A Hidden Witch

chapter 17

With delicate moves and sure fingers, Elorie finished attaching the clasp to her first creation since she’d returned from California. Paperwork, magic, and visitors had all conspired to keep her away from her studio far too long.

Her fingers and her heart had needed to create again, even if it was 5:30 a.m.

She’d walked past Gran’s new soaking pool on the way to her studio. With the number of witches waiting a turn last night, she’d been mildly surprised not to find anyone asleep in the warm water. The temptation to crawl in again herself had been high, but her glass had beckoned. The pool would wait; her need to create wouldn’t.

She’d dipped into her most special jar of treasures for this one. The violet glass was a color she’d never seen before or since finding this particular bit of loveliness. Obviously hand-blown, it had streaks of red and blue running through the depths of the glass, making it look almost alive, and somehow, its eons in the ocean hadn’t marred the perfect heart shape.

She held the small glass heart in her hand and felt, as she always did, like it beat for her. A flat rim of silver wrapped around it now, and attached to a chain of delicate handmade links.

It wasn’t often she claimed a piece of her own artwork. This one would be hers; it always had been.

She had just done up the clasp when a sound at the door had her turning around.

“Good morning,” Sophie said, two cups of tea in her hands. “Is it okay to interrupt? Aaron thought you might be ready for a little breakfast.”

Elorie looked longingly at her jars of glass. She wasn’t quite ready to leave yet.

Sophie smiled. “He knows you well. Don’t worry—if I’m not back up there in a few minutes, Aervyn will port us some breakfast. If you throw me out, he’ll send down breakfast for one.”

Elorie’s stomach let out an audible growl. She laughed and motioned to her other chair. “Apparently, breakfast sounds good.”

Sophie grinned. “Breakfast will be delivered to Aunt Moira’s pool.”

Excellent. It looked like she was going to get a morning soak after all. She picked up her cup of tea and followed Sophie out of the studio and down the path to Gran’s garden.

Mists were still rising off the pool, and it was miraculously still unoccupied. Some of their travelers had headed home, but there were plenty who remained, guests in nearby homes. Not everyone was a morning witch—she’d have to remember it was a good time to wander over for a dip.

“Good morning, my lovelies! Come to have a soak in my pool, have you?” Moira walked out her back door, wearing a light robe.

She set her cup of tea down on a convenient flat stone and unbelted her robe. Elorie felt her eyes fall out of her head. Gran was naked!

Moira laughed. “In deference to the climate here, I don’t work skyclad like I did as a girl, but trust me, it’s the very best way to experience a hot spring. Nell’s playing gatekeeper in the kitchen. We won’t be disturbed.”

Sophie shrugged and peeled off her bikini. Elorie paused, trying to wrap her mind around the idea that Gran had ever done magic wearing only moonlight. However, the blissful sighs of the other two as they settled into the warm waters got her moving again.

If Gran could skinny dip, she surely could too.

As she settled into the water, a tray with fragrant scones and strawberries materialized at the side of the pool. Bless Aervyn. She could get used to having a teleporting witchling around.

“Aaron’s such a good man,” Moira said, handing out scones. “Here, Sophie—you first, dear. As I remember, pregnant bellies aren’t very patient.”

Sophie blushed. “I had three before I left the inn. For someone the size of a pinhead, this is one very hungry baby.”

“There’s more than just the baby to grow. You’ve been monitoring yourself, I hope?”

Sophie grinned. “Of course. I’m a well-trained witch.” Then she held out a hand. “Would you like to look?”

Moira smiled in delight and moved to place her hand on Sophie’s belly. Elorie watched in fascination as a few moments later, Gran’s other hand touched Sophie’s temples, and then the back of her neck. She’d seen the same done for a headache or two, but not for a pregnant woman.

Gran caught the question in Elorie’s eyes and smiled. “It’s a wee bit of a hangover is all.”

Elorie stared. Sophie wasn’t a big drinker.

Moira laughed. “Not that kind of hangover. A touch of wine is fine for a babe, but nothing more. This is just some aftereffects of yesterday’s magic. We all worked very hard.”

Pride blossomed again as Elorie looked around at the pool. They had done some very good work.

Moira touched Sophie’s cheek. “All fixed up, although I think these marvelous waters were taking care of most of it for you.”

She glided over to Elorie. “Are you feeling any aftereffects of yesterday, sweetling?”

Elorie shook her head, wanting to dodge a healing scan. She wasn’t at all sure what Gran might find, and not quite ready to know the answer. However, she had a question that had been niggling, and this might be a good time to ask. “Will magic affect Sophie’s baby at all?”

“Affect? Of course,” Moira said, her eyes twinkling. “Babies are very elemental creatures, and I think they feel the power flows more readily than we do. But harm? No. It would have to harm Sophie first, and she’s well-trained enough to prevent that in anything other than the worst of circumstances.”

