Chapter 8 Three Hemlocks #2
Casimir leaned his head back on the top of the booth with a sigh. “A cruel twist of fate.” He uncrossed his limbs and reached over for a crisp from the packets split between them.
“Oh, Cas! For all the stars…” Robin’s drink toppled over entirely this time.
Three seconds later, the soggy crisps floating on top of the pool of beer had transfigured into a selection of miniature yellow rubber ducks under a rain of unexpected burgundy sparks.
Sage gave a shudder as her magic sputtered from the unplanned spell.
She shook out her hand with a wince and the four of them shared an awkward pause.
“Well, thank you for that,” Robin muttered, glancing around the pub. “This evening was far too calm and quiet for my liking. It was missing some torches and pitchforks, if you ask me.”
She felt furious with herself. “Not again! Is everyone okay? Laur, it didn’t hit you, did it? Rob, did it catch your sleeve? I’m so sorry, it’s the run-up to Halloween, it gets so…”
“They’re so cute! Sage, I love them. Thank you,” Laurel said, beaming as she picked out a few of the ducks and popped them in her frilly dress pocket.
Sage threw her head onto her folded forearms on the table, letting out a frustrated sound like a dying animal.
Her initial panic blended into dismay, and she roared into her arms. “It’s absolutely uncontrollable this week, and I can’t figure out what I’ve done to anger it. I’m trying my bloody best, but it’s…”
“I believe the proper scientific term would be, it’s kicking her arse,” Casimir finished for her.
“Sage, you told us you had things back under control!” Laurel said, her voice rising an octave higher in a way that reminded Sage so much of their mother that she felt herself wince.
“Oh, shut up, will you? I do, I always do. Of course I do.” It came out snappier than she’d intended. She prickled even more sharply when Robin and Laurel darted a look between each other and Robin mouthed, “Yikes…”
Three of them proceeded to take a silent sip of their drinks, Robin spinning his empty glass on the spot.
“She doesn’t,” Cas said.
Sage promptly elbowed him.
“What is up with you? No need to be such a cow,” Laurel said in the blunt way that only a younger sister can.
“Nothing, nothing,” Sage said with a flap of her hand and a sigh. “Sorry. There’s just a lot riding on this month, that’s all. I can’t afford any slip-ups or mistakes.”
“It’s going to be great, Sage,” Laurel said, softening. “It sounds incredible, everything you’ve worked so hard for. I can’t wait to come and see it.”
What Laurel didn’t realize was that the success of the exhibition was rapidly becoming the least of Sage’s concerns.
“Is that really all it is?” Robin asked, always much more difficult to convince than Laurel about anything. “There’s nothing we can do except remind you that you’re actually quite good at your job?”
“Yes.”
“Promise? It’s just the pressure of a new exhibition?” Laurel said.
Sage swallowed. “Well…”
“So it is the magic that’s getting you down,” Robin said. “But it’s popped and whizzed and banged for as long as I can remember. Octobers are always tricky, right? What’s so different this time?”
Sage glanced up at her brother and sister and felt her heart give an extra protective beat of gratitude.
It rendered some kind of balance back to her world when she could see them both safely in front of her.
She might not be particularly fun or funny or popular, but that was Laurel’s job.
And she might not be even-tempered or approachable or maybe even all that likeable, but that was always Robin’s thing.
With them nearby, Sage was just the one who kept the world turning.
She simply had to make sure that they were looked after and doing okay.
All of her own flaws felt a little less glaring when they were next to her.
Their childhood in Port Sylvan had been the happiest type, overflowing with beloved books and bedtime stories and small moments of tradition.
There were bunk beds and pets and living room dens, patched together by two professor parents who had raised them to always be kind and curious.
When the most surreal, cruel sort of loss had befallen them—aged fifteen, thirteen and eleven—their grandparents had quickly moved into the family home to raise the Hemlocks and somehow life had carried on in a messy, stumbling way.
They had all left for university but found the lure of Port Sylvan welcomed them back.
The Hemlock home was Robin’s house now, since their grandparents had passed away, its familiarity and fixity keeping him secure with his two young daughters, making new memories to replace the painful ones.
The trio of siblings had remained close through it all, finding the real feeling of home to be among themselves.
Robin and Laurel, like Casimir, had never once blamed Sage’s magic for what happened to their parents. They were of the same supportive opinion: that it was special and something she should have embraced from the start.
Sage could see out of the corner of her eye that Casimir was trying to catch her attention, encouraging her to share the truth—that her powers were wildly fighting back like they never had before and she couldn’t be sure what had riled them.
She hated lying to her siblings, but it was the best way to protect them, as she had always tried her best to do.
“Don’t worry about me, Rob. You’re right. October hijinks are nothing I can’t handle,” Sage said, pushing her fingernails into the groove of the table.
The light from the lamp on the windowsill flickered in a mirror image of the dread that whirled in her gut, and she spotted a couple of curls on her shoulder furling up tightly, turning in on themselves, embarrassed at the scrutiny. She sensed her siblings weren’t convinced.
“Did you know that the Dap is a perfect example of gloomth?” Sage blurted out, desperate to steer the conversation somewhere else.
The three faces across the table blinked at her.
“Gloomth. A word with the earliest known use in the 1700s. An amalgamation of ‘gloom’ and ‘warmth’ that captures the perfect melancholy combination of eeriness and charm.” Sage glanced anywhere else except at her comrades.
“An otherwise indefinably miserable cosiness.”
“You know, that’s actually a pretty fun fact for you,” Robin said with an impressed nod. “Got any more for today?”
Sage couldn’t help but smile. See, she could be fun too.
The evening passed by in the easy embrace that years of familiarity bring.
While it wasn’t entirely enough to ease the tension in Sage’s shoulders, it did at least make her snort-laugh a few times.
As a teacher for teenagers, Robin always had more than his fair share of unbelievable anecdotes, while Laurel usually seized the chance to share some gossip or other about friends who Sage couldn’t give two hoots about but for some reason cared immensely when her sister was telling the story.
Having ruined the crisps for them all, Casimir was bullied into buying bowls of chips.
“Your favourite pub-quiz cheat is at the bar. Did you see him?” Casimir asked Sage, plopping the bowls down onto the table.