Page 15 of Rewitched

Glancing over her shoulder to check that nobody was taking any notice of the mad girl staring at a thicket of a willow, Belle reached out and parted the dense wet greenery, soaking her sleeves. As the darkness shrunk away, the warm light revealed a wooden door pressed deep into the stone circle wall of the cemetery. It couldn’t have been there before. Even behind the willow, she would surely have spotted the heavy dark oak door strapped with aged metal. Or the weighty knocker shaped like a celestial moon. Or the intricate carvings of stars in the grain, along with three single words: Tonitru, Fulgur, Pluvia.

6

The First Test

THE DOOR WAS locked, of course.

Luckily this was a spell she did have in her arsenal, having used it frequently when she still lived at Bonnie’s house. It had been worth committing to magic to avoid knocking in the middle of the night every time she forgot her keys. Belle flicked a finger of Ostium Resigno stars towards the heavy bolt. It opened with a click followed by the flurry of a brown mouse scurrying into the musty darkness that breathed out of the passageway.

Belle let out a loud laugh of sheer disbelief.

She dropped her bag to the ground and tugged at the bundle stuffed inside. Rushing to straighten out her cloak, she batted at the creases before throwing it over her shoulders and fastening the silver clasp at her collarbones. Although not exactly a frequent choice from her wardrobe, Belle had a soft spot for the coven attire. The fabric billowed around her right to the floor, black at first glance but revealing rich tones of plum, amethyst and violet when it caught the warm light of the lamp-post. It wasn’t until the cloak was admired more closely that it revealed the best part—delicate, exquisite embroidery of constellations. Stars, moons, planetary alignments and zodiac signs, all in fine lucid threads like spider-silk woven into the fabric. Each witch’s cloak was uniquely personal to them, the pattern designed to their own birth chart: the way the night looked the moment they arrived into this world, the plotting of the sky that the universe had crafted to welcome a witch’s first breath. Even when Belle had been somewhat mortified by all things magical in the early years, she had known the cloak was something to behold.

Belle pulled out the crumpled hat to match, which was scrunched underneath a water bottle and a notepad. While she had always loved the cloak, the hat could get straight in the bin. No one looked good in that thing. Although the coven had voted to give their classic hat a much-needed refresh a couple of decades ago, shrinking the towering height and banning all unbecoming cliché cobweb detail, it still sat tall in the classic point. The wide brim flopped down as she popped it from inside out, shoved it haphazardly onto her head and blew her fringe out of the way. It looked ridiculous. Belle hastily snatched up the rest of her things, steeled her nerves and rushed inside.

She found herself in a pitch-black corridor, save for a smattering of burning torches pinned to the walls. They lit the way in pools of meagre light and heat, just enough to vaguely make out a long stretch ahead. Enough to see a corridor slope downwards and disappear into an unwelcoming nothing. It smelled hot and dark, like scorched earth at night.

“Well, this seems like a wonderful idea.”

Taking a step forward into obscurity, Belle jumped what felt like ten feet into the air as the door slammed behind her. With it went the last trace of daylight. The outline of the outside world faded to nothing, as though it had never been there at all. She was alone.

Squinting to make out anything at all, she attempted to yank one of the flaming torches from the wall before quickly realising that a Lux Vegrandis spell to turn her finger to torchlight was a slightly more refined option. She felt her way along the walls, following the path that uncoiled like a hibernating snake underneath London.

It had only been a few metres of careful treading when the whole corridor shuddered suddenly and violently. It seemed as though the floor would give out beneath her, that the tunnel would collapse entirely, debris and dust crumbling onto her shoulders. Belle cried out and clung to the wall. An earthquake in an underground witch’s tunnel felt like an unfortunate way to go but was about what she deserved.

It took a moment for her wits to register that the tremors came from a tube train rumbling past just on the other side of the stone walls. She gathered herself and walked on.

With a growing feeling that this was probably the end of it all, Belle eventually came to an abrupt stop with a hard, painful smack against both knees. The small light from her finger extinguished in an instant, and she found that it couldn’t be reignited, forces bigger than her now blocking her meagre magic. She thought her eyes were tricking her, still adjusting in the swallowing darkness, but a firm stone wall gradually formed into view a foot or so ahead, shutting off the way, like the shadows themselves had turned solid. A dead end. She must have missed a turning, a hidden corner or an entry in the walls, and walked straight past the door that took her to the courtroom. She sighed and spun to turn back.

The winding corridor was gone. It had been silently closing up behind her as she walked. The once stretching, endless space now pressed up close, the solid stone only six feet away. Her heart skipped double, rebounding off her ribcage.

She was trapped. A sole torch was giving out watery light that barely lit her own hand in front of her. She swallowed over and over again. A firm stone lodged itself thickly in her throat. Don’t panic.

She gazed around again, noting every possible inch of the space but finding only an echo of her own unsteady breathing. A spell was required, that much was obvious, but the possibilities were too many to know where to even begin.

“If anyone is listening, if I get out of here, I promise that I will never try and improve myself ever again.”

She took a moment to steady her breath, to push away the claustrophobia stroking at the back of her neck with spindly cold fingers. Desperate for stability, she leaned against the wall in front to steel herself. She flinched. The contact of her skin against the stone sent static energy through her, unpleasantly shocking like brushing an electric fence. With a hiss of pain, Belle could only stare with dreadful realisation as the stones began to crumble to a fine dusty powder at her touch. And once they’d started, they didn’t stop.

Sand began to gather at her feet, slowly but definitely pooling. It was piling up as the wall disintegrated. Some kind of chain reaction from her touch.

“This cannot be happening. Why? Why are you doing this? Please stop, stop, stop.”

She tried to shove the rapidly multiplying sand back into place, scooping it feverishly from the floor into the holes of the wall. But as quickly as the stones crumbled at her feet, they refilled and rebuilt themselves, leaving the dust to pile higher around her toes. A horrifying thought of quicksand crossed her mind. Trapped, inside her own personal hourglass.

“I cannot die in here. Mum will kill me,” she spat, trying to clear the flying grains of sand from her lips.

She was struggling to loosen her feet now, but the tip of her boot hit against something solid with a dull thud. The top of a glass bottle bobbed up through the sand. A flicker of frenzied relief and hope flooded her heart as she noticed a small scroll inside. She grabbed at the bottle. Real-life buried treasure. It had to be the right spell. An answer or instructions. Some kind, any kind, of help. She frantically uncorked the bottle with her teeth, shook the contents out into her hand and unfurled the scrap. The sand tightened just below her knees. She couldn’t read the words fast enough as they glowed like fine embers against the paper.

No soul shall pass untrue in purpose.

This wall unmoved for those superfluous.

Key nor hammer break illusion.

Transfigurate this path’s conclusion.

While time’s relentless sand does flow,