Page 9 of Disenchanted

“Trust me, Maggs. It’s best I keep to myself,” Sage said wistfully. “Anyway, I have Casimir, Robin and Laurel. There’s no one else I need.”

Maggie coughed pointedly.

“Apart from you. I wouldn’t get very far without you around, Maggs,” Sage said gently. There weren’t many people in the universe who earned such a soft tone of affection from her voice. In fact, it was solely Maggie and Mal who managed to. Occasionally her siblings too. Casimir certainly wasn’t lucky enough to make the list. “Although, as we have long established, if I knew how, I would break my own rules to free you before you even had a moment to change your socks.”

“You are most kind for it, madam—Sage,” the maid corrected herself. “Now, what shall it be this eve?” she said cheerfully as she opened the junk drawer below to pull out a pack of cards. “Whist or bridge?”

Only when she safely judged that the spice rack was not about to perform any more malevolent tricks did Sage accept Maggie’s offer, grateful for the distraction. Still, it was difficult to concentrate on the game, thoughts running wild of devious, exploding kettles or wayward oven timers catching fire—not to mention when the Queen of Hearts shot an unexpected wink from her hand. It had all become so untrustworthy. Sage would need to be more disciplined to protect those around her. She could not afford to relax for the rest of the month, not for a single moment.

Long ago, it had become clear that magic was not meant for Sage. Hers was a dark, malignant force that was not to be tampered with. A complicated, tangled kind of trouble. An inexplicable impetus that even a lifetime of study and devotion had still provided no real answers for. She repeated the same mantra over and over: All she had to do was control it and, eventually, it would be gone.

Although, as any witch knows, if she was honest with her heart, even the most dormant magic, buried deep in the darkest corridors beneath, is impossible to ignore forever.

5

Impractical Magic

Sage threw out an arm, trying to silence the shout of her alarm clock. She squinted through sleep-stuck eyes to see the shadows of her bedroom, starting her day, as usual, before the birds began theirs. She couldn’t exactly call herself a natural morning person, but it was worth it for that precious hour of solitude at her desk, with nothing but the sunrise and the first stirrings of the world to disturb her. She felt around for the button, half expecting to hear the glass of water topple into the tower of books on her bedside table. But her hand kept hitting against…nothing? Her eyes flew open.

“Oh, for the love of…Not again,” she half grumbled, half roared, an arm flying over her eyes. “Rotten, confounded stuff!”

Sage had awoken five feet above her bed, levitating in mid-air.

The edges of her duvet trailed over her body and still weren’t even touching the fitted sheet. Mal watched from the armchair next to the wardrobe with an amused look that made his whiskers twitch. Sage bicycle-kicked the blankets furiously off her body and did her best to push back down against the cushiony air below, but nothing budged. She threw her head against the pillow, also hovering neatly below her, and huffed. It was the third time this week that she had levitated in her sleep. And, okay, perhaps nothing too dangerous had occurred as a result, and it did seem to be her magic merely having a laugh at her expense, but she was waiting for the morning that it dropped her suddenly and broke a bone, or she at least developed a nosebleed from the altitude.

It wasn’t until she properly woke up, shedding the last few stubborn cobwebs of her dreams, that she could feel herself start to drift back down. After a few minutes of muttering to herself about inconvenient, petulant incantation, tapping her fingers while thinking of everything else that she could be doing instead, the ceiling finally began to fall away and her back grazed the mattress again at last.

Once out of bed, she threw open the curtains and squinted at the bright trace of gold that frilled the edges of the lilac dawn clouds. The trees of Port Sylvan had turned a marmalade orange recently, and shadows as dark as ripe blackberries were inked across the lawns, where traces of night still clung.

“Another glorious morning,” she grumbled and yanked the curtains closed again.

Thoroughly unimpressed with the day thus far, Sage bundled up her blankets and lobbed them in an angry ball at the headboard before shuffling her way to the shower. She reached out to turn it on, but she startled through a lazy yawn. The sound wasn’t right. A jolt of magic snapped around the shower head and a steady flow of purple berry-scented bubbles was raining down where the water should have been.

“You have got to be…” Sage mumbled to herself. With no choice, she slid inside and stood cross-armed and scowling under the lavender froth. Utterly ridiculous. She did not have time for this nonsense.

At the bathroom mirror, she managed to gather her uncontrollable hair into some kind of slightly less uncontrollable half-up braid. But a few rogue tendrils began to quiver, a couple of them bending into sharp angles that resembled angry lightning bolts. They had a tendency to curl themselves into shapes that reflected her mood and she flattened them angrily. Another crackle of crimson magic and a selection of spotted red toadstools sprouted from nowhere between the braid. These were soon followed by a smattering of white baby’s breath flowers and a handful of dark red berries. Sage grimaced as she swiftly removed them. Far too whimsical.

Her toothbrush tapped itself impatiently against her shoulder.

“Yes, yes, I’m getting to you. Give me a bloody moment,” she told it crossly, snatching it and shoving it under the tap. She had never brushed her teeth so furiously.

Her grip tightened on the edge of the sink when the reflection looking back at her suddenly rippled like water. Between blinks, toothbrush hanging out of her mouth, her face in the mirror transformed for a flash, the reflection turning dark and stormy, if only for a fraction of a second. But before she could rub her sleepy eyes to confirm the vision, any sign of a ripple had smoothed to glass again.

Waking up in mid-air apparently did strange things to your mind.

“Well,” Sage warned, loudly and sternly, “if that’s how you’re going to play it today, then let the games begin. You meet me in an absolutely foul mood, no thanks to you and your twisted sense of humour. I will make sure that you don’t see so much as a coffee-reheating spell for the rest of the week. And let that be a lesson to you.”

It wasn’t often that Sage acknowledged her magic so directly, and whenever she did, it was usually to chastise it back to where it was supposed to go. Into the dark, silent and still, where it belonged. When she pictured the thought, it felt as though she were telling a younger version of herself to be quiet, to sit quietly in the corner and to behave. Which, in turn, made her feel a terrible combination of guilt and sadness and only made the magic kick up even more of a fuss in return. But it was how it had to be. She knew no other way.

She chucked her toothbrush back into its pot and huffed.

There was a knock at the bathroom door.

“Sage? Pray tell, are you quite all right in there?” Maggie called from outside. It was enough for Sage to catch herself and wonder whether she had in fact crossed the bridge over to insanity as she looked back into the mirror. Moving reflections, visions of her younger self, bubble showers—all of it was harebrained.

“Fine, Maggie,” she sighed.

It had to be said that, as a strict introvert, living in a cottage constantly inhabited by a literally housebound ghost was not always appreciated. Often, Sage found herself longing to be alone—really alone—in her own home. They had long ago established boundaries as a priority, and most of the time, Maggie was very considerate of Sage’s privacy, and Sage of hers. But Maggie’s endlessly caring nature and her perpetual loneliness also meant that she could be something of a busybody. Such was roommate life.