Chapter 32 Courage and Joy #2
Laurel nodded frantically, which made it very hard to brush her hair. “And I know for a fact they were definitely fairies and not bugs, because I smelled strawberry sherbet when they took off. That’s how you know.”
Sage bit down on her lip so as not to give anything away. Her sister’s obsession with seeing fairies in their garden was her current favourite thing to hear about. Particularly given her own recent and most magical incident…
On her fifteenth birthday, three days ago, Sage had been doing her English homework because, honestly, she enjoyed it anyway, and the piece of lined paper that she was writing on had begun to fold itself into an intricate origami star.
All by itself. It had levitated directly in front of her, spinning beautifully, before landing perfectly in Sage’s palm.
She was excited to tell her mother and father about this newfound magic—if not a little unsure of how to break the news. Being two university professors, she hoped they would be thrilled and begin their research keenly to help her understand and nurture it properly.
The three days with magical powers at her fingertips had changed everything.
She had decided that it didn’t particularly matter that she wasn’t pretty or skinny or destined to be a pop singer in a crop top.
She was clever, which people sometimes liked about her, and now she seemed to be able to conjure extra marshmallows into her hot chocolate on demand, so nothing else mattered all that much.
The presence of magic had blown Sage’s entire world wide open.
“After tea, you can show me again, all right?”
“You believe me?” Laurel asked into the mirror, surprised. She yowled as Sage tugged her hair a little too hard.
“You know what, Laur, I think I do,” Sage said with a conspiratorial wink. “Rob, on the other hand, might take a bit more convincing. Boys are much more boring with that sort of thing.”
Having wolfed down their dinner at record speed, Laurel had barely even let Sage and Robin finish their last mouthful before she was tugging them out of the back door and into their garden, a thin but long stretch of wilderness that led to a stream at the very back.
Laurel sprinted off into the distance, calling to fairies, while Sage hung back with Robin.
The pair walked side by side with crossed arms.
“Has anything else weird happened?” Robin said in a lowered voice. “I really think we’re going to have to tell Mum and Dad soon, especially if you end up blowing anything up again. They’re going to notice the scorch marks on the sofa cushions.”
“That wasn’t my fault. You’re the one who wanted to see the flame spell again.”
Robin scoffed a laugh through his thick braces. “It’s fun having a secret from them, to be fair. They normally know everything.”
“This one’s just between the three of us.
” Sage grinned before ruffling his hair in the sort of way that only an older sister can get away with.
“These post-spell headaches are pretty intense, but it’s worth it.
It won’t be long until they realize something’s up, though.
Dad, we could probably convince that it’s just hormones.
That usually scares him off. But Mum never misses a trick.
I’m going to get it out of the way tonight. ”
They strolled past a part of the garden which, thanks to their mother’s talented growing, was always thick with the most beautiful rainbow of flowers, no matter the season.
It was Sage’s favourite spot. Completely pointless, entirely wild and extremely beautiful, just for the sake of it. She loved stuff like that.
“Go and keep an eye on the little rat bag, will you? I’ll catch you up,” she told Robin, who nodded and slunk off after the youngest Hemlock sibling.
Sage knelt to the flowerbed and happily plucked a couple of handfuls.
If she was going to break the news of this magic to her mum, then it would probably help to be armed with a little bouquet of beauty.
She gathered up a bunch of the pink-purple heather, which was her mum’s favourite colour.
Her own too. Then a few of the blue forget-me-nots, some white cow parsley, orange poppies.
Finally, using the secateurs that her mother left in a basket nearby, she took three long-stemmed red roses to add into the mix.
They were beautifully, brilliantly red. Three was a magical number in their family.
“Ouch!” Sage’s hand shot back, then she brought it to her lips as it caught a sudden sting. It felt like an electric shock, a sudden crackle, a sharpness that burned against her skin. Must have been a thorn.
