The Maple Witches (Worst Witch Spin-Off)

Chapter Nine

Sephy shrieked in fear when she looked down at her arm. Her sleeve had come too close to the candle and now flames were dancing along her sleeve and threatening to set her hair on fire too. She ripped back the covers with the arm that wasn't on fire and leapt into action. She grabbed a water bottle from her desk drawer with urgency whilst uttering some choice language. Unscrewing the cap, she doused her arm and the end of her plait with water, quenching the flames.

Sephy slumped against her desk. The crisis was averted but her heart was still pounding.

Why? Just, why? Why did everything keep going wrong? So much had already been on her mind, she'd actually believed that things couldn't get worse. As if she hadn't seen enough trouble over the past couple of days, now she was setting things on fire.

She winced suddenly as a hot pain in her arm intensified. Pushing aside the singed ended of her plait, she rolled up her right sleeve carefully to reveal a horribly red burn mark. She rushed out of her room and down the corridor until she reached the bathroom and turned on the cold tap. She spent the next twenty minutes letting the blissfully cool stream of clear water soothe her skin.

Unfortunately, those twenty minutes gave her plenty of time to get lost in her own thoughts. At one point, she couldn't help but let the tears in her eyes spill out onto her cheeks. She wanted all this to stop. She wanted to be able to go home to her parents and for them to hold her close in their arms and for everything to be okay again.

Stormbringer, now more than ever, seemed like a very appropriate surname for their family. They all seemed to have an uncanny knack of bringing trouble to them without ever really meaning to.

When she finally returned to her room, she got out her cauldron, pestle and mortar and made a simple healing poultice from ingredients she had in her personal supply. Setting aside some of the mixture for the morning, she began the fiendishly difficult task of applying the poultice to her right arm - she was right handed. She got there eventually, although it was a lot messier than she would have liked. After wrapping a bandage around it, she could finally return to her bed and get some sleep. She was dreading having to get up the next morning, or rather, in a five hours time.

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Sephy woke before her alarm sounded. She must have forgotten to close her shutters because her room was flooded with the rays of the early morning sun.

She sat up slowly, and couldn't help smiling. She felt well-rested and ready to seize the day. In fact, it was probably the most energetic she had felt in months.

That was when she saw the poultice on her arm and the cauldron that was still on her floor, and the events that had unfolded in the early hours of the morning all came back to her. She got out of bed and stood up, waiting for the wave of fatigue to swallow her whole. It didn't. And then the slight throbbing in her arm from the burn made her realise that the strange tingle from yesterday was gone.

Had she overdone it on the healing poultice? It was possible, but that didn't make any sense. If anything, she'd expected the poultice to be weaker than normal because the toad slime that she'd used had been sat fermenting in its vial for at least a month, which should have reduced its potency.

Not that she was complaining. It was just... odd.

She removed the poultice, which had relieved the pain considerably and reduced a little of the redness, before getting changed into her uniform. Then, rolling up her sleeve, she reapplied the poultice and wrapped another bandage round her arm. Finally, she carefully pulled the long sleeve of her blouse over the bandage. Her lower arm looked very bulky, but at least the poultice was hidden from view.