Everything else went according to plan, and each small spell was performed flawlessly by all of us.
Another fifteen minute break followed. This time I didn’t even go over to the refreshments table, I just when talked quietly in a corner with Jackie and Kelly. None of us said much, but it was comforting to know that I wasn’t alone.
I hadn’t wanted to have a break at all after the spellcasting. I would much rather have done the cauldron test immediately, because this was the part I was really worried about. If I could get through the cauldron test, than I can could get through anything. And—maybe I’d have a chance to pass the examination, save the family, and become an official Rhinestone witch after all.
Kyra had said that the cape, hat, and shoes they had made for me were beautiful. At the moment, though, I felt the necklace heavy against my chest, a symbol that I didn’t really belong in Twinkleford. All I could hope for was to change that today.
After the slowest fifteen minutes of my life, we went over to the cauldrons. Sitting down to cauldron brewing at last, I actually felt confident for a change. As far as I could tell, the first two rounds had gone well. In fact, they had gone better than I had expected.
The cauldrons were empty and the flames were off. This was the worst part of it. It meant that we had to choose the temperature and proportions ourselves. I hated lighting the flame. I never felt like I knew what I was doing when I tried it. I glanced to either side and found out that unlike during the other tests, I now had the misfortune of being sandwiched between Taylor and Hannah, who were doing their best to pretend I wasn’t there.
“I’m going to come around with a list of instructions,” said Mr. Berger. “Once I place the instructions next to the last cauldron, you may begin. Please read the instructions carefully before you start. A mishap, especially at the beginning of the exercise, would be disastrous.” He held up the folder in his hand and asked, “Any questions?”
When nobody said anything, he started at the end of the line. Jackie got her instructions face down, then Kelly, then Taylor. Mr. Berger didn’t look at me as he passed. Last to get her instructions was Hannah. As Mr. Berger walked away he said, “Begin.”
What followed were the worst forty-five minutes of my life. No matter how much practicing I had done, I had never been a good test taker, and cauldrons weren’t my strong point either. It took me three tries just to light the flame properly.
Once the light was finally burning brightly under my cauldron I moved on to my next task, which involved putting seven ingredients into boiling water. First I had to add the water slowly. Impatient as ever, I forced myself to calm down. Unlike with crystal ball reading, I didn’t feel as much “in the zone,” and that worried me. What the girls on either side of me were doing kept distracting me. I tried harder to focus.
The goal was to produce a flower concoction, a type of liquid that was used as the basis for many more complicated potions and elixirs. We had done one in class. Now it was just a matter of remembering the process.
I knew that there would be some sort of trick to the seven ingredients. Mr. Berger hadn’t put them in order, but there was an order; there was always an order. The trick was to figure out what it was without being told. Usually there was some governing principle, like maybe all of the red ingredients went in first, or the most dense, or fruits before vegetables. It was a lot like real cooking, only worse, because you could blow up the cauldron and yourself.
When all my ingredients were added and I had gone through the entire list Mr. Berger had given us, I began to relax. I had remembered the proper order I needed, I had used the right spoon in the right motion at the right time, the flame looked like everyone else’s. After hours of stress and tension, I felt like I might actually have done the tests correctly.
“Everybody finished? Calling time,” said Mr. Berger.
I sat back. My lower back ached. My head started to throb. It was past time for me to eat something, but I still didn’t feel hungry. Maybe I’d grab a biscuit on my way out, and hope for something more substantial afterwards.
I knew my grandmother and my cousin would be waiting for me outside. They would surely be part of a crowd, because a lot of the town liked to come see the witches leave the examinations, or so I had been told. Bethel and Lisa would probably be with our friends. Lisa and Lucky had said that they came every year and brought champagne. When I asked why they didn’t wait until evening to have champagne, they said it was best to start celebrating as early as possible.
I glanced down the row of girls. Jackie still looked pale. Kelly was calm. Glory was staring hard at the floor. Taylor and Hannah had already started joking around again, but Hannah was examining a chip in her nail and looking distinctly displeased. She was telling her friend that she would need to get the nail fixed for the evening celebration. She had already decided that she had passed the examinations.
The judges were going down the row of cauldrons, peering inside each of them. Her face impassive, Mrs. Berger grabbed wooden spoons and tested each concoction. When she came to mine she dipped the spoon in and examined it closely. Not satisfied, she dipped the spoon in again. Her eyes flicked to me and then she kept moving.
Unease started to creep back into my heart. She hadn’t tested anybody else’s concoction twice. What if I had done something wrong? Maybe I had in fact added the ingredients in the wrong order. It was deeply worrying, but there was nothing I could do about it now.
“Very well, everyone. Nicely done. This marks the conclusion of another year of witch testing. By this evening you will either be a witch or your lives will be entirely irrelevant. Congratulations,” said Ms. Mallon.
“I think we know in which direction you’re going,” said Taylor out of the side of her mouth, leaning toward me just enough so that no one else would hear the jibe.
I tried not to react. Who knew what had suddenly made her so interested in being unpleasant to me. Maybe she had taken her cues from Hannah, or maybe she was just like Hannah in her own right.
