“Cat Magic”
By Stacey Welsh
Sylvie was perplexed, the spell had failed again. Her room was filled with blue smoke and her face was covered in blue powder. At this rate, she would never get this one spell right and this was the one spell she needed to learn in order to pass Magical Transformations 101. What should have happened, was that the small rock before her would be coloured blue, not her, and there should not have been a small explosion of blue smoke and powder.
She sighed and wiped the powder from her face.
“I’ll never get this right.” She said with an air of hopelessness to her empty room. The students’ quarters were usually noisy with other witches chattering away, reading and playing games, or repairing their brooms after a mishap in the air or with a tree. She was fortunate that today the other girls in her dormitory were out enjoying a picnic and daring each other to broom races.
Sylvie couldn’t even get her broom off the ground.
It wasn’t that she had no talent for witchcraft; both her parents were magically inclined. Her mother and grandmother were both members of the Full Moon Sisterhood, the most elite witchcraft coven that there was in the realm.
Sylvie knew how spells worked; she even had the complex patterns of magic worked out in her mind. But when she went to put the essential magic into them to make them work, the carefully selected Runes within her mind’s eye collapsed or disintegrated into chaos.
So instead of harmonising into a working spell with effects that would gain her a pass in school, she found her spells would fail miserably.
She took a deep breath and tried again. The first Runes came easily and then the second set and finally the third. She drew the master Rune within her mind’s eye, the one which would bind the others together. The marks began to glow brightly, quickly gaining power. She was about to speak the mark’s name and activate the spell when she was distracted by a scratching at the window. Her curiosity got the better of her and she opened her eyes at the wrong moment.
The room exploded with blue powder again, this time covering everything in the room, including her. The scratching noise came again from the window. Sylvie moved through the blue coated room and the tiny puffs of remnant powder swirled around her, settling in a fresh new coating on her face hands and clothing. She wiped the dusty blue specks from the window pane so she could see what was happening outside.
On the other side of the window and at an impossible height, considering that her window was at least seven stories up in the dorm tower, sat a black fluffy cat with large green eyes.
“Well, are you going to let me in or not?” the Cat asked. Sylvie stared agape at the creature.
Cats didn’t talk. At least none of the cats that she knew talked. The Cat looked at her and slowly blinked its deep eyes at her. The spellbound girl returned to her senses and moved quickly and unlatched the window. A cool breeze swirled the deep blue dust around the room as the Cat entered.
Strangely enough there was no blue powder settling upon the Cat’s fur as she moved about the room and she left no paw-prints upon the floor as she walked across the powder coated boards.
Sylvie watched as the Cat inspected the room sniffing with great care and interest at each item she came across, before jumping up onto the bed and proceeded to clean herself. She stopped long enough to look at the young witch.
“Close the window; you’re letting the cold air in!” the Cat ordered her. Still dumbstruck at the Cat’s appearance Sylvie quickly closed the window, re-latching it against the rising wind.
