CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Geraldine Thomas was a prim woman of middling age – stout, and with a mild rosacea of the face which made her look always a little jolly, resulting in her curious choice to dress only in complementary shades of green.
Her stockings were fine wool; her skirts, personally tailored and purchased, always, from Hemmington’s department store.
She drank her tea with three sugars and routinely completed the crossword puzzle in the Alliaster Review, no matter how many times her cousin Maud told her it was a cheap modern fad.
She did this puzzle every morning at the tea shop on the corner of Wren Court and Ethel Avenue.
Theodora’s, it was called, and it was no ordinary establishment.
Maud had told her about it two years prior.
Maud, too, had encouraged her to buy a packet spell – illegally, mind you – to fortify her bedroom wall against the neighbours’ nightly nonsense.
Geraldine had already contacted the council.
She had written ever so many letters. It had been months since she had slept properly.
She had complained to just about anyone who would listen until Maud got quite cross with her and gave her the address of the tea shop.
Geraldine had found it easily enough. The red-haired lad at the counter heard her predicament. A silencing charm would fix it.
‘Nice and easy, madam. Only twenty minutes’ wait, that one.’
Geraldine drank a short glass of milk, received her spell and returned to her townhouse in the Mourners’ District. She opened the envelope and, lo and behold, the spell was cast. She never heard another peep from her neighbours again. That was all it took.
Geraldine was hooked.
She had always believed she’d had the proclivity for magic. Yet, the lobbying from those silly Radical Spokes and the wretched events with that daemon had ruined it all; then came the war. It’s unnatural, restricting magic, she’d told her brother-in-law.
She never did get around to finding a teacher in her youth.
And now that Article 13 and the Prohibition were in place, there was no point.
Geraldine Thomas would lose neither limb nor life for magic.
So, upon her first visit, she had pulled the lad aside. ‘Love, I am sorry. Explain it to me again: the charms, the protections.’
The red-haired boy had ducked out the side door and come back with the witch herself.
Theodora was ever so patient. ‘We are the ones casting the spells. The police would hardly punish you for our crimes, would they?’ The witch took her hand as she spoke these words.
‘Not to worry, Madam Thomas. You are perfectly safe in my tea shop.’
Geraldine always found new reasons to return to Theodora’s.
Her knees were ailing; her icebox wasn’t cold enough; a villainous tabby cat was worrying the larks in the tree by her home.
She had the silver for it. A monthly allowance, and no children to depend on her.
The older she grew, the fewer her relations became and the higher her allowance climbed.
It was after the new year had begun, right before the summer was its hottest, when Geraldine found herself on a Monday morning, as she always was, sat in the back corner of Theodora’s Tea Shop.
It was a spell for grief, this time. Maud had passed away in the night.
It had been her liver; why had she not gone to the witch, rather than those quacks in The Apexes?
Another rise in her allowance, Geraldine supposed.
She didn’t much feel like doing her crossword puzzle that day.
She drank her thin, lemon tea and waited for the grief charm to take.
It was not quite as potent as Theodora’s other spells.
Oh well, thought Geraldine. Better than nothing, I suppose.
She sat a little longer, gazing at the shop around her.
The blonde girl with the curly hair was working; Geraldine often gazed at that strange, scaly hand of hers as it placed packet spells or cups of tea before her.
The young man, the bearded one with the long nose, was beside her washing dishes.
Geraldine watched the girl watching the young man, her eyes glancing at him ever so carefully, sometimes flinching back as if ready to be scolded. What a timid child, thought Geraldine.
‘Lio,’ said the red-haired boy now, rushing up to the counter with a large crate. He bumped a snowy, fur-covered spirit – a staff member who was carrying a flurry of cups and plates and envelopes. ‘Oh sorry, Thistlethwaite!’
‘Watch it, lad,’ grumbled the spirit. ‘I’ve belonged to this city longer than the River Lourdes and I will not be knocked to the ground by a child too piddly to even swim against its current.’
‘Sorry,’ said the red-haired boy again before turning to his colleague. ‘Lio – Mr Oniba wants a portal charm. Theodora’s not back yet. Could you help me?’
The young man with the beard scoffed. ‘Mistress high and mighty won’t like that.’
The blonde girl then reached over the boy and picked two of the envelopes out of his crate.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, flinching away.
The girl flushed red. ‘Just trying to help. Those are ready for the customers, aren’t they?’
‘No,’ said the boy, and he turned and went through to the backroom.
The girl stole an embarrassed look at the bearded young man, who had no words of comfort for her.
As if to hide her embarrassment, she busied herself with the dishes.
The white, fluffy spirit dumped plates into the sink, splashing the young woman.
The witch, Theodora, appeared in the doorway, watching it all.
She gazed between the blonde girl, the bearded young man and the hall where the red-haired lad had disappeared, all with a furrowed brow.
Then, she swept through the tea shop and placed a small, orange parcel before each of the customers.
‘Complimentary truffles,’ said the witch.
‘We’re celebrating. Our tea shop is nine years old. ’
Geraldine thanked her.
But in her melancholy state, she left the chocolate behind.
Geraldine Thomas exited Theodora’s Tea Shop, the grief charm gently warping the city around her.
The pain was manageable. The spell helped her to cry.
It helped her to remember. She decided to treat herself to a nice, cathartic stroll along Wren Court under the dense greenery of the jacaranda trees.
She would find her way up Folène Street, then to Sterns Road, then to the main street.
Then she would take a tram home to the Mourners’ District.
But Geraldine Thomas did not make it to Mourners’.
For at the end of the street, two women stepped out from behind an old jacaranda, and that was simply that.
A paring knife came quickly, stuck her in the neck.
Oh, Geraldine felt the sharpness of it, the wetness of her blood all over her green blouse, recently bought from Hemmington’s.
They spirited her away to the Alliaster Zoological Gardens – she recognised the gate.
She had loved this park when she was small.
Maud had, too. The elephants. The kangaroos.
They tied her to the roof of the admission building.
Not in the sun, thought Geraldine, I’ll burn.
‘Three down,’ came the rasping voice of the woman who’d held the knife. The other one walked circles around Geraldine, muttering, winding her threads, performing some dark sorcerie. Geraldine could not move. She could not scream. Cicadas shrieked in the trees around them.
A horrible wind kicked up, surrounding them in the scents of woodsmoke, incense, gunpowder, elderberry and hemlock.
The woman with the threads muttered louder.
Geraldine caught the sound of wind chimes, children’s chanting.
The grief charm persisted. It softened her terror.
How quickly she accepted it; how much she would miss her trips to the tea shop.
The elder of the two women reached down, took the knife to her skin.
‘Sorry about this,’ she said in that haunting voice joined by the tinkering of jars on her hip. ‘Nothing to do with you, of course.’
And she drove the paring knife across Geraldine Thomas’s throat.