Chapter 11 #2
She’s not wrong about that, I think.
“I’d like to start by learning more about your family,” I go on as we walk side by side.
“Oh, that figures,” she says, sounding defeated. “It’s never really about me, is it?”
I reach out and grab her gloved hand, pulling her to a stop. “Trust me. It is about you,” I say, staring intently into her eyes.
She relents, and I let go of her hand. “All right.”
We continue walking. “Tell me, Kat,” I say, keeping my voice down, “how often did you see your aunts while growing up?”
“My aunts? Hardly ever. Aunt Leona and Aunt Ana were around when I was a baby, but I don’t think I was much older when they and my mother must have had a falling-out.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just the way my father would talk about them. I was always listening—I was always so nosy.”
“Still are, I imagine,” I interject with a smile.
“That’s true,” she concedes with a nod. “My father would say that my mother was better off without them. Sometimes he made it sound like she chose him over them.”
“They didn’t approve of your father?”
“I don’t know how they couldn’t have. Everyone loved him. He was the nicest man in town.”
“I don’t think the sisters care much for whether someone is nice or not. They seem to care whether they have power.”
“My father was a witch too,” she adds, to my surprise. “But I never really saw any magic with him. Or with my mother. In fact, when I was really young, one night when my mother had gone on one of her monthly trips to the school—”
“Your mother went on monthly trips to the school?” I interrupt. “To here?”
“Yes. The days before and after the full moon. She still does. She’ll probably be back soon for the next full moon.”
“What does she do here?”
“I have no idea,” she says.
“You never asked?”
“I was told not to speak about it by my father,” she says. “I assume it’s some full moon ritual she has to do with her sisters, but my father made me promise to keep my own magic and all talk of magic hidden.”
I frown. “Why would he tell you that?”
She shrugs. “He said it was too dangerous for the world to find out what I am. Said I was never to practice my magic in front of anyone, and that included him and my mother. So I didn’t…
for the most part.” She trails off with a wistful look in her eyes, and the energy coming off her deepens in grief.
“I had a friend. I showed him sometimes.”
Him. How curious this feeling of jealousy that she used to show her magic to a male friend. I shake it out of my head.
“Well, I suppose your father wasn’t wrong in that.
I grew up with a father who was a pastor for the church in our small Kansas town.
I didn’t even know I was predisposed to magic until the old native man, John, who ran the general store, pointed it out to me one day.
After that, he used to visit me in dreams, and it was there I was able to practice and understand.
He warned me that my family would never understand and I’d risk being killed over it or locked up in a mental institution, which is more or less the same thing.
But to have parents who are also witches… feels like a shame to have to bury it.”
She watches me for a moment, taking in the information with hunger in her eyes. “I just did what I was told. My father was so adamant about it. And because neither of them ever mentioned their magic or used it in the house, it was easy to pretend we were normal.”
“Except when your mother left the house on those full moons.”
“Except for that part. I just told myself she was having family time, even though my aunts stopped coming to see us after a while.” She stops and points to the stables, which we’re now behind. “Want to see Snowdrop?”
“Would love to,” I tell her as we walk around the building and to the stalls at the front. There are quite a few stalls, but it seems most of them are empty save for two bay draft horses at one end and a gray at the other.
She stops at the gray, who immediately nickers when it sees Kat.
“Hello, darling,” Kat says to the horse, kissing its dark gray muzzle before running her hand over its white forelock. “Crane, this is Snowdrop. Snowdrop, this is Professor Crane.”
“You seem to have a close relationship,” I comment, their connection quite visible.
“I talk to her when I can’t talk to anyone else.
My mother doesn’t like to listen to anything I have to say, really, and my friend Mary doesn’t understand anything of witches or of this school.
I’m not allowed to talk about it, even if I could remember it.
But Snowdrop knows. I mean, she really knows. She understands my thoughts.”
It makes sense that she would have some sort of telepathic aspect with her horse. “Are you able to talk to all animals?”
