Page 47 of Disenchanted

“Don’t take it personally,” she teased.

Carefully, she lifted the mirror down from its display and carried it back to the archive to examine it thoroughly in a new light. Of course they had weighed, measured, dusted and swabbed the frame, the glass and its fastenings the moment they had identified potential magical qualities. But now that it was possibly a more significant piece in the spell’s puzzle, she could not underestimate any tiny scratch or sparkle.

After careful inspection under a magnifying glass in the archive, Sage puffed away her hair in a grumble of frustration.

“There’s nothing!” she whined. “Not so much as a bit of sale sticker residue.”

Casimir had long ago slid down the bookshelves and taken a seat on the floor. He was doing a terrible job of pretending to make himself useful, flicking through an old copy of Favourite Fairy Tales that he had borrowed from the library the day before. Sage was privately very touched that he had gone to the trouble of researching without her having to nag. It normally required a lot of bribery.

“Mirrors are a very common fairy-tale trope,” Casimir said. “Although rarely a bringer of good news. They seem to mostly either tell you that you’re uglier than your stepdaughter, that your crackpot father is in trouble, or they send you into a topsy-turvy world you didn’t want to go to in the first place. Take your pick.”

“I think we’ve already achieved the latter,” Sage said, leaning over the mirror on her desk at such an unflattering angle that she grimaced. “They’re more than just bad-news bringers. Mirrors always show characters something about themselves, a truth that they can’t bear to face or things they can’t perceive themselves. There’s revelation, there’s…”

“Illusion?” Casimir said. “Seeing things more clearly?”

Sage pushed the mirror away. That much was true. She could see all too clearly that she looked tired and drawn, while everyone else seemed to have an unfair romantic glow about them. As much as it annoyed her to acknowledge it—because it really shouldn’t matter—she felt left out that the spell had seemingly not bothered to give her her own part in the story. Where was her transformation, her fairy-tale moment? She pushed the mortifying, petulant thought to the back of her mind. It made perfect sense, in many ways. Perhaps she wasn’t deserving of one.

19

A Familiar Spell

With the mirror refusing to give anything away, Sage eventually bowed to peer pressure, as well as literal tugging on her sleeves to drag her away. They all returned to the bonfire celebrations, she and Casimir heading for a seat in the gazebo. It was his idea—the white structure with ornate railings sat at the back corner of the green and looked perfectly, peacefully inviting. Although he did like to push her out of her comfort zone, he was always first to notice when Sage needed a quiet moment away from other human beings. He insisted that they take two cups of warm cider to go and observe the organized fun at a safe, separate distance, just as she liked.

“Come on, Rob. I long for adventure!” Laurel said excitedly in a strange tone that sounded too dreamy, even for her. “How I wish, upon a star, to see a world beyond these walls!”

Before Sage could tell her to lay off the sugar, Laurel had dragged Robin back to the stall selling homemade rag dolls that his daughters would love. He too looked a little baffled at her ramblings as she hung off his arm and babbled on about how her nieces were “the prettiest girls in all the land, with hearts true and fair.”

“It is doing you good, you know,” Casimir said, his voice calling her attention back to the moment. He threw an arm around Sage as they sat side by side, perched on the bench that wrapped around the inside of the gazebo. She leaned her head on his broad shoulder as they looked out. She was mostly using him for warmth, the cold night creeping in now that they were away from the bonfire, but being held by him always brought a welcome sense of safety too. “I can see it in your face. It’s nice.”

She grumbled. “I’m not so sure. I certainly feel considerably madder than I did a week ago.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. It’s been almost a week of magic unfolding everywhere around us, and you haven’t lost the plot just yet. You’ve spent the past fifteen years keeping this a secret from almost everyone you’ve ever met, and now it’s just…out there. For all to see.”

“Fortunately, they can’t see the witch for the trees,” Sage said.

“Even if they do remain completely oblivious, it’s still turned our existence upside down, and you’re managing. In fact, you’re more than managing. You were thriving today.”

Sage gave a quiet “hmm” in response.

“Dare I say, maybe even abandoning ship? Considering hanging on to your magic after all?” Casimir said, one eyebrow raised.

She sat up and away from his shoulder.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Sage said, the prospect jarring. She shook back her hair, digging for the unbending determination that she hated this. That resolve felt more comfortable than this new, softer sense of chance. “I mean, just look at your face, for one thing. That could have been so much worse. We were fortunate you weren’t seriously injured.” She reached out a hand to examine his face again and carefully turned it towards the light to take a better look at the cut that lined his left cheekbone. The wound was healing nicely already, but still. She caught herself looking at his face for a moment too long and flushed. She dropped her hand quickly and huffed. “It’s all incredibly stressful; we’re making absolutely no progress towards a theory, Lilara is revealing absolutely nothing of use to me…”

“And yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite as many secret smiles from you as I have done over the past few days,” Casimir said with a smug upward tick of his mouth, still looking out at the bonfire.

Sage was determined not to agree with him. She clenched her jaw but then couldn’t hold in a relenting sigh.

“Fine. Maybe I am quite enjoying myself. Maybe this is a little…fun.” She bit down on her bottom lip to stop an annoying, insistent grin. “More importantly, everybody else seems to be okay.”

“Of course, that’s always what comes first,” Casimir said with a slightly mocking tone as he leaned back against the white railing of the gazebo and opened his arms out to sprawl on top of it. “It is pretty, watching from afar like this. Although I’d be having a much nicer time if it weren’t freezing over here.”

Sage’s shoulders gave a shiver in agreement; it was much colder away from the bonfire. Her mind flooded with a vivid memory. The night of her fifteenth birthday. It wasn’t normally a time that she permitted herself to think about, too tender even now. She had been unable to sleep, which was understandable given the sudden arrival of magical powers, so she had crept downstairs in the middle of the night, reasoning that a bonus piece of birthday cake would probably help matters. Candles still pressed into the thick sheet of half-eaten white icing, she’d dared to try something. The prospect was impossibly magical, too inviting to resist.

Glancing over her shoulder to check for any incoming parents or siblings and finding only the family dog watching with a wagging tail, Sage took a deep breath. Raising her left pointer finger, she whispered quietly to herself in the kitchen. Something she’d read in a story. Was this how it worked?

“Ignis Parvus.”