CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of abusive and otherwise-shitty parents.
Áine
I've been poring through my mother's grimoire to keep myself company.
With my partner and daughter gone, it has been incredibly lonely. Sleeping and waking alone leaves a coldness in my chest far worse than the winter cold outside. I understand why Reynold had to leave, but I wish he had stayed. I wonder if I had pressured him into following me here. I hope he doesn't feel that way.
I don't interact much with the others in the settlement, but not with any intention. I mostly see the students, who are wonderful and keen learners and listeners. I find myself thinking about little else than teaching them, and spend most of my time drafting plans for lessons or annotating my students' notes.
This grimoire has kept me company ever since I were young, and it has not let me down, just as the woman who wrote it never let me down. My mother passed this knowledge down to me and it kept me alive in a world that wanted me dead.
Many of my students have been without a mother or father for far longer than I have, like young Matis. I want them to have the knowledge to grow up the way I did - with the smarts of an older woman to guide them when all seems hopeless.
As the years have passed, more and more of the grimoire is making sense to me. Cryptic metaphors that used to confound me now make perfect sense, and the more difficult spells seem moreso within my reach. Many of the spells in this book are ones any witch would use in her daily life, from cleaning to making fire. Others, witches are still fearful of - appearing in another place in an instant; harnessing lightning, the anger of the Watcher in their palms; even supposedly raising the dead and calling the ghosts through the veil.
Magic in itself is a manipulation of nature, and yet there are some aspects of nature most witches dare not touch. It is sometimes difficult to tell what are actual incantations and spells in this book, and what are merely my mother's vivid imaginations and the stories she used to tell me as a child.
One spell in particular - right at the back of the book - speaks of worlds outside of our own, defying all known rules of existence. I'd paid little attention to it in my later years, having passed them off in my youth as just my mother's stories. I dreamed of seeing these worlds as a child, and forgot about them as a teenager.
Nearing middle-age, I have been ruminating on them again, wondering if it is at all possible to visit worlds outside of our own. Growing up a witch, you come to realise that many answers to the universe's questions lie within the veil of magic, and within the magic in your blood.
There's a loud knock on my door. He holds his arms close to his body and brushes the snow from his hair. I'm still getting used to his new look. He's gone from a tidy and well-renowned billionaire to a dishevelled teacher, yet he seems all the more happier for it. In spite of his pallor, he looks a lot healthier these days.
As much as I appreciate his help at the magic school, I sometimes find myself wishing we had more of a bond. We spoke of how we saw each other almost as long-lost siblings, and yet it does not feel that way. I fear we've both grown too old to make such connections to others. I truly hope that is not the case.
"Don't you think you've spent enough time in here, Áine? We're outside around the fire if you'd care to join us."
"I'm quite alright, Owen. I'm just reading through my mother's grimoire."
Owen adjusts himself, leaning heavily on his cane. The cold weather seems to worsen his issues, and there's no sign of either of those two things letting up anytime soon.
"You can't just stay in here all of the time between lessons, Áine. You don't need to alienate everyone."
"Whatever do you mean?"
Owen leans his stick against a table and sits on the end of the bed. He has a completely different attitude with me than he does with others. I never feel like he's trying to intimidate me.
"I understand that it's difficult without Róisín and Reynold around, but it's no good only interacting with the students."
"Owen, you've had a governess doing most of the work for your children. People like you don't spend as much time with your children. Róisín and I were rarely apart for many years. It's only natural that I'd long for my family like this."
Owen still lacks the understanding of what constitutes a normal life. Things seem like a non-issue for him when they're very much issues for other people.
"I see. Well, never mind, then. What are you reading about?"
"My mother wrote stories in this grimoire as well as spells that she would tell me when I was younger. She tends to write spells in a very cryptic manner. It's taken me years to try and decipher some of their meanings."
Owen gives me a light nod. "Alchemy is similar. They didn't want the prying eyes of witchfinders or people who wanted to steal their ideas. I assume it was the same with your mother."
"The story I can't stop thinking about is one about traversing other worlds. I used to dream of doing such things as a child, and now... I can't let go of the idea that this story may actually be a spell."
Owen gives me a confused look, something almost akin to a glare.
"I know it sounds preposterous, but most magic does until you realise it can be done. Just imagine, Owen - if it were possible, we could all be safe and sound and live our lives away from those who want us dead. We could raise our children to be adults. Doesn't that sound incredible?"
As I walk over to him, his judging eyes don't leave mine. What's his problem?
"Áine, I'm no alienist, but I do think all of this time to yourself isn't doing your mind any favours. You know as well as I do that there is no world outside of this one. There is no world above, and none below. The Jacobans merely use those stories as a scare tactic, just as your mother used that story to give you an escape from the tribulations of growing up with magic in your blood."
