The Great Pumpkin Chase

Chapter 4

"Melisande Fee what are you doing down there!" Aunt Milly shouted at the top of her lungs. A billow of green smoke wafted up the stairs from her niece's still room. 

The was door snatched open, which did not improve Milly's mood nor the smell in the house. The raven haired girl tripped on her way up the stairs. "I'm sorry I thought I was following,"

"You forgot the counter clock wise stir before you added the powered toenail didn't you?" Milly folded her thin arms and gave her niece a stern look. "If one wants to be a potioneer one has to follow the recipes exactly. This in not like the frilly wand waving those godmother's do in their ivory tower. What we sorcerers do can enchant the mind and enslave the soul. It is serious, and if you want to continue was my apprentice you will be more careful." She hated to be so heavy handed with her niece, but this was serious business. And Milly was not going to sit by and watch her niece go down the dark path that her sister did. She had already buried one member of her family. She was not going to bury another.  

Melisande hung her head in proper shame. The smoke continue to roll up from the basement. "Well let's sort it out shall we." Milly hitched a smile on her face and hook her arm through her niece's. She was still upset with her niece and she was going to make her clean up everything, even the smell, but she was not a hard task master. Like her mistress had been. Though mothers tended to be that way.

The potion was perfectly salvageable, but it didn't do to let the pupil make mistakes without chastisement. 

Melisnde nodded and went about fixing her mess of a forgetful potion. It was a oxymoron of the highest caliber. Since the cause of the mess in the first place was her forgetting to add in that last stir before dumping in the toenails. 

Melisande Fee was the latest girl in a long line of extremely powerful women. Her grandmother had been the blue fairy queen, Morgana LaFey. The origin of the fae blood in the family. Fae rarely took on human partners, let alone married them, but her grandmother had been a trailblazer to say the least.  Morgana had three daughters, Melinda, Millicent (Aunt Milly. She hated her name. So call her Milly or suffer her wrath and scorn.), and Maeve who would later in life morph into the devastating figure of Malecifant.

Maeve had two daughters, Melisande and Madeira. Maderia had forgone the family business of sorcery and gone to the godmother academy. Her aunt Milly had cried for a whole week. Literally she sat in her favorite chair by the cauldron and cried. Melinsade didn't see the big deal. She had been happy for her sister. Maderia was trying to wash the stink of her mother's crimes off the same as De was. 

Maeve had been a willful and spiteful child from the womb. Her grandmother had told her one evening as they planted Nightshade in the family garden. Maeve had been the middle daughter doomed to be overshadowed by a more talented sister, Melinda, and never quite the favorite with Milly and her curly red hair around. She always had a chip on her shoulder about being overlooked. Maeve wasn't the prettiest, nor the tallest of the three Fee sisters. She didn't get asked to the Pixie Equinox Dance. She never got the gold star in class, and her mother didn't bounce her on her knee as they recited the elemental table. 

Fed up with being second class she left home before her twelfth birthday. It was a month before the family noticed. Nothing was known about Maeve's life after she left home. When she returned she was 18 and in full swing of her bad girl persona. Somewhere Maeve had amassed an vicious army of trolls as the darkest magic the kingdom had ever seen. 

Gone was the scrawny girl with acne and a bad hair cut. In her place was the destroyer of nations and the scorn of several kingdoms in the south. Maeve arrived on her sister's doorstep with plucked eyebrows and two bundles of joy. Once her children were secure Maeve went on to bring the kingdom of Bean to its knees. 

All the death, destruction and mayhem she caused still gave children nightmares. The family struck her from its tree to distance themselves from her crimes. Though no one knew of her children Maderia and Melisnde knew she was her mother. The rest of the family swept Maeve under the rug, but not Milly. Milly brought her nieces up knowing who their mother was. She taught them that Maeve had loved them enough to not drag them through the hell she made her life out to be. She loved them enough to make sure they were taken care of buying her little sister a house and putting some of her spoils of war aside for their upkeep. 

The knowledge made Maderia sick. Of course they had learned about the wicked fae Malecifant in school, but to learn she was their mother had hurt Maderia deeply. Melinsde hadn't had as hard of a time with the knowledge as her sister, but she still wanted to restore what her mother had broken. 

It started with learning sorcery properly, and that was why she tried to hard at it. To the detriment of everything else. Like her mother, De was never asked to the pixie Equinox Dance, but that never bothered her. Boys were a distraction she could not afford. Sorcery didn't come as easy to her as it did Maderia, but instead of getting a chip on her shoulder about it. She simply worked harder at it. 

She trudged back down into the stillroom to dump her ruined potion down the drain. There was no saving it. "Damn," she muttered as she peered into the cauldron. She had scorched the bottom. There was no saving the cauldron now either. This would make cauldron number five this month. She didn't know if she were getting better or worse at the forgetfulness potion.

"All I've got is rabbit for dinner." Milly called down the stairs.  De groaned. They always had rabbit. Ever since her aunt learned to hunt and trap all she brought back was rabbit. De would give anything for chicken or venison or even a nice slab of beef she could sink her teeth into. 

"Fine." No sense in saying anything about it. Her aunt weirdly sensitive about her cooking. 

Milly and Melisande worked in the stillroom for hours after the mishap. They often did this. Working on potions for house at a time. Milly owned a apothecary in West Vines and most of her stock went to the store. In addition to the few students she taught.  

The sun had fully set by the time they made their way back up into the land of the living. "Oh no!" Melisande cried. "I'm late." She ran around the house snatching her robe, satchel and boots. 

Milly leaped out of the way of her wrecking ball of a niece. "Late for what? A fire drill?" She had never seen De move that fast, and with coordination. He niece was not the most graceful of creatures.

"Meeting for the pumpkin races," she managed to kiss her aunt on the cheek before she dashed out of the house.