by Nancy Warren
“Now we set the direction.”
“You mean like a GPS?”
Margaret chuckled, which always sounded like an evil cackle to me. “Not exactly. But if that helps you visualize the process, then fine.”
What I was visualizing right now was being back in my bed all snuggled up with a pillow over my head to block out light and noise.
I was puzzled. “But Nyx has never been on the broom before.”
She gave her superior smirk. And no one could smirk in a more superior fashion than Margaret Twigg. “Your cat is also from a long line of familiars connected with your family.”
Okay then. Nyx gave me a look that was slightly piteous. I supposed I should have figured that out by now.
“The rest is as simple as a spell. Mostly all you’re doing is focusing your intention. Concentrate. Picture the broom riding around this thicket. Trying to rhyme helps you bring focus.”
I felt a bit foolish making up an impromptu rhyme in front of these much more experienced witches, but they were all looking at me and standing there in expectant silence. I closed my eyes. As I pictured the broom circling the clearing, I felt my hand begin to tingle again. Instinctively, I reached up my index finger as I traced a circle around the edge of the clearing. I said, more as though I was reciting a rhyme I already knew than making up a fresh one, “Dear Broom, I call to thee. Travel in a circle from tree to tree. When you are done, return to me. So I will, so mote it be.”
Then I gave a gasp as I felt a spurt of energy. The broom jerked out my hand. My eyes opened wide in time to see the broom launch into the air like a rocket. Nyx braced herself, and I was certain her claws were digging into the wood. Her ears pressed back, but to my shock and amazement, the broom followed my instructions. It took a perfectly nice circle around the edge of the clearing and then landed back in exactly the position it started from.
Nyx turned to look at me over her shoulder, not even jumping off the broom. It was as though she said, “Come on in, the water’s fine.”
Aunt Lavinia clapped her hands. “Well done, Lucy. That’s excellent for a first attempt.”
Violet nodded. “Now you try, Lucy.”
There was a certain smug anticipation in her tone. Violet and I had become good friends, but there was still an edge of competition between us. I seemed to have more raw power than she did, but she was much more practiced in our craft. I had a notion she was looking forward to watching me tumble. And that would make one of us.
Still, if there was something bad coming our way, I supposed I owed it to my fellow witches to at least learn the rudimentary skills. I promised myself I was not going to make a habit of flying on brooms.
I eyed Margaret Twigg. “What’s the whip for?”
“Should the broom get away from you, I’d be able to retrieve it.”
The whip wasn’t very long. “But only at the very beginning?”
“Yes. After that, you’re on your own.”
I wished I hadn’t asked.
“Now. You can begin with a standing start, as it is right now, or a floating start, when the broom is suspended in the air and you mount it like a bicycle.”
I looked at the old broom. “Which one is the easiest?”
Margaret Twigg threw her hands up in the air, and the whip twitched as though it really wanted to smack me. “Never mind what’s easiest. You’ll try both.”
Since the broom was already in the ground position, I decided to start with that. I went forward and stepped one leg over the broom. I repeated the same verse as before since it had worked so well and hoped that we would both return safely.
Margaret told me to lean forward and clasp the broom handle with both hands. I did and then I felt that same surge of energy, and the broom came up off the ground so quickly, it whacked me on the hipbone. “Ow,” I cried just as Nyx and I took off with a lurch.
I can’t describe the feeling of flying on a broom. It was a little bit like riding a bike, with the feeling of wind in my face and the narrow perch. But when I looked down, I didn’t think of riding a bike anymore.
The earth seemed a long way below. The three witches were following my progress, their faces pale in the moonlight. I wanted to enjoy this moment, but I was actually terrified. I mean, I was sitting on a broom about thirty feet above the ground. What if the broom decided it didn’t want to fly anymore, or I lost concentration, which was probably the same thing as running out of gas? So instead of daydreaming and looking all around, I focused all my attention on the circle we were making. Nyx seemed pretty relaxed, and it was amazing skimming above the treetops. Something whizzed past, and I realized it was a bat.