“The only thing we have left to do is to find out what the weather is going to be tomorrow,” said the queen witch, holding our sheets of paper in her hand.
I swallowed hard. I had managed to forget about this part. Oh well, the storm coming tomorrow had been as clear as day in my crystal ball. There was no way that everybody else hadn’t seen it as well.
I had expected Ms. Mallon to do this part, but she didn’t step forward.
All of us were exhausted. For myself, I just wanted to get out of the hall and under the sky. I didn’t even want lunch at this point, I wanted to see my family and go on a long walk and talk about something else. Maybe my grandmother could tell me stories of the unicorns. Maybe if she was in a good mood, some of them might even be funny. I was bone tired and shaking a little from the release of tension. I hadn’t realized how nervous I had been.
But there was this one last thing that had to be dealt with. What made it worse was that it was going to be dealt with by the Carlisle queen.
As she stepped forward, her bright red lips broke into a smile that made her look more vicious and terrifying than pleasant and welcoming. “Congratulations to all of you,” she said, “on finishing your exam. Now the work starts for us. We will be deliberating. You all studied hard and today you did quite well. Of course, there were some hiccups that we will have to address. But let me send you off with this, the predictions of the weather for tomorrow.” She held up the pieces of paper as if to show them off.
I couldn’t tell what my fellow students thought of what was happening. Jackie looked as exhausted as I felt. Kelly looked calmer than I had seen her before. She knew that she had done everything perfectly, so she could relax at last. Hannah and Taylor also looked confident, probably because they knew they would have passed even if they had taken their cauldrons, dumped them out, and danced around holding signs saying, “All the judges are idiots.”
Not that I resented them or anything.
“Th
e first prediction for tomorrow is for a terrible storm,” said the queen.
There was a slight shifting around me, and I liked that. That one was mine, or it lined up exactly with what I had said. Either way that was a good thing.
“The second prediction for tomorrow is for bright, sunny skies with no clouds at all. The third is for bright sunny skies and no clouds,” the queen intoned.
By now her voice was starting to fade into the background for me. Despite my tiredness, shock was racing through my mind. In the far distance, a voice continued. No clouds, blue skies.
I nearly fell over. When she had finished, there were five blue sky predictions and one for a massive storm.
“I can tell you what our own predictions said,” the queen summarized. “They were for blue skies. I would say that the one storm prediction is an outlier, and wrong.” Her eyes bore through me and I could see triumph in their depths. I didn’t know what to say or do. I didn’t know where to look. I was going to fail.
Mrs. Berger, a woman I didn’t know it all, gave a slight cough. “Actually, my prediction said that there could in fact be storm clouds. It is worth noting that crystal ball reading has never been my specialty. Now, I think these young ladies could use a break. We will deliberate and make the announcement in one hour.”
The Carlisle queen’s mouth tightened. I felt certain that she didn’t like Mrs. Berger stepping in on her fun, but Mrs. Berger didn’t appear concerned. I supposed that as a world-famous witch scientist, she didn’t worry about such things. I warmed toward her, but even so, I felt terrible as I slowly followed my classmates out the door.
“Can’t imagine who got the weather wrong for tomorrow,” said Hannah, tapping her pretty nail against her mouth.
“Mrs. Berger said she might see a storm,” said Kelly as we made our way toward the doors.
“Yes, but the majority didn’t see that. It’s going to be a bright and sunny day,” said Taylor.
Everybody knew I was the one who had gotten the weather wrong. Mrs. Berger had just been trying to be kind.
When we emerged onto the front steps of the dance hall, the entire space in front of us was filled with townsfolk. At first I couldn’t see my family. In fact, I was so overwhelmed by the sheer size of the crowd, with everyone standing there and looking at us, that I couldn’t focus.
As we walked out in our beautiful suits, cheers went up. Any clouds that had been in the sky before were gone. The sun was shining and the blue was so bright it was sparkling.
Despite the cheers, I didn’t feel the least bit cheery, but that didn’t stop the crowd. Hannah and Taylor waved as if they were at a pageant. Kelly smiled, and even Jackie looked relieved.
A robust-looking woman with a blocky form stepped forward. She was wearing a nicely tailored suit and a serious expression, and she had several aides circling around her. I figured that the four young men who also hovered nearby must be Jackie’s brothers.
Hannah and Taylor were still enjoying the attention. In fact, everyone was delighted except Glory. Her mishap hadn’t been major, but I could tell that it had unsettled her.
Finally, to my great relief, I spotted Bethel, Lowe, Lisa, Lucky, and even Kyra and Kayla making their way through the crowd. I stumbled toward them, feeling dazed. Bethel gave me a big smile and wrapped her arms around me.
“Darling, congratulations! You did it! The worst is over now! We’ll find out in an hour. No more worries now.” She hugged me as tightly as anyone had ever hugged me. I smelled a mix of essential oils and flowers from the garden.
“I failed. I know I failed,” I whispered in her ear.
Her arms tightened on me. “We don’t know that yet. Did you get something terribly wrong?” she whispered back.
I replied that I did. She held me at arms length and smiled anyhow. “Let’s go home. Everything will look better there.”
“Aren’t we coming back for the announcement?” my cousin asked.
