Page 47 of Uncharmed

Chapter Twenty-One

TIME TO GO

A rden Place was feeling its own heart break just the same as Annie was, a steady stream of rain pouring so heavily from dawn until dusk on their final day together that the clattering against the window panes transformed into a constant, aching background sigh.

Karma wouldn’t leave Maeve’s side while she packed away her things, refusing to get out of her suitcase while shooting daggers at Annie that all the custard in the world would not be able to save her from.

It felt like Annie had been caught inside a snowglobe, as though some large, unwelcome hand had shaken her whole life up roughly and unexpectedly and now the fragments of it were tumbling down around her in slow motion.

And she could only stand there in the drift, powerless and speechless, and watch while it faded away at her feet.

All she had ever tried to do was the right thing for everybody else.

But somehow it had resulted in managing to make two very important people not want to speak to her any more, both irreparably disappointed and hurt by her decisions that were supposedly the right and proper ones to make. Annie had never felt worse.

Maeve finished her packing in a racket of furiously slammed drawers, shoved clothing and, to Annie’s greatest dismay, a few sly sniffs of tears that were definitely not supposed to be heard.

Maeve refused any and all forms of breakfast, leaving a stack of her favourite chocolate-chip pancakes untouched, and wouldn’t even accept a cup of coffee from Annie.

Instead, she briefly emerged from her room to make her own, ignoring all of