Under Her Spell

by Bridget Essex

  But she’d noticed the signs of spring creeping up even through the severe, frozen promises of winter. She’d just been so wrapped up in falling in love that she’d almost forgotten that Imbolc was almost here.

  The Winter Solstice would always be Isabella’s favorite holiday, but Imbolc came in at a very close second, if only for the fact that when she was little, she was able to get out of going to the Academy for a week, and she and her school friends would make the broom flight together to Lunarose Abbey. The abbey was one of Isabella’s sanctuaries in the wide, green world, for it was ancient and crumbling and held the Lunarose order of priestesses and so many secrets and stories, and it’s where Isabella had had her first kiss when she was thirteen (she often wondered what had become of Eloise, one of the best witches at weaving spells Isabella had ever known), and where Pye told her when they were fifteen that Pye’s father had just passed, and where Bridey had had her heart truly broken, and where Tabby had decided that she was going to be an oracular witch after all, and…really, some of the most important milestones of Isabella’s life had been held within those warm, sunset-colored stone walls.

  And every Imbolc night, for some bizarre reason that Isabella had never bothered to find the root of (though she assumed it was because it was very difficult to coerce people into being in theater), Isabella and Pye had—for years now—taken part in the annual Imbolc night play that was held within the abbey. She knew her lines by heart, had said them over a dozen times to different audiences across the years.

  And then, after the play and party, the girls would always gather together in the softly lit sanctuary of the abbey, beneath the gigantic rose stained glass windows, light the traditional white tapers in their bronze brackets and stay up the entire night in veneration and vigil to the Rose Goddess. There would be laughter and tears and chanting and giggles and jokes and still a great deal of seriousness, and some of Isabella’s happiest moments had been in that sanctuary, with the women nearest and dearest to her heart.

  She couldn’t imagine celebrating Imbolc anywhere but at Lunarose Abbey.

  Isabella said as much to Emily when she finally reappeared, panting and damp with snow and with a feral look about her eyes that melted to softness the heartbeat she caught Isabella’s gaze.

  “So,” said Isabella carefully, folding the Changer’s body in her arms and drawing her close. “I was thinking.”

  “And I was being hunted by wolves,” murmured Emily, eyes wide in the descending dark. “It was wonderful. I led them on the merriest chase… You should have seen it, Isabella—”

  “I’m quite glad you're faster than the local predators,” said Isabella with a wry grin, “but would you…” She trailed off, stepped back, cast a glance to the setting sun, uncertain of how to ask her. Somewhere, far distant, the lonely tune of a wolf filtered through the trees to trace a finger over the back of her neck. She shivered. “I…I know you love Benevolence. And that it’s very important to celebrate holidays where you call home. But I’ve spent almost every Imbolc of my life at this place—have you heard of it? Lunarose Abbey?”

  Emily considered for a long moment, licked her full lips. “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you even know Imbolc was coming up so soon? I haven’t been paying attention to how quickly the days have been passing…” Isabella trailed off again as she caught Emily’s glance. The Changer stared at her with wide, dark eyes, mouth parted just a little, chest rising and falling in the descending dark.

  “I’ve been...preoccupied,” said Emily, stepping a little nearer. A thrill ran through Isabella as the Changer moved close enough for her to feel her warmth in the chill air, feel her breath on the skin of her neck once more. “To tell you the truth, Isabella…there’s nothing I’d like more than to get away from Benevolence for just a little while…” Isabella glanced up at the Changer, who now stood close enough to kiss, if Isabella stood up on her tiptoes, if she reached up and put her arms about Emily’s neck. If she brought her mouth to hers.

  Which she did.

  Relief and excitement warred within Isabella for a long moment before she took a step back, hands on Emily’s shoulders. “You’ll be able to meet my best friends. Oh, Emily, it’d mean the world to me if you went.”

  “It would be my pleasure,” she breathed with a grin, capturing Isabella’s mouth again.

  After a long moment, Isabella came up for air, flushed and inordinately happy. Save for one little detail: “I forgot to tell you…” she said nervously, glancing up at the Changer. “The abbey is a little…well. Strange.”

