Chapter 17 Your First Vanquishing
Your First Vanquishing
Five days had passed since she had inadvertently invited Lilara’s magic back to town, and Sage was quietly feeling a strange sort of pride at allowing herself to let it colour within the lines of their days.
Above all else, everybody seemed unquestionably happy and safe, which calmed her concern considerably.
It all felt, if not under control, then at least running smoothly, which was enough for now.
She had reasoned with herself that once the spell had run its course and they had worked through all twelve of its chapters, then the book was bound to present her with its secrets, including the solution for banishing her powers. It felt logical and neat.
Sage was sleeping better, breathing deeper, moving slower.
Happily, her own magic seemed to have calmed with Lilara’s nearby to keep it company, finding a twin flame like a sibling or a cousin.
There had been no more accidental, rogue explosions of her powers since the book was opened, which gave a satisfactory explanation as to why it had been behaving so badly in the first place.
It had been responding to the arrival of the book, ramping up once it was delivered.
After hours of poring over Okafor’s Winks and Whispers of Fictional Magic, changing their research tactics from fictional to non-fictional and back again five times over, Sage decided that she would need some form of motivational treat to steel her resolve afresh.
Lilara’s grimoire remained blank, and their most successful methods of filling in the spell’s whole picture came from exploring the town in person, rather than through dusty cartography and aged records.
Sage and Casimir had unanimously concluded that the magic seemed to be encouraging them outside, away from the museum, to immerse themselves as best they could in the community and unfolding fairy tales.
Sage had yet to decide how she really felt about it all.
She and Casimir strolled through the afternoon in tandem, detailing the latest changes and scoffing toffee-drizzled cinnamon buns as they made their way along the bank of the stream, which meandered its way through the landmarks of the town.
Their surroundings felt different and yet familiar all at once: a route they had often trodden together seen in a new light.
Even the rose gardens had been bewitched by the spell, their manicured beds exploding in wild bursts of blush, crimson and cherry red.
Although the flowers were always pleasant to walk through, every possible inch among them was now splattered with an extra sprinkle of wildflowers too, transforming the neat gardens into something more like a rose meadow.
It was wildly beautiful and had taken on a life of its own.
They were clambering, sprawling, and the lush colours were like nothing Sage could ever remember taking the time to notice—not since she was very young, anyway.
Tiny bells of blue, a spray of butter yellow, freckles of daisies, frills of pale pink and ripples of deep purple.
Sage was startled to find herself imagining when she gazed out towards them.
She could almost see the tiniest of fairy feet that might wander between the stems.
What in the name of all known theorems was happening to her? She shook her head to clear these most obnoxious of cobwebs. She had very important answers to find. Fairy feet were certainly not an immediate priority in the grand scheme of things.
Casimir stooped down to snatch up a stone that he’d been kicking along the trail of the stream and rubbed it on the collar of his doublet. He blew on it for luck, then sent it skimming down the stream with three enthusiastic bounces.
There was a clunk of rock hitting metal.
“Tell me you can list a few fairy tales that involve buried treasure in a river?” he asked with a hopeful look. “Everything else has been pleasant enough so far, but I could do with a chest full of gold. Have we been at the end of the rainbow this entire time? That’d be nice.”
“That’s not treasure,” Sage said, shaking her head. She pointed to where the stone had landed. “Look, there’s a…helmet? And…Ah, an entire knight in shining armour, by the looks of it.”
“I think you’re right. But is…is that knight drowning?” Casimir shouted, already rushing down the bank of the stream to where the glint of silver was bobbing up frantically and then back down below water level.
Someone else thrown into the spell’s path?
Sage trailed after him with a worried lump in her throat.
This was evidence that the spell was growing, beginning to reach out further than only her nearest and dearest, although the sight of Casimir’s sword swinging behind him as he ran, hitting him on the rear with every step, was a welcome, amusing distraction.
“I think it’s…oh, you’re kidding. It’s Patrick from the Dap!
” Casimir called back at her. “Why does that idiot get to wear a bloody suit of armour? That’s far cooler than anything I’ve got. ”
At this discovery, Sage slowed her pace just a fraction. “Is it really? In that case, we should have brought snacks.”