With witchery such a freshly blooming beauty beneath her skin, Sage had not yet come to realize that new, untrained magic would sometimes snap in such a way if it sensed uncertainty or unfamiliarity in the air.
If a clash of magic felt uncomfortable. If it came to butt heads with a curse that was already at play and had been since the witch was born.
“Mum! Mum! Why didn’t you wake me up? I’m going to be late!
” Sage hop-sprinted from her bedroom to the bathroom, calling downstairs as she yanked a sock into place while simultaneously brushing her teeth.
She tugged on her school tie, then took a quick look in the mirror and sighed.
Her hair was even more out of control than usual.
“Ugh, Mum? I’ve got my French test this morning. Mrs. M absolutely hates it when anyone is l—” Sage burst into her parents’ bedroom only to find that they were still in bed. “What the hell? It’s not the weekend, you know! Why aren’t you…?”
Sage blinked, confused. Her mother and father were still under the covers, eyes closed, fast asleep. But strangely so.
They hadn’t so much as stirred at her barging into their room, and she always got told off for doing that. They were too still. Too peaceful.
Sage felt disoriented. The sight was wrong, as though she couldn’t trust her own eyes.
She crept towards their bed, hesitant to say or do anything that would tell her what was really happening, because something in her deepest, most animalistic instincts told her that she didn’t want the answer.
A sick, bubbling feeling brewed at the bottom of her stomach, made her feel a bit faint.
She reached for the bedside table to steady herself and a vase fell to the floor as she knocked it.
The glass broke. Water pooled. A floorboard creaked beneath her feet, and still her parents didn’t stir.
A silence followed when there should have been more.
“Mum…” Sage barely breathed. Her pulse was spinning. This was not real. It could not be real. “Dad…”
They were unnaturally pale, a sheen of sweat clinging to their foreheads.
And at the corner of her vision, as everything else blurred, Sage saw the broken vase of flowers at her feet, the bouquet that her mother had divided into two and placed on each of their bedside tables.
She had been baffled but dazzled by her daughter’s news.
They had celebrated the arrival of her magic wholeheartedly, as she had always known they would.
Heather, forget-me-nots, cow parsley, orange poppies. Three ink-black roses, striking and beautiful, but jarringly dark, with only the faintest hue of crimson to the very edges of their petals.
Sage’s own throat had already started to tingle, closing up with an itchy, metallic sort of taste at the back of her tongue. Her magic gave a painful twang, as though trying to catch her attention, alert her.
Black roses?
She wasn’t quite sure whether her body and her mind were still functioning.
But somewhere in her periphery, Sage was distracted by the sound of the squeaky bedroom door behind her.
And then the scrape of wood on floorboards, where their cosy but slightly scruffy cottage had started to warp a little against the winter cold.
Quiet laughter from Robin downstairs followed by the noise of a cartoon.
“Why are Mum and Dad still sleeping?” Laurel asked at Sage’s shoulder.
That was enough to burst the bubble that Sage had formed around herself. The bubble that had muffled everything since she’d stepped inside the room and seen…
“Sage, put me down. What’s wrong with Mum? Put me down! Mum, tell her!”
Sage had scooped up Laurel by the waist and now carried her out of the room before she could get any closer to the bed.
She rushed down to the living room and plonked her little sister down heavily next to her brother.
Laurel whined. Robin ate cereal. Sage told them not to move, to turn the TV up, to not look away.
They were too young to have a memory like that burned into their minds. It wouldn’t have been fair. Sage would carry it for them instead. That was what an older sister did.
Irreparable, incomprehensible damage had been done so quietly and calmly, but that was how life best liked to work, with invisible footsteps and no announcement as it welcomed itself at the home’s hearth.
The moments that left a jagged, ugly scar behind in their wake were often formed in such a way—a sudden, rough rip through an otherwise normal day.
And while the world kept spinning and the music kept playing for everybody else, Sage Hemlock felt any ounce of reckless magic slip irredeemably between her fingers forever.
Caution and control were quick to take its place.