  Emily raised one dark brow. “Strange?”

  “’Haunted’ might be a better word,” Isabella confessed, biting her lip. “Very, very haunted.”

  “Don’t worry, darling,” Emily chuckled, “I don’t believe in ghosts.” The Changer wrapped her arms around Isabella, kissing her mouth and her cheek and her neck.

  “Well, you know that dratted old expression…” whispered Isabella, watching the sun slip over the edge of the world, holding the Changer close. “It doesn't matter if you believe in ghosts if ghosts believe in you.”

  ---

  “Broom travel was made for people who enjoy self-torture,” said Emily, her feet planted firmly apart in a snowy drift. The Changer’s arms were crossed, and she gazed at Isabella’s broom, floating about two feet in the air at the edge of the porch, with a mixture of fear, curiosity, aggravation and a great deal of nausea.

  “You say that every time I bring the broom out of the closet,” sighed Isabella, hands on hips, eyes heavenward. “But I remembered to give you the airsickness potion this time, which I am still very sorry that I forgot last time, and you can just close your eyes the entire way, Em!” She clapped her hands together and gave her Changer the most sincere smile of encouragement she could muster.

  But Emily still appeared thoroughly unconvinced, and continued to glare at the broomstick.

  “If we go by foot, we’ll reach Lunarose Abbey by Midsummer,” Isabella reminded her helpfully, holding out her hand to the Changer. “Isn’t it gallant? You trust me to get you there in one piece! It’s very romantic that you’d trust me so…” she wheedled.

  “May I remind you that this is the witch who failed her flight tests a record number of times at the Academy?” asked Alice with great cheer, taking one smooth bound from the porch floor to the end of the broomstick’s handle. She gave Emily one of her most fetching cat grins, whiskers pointed at the Changer. “Forty-seven times! They had to get an entirely new drawer for her failure files—”

  “Alice,” smiled Isabella through gritted teeth.

  “And on the forty-seventh try, Miss Agnes Germaine—that was the flight instructor at the time—what did she say, Isabella? As I recall, it was something like, ‘Oh, gods, here, just take the flight certificate, I’m sick of seeing you, and don’t tell the head or my job is toast.’”

  “Why was I cursed with a talking Familiar?” muttered Isabella, tugging her flying hat closer down about her ears. It was already getting a bit rumpled.

  “Because I like Emily,” said Alice, head cocked, tail twitching around her dainty paws. “And if she dies today, I want her to be in possession of the fact that no broomstick in the world should be steered by you. But if she knows that, most of the time, I’m helping in the steering, she can be more relaxed about the trip.”

  “Good kitty,” said Emily, scratching Alice behind her ears before she sat down at the end of the broomstick gingerly. But at least she was on the broomstick, a marked improvement.

  “Finally!” Isabella muttered, tossing her hands into the air. “We’ll be there in two serpent hisses, Em… Just hold on tightly.”

  “My pleasure,” whispered Emily softly in her ear. This made Isabella shiver, and the entire broomstick shivered, too.

  “I would like to inform my witch that she should very much concentrate on the task at hand,” said Alice primly then, puffing her tail just a little. “What’s the first rule of f
light in the witch’s manual, Isabella?”

  “Something, something, 'pay attention,'” said Isabella, kicking off from the ground. And they were airborne.

  Flying with two bodies aboard a broomstick is much different in balance and wind resistance than flying with one (plus a cat). Though most of her classmates at the Academy had done dual flying quite often when they dated (witches thought dual flying very romantic), Isabella had never been with a girl long enough in school to think about it. As it was, she’d flown with Emily only a handful of times before, once in a very different, possibly-a-mob-is-after-us circumstance, and Alice had been doing the steering that night, anyway.

  But still. Emily had put her faith in Isabella, and Isabella wanted to prove competent and worthy enough of that faith. She gripped the broom handle tightly and hoped that Emily, clutching with enough strength to the witch’s waist behind her that she couldn’t, actually, take a deep breath, didn’t notice the slight shuddering of the broomstick beneath them.

