“I’m just taking a bath,” Lily called back through the bathroom door.
The bath was empty, but Amanda could not see through walls and Lily barely thought about the lie as she said it. Without an expression to judge or any telltale inflections in the tone that would indicate anything but the truth, Amanda believed her.
“Alright. There’s pancakes downstairs when you’re ready.”
“Okay.” Lily didn’t even glance at the door as she answered. She was staring at her self closely in the mirror. She was trying to decide if the veins in her eyes were slightly redder than usual and she was doing that to distract herself from whatever it was that was going on with her skin.
This morning she’d woken up to find her skin covered in a smattering of weird green and yellow bruises. It was the sort of colour which old bruises went after a few days, except Lily had never had any new bruises to begin with. The bulk of them seemed to be on her body, but a few were on her limbs and collarbone as well, and one of the ones on her arm, where she’d been scratching the last few days, now looked kind of moist, like when you left a plaster on something too long, except more green-tinged than white. She was afraid to touch it. It almost looked like her skin was dying, right there on her arm. The thought terrified her. So did the idea of telling anyone about it so, after some time studying herself, she put on a long-sleeved, tight-necked maroon skivvy and some light denim jeans. They had belonged to Sasha once, before she’d outgrown them, and they had the prettiest tiny pink fabric butterflies sewn into the pockets.
Once she was dressed she stood there a little longer, wanting to be sure, not a bruise could be seen.
Downstairs, only Katrina, Gemma, and Sirius remained in the kitchen. Amanda had a unicorn to train. Salem had slipped out of the room toward the family computer. Sasha had taken her python back to the laundry before following Bobby and her mum outside to join them riding.
Katrina was back to checking and double checking her mixture while Gemma rocked the baby to sleep, her own eyes drooping.
Sirius finished off cleaning the dishes and then he turned to his two daughters. “Can you tell Lily, there’s pancakes in the fridge once she gets down? I need to head down to the docks to check how things are going.”
Both girls nodded and although he couldn’t be sure that either of them had actually heard him, he figured the pancakes were easy enough to find anyway. “Alright, see you girls later.”
“Mmm hmm.” More absent-minded nodding. Katrina was focused on her potion and Gemma just looked tired.
A little while after he left, Lily skipped into the room. She paused looking momentarily lost. She bit her lower lip.
“Pancakes are in the fridge.” Gemma pointed with only a brief glance at Lily.
Lily smiled, skipped over to the fridge, helped herself to several leftover pancakes.
As Lily was closing the fridge door again, Gemma asked, “Aren’t you hot in that?”
Lily shook her head and attempted an innocent smile.
Gemma’s frown in reply sent a spike of panic through Lily and for one terrifying moment she thought she was caught out.
But then, as she sprinkled a dash of powder in one bowl, Katrina remarked, “It’ll probably rain later.”
“What?” Gemma turned toward her with a deepening frown.
“It’s the elemental festival this week,” Katrina reminded her.
While the two sisters were focused on one another, Lily took her chance to slip from the room. She took her pancakes with her outside, where she could watch the horses.
Bobby had ridden off toward town to get some feeder rats for the python. In one paddock Sasha was practicing vaulting, a sort of gymnastics but on horseback. Lily thought it was a strange sport but also found it captivating to watch.
Sasha balanced on one leg on the back of a white horse as it cantered around the paddock. At one turn she threw her hands high and soft snow appeared in the air and fell down around her like confetti.
In another paddock, Amanda was working with a lilac unicorn.
Unicorns did not look like regular horses. They were similar in shape and yet anyone who could not tell them apart almost certainly would have been in need of some glasses. Unicorns were taller, more slender, more shiny. They were almost skeletal like in nature. They were not as strong as a regular horse but they were smarter and they could do magic, much in the way a witch could.
Lily had only ever seen a real life unicorn once before in her life. It had been at a fancy dinner her father had been invited to by one of his coworkers. Usually she was not allowed to attend the fancy parties that her parents went to, but that one had been special. There had been other kids there as well. They’d played hide and seek in the garden hedge maze and Lily had bowed to a white unicorn, and it had bowed, ever so politely back to her.