She nods. “Yes. It’s a one-way street though.”
“Even so, that’s a handy talent to have,” I say. “I must admit, I am continuously impressed by you.”
“Thank you,” she says, giving her horse another kiss.
And now I’m finding myself envious of a horse.
After we spend a little more time with her horse, we continue on our walk, making our way around the back of the school and back down to the lake. She tells me more about her childhood, then about the other classes she’s taking here.
“Must be a strange feeling to go home every night and not remember what you learn,” I say as we find ourselves standing on the shore of the dark lake again.
“It is,” she says. “But I always remember you.”
I get the queerest feeling in my chest, a tightness. I swallow hard, staring at her. “You do?”
A faint patch of pink paints her cheeks again. “I don’t know why. But I’ll remember this interaction with you later. I remember everything you’ve taught me.”
“That shouldn’t be possible…”
“That’s what my mother said.”
“Huh,” I comment. “Well, I must say, what you just told me is the greatest thing that I could ever hear as a teacher. That what I teach you goes beyond whatever spells or veils they’ve put up around your memories. That I break through somehow.”
She gives me a shy glance, her hands clasped at her front, before turning her attention to the lake.
“I can see why that would boost your ego. But I don’t think it’s about what you’ve been teaching me.
I think it’s just you in general. There’s something about you that makes you impossible to forget. ”
That boosts my ego too. I’m struck with this sudden, hungry urge to kiss her.
But given that we are in broad daylight, on campus, I manage to hold myself back. My sexual impulses have gotten me in trouble in the past. It’s something I always have to remain in control of.
“That’s kind of you say,” I offer.
“I’m not being kind,” she says, looking back at me. “Just honest.” Then, her attention goes to the edge of the lakeshore, where blue butterflies have gathered, their long tongues licking up the water.
“You see those butterflies?” I ask.
She nods. “Vlinders.”
“What?”
She laughs, her eyes sparkling. “Vlinders! That’s Dutch for ‘butterfly.’ It’s what my father used to call them.”
“I see. Let’s do a little magic, shall we? Can you call those vlinders over to you, make them land on you?”
She rubs her lips together as she mulls that over. “I suppose….”
“You’re not being graded on this, Kat,” I tell her. “It’s not a test.”
“Feels like a test,” she says under her breath.
“I’m merely curious, that’s all.”
“When aren’t you?” she counters. But then she takes in a deep breath and holds out one hand, pointing it at them. She closes her eyes in concentration, and her mouth starts moving soundlessly.
At first, nothing happens. I don’t have the ability to talk to animals, so it’s not as if I can give her any coaching or pointers, so I can only stand there and watch.
A line between her brows forms as she concentrates harder, her mouth moving faster, and I want to tell her to not give up. Even from where I am, I can feel the energy inside her, ready to go.
And then it happens. One by one, the blue butterflies lift off the shore and start gathering together in a swarm. They bump into each other, the metallic glint of their wings catching the faint sunlight, and then they start flying toward Kat.
“You’re doing it,” I whisper, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice.
Kat opens her eyes and gasps as the butterflies fly toward her and circle her head. She looks like a goddess or a queen, with them her moving crown.
Then they delicately land on her head, her shoulders, her arms, their wings occasionally opening but content to stay in place.
“Look at you,” I say in awe. “Queen of the butterflies.”
“Vlinders,” she says breathlessly.
Yes. My vlinder.
She giggles joyfully, spinning around with her arms out, the butterflies sticking to her like glue.
She truly has stupendous power, I think. All those years of having to hide it, being afraid to show it, and it’s finally given a chance to breathe.
How powerful she could become.
How powerful we could become if our magic were to combine.
Heat creeps through my veins at the thought.
“Kat,” I say as she coaxes the butterflies to leave and watches them fly off. “Would you be interested in a little after-hours project with me?”
Her blue eyes meet mine, startled. “After hours?”
“A secret ritual. Here, with me in the dark.”
There’s someone I’d like to talk to.