I ball my fists to contain my anger. Even being a man of magic himself, he can't think outside of the confines of known science.
"I'm not a madwoman, Owen! I'm trying to be hopeful for something better than what we have - is that so terrible?"
"We have a community of people here who support us and look after us, and we have quite possibly the first magical educational establishment in the country - maybe even the continent. We already have something better."
"And not everyone has a mansion and a gryphon back home to protect them," I explain. "You will always have everything you could ever want or need, Owen, but the same doesn't go for everyone else. You know as well as I do that whatever we try to build, the witchfinders and now the Jacobans will do whatever they can to try to take it from us. As much as I'd like to believe the magic school is permanent, you know nothing is permanent for a witch."
"And do you really think they have what it takes to take anything else from us?"
"I don't know, and I'm not willing to find out. I've worked my entire life to create a safer world for those with magic in their blood...and if I have to be more literal in that line of thinking, then that is what I will do."
"I apologise if I've said something out of turn. Perhaps a little stroll outside might calm the situation a little. You wanted to learn the Fulguris spell, didn't you?"
Owen
Áine's plan for some kind of world outside of our own is beyond bizarre, yet it seems fixed in her mind that the story in her grimoire is more than just a fairy tale. True witches realise many things are more than what they appear - that many of the universe's rules can be broken - but sometimes, they don't realise that doesn't mean every single one of the universe's rules can be broken. In most situations, science and reason will prevail.
It's been some time since I've used this wand. My students' help with casting magic during alchemy classes meant I haven't had to, and I ought to not entirely neglect spellcasting for the fear of making myself unwell. I doubt never casting it again will make matters any better.
"I must ask, Áine - I expected a true witch would know Fulguris like the back of her hand. Is there a reason you are unfamiliar with it?"
"We understand fire, but we do not understand lightning quite so well," she says. "I consider it a godly power, a divine punishment of sorts. Witches have thought that for years. I considered it beyond my ability, I suppose. I worried what kind of corrupting power a god's magic would have."
That would explain a lot, come to think of it.
"I see where you're coming from, Áine. My first casting of Fulguris was an accident, but the powerful emotions I get from that spell, I can hardly explain them. They're euphoric, sometimes in a dark way. This is part of why I need to try and control my spellcasting. On murkier days, I find myself chasing the euphoria in my mind. The way you call it the power of a god...when Volpe died, that was exactly how I felt."
She nods and gives me a small smile.
"I would not fear the spell, Áine. Lightning is as much a part of nature as fire. You'll be fine. I must admit, I find it almost impossible to cast without conjuring an image in my mind that fills me with enough rage to cast the spell."
I see her clench her fists, her scowl tightening into something much fiercer.
Áine
Brádach.
Aside from Eduardo Volpe, there is no man I hate more than Brádach. What he did to me, what he did to my mother...what he did to other witches, giving up his own magic to save his own skin and persecute others.
His memories sometimes appear to me in my dreams. They sometimes appear to me in day-to-day life, as if they were my own. The way he helped to have my mother killed to stop people being suspicious of him. The way he worked alongside witchfinders - the way he tried to stop my mother being so excited to have a witch for a daughter!
His soul is a part of me now, and I will do far better with it than what he did.
I feel the sharp tingling of crackling lightning at the ends of my fingertips and all around my body. There's a burning rage inside, soon giving way to exactly what Owen had described - the deific pride.
My field of vision becomes clouded with bright light, as if I am seeing into the heavens themselves. The lightning knits a figure from thin air - a figure of my father, the traitor. I think of the way he looked at me when I stole his life force from him. How his skin turned grey and shrivelled, and how his eyes faded into murky black.
Owen gazes at me, completely dumbfounded. I keep my focus on him for the time being, and try to forget about my father. The lightning begins to dissipate, as do the heightened emotions. I can see what he means about it being addictive in nature. I've never seen him like this. He looks terrified, shaking a little.
I expected to feel as if the power was not mine, that it did not belong to me - but I didn't, and I still don't. It no longer belongs solely to the gods, but to myself. To have harnessed fire and lightning like this...
Perhaps Owen is right. The witchfinders don't have what it takes to do anything to either of us.
"It wasn't my intention to sound so harsh as I did, Áine. I apologise for that.
I always try to keep a scientific and rational mind, but I've been proven wrong before. My own wife won over an audience during a debate we had amongst medical minds. I'd argued that we ought to move into modern science and medicine and away from the traditional and herbal methods used by the people of days gone by. She'd argued that the ancients knew what they were doing and that we shouldn't discredit their research and completely throw their methods away. Of course, she was right.
