Under The Same Sky
Chapter 1
Ember
I did it again.
For a hot minute there I stupidly harboured the delusion that my mum, for once, might have actually supported a decision that I’d made.
Today I moved nearly 90 miles away for university from the quaint ‘book town’ of Hay-On-Wye to the Roman city of Bath.
“You do realise that over half of UK graduates don’t actually end up working in the field related to their degree?,” my mum says with a look of discontent as she reluctantly passes me another storage box.
My eyes roll into the back of my head as I stack it onto the storage box Jenga I’ve currently got going on in the boot of the car.
“And where’d you hear that?,” I ask turning to face her now, “the well-renowned, highly established, peer-reviewed source of Facebook?”
Her lips morph into a disapproving thin line before puffing out an exhausted sigh, “No, actually. Lianne told me. She said that her girl Ruby just graduated with a first class in English Literature from Nottingham and is now working full time at…Home Bargains.” She whispers ‘Home Bargains’ with a face full of such disgust, you’d have thought she’d just seen a nun get her tits out in church.
“Ah- Lianne said, therefore it must be true!” I add, my tone laced with sarcasm.
“Just really think about it Ember, consider whether you’re making the right choice.”
Jesus CHRIST she really didn’t know when to give it a rest.
I inhale a deep gulp of air and compose myself in case I explode. “Look,” I say clasping my hands together, “you’ve made it perfectly clear that you don’t want me to pursue this degree. I get that. I don’t respect it, but I get it. You’re quite happy for me to continue to live in your tight little bubble because of dad, but you need to realise that you shouldn’t want that for me, I’m literally your daughter.”
The thing is, I know she meant well. My dad passed away just under 2 years ago during my first year of sixth form and ever since then her grieving has taken on the form of constantly pushing me to follow in his footsteps. Don’t get me wrong, it was the most challenging thing we have ever been through. I don’t care what anyone says, time certainly does not heal all wounds. You just learn to keep reapplying fresh plasters, gritting your teeth through the sting, and gaslighting yourself into believing that they’re healing underneath. Dad was a full-blooded witch, born and raised to an extensive line of witches in a small village of Vienna, (I’m not going to even attempt to butcher the name), in the summer of 1965. They managed to live a quiet life for a few years but were still able to practice magic. However, when dad was 16, they ended up fleeing across the other side of the world and starting a new life in Hay-On-Wye, Wales, when the rumour spread like wildfire around the village of ‘unexplained magic’ and ‘sightings of cults practicing satanic rituals in the woods’. Thank God, these rumours ended up being nothing more than that, rumours. No pitchforks, no angry mobs, just overembellished news articles that will now be nothing more than another myth likely to be found in endless ‘unsolved mystery’ videos on YouTube.
After the whole ‘we think you’re a satanic cult’ debacle, I can see why my dad and his family tried even harder to blend in with their surroundings. Although he still dedicated time every day to perfect his magic, he found himself wanting to study a psychology course at college. It sounds cliché, but dad really did love helping people. It was part of the reason he was so invested in practicing white magic, he wanted to learn to cultivate it for good. But before he could treat the symptoms with magic, he wanted to know and understand how to effectively treat the cause, that’s why he opted for psychology in particular.
Enter my mum. He met her on his first day of college. I remember how he’d always used to tell everyone that he thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen when she first walked into the room with her crimson flared jumpsuit and blonde bouncy curls, his heart pounding in his chest as she came and sat down in the empty chair next to his. Cue the part where everyone audibly coos and gushes.
“I couldn’t believe out of all of the empty chairs; she chose to sit next to me. I couldn’t wait to get to know her,” he would say as his smile reached his eyes, “…until she opened her mouth and I realised she was a right moody bitch.” Everyone would roar with laughter as he revealed this part of the story, mum guffawing every time.
“I was just nervous, okay?,” she insisted.
“It was my accent, wasn’t it? It put you right off!,” he announced, the laughter of the room growing even louder. That’s the thing about my dad, he was a joker. He drove mum around the bend and back, but I honestly think it was one of the things she loved most about him. He was her first shot of espresso on a winter morning and her glass of warm whiskey before bed. Their friendship quickly bloomed during college and within 2 months, they were official. They rarely argued, it was only when dad started making constant excuses as to why she couldn’t come to the house that mum decided she’d had enough. She thought it was because he was embarrassed to be seen with her and gave him an ultimatum. She said she wanted someone who was proud to introduce her to his family, who wanted her to be a part ofhis family. Dad knew he couldn’t risk losing her, so one night, he invited her over to the house and admitted everything. She laughed in his face at first, exclaiming that if he was that embarrassed of her, he should say so, rather than making up some radical story. He knew there was no way of her believing him unless he proved it, so he took her hand and led her over to the window.
