Page 26 of Uncharmed

Chapter Twelve

SWEET KARMA

A nnie was not much of a runner. Endorphins could allegedly make her happy, but she firmly believed that a slice of cake could normally make her much happier.

But if anything was going to make her run, it was the need to find her familiar.

She would run to the ends of the earth if she needed to, if it meant that she could protect her heart’s link.

Annie broke through the trees and left the meadow behind for the woodland, with no choice but to trust that her affinity would take her the right way.

Eventually, she had to stop, folding over to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath.

‘Annie, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Maeve came sprinting behind her, much less winded by the exertion but maybe even more visibly upset. She fiercely wiped at her wet cheeks. ‘Did you see which way she went?’

‘She bolted somewhere up there,’ Annie said, fighting to get her breath back.

‘Maeve, wait...’ Before she could finish, Maeve ran off to blindly follow the direction of Annie’s vague pointing, quickly vanishing into the trees.

Annie winced and pulled herself back up to rejoin the desperate search party.

‘Maeve, please hang on a second.’ She caught up and tugged at Maeve’s dungarees strap to make her stop.

‘I shouldn’t have pelted after her like that.

It probably only made her more scared. If we stop for a moment, I can tune into our affinity and listen properly to my instincts.

But I do need to be able to breathe to do that. ’

Maeve, now gasping for air, too, nodded as she tightened her ponytail and pushed her glasses back up her nose.

They slid straight back down with the sheen of sweat across her skin.

Annie inhaled deeply to reset, the sharpness of cold air filling her nose.

Another, slowly in and out. A gust of wind breathed through the chestnut trees that canopied above, sending her hair flying back and a smattering of auburn leaves fluttering down like a whisper.

Gradually, it grounded her. Then, after making space in her mind, she caught it faintly on the breeze: that sweet, powdery scent that could always soothe her soul, the one that smelt like home.

‘This way,’ Annie said softly. It could have been their intrinsic familiar connection or maybe it was all the magic that she had felt carrying on the air around the cottage, but something told her that she didn’t need to panic.

All four paws had stepped into a safe space.

Her heartbeat regulated the smallest amount.

The aura around the woodland seemed to change from red to amber, to a gentler gold as she thought of Karma.

It was vast and labyrinth-like and unwelcoming to a prim and proper house cat, but her heart knew as they began to walk that Karma was okay.

It was just a matter of time until they found her.

She gestured to Maeve to follow her, heading in the direction that the magic tugged her towards.

‘Do you know where she is?’ Maeve asked quietly after some time.

‘No, but I know she’s okay. The sense of danger has dropped,’ Annie replied gently. ‘She won’t be happy with you that she’s had to get her paws muddy, but I promise we’ll find her and she’ll be fine.’

Maeve sniffed and wiped her nose with her wrist. ‘I really am sorry, Annie.’

‘I know.’

‘I didn’t mean to scare her. I would never want to do that.’

‘I know that, too.’

‘I’m sorry for loads of stuff, actually.

Yesterday. And today. And now this. I just.

..’ Maeve broke off whatever it was that she was pushing herself to share, swallowing it down to keep to herself.

Annie only nodded, sensing the regret, then gestured with her chin for them to keep walking.

The pair walked side by side in silence, occasionally clicking and calling for Karma as their bare feet scuffed through the dirt.

It said a lot that Annie was too focused on finding her familiar to be disgusted by the state of her filthy pedicure.

‘You can tell me,’ Annie said softly after a time, reaching out to put a gentle arm around Maeve’s shoulder. For the first time, she didn’t flinch away. In fact, she leaned into it, needing to be held.

‘It’ll sound stupid,’ Maeve muttered.

‘Sweetheart, if we don’t start being honest with one another about how this feels, we’re never going to make any progress. It’s just going to be exploding pumpkins and me driving you to the edge of insanity until the coven decides that we’re both officially and categorically useless.’

Maeve gave an emphatic sigh. ‘I just feel so much, all at once. Everything feels massive, all of the time. And I don’t know where to put any of it.

It bursts out of me before I can figure out how to shrink it back down again.

It’s like everything is just expanding inside of me until, before I know it, I’ve blown something up or set fire to something and ruined it.