Our circle completed, we began to descend. We landed with a bump, but at least we landed. I dismounted, feeling wobbly in my knees. I’d been so focused on trying to stay aloft that I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I, a grown woman, had somehow managed to balance on the handle of a broom. In the air. With my cat.
Lavinia and Violet both clapped. Margaret Twigg did not.
“Now,” she said, “you’ll practice mounting the broom while it’s aloft.”
I thought it might have been nice if she’d given me a chance to catch my breath and let my legs stop shaking, but Margaret Twigg wasn’t one for worrying about other people’s feelings. Especially if those feelings happened to be mine.
Nyx was still on the broom, and she looked to me expectantly. She clearly knew what came next, even if I didn’t.
Margaret instructed me to picture the broom sitting in the air at the right height for me to mount it. I pictured something about bicycle seat height, and then with my tingling right hand, I simply lifted the back end of the broom without touching it. Surprisingly, it worked. I was a bit more nervous getting on this way. But at least the broom didn’t come up and whack me in the hip this time. Still, there was something very disconcerting about positioning myself on a broom while it hovered in midair. How could I not fall off? How could I not end up as I had that day on the horse, climbing on all right and then finding myself sliding underneath until I was upside down? I had no idea. Those physics were beyond me. But the good news was that I managed to mount without any problem at all. I had to resist the urge to wrap my arms around Nyx as though she were my boyfriend and we were riding a motorcycle down a twisty road.
If Margaret Twigg hadn’t been watching me, I might’ve done it, but there was something about having that sharp critical gaze on me that made me concentrate for all I was worth. Once more, Nyx and I did a circle around the clearing. I was feeling pretty confident when we returned. If there was a witches’ driver’s test, I thought I should get a gold star. But of course, when Margaret Twigg was involved, she wasn’t satisfied unless I was experiencing one of the following: terror, complete lack of self-esteem, feeling foolish. If she got me feeling all three of those things at the same time, she gave herself a gold star.
Even as Great-Aunt Lavinia was congratulating me and telling me that I was a natural, Margaret Twigg was saying, “All right. I want you to ride to my cottage, pick a sprig of rosemary from my garden and bring it back.”
I felt my eyes grow wide. Even Nyx twitched her tail as though she thought Margaret was pushing it. And since Nyx was my copilot, I didn’t think she wanted me pushed out of my comfort zone too quickly, either. “What?”
“You can do it. I’ll expect you back here in five minutes.”
Oh, good, just to add to my stress, now I had a time limit on top of the larger task of flying a broom. I wanted to argue, but there was something about Margaret that made it very difficult for me to engage in conflict with her. Instead, I blew out a huge breath the way I used to when my mom criticized my grades in high school and then stomped over to the broom. I moved my hand up so quickly that the broom bounced, and Nyx let out a surprised meow.
“Sorry, Nyx,” I said, feeling terrible. I shouldn’t take my temper out on my poor familiar. It was Margaret Twigg I wanted to let out a startled meow at.
The way Margaret’s cat eyes were looking at me, I suspected she could read my mind. Good.
I mounted the broom. Aunt Lavinia came up to me and touched my shoulder. “Take your time, Lucy. Focus. Concentrate. You can do it. Nyx is there to help you.”
I was so happy I had someone here who actually seemed to care about me. I nodded and breathed in and out, slowly regaining my focus. I pictured Margaret’s cottage and the lush herb garden I’d walked through. I was sorely tempted to make a rude rhyme and thought of all the satisfying things that would rhyme with Twigg, but the reality was I wanted to survive this night more. I said, “Dear Broom, please take me to Margaret Twigg’s home, to a clump of rosemary on its own. So I will, so mote it be.”
