Chapter 11 All Aflutter
All Aflutter
With hot Hedgehog House coffees and celebratory croissants in hand, following a daring return of the ceramic hedgehog to his shelf, the pair walked on towards the museum.
Casimir eventually managed to crack Sage’s bad mood and earn a laugh, saying something horrifying about her eating a pair of children and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.
Sage tried to reason that it was a day like any other, that last night had been a simple, strange fluke.
An annoyingly messy mixture of her own magic behaving badly, as it always did in the run-up to Halloween, and clattering weather against the old building.
Nothing had even happened, if she really overthought it enough.
Magic had flown unpredictably (nothing new), a few meaningless words had appeared on a page, the stormy night had rattled the shelves. Nothing more.
“So, what’s our plan of action today, boss?” Casimir asked. He was still trying to distract her from her grump.
“Mercifully, we have until this afternoon before the school trip arrives,” Sage said. “That might give us enough time to take another look at the book.” Now that she was caffeine-fuelled, she had no choice in the matter.
Casimir tutted. “I know it’s tempting, but I was under the impression we agreed to leave it alone until we sent it away for verification. I’d rather look more closely at that haunted wedding dress, if we have to do some work. We were supposed to be celebrating.”
Sage tucked her hair behind her ear in an offhandish sort of way. “Call it a hunch. We can decide whether the book is a worthy late addition to the exhibition or whether we should keep it to ourselves.”
“You make it sound like some kind of sinister secret. If it really is Lilara’s, it’s bound to be a diary or something, rather than her actual spell book, don’t you think?”
“Yes, yes, absolutely…” Sage trailed off with a swallow. “More of her letters or plain writing paper, I’d guess. But that’s still an important discovery, don’t you think? That at least warrants a closer look.”
“And if, by some miracle, we do prove that it’s Lilara’s grimoire…” Casimir glanced sideways at her, finishing his drink.
Sage gripped her coffee cup a little tighter, and her latte sloshed out of the lid. “Then we will have found something very special, won’t we?”
Casimir nodded, his mouth pressed to one side to form a dimple beneath his stubble. “Is that what you want?”
Sage shrugged and pushed up her glasses. “Why wouldn’t I want something that would be such a vital discovery in our work?”
“Because that would mean we are face-to-face with the real deal, not just notes on a page or outdated theories in textbooks. We have no idea the effect that it could have on the already unpredictable magic levels in Port Sylvan, how the ley lines might react to its presence, let alone how the”—he checked over his shoulder—“how the c-o-v-e-n might respond to it being opened for the first time in well over a century. You messing with another witch’s grimoire feels like questionable karma, Specs. ”
Sage cleared her throat guiltily. “We shan’t be taking any silly risks, that’s for certain.”
“Sage Hemlock? No risks? I’m staggered, truly. If only you weren’t famously such a thrill-seeking daredevil rule-breaker who loves nothing more than dicing with danger.” Casimir halted abruptly in his tracks. “Did you see that?”
He pointed down at their feet. Their shadows stretched out side by side in the blinding morning sun, long and narrow in front of them. Sage watched the shadow of his arm move naturally in unison, the dark shape copying his body’s motion on the pavement.
Until it didn’t.
Casimir’s arm pointed at the ground, while the arm of his shadow waved up at them.
It did. Sage saw it, entirely separate from Casimir himself.
The dappled light of the morning shifted again through the leaves of the trees above like a golden kaleidoscope, and the shadow returned to the boundary that science insisted it should lie within.
It couldn’t be. She would not have it.
“See what?” Sage shook out her curls and marched on towards the museum door.
By late afternoon, the school trip was going surprisingly well.
As hoped, the new exhibition and all of its fairy-tale wonder managed to interest even those with the shortest of attention spans—for at least twenty minutes, anyway.
Their young guests were certainly chaotic, but not quite touching “feral,” which felt like a win, and Sage and Casimir had somehow managed to shepherd the swarm of six-year-olds from the local infant school into a semi-controlled environment full of activities they’d thrown together.
There was, of course, a dress-up station, essential to any good museum, with capes, crowns, wings and masks for their charges to become their favourite fairy-tale characters.
