Page 10 of Uncharmed
But every time that doubt crept in, she remembered her mother.
The spell was a rite of passage among the Wildwood women through history.
Cressida had been keen to induct her daughter as soon as her magic came to blossom, determined that Annie wouldn’t spoil all that she had spent her life curating.
She thought her young daughter had a habit of ruining things with silly slip-ups.
Annie dabbled and debated between bottles of nectars and vials of elixirs, pulling out refined combinations of favourites while putting others back in as she changed her mind on the night’s mix.
The recipe needed tweaking every now and again, usually in synchronicity with the full moon.
Whenever the moon sat particularly plump among the clouds as she left the monthly Sorciety symposium, she knew it would be time to revise her alchemy.
Time to take stock of where she needed to distil and define the qualities of herself.
Her current blend would certainly need modifying for the coming month.
Magic often went awry in October. The air was supercharged.
‘Rose petals, pearl dust, opal quartz...’ Annie muttered to herself, tucking the pastel-coloured trio of ingredients under her arm, the colours of a bursting summer dawn.
The glasses clinked in a satisfying melody.
‘Adder’s tongue, fox scream, heather and feather.
Maybe crow tonight...’ The dark shades of jet, smoke-grey and rust looked stark against her first choices.
They made for an unsettling combination.
‘All people are a contrast,’ she said quietly, reasoning her decisions.
With a flourish, a pair of glasses appeared at the end of her nose, her vision a little less than perfect with the spell wearing off for the day.
She held the ingredients up to the soft candlelight, checking that each looked as it should in texture and colour.
The slightest flaw could really scupper things in the precise potion balance that she craved.
They had to be the best of the best. Annie appreciated hallmarks of quality, promises of longevity, something to assure her that they wouldn’t let her down.
Whether ingredients or shoes, handbags or people, those things were rare and important.
Satisfied with her decisions, Annie sent the selection of stoppered bottles, vessels and mysterious, miniature boxes cascading through the air, over the dark green floor tiles to levitate just above the full bathtub.
The burgeoning heat from the water had brought a bloom of steam across the mirrors and a dampness to her cheeks.
With concentration and methodical precision led by her magic, like a conductor stirring her orchestra to a final crescendo, each vial tipped its required amount into the water one after another.
Gradually, the combination turned the water from a pale, crystalline blue to an intense, cardinal red.
Annie slipped off her clothes and dipped a toe to test it. She inhaled sharply through her teeth. She had found that increased heat made the most potent result, brought out the best in her. It was worth the pain, to be the best that she could be.
Some of the spell’s results were surface-level. Immaculate hair of course, long lashes, excellent teeth, unsmudgeable make-up, a hypnotizing scent, a dazzling smile.
But the spell ran deeper, too. Stiffly unwavering patience.
Endless generosity with her time. A selflessness that made most decisions on her behalf.
Always conscientious, welcoming and warm.
Almost no sleep ever required. A supernatural problem-solving streak that anyone could call upon whenever they needed to.
Stepping into the potion was a path to perfection.
Annie stared determinedly at the chandelier, which blurred to a watery glow.
She lay back against the tub, wincing just for one more second, before the scalding water finally brought its welcome numbness and she succumbed to it.
When it felt comfortable, Annie slipped fully underneath the surface.
Emerging again, pushing her wet hair away from her face, droplets of crimson water clinging to her lashes, she steeled herself to whisper the incantation.
The water burst and bubbled between her lips as she spoke:
Fair price to pay for those who wish it.
A ghostly shadow to solicit.
No gift is free so here in smoke,
The dark mistakes of wicchefolk.
Surrounding whispers of their sadness,
Feel the stroke of regret’s madness.
Exchange the balance for my shine,
A pact that makes perfection mine.
They had been waiting patiently, poised for their cue.
Wisps of steam that emanated from the hot water began to rise towards her voice.
The curls of vapour moved upwards in hypnotizing movements for her to inhale, stretched smoke carrying up from the potion to the ceiling and fading into the bathroom’s cocooning warmth.
The trails of spectral steam swayed and morphed like flames, until they blended into a smoke screen that engulfed Annie almost entirely.
It was hard to make out any specific features among them, but so much time spent with the spell meant that Annie had grown very familiar with the voices of the ghosts who came to visit her.
Every night, when knitting the spell – the hex – together, she recognized their cries, their faces pulled in and out of focus, but never quite enough to see definitively.
Figures amid the grey smoke were there one moment, barely visible, then gone.
Before they could reveal themselves as more than an eerie blur, the mist blended faces and figures together into a drizzly grey.
She didn’t know their stories in detail, but she knew all about their mistakes. The pain that came from imperfection. That was the pact that Annie made for it all. Splendidus Infernum.
Annie gave a full-body shiver as the hot water turned ice-cold and the hex began.
The figures around the tub always changed, impossible to pin down, but she knew the most haunted regulars and their faintest outlines.
There was the cloudy image of the man with wire-rimmed glasses who cried to himself in secret, willing his breath to steady and stop the flow before anybody saw, terrified they’d find out his truth.
The faceless lady with the thick plait swung over her shoulder, so plagued with guilt that she was confident it would be best to fade away entirely, to unburden the world.
The young woman so filled with troubled, unanswered questions, wondering if she’d done the right thing, certain that she hadn’t, unable to ever come to terms with her decision.
As the enchantment spelled out explicitly, no gift ever came for free – and Annie could never say that she hadn’t known the price to pay.
It was only fair and right that the exchange for her perfection was a heavy cost. The trade meant that she willingly took on the most imperfect moments of others, haunted by their sadness and regret every time she came to do the deal, taking on the weight of their feelings and hurt so heavily that she didn’t ever really stop thinking about them.
Highly attuned to all emotions around her thanks to the long standing Wildwood hex, Annie felt it all, all of the time, as though it could burst from her like barrels of thunder that she must silently keep hold of.
The cost of pleasing everybody was one that she paid alone and she found herself in a spiralling, bottomless debt of it.
But it was worth it. She had to make sure she wasn’t disappointing anybody and this was the way to be sure of it.
She had to be perfect. She could cling to the safe familiarity she knew and nothing would change; no one else would leave her behind.
It would mean she wouldn’t fail. Look at the wonderful life it had made for her. Everybody was delighted by it.
Annie’s mother had never struggled with the cost; other people’s emotions weren’t something that held a lot of weight with her. But to Annie they meant everything.
The midnight of her fifteenth birthday was spent meeting ghosts for the very first time.
Cressida had pushed her to continue, insisting it would get easier, but still Annie carried them all, her heart like a locket bursting at its delicate hinges with the burdens of others.
Like a nocturnal creature that burrowed down when the sun rose, worry wove its way through the tunnels of Annie’s heart under the moon at midnight and barbed itself into the softness.
Thirteen minutes passed and sparks of magic began to spit from the dark red potion, smoking like ashes as they fell to the surface again.
The ghosts and their struggles seeped into her soul as she breathed them in.
She could feel every regret they carried, the weight of their history, all the mistakes that kept them chained to the wicche world when it had long since been their time to pass through onto the next.
The spell came to its conclusion – restoring her and destroying her all at once – and, as she furiously wiped away a tear that threatened to hit the water and upset the balance of her careful concoction, Annie wondered why, if she was doing everything so right, it all still felt so wrong.