  “We’ve never flown to Lunarose from the north before,” said Alice, peering over the edge of the broomstick. “So I consulted the flight maps, and—”

  “Alice, really,” sighed Isabella, peering down at the world below her. “I could fly there in my sleep. See?” As they’d risen higher and higher into the heavens, the ground beneath them had obligingly transformed itself into a beautiful, shimmering map of forest and village and dazzling snow, and, with unruly Glimmer Mountain far beneath them, Benevolence was now a tiny grouping of dolls’ houses well below their feet.

  “I’m not looking,” muttered Emily, eyes tightly shut and face buried in Isabella’s shoulder.

  “There it is,” said Isabella, pointing down to the shadow of a valley removed from Glimmer Mountain. Even this far distant, she could make out Lunarose Abbey’s two beautiful steeple towers, like tiny glinting needles in the panorama beneath them.

  And there, far, far, to the west, so large it drew the eye like gravity, was the shimmering shadow of Arktos City. Isabella breathed out for a moment, watching it shine, just barely visible. It would take several hours’ flight to reach the walls of the city, and, really, it’s not as if she missed it. Quite the contrary—she’d been sick of how crowded the people lived, the snobby clean walls of the Magicmaker Academy contrasting with the well-lived chaos of Ratter Prison.

  All right, yes, she missed it a little. She wondered if Emily would ever like to visit and chalked it to up to a conversation worth having.

  Just, maybe, not when they were quite so high up.

  “Hold on, Em!” Isabella sang out, then pushed down slightly on the broomstick handle.

  Isabella hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until they began to glide down gently, making a beeline toward the abbey. She gave a glance to her Familiar, who still sat on the edge of the broomstick, smiling like a cat who’s devoured an entire flock of birds, who was, in fact, doing almost all of the balanced, smooth steering.

  “Thanks,” she mouthed to Alice, who gave her a single wink.

  The descent was slow but perfectly unbumpy and absolutely devoid of uncontrolled freefalls (thanks to a certain cat). Soon they drifted over Darkling Forest, the wood that edged Lunarose, and then Isabella’s feet touched down on the landing strip among the familiar, towering pines.

  “Oh, thank the gods,” muttered Emily, rolling stiffly off the broomstick, huffing an audible sigh of relief. But then she put her arms about Isabella and squeezed her tightly, pressing her lips to the witch’s temple. “Thank you, darling,” she whispered, making Isabella squirm with pleasure. And then Alice was snatched up, too, a soft kiss pressed between her pretty, pointed ears. “And thank you, too, kitten,” growled Emily, earning a very solid purr from the usually unflappable Alice.

  “There it is,” Isabella whispered happily, pointing up through the trees to the towering sentinel of Lunarose Abbey.

  The abbey was splendid, sprawling, with the unusually colored stone—the color of sunset, Isabella had always thought, blush-like and almost-orange-but-actually-closer-to-pink—making up the bulk of the gigantic building. From here, Isabella could just pick out a handful of the innumerable stained glass windows that adorned the walls of Lunarose, the cobalt and sea-blue colors of the closest window practically sparkling in the fresh sunshine. This window depicted the Star Goddess Lest, the Rose Goddess Cordelia’s sister, and it happened to be the stained glass window Isabella had stood beneath for her very first kiss, once upon a time.

  And high, high, high overhead, the two lances of Lunarose’s steeples glinted against the sky, visible from as far away as Arktos City, a constant reminder against the horizon that if you needed help, it was here for you.

  Isabella tilted her head back and back, holding onto her flying hat as she stared up at the steeples with a sigh, grinning from ear to ear. She hadn’t realized until right this heartbeat how desperately she’d missed Lunarose. Here, she’d never been mediocre or looked down upon or teased or torn apart. For a few days every year, she’d been nothing less than a child of the goddess, something she realized that she was, technically, all the time.

  But at Lunarose Abbey, she never had to try and remember it. Not even once.

  It was simply fact.

  All around them, other witches were descending to land on the strip, puffs of snow swirling about them from impish winds, kicking up snow devils, upward spirals of powder, to dance around the witches. At the edge of the strip clustered a small gaggle of men and women, all in black, pointy flying hats and cloaks (well, mostly black—there were a few blues and purples and reds in the mass that Isabella could spot. A witch needs to know how to make an engaging entrance, after all), surrounding one of the priestesses from the abbey. Isabella shielded her eyes and then, without even thinking about it, clutched her broom to her chest and gave a little bounce.