“Kyra and Kayla can let us know what the verdict is. We need to discuss a couple of things,” she said.
Lowe clearly knew this a signal for something, even if I had no idea what it was. The three of us departed quickly. We didn’t have a lot of time to get home.
My heart lifted the tiniest bit as we slipped away through the crowd. No part of me wanted to be there when they announced that I had failed, and the face of the Carlisle queen before we left had told me everything I needed to know. Even if I had been perfect, she wouldn’t have wanted to pass me. Since I hadn’t been, it would be easy. I was never going to be a Rhinestone witch.
It wasn’t a dream that I had grown up with. It wasn’t as if it was a loss that had been a long time in the making. No, but it still hurt. Mostly it hurt because I felt as if I had let my family down. Now Ethel would have nowhere to turn.
It didn’t take us long to reach home. Our entire borough of Misdirect seemed empty of people, and our own house was uncharacteristically quiet. I didn’t know if the pixies, fairies, cats, beetles, and all of the rest of them were downtown waiting to celebrate, or somewhere else. Either way, there was no one about.
The second we entered the house Lowe said, “We are leaving aren’t we? I’m already packed.”
“We are not leaving,” said Bethel firmly. “There is no one else who can take care of the unicorns like our family can. If they try to kick us out, we’re going to stay and defend this house. If the coven queens take the unicorns, they’ll have too much power concentrated in too small a group, and nobody will be able to stop the foolish choices they’ll want to make. We can’t let that happen. We have to stop them, and if we have to fight to keep the house, then so be it. There are explosives in the basement. Lowe, if you wouldn’t mind going to get them?”
My cousin and I raised our eyebrows. Apparently it was also news to her that there were explosives right below us.
“Don’t be afraid! The explosives aren’t going to blow you up without my command,” said Bethel imperiously. For a well-dressed elderly woman, she was certainly bloodthirsty. Then again, she had seen enough of life to make herself indomitable.
For the next hour we prepared for battle.
Lowe returned from the basement with a supply of explosive devices of a kind that I didn’t recognize as such, not that I had a lot of experience in the field of blowing things up. She had old VCRs, DVD players, and the occasional gaming console, all in strange colors. Apparently my grandmother used a spell that turned ordinary electronics into dangerous devices.
Once Lowe came back from the basement, Bethel sent me to get crystal balls from the attic. As with the explosives, these were not familiar items. They were, in short, not the same sort of crystal balls I had been looking into earlier in the day. These ones had no base, and sparks flared and danced inside them.
Continuing her preparations for battle, Bethel pulled up various floor panels throughout the house to reveal potion bottles. She said the bottles would also explode on her command.
“Do you have any defenses that aren’t going to explode?” I asked.
“Certainly not. What good would those be?” Bethel said.
“It’s been an hour. Whatever was going to be announced has been revealed by now. We have to get ready. They’ll be coming soon,” said Lowe, some of her earlier panic coming back.
My grandmother ushered us out to the porch, where she had us overturn three small tables. We ducked behind them, each of us holding several explosive devices. My grandmother had the most. I had the distinct impression that she was kind of looking forward to blowing somebody up.
We waited.
And we waited some more.
Just when I was wondering how long Bethel intended us to stay in this position, we heard footsteps. It sounded as if several people were approaching Mountain Misdirect. Of course there were several of them; if they were coming to take the Rhinestone witches from their ancestral home, no one was foolish enough to try to do it alone.
When a couple of voices called my name
, Bethel motioned for me to stay behind the table. My nerves twisted as I waited. Tiger jumped onto the porch and came to sit between my legs. I tried to motion him away, but he wouldn’t go.
Finally, I peered around the table.
Standing in the garden was Lisa, closely followed by her mother and my stylists.
When Lisa caught sight of the explosives, she raised her hand as if in surrender. The other three looked around her, then quickly followed suit. Their eyes were huge and staring.
“You certainly have a very strange way of celebrating,” said Lucky.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“What?” Lowe sprang to her feet.
My grandmother and I quickly followed suit. My mouth was agape. “What are you talking about? You aren’t here to kick us out?” I asked.
“Course not. You passed. The celebration is in two hours, and we need at least four hours to make you presentable, ideally, so there’s no time to waste,” said Kayla. All four of them were positively beaming.
My grandmother looked over at me, shock written all over her face. “You said you didn’t pass.”
“I thought I hadn’t,” I said. “I got the weather wrong.”
“I’m sure a little thing like the weather isn’t a big deal,” said Kyra.
My grandmother was frowning at me. “It’s all a big deal,” she said. “But fine. Either way, she passed, and now we have to get ready for the ball.”
“Quinn will be here in an hour and a half,” said Kyra.
“No he won’t,” said Bethel. “We planned that he would meet us at the dance hall for the procession. He said he had some last-minute work to do.”
Then, all of a sudden, my grandmother’s whole face lit up and she clapped her hands together. “We have a ball to get ready for.”
Everyone spent the next two hours giddy with excitement. Everyone, that is, except me. A huge weight had been lifted off our shoulders, but from my point of view there was a still a long way to go.
Pointy Hats and Witchy Cats Page 21