Page 69 of Disenchanted

When the day does come that the next true witch after me should stumble through the threshold of this town and find my magic hidden, it will call to her. Let it be she, the witch, who must endure such heartbreak, of having known a perfect life and then to watch it fall away from her. Let it change her. Let it awaken her eyes to the truth of this all before it is too late. Teach her that no good can come of magic.

I am no wicked witch, Magnolia. Perhaps bitter, perhaps jaded or perhaps merely weary of the world and its cruelty. Still, I am not wicked. It will only be for her own good, so that she will never feel a pain like this. Now she may find love instead.

Until she does come, Port Sylvan will remain a place of my own magic, for better or for worse. Let it be wrapped in the stuff. A place of happiness, a ribbon of golden sunshine tied around it, a sense of wonderment like rain showers each day. Someone ought to enjoy it.

Then, if she ever finds this book of blackened sorcery that found its way to me, the final tangle will be upon her. A twisted web of wickedness that she must unpick, just as I have had to fight to find my way through. She must not be greedy enough to think that love and magic can exist in tandem. Perhaps if she were able to embrace the impossible, to find the joy in this world anyway, to find that love and magic and softness can still somehow endure, then the curse may be broken. Such an impossibility earns reward! But I defy the moon, the sun and the stars to ensure that joy can fight its way through this wretched, hardened world.

A life of solitude with only magic at hand does not feel warm in the mornings. It does not make the tea or bake the bread. It does not share a story of the day before one falls asleep at night. Let her meet her own wickedness.

Tuesday 31 October

It is done. I am away. Farewell to my once home, to Port Sylvan.

Farewell to my true self, for no good ever came of her.

Maggie, if I am ever to return to this cursed town, for better or worse, my dearest hope is that you are here to greet me. I hope you live the very longest of lives, and may you never have to flee the home you have always loved so dearly. May the walls of it keep you safe forever. I hope the next witch may find herself a friend just like you. Without your heart entwined with mine, I would have perished long ago.

May lost magic trapped between the pages betray the next foolish one who finds it, so that she may learn quicker than I ever did.

Happiness was not meant for a witch like me.

29

Before You Met Magic

Sage always wished that the ground would swallow her whole the moment she became the centre of attention. She had been that way ever since she was first dragged on-stage and forced to participate in a school play against her will. She had never quite recovered from being Sheep Number 3 and found that the only way to combat the hideous feeling was to launch into some sort of academic spiel that no one else gave two hoots for. They would quickly turn their attention elsewhere, and she could continue passing the minimum amount of time required of her in the shadows of said social situation.

Standing in Maggie’s room with her two closest friends, having learned that an ancient witch had cursed her to open the grimoire a hundred years before she was even born was just such an inconvenient, awkward occasion.

She glared at them defensively and offered a tight scowl.

“What?” she said crossly, arms folded tight. “Oh, stop looking at me, will you?” Her irritation only grew when she saw the silent, loaded glance that Maggie and Casimir shared between themselves instead. “And stop looking at each other, for that matter.”

“Where exactly would you like us to look, Specs?” Casimir asked, a gentle version of that lopsided grin of his creeping in, even still.

“Sage, I…” Maggie’s eyelids fluttered. Her hand flew to her throat as though she were trying to keep a hold over her emotions.

“And you can stop with the pitying tones too. I’m not an injured vole that you need to wrap in a blanket.”

Casimir rolled his eyes. “I think an injured vole would bite less.”

She glared more fiercely at him, but his face only softened in return. “For once, Sage, let us know what you’re thinking, will you? Bravery is no burden to be borne in solitude. Speak your heart.”

That was it. The gentle offer was the very last thing she needed to hear. Even beneath the ridiculous, princely facade, it was still there—his continued, unrelenting kindness, which she had done nothing to deserve. It made her snap. She threw the handful of letters to the floor.

“Of course I have to be brave!” Sage shouted. The anger could have choked her. “Because what happens if I stop? How do I possibly begin to be okay? There has never, ever been another option but to be brave, Casimir. What don’t you understand about that?” Her temper was white-hot at the sheer unfairness of it all, at the mess she had found herself in and at her lack of choice but to keep on wading through and hope she wasn’t pulled under.

“We still have to solve this,” she thundered on. “The letters don’t change that. We might finally have an explanation of some kind, but we still have the spell—curse, hex, whatever this is—to lift. In case you’d forgotten, we still have my brother and sister…” Her shouts wavered. A choke gave way to a sob. “We still have my brother and sister to save. I cannot be anything other than brave every single day of my life, and it is…It is so exhausting.”

The dam burst. Sage buried her face in her hands and her curls closed out the world as all of the fear that she’d been trying to keep contained inside herself for weeks—or maybe even her whole life—refused to stay a secret anymore. Her whole body was racked with deep, hearty sobs that shook her from shoulder to shoulder. It was so self-indulgent, so horribly embarrassing to hear herself cry, but she wept for the simple unfairness of it all. She lived every day with a leaden, guilt-ridden shadow that followed her round in chains, whispering spitefully in her ear when life became quiet that she didn’t deserve the good, could never deserve the good. And now she knew that her mistakes were not only stupid and careless, but fate-driven too.

Sage cried and cried. The impossible thought that other people simply existed in this world without being weighed down by loss and grief and solitude as commanding forces? The concept that they would never once know what it was like? To feel your chest crushed by a tidal wave of guilt, the repercussions rippling through the rest of your life while nobody else even remembered you were holding on to them. Life must be so, so sweet without it.

It was probably making Casimir feel endlessly awkward and probably making strong Maggie think less of her, but Sage couldn’t care less anymore. She didn’t care that it made her sound petulant or childish. She wasn’t sure how she had made it this far, with an impossible loss on her back that pulled her down beneath the waves like a wrought-iron anchor each day.

Lost to the unfairness of it all, Sage gave a slightly stunned whimper when a pair of wide warm arms pulled her in tight and a second colder presence stroked her hair. Casimir and Maggie both held her tenderly and simply let her cry.

Sage wasn’t even sure what it was that she was crying for anymore: her failure to fix the one unsolvable problem that she had ever come up against, the mess that she had been dragged into against her will or maybe the surprising revelation that perhaps she couldn’t be entirely to blame for every single part of it.