This unicorn did not belong to Sirius and Amanda, they were simply being paid to train it for some special event. It was not easy to get unicorns to perform tricks. Amanda had explained this to Lily. Unicorns were proud and clever and yet people always wanted them to do cheap parlor tricks. The real trick, Amanda had said, was in convincing those who coveted the unicorns that what they really wanted to see was a dance, a performance. For while unicorns did not like to be used for the amusement of others, they did like to be admired. It was a fine line, but the fineness of it meant it was often easy enough to convince the proprietor that a performance was a better idea than a simple trick.
The way one worked with a unicorn was also quite different. They could not be commanded. They must be asked, persuaded. The act of teaching a unicorn to perform was in itself a sort of dance.
As Lily watched Amanda work, not from a saddle, but from the ground, she found the interaction was just as captivating as Sasha’s vaulting. Amanda looked very much like she was teaching the animal a bunch of dance steps. The unicorn was rewarded with treats, and praise, and mental stimulation. On top of that though, as Lily watched Amanda dance with it, it looked like they were both having fun.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Only the very lucky and very foolish ever rode a unicorn. Rumour had it that a unicorn knew what was in your heart and they only let truly good people ride them. Amanda said it had more to do with kindness. Kindness, respect, and a lot of luck. As Lily watched the magnificent creature perform and fiddled with the sleeve of her sweaty bruise-covering skivvy, she wondered if she would ever be that lucky. She would, she thought, even be happy enough with just a dance.
Back in the kitchen, just after Lily had left.
“I thought the festival finished today?” Gemma remarked.
“No, last day is tomorrow. Anyway they’d still all be here,” Katrina replied.
“Mmm.”
Katrina paused in her mixing and glanced at Gemma, who had her eyes shut. As she watched, Gemma blinked them open and shook her head.
“You know, you might remember things better if you weren’t out drinking until the cows came home,” Katrina quipped. With each of her thumbs, she hooked her fingers under her dark hair near the nape of her neck and flicked her hair back over her shoulders in a superior manner.
Gemma opened one eye and scowled at her younger sister. “Didn’t I see you coming back home early this morning, after the sun was up?”
“That may be true, but I went to bed early and relatively sober, unlike some people.”
“Oh, and whose bed was that in this time?” Gemma teased. Even as tired as she was, she knew what words would bite her sister best.
Katrina bristled. She had a reputation for being a flirt and maybe a little more than that, but the latter half of it was rumour and besides, flirting was fun. Katrina couldn’t help it if she was admired by a lot of people, especially very cute boys. Meanwhile, Gemma had stuck to her small group of friends and same boyfriend for the last two years. Same old, same old, sounded boring to Katrina. She was a butterfly and proud of it. Alas, Gemma didn’t care much for popularity one way or the other so Katrina couldn’t use it against her. But she did have one thing on her sister. “A least I’m not the one who got knocked up while in high school.”
But Gemma just smirked and the words rolled off her like water off a duck. “Not yet,” she replied. “And guess who else is pregnant.” She smiled like she knew a secret.
Katrina wanted to ignore her, but the grin on Gemma’s tired face was just too annoying. She glanced curiously at her sister a few times but managed to outright avoid asking.
Her expression was question enough though and, knowing the answer would provoke Katrina just as much as no answer, a gleeful Gemma said. “Aunt Cat.”
Katrina stopped her work and studied her sister. The grin on Gemma’s face was too obnoxious for the statement not to be true.
“To whom?” Katrina asked, her voice going up a notch.
Gemma shrugged. “Dunno.” Her grin didn’t disappear. “Wanna know what else I know?”
Katrina sighed and sat down. Her sister had her attention now. “What?”
“You know that old Milton place, just behind the the forest at the back of school? That’s were mum and dad were last night.”
“Why?”
“They were helping Kass find the will. Apparently the old lady who owned it kicked the bucket, but that’s not the interesting part. Guess who else was there.”
“Who?”
“Your favorite aristocrat.”
“Coal?”
Gemma’s smile twisted. “You got another favorite aristocrat?”
