AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t have any magic,” she read and then burst into peals of laughter. “Oh, my dear—of course you have magic!” she exclaimed. “Any witch of the Pruitt bloodline has more magic than they know what to do with. Why, I remember when you were just a little thing and your talents started to show—your Grandmother was so proud of you! She bragged to me that you were going to be the strongest witch in generations.”
I wrote again and passed the note to her.
“I’m not a witch?” she read, making it into a question. She frowned at me. “Why, sweetheart—of course you’re a witch! I can feel the magic, just under your skin.” She put out a long-fingered artistic hand and gripped my wrist. “It’s all bound up in knots because it can’t get free, but it’s there all right—like an electric current looking for an outlet.”
Now I had so many questions I didn’t know where to start! But one seemed to be the most important. I scribbled it down.
“How do I get unbound?” Goody Albright read aloud. She frowned. “Well, you’d have to find a way to break the binding spell that was put on you.” She sighed. “But I’m afraid that might be difficult, since it was your own mother who placed it. Oh, I remember how she and your Grandmother fought about it! Elvira was against binding you but your mother insisted it was for your own good.”
This was making my head whirl. Was she saying that my mother had been a witch too? Not only that, but she had bound me somehow with a spell?
“I don’t understand,” I wrote. “None of this makes sense.”
“I expect not, if you’ve been living in the human world,” Goody Albright said, after reading my note. “You probably didn’t even know magic was real until you were drawn back to Hidden Hollow, am I right?”
I nodded and then shrugged, trying to indicate my bewilderment.
“Yes, we’re one of the magical enclaves in the world where magic workers are free to use their craft and Creatures don’t have to wear disguises,” she remarked. “And we?—”
But just then another one of the Brownies came into the sun parlor and bent down to whisper in her ear.
“Oh, for goodness sake!” Goody Albright looked irritated. “Excuse me, my dear,” she said to me. “But one of our guests is having some difficulty and is demanding to see the owner which happens to be yours truly.”
She sighed theatrically and rose from her chair.
I rose as well, since it seemed like our “chat” was at an end.
“Thank you so much for dropping by.” Goody Albright leaned down to kiss me on the cheek. “And don’t worry—I’m sure you’ll find your way out of that binding spell. It’s getting old by now—it must be fraying around the edges. If you can even find one person you can talk to, that will help unravel it even more.”
Then she flitted away like a brightly colored butterfly, leaving me to find my own way out of the sprawling B&B. I barely saw my surroundings as I went—my head was too full of questions.
Was I really the descendent of a family of witches? And did that make me a witch too? Was it a spell that made my words stick in my throat? And had my own mother really been the one who cast that spell?
I didn’t have any answers and it seemed the eccentric Goody Albright was too busy at the moment for me to ask her anything else.
But I was determined to find out one way or another…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Luckily, Goodman Kreeches Grocery was just down the street from The Red Lion. I walked there in a daze, barely noticing the strange people passing me on the sidewalk.
From the outside, Goodman Kreeches appeared to be a small, gourmet grocery store like the kind you might find in the expensive part of any city. It had a rounded green awning over the entrance and a display of fresh produce out front. Inside, I grabbed a whicker basket from the stack beside the front door and began my shopping.
As I went down the rows, I saw a special cheese section, an olive bar, and a whole wall devoted to different wines—each seemingly more expensive than the last.
But there were some other, stranger sections too—ones you’d never see in a regular grocery store.
In the middle of the store I saw a nectar fountain, which looked like one of those chocolate fountains you find at wedding receptions and buffets. The nectar that oozed from it seemed to have the same consistency as honey and a sign informed me that it was, Bluebell Nectar—only $20 or two gold per jug, today only!
Since the little glass jugs stacked beside the fountain were tiny—I estimated that each couldn’t hold more than a cup—it seemed like an exorbitant price to me. Also, what did it mean “two gold?” Did they have another type of currency here in Hidden Hollow?
A little further down, I saw a stack of hay bales, each about two feet tall by three feet long. “Gourmet Hay—$10 or one gold per bale” read the sign.
I frowned at it in confusion. Who around here was eating hay? Then I remembered the centaur and the minotaur I’d seen when I first came into town. Maybe they were the customers for this particular product.
Beside the hay bales was a section of grain bags with lots of different grains to choose from, including a “Gourmet Gut Mix” whatever that meant and “Gluten Free Rice Mix” as well.
Right next to the grain section were some bags of “Honey dipped sticks.” I picked one up and looked at it, expecting that it would be pretzel sticks. But no—it looked like someone had actually clipped twigs off of trees and dipped them in honey. They looked glossy and crispy but also completely inedible—for me, at least.
