“So I was a reading prodigy. So what?”
My father said, “I don’t believe you had any real notion of what a lot of the words meant, although you did understand the meaning of quite a few of them. But you could pronounce them, even long, hard words.”
“I didn’t have a stammer then?”
He got a sad smile on his face and shook his head. “That came later, after…”
I couldn’t help myself. “After what?”
“You did a few little things,” my mother said. “You told one of your dolls to fly and then invoked the make-it-true sanction because you’d heard us doing it, I suppose. I came into your room and found that doll swooping all around the ceiling while you stood in your crib and laughed…”
That was pretty amazing, but it still didn’t explain things. I said, “Something m-more than that must have happened.”
“It did,” my father said. “We taught you a few things, enough to know that you could tap into the source of our powers better than either of us or even Mark could, but we didn’t think it would cause a problem until…”
“Go on,” I told him when he paused.
“You were three,” he said. “Actually, you had just turned three. You went into my study. You weren’t supposed to be in there, but I had forgotten to lock the door, and…well, telling a three-year-old not to do something doesn’t work all the time, especially a three-year-old who’s as bright and inquisitive as you were. You got one of my books off the shelves and when I came in and found you…you had sort of…opened a hole in the fabric of reality.”
I couldn’t help but stare at him. My eyes probably bugged out. “A hole,” I repeated slowly, “in the f-fabric of reality.”
He gave me a solemn nod. “That’s right. It could have been quite…troublesome.”
“Actually, it might have destroyed the universe,” my mother added.
For a long moment, I sat there trying to process what I had just heard. Finally, when I could speak again, I said, “You left a book with a spell like that…where a three-year-old could get it?”
He winced just like he had when he thought about what had happened to Ronnie Holt. “I told you, normally I would have locked the door…and not only that, but the book itself had wards and locks on it. You shouldn’t have been able to even take it down from the shelf, let alone open it and start reading what was inside. I even had it protected from myself because it was so dangerous. It would have taken hours of spell-casting for me to open it.”
“Then how did I manage to do it so easily?”
“Damned if I know, sweetheart,” he said as he shook his head. “Damned if I know.”
My mother said, “But once you did, we knew that something had to be done, and quickly.”
“Back up a m-minute,” I said. “What happened to the h-hole in the fabric of reality?”
“Oh, we closed it up,” my dad replied. “It took both of us, and it was touch and go there for a little while, but we managed to close it before, uh, anything got through from the other side.”
I wondered exactly what “uh, anything” from the other side of reality might be, but it didn’t seem like a good time to ask.
“I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “It still doesn’t explain why I t-talk the way I do, or why I couldn’t c-cast spells, or why I n-never sang.”
I was starting to feel overwhelmed. I could tell that by the way my stammer was getting worse. At this rate, pretty soon I wouldn’t be able to get out a sentence…unless maybe I sang it.
My mother said, “After the Apocalypse Incident – ” I could tell she had capitalized it in her head, just like she did the Sandbox Incident. “ – we had no choice but to notify the witches’ council.”
I tried not to groan. As far as I could tell, the witches’ council was just a bunch of stuffy old politicians. They made rules that witches were supposed to live by, but mostly it was just common sense stuff we would have done anyway. They also issued decisions any time there was a serious dispute between witches. None of that had anything to do with me, I had always thought, since I couldn’t cast spells or do anything else mystical. I was about as close to human as a child born to two witches could be.
Or so I had always thought.
“What does the witches’ council have to do with this?” I asked.
My mother looked surprised. “Why, everything,” she said. “It’s their responsibility to make sure power is used in a responsible, ethical manner.”
“What about curses and revenge spells and love spells that make somebody fall for you who never would otherwise?”
“Those can be ethical uses of power,” my dad said, “for a witch. It all depends on the situation.”
I had taken a philosophy course in college where this discussion would have been right at home, but right now I vowed not to let myself get sidetracked again.
“So you told the witches’ council I almost destroyed the world,” I said. “I’m surprised that bunch of stuffed shirts didn’t want to just get rid of me.”
My mom clasped her hands together in her lap and looked away. My father cleared his throat and studied his shoes. Neither of them said anything.
“Wait a minute,” I said as alarm grew inside me. “They really did want to d-do away with me?”
“Some of them suggested that that was a reasonable solution to the problem, yes,” my father said with obvious reluctance. “There was also talk about banishment to another dimension.”
“There are actually other dimensions? I thought those stories were…”
They were looking away again, not meeting my eyes.
“…witch fairy tales,” I finished lamely.
“There was also a faction that favored leaving you alive, but shutting down your mind,” my mother said.
“I would have been a v-vegetable?”
“We didn’t let that happen,” my father said. “We made it quite clear that we wouldn’t allow anything to be done that would harm you. In fact, I argued very strenuously that we would take the responsibility for keeping your powers under control. After all, we’re your parents. It’s our job to take care of you.”