I’ve always blown up in one way or another, but it used to just be my temper acting alone.

Now there’s bloody magic involved to make it happen literally, too. ’

Annie found that she related so acutely in many ways to the revelation that she wasn’t sure whether she could even admit to it out loud. Annie knew what it was to feel. Even when she felt nothing, it was still an enormous kind of nothing. A huge, cavernous, swallowing nothing.

‘You know, it might seem like we’re very different types of people, Maeve.

But I do understand what you mean,’ Annie said, resisting turning her head to look at the girl.

The magic of walking side by side was that people could tumble into their own thoughts while sharing them, more for themselves than the other.

Eye contact risked snapping that careful, fragile bridge.

‘Oh, please. There’s no way that you, Ms Perfect, have ever had any kind of outburst that someone’s had to, like.

..fill in a form about. My whole life is documented in forms. Meanwhile, you’re the most calm and collected person I’ve ever met.

Your reaction to my absolute disaster at school?

And yesterday? It’s kind of terrifying, actually.

I wouldn’t be all that surprised if you told me you’d killed a man. ’

Annie laughed. She didn’t take Maeve’s dismissal as an insult.

Any fifteen-year-old would assume that they are the only person to have ever felt the things they feel and, in a way, they weren’t wrong.

After a lifetime of listening, she had learned that everyone sipped at their own entirely unique concoction of experiences and responses.

‘Calm and collected? Me?’ she replied. ‘I’ve always thought I’m a bit like a swan: calm on the surface but frantically kicking underneath – except my swan is doing an aquatic Irish jig.

I spend most of my day trying to decide which thing to ruin next with worry and overthinking.

I guess we show and process them in different ways, but I feel the big things, too, Maeve.

I’m tying myself in knots most of the time. ’

Maeve’s eyebrows spoke for her as they jolted up in doubt.

‘It’s true, I swear. I feel things so hard and so much, just like you, that sometimes it’s like they’re going to stop me from breathing,’ Annie said.

She thought about the spell and what it did to her.

‘I feel it all on everyone else’s behalf without them even asking me to, they all take up so much space that there’s barely any room for me to figure out my own thoughts. ’

An owl hooted softly above them, welcoming in the early evening and the first streak of pearly moonlight behind the clouds.

‘You might feel as though your feelings and your powers are bigger than you are, but at least you express them, Maeve. At least you let them out and you fight back against them and you show them who’s boss – or who will be boss eventually.

That’s strength in itself. I really admire that about you, your bravery.

Even if it does explode in ways that you’re not expecting sometimes. ’

For the first time, Maeve looked properly at Annie as they walked, her mouth squashed into a frown. ‘What do you do with yours? All your feelings, I mean. I’m all ears for suggestions.’

Annie thought about it for a moment. ‘Nothing,’ she answered truthfully.

She laughed a breath through her nose as her mouth stretched into a line, but it couldn’t be classed as a smile.

What did she do with her true feelings, to honour them or consider them or even acknowledge them?

She had trained that out of herself long ago.

That was where the spell stepped in, so that she could remain as perfect as she willed.

‘What, like, ever?’

‘No. I just find a way to make them feel smaller and controlled again and then I can move on.’ Annie had never been honest with anybody like this before; something about the girl’s vulnerability brought it out of her.

If she expected Maeve to be honest with her, then it was only fair.

Or maybe it was just because nobody had ever asked her before.

It felt like splitting open a rock to reveal a fossil inside, the shape of the truth inside so strange and old that she was unsure of what it was really exposing.

Maeve gave her a baffled look, as though Annie were an alien that she’d just encountered in the middle of the woods. ‘What, so you don’t ever just...scream? Or yell? Or chuck something across the room and embarrass yourself a bit, but then feel better for it afterwards?’

Now it was Annie’s turn to shrug, feeling self-conscious. As though some kind of secret shortcoming had just been pointed out, even though she didn’t think Maeve meant it to feel like that. The girl seemed genuinely fascinated.

Maeve turned suddenly to Annie with a glint in her eye, a bubble of a mischievous grin unable to keep itself under wraps any longer.

‘Do a big shout.’