  “What is it?” asked Emily, but she was left behind as Isabella raced over the packed snow of the flying strip, across the space to the woman who glanced toward the careening witch at the exact same heartbeat that Isabella collided with her.

  “Aunt Sophia!” she cried, her arms around the woman’s shoulders, laughing, and—if the truth were to be told—trying to keep a few tears from spilling. It had been too long.

  “Isabella!” The woman’s grin was in danger of splitting her wide face, brown eyes flashing under the traditional priestess scarf, the cobalt cloth carefully and intricately braided with every strand of her long, brown hair. She squeezed Isabella so hard in that instant that the witch’s breath was stolen.

  Everyone was talking at once, the men and women, the new group of girls and boys that had just arrived, wearing the Magicmaker Academy sashes over their shoulders, Isabella’s heart beating faster as she spotted the familiar rich purple and silver on the children, the Academy’s colors, what she’d worn almost every day of her life. Emily moved through the people with wide eyes, a soft smile on her face, carrying Alice on her shoulder.

  “Aunt Sophia,” said Isabella, straightening, grinning, holding out a hand to Emily, who took it gently, as if the Changer’s fingers belonged nestled in her own palm, “I want you to meet Emily—she’s my sweetheart.” She said it all in a breath, joy bubbling up in her heart. It was the first time she’d ever introduced Emily to anyone in her life, and certainly the first time she’d called Emily such a thing to another living creature. Back in Benevolence, it was just understood that Emily and Isabella were together. There was really something to be said for announcing it. Saying it out loud, a declaration, filled her heart with rampant joy, and as Aunt Sophia’s smile widened, the joy unfurled into immense bliss.

  “Is it true? Oh, Emily, it’s wonderful to meet you,” said Sophia, enfolding the Changer then into one of her bone-crushing embraces. Emily took all of this in stride, even embracing the woman back.

  “Aunt Sophia is my mother’s sister,” said Isabella with a smile, “and she’s the head abbess of Lunarose.” There was a touch of pride in her v
oice; Isabella had little to be proud of in her life, and Aunt Sophia was at the tiptop of the very short list.

  “It’s a beautiful abbey,” said Emily, voice soft, but Sophia was laughing, shaking her head.

  “You haven’t even seen it yet! Flatter me when you’ve actually been inside.” She winked. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she announced, then, spreading her hands. “I’m fairly sure that everyone’s ashore who’s going ashore… If you’ll follow me now, please. And please stay on the path this year; we don’t want another repeat of last year’s bone-setting Imbolc Eve!”

  “I shattered my collarbone because I wanted to pick pinecones for a spell on the way to the abbey and slipped off a cliff,” said Isabella helpfully, hefting her broomstick up onto her shoulder, linking arms with Emily and tugging her forward a little to angle closer to her aunt. Emily cast her a wide-eyed glance, but didn't comment further on her sweetheart's clumsy habits.

  “Aunt Sophia, where’s the others…?” Isabella asked, casting a glance backward to the assembled witches.

  “The ladies are up in the dining hall, having tea. They got here about a little while ago. This is the group of late stragglers,” said Aunt Sophia with a single brow raised, hiding a smile behind her hand. “As is tradition, m’dear, this is your group.”

  “It wasn’t my fault this year,” said Isabella with a grin, gazing up at Emily.

  “All right, m'dear! You simply must tell me everything,” Sophia murmured, putting an arm about Isabella’s shoulders and squeezing as they began to ascend the snowy path between the trees, Lunarose rising ahead of them. “You haven’t written me in ages, and now you have a sweetheart?”

  “I haven’t written for just a few moons…” said Isabella, biting her lip with guilt. “I’m sorry, Aunt Sophia. You know I’m rotten about correspondence.”

  “Yes, well, this is a major life accomplishment for you, m’dear, getting a sweetheart! Emily, how long have you two been together?”