Love Potion

Wandmaking

The golden desert stretched far until meeting mountains in the distance, lest the occasional shrivelled shrub or miserable-looking tree, and the town of Day Vale seemed to be the only civilisation for heaps of miles. I hoped it would meet our excited expectations. It looked jolly enough, with its jumbles of brightly coloured buildings, and even from this distance I could hear merry bellows and music.

I turned my foot and my mary janes scraped on the sand. I realised it was the first time my feet had truly touched this new world's ground. Or was it a new world at all? Were Mathilda and Betty on another side of this globe, unaware of the magical castle on a dragon that flew above them, and the mystical towns tucked into deserts or below the ground? However, in the books, voodonts were well aware of magists, and many had much hatred against each other. I guess it's my wishful thinking to imagine that Mathilda and Betty are somewhere on the ground I stand on.

No. I had left that world behind for good.

There were forty carriages ready for us. They looked old and goaty and particularly rattle-y. Their wood was dark and dry and their metalwork, rusted. Each was pulled by a couple of wheezy-looking yellow donkeys.

Me, Persephone, Morgaine, Mollis and Pip all bundled into one of them. It was a tight squeeze, with the six of us and the immense Chonk, as well as Magnos, Mollis' dragon, And Pip's flying cat. Persephone was huffy because we had to be in carriages of the same house, so she couldn't see Gilbert for like ten minutes. Honestly, I was glad. I was getting a little ill having to watch the two of them. They were such a perfect pair, like damned star-crossed lovers, and it was making me feel very lonely.

We opened all the windows, but it only took a few minutes of the expected jostle of a journey for the air to feel thick as cream, and smelling rather funky from Chonk's green burps. We got tired of chatter quickly. I hope it won't squash our excitement.

Lo, when the carriages finally shuddered to a stop, and Chonk jumped down from letting his tongue jangle out the window, each of their dull faces lit instantly. It was an eager scramble to get out of the carriage and skip and squeal with glee, because Day Vale was the prettiest little place I had ever seen. The tire of the heat all but left me.

The houses were small and crumped in the middle as if squashed slightly, the most marvellous of colours, and bottle-shaped fairy lights strung between the buildings; there was a fountain with a statue of a peeing boy that was filled with twinkling fish, those winged cats flying everywhere, common as crows, curious magical people in curious clothes giving us curious looks, and so many shop windows bulging with fantastical things, I felt my nonexistant money pouch begging to be spent. 

Spigte gathered us round as successfully as if she was rounding the flying cats, and gave us a briefing of safety or curfew or something, I wasn't listening, and then we were relieved of our itching to go and splurge the place. Persephone was boggling and wondering where on earth we could go to first. I was frisky with her but then a finger tapped my shoulder and I jerked in fright to meet the round face of Spigte.

"Cosmo," she said, her tight red lips barely moving. Clearly unquenched by the heat, she wore her full black attire and was pale as ever. "You can go - frolic - with your friends later. You must get your wand. Follow me."

"Oh," I said. Somehow, I had forgotten about that.

"We'll be in the trinket shop when you've finished," Morgaine told me, and so I split from them to go with stiff Master Spigte. I didn't want to part with my group, who were gleefully giggling, but I was skittish for getting my wand.

Spigte lead me down the student-bustled road, and I realised she was still bare-footed, even out of the castle, her eight red-painted toes winking.