A Different Witch

Chapter 17



Nell sat in a quiet corner of Nat and Jamie’s living room, nibbling on a cookie. It seemed appropriate that she’d been handed a snickerdoodle. Cinnamon penance.

Happy baby cooing floated over from the small rug where Kenna played with her fire truck, undisturbed by the emotional currents swirling in the room. She’d set off her shower of magical ball fireworks in the back yard, made delighted noises at the sky, and then cuddled into her mama’s chest, a contented witchling.

Blithely unaware that her playmate had passed out cold.

Ginia walked in from the hallway, Lauren right behind her. The room quieted instantly.

“She’ll be fine.” Their ten-year-old healer exuded the confidence of someone whose patients always got better. “Her head will hurt a bit, but she’ll feel better after she has a nap.”

It wasn’t her head Nell was worried about. “Backlash?” Singed channels could take a long time to heal.

“Nope.” Ginia seemed very sure. “Lauren was right—it wasn’t her magic that overloaded.”

Which was still an entirely baffling statement. “We knocked her unconscious—how can that not be channel shock?”

Lauren squeezed Ginia’s shoulder. “The magic contributed, but not in the way you think. Her channels were fine—she’s a disciplined witch, and she’s put in the practice necessary to strengthen them. But she’s very sensitive to sensory input. She finds it plenty of work just to handle the sights and sounds and smells of everyday life.”

That’s why they’d spent an afternoon coloring dragons in a half-lit basement. Nell felt her frustration surge at being told what she already knew—and then she connected the dots. “Magic is just another sensory input.”

“Yeah.” Lauren eyed her youngest niece, who was busy trying to hide her fire truck under the rug. “And someone builds her butterfly spells with lots of sensory bells and whistles.”

They had been some very impressive fireworks. “I should have stepped in.”

“I don’t think so.” Lauren shook her head slowly. “That could have easily hit the whole circle with backlash, especially if Kenna objected.”

“Indeed.” Moira’s Irish lilt inserted itself into the conversation. “And then strapping young lads trying to protect their elders would have had nasty headaches.”

Devin just chomped on a cookie and grinned.

She sniffed his direction. “When I’m old enough to need a protector, I’ll let you know.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And when I’m old enough to worry about a little headache, I’ll let you know.”

Brown eyes glared at green—and then green eyes twinkled in apology and forgiveness both. “Ah, you’ve always been the one who inherited my most stubborn genes.”

Nell shook her head as Devin rolled his eyes and yet another bit of tension unloaded from the room. No one knew better how to charge a problem head on than those two. And not a soul would ever remind either of them that they didn’t share a drop of blood.

In the way of witches, they simply shared a heartstring instead.

Remembering that made them all stronger. Point made.

Unless you had just conked a witch unconscious because the bonds of love and trust and understanding didn’t run nearly deep enough. Nell felt her shoulders scrunching. “There has to be something I could have done differently.” Well, there were a lot of things, but she still had no idea which of them would have protected Beth.

“Nay, love.” Moira’s words were quiet, but firm. “This isn’t on your head any more than it’s on wee Kenna’s. We’re witches, and sometimes the unexpected happens.”

“I know that.” Her crankiness had returned full steam. “But when the unexpected means we leave a fragile witch holding more power than she’s ever seen before, it seems to me like we should be learning something from our mistakes.”

No. This wasn’t Witch Central’s goof-up any longer. “I should be learning from my mistakes.”

“Beth did fine.” Jamie frowned. “She did great, actually. And let’s not forget the beginning just because the end got a little nuts. The initial circle was a big deal for her—you could feel it.”

Heads nodded all around the room. Thanks to Lauren, every mind present had felt Beth’s streaming joy.

“And she figured out Kenna’s butterfly spell.” Aervyn spoke up from a chair bedecked in cookie crumbs. “It was all inside out and stuff. Beth’s really smart.”

Everyone else was seeing success. Nell had only found more names for her fear.

She knew everything they said was true, but her spellcaster’s soul rebelled at calling it a victory. “She was very brave, and she held very steady for the casting.” And Kenna was happily playing in the corner because of it—she’d have had one very sore head if she’d triggered her mangled spell before it had been repaired.

Those were very good things—but they weren’t enough. Too much risk, too many wrong steps. It was still shaking her soul, and their Chicago visitor was at the center of the earthquake. Nell struggled to find words that didn’t sound awful to her own heart. Words that didn’t paint Beth as less because she was different.

And simply couldn’t find them.

-o0o-

Such pain. And so much confusion from someone usually so clear.

Lauren watched the woman who was Witch Central’s rock sink back into her chair, shoulders drooping. And heard the question she’d been too kind, too uncertain, and too guilt-ridden to ask.

