Page 25 of Rewitched

With the short break, the jury seemed to have settled back to something more neutral, marginally less side-eyes and curt looks being thrown in Belle’s direction. Bronwyn took her place beside her impatient sister, and Belle regretfully returned to her precarious stool. As Rune found his seat again, adjusting the thighs of his trousers as he lowered himself, Belle was surprised to notice him give her a small expressionless nod of what she assumed was supposed to be encouragement. Belle returned the gesture and did her best to entirely ignore the small swell of appreciation in her chest.

She fiddled with the clasp on her sooth stone, now pinned back onto her dress.

“No knitting needed, thank you. I’m ready.”

Bronwyn gave Belle a wink and a keen thumbs-up, like an enthusiastic parent watching their child in a school play. The mouse in her pocket adjusted itself to get a better view of the courtroom scene, its tail peeking over the hem.

“We’ll pick up where we left off, eh, folks? No need to rehash the boring stuff,” Bronwyn asked the jury, who murmured in approval. Morena looked disappointed that her speech about withering death did not require a reprise.

Bronwyn clapped twice to bring the lights low and the pendulum to a languid halt once more. Belle could feel her own pulse raising the skin at her temples in an emphatic rhythm.

Recognising their cue, those able amongst the jury rose to their feet with a flurry of cloaks and a rustling adjustment of hats. Hands were raised in unison, poised in personal shapes, gestures and statures. Belle was grateful she had instantly selected the simple finger point fifteen years ago without much thought, drawn to its minimal margin for error. Other magic folk chose options with a little more flair when first receiving their powers. Raised open palms like both Gowdens were common, claps and clicks like Rune also popular choices, but any gesture was a possible option to accommodate all physicalities. Nose twitches had their day, intentional stares were considered a power move, wands were sometimes favoured by traditionalists but widely considered clunky in the modern magic era. She’d heard of a warlock who burped to cast his magic, which seemed like a choice that a fifteen-year-old boy would find funny and later grow up to deeply regret.

Speaking in one galvanising voice, the coven began to chant in unison, and the words washed over her in a wave of solid magic. She shut her eyes.

Our grandmothers wait for the truth to reveal,

Equidistant existence, thine secrets unsealed.

Ten nine fifty days to span decades three,

Transcend limitation, and thus shall it be.

Experience, action, perception and truth.

This coven now claims you for life, so in sooth.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Belle dared to peep through one eye while keeping the other firmly shut, half expecting everything around her to have vanished. To wake up with a start but safe in her bed.

Instead, everyone present in the courtroom had turned completely still, all held under the same blanketing trance. Their eyes closed, the slightest of movement only in hair caught on a slow breeze, and steady sleeping breaths seemed to come at a fraction of normal intervals. Everything in sight was motionless. Frozen in time.

“Oh…god.” Belle swayed on the spot, gripping the edge of the stool. “Please don’t have all died. Please, please don’t have all died.”

Bronwyn stood at peace, a pleasant smile on her face. Morena, deathly still, could have been a glamorous corpse. Belle chanced a glance at Rune, somehow expecting his attitude to be immune, but he, too, was entirely stationary, though still leaning unruffled against the wooden pew with one hand in his pocket. Belle’s internal panic was reaching interesting new levels of chaotic. How best might one begin to escape an underground witches’ lair full of the mysteriously deceased, with no exits known or available? All of the true crime documentaries in the world couldn’t help her cover it up.

The ground beneath her jolted in a giant tremor. She grabbed the flopping brim of her hat, losing balance. An enormous deafening clap of what could only be thunder boomed so loudly that Belle felt it rattle through her legs and chest and all the way up to the domed ceiling. The walls shook so hard from the noise that books tumbled from the shelves. The fireplaces burning at each end of the room were instantly extinguished.

The courtroom ceiling began to disappear from view as looming layers of opaque grey clouds rolled in thickly from the shadows and knitted themselves densely together. Several hundred feet under London, a storm was coming to Hecate House.

There followed three blindingly bright bolts of lightning, which slashed through the air with startling white light and wrapped the pendulum in a live, sparking current. All the while, through cacophony and chaos, the entire jury and the Gowden sisters remained absolutely motionless, frozen and floating in time.

And then came the rain. Sheets and sheets of it, relentlessly pouring down from the clouds which had formed inside. The heavens—or wherever she’d found herself for her birthday—had opened, and Belle threw her pointing finger out instinctively to conjure an umbrella.

But it wasn’t needed. Rather than drenching her from head to toe, the rain slid right over her. It felt like a ream of chilled soft silk, the water skimming over her clothes and skin, leaving no trace. Yet the rain pooled at her feet in translucent floods, reflecting rainbows like a petrol spill. The rainwater rippled like invisible pearlescent cloth across the floor, while the sparks and shocks from the lightning bounced and crackled haphazardly through the air, falling like a snow flurry. Rather than sticking as snowfall would, the sparks hovered in mid-air above the floods, from snowflakes to fireflies. It was breathtaking to see, the lightning dust reflecting off the torrents of rain. Belle couldn’t look away. It was beautiful and terrifying.

As suddenly as the thunderstorm arrived, it passed. One final grand thunderclap shook the room and seemed to break the spell. The rain slowed in a moment. The clouds above parted and dissolved to nothing, as candyfloss vanishes in water. The iridescent flood remained pooled across the ground, and the fireflies of lightning stayed floating.

The jury were awoken from their trance in unison as though they’d been napping and jerked themselves awake. The Gowden sisters jolted back to consciousness, Bronwyn so startled by her return to the room that she dropped like a sack of spuds into her chair with a snuffling snore. Morena simply shook her head elegantly as if to brush away the cobwebs, returning to perfect composure in an instant.

“Bravo, everybody! Bravo, folks! All okay back there?” Bronwyn called cheerily, as she dusted herself down.

She was answered with a murmur from the jury that didn’t sound entirely convinced that they were okay, actually. A few looked wobbly on their feet, like they’d had one too many. One lady covered her mouth in panic to stop herself from throwing up. Another person was attempting to wring imaginary water out of their ears. Caspar simply straightened the lapels of his blazer. Rune casually pushed hair back from his face and looked straight at Belle.

“Oh, isn’t it pretty?” Bronwyn said, gesturing to the dance of stars and rain now in front of them. “Well, that’s the easy bit out of the way.”

“The easy bit? I thought you’d all died,” Belle exclaimed, any fragment of composure long gone.