Chapter 22 Burn the Witch
Burn the Witch
“Why are you awake?” Mal wandered into the bedroom and stretched out his booted front paws with a slope of his whole body.
“This is the time when I’m supposed to walk across your head while you’re fast asleep, a helpful reminder to make sure you haven’t forgotten that it’s time for my first breakfast.”
He sat back on his hind legs and watched with intrigued, twitching whiskers as Sage spun around the room in a whirlwind.
She hadn’t the slightest idea of the time.
Somewhere near dawn? Hastily, she threw on the same outfit that she’d worn to the festival the other day and left tossed over the armchair.
The shirt still smelled strongly of bonfire smoke, but she didn’t have time to figure out anything else.
She had a plan. The fact that she had not gone to bed at any point seemed entirely irrelevant.
“I’m going to the museum,” she told Mal as she gathered up the notes that cascaded over the bed, shuffling them into a rough pile, along with the handful of textbooks that she kept by her bedside.
“At this hour? A little excessive, even for you,” Mal said. “I’m interested in assisting, you understand, but doing my level best to keep the outright curiosity to a minimum. Doesn’t tend to end well for cats.”
Finally, she stacked Lilara’s own book on the top of the pile. Sage puffed her still damp hair out of her face as she shoved the whole lot into a book bag and scrambled to pull on a pair of mismatched socks.
Mal hesitated, a frown forming between his whiskers. “Sage, I beg you, do not do anything rash without talking to Casimir first.”
Sage halted her whirlwind and turned to her familiar. He would soon cease to talk, once her plan was complete. But she needed to protect him too. Who knew what the enchantment had in store for him?
He had been by her side since university, a scrawny, underfed little thing that turned up unannounced one day.
Mal had made his way over the fence of their back garden and cried at the back door to catch her attention while she was roasting a chicken.
With all signs pointing towards him being a flea-bitten stray (you’d never have thought it to see him now, with his penchant for velvet stools and fresh fish), he had simply never left her side since.
He was meant for her, her familiar, the constant heartbeat of her every day.
She couldn’t be selfish about this. She would miss his quips and funny voice, so much so that a hefty sadness threatened to pull her away from her plan. But he would still be Mal. They would still understand each other, words or not.
“Don’t worry, okay? I know what I’m doing; leave it with me. I’ll see you later, Mal.” She turned back to packing her satchel before he could see the hot tears that were threatening to fall. “Tell Maggie you can have kippers this morning.”
In true cat style, Mal didn’t so much as bother to say goodbye before sprinting off to deliver her most important instructions.
Creeping silently down the stairs, Sage peered back towards the kitchen between the banisters and saw the silver-grey trail of ghostly skirts.
She couldn’t face seeing Maggie after their conversation the night before.
The ghost would take one look at the bags under her eyes, her knotted hair, her crumpled clothes and know immediately that something was wrong—even more wrong than Sage had already confessed to.
She tiptoed to shove her boots on and silently slipped on her coat before she crept out of the front door and eased it shut behind her.
Maggie would understand eventually, once she explained why she’d had to rush away.
She didn’t have a choice anymore. She had to end this shambles while she still could.
How had she been so selfish as to think there was another way?
The first fiery streaks of orange began to trail over the horizon in a blaze of dawn.
The town was empty at this early hour. An expectant silence hung fragile and delicate over the entirety of her route to the museum, as though all were made of glass.
The weather had turned, which didn’t surprise Sage.
October’s dew had become the first fine white frost of the year.
She had sensed the change almost immediately after the newest pages of Lilara’s grimoire revealed themselves; the uplifting, heartwarming magic that had enveloped the town for the past week like an old friend now seemed fractious.
The enchantment had begun to flicker under Sage’s closer, sceptical scrutiny.
The sparkle was gone, and in its place was a coldness—a barbed, jolting electricity that coated everything.
Like Sage could simply touch the dangerous magic and it would crack like an iced lake, or the spell might prick her finger in a sharp, cold shock.