She touched Elorie’s hand gently, her eyes more serious now. “A witch with less training would want to be sure her channels were being cleared regularly. Otherwise, power remnants could cause a babe some distress.”

Elorie nodded. Messaged received, Gran, loud and clear.

~ ~ ~

Marcus looked around the parlor of the inn. Such a motley crew of students. He had insisted on another spellcoding lesson. His reinforcements in that area were heading back to California in two days, and he wanted as much of their help as he could get.

That, and the longer he kept Ginia training, the less trouble she could heap on him in Realm. It amused him that she was currently helping to train his secret weapon. It wasn’t an easy task. Elorie wasn’t a dumb witch, but when it came to spellcoding, she was a brick-headed one.

“Stop scowling, nephew,” Moira said. “You’ll scare your students.”

“I wish. Have you gotten that login spell working yet?”

“Not at all,” she said, shrugging. “It wiggled a bit, but I’m just too old for this, I think.”

Ginia giggled from the other side of the table. Marcus shot her a suspicious look, but refrained from a less-than-ethical mindread. She was up to something, but darned if he knew what it was.

Moira put down her mouse. “She’s an excellent trainer, our Ginia. The young ones are coming along very nicely.”

There was truth to that. Kevin was developing into a solid coder, and even Lizzie, who had only the small-sparks kind of Net power, appeared to have some spellcoding talent.

Aunt Moira, however, was a dead loss, and Elorie was far too resistant to use her magic effectively.

“It’s not what she wanted,” Moira said softly, following his gaze. “Give her time. Yesterday helped, but she has some steps to travel yet.”

“She’s wasting a prodigious talent.”

“No, my dear. She’s learning to live with it. Some of us move to acceptance more slowly than others.”

He glanced at her sharply. Aunt Moira was fond of making her point in roundabout ways. She had never entirely approved of his isolated life. “Some things are not meant to be accepted.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really now. And would that be a tolerable answer from Elorie?”

That was entirely different. He’d lost a brother because his magic wasn’t strong enough. Elorie was denying the full potential of her magic.

He felt the black mood creeping in. It really was time to leave this place and go home.

A small hand slid into his. Aervyn. The black mood backed off, just a little. “I wrote a spell. Will you come watch while I set it off? Ginia says I need supervision.”

Since Aervyn hadn’t been able to string together three lines of functional code so far, Marcus doubted supervision was required. But for some reason, it wasn’t in him to resist the tugs of the small boy who looked so much like Evan.

He sat down and glanced briefly at Aervyn’s code. Well, hallelujah. Five lines of a login spell, with only one small glitch in line four. The child might actually get into Realm this time. “Go ahead, set it off.”

Aervyn focused and clicked on his mouse. Then everything went black.

Marcus felt a strange sucking sensation and a moment of dizziness. “Who goes there?” said an oddly familiar voice. He opened his eyes and saw the head guard of his Realm mountain keep, still wearing his bunny slippers. Those had been unusually resistant to any and all reversing spells.

“What manner of infiltrator are you?”

Marcus realized he was lying on his back contemplating bunny-slipper spells while an armed man pointed a sword at his neck.

What in the heavens was he doing inside Realm? And evidently not in costume.

The guard suddenly toppled over and curled up, snoring. “We can do real magic here,” Ginia said, dusting off her hands. “At least I can. I hit him with a sleep spell. So, how come we’re in Realm?” She seemed very unconcerned.

“I don’t think we’re the only ones,” Marcus said. “Aervyn activated a login spell right before I got dumped here.”

Ginia’s eyes opened wide. “Aervyn got spellcode to work?”

Marcus frowned. “It appears that way. And I guess this is what you get when someone with his level of power manages to pull off five decent lines of code.” Although clearly that glitch in line four had been rather more serious than he’d realized.

“So, where is he?” Ginia looked around, a lot more worry on her face.

Marcus opened his mouth to yell for Aervyn, and then closed it again, realizing that was a waste of air. If real magics had come with them, then he and the witchling were both mindreaders. He cast out with his mind. Aervyn. Where are you?

The reply was strong and happy. I’m in a castle with a princess. She’s feeding me bread and honey. Am I asleep?

Don’t think so, my boy. I think you pulled us all into the game.

Wow, are we like superheroes now? Awesome!

Hardly awesome, Marcus thought. But the first step was to gather the troops. Can you port to where I am? Ask the princess if you can have the bread to bring.

Moments later, Aervyn thunked into place beside him, carrying a good-sized bag with several loaves of bread and a pot of honey. Clearly the princess was generous.

“Are we gonna rescue the princess?” Aervyn asked, his mouth still full of bread.