I clung to the ancient wooden handle of that broom so tightly I could feel my palms begin to sweat. But then I thought of all the other witches who’d gone before me on that very broom, including my grandmother. Without the scrutiny of the three witches, I started to feel as though I were on one of those terrible rides at the fairground, the kind that makes your stomach feel like it’s flipped inside out and is wedged in your throat. But as I looked down over the trees, I suddenly felt like a kid again. This couldn’t be happening, and yet it was.
I was flying.
It wasn’t far to Margaret Twigg’s cottage, and soon we were clearing the edge of the forest and I nudged the handle of the broom down. I wasn’t sure if it needed the extra steering, but the broom responded. It brought us right down in the herb garden, and to my delight, we were on a path beside a healthy-looking rosemary bush. I snapped a largish piece of the dark green spiky herb, and the spicy fragrance of rosemary briefly filled the air. I was so delighted, I seriously wanted to go for a joyride, but I had a five-minute deadline, and I was determined I’d be back within the time limit.
I told the broom that we wanted to return, and Nyx and I sailed up again over the trees. I felt sheer joy as the breeze we were making by flying lifted the wisps of my hair that had come out of the ponytail. The air was cold and crisp, and below, the trees blocked anyone’s view of us. Even when we crossed fields, they were empty, sleeping quietly.
When we returned, I presented Margaret with the sprig of rosemary as though it were a bouquet of roses. She gave a tiny smile and said, “Well done, Lucy.”
Even though Lavinia and Violet had been clapping and congratulating me all night, those three words from Margaret filled me with pride.
She looked at me in a considering way and then said, “You have one more task. I want you to fly to the standing stones and bring me back the round pebble that’s sitting on top of the headstone.”
I was puzzled. That was pretty specific. I wrinkled my brow. “How do you know there’s a round pebble on top of the headstone?”
She looked to me like I was a particularly dim student. “Because I put it there.”
I did not think she’d taken a twelve-foot ladder out to the standing stones and climbed up to the headstone. She’d flown there herself.
“I won’t be able to land, will I?”
That smug, borderline evil smile tilted her lips. “No. You will hover, reach out one hand and pick up the stone. Then you will circle and return here.”
I thought I had been doing very well, but this was advanced driver training. “Are you sure I can handle it?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. But we’ll see, won’t we?”
I glanced at my two witch relatives, but they both nodded at me encouragingly.
“Okay,” I said. “Here goes.” I might have sounded hard done by, but I was really starting to enjoy this flying thing. I just didn’t want the twisted sisters to know.
I set my internal GPS, muttered my rhyme, and off we went. This was a longer ride, and it was exhilarating. As we sailed across the A40 motorway, I looked down and saw headlights. What if someone looked up and saw us? I wondered if that ever happened. But we flew without any kind of lights. No doubt if a motorist looked up in the sky and saw what they thought was a witch flying on a broom, they’d think they’d eaten something bad. Or that it was a very big bird. They’d doubt their senses before they believed in such foolishness as flying witches. Or at least I hoped so.
The standing stones in the moonlight looked like ladies in white gauze gowns dancing. I’d been there before during a full moon, for coven events, but naturally, I’d never seen the stones from this angle. As I came closer, I experienced the feeling as though I were dancing with them. I took a couple of turns around the stones and then, feeling particularly daring, I took us between two of them where there was the widest gap. I was flying in every sense of the word.
I discovered that I could, in fact, use the broom’s handle to steer us. I could tell it where to go, but I could also manually point to where I wished to go. However, I didn’t want to crash right into the stone, so I needed to go close but not too close. Also, I had no idea how to pause in midair long enough to grab the pebble. We sailed past, and I could see the perfect round pebble perched in the middle, on the top of the head stone. “Nyx, what do I do? How do I put this thing on pause?”
And then the words came to me. “Broom, hover.”
I said those words aloud and, like magic, we began to hover. By reaching out, I was able to scoop up the pebble.
As we rode back home, I said, “Nyx, we are a great team.”
