CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
‘We also had the Divers’ Café,’ said Dot. ‘And a bakery.’
‘Of course,’ said the witch. She smiled again. ‘Places of hospitality aside, I believe it is time for us to try out a spell.’
Theodora took up a piece of parchment and, with her pen, began to draw.
‘The way you write the rune is very important,’ said the witch.
She scratched onto the parchment a diamond with three diagonal lines shooting off to the upper right side; three dots were stippled in above and below these.
She drew until the rune resembled a shooting star.
Theodora placed her hand on top of it. A flash of light shot out, and the parchment soared into the air.
‘Oh!’ cried Dot.
‘I mastered this when I was eleven,’ said Theodora. She caught the floating paper and handed it to Dot. ‘You try.’
Dot reached for the sheet but, upon spotting her bandages, halted. That terrible wash of cold remembrance flooded her, but she steadied herself and took the parchment and pen with her other hand.
Yet, as she traced one-handed, the paper slipped from under the nib.
It needed to be steadied. She tried again and again, and her frustration grew, and she glanced up at the witch watching her struggle for no real reason, other than the fact that she did not want to remember the scales.
The witch raised her eyebrows and Dot, at last, gave up.
She placed her bandaged hand upon the parchment to still the paper properly, and traced the rune.
‘What does it feel like?’ asked Theodora, nodding at the bandaged hand. ‘Is it painful?’
Dot merely shook her head. It felt damp in the way one’s mouth feels damp, but stretched too tight and too smooth. The bandages were rough against the scales, irritating her every moment of every day. The thought of looking at it turned her stomach.
She did not elaborate this to the witch; Theodora did not ask.
In silence, Dot traced the rune.
‘Eventually,’ said Theodora with gentle warmth, ‘you won’t need to draw the runes at all. Well, not unless you’re a slapdash Magician like Liutprand.’
‘What exactly makes Lio slapdash?’ asked Dot, quietly.
‘What doesn’t?’ asked Theodora. ‘In the years since I knew him, he seems to have grown worse at magic, if you can believe it. He’ll be doomed to use that chalk of his forever. Now, place your hand on the rune and close your eyes. Envision it.’
Dot did as she was told.
The page did not move.
‘Hm,’ said Theodora, and she took a fresh sheet of paper and had Dot redraw the rune again and again.
Dot tried several different kinds of pen, and then chalk, of which she disliked the roughness.
They tried for hours – different symbols, different mediums, until Dot was tired and a bit embarrassed and Theodora looked at her pocket watch and leaped from the stool, crying, ‘Oh, Saints! The parliamentary session began twenty minutes ago.’ As the witch flew from the room, yanking on the robe of Bianca De León, she called over her shoulder, ‘Let’s just start you on powders, instead. ’
In the following days, Theodora showed Dot several simple potions which could be used for packet spells: a chamomile and fennel tea for bad dreams, a salve for plantar warts and a brew to increase the fondness of house cats.
These Dot practised over and over until they were utterly committed to memory; yet, no matter how carefully she prepared them, the magic simply would not take.
‘I have to take care with this one,’ said Theodora, tucking a finger-waved strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Too much lemongrass and you’ll go the other way. I once made a customer so despised by the family cat that his wife had to choose between them.’
‘Goodness, that’s horrible.’
‘Is it? Her new husband’s far better looking.’
With each day, Dot grew a little stronger and a little more used to the alien whiteness wrapped around her left hand.
With the help of Theodora’s magic, the cut on her shoulder quickly healed.
The witch also set herself the task of improving Dot’s tonic; she fortified the ingredients, swapped the garlic for asphodel, and so on until the drink was noticeably sweeter and remarkably more potent. Dot drank it now only once per day.
Yet, the fatigue did not leave her. It fogged the world around her, stretching and warping time in bizarre bursts and lulls.
Quite suddenly, she had been in the tea shop three weeks.
The summer air was now thick with humidity, the cicadas had started to shriek, and she found herself more and more interested in Lio.
He began cooking for them.
One night, he simply wandered into her room and placed beside her a bowl of stew.
So stunned was Dot that it took her a moment to remember to shout ‘thank you’ down the hall.
‘I’m only doing this,’ Lio called back, ‘so that the empress stops hiding the good food.’