The Witching Hour

Chapter Eight

James was alone. It only occurred to him recently, when he came home and the dishes weren't done and dinner wasn't prepared.

His father was always out, and when he was home, he was tired. Too tired to talk. Just awake long enough for a bowl of soup and a slice of buttered bread.

James made him tea every night. It was something his mother had done for him. She made chamomile tea every night for both of them, and in the short time Julia needed a place to stay, there was tea for her too. Now it was tradition–tea every night for everyone in the house. Even if every foggy morning the little blue mug sat untouched on the counter, as cold as the drafty room.

There was a routine now that school had started–get up, wake up Father, make breakfast, rush to school, come home and study, make dinner and tea, go to bed. Life was easier with a routine. A schedule. Knowing what would happen every day, and not worrying about long breaks with nothing to do and too much time to think.

Thinking was dangerous now that Percy was gone and James was no longer in England. Something had changed inside him. For the first time in his life he understood the meaning of having too little to do. Until now, everything was a chore. Now, every small thing he had to do was a relief. An escape from the deafening silence of his mind. When there was somewhere to be, he couldn't waste any time being unable to get out of bed.

They started learning magic in the small, beaten-up greenhouse behind Tom's cabin. It was the perfect place to stay hidden away and practice in private.

The first ten days nothing happened; the six of them talked through the day in the greenhouse, pretending this was anything they'd hoped. The eleventh day, Austin arrived with a book under his arm.

"I borrowed this from Father," Austin explained. "It's a book of castings–simple spells that are easy and require very little materials."

They flipped through the book, each getting excited about different spells.

"I want to give a frog wings!" Trevor said.

"Let's try this one–purifying water," Julia said.

"Ooh, the hover charm," Sage mused.

Finally they settled on the simplest one in the book–altering the color or pattern of an inanimate object. They each found a rock or a leaf and followed the instructions in the book.

A. Place your chosen object directly in front of you.

B. Picture the object clearly in your mind.

C. Picture your chosen color clearly in your mind.

D. In your mind, imagine the color as a sheet floating over to the object and covering it. Imagine the sheet melting into the object and staining the object with its color.

Poppy held her leaf in her hand–it was a leaf of ivy, from the tree outside the greenhouse. She thought of red, the exact red of Julia's sweater, and did as the instructions said with her eyes closed.

When she opened her eyes, her friends were sighing around her. Their spells hadn't worked. Some of them closed their eyes to try again. Poppy did too.

"Poppy!" Julia said. "Look!"

Poppy looked down. Her leaf hadn't turned red. What was Julia talking about?

"Look! Look at my leaf!" Julia said. "I did it!"

She had done it. Julia's leaf, also ivy, had changed color. "Well done," Poppy smiled.

"It isn't the color I was thinking of, though," Julia said. "Oh well. The point is it worked."

Julia's leaf was a striking scarlet, and it blended in perfectly with her sweater. The exact color Poppy had imagined.

Was it possible that by thinking of Julia's sweater, and the ivy leaf, that Poppy had accidentally changed the color of Julia's leaf instead? Was that even possible?

Regardless, there was no need to mention it. Let Julia believe she'd done it. Which she might have. Poppy couldn't prove it was her work.

However, as they tried spell after spell, Poppy was the only one who managed to turn her leaf into a stone, or evaporate the water in a jar, or speed the growth of a small plant.

"You have a talent," Sage said, but she could hear the jealousy in their voice.

"What's the secret?" Tom teased. "What are we mortals doing wrong?"

Poppy didn't have a secret. She was just doing what the book said. Besides, she wasn't doing anything perfectly. Her leaf was more mud ball than stone, barely any of the water in the glass had been drained, and the plant had grown faster but instantly lost half its leaves.

They would always be Quiet Witches–learning to turn a leaf red didn't change that at all. They would never go to Rosewood, or Primrose, or Horace and Arthur. They would never even get into Fairwell, one of the lowest-ranked schools in England.

Insignificance was a life they'd learn to fit into.