had to master this boundary magic.

  She turned round. “I need animal noises, to see if I can do this when I’m something less familiar than a hare.”

  Atacama miaowed softly.

  Molly became a mouse. She crouched in the shadow of the wall, drew a line with her paw, and thought about the long line of her mouse’s tail. She saw the difference between here and there, then lifted her paw. She jumped the line and hit the wall with her shoulder.

  “Ouch. Lesson one. Leave myself enough space to shift!”

  She rubbed out the tiny line. “What else?”

  Innes howled and Molly became a deer. She made a line with her hoof, putting her speed and elegance into it, then leapt over it.

  She landed on her hooves. She shook her slim head, smudged the first line, and made another, putting in her speed as she drew, then remembering to see the ground on either side as here and there. She leapt again and rolled over as a girl.

  “Lesson two. Don’t rush it.”

  “But you’ll need to rush it,” said Innes. “A real wolf would have been chasing you.”

  “So let’s try this spell at speed. Who wants to chase me?”

  Atacama grinned. “Me…” And he growled his own low reverberating snarl.

  Molly shifted into a goat and galloped to the other side of the garden as Atacama ran towards her. She scraped a line in the earth with magical memories hard in her head, she looked at the ground – one side, the other side – then she lifted her hoof—

  And was knocked over by the furry impact of a fastmoving black body.

  “Got you,” said Atacama.

  She nudged him off with her horns and jumped the line.

  “Lesson three. Sphinxes are faster than they look. I have to become even faster. I have to create the boundary in fewer steps.”

  Theo walked over. “You mark the line, placing power into the line, you see here and there, you lift your paw or hoof. Then you jump.”

  Molly nodded.

  “That’s the minimum you can do to make the spell viable.”

  “But it’s too many steps when I’m being chased.”

  Snib said, “Why not look at the two sides of the line as you draw it? See here and there as you separate them?”

  Theo nodded. “That might work. Try it.”

  Molly looked at Beth. “Could you hoot like an owl?”

  Beth folded her arms and shook her head.

  Snib said, “I’ll do an eagle. I’ve heard lots of raptors at home recently.”

  She called, high and piercing, and Molly shifted into something oddly familiar but also completely different. Like a hare, but smaller, weaker and considerably less sure of herself.

  “A rabbit!” Innes laughed. “Let’s make this realistic. Let’s all chase her.”

  Every single one of Molly’s friends took a threatening step towards her.

  Innes said, “Everything eats rabbits. Everything likes a bit of rabbit stew. So imagine that Snib’s an eagle, I’m a fox, Beth’s a stoat, Atacama’s a lion, Theo’s a rabbit-eating toad and we’re all coming to get you…”

  Molly drew a line, fast, with magic powering into it, and a here on one side and a there on the other, then lifted her paw, leapt, and crashed into a rose-bush with her human hip.

  “That’s fast,” said Theo. “Really fast. Well done! You need to practise though, to be sure you’re safe.”

  “You can never be sure you’re safe,” said Beth. “Because not every prey animal can draw a line.”

  The dryad trilled a fragment of birdsong.

  Molly became a worm.

  A worm, with no hooves or paws.

  Though Molly couldn’t quite remember what she’d have done with paws…

  Then she saw a shadow above her.

  She burrowed into the loose earth of the flower bed, and as she burrowed, she recalled that straight lines were important, for some reason, so she burrowed in a straight line, just under the surface, focussing as hard as she could in her boneless body on straight and line and line and straight, and earth to one side, and different earth to the other, then she pushed up towards the air.

  She squirmed out into the light, and wriggled round to cross the line from above, though she was a bit fuzzy about why that was necessary.

  Before she crossed the line, Molly felt a pincer-grip round her soft body and was lifted into the air.

  Beth held Molly above her open mouth. As she dangled, Molly could feel the dryad’s warm breath.

  “You’re dead,” Beth said. “The bird caught you.”

  She lowered Molly, then moved her gently across the underground line. And Molly was human again, curled up under the rose bush.

  Beth held out her hand and helped Molly up.

  “Theo’s fancy spells won’t keep you alive if a real predator is chasing you. You can’t rely on your speed to save you, because something will eventually be faster than you. You can’t rely on your friends to save you, because we won’t always be there. And you can’t rely on magic to save you, because it’s magic that’s endangering you. You must lift your curse.”

  “But I don’t think I can.” Molly looked round at everyone. “If I break or lift my curse, a bird will die. He’s Snib’s little b
rother and he’s called Mickle. I don’t think I can take a decision that will kill a curse-hatched. Especially not now I have ways to keep myself safe. Not completely safe, but safer than I was yesterday.”

  Beth squeezed her hand. “Molly! You can’t put the life of a curse-hatched bird over your own life.”

  Molly glanced at Snib. “I think I have to. I think sacrificing someone I’ve never even properly met, in order to save myself, is a much darker use of magic than any spells we’ve been playing with today.”

  She looked away from Snib’s surprised face and Beth’s shocked one, and saw birds swooping up from the car park towards to the clouds. “Have those birds been spying on us? Are they crows?”

  But the three birds were already too far away for her to be sure.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As they hid in the narrow lunchtime shadows and watched the Ballindreich House custodian lock the front door, Molly asked quietly, “What are we taking Rosalind as a birthday present?”

  Beth said, “I carved a wooden pendant weeks ago.”

  “My brother is taking her a bottle of fancy bubble bath,” said Innes.

  Atacama smiled. “My wee sisters are giving her a fluffy blanket. They’re all very excited about how cuddly it is.”

  “We have to take her something together,” said Molly. “Or at least Theo, Snib and I do…”

  “But I haven’t been invited,” murmured Snib.

  “True,” said Beth. “So you don’t need to worry about a present.”

  Molly sighed. “We don’t exactly have time to go shopping.”

  “Just come without a present,” said Beth. “Rosalind won’t mind.”

  There was a moment’s silence, while they all considered the truth of that statement.

  Beth laughed. “Ok, she will mind, but she’ll get over it, once we cut the cake.”

  They watched the custodian drive off in her yellow car, then Innes said, “Time to liberate a lump of star iron.” He pulled a key out of his back pocket, and pointed to the cream label hanging off it: Cab. of Curio.

  “What about the front door?” asked Atacama.

  “The front door key wasn’t on the rack. We’ll have to break in.”