AllFreeNovel
Share Us
THREE WITCHES
Bethany stood on her toes and craned her head, trying to see through the crowd and find her friend Willow, who should be weaving her way through the throngs of students arriving at Las Vegas International Airport for their spring break. “Why didn’t she call us? We don’t even know if she’s off the plane. Intercontinental jets can carry hundreds of people. She might be stuck way at the back. She might not even get here for an hour.”
Beside her, Ember was also ducking and peering around people, trying to get a clear view of the people coming out of the tunnel. “I’ll just send up an air elemental to see if she’s in the gate area yet.” Ember cupped her hands together and began to blow gently into her fingers.
Bethany slapped Ember’s hands down. “Don’t. The last thing we need is a bunch of naturals freaking out because they saw something they shouldn’t have.” Or a whirling air elemental raising chaos and dust in an airport. Even the plants were dirty.
“It’ll only take form for a second. No one will even see it.”
Bethany held her hands over Ember’s. “We can’t chance it. Besides, who knows what will happen?”
Ember snatched her hands away. “I’m just going to look. It’ll just take a second.”
“Ember, don’t!”
“You are such a mouse. Our magic will never improve if we don’t work at it and take chances. It’s like a muscle. If you work harder at it, it will get stronger.”
Bethany shook her head, frowning. “We keep saying that, but it never gets any better.”
Between her cupped palms, a tiny tornado took shape, the funnel glistening pink. Its bright blue eyes blinked up at Ember, and then it glanced at Bethany.
Ember said, “See? It’s going to be just fine—”
The semi-transparent air elemental grew within her palms, growing to the size of a cat.
“Uh-oh.”
Bethany gasped, “Ember, what have you done?”
The air elemental expanded around them, whipping a newspaper into its vortex and grabbing at people’s clothes. It reached out with playful, shimmering hands, sank its fingers deeply into Bethany’s hair, and gave her a noogie that Bethany knew was tying knots in her long, dark strands.
Ember swung her fingers through the air, trying to control or minimize the air elemental with her spellcasting hand gestures, but the towering tornado took off through the airport, careening through the crowd. Shrieks followed the whirlwind as people stumbled or were tripped by the whipping air. A man yelled, “Hey! Somebody close that door!”
Bethany tried to comb the rat’s nest out of her hair with her fingers while she chased the elemental, trying desperately to clean up its mess. “Dang it, Ember.”
Ember kept trying to control the air elemental, pantomiming throwing lassos at the half-invisible, giggling dust devil that bounced through the crowd. “I’ll get it under control. I promise. Why can’t we be like other witches? Other witches our age can control their magic. We studied hard. We took extra lessons and private tutoring. What is wrong with us?”
Bethany shushed her, even though none of the naturals around them would have believed their ears even if they had understood what Ember had said. She stacked papers and threw debris in the dustbins, but she couldn’t keep up with the raging elemental. “Just make it go away.”
“I’m afraid to.”
“Do something!”
Ember clapped her hands and then pushed them apart, huffing out her breath hard.
The air elemental disintegrated with one last, manic cackle that reverberated on the high ceiling and far walls of the airport terminal, returning to the magical ether from where she had drawn it.
The crowd in the terminal was looking around, fixing each other’s hair and clothes after being thoroughly tousled by the miniature tornado. One guy was still grousing, “I don’t know who was stupid enough to open a door when there must be a hurricane outside.”
Ember muttered, “Like a hurricane is ever going to hit Las Vegas in the middle of the desert. Dammit. I had two good spells last week. Why does this keep happening to us?”
Bethany flitted around, trying to tidy up. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll be okay, someday. Maybe Willow figured out some secret that can help us while she was in Paris.”
“I’m sure she would have said something about it when we talked to her last week over WitchChat.”
They’d been over it a thousand times, hypothesizing that maybe their parents were infected with a natural virus that had stunted the three girls’ witching abilities, or maybe chemicals in the plastic that they had teethed on had leached into their bodies and messed them up, or maybe it was pesticides or herbicides or saltpeter in the water.
All three girls’ parents had taken them to witch doctors and magic seers, but no one could find anything wrong with them. They had volunteered at animal shelters during their summer breaks while in high school, trying to find familiars to stabilize their magic. Animals liked all three of them fine, but none had formed the special witch-familiar bond with them.