Sometimes even warriors ran low on courage. “Nell’s right. Some things went very well today, but we need to ask the same questions we ask about any witch in a circle.”

“Okay.” Jamie was skeptical, but trying to help. “So… what can they handle, magically? And how can we best keep them safe?”

“Right.” Now time to thread the trickier needle. “Beth’s brain works a little differently from most witches—so the answers to those questions might be different too.”

“It’s hard—” Nell stopped and took a visible breath. “It will be hard to figure those things out when we can’t train with her.”

“She’s learned lots of stuff.” Aervyn scowled at the room in general. “She’s a really smart witch.”

Lauren wondered if Beth had any idea how much the ten-and-under crowd in Witch Central loved her. Which was a good thing—but Aervyn’s words were hammering into his mama.

Time to clear the kids out of the room. Nell wasn’t going to be able to be weak and scared while they watched. She needed space. And Daniel. And nobody pushing a sword into her gut. Lauren beamed word to Jamie.

“That’s true, superdude.” Jamie acknowledged her send and picked up Aervyn, ready to begin the herding. “She did some pretty cool magic tricks today. But I think she learns a lot on her own. She doesn’t learn while we’re teaching her, and that makes some stuff more complicated. Imagine if Kenna did all her magic by herself under her bed.”

He met Lauren’s gaze over Aervyn’s head. Daniel’s on the way.

“Her bed would blow up. Beth’s not silly like that.” Aervyn protested as they hit the doorway. Mutiny hadn’t disappeared any, even with uncle cuddles. “She just likes to practice on her lonesome.”

So many witches hurting on this one. Lauren reached comfort out to Aervyn’s mind. He deserved words too. “Practice is awesome, cutie. But sometimes we have to practice together so we learn about each other. There are some things we’d like to learn about Beth.”

He scowled some more. “Like what?”

She dug into her mental impressions from the past week. “Well, you know that Beth likes to do things in small steps, one at a time, right?”

He nodded. “She likes to know where the beginning of a spell is, too.”

Something that had mystified her husband for two days. “Right. We need to know things like that so we know how to take care of her when we work together in a circle.” Ideally, the kind without impromptu toddler fireworks.

Something still wasn’t sitting right—she could see it in his eyes. And then he wasn’t watching her at all.

Lauren turned. Oh, damn.

“She’s not fragile.” Shay stepped forward from the wall, eyes shooting blue thunder. “He can feel it in your brains, and I can see it on your faces. You all think that, even after what she did today.”

The room stared at Nell’s quietest triplet in utter shock.

All except for Nat.

And that had Lauren sitting up a lot straighter. This wasn’t only coming from one child—she was simply their spokesperson.

“It’s not true.” Hands fisted at her sides, Shay put her entire body behind each word. “She’s new and she’s careful and she has to do some really hard stuff every day. But she’s really strong. And you won’t be able to work with her or fix anything until you believe that.”

Nobody breathed.

-o0o-

Beth sat on the bottom step of the staircase in a strange house in a foreign land, listening to the words of the people who had pushed their way into her life.

And felt like the little marionette puppet Liri had rescued from the flea market, tears streaming down her cheeks as she cut the strings and freed the poor wooden doll from its days of dancing to someone else’s tune.

Beth hadn’t understood then, although she’d tucked the doll into a place of honor on their mantel, knowing it mattered to the woman she loved.

She understood now.

And she wasn’t so weak she needed defending by a child—even a wondrous one.

With hands no longer shaking, she pulled herself up. Ordered her knees to behave. And on bare feet, walked the five and a half steps to the living-room entryway.

“You should be sleeping.” Ginia looked stunned. “I used my best sleep spell on you.”

Beth had vague memories of a weird tingling sensation. “Sleep is difficult for me.” Maybe that made a difference. Maybe not. She didn’t much care right now.

Shay had turned around to face the doorway, eyes huge.

Beth walked over to her diminutive white knight and knelt down on the rug. She reached out a hand and touched Shay’s cheek. A gift—just like Liri, Shay liked to touch. “You’re a very good friend. Thank you.”

Bright blue eyes brimmed with tears, but the smile was a real one.

Willing her fingers not to shake, Beth reached for fisted knuckles. “I have some things I’d like to say. Will you hold my hand while I try to say them?”

Two fists relaxed. And the small fingers that slid into hers didn’t feel strange at all.

Slowly, Beth got to her feet, Shay a small, sturdy sentinel at her side.

“I’m not good at arguing.” Her first words rang oddly loud in the quiet space. “So please, just let me say my piece. I’ve listened to yours.

