Page 77 of Disenchanted

She had done the best she could in that moment. As she always had.

The snow was getting heavier, a fine white dusting clinging to her eyelashes and melting into the ends of her red curls. She held out a hand to catch a particularly fat snowflake in her palm, blinking fast through the flurry, but her focus was quickly distracted again. What was that? Sage spun on her heel and stared back the way she had just come. It wasn’t a sound exactly or the distinct call of a voice like there had been in the forest. It was more like a feeling. A magnetic pull. It coaxed her to wander and told her where to turn. The feeling, the pull, was strong, taking over all of her instincts and telling her that, yes, this way was correct, and, no, take a left instead this time. She picked up the pace, leaving footprints on the snowy ground. A particularly ludicrous part of her brain sulked that she didn’t have a tape player or a Dictaphone to record the sensations as she came upon them. This would have made for a fascinating, incomparably unique case study. Award-winning, probably.

At long last, with inches of snow caked to the tread of her boots, the air grew still along the stretch of corridor ahead. The snowflakes slowed, still falling but at a sleepy pace that felt almost…dreamlike. Lilara had made specific mention of nightmares. This had to be it. Sage glanced to her right and saw only more dark stretches of labyrinth, but the left turn…There was that tug again. She followed it around the bend and finally stepped into a clearing. The black misted walls unfolded into a dead-end curve and shut off her way to make a round space. The heart of the labyrinth.

And in the very centre, underneath an unseen spotlight, was, of all things, her desk—at least, an otherworldly version of it. All was as it usually was inside the archive, with familiar piles of notes, stacks of reference texts, a few artefacts waiting to be catalogued properly. There was even a forgotten cup of coffee and a couple of jam biscuits waiting to be eaten, but everything glistened with a thin veil of snow and was formed from the same curls of moonlight and mist that had breathed the labyrinth to life.

Perfectly in the centre of the mahogany tabletop, waiting for her to take a seat in her chair, was Lilara’s grimoire. The book that held her own magic.

How? She had destroyed it, seen it turned to ash in the flames of the bonfire. Yet here it was, returned to her. Perhaps Lilara had saved it somehow. Perhaps the spell had fought back against the fire. Or perhaps genuine magic could never be destroyed entirely and would always find a way to return when it was most required.

Sage felt it again, that same tugging sensation, but far more intense now. Like a supersonic wave breaking over the crown of her head and travelling like silk down her entire being. It was forceful and heady, a ripple that boomed out from the book itself. It was the most incredible sensation, and she immediately knew it for exactly what it was. Her magic was calling to her, banging and bellowing between the pages of the leather cover.

Sage hastily lurched towards the desk, but reason caught her before she could place a hand upon the book. Magic was acting in the way that she feared the most. It felt irresistible. So beautiful, full of temptation and complete distraction. That feeling of danger she had sensed crackling in the air between her and Lilara had returned.

The first time she had opened the thing, she had invited untold chaos and devastation into the lives of everyone she knew. Perhaps no good could ever come from between the covers of this book. It had played prison to Lilara’s abandoned, heartbroken powers for so long, happily unleashed a curse on another witch and had greedily drunk from Sage’s own witchery the moment she had offered it up. Bottomless, thirsty in its acceptance, holding secrets in its depths. Like a wishing well—apt for a fairy-tale curse.

But Sage could see now that there was a crucial difference between Lilara’s magic and her own. Lilara’s had turned dangerous and bitter, but only at the hands of the woman who possessed it. It had been good and she had consciously decided to knit a spell of such destruction and agony.

Sage’s own magic was not the same. It had not yet turned. It could still be trusted.

Lilara had spoken of nightmares and love. Sage had to let herself fall between the pages for her answer and embrace what she had found, through all of this, to be the two unfaltering things that would probably steer her right in the end.

“Courage and joy,” Sage said quietly. She took the bottom corner of the cover gingerly between her fingers and threw open the book.

The new jeans that Sage had received for her fifteenth birthday a couple of days ago were not doing what they were supposed to be doing. Emily Mathers had looked like a literal supermodel in them at Katie Fenwick’s party, and Sage had decided at the bowling alley that they would completely solve all her problems if she could own them too.

But annoyingly, the addition of sequinned jeans to her wardrobe had not simultaneously managed to tame her stupid hair into a sleek, straight style. Or get rid of the freckles which were the absolute bane of her life. And they had also, crucially, not cured her eyesight, so that she wouldn’t have to wear the ugly glasses that she had chosen in a huff because Mum wouldn’t let her get the expensive ones that everybody else had. The jeans sadly did not hold the all-powerful magic that she had been hoping for.

She made a mental note to ask at the library if there were any examples of witches in history who had been particularly cool dressers and if the librarian knew how they’d managed it. Maybe it was time for a new look. Or maybe, now that she’d discovered these cool powers that seemed to be in her system for some reason, she should surrender and go full cloak and pointy hat. Sage sighed. That was probably her spinster destiny, to be honest.

Her bedroom door flew open and Laurel bounded in. Her eleven-year-old sister dove face-first onto the lilac bedding and went straight into a headstand against the posters on the wall. She had unicorn stickers stuck to her face. “Mum said tea’s nearly ready. And that you have to plait my hair for me.”

Sage made a face at her sister via the mirror. “She did not say the second part.”

“She did!” Laurel whined, speaking to her sister upside down. “But she also said don’t ask her whether she said it or not, because she’ll get really cross with you if you do.”

Sage sighed. “Whatever. Fine. Actually…” She whipped out the sparkly purple ribbons that were tied onto the belt loops of the stupid jeans. “We might as well use these; they’ll look better on you anyway.”

The look of delight on her little sister’s face was worth the sacrifice. On the days when Sage felt like the single most tragic case in all of tragicdom, that face made her feel at least an ounce of cool. Laurel was obsessed with her, which was something, she supposed.

Laurel plonked herself in front of the mirror, and Sage crossed her legs to take a seat behind her.

“I saw them again, you know,” Laurel said, a lisp to her voice which had arrived recently, thanks to the loss of one canine and a wobbly premolar. It made her look even more feral than usual. Sage carefully undid her sister’s current bunches and grabbed a hairbrush.

“You did?” Sage asked uncertainly.

Laurel nodded frantically, which made it very hard to brush her hair. “And I know for a fact they were definitely fairies and not bugs, because I smelled strawberry sherbet when they took off. That’s how you know.”

Sage bit down on her lip so as not to give anything away. Her sister’s obsession with seeing fairies in their garden was her current favourite thing to hear about. Particularly given her own recent and most magical incident…

On her fifteenth birthday, three days ago, Sage had been doing her English homework because, honestly, she enjoyed it anyway, and the piece of lined paper that she was writing on had begun to fold itself into an intricate origami star. All by itself. It had levitated directly in front of her, spinning beautifully, before landing perfectly in Sage’s palm.

She was excited to tell her mother and father about this newfound magic—if not a little unsure of how to break the news. Being two university professors, she hoped they would be thrilled and begin their research keenly to help her understand and nurture it properly.

The three days with magical powers at her fingertips had changed everything. She had decided that it didn’t particularly matter that she wasn’t pretty or skinny or destined to be a pop singer in a crop top. She was clever, which people sometimes liked about her, and now she seemed to be able to conjure extra marshmallows into her hot chocolate on demand, so nothing else mattered all that much. The presence of magic had blown Sage’s entire world wide open.

“After tea, you can show me again, all right?”