“Ha,” Ginia said. “I’ve met her. She doesn’t need to be rescued.”

The princess in question was one of Marcus’s stealth warrior creations. She had strong magic, excellent fighting skills, and a blessed lack of the almost universal female need to talk all the time. His perfect woman. If she’d caused Warrior Girl some consternation, all the better.

Aervyn swallowed the last of his food. “Should we go help Sophie? She’s fighting pretty good, but there are two more big guys coming.”

Marcus spun around in disgust. This was why amateurs shouldn’t be spellcoding. “Which way?”

They all ran down the trail after Aervyn. Sophie wasn’t far away, but one of the fighters attacking her had laid down a silencing spell, presumably so no one would come running to her aid.

Marcus took a fraction of a second to appreciate Sophie’s extremely impressive kung fu moves, and then borrowed Ginia’s trick and knocked out all three fighters with a sleep spell.

Aervyn hopped up and down. “Can I get the last two? Pretty, pretty please?” Two big warriors crested over the hill, approaching at a dead run.

Nell was going to have his hide for this. “Just a sleep spell, youngling.”

Marcus was pretty sure the two warriors would sleep for a century. Aervyn’s magic was not subtle when he got excited.

“Thanks,” Sophie said, gasping for breath. “I was about out of tricks there. What are we doing here?”

“Aervyn ported us in,” Ginia said. “Marcus didn’t check his code well enough, I guess.”

Aervyn grinned. “I told you I needed supervising.”

Gah. It really was his fault. That fourth line of code had definitely looked wonky.

“Are Aunt Moira and Elorie in Realm too?” Ginia asked.

“Nope,” Aervyn said, shaking his head. Marcus cast out mentally to double check. Good. Two less people to worry about.

Sophie grabbed a hunk of Aervyn’s bread. “So, Super Boy, can you get us out of here?”

Aervyn shook his head. “Nope. But I bet Mama can. She knows all about reversing spells.”

Sophie looked up at Marcus. “Nell went berry picking with Aaron, Mike, and the twins. They’re not going to be back until after lunch.”

It just got worse and worse. “In that case, let’s go to the castle and see if the princess can scare us up some more food. We’re going to have a long wait, and I don’t want anyone getting cranky.”

Ginia giggled and held out a loaf. “Have some more bread, Gandalf.”

He scowled. No one was taking this seriously. “We could be stuck here for a long time, little fighter. Have you thought of that? Aunt Moira and Elorie are hardly going to be coming to our rescue.” Neither of them could code their way out of a paper bag.

Sophie grinned along with Ginia. “Oh, I think you may be underestimating the two of them.”

“Hardly. I’ve been training Elorie myself. She’s not capable of coding a reversing spell. She’s barely capable of coding any spell.”

“Sometimes, nephew,” said a strange voice, “you think too little of others.” He spun around. The voice belonged to the Xena look-alike he’d heard was training with Ginia.

Ginia ran over and hugged the new arrival. “Aunt Moira, you’re so smart.”

Aunt Moira?

“I’m sorry to spill our little secret, my dear, but it seemed like it might be the best way to get you out quickly. Marcus is correct—neither Elorie nor I can solve this with coding, so we’ve another idea.”

Good God. It was Aunt Moira. In the highest level in Realm, and clearly this wasn’t her first visit.

One of the guards started to stir, and Moira calmly zapped him with a new sleep spell. “Elorie is going to use Net power to pull us out, and she needs us to shape some spells for her. It’s handy that all of your magic seems to be working.”

Marcus was still trying to process Warrior Girl’s sheer deceit and trickery. Training Aunt Moira as her secret weapon was daft. Insane. And brilliant.

Sophie tapped him on the shoulder. “Focus. You can contemplate the likely magnitude of your defeat later.”

Impossible. He wasn’t going down to a nine-year-old girl and a woman in her seventies. The he realized Sophie hadn’t been surprised when Xena had shown up. Good God. Maiden, Mother, and Crone. They were going to take over Realm.

Ginia met his gaze, supreme confidence in her eyes. Oh, yes. He was going down.

Moira picked Aervyn up and twirled him around, clearly enjoying the vibrant youth of her Xena avatar. “Perhaps we’ll just take you home, and leave these three who aren’t paying attention.”

Aervyn giggled and shook his head. “Nuh, uh. I like it here. I wanna stay.”

Moira tossed him in the air. “Aaron left Monster Mac and Cheese for lunch.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go, but I wanna come back and play again sometime.”

“Let’s see about getting out first, my dear boy, and then we’ll see about a return visit.” Moira turned to the others. “Ginia, Elorie needs for you to form a link between real and game that she can grab. My sweet boy here needs to ready a teleporting spell strong enough to carry four people. Sophie and Marcus, whatever power you can feed to either of them would be helpful.”

