Under Her Spell

by Maggie Morton

  “She’s no ‘you,’ not at all, but she’s very sweet, very kind to me, unlike the rest of the mansion’s staff.” Then Terra had a wicked thought. “I wonder if I’ll be allowed to do some rearranging and cull a few members of the household’s staff?” Terra smiled as she said this, despite the inherent—and obvious to her—evil of the idea. No, she’d turn the other cheek, although it wouldn’t hurt to ask them to fetch things for her, and maybe start to ask her “how high?” as well. A few idle threats might be nice, too…

  “I’d guess that a lot is bound to change now—for your father, for you, both with your abilities and your partnerships.” Nerit raised her glass of tea and winked at Terra as she brought it to her lips.

  “Partnerships? Do you know something I don’t?”

  “Perhaps I do. I was allowed to watch your father a few times while you were on your quest, and he seemed to spend a lot of his free time in the mansion’s kitchen. With a pretty, short woman who was always cooking. It looked like they got along with each other quite well, Terra. Quite, quite well.”

  “That’s great to hear. I was hoping he would eventually…you know, that he would notice her back.”

  “I believe he has. I also think you have brought the two of them together, by leaving for those few days.” Nerit rose from the table then, and went over to the house’s screen door. Terra watched her as she did, her beautiful mother lit up like a goddess by the early evening light.

  Terra sighed at the sight. “You always were so beautiful, Mom.”

  “Thank you, honey. You’re beautiful too, you know. Beautiful and so, so special. I’m glad Athene has noticed your specialness, and I hope she is able to bring you all the love I can’t.” Her mother’s voice sounded thick and shaky, and when she turned her eyes were damp, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. She walked over to Terra and leaned down slowly. “You have made me more proud than I can possibly put into words, Terra.” Nerit placed her lips on her forehead and kissed her gently.

  The room began to fade then, and Terra tried desperately to hold on to everything in it. But it was gone a few seconds later, and then she was waking up in Athene’s bed with a nuzzle against her neck. “It’s time to wake up, Terra. Let’s greet the day with each other, and then I’ll call downstairs and have breakfast delivered. Whatever you want to eat, it’s yours. The same goes for any possible appetizers I can provide for you.” Athene was smiling when she looked up at Terra’s face, but she seemed to notice her mood in an instant. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

  “I was with…I was with my mom tonight,” Terra said in a far-off voice. “I went to where she is now, and we talked, and she held me, and…” and here Terra felt her throat grow tight and tense, “and she told me how proud she is of me, and how glad she is we’ve found each other.”

  “Oh, Terra!” Athene pulled her into a hug and smoothed down her hair. “It was…are you sure it was real? I mean, no, I’m sorry, what a stupid question. With the level of power you have now, you’d have known if it was or wasn’t.”

  “Yes, yes, it was real. That’s why, well, I think if it had just been a dream, it wouldn’t have meant so much to me, you see. I’ve dreamed about her before, and while it always made me sad, it wasn’t as special. Or as painful, either.” Terra was surprised when the tears she’d been expecting didn’t come. Instead, she found herself feeling stronger, growing less sad and more joyful as each moment passed—as each moment in her love’s arms flowed by. “I think,” she said, pulling back gently from Athene, “I’d like waffles. With whipped cream and fruit. And orange juice, and bacon. And coffee. With cream and sugar. And,” she said, letting a wide grin spread across her face, “after breakfast, and perhaps after a quickie, I’d like to start planning our wedding. What do you think? Do you think I can have all of that? Am I asking for too much?”

  “Only if you want the quickie to come after breakfast instead of before it. Then you’d definitely be asking for too much.”

  Terra laughed, and then she tackled Athene down against the bed, and they didn’t use magic for a single second of their lovemaking. After all, who needs magic when you have someone to love, and that someone loves you back?

  After the sex, and after eating far too much food, Terra insisted that they go right downstairs and start planning the wedding. “But first, first I need to ask my dad about something my mom told me last night.”

  “What is it? Tell me, please.” Athene and Terra were getting dressed when she asked, as some of Terra’s wardrobe had been ordered along with the breakfast. Terra had insisted that Isis bring both her clothes and the meal, and she had looked none too happy at serving Terra instead of the other way around.

  “It’s about Freo and my dad. My mom said something about them spending a lot of time together while I was gone. I’m hoping he finally got a clue and decided to start his life up again.”

  “She’s definitely a good match for him—they’d be so cute together!” Athene made an annoyingly girlish squealing noise at the end of her sentence, but Terra decided she would forgive her for it, just this once, since it had to do with her dad finding love again.

  Once they were both dressed, Athene said they should meet in the mansion’s main living room, and she’d make sure someone came by with some fabric swatches and some patterns of possible dresses for her and suits for Terra. Terra remembered about her plans for the Hoomes then, and she brought their song to the front of her mind. But first, she had something more important to attend to.

