Spells in Silence

Chapter 24: The Convocation

A soft pop heralded Hazel's return to the cabin. Appearing next to the front door, she looked out the nearby window at the thick layer of white blanketing the ground before shaking her head. The last couple of months had been rather mild and dry based on what the hags had told her, but now winter was catching up with them and the snow had moved in with a vengeance.

Deeper in the room, Hedwig's eyes shot up from the book she was reading only to relax once she saw the source of the noise was Hazel. "We wondered where you had gone this time." Taking in her appearance, the hag's smile dropped off into an expression of mild confusion. "You were not wearing those earlier, were you?"

'No, they are new,' Hazel replied. Strictly speaking, the long wool coat that reached down past her knees and the heavy boots that were both meant for a man and several sizes too large for her were not 'new'. She had picked them up out of a donation box sitting outside a building in Stuttgart. It was not theft, she told herself. Sure, she knew that technically they were put out specifically for people who needed them like her, but she had also performed more of a trade than a taking. In exchange for the coat and boots, both large enough to have plenty of room for her to grow into in the future, she left behind her puffy pink coat – grown too small for her within the single year since she took it from the Tesco – and her school backpack.

Hazel had decided it was finally time to admit to herself that she would never need her old backpack again. Not when her satchel still had so much room to fit everything she had and more. She did not know if it would ever run out of room, but at the very least getting rid of her backpack freed up a little space for later.

"What is the point of me going?" she heard yelled from the back of the house, and within just a few seconds she saw Elfriede literally dragging Gertrud into the main room. Their clothing immediately caught her eye. She had never seen Gertrud wearing anything but homemade smocks and tunics, but now the hag wore a blue, almost wraparound dress or robe with tapered sleeves. Elfriede's clothing was similar although of a more greyish blue than her sister's and with a thin shawl wrapped around her back and shoulders.

It was far fancier than anything she had ever seen them wear, and so she turned her head to stare at Hedwig in a silent demand for explanation. Instead of answering, however, the youngest of the hags stood up from her chair to reveal that she was also wearing a dress, though of a different make than her mother's and aunt's. This was sleeveless and low cut, red with multicolored thread tracing almost runic designs in two rows down the front of her dress and along the hem at her ankles. She also wore a shawl, though this one had tassels dangling from it and was decorated with spiderweb designs all the colors of the rainbow. All three hags were barefoot, although Hedwig's ankles and feet were wrapped in strips of white cloth that glimmered when she took a few steps as if they were covered in sparkly glitter.

'Going somewhere fancy?' she asked when nobody volunteered any information.

"It is the time for the Convocation," Elfriede told her. "It is a time every year when the various covens of Europe meet to exchange favors and find matches for our daughters. It is also a time when we can most easily interact with friends from other covens or even cousins from more distant lands. I would not be surprised to see a few families from Great Britain, in fact, and it might be worth talking to them for a bit," she added to herself. "We will be gone tonight and most of tomorrow. The first couple of days are always the busiest, with less and less happening over the rest of the week."

Gone tonight and tomorrow? There was only one explanation for why they would need to tell her that, but just to be fully clear on the subject Hazel wrote, 'You expect me to stay here, yes?'