Chapter 20 Moonlight
Moonlight
It wasn’t strictly protocol to bring artefacts home from the museum.
But then again, it wasn’t strictly protocol for them to be responsible for a spell that held the entire town in its palm either, so Sage had decided that Lilara’s grimoire was a worthy exception to the rules.
She had slipped it into her bag after work that day.
“Are you sure you won’t eat something proper, madam?
I hate to think of you having such a sorry excuse for a meal.
” Maggie looked personally affronted by the haphazard snack plate that Sage had thrown together.
“Let me at least get you a bit of bread and butter. Maybe some chutney to liven things up a bit.”
The food sat ignored at the end of her bed while Sage pored over numerous notes scattered haphazardly across the bedspread. The grimoire was wide open in the middle of it all and, of course, still entirely blank after almost a whole week spent coaxing it back to life.
“Not now, Maggs,” Sage said, scowling at the disruption, then caught herself. She removed her glasses, then pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just need to focus.”
“On the hocus-pocus!” Maggie said cheerfully, then deflated slightly when she received no appreciation from her friend. “As you wish, Sage,” Maggie said, the tone of sadness in her voice even wispier than usual. It made Sage feel absolutely terrible.
“Actually, Maggs, I wouldn’t say no to something involving gravy, to be honest. Maybe it’ll lift my spirits. I’ll come and join you shortly,” Sage said, offering in compromise, which earned a much more satisfied response from the ghost, who floated off merrily back to the kitchen.
Sage had spent the night reading until her vision blurred and her head ached, trying to decide whether her previous annotations around the spell, the element of danger and uncertainty that it had first struck her with, could still be applied alongside the joyful way that it had left her feeling more recently.
Could such a combination exist comfortably?
Was there such a thing as a malevolent good?
And more importantly, what was to come next at the hands of the mirror charm, which was still stubbornly refusing to manifest?
Sage’s eyes fell back to Lilara’s grimoire. Another spell of her own had been tempting her all evening, and her fingertips tingled at the call. Conjuring the flame had felt so good. Perhaps just one more piece of witchery for the sake of a neatly structured and satisfying investigation…
It was a spell that she had become aware of several years ago, thanks to a newspaper clipping about a reported warlock who had tried to use magic to reveal a secret inheritance.
His sister had received hers, but his portion remained missing.
As it transpired, it was just that his parents thought he was a twit who’d waste it all away, but he’d left the words of the incantation scribbled on a napkin at work, which raised suspicions of the occult.
With a deep breath, Sage cast the revelation spell to uncover hidden secrets of a page.
“Ostendo Fateor Occultus.”
A sprinkle of stars and then…
Nothing.
Dejected, she slumped back against the pillows propped up on her headboard. She kicked the book away to the very end of the bed.
“Isn’t that a priceless historical artefact that proves the very existence of magic itself?” Mal leapt up onto the bedcovers to join Sage with an inquisitive chirp.
“And a fat lot of good it’s proving to be,” she said, sulking.
“In that case…” Mal took it upon himself to walk straight on top of the open book and settled himself into his favourite loaf shape upon the pages. “I shall sit on it.”
“Be my guest.” Sage leaned her head back and closed her eyes in defeated silence.
Half the reason she had kept herself so busy for the past twenty-four hours was to avoid thinking too much about the moment yesterday evening with Casimir.
He had seemed completely untroubled by…whatever it was that had sparked between them in the gazebo, babbling so incessantly and effusively all day that he had given her a headache.
So she had followed his lead and plodded through business as usual.
But as soon as she allowed her eyes to close and her research to pause, the questions came flooding back. Uncertainty and confusion, but a quiet thrill too. What would have happened if Laurel and Robin hadn’t appeared until five minutes later?
Sage groaned and thumped her pillow, then threw an arm over her eyes.
“Cat got your tongue?” Mal asked, looking at her with distinct scepticism.
“What does it all mean, Mal?”
“Who says it has to mean anything? Not everything has a worthwhile explanation in my experience, especially the big universe-shifting things that we can’t plan for.”
Sage peeked one eye open. “Do cats experience a lot of those?”
“Any time you force me into that carrier box, for example. There’s never good reason for that,” Mal replied, earning a laugh.
“I would imagine that the wise, selfless witch you’ve admired for so long is simply trying to remind you that magic really can be something kind.
Isn’t it plausible that she doesn’t want you to make the same mistakes she did? ”
Sage made some sort of deeply frustrated, garbled roar of exasperation. “I know she’s trying to tell me more. I just need to figure out how to speak to her again. Or with her. Or…through her. Whatever it was last time.”
Mal’s whiskers twitched. “And your revelation incantation couldn’t shed any light?”
Sage shook her head, then sat bolt upright. “Light?”
She lunged forwards across the bed and yanked the book towards her, cat still balanced on top of it.
“What on earth do you think you’re…? Allow me some dignity, woman,” Mal said, outraged.
She lifted him by the stomach and placed him back onto the duvet. “Sorry, Mal. But you just gave me an idea.”
“I wish I hadn’t. I was perfectly comfortable there.”
Sage bolted across to the bay window of her bedroom. She did her best to angle the open pages towards the few faint silvery beams that were making their way through the clouds.
Mal peered over with a disgruntled “hrmph” of a meow. “What are you even…?”
“When I triggered the spell the first time, it was nighttime. The moon was so bright.”
“Yes, the moon does tend to show itself at nighttime, Sage. Even that idiot cat Bilbo next door knows that much,” Mal said, unimpressed.