  When Terra asked one of the staff’s cleaning ladies if her father was out at the stables, she replied that the last time she’d seen Zachary, he was headed toward the kitchen. Good, Terra thought as she made her way there, and she was smiling as she began to open the kitchen’s door.

  Inside the kitchen, Freo was standing behind the heavy wooden worktable, wearing an apron and covered in flour, and Zachary was standing to her left. Neither of them noticed Terra as she walked into the room. She noticed the smiles on each of their faces, though. And she also noticed the pink rose sitting on the table next to Freo’s hand.

  “So what should we do on it?” Freo was saying to her father.

  “Do on what?” Terra asked.

  Both of their heads whipped in her direction. Her dad started blushing a bit, and Freo smiled and looked down for a moment. “On our first date,” she said when she looked back up. “That is, if you approve of your father going out with me. I wouldn’t dream of doing it without his daughter’s permission.”

  “I’ve been waiting—eagerly—for this to happen for ages. Of course I’m okay with it!” Terra ran up to her father and hugged him. “So is Mom,” she whispered into his ear.

  Her father looked even more surprised than he had when Terra had first entered the room. “She…is? You mean…?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now, you have a first date to plan, and I have a wedding to plan, too.” She kissed her dad on the cheek, then did the same to Freo.

  “My!” Freo exclaimed. “Someone seems to be jolly today!”

  “Must be all the love in the air.” And with those words Terra left the room, the sounds of Freo and her dad resuming their date-planning following her out of the room.

  From eleven that morning until four that afternoon, she learned that planning a wedding was a darn bit more complicated than planning a first date. She hoped her father and Freo weren’t having a hard time figuring out their own plans, because she sure as hell was having trouble making hers and Athene’s.

  But one month later, their wedding day arrived. Despite a touch of jitters and worrying every few hours about everything going wrong, Terra was delighted when everything went right. Onyx was the first to walk down the aisle, carrying their two rings in a heather-gray silk pouch attached to his collar. He had been overjoyed when Terra had asked the Werths’ magical acquaintances and found not one, but two gay cats who were now living with him. He’d told her that juggling two boyfriends was far too
challenging, but he hadn’t sounded all that unhappy about it.

  Next down the aisle was Freo, dressed in a knee-length, green dress covered with delicate, pink flowers. She looked almost as happy as Terra felt. Maybe…or, perhaps, obviously, it was all the time she’d been spending with Zachary lately, but Terra had never seen her look happier. Next came Terra’s turn. She wore an elegant, pink-trimmed, forest-green suit the Hoomes had made for her, and their magical jackets had found a new home in a leaf-patterned, button-up dress shirt. She didn’t know if it still possessed the forest’s magic in its weave, but she’d decided it wouldn’t hurt to have a little magical help on her wedding day.

  Her father walked her down the aisle. Cer had already done the same for Athene, at her daughter’s insistence; she and Athene had wanted to remove some of the inherent sexism in fathers giving their daughters away, after all. Sadly, Terra’s own mother couldn’t help them out with accomplishing that.

  Up at the altar, Terra took in Athene’s effervescent, glowing beauty. She was dressed in a loose, rose-colored gown that skimmed her body and stopped at her ankles with a delicate lace hem, which the Hoomes had apparently spent hours perfecting. How they had gone about making their wedding clothes, Terra didn’t know. The petite, gray-haired women had kept her and Athene out of the room allocated to them for their work, telling them that seeing their clothes before their wedding day was bad luck. Terra had never heard this custom before, but she just went with it. After all, she would soon be getting married, and the rest was just second fiddle to that wonderful fact.

  After the witch and high priestess leading the ceremony had spoken, it was time for them to exchange vows, and Terra’s voice shook a little as she read hers. It wasn’t shaking from fear, but from her joyful tears that came as she poured out her heart to her soon-to-be wife.

  “I had always wondered,” she began, “if there was some spell you could cast to bring you someone who would love you, someone who would love you above all else. I would have searched throughout the land to find something that I thought of as so useful, as so very important. But then, this beautiful woman standing before me caught my eye one night, and I realized only weeks later that I didn’t need a magic word to bring me that love. Because now I had one—the word was ‘Athene.’”

  Terra continued from there, but everything else she had to say was less important than those beginning words. The rest of her speech seemed almost unnecessary now, but once she had finished, she looked up, and Athene was crying, too.

  “And you are my magic word, Terra,” Athene said through her tears. She pulled Terra close, holding her in her arms in a hug that wasn’t really a planned part of the ceremony. But magic can rarely be planned either, Terra thought, nor can love. And magic and love, she thought, as she held her lover ever-so-close, would always be a perfect pair…just like her and Athene.

  About the Author

  Maggie Morton lives in Northern California with her partner and their two cats. She is the winner of an Alice B. Award 2013 Lavender Certificate for her first novel, the lesbian, erotic romance Dreaming of Her. This is her second novel.

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