He said that like I was still eight years old. I guess in a part of his mind, I always would be. And this probably wasn’t the best time to remind him that I was a grown woman.
“The majority of the council agreed that something had to be done,” my mother said. “Someone finally suggested a compromise. Since there was no way to take away your powers without at least destroying your mind, steps would be taken to insure that you couldn’t use them anymore. You know that spells have to be spoken, Aren. If…if you weren’t able to speak well enough…”
“If I stuttered so bad I couldn’t get the w-words out, I couldn’t cast spells.” Even to my own ears, my voice sounded cold and angry.
“That’s right,” my mother said with a note of defiance in her voice. “It was better than the alternative.”
My father said, “Even then, it was known that people with a stammer can sometimes sing without any impediment. So the council cast another spell to keep you from singing. It wasn’t as strong, though. It wouldn’t keep you from pretending to sing. That way you could blend in better with other children. There just wouldn’t be any words coming out of your mouth.”
“Today I sang, though, really sang,” I said. “Listen…‘I feel the earth move…under my feet…’”
I sounded pretty good, even if I do say so myself.
I wasn’t expecting the reaction I got from either of them. Both my mom and dad got this funny look on their faces, and after a second I realized they were so moved, they were trying not to cry. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to raise a child and never hear her sing a note. To attend school plays and choir performances and know I wasn’t really singing. To never hear your own child’s voice lifted in pure happiness…
I started feeling a little misty-eyed, too, just thinking about it.
To get all our min
ds off the things we had missed out on, I asked, “What happened to that spell? It’s not keeping me from singing now.”
My dad shrugged. “Like I said, it was a weaker spell. It’s probably eroded some over the years. One of the council should have been responsible for renewing it from time to time, but maybe that didn’t happen. I don’t know. But there’s no doubt you can sing now. Just…don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t sing,” he said. “Because if you do, there’s no telling what might happen.”
Chapter Six
That immediately rubbed me the wrong way. Sure, I’d never felt any compulsion to sing before, and now I knew it was because of the spell that had been cast over me by the witches’ council. But now that I knew I could sing, it was like I’d been handed a present, only to have it snatched right back out of my hands.
“My job is delivering ssinging telegrams,” I pointed out. “And nothing happened all day until the last one.”
“Which was a spell of some sort, and which you activated with with that power sanction,” my dad said. “Do you want to take a chance on that happening again?”
“I don’t th-think it’s very likely. Now I know what to watch out for.”
He shook his head. “It’s risky, really risky. And there’s really no need for you to keep that job.”
“Oh, this is about me going to work for you now, is it? Taking some made-up ch-charity job just because I’m your d-daughter?”
“That’s not what I said,” he snapped. We’d had this argument before.
“What good could I possibly be to a media and communications empire?”
“It’s hardly an empire, just a successful company. And you’re smart enough you could do anything you set your mind to. Good grief, didn’t you hear what we just told you? You learned to read when you were eighteen months old!”
“Fat lot of good it did me,” I muttered. “I almost destroyed the w-w-world.”
Wearily, he rubbed a hand over his face. “That’s in the past. We don’t have to worry about that now. You never cared about singing before. If you don’t sing anymore, nothing will happen.”
I knew that logically, he was right. I just didn’t feel very logical at the moment. What I was feeling was betrayed, lied to, taken advantage of…Take your pick. I had spent a lot of my life being miserable because of a decision made by a bunch of witches who didn’t even know me. I had blamed myself for all my problems, when really someone else was responsible.
“You said a while ago that you d-did this to me. Did the council make the two of you cast the spell?”
“No,” he said. “But we stood by and let them do it. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think so,” my mom said. “The way I see it, we were saving your life, Aren.”
I heard something in her voice that made me look intently at her for a long moment. Then I said, “It was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who suggested g-giving me the stammer.”
“Don’t blame your mother, Aren,” my father told me. “Like she said, she was trying to save your life. I was such a stubborn old bull, the only thing I could think of to do was to fight the whole blasted council, and that wouldn’t have worked out well for anybody.”
He was right about that. My father wouldn’t have been able to stand up to the combined power of the thirteen members of the witches’ council. Even if my mother had fought alongside him, they would have been overcome. But the battle would have done tremendous damage and might have even sapped so much power from the earth that it could have caused an environmental catastrophe. It would have been difficult to keep the existence of witches secret from the humans after that. Better to let even the ones who believed in us keep on thinking that we chanted and danced around naked in the forest and brewed love potions…none of which I or any of the witches I knew had ever done, at least as far as I was aware.
I thought about that and then said, “All right. I don’t b-blame either of you. And for now…I guess I won’t sing. Maybe if I k-keep working for the same company, the owner can find something else for me to do.”
The whole thing might be moot anyway, I reminded myself. I didn’t know that Sherry would have any more work for me. I had to go by her office in the morning to return the sexy witch costume and pick up the clothes I had left there, but that might be the end of it.