Katrina pushed her chin out but she knew she was blushing, and Gemma had her, hook, line, and sinker. There had been a time when Katrina had wanted to be a sorcerer. To learn everything there was to know about magic. To absolutely master it. And a huge part of her still wanted that, but as she’d gotten older and she’d learnt more about the world, about the aristocrats who ruled this end of the continent, her attention had shifted slightly. Sorcerers were powerful yes, but being a sorcerer also came with a large amount rules and restrictions. Knowledge and limitations. The path to becoming a sorcerer was tightly controlled. She wanted to know more but she also wanted the freedom to do things her way. Sorcerers were bound to follow a code and their minds were wiped if they ever strayed. They were kicked out and left with nothing, not even their hard-earned knowledge. Aristocrats did not play by such rules, not spoken ones anyway. They didn’t have the quite the same resources that the sorcerers did but they had plenty of their own power. What better thing to pursue was there? After all, power let you do, well, pretty much whatever one wanted.
There was more to Katrina’s fascination with the aristocrats than just power though. They were all beautiful. Even the ugly ones had an elegance, a sort of interesting aesthetic that drew the eye. And they all dressed so well. Coal in particular though, with his dark hair, cool blue eyes, strong stature, and well-tailored suit, was every teenage girl’s fantasy, or at least, he was Katrina’s. A real man, not some silly boy.
Katrina was caught up in a love struck fantasy. She was not quite so naive as to not realise that the aristocrats still had their own set of rules, a darker and unspoken set of rules. Blades in the dark and whispers on the wind. But to Katrina, all of that stuff was a distant fantasy. She knew not the realities of it and danger at a distance held its own allure.
“Why was Coal there?” Katrina asked.
“Because I still haven’t gotten to the best bit. Turns out that house is full to the brim of magical items. All sorts of things. Things so powerful, the old lady had them guarded by a dreamweaver and Witch’s Weep.”
“Witch’s Weep?”
“Don’t you pay attention in biology?” Gemma replied. “Witch’s Weep is that plant that eats magic, and witches. It gets stronger the more magic you use.” She said that last bit with a grin.
Katrina frowned. She didn’t remember that one. “How do you know all this?”
“Mum told me, last night.”
“Mum wouldn’t tell you all that.”
“She would if she was drunk. Almost as much as I was.”
That Katrina did believe.
If Gemma had been more awake she might have considered the effect her teasing would have on Katrina, but winding her sister up was just a little too much fun and Gemma was tired. Besides, she didn’t for a moment think that her sister would be stupid enough to walk right into a house with a dreamweaver.
But Katrina’s mind was already imagining all of the items she might find in such a place. And the dreamweaver while scary, didn’t scare her as much as it should have. Katrina considered herself an excellent dreamwalker. She’d borrowed her aunt’s magic so often that it might as well have been the power she had been born with. Besides, her parent’s and their friends had gone in and come back out just fine. Her mind whirred and she wondered, “What do you think Coal took from the house?” For she had no doubt that he had taken something, and that is was probably something wonderfully powerful.
Gemma shrugged. “What does it matter? Whatever he took, you’ll likely never see. That’s an aristocrat you’re talking about. You don’t even come close that kind of power. You probably couldn’t even steal a rose from his garden.”
“Pffft,” Katrina came as close to snorting as she dared. “I could too. A rose from his garden would be child’s play.” Katrina turned back to her bowls, as if she was above such things, but in her mind she was already making plans.
Gemma certainly interpreted that as the end of the conversation, with no inkling of Katrina’s reaching ambitions. As Kate started crying again she picked the baby up gently and took her upstairs, intent on them both getting a proper nap.
Katrina stared down at the measures in front of her, trying to remember how much she’d already added to that last bowl. Did it need another teaspoon or had she already put the right amount in? She should probably start over. Surely one teaspoon off wouldn’t make much difference? Recalling her mother’s words from earlier she reconsidered. She didn’t want things to go the same way as her last experiment, even more so for this batch, given it wasn’t quite the spell she had told her mother it was. The makeup spell hadn’t been a complete lie, this one was adapted from it, but it was also adapted from another spell, one in a book she’d borrowed on her way back from Jade’s house this morning. Yes, she had better start over, at least for that bowl. It needed to set again for a minimum of an hour in the fridge, but that was okay, she already had an idea of how she was going to spend the time.