Chapter 28 Your Dear Friend #3
Sunday 29 October
This magic. This treacherous, abhorrent, wild magic.
It has ruined everything. No good can ever come of it, of that I am most certain!
It renders me more and more alone by the day.
If my soul were a red rose, it would be rotted in the ground that it grows from, petals all lost, no more beauty to linger, nothing but fodder to the creatures.
There is no one. I have nothing, aside from a heart that whines a pitiful mew of a beat and a palm full of power that disgusts me to my core.
Maggie, I hope that either it dies or I should die before it and send it back beneath to the worms, where it belongs. No good shall ever come of magic.
While magic beats within a heart, it seems that love may not. They repel one another; I see that now. It is how the story of a witch must be written. What a fool I was to think it otherwise!
Still, I must find him. A love as beautiful as ours cannot possibly end in such tragedy. I know you will wish otherwise for me, but there will be no persuading it. Besides, it is too late. I have drained the magic from my palms, banished it from my soul.
Perhaps now he will consider me again.
A boat departs at dawn tomorrow, Maggie, and the few belongings I require to survive are packed into the pockets of my coat. Take what you wish but burn the rest. Everything else—my favourite cloak, my precious jewels, my pretty things that were once so important and full of silly hope—can perish.
Along with this whole town. A curse upon it.
Monday 30 October
My true friend,
You were always too kind to me, always too understanding and forgiving of this darkness, this blight that spreads inside me.
You are a rare treasure, Magnolia. I only wish that the rest of the world could stand up to the measure of your goodness.
I see now that perhaps you were an unfair example as a friend, one I could never have hoped to follow in the footsteps of with this cursed heart of mine.
There must be some good to come from this agony! There has to be; otherwise it is too cruel to comprehend. But perhaps I can save the next poor soul who comes along.
So, when next a witch of real magic should find herself treading these cobbled streets, I call a curse upon her. A curse upon them all, in fact—every member of this forsaken, hollow town of treachery and judgement.
When the day does come that the next true witch after me should stumble through the threshold of this town and find my magic hidden, it will call to her.
Let it be she, the witch, who must endure such heartbreak, of having known a perfect life and then to watch it fall away from her.
Let it change her. Let it awaken her eyes to the truth of this all before it is too late.
Teach her that no good can come of magic.
I am no wicked witch, Magnolia. Perhaps bitter, perhaps jaded or perhaps merely weary of the world and its cruelty. Still, I am not wicked. It will only be for her own good, so that she will never feel a pain like this. Now she may find love instead.
Until she does come, Port Sylvan will remain a place of my own magic, for better or for worse. Let it be wrapped in the stuff. A place of happiness, a ribbon of golden sunshine tied around it, a sense of wonderment like rain showers each day. Someone ought to enjoy it.
Then, if she ever finds this book of blackened sorcery that found its way to me, the final tangle will be upon her.
A twisted web of wickedness that she must unpick, just as I have had to fight to find my way through.
She must not be greedy enough to think that love and magic can exist in tandem.
Perhaps if she were able to embrace the impossible, to find the joy in this world anyway, to find that love and magic and softness can still somehow endure, then the curse may be broken.
Such an impossibility earns reward! But I defy the moon, the sun and the stars to ensure that joy can fight its way through this wretched, hardened world.
A life of solitude with only magic at hand does not feel warm in the mornings. It does not make the tea or bake the bread. It does not share a story of the day before one falls asleep at night. Let her meet her own wickedness.
Tuesday 31 October
It is done. I am away. Farewell to my once home, to Port Sylvan.
Farewell to my true self, for no good ever came of her.
Maggie, if I am ever to return to this cursed town, for better or worse, my dearest hope is that you are here to greet me.
I hope you live the very longest of lives, and may you never have to flee the home you have always loved so dearly.
May the walls of it keep you safe forever.
I hope the next witch may find herself a friend just like you.
Without your heart entwined with mine, I would have perished long ago.
May lost magic trapped between the pages betray the next foolish one who finds it, so that she may learn quicker than I ever did.
Happiness was not meant for a witch like me.