The sign outside the museum swung back hard as she threw open the doors, overwrought but more emboldened by her decision with every step further away from home.
She had no idea where to even begin, what pattern of destruction would make the most sense or be the most effective. All she knew was that everything had to go.
She didn’t bother to turn on the lights or the heating to fill the place with cosy life.
Normally she loved that moment each morning: seeing the lights come on, bringing a new day to their trinkets that had once been long forgotten.
It had always brought her peace to think that old, abandoned, sorry things had been given a second chance at shining.
But today there was no time; she had to act quickly, before the rest of the town woke up.
Sage headed into the archive, grinding her teeth.
But she faltered the moment she stepped between the familiar shelves and closed the door behind her.
It was so peaceful, her safest of safe spaces, the room that held everything she had poured her whole soul into.
Hours, days, weeks, years of thoughts and ideas stowed away just in case, ready for the moment she might need them.
But it had all been a trail of proof, preparation and punishment.
She had always known that magic would betray her again somehow.
She had always thought, given all the work she had done to control and bind it, all the sacrifice she’d made to ensure those powers were “safe,” that she was ready for a time when it would surely happen again.
But nothing could have prepared her for the tricksy, twisted way that magic had almost enticed her back.
It was lucky that Lilara had been there for her last night, to give her the harsh but necessary wake-up call.
She should have acted days ago, the very moment it began to change and endanger her loved ones.
Sage was filled with fury at herself for delaying the inevitable, for daring to think that this could have ended differently.
She deserved to be cursed, but they certainly did not.
The effervescent anger erupting beneath Sage’s skin was more than enough to set her alight and put her to work.
She didn’t allow herself to think anymore, to contemplate if there was an alternative decision to be found.
Instead, she dove for the bookshelves, pulling out a couple of the emptier boxes to begin with and tossing their lids.
Then she clambered up the rolling ladder and, with a hasty, sweeping arm, spilled the contents of the entire top shelf into the boxes below.
Everything—thick textbooks, filled notebooks, curled photograph albums, rough newspaper clippings, quick scribbles, mind maps and the universe knows what else—toppled into a heap inside the boxes with a huge ear-splitting crash.
She heard glass break, covers bend and spines snap.
The damage to her precious books sent immediate, sickening regret and heartbreak through Sage’s whole body. But she scowled at her own weakness. This was the right thing to do. She was the shield to those she loved, and she would not fail them again.
Sage scrambled back down the ladder, stumbling as she lifted the first box to waist height.
It was so heavy. She thought longingly of the levitation charm that she’d occasionally permitted her witchery after particularly impassioned trips to the library.
“Absolutely and categorically not,” she muttered to herself.
More magic was the last thing she needed.
Leaving the museum behind, the first early birdsong dotting the air, she marched towards the green. As she’d hoped, the structure of the bonfire had been left to die out by itself once the celebrations had ended.
Sage’s nails sank into the sagging cardboard.
Last time she was here, things had been so different.
Casimir’s wide-eyed awe, her hopeful spellwork, the unspoken feeling that had been daring her to live life at the hands of magic.
It had been so convincing, so…bewitching.
She wavered, trying to keep her body stiff and certain, even though her knees felt as though they might give way.
It wasn’t just more recent memories with Casimir that tugged her back.
It was the distant past, a lifetime of his work too.
It all meant so much to both of them. The achievements, the progress, the fulfilment and success were wins that they had shared together.
Screams of excitement at new discoveries, a sometimes deluded hunger that kept them working into the night, the call of just one more page.
Together, they had wandered hallowed halls, lanterns in hand, illuminating ideas and unearthing secrets.
Academia was the only thing she’d ever been any good at.
Without her smartness, Sage wasn’t quite sure who she was; she had always simply been the girl with her nose in a book.
Most importantly, this obsessive body of work had come to be a symbol of the control that she had won for herself, her victory against the dangers of magic.