Marcus nodded. It was a surprisingly reasonable plan. “I think we’re most useful supporting Ginia’s outbound link.”

Aervyn frowned, counting on his fingers. “Why only four, Aunt Moira? Am I staying?”

She laughed. “Not today, sweetling. My lovely young warrior body will stay here. It’s not real, remember. I’m really sitting in my chair, looking at my computer screen and wanting to tickle your belly.”

Aervyn covered his belly and giggled. “Okay, but I’m coming back to play sometime.”

Whatever complaints Marcus had about his companions, they were all well-trained witches. Within moments, they had the necessary spells ready to go. Now it was up to Elorie. She had the raw talent. It was her training and her will that were sometimes in question, particularly when computers were involved.

Slowly the spellshape in Ginia’s hand began to shimmer. Then it gently expanded and settled over all of them like a dome. He looked up at the glowing light. Aye. The girl had talent.

Aervyn held steady as his spellshape began to move next. It wove and darted, linking into the dome of light in hundreds of places. Marcus shook his head. Elorie was overbuilding the spell, a common error of inexperienced spellcasters.

Then came the dark, and a deep sucking sensation. When he opened his eyes, his niece had her nose three inches from his face, and she didn’t look happy. “Don’t doubt me again. It weakens the magic.”

Anger flared and died, guilt hard on its heels. She was absolutely right. “It’s your training I doubted, niece, but even that was wrong. My apologies. It won’t happen again.”

She looked at him in absolute shock.

“That was awesome cool magic,” Ginia said, oblivious to the undertones in the room. “Maybe after lunch we could try it again. Uncle Jamie would be so jazzed if we could zap everyone into Realm.”

“Let’s have lunch before we contemplate such things.” Moira touched Marcus’s arm and spoke quietly. “For a man who never apologizes, that was well done. Take the witchlings now—I’d like a word with my granddaughter.”

Marcus did as he was told.

~ ~ ~

Moira chuckled as Marcus walked off. She wondered how long it would take him to realize he was wearing pink bunny slippers. Ginia’s doings, she imagined.

She turned to her beloved girl. “Ginia’s right, sweetling. It was wonderful magic. Now tell me what’s wrong.”

Elorie’s expressive face was a tangle of frustration and hurt. “It doesn’t feel like me, Gran. Every time I do magic, there are wires and computers everywhere.”

“Aye, child. And you’ve done lovely things with that magic. My pool is the envy of every witch living, and probably a few who’ve passed, as well.”

Elorie’s face softened even as tears threatened. “That’s just it. Making your pool almost felt right. I was part of a working circle, and we did magic that mattered.”

She paused, taking a couple of jerky breaths. “But then we had Sean’s circle on the beach, and part of my heart wished I could go back to being Elorie who plays her flute in the outer circle. Elorie of no magic.”

Elorie who knew how she belonged. Moira settled in a chair. This called for careful handling. “I think I was nine the first time I wanted to give my magic back. My friends were taking a trip to the beach, and I had to stay home and study witch history.”

Elorie sighed. “Is that what this is? Just a witchling tantrum? It feels bigger than that.”

Moira reached for her granddaughter’s hands. “It’s not always convenient being a witch, my sweet girl. I hope you will continue to be Elorie the flute player, because you’re wrong—there is a great deal of magic in that. But you are a witch, and even when that responsibility lays heavy, it’s not one to be ignored.”

“I know. You’ve taught me well.”

Such sorrow. Moira’s heart ached. “It appears that what I haven’t taught you nearly so well is the joy of magic. It’s such a gift you have. Magic is not always a burden.”

Elorie shook her head. “It’s not that. Weight I could handle. But why do I have magic that works best in some game? You heard Ginia. I don’t want to be a shuttle service for witches who need a ride into their computer.”

Ah. Still seeking her purpose, too. Moira ignored the petulance and dug for what mattered. “What do you want?”

Elorie sniffled. “I want to sit in the garden with you and help the flowers to bloom.”

Some wishes were more easily granted than others. Moira picked a flower bud out of the table vase and prepared a simple blooming spell. She held them both out toward Elorie.

Her granddaughter touched the flower gently, smiling as it opened under her fingers.

Moira leaned over and tucked the flower into Elorie’s hair. “Such magic you have in you, my love. Every witch must find their own path. If yours doesn’t involve transportation for Realm players, that is for you to choose.”

She paused, debating whether to go on. “But think on this, granddaughter. I haven’t been able to toss a witchling in the air in thirty years. You brought joy to me and that sweet boy today. It’s not all wires and technology. The hearts and minds are as real as those on the beach under the moonlight.”

She touched Elorie’s cheeks. “It’s love that is at the very core of witch tradition, my darling girl. The rest is just trappings.”