“You’re right.” She focused on the swirling colors in a painting on the wall. “You don’t know what it is to live in my head. You don’t know what it is to come here, to a strange place with strange rules. The invitation I got wasn’t a gentle one, either time, but I came anyway.” She squeezed Shay’s hand. “And I’m very glad I did. But it was a choice.

“My choice.” She was a grown woman, even if a baby’s magic could knock her out cold. Beth looked at Nell. “I came for training. I came here to know the possibilities of my own magic, and I won’t run from it.”

So many eyes. “But I need to walk the journey in my own way.” She could feel the reactions, even without looking. “You see that as selfish, perhaps. But it wasn’t me who walked into a coven meeting uninvited. It wasn’t me who told two women devoted to the craft that they weren’t witches, and untied another from her chosen magic. It wasn’t me who did all that and walked away.”

The anger bubbled up inside her from places unknown. “You talk of witching community—well, you did damage to mine.” Damage they had needed to work long and hard to repair.

“And no one came back.” Now, fueled by painful anger, she met eyes. Dark ones, surprised ones, sorrowful ones. “Twenty months, and not one of you ever bothered to see if we were okay. If we needed help or training or a cookie or a hand to hold.”

Shay’s fingers still rested warm and firm in hers.

The Aspie need to be fair pushed on her soul. “You have a wonderful thing here, with people who love you and magic beyond anything I knew was possible. But you’re not everything. And whatever magic lies in me can’t look just like yours.”

She nearly choked on the next words. “You feel sorry for me. Because my brain is different. You’ve tried to accommodate that, and I’m grateful. But I am a witch of reasonable power, not a small autistic boy who spins.

“Coming here was my choice.” Her smile wobbled. “And I’m sorry that I expected your amazing magic to make you smarter and wiser and more able to work with this difficult head of mine. That was silly and wrong.” Her words had come full circle. “You couldn’t possibly do that—you don’t know what it is to live in my head. But I do.”

She sought Nell’s face. “I knew what could happen when the spell released. Even a small spell often overloads my brain. It was my choice to make.”

Nell’s arms cuddled her knees like a small, scared girl, but her eyes never wavered. “Why did you do it?”

“For the same reason you would have.” For butterflies and snickerdoodle crumbs and a fiery girl with magic hands. “Because it was the best choice. The one where the risk was mine, and Kenna was as safe as I could make her.”

She met Nell’s eyes for one last moment, woman to witch. “And because I am not entirely different from you.”

-o0o-

Nell walked down the stairs, feet feeling a thousand times heavier than usual. It had been a long pre-bed chat with Shay, and then with all three of her girls.

Honoring their wisdom. Respecting the right of a grown woman to make choices for herself—and of young-women-in-the-making to think hard thoughts and say difficult things.

Shay had been right, and so had Beth.

And as Nell walked down the stairs into the dark, she wondered exactly where she’d gone off the rails.

Or if she had.

Nell Sullivan Walker didn’t like change, and she didn’t like failure, and she didn’t like fighting battles she couldn’t see. But none of that explained the personal clenching of her gut every time Beth touched Witch Central’s magic.

Warriors trusted their guts. They had to.

Turmoil churned her insides like a living thing. She followed the walls into the living room, leaving the lights off. The dark and shadows suited her mood. Slowly she walked the room, seeking comfort in the familiar.

And used the shreds of solace she found to hold a mirror up to her gut.

It took three circles around the room before she found the courage to name what she saw there. It wasn’t dislike lurking in the depths. Or impatience, or even lack of respect.

It was fear.

She was a warrior. And her warrior heart feared Beth Landler.

A witch who was different.

Nell felt the tears starting to fall as the true awfulness sank in. At the core of Witch Central was acceptance. And this time, her warrior couldn’t accept. She slid down the wall, her legs no longer willing to hold her up. And felt the shame slicking her soul.

Hot tears ran down her knees, the silent crying of a mama who didn’t want her children to hear.

The arm that wrapped around her shoulders wasn’t a child’s—and it nearly shattered her. Daniel’s gentle crooning finished the job.

Self-respect already vanished in wet trails down her knees in the dark, the warrior crawled into her husband’s lap and let the tears rain.

With hands and sounds and the beating of his heart, he gave her space to crumble. Wiped her tears and warmed the shivers coming for her soul. And made her believe that love flowed into even the deepest places of the darkest night.

When she’d slowed to the occasional hiccupping sob, it was his fingers that pushed the curtain of hair back from her eyes. “Tell me.”

“I feel like she doesn’t belong here. I don’t want her here.” Nell’s words whispered into the night. “And I’m horrified that kind of ugliness lives inside me.”