Sage couldn’t help but snort as she glanced across the room and was met by the sight of Casimir, nobly wearing a flower crown and waving around a stuffed unicorn that one little girl had selected as a perfect steed for him.
Sage had decided that it was probably for the best that she didn’t get involved in the costumes, the wand-making or the potion-brewing.
They all felt a little too high-risk, considering recent circumstances.
Instead, she’d spent most of the afternoon safely hunched in a miniature plastic chair, helping the quieter children to write their own endings to classic fairy tales.
They had introduced the task with the solemn promise that the town remembered all the stories that were written within its boundaries.
“Most stuffy archivists deny it, of course, but not us. If you suspect that magic might have been at play today, do check your pockets on the way out. Perhaps you’re one of the lucky ones,” Casimir told a few of them after inconspicuously slipping chocolate coins into all of their coat pockets to be discovered later.
Sage should have known that everything was running far, far too smoothly.
If she’d had a moment to consider it properly, she would have realized that the lull itself was strange.
It was the most peace she’d experienced in weeks.
The bouquet of flowers on the front desk hadn’t so much as given her a second glance.
The electrics were all playing ball. There wasn’t a single rogue cat, bat or rat to speak of.
And not one of the artefacts made any mysterious movements, moans or mumbles as she passed by.
It was nothing short of a miracle. Sage was rather pleased.
That was until, with just fifteen minutes to go, the two teachers, Mrs. Gregory and Miss Mellor, began the long process of putting on coats and gathering up backpacks when Sage spotted something rather odd.
The child next to her, a round-faced little thing with cherub-like cheeks and a perpetually runny nose, pushed his bowl-cut hair away from his ears. And it grew. The ear. Just the top of it and only an inch or two.
Sage leaned backwards on her chair’s rear legs to peer around the other kids and take a subtle closer look.
Her mouth fell open. Yes, it was undeniable.
In a matter of seconds, the top of the little boy’s ear had sprouted into a long point, followed closely by the other ear, in an extremely fairy-like fashion.
Across the small table from her, she heard a flutter.
It sounded as though a hummingbird had flown into the hall or the pages of a book were being flipped through quickly—almost silent but flittering at super-speed.
A small girl with her hair in puffs, who had been particularly engrossed in writing her story, scratched absently at the top of her back with a pencil.
Sage’s hand flew to her mouth, knocking over an entire pot of crayons as she registered a faint glimmer behind the girl.
An iridescent flutter. A pair of laced, rainbow-tinted…
Well, if she didn’t know any better, she’d say—
“Miss Hemlock, can I borrow you for a moment, please?”
“What is it, Mr. Everald?” Sage replied with a strained yelp. “I’m not sure I can leave the story table at this exact moment. I have a bit of a conundrum, to say the very least.”
“Oh, I think you will very much want to leave the story table, Miss Hemlock, when I tell you the reason for joining me,” Casimir said through a fixed stiff grin.
From the dress-up corner, he jolted his head towards a little boy at his side who was wearing a dragon mask and sitting cross-legged against the cushions. The boy gave a sudden hiccup and…
“Ah, yes. I think I see the problem,” Sage said calmly, rising to her feet before bolting over to Casimir.
“Miss Hemlock, wonderful.” He smiled. They both looked out onto the scene with feverish, frozen grins. “Now, far be it from me to ask inane questions, but do you have any bright ideas as to why this little boy keeps levitating before my very eyes?”
“I can’t say I do, Mr. Everald. That really is most peculiar,” Sage replied, rocking back on her heels with a maniacal smile.
If she let it drop, she feared she might scream.
“And, equally fascinating, there appears to be some kind of elfin or perhaps fairy transformation occurring with the kiddywinks at the story-time table. Isn’t that a fun development just before home time? ”
There was no mistaking it. Sage’s eyes shot back to the little girl, who was also now rising higher and higher as a pair of fairy wings fluttered behind her.
Two children in their care now floating several inches above where they were supposed to be.
They were both seemingly unaware of their change in state, and the other children seemed entirely unbothered, but Sage suddenly felt as though she might expire.
“Oh, goody. That’s just what I wanted to happen with the little tykes this afternoon,” Casimir said, nodding, pushing back his hair rather frantically. A bead of sweat appeared at his temple.
“Quite.” Sage smiled through gritted teeth.