Three Witches #1: Magnus and Magnolia

Chapter 33 (Magnolia): Stop Avoiding Things

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

"Something's weighing you down, witch."

Rosemary's insight was accurate even though all I'd done was say hello to her. Something had been weighing me down, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I suspected, although I wasn't willing to admit it. Every time my mind started to wander there, I focused immediately on something else. My shop customers. Ordering stock. Tending to my plants. Rearranging displays. Dusting my house. Calling my mother. And, like now, calling Rosemary.

Anything to keep from completing that thought I didn't want to be...thoughting.

When she saw I wasn't going to confirm nor deny her accusation, Rosemary sighed. "You forget how we're connected now. If you hadn't called me today, I was going to call you."

A witch and her mentor witch shared a bond that linked them together magically but mostly for extreme emotions or circumstances, a way to let the mentor know if the new witch needed guidance. Rosemary hadn't really used it yet like this. Sometimes I felt her checking in on me, but she checked right back out.

"Have you seen Magnus?" she asked tentatively, and I knew she was reading me. Rosemary had opened her mind to mine and she was probing the ruthlessly suppressed thoughts I'd pushed way down.

"No." 

Not for three weeks and two days. Not since he told me good bye because he didn't want to be with me. That still angered me, and then I got angrier because I shouldn't be angry, which made me even angrier, to the point that I was sparking energy almost constantly if I didn't rein myself in. 

Why do men tell you one thing, swear up and down that they want to be with you and beg for a second chance, just to let you go? Why did they say things if they didn't mean what they said? Why did they say the shit they did if they had absolutely no intention of backing it up with actions. 

Holding my palm out flat in front of me, I concentrated on all of those blue sparks forming a light mist as I turned my palm toward the ground and moved my hand over the tiny ferns on a display shelf. Plants that Magnus had given me. Watering them with my angry rain. Better than my tears.

"Magnolia."

How could one word convey so much? Rosemary was chastising me, expressing her concern, relaying her exasperation and nudging me to share.

"I haven't seen him. And I won't. Magnus came to tell me good bye and he told me he wanted Tahvo to have me since he decided he didn't want me after all. He was given the choice by the Fae, and he said he decided to let Tahvo have me, which I don't understand because Tahvo isn't coming back. He made that very clear to me before he turned Fae again. He said I'll never see him again but I'll sense him someday."

"That's all he said?"

"Yes.

"What did he say exactly?"

But you'll sense me again for just a moment one day.

When?

I can't give you an exact date, cailleach, but it will be a special day in your life.

"They are so devious," Rosemary mused when I'd told her about the conversation.

"Why? Was that a lie?"

"Not exactly," she said. "More like half of the whole truth."

"What's the whole truth?" I asked. 

She was silent a minute. "That I won't tell you right now because you're at a critical point in your journey, and I need to think more about why he gave you only half of the truth. Tell me about the trials. What did you think when you watched them?"