And if I never had a reason to sing again, I supposed I could live with it.
My father smiled and said, “I’m glad you’re going to be reasonable about this.”
“Don’t ruin it now by patronizing her, Edward,” my mother said.
He laughed. “You’re right.” To me, he added, “Sorry, kid.”
“That’s all right,” I told him. “And I’m sorry I showed up on your doorstep talking about what I d-did to some guy’s – ”
“There’s still that cheesecake in the refrigerator we were about to have,” my mom broke in. “Would you like a piece, Aren?”
“Sure. I c-can’t turn down cheesecake.”
She left the room to get it. My parents had never been the fastidious sort who didn’t allow anybody to eat in the living room. As the name said, it was a room for living in.
While she was gone, my dad leaned forward in his chair again and clasped his hands together between his knees. “There’s something else we need to think about,” he said quietly. “This woman who paid you to deliver that revenge spell to her boyfriend – ”
“Angela Vandermeer,” I said. “And Ronnie Holt wasn’t really her b-boyfriend.”
“Do you know anything about her?”
I shook my head. “Just her name. I guess Sherry – the lady who runs the agency – has some more information about her. Her credit card number, anyway. That’s bound to be the way she p-paid for the telegram.”
“I’d be curious how she knew the words to that particular spell.”
Now that he mentioned it, I was curious, too. Spells are inexact things. They don’t have to be recited literally word-for-word every time. But the idea and the intent have to be clear. Angela’s spell, if she was the one who had written it out, as seemed likely, had been very clear. She had detailed the way Ronnie had wronged her – making her think he had genuine feelings for her, sleeping with her, and then blowing her off – and the way she intended to take her revenge on him. It was an effectively constructed spell, and once I’d added the power sanction to it, it wasn’t surprising that it had worked. The only real surprise was that I had been able to cast it, and now I understood why.
“I doubt if she’s dangerous,” my dad went on, “but if she’s a witch, that was pretty reckless of her, putting a real spell in the hands of a human like that.”
“But if a human had delivered it, the spell wouldn’t have worked. At the very worst, it might have m-made Mr. Holt worry about being cursed. That was probably what she was going for. She d-didn’t have any way of knowing who would deliver the telegram.”
“No, I don’t see how she could have,” my dad agreed. “You’re right, it was probably intended harmlessly.” He chuckled. “For all we know, she’s just some human who got the spell off the Internet. Goodness knows there are plenty of real ones floating around out there!”
He was right about that. The humans had no idea how much truly mystical content was on the Internet. They couldn’t do anything with it, anyway. They didn’t have the ability to tap into the power that would make it work.
My mother came back into the room carrying plates with slices of cheesecake on them. “Did you have supper before you came over?” she asked as she handed mine to me.
“No, but this will do just fine,” I said. I picked up the fork that was on the plate.
“Cheesecake isn’t a very healthy meal.”
“No, but it’s a pretty tasty substitute,” my dad said with a grin.
After all the drama and all the revelations of the past hour, it felt a little strange to be sitting in my parents’ living room eating cheesecake w
ith them. Strange, but good. More like things were going to get back to normal despite the brief upheaval. We even talked about Halloween and the trick-or-treaters they’d had come to the door. My mother didn’t think the preponderance of Lady Gaga costumes on the little girls was very healthy, either.
“So, you were dressed as a witch to deliver those telegrams, eh?” my dad asked.
“That’s right.”
“Tall hat, long black dress, hooked nose with a wart on it? The usual?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “I even had a broomstick.” He didn’t need to know about the skimpy costume I had really worn.
He shook his head. “The things that people believe. Why would anybody with the power to alter her appearance choose to look grotesque like that?”
“Everyone had different ideas of beauty, Edward,” my mother said. “And grotesqueness.”
“I suppose so. The whole thing is just so…silly. I’m surprised they didn’t give you a stuffed black cat to carry around.”
“Better a stuffed one than a real one,” I said. I had never been a cat person. That was one more way the stereotypical witch didn’t necessarily reflect the real thing.
When we had finished off the cheesecake, I put my plate on the coffee table and stood up. “Thanks, Mom,” I said. “I guess I’d b-better be going.”
“Guest room’s ready if you’d rather spend the night,” my dad said.
“Taylor and Beth would w-wonder where I was if they came in from their party and I wasn’t there.”
“They went to a party tonight?” my mom asked. “And didn’t invite you?”
“Actually, they did. I t-told them I couldn’t make it.”
“You really should get out more, Aren – ” She stopped herself and held up a hand. “Sorry. I don’t mean to sound like a meddling mom. I’m sure you get out plenty. I mean – ”
I leaned over to hug her. “I know what you mean.”
My dad followed me out onto the porch. “I’m sorry you had to find out about…well, about everything the way you did.”
Misadventures of a Tongue-Tied Witch: Boxed Set Humorous Witch Series Page 4