NaNoWriMo: Chapter Two: Life Is “Normal”

Life is "Normal"

Mel's bedroom is at the top of the north stairs over her mother’s room and under her the workroom. No matter where they had lived the workroom was a place she had a standing invitation to come and learn the parts of witchcraft that bored her the most. Mel never came. She preferred her own try and see approach to magic. To be fair this haphazard learning style is what lead to them moving across the country away from anyone who might have seen the frog incident.

Mel had only meant to frighten Tom. Not even a full reanimation just a twitch of the leg or a soft ribbit. Enough to startle him into some semblance of respect and fear. She had no idea how all of the frogs got up from their trays and began hopping and ribbiting in a surprisingly non plussed manor. It did little good to point out how much better it was that the frogs had come back to motion and breathe before the class had touched a scalpel.

Her teacher knew it was her, who else could it possibly be? Tom had gone from guillotine jokes, proving he had contrary to popular belief been listening to at least the gorier bits of history class to fainting dead away. His skin turning green, shiny wet, and pale. No one else appreciated the irony.

But what could anyone do? To say Mel was weird and strange was one thing but to be able to reanimate a class full of dead frogs, that would be saying she was a witch, and there hadn’t been real witches for hundreds of years. Instead the principal and a very nervous counselor recommended homeschool or a long trip at least for the rest of the school year. A year that had only just begun.

She didn’t mind, not really. High School had been amusing but she hadn’t made any real friends in the three years she had been there, with mostly the same kids she had been avoiding and trying to mimic with little success since Kindergarten. Her Mother never believed her when she told her how unpopular she was. How few people would tolerate her presence at lunch let alone be her friend. Eleanore told Mel she was sensitive. Pointing out how often she was invited to slumber parties. It just showed how grown ups, even witch grown ups, never knew the right questions to ask.

Every slumber party girls who had gotten up from any table she approached would suddenly sidle up to her at lunch. They did not ask if her thermos contained potions. The girls even stopped pointing out her birthmark. The one on her wrist she tried with very little success to hide with longe sleeves. It was shaped in a way that should could not be explained away as accident of biology. It looked like it should be something but no amount of half hearted searching in her mother's books had lead her to the answer. There was also the small matter that it changed color. Nothing brilliant or rainbow just darker and lighter shades freckle. There was no end to the speculation from those in her class as to what it meant or who she had made a deal with.

When a sleepover was scheduled an unspoken truce between the normals and Mel was formed and all was peaceful for a few days. Torture was teasing , she must have just misunderstood. Wasn't she their friend? They wanted a pet witch at the sleepover for the Ouija board and for games to find out who liked who.

Idiots. They had no idea about magic. Real magic. But Mel did and she found ways to amuse herself at the parties. She told the most popular girl in school that she couldn’t see ‘the one’ for her in her future. She made sure she looked at Chelsea with big sorry eyes.  The way Chelsea went on and on about it you just knew she already had a prom and wedding Pinterest board. Mel had thought that would be that until Chelsea’s mother made an ill advised call to Eleanore. It ended with threats of adding to the families toad collection. Mel had never liked her mother so much as in that moment.

It almost made going to the few family events they attended better. Except there she wasn’t magic enough. She wasn’t anything enough. She was Mel in a family full of screaming and rampaging cousins almost all had a sibling that shared the others face and sentences. A family full of aunties who would leave the room when she entered and any unlucky enough to not be able to think of an exit would stumble around questions of boyfriends or if she had decided her life’s purpose yet. None mentioned the school half of their daughters would be going to. Not when she was in the room. But her cousins did. Too much and not nearly enough everywhere she went.

Now here she is in a haunted house with an entire country between here and her real home, completely alone, again. She grabs a book on herbology from her mother’s box of books and heads out to explore, head down to avoid seeing her mom’s smile. She would be entirely too pleased about magical studies. Fortunately she seems busy unpacking Falcore and tripping over Bastet’s idea of helping.

“Nevermore.” Claws around a stump, feathers popping from its’ neck in a rage. A shredded aviary. Metal fine, twisted, and spiked mound up behind the raven. It looked like it escaped its’ own burial shroud. “Nevermore.” It screams at her, at the house, the sky. “Nevermore.” Bastet rounds the house in a sprint placing her body between the screaming bird and Mel’s ankles.  Bastet centers her head and body straight and still, not hunting, just a warning to the bird. Mel reaches her hand to the raven who jumps from its’ stump a cloud of abandoned feathers and claw aimed directly for Mel’s head. Mel hits the ground on top of Bastet. The both straighten at the same time to see a storm of black feathers.

“Shall we call that a rescue when we tell mom?” Bastet kicks a leg out cleaning the mud from her paws while leveling Mel a definitive stare that this was not a story for the telling.

“It’s a good trick you are fast on your feet. Q never liked the ghosts here.”

“I’m not a ghost. I’m Mel. My mother use to live here.”

“My apologies pet. You young ones all look like ghosts to these old eyes.” The woman had a look about her of kindly old, of knit cardigans, and perpetually refilling hard candy crystal bowls. “Would your mother have been one of the Dashwood girls?”

“We don’t have that name.”

“It was a grand joke in town poppet. The Miss Mary Anne and the Miss Elanore of the big house. We did have such a laugh about it all. Have you not been reading your Austen child?”

“I saw one of the movies I think.”

“You best make your way to the library. Ghost or living everyone in this town reads. A discussion of a book read by two builds all sorts of bridges.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Forgive Q.” She nods at the raven’s flight pattern. “He has waited here for you for such a long time.”

“Does he come with the house?” The thread of a vision of being the girl with the pet raven begins. Would it be better or worse to be known as the girl with a raven for a pet? Before Mel can begin the debate with herself Violet dashes the notion.

“Come with house? Oh no. My aren’t you a card. No Duckie. I suspect not. Not anymore anyhow. I believe his watch has finished and he’s gone back to his kin in the forest. In a day or two there won’t be a hare nor a toadstool that doesn’t know the Dashwood girls are back. The town will know sooner.”

“I’m not a Dashwood but my mother’s name is Eleanore.” As the words slipped out she began wondering if she should be tossing that sort of information about but what harm could an old woman in mustard crochet cardigan do?

“Mother eh. So that is how that one shook out. All the same to the town and the woods. The house has its’ daughters back and I can bustle myself back on home.”

“You live here?”

“I took care of the house while it was empty. I hope it meets with your satisfaction or that you have good manners to keep your tongue in its’ place if it does not.”

“My mother hasn’t lived here for sixteen years. Have you been here all that time?”

“Aren’t you a babe in the woods thinking that is a span of years. You tell your mother her Auntie Violet says hello won’t you my pet?”

“She’s just inside.”

“You just tell her for me and mark how her face changes when she hears my name. We will see each other again Duckie. Soon I should think.” Mel shifts her gaze to where Q had flown. Two firs travel high with a gate between them, the meadow in front and a forest of green to black beyond. Q rests on the gate post and just as her eyes locked on him he screams his news to the trees and flies straight in the air joining a flock circling in a spiral. “Count them Duckie one for sorrow, 2 for joy, 3 for a girl, 4 for a boy, 5 for silver, 6 for gold, 7 for a secret never to be told, 8 for a wish, 9 for bliss, 10 for a time on borrow.” Violet’s voice hits her in the center of her ear traveling through her nerves and brings winter to her limbs.

Mel is unsurprised to find Violet gone. The only thing that did pique her curiosity was the sound of an engine and tires on road. A broomstick or a pumpkin would have been more fitting.  Mel decides immediately to keep this one secret for herself. At least for her first day. She could ask her mother about Violet later at dinner. If she remembered.