“Just look,”he whispered in her ear before channelling all of his magic and shoving his palms toward the sky. The stagnant night sky turned from a deep Noir into an explosion of technicolour. He’d created her own personal firework display. I swallow down the thick lump in my throat as I imagine how romantic that must have been. Naturally, she was freaked out at first. Dad said that all the colour had drained from her face and he thought she was going to throw up. She didn’t bolt for the door as he’d expected, but it took over an hour to try and reassure her that he wasn’t anything to be feared. She was visibly calmer then and in time, she came around, promising him that his secret was safe with her.
And it always was.
She never breathed a word to anyone and if anything, his secret brought them even closer together. Fast forward twenty-two years and then there was me. Born out of the pure love of both human and witch.
Dad was everything, not just to mum and me, but to everyone who ever had the pleasure of knowing him. It was like the light of our lives had immediately dimmed when he died suddenly of a cardiac arrest. Everything felt significantly darker when the doctor teetered into the waiting room and gave us the news that there was nothing else that they could do.
“We can bring him back!,” I screamed at my grandma and dad’s mother, Allegra, “we can fuse our magic, we can revive his heart!”
I didn’t even care who heard at this point, they probably thought I was just a delusional grieving mess anyway.
Allegra looked at me sympathetically with her swollen red eyes, “Ember,” she choked on my name whilst wrapping her arms around me, “you know it doesn’t work like that. We can’t interfere with life and death. It’s the natural order and it’s done.”
I’d shoved desperately out of her grasp, “how can you say that?! what’s the point in even having magic if we can’t use it for things like this?! He’s dead. We will never see him again…he’s…gone.” The floodgates were out in full force, I couldn’t breathe. I felt like a pathetic excuse for a half-witch, useless. But if there was one thing that I learned from this horrific experience, I knew it with absolute certainty. If the magic I had couldn’t save my dad, I didn’t want any of it.
◆◆◆
“I suppose you won’t be visiting every weekend considering you’ve chosen a university that’s as far away from me as humanely possible,” Mum mumbles with yet another disapproving look, acting as if I’m jetting off to the outback rather than Bath.
“Mum it’s literally 2 hours away. I can’t promise every weekend because I don’t know how much work I’ll have to do yet, but I can easily hop on the train,” I reply.
To be honest, I can’t see myself visiting her all that much with the amount of grief I’m inevitably going to receive every single visit. It’s borderline toxic. I genuinely thought she’d be proud at the prospect of me heading off to university to pursue a degree in the field that both she anddad studied at college. After all, if it hadn’t been for that course, they wouldn’t have even met. However, I quickly learned that this battle has much less to do with the premise of me going to university and a lot more to do with the fact that I said I wasn’t going to practice magic anymore.
“You’re what?,” she spat out the first time I told her, her tone seeping with venom.
She had a mixture of disappointment and fury in her eyes as I explained myself. “I’ve already told you, it’s useless. It couldn’t save dad; therefore, I’m not interested, end of discussion.” I think she soon learned that even though she’s stubborn, I’ve got her beat, and decided to drop it. Instead, she now just made sarky comments and constant digs at my choice to go to university.
Alas, I do what I always do, I inhale the world’s deepest breath and keep on moving, figuratively but now literally as I do need to get a move on in the car if I’m going to ensure I make it in good time to secure the best cupboards and fridge space in the flat kitchen. I’ve seen enough student forums on Reddit to know that if you’re last to the flat youre more often than not destined to get the shittiest ones possible.
“I should probably get going now Mum,” I say as I walk over to her, arms extended for a hug. Even though she’s still frowning, I can tell a fa?ade when I see one. It’s natural, I’m her only child, and empty nest syndrome is a real thing.
“I’ll text you when I arrive, love you,” I give her a quick squeeze and she plants a brief peck on my cheek. A flicker of sadness hits my chest, but it’s only fleeting. Picking up my tote bag and perching the straps over my shoulder, I then head over to the car.
“Ready?,” my grandma Allegra asks through a warm smile.
Buckling myself into the seat, and peering one final glance over my shoulder at the maze of boxes and bin liners engulfing the car, I plug my phone into the aux cord, pull my sunglasses down over my eyes, and reply with a grin, “as I’ll ever be.”