I swear she shook her head. And if I could have seen her face, I’d bet she was rolling her eyes.
When I returned back to the clearing and handed over the pebble, Margaret Twigg said, “Good. That’s enough for tonight. But I want you here once a week, Lucy.”
“Once a week?” It wasn’t the flying lessons that I minded so much, but the thought of spending one evening every week with Margaret Twigg took a lot of the fun out of zooming through the air on a broom.
She looked quite stern. “You’ve a great deal to learn, and if you’re not pushed, you grow lazy.”
I wanted to argue, but I knew she was right. I just had so much to learn in every area of my life. Between trying to figure out how to knit and still being quite new at running a retail store, and trying to pack in a lifetime’s worth of witch training, and trying to keep Alice safe and stop a murderer, I barely had any time left over. Still, if I was going to take this witch gig seriously, and she wasn’t making it up about dark forces coming our way, I knew I had to sharpen my skills. So I nodded and agreed that I’d be back at the same time next week.
We all went our separate ways then, and Nyx and I drove back to Oxford. As we headed down the A40, I couldn’t resist looking up in the sky to see if I could see any witches flying. I didn’t see any, but I wouldn’t put it past the three twisted sisters I’d just left to be careening around on their brooms for fun.
When I returned home, as I was getting out of my car, a dark and dangerous-looking man emerged from the shadows and stepped toward me. I’d have screamed except I was becoming used to the sight.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Rafe. “And why are you waiting outside?” It wasn’t like he needed a key to get in.
Nyx ran to him like he was a succulent bowl of fresh tuna, and he automatically bent and scooped her up. She crawled up and over his shoulder and hung there in one of her favorite positions. “I heard about your evening’s activities. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
In truth, I was happy to see him. I was bubbling over with excitement and dying to tell someone. And there were very few people in my life to whom I could safely gush about my experiences flying on a broom.
“It was amazing,” I said. I opened the door, and we all went in. He followed me upstairs to my flat. I’d planned to make myself some hot cocoa, but now that Rafe was here, I asked, “Would you like a glass of red wine?” He sometimes drank wine, and it was a nice way for us to share something. He nodded and reached into the high cupboard where I kept the wine. I handed him the corkscrew and fetched two glasses.
We sat on my couch, and I told him about my evening.
“It was so cool,” I cried. “Nyx was amazing. Rafe, I flew.”
He was looking at me indulgently. “It’s a good feeling, isn’t it?”
“You…?”
“Well, it’s not exactly flying when we do it. It’s more just moving very, very quickly.”
I thought that was pretty cool too.
But I didn’t think he’d come only to talk flying. “Has Theodore discovered anything about the murder?”
Chapter 14
“Theodore has been looking into Philip Wallington’s background.” Rafe shifted and crossed one elegant leg over the other. “It seems he didn’t tell the police everything.”
I couldn’t believe it. “You’re telling me an Anglican vicar lied?”
He made a back-and-forth motion with his head. “No. He didn’t lie, exactly. It was more a sin of omission.”
That made me feel better. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“It’s the reason he moved from London to this rather sleepy backwater of Moreton-under-Wychwood that’s interesting.”
“And the reason is?”
“His life was threatened.”
Somebody wanted to kill that nice vicar? “What?”
“My reading of Philip Wallington is that he genuinely wants to do good, but perhaps he’s a bit of a hothead. His ministry was in a bad part of London, one rife with drugs and gangs. He was very successful in getting people off drugs and helping with gambling and alcohol addictions. He started ambitious programs, trained volunteers, provided food and counseling, places to stay, halfway houses and jobs. He was quite successful.”
“That sounds wonderful. What went wrong?”
“He was too successful. He made enemies of some very powerful people, the kind who run drugs and gambling and so on.”
“I hate that there are people like that in the world.”
“So, it appears, does the vicar. He was warned to stop some of his programs, but he refused.”
“Oh, dear. Did something bad happen?”