“The book was resting on the front desk, and I remember noting how perfectly the pages were catching the beam of—”
“Moonlight?” Mal interjected. “Wow, I can’t believe I figured that out for you. I really am the most brilliant cat of recent times. Maybe ever.”
Sage tilted the heavy book in her arms, jostling it to the most exact angle, encouraging the moonbeams to light the entire page.
She couldn’t quite manage it. Each time, the tiniest fraction of a corner or an inch near the spine remained in shadow.
The seconds, then minutes, sped by. She was running out of time.
The clouds were rolling daringly close to blocking the moon.
She couldn’t bear the thought of having to wait for another shot at it.
She shoved back tendrils of her blasted hair and fumbled, rushing her way through to find a page that might spill secrets.
She gasped so quickly and so intensely that she almost dropped the thing and had to start all over again. But finally, there it was. A whole week later.
“Mal, this is it,” Sage whispered, barely daring to breathe.
Beneath the silvery trail of light, just as they had the first time, the words revealed themselves to the moonlight, glistening ink as though freshly written. Gradually, the lines formed, becoming clearer and glowing warmer as they charged themselves from the moon’s magic for her to read.
Mine soul does beg, how I implore
So love may be yours evermore.
They were different. Different words. Sage’s heart raced.
Were these the banishment instructions instead?
She’d assumed the blank grimoire would merely reveal the same incantation as last time.
All she had wanted to do was read it again so that she could pick apart the words of the spell, make a proper record of it to understand it further and see Lilara’s message for what it was.
But this was a whole new entry in the grimoire. Not only that, it didn’t feel the same either. There were no dramatics this time—no rush of wind, no shaking of the earth beneath her feet.
Witch, leave this wicked life behind
And flee the town in dark spellbind.
This wasn’t the same kind of spell. Maybe not even an incantation at all. It didn’t seem to create any physical changes or encourage her magic to bubble and bloom beneath her skin. She couldn’t feel it taking hold around her.
Her hair did not fly back. Her fingertips did not tingle. Her voice did not change—aside from the weak shake that broke and cracked as she read the final few lines. She could barely even speak them aloud. This was no spell or banishment. The words felt more like a promise. A confession.
Witchcraft may never know another,
No true kin, sister or brother.
No joy, no light, no heart is worse.
For who could ever love the cursed?
Mal continued licking his snow-white paw and cleaning behind his ear. “What a pleasant, light-hearted ditty,” he said, distinctly unbothered.
But it was all true.
Sage had dared to let herself think that her story was being rewritten, that the ending could be a different one than she’d been anticipating.
But as she had always stubbornly told everyone her whole life, she was never wrong.
Every sparkling glimmer that she had been fortified by over the past few days extinguished with a single breath.
Lilara knew exactly what was coming for her, and despite it all, Sage was insistently following in her very same footsteps.
Lilara was doing what she could to prevent it.
This was not an invitation, a celebration or encouragement, as Sage’s soft, naive sister had insisted.
It was a warning after all: that she would always hurt the ones she loved.
“Sage, are you all right?” Mal jumped down from the bed and padded over to the window. “I hope you’re not going to take any notice of that.”
She slumped suddenly onto the windowsill, overcome by a feeling of heaviness and emptiness. “Cursed,” she whispered.
Mal gave a little chirp of alarm and leapt up onto her lap.
“Witches really are cursed. I knew it. I knew,” Sage breathed. An angry, smarting flash bit sharply at her. She had been so very, very deluded.
“Knew what?”
“Everybody tried to tell me it wasn’t true, that I wasn’t right. But I was. I always am.” She wasn’t even talking to Mal. She was lost to her own cruel thoughts. “How could I be so stupid? So ignorant?”
Distracted by her own ego. Tricked by glitter.
“Don’t be so harsh on yourself. You’re the brightest witch there is,” Mal said, nuzzling the top of his head under her chin.
The first words that the book had revealed played over and over in her head. So, naively, she had allowed herself to believe they were an invitation to explore magic. Permission to find a freedom in joy that she had never let herself feel before.
It was clear now, with these new words straight from Lilara’s own pen, that she had interpreted it all so very wrong.
“Magic is not meant for me. It never was.”
“You’re tired, Sage,” Mal said kindly but firmly, as only a good friend could. “It’ll look brighter in the morning. How about brushing me? That’ll help.”
It was so unlike her, but there was no mistaking such a clear, dire warning anymore. Proof, written in moonlight itself, that she must leave magic well alone if she wanted any chance at happiness or any kind of love.
Everything that Sage had ever suspected about herself was all but confirmed by the witch that she admired most. Who could know it better?
She really was cursed—all witches were—and unlovable for it.
It made sense that this was the price they all paid, in exchange for wielding this great power.
Of course it couldn’t come for free. Laurel’s bruises flashed into her mind.
Casimir’s cheek and Robin’s hand. All horribly close to real trouble.
She must never let anybody else be harmed by the darkness of her magic.
She would not allow herself to cry, though exhaustion and bitter disappointment soaked straight through to her bones like heavy rain. The swell of humiliation was beyond anything as useless as tears.
Sage stroked the top of Mal’s head, lost in thought while her own brow rested against the cold window and she peered down onto the night below.
Something had shifted. With this second correspondence from Lilara, it was as though the magic that had flooded the town for the past few days, dusting it in such a beautiful glitter, had changed from gold to a stark, icy silver. Port Sylvan suddenly looked cold.