But not horrified enough to make it go away.

His hands never stopped their gentle soothing. “Why don’t you want her here?”

It wasn’t rational. And it wasn’t right. She was simply broken. “I don’t know.”

His arm stretched up to a nearby table. And came down, a small photograph in his fingers. He tilted it to catch the dim rays of a streetlight. Aervyn at two, asleep in a corner.

It was one of her favorite pictures. She reached out to brush his baby cheek, not understanding.

“Look at him.” Her husband’s words murmured in her ear. “Keep your eyes on our son, and ask yourself again. Why doesn’t Beth belong?”

The ocean of tears threatened anew. Nell cringed. She had nothing left.

“Look.” Daniel wrapped her fingers around the frame, insistent now. “Why don’t you want her here?”

Because it was him that asked, she found the strength to look. Her beautiful boy, so tiny and innocent in sleep.

Hers to love. Hers to protect.

And then she knew. “Because she’s a threat.” To Aervyn, and to the baby cousin who shared his power.

It wasn’t prejudice fighting against Beth—it was motherhood.

His hands ran down the waterfall of her hair.

Nell breathed, beginning to make peace with the angry warrior inside. Her fighter, wrongly judged. “The circle got hairy today.” They lived every day with Aervyn knowing that could happen. Unfathomable magic came with lots of surprises.

So did witches who were different.

“You stepped in.” It wasn’t a question—Daniel knew his wife. And there’d been plenty of scuttlebutt flying all day.

“I did.” Clarity was flowing thick and fast now. “But it was like being in a fight with the wrong weapons. I made a lot of mistakes.” Because she hadn’t understood Beth—her strengths, or the things that might make her weak in strange places.

It had made Nell frantic and indecisive and combative in all the wrong places.

It had made her weak. And that was the fear eating at her soul.

Today the wrong steps hadn’t mattered, but tomorrow they might. They all had weaknesses—and the warrior fought best when she knew them all. Witch Central was her turf. The place she chose to fight to keep her son, and all those she loved, safe.

Beth wasn’t the enemy. Not understanding her was.

“I screwed up because I don’t know what it’s like to be her.” And that could be fixed. Without cringing at the contents of her own soul.

Nell sat a long time, letting the worst of the ugliness inside herself settle. She leaned into the chest of the man who loved all her darkest, weakest parts. “Thank you.”

He only smiled into her hair in reply.

The room was still dark—but the light inside her heart had been relit.

-o0o-

She’d always been drawn to the dark. Moira let herself out the back door quietly—no need to wake up wee Kenna with her nocturnal wanderings.

The old energies were stirring again as the veil thinned, awaiting the coming of the light. And they kept an old Irish witch awake.

She pulled her wool cloak tighter around her shoulders and looked up at the waxing moon that braved the night sky. It wasn’t truly dark here—no city ever was. But she could feel the blackness sitting over the city just as the wool covered her shoulders.

Protecting. She looked up again, smiling. Forever now, she would think of Evan, guardian of the night skies. And be grateful.

It soothed her, the remembering. They only needed be patient and wait. The darkest moments were those just before the world turned anew to welcome the light.

She breathed deeply of the night air, trying to let it cool her heart’s small aches. People she loved were hurting deeply. Struggling. Seeking the path that would carry them to the light.

Beth had perhaps found the beginnings of hers, hard words carrying with them the truths that mattered. The need for equality and the right to justice. They had wounded what was hers, and she’d finally been brave enough to say so.

Courage was a great help to the light.

A witch who had taken charge of her own journey, even if she was a little unsure of the destination just yet. And she’d done it holding the hand of a ten-year-old girl who had learned something about the power of her own voice this day.

A mighty reckoning—for so many hearts.

Some would be sleeping peacefully tonight, their hard work done. Some simply storing energy for tomorrow’s steps.

But it was the great mama lioness who was hurting the most. Nell carried her burden so lightly most days that you almost forgot it was there. Guardian and protector, center of the circle and its heart.

Moira sat down on a swing and held Nell softly in her thoughts. A blessing on you, daughter. May the light come to help you find your way.

She set the swing to moving gently, talking to the flowers at her feet. “It’s so much easier for those of us who are weak, my sweet rooted friends. We know what it is to not feel brave or strong.” When a warrior found cracks in her own heart, it was a fearsome thing.

And a necessary one, even if the warrior hadn’t looked clearly yet. It was guilt and blame that still coated Nell Walker’s soul—and they were hiding the truth.

Nell had been very quiet at dinner. Perhaps the light was coming.

Moira bent her head, acknowledging the dark. And trusted that the circle would begin anew, just as it always had.