Page 37 of Rewitched

The old woman waved the pair away, already forgetting their brief encounter.

“One of life’s kindest and cruellest gifts, old friends. Anyone’s Achilles heel,” Bronwyn said sadly. “I miss her and she’s still here. Love does leave you vulnerable, if you allow it to endure.”

Moving through the endless aisles again, the pair finally reached an intricate iron structure buried in the shadows. A gate stretched all the way up to the high ceiling and was wide across. Its bars of iron twisted and turned together like immovable roots of ivy, marking off a separate chamber. Its branches sprawled out all the way across the roof overhead and wound downwards like an unnatural twin to the willow tree above. The ossuary stood like a giant birdcage but devoid of any life inside.

“An unlocking spell won’t work?”

Bronwyn was roughly digging the small key into a thick lock on the cage’s gate, wiggling it about with great effort. She laughed aloud at the apparently ridiculous idea.

“Heavens and hell’s bells, girl. Safely storing sacred magical information requires a good old lock and key. Any witch or warlock can work out a spell if they think about it hard enough. But the Lore Key is one of a kind that only Sybil can mind safely. No one stands a chance.”

With a satisfying click, the lock opened. The key vanished from Bronwyn’s grasp as soon as it had completed its duty, leaving no trace but a few miniature sparks amongst her fingertips.

“Oh, where did that come from?” Belle heard Sybil across the library, sounding faintly far off in the distance as she received the key back in her possession.

“Foolproof,” Belle muttered in amazement.

As the ossuary gate swung open, a cold breeze sent Belle’s hair flying backwards, and she only just managed to catch her hat from sailing several shelves behind. The coldness carried the scent of winter. Crisp frost, misty rain, pine needles.

Belle felt her breath catch in her chest as more of the space came to light. A blanket of pale, blanched bones covered the entire back wall. It must have contained hundreds if not thousands of skeletons, all artfully arranged and thoughtfully positioned in an eerie but undeniably joyful way. A startling chandelier of bones of every shape hung hauntingly from the ceiling, swaying slightly in the cold air amidst draped garlands. The sight was all at once both deeply horrifying and strangely beautiful, bringing an awareness of the skeleton under her own skin, which was a feeling she wasn’t sure she loved. Despite the sentiment Bronwyn had described—lost souls finding friends and chosen family to rest beside—she couldn’t help but shiver.

“That’s the badger!”

As well as the macabre decor, the ossuary also held a vast selection of chests, trunks, cabinets and cupboards slotted together like building blocks. It looked like the most cursed Lost Property Department of all time. Finding her footing on various knobs, handles and jutting drawers, Bronwyn climbed up to one particular cabinet. With a huff, she shoved aside a box brimming with newspapers, a plinth holding a golden cauldron and an inexplicable statue of a screeching cat head. Eventually giving up and clambering back down to instead direct Belle with hands on hips, the pair brought down what looked like an ornate library card catalogue system.

“This,” the sage witch began as she pulled out the first drawer with a flick of magic and immediately began rifling through the contents, “is the coven archival register. Hasn’t been updated for a while, in truth. But I’m sure there’s some folk in here who’ll be keen contenders for your mentorship, lovey.”

Belle frowned. “And if there’s not?”

“Then it’s Plan B, I suppose. Although, actually, this should probably be considered Plan B. Plan A was that you pass your hearing and head off for a lovely birthday dinner. I think we’re past that one. Plan C remains unconfirmed as of yet, poppet.”

She replied brightly, as though Belle’s powers were not hanging by a fine thread. Bronwyn continued rummaging through the drawers, pulling out from each oddly shaped compartment a stack of what looked like old sepia postcards with a holographic quality to the film.

“In this archive is every single member of this coven, past and present, who, in different ways and circumstances over the centuries, have proven themselves to have the hallmarks of legendary Selcouth magic. As the note in the grimoire plainly said, they would all make worthy mentors.”

Bronwyn shuffled through the cards, glancing fondly at each as she went.

“You could put all of this on a computer, Bronwyn. It might be a bit easier to keep on top of everything,” Belle said, trying to be helpful.

“A what, love? Ahh, see, I would have loved you to meet Elagoria. Fabulous, she was,” Bronwyn said affectionately. She extracted the card in question from the archive stacks. It showed a grinning woman with her witch’s hat covered in tropical flowers and a few pieces of fruit. “So gentle. Loved animals above all else. A perfect magic mentor—if she hadn’t met an unfortunate end a couple of years ago. Poor Elagoria. That’s what happens when you try to moisturise a dragon’s tail. They don’t like to be groomed.”

Bronwyn handed her the card for a closer look. Elagoria’s photo featured a bold red line, which looked alarmingly like blood, slashed right the way through.

Name: Elagoria Tippleton

Last known location: Leeds, United Kingdom

Special arts: Animal Affinity, incense burning

Next to “Status,” an updated detail had been written: Deceased. Dragon fire.

Bronwyn sighed. She dove back into the cabinet, trying the next drawer along.

“Arjun Christophate…” She flashed a picture of a man with piercing eyes and a dense black beard. “The less said about what happened to him, the better. All I can say, Belle, is never trust a siren when you’re on holiday. It never ends well. His poor wife.” Belle, aghast, caught the phrase driven to madness, drowned at the bottom of Arjun’s card.

Things didn’t brighten up from there. Once they’d removed everybody with a vested interest in her trial, the pool of potential mentors dwindled drastically. The handful of remaining Selcouth members seemed to have followed one unfortunate fate after another. Poor Lira Draculite had suffered a miserable demise from something that Bronwyn would only mysteriously describe as “the pox…but not that pox.” Ethellius Hartingham had attempted a transference to Hull, but had ended up in hell thanks to his strong Scottish accent, which seemed particularly unfortunate luck. Marigold Drefus had fallen down the stairs. Her family swore that spirits had been to blame.

“You can say that again. Always on the drink, that one” was Bronwyn’s cutting assessment.