Page 30 of Witchlore
“Not really, it’s just something my mum taught me.” His voice is light but forced, and I know he’s trying to make it less of a big deal, but he can’t stop me from remembering the hand position, the wide stance of his legs, the force of the spell that caused his hair to ruffle and mine, too. I imagine that I can hear my father’s voice in my head:Powerful witches are the only witches worth our time.I may not be able to perform magic but I’m not an idiot, I know that a spell with that kind of elemental force, enough control of light to deter a magical creature, is not something to be shrugged off.
“What’s the name of that hand position?” I ask.
“Golow Taranis,” he says, and his accent becomes more pronounced. “It’s Cornish.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s… quite old.” His voice is becoming more strained as he speaks. “It’s not dangerous or anything, just a deterrent. My old coven in Cornwall teaches it.”
There’s a hint there, something to question. It’s telling that he says the coven teaches it, not practices it. Perhaps it’s a spell that’s been passed down as part of their Cornish witchlore and Bastian is just the rare individual who can actually perform it. A prodigy, as my father would say. Or it could be that he’s grown up in one of those isolated covens that my mother always said still live in the sixteenth century.The things they would do to hoard power,she used to say, with a shake of the head.Useful, though,my father always added. Glancing sideways at Bastian, I have the nasty sensation that he is probably the kind of witch my parents would be impressed by. Which means I should get as far away from him as possible.
“Which coven is that?” I ask, attempting to sound casual.
“Arlodhes an lynn,” he says in Cornish. I stare at him, and he looks slightly abashed. “Lady of the Lake. Ninianne in English, or… Nimue.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
It’s the worst possible answer. The Nimue coven definitely fall into the category my mother described: powerful, secretive, and in it for life. They rarely educate outside their coven yet here Bastian is, hanging out with a shifter. An outcast. The breakdown of his parents’ marriage must have been more than devastating. For his father to turn away from magic, to discard his ring, no wonderBastian treats him like a traitor. I also realize I’m doing this with a lone Nimue witch with potentially threatening magic and no one to check him but me.
“So you know that you can’t do that kind of spell at college, right?” I say nervously. “I’m not judging—”
“Sort of sounds like you are,” Bastian says sharply.
“Of course I’m not, you just saw me shift,” I say, trying not to match his tone. “They kick people out for doing ancient witchcraft unsupervised. Believe me, I know.”
Professor Wallace was very clear with me after Elizabeth’s death about what the consequences of me “attempting similar levels of magic in the future within college” would be. Forgetting entirely, it seemed, that I can’t do magic at all.
“Well, I’m not going to tell them.” Bastian gives me a steady look. “Are you?”
“No,” I say. “But I don’t love you doing that kind of spellcraft around me without asking first.”
“Prejudiced much?”
“No, the last time any witch did ancient witchcraft, a spell of that strength around me, shedied,” I say with emphasis. “Just ask next time.”
“Well, I would have if you had been conscious,” he says crossly. “But you weren’t. Because you shifted, which might not beGolow Taranisbut was a fucking huge magical moment, and it’s not like you asked my permission to do that—”
“I didn’t even ask my own permission to do that!” I snap at him. “Do you think I like having uncontrollable magic? You don’t think I would have chosen literally any other time to shift form than when we were knee-deep in boggart negotiations?”
“Okay, fine!” Bastian nearly stumbles and we both list sideways,trying to keep our balance. “Fine. Just… forget it even happened.”
I give Bastian a long look and wonder, for a moment, exactly what kind of person I have got myself tangled up with. In my life, I’ve seen more wild, raw magic than most witches. I remember the one time my father powered his study with his magic during a blackout, his hands glowing with pulsing light while he read and worked, so intense it spilled out from the door and down the stairs. Witches are different. Before Elizabeth and the cave, I had never seen a witch channel so much power in their ring. Now, when I look at Bastian, I don’t just see a smart, studious young man. I see the witch who stood over me, pulsing blue light out of his ring with a spell I’ve never seen before. I am not sure if I like it. I wonder, suddenly, what it will look and feel like if we do get to the resurrection spell, if I have to watch Bastian use my own blood to bring Elizabeth back to life. I get a horrible shiver down my back and can’t stop from shuddering. Bastian looks at me.
“What?” he asks.
“Do you think the spell will work?”
“I don’t know.” He sounds like he might have been thinking about it, too. “It’s a good sign that we could get the boggart’s name. Hopefully, it means the other parts of the spell aren’t out of date.”
“But the actual resurrection,” I begin, trying to put words to some of the anxiety that is flooding my mind with all kinds of images and terrors. “Do you know exactly how it works? Like, will she appear where we are or, I don’t know, go back inside her body? Christ, will we have to dig her up?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Bastian says, and he doesn’t sound nearly as worried as I feel. “We can only go by what old accountsof resurrection spells teach us and they’re pretty diverse. Some of the ancient stories imply people walk out of the coffins, some that a new body is built by magic; that seems most likely with everything I’ve looked at in the spell—”
“Okay, okay.” I try to breathe through my dizziness, which I don’t think is coming just from the sudden tumble down a ravine. “But she could… she could be a different person? Like, look a different way?”
“Maybe, it depends if the magic rebuilds a replica of her old self or not,” he says. “But we’re very far away from all these things.”