“Specs! We can’t just leave him. Look, he can barely stay afloat!
The suit is weighing him down.” Casimir was right.
Patrick, barely recognizable thanks to the knight’s helmet wrapped around his big head, was waving frantically with heavy armour-plated arms. The splashes were high as he flailed, silver reflecting the sunlight in bolts of bright white against the water.
“Patrick, what the hell are you doing, man?”
“The mermaids! The bloody mermaids!” Patrick spluttered back, trying and failing to keep his head above water. His very sad-looking red feather kept resurfacing persistently. “They lured me in…” he just about managed to shout through a mouthful of stream. “I can’t…Will you just help me, brainiacs?”
Patrick, of all people, was the latest to be chosen for enchantment? Sage and Casimir exchanged looks of disbelief.
“Should we, you know, save him?” Casimir asked, rocking back on his heels with a raised eyebrow. He too had lost a bit of urgency since the discovery.
“I suppose so. In you go, then.”
“This is your spell, Hemlock. This one’s down to you. I can keep watch.”
“What for?”
“More mermaids, hopefully.”
Sage gave him a short, sharp elbow to the ribs.
She had been resistant to using her own magic in any capacity since her one very necessary compromise of the concealment spell against the coven.
But with that enchantment in place, a life-or-death matter was probably a good reason to drain her system and flex her finger, even if it was for an unbearable, cheating buffoon.
“Fine,” she said reluctantly. “But if he ever, ever dares to con us out of points again, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”
Sage threw out her left hand and sent a simple but sparkling displacement spell to hold back the flow of the stream that had swallowed Patrick, temporarily dropping the water level to the depth of a puddle.
Hardly enough to make a dent in the magical landscape, she reasoned, given everything else that had unfolded around the town.
With a gurgle like a drained bathtub, the water disappeared.
Patrick collapsed in muddy exhaustion. For a short while, he didn’t move.
“Pat…? You all right?” Casimir called, craning over the stream to get a closer look.
Patrick startled, as though he may have in fact fallen asleep behind his knight’s helmet after all of the effort to stay afloat.
Sage concluded that he was truly the most hopeless, insufferable man that she had ever encountered.
Patrick sprang to his feet—or at least tried to, buckling under the weight of his armour and stumbling forwards in their direction.
Sage managed to throw her hand out in time to catch his before he fell flat on his face and bashed his head.
With Casimir hoisting his bottom half up by the waist, they yanked him as hard as they could onto the riverbank.
“Unhand me, miserable hag!” Patrick clambered to his feet and drew his sword, pointing it directly at Sage’s chest. Her mouth fell open. The audacity of this man.
“Oi!” Casimir shouted and stepped in front of her, reaching for his own sword to bash Patrick’s out of the way with a clang. Sage wasn’t entirely sure that was the formal way of handling a duel, but it did the job.
“Excuse me, you oik,” Sage yelled from behind Casimir. “I just saved you from drowning! Don’t you know what happens to stupid men who are lured to their deaths by mermaids? And who do you think you’re calling a hag?”
“Well, you are, aren’t you?” Patrick faltered for just a moment, straightening himself up awkwardly with a metallic rattle from head to toe. “You’re the witch.”
Sage recoiled. It was so jarring to hear someone she knew spell it out in black and white. Everything that she had been fighting against and hiding her whole life.
But, she supposed, there wasn’t a lot of point in pretending otherwise.
Maybe the revelation carried a lot less weight when everything and everyone was calmly encased in magic.
In fairy-tale circumstances such as these, the existence of the witch was actually widely accepted by everyone in the town.
“Yes, I suppose that’s correct,” she said, straight-faced. Oddly liberating.
“Right…Exactly…” Patrick hesitated. “And aren’t you miserable? You certainly look it whenever I see you around.”
“He’s got a point there,” Casimir said.
Sage shrugged defensively. “It’s just my natural resting face. And not all the time—only when people are thoroughly annoying to me.”
Patrick pointed. “Aha! Such an answer would never be delivered from a fair maiden. A damsel of good honour and a righteous heart has patience for all; she would never admit to such a darkened soul. Good women are always ready to present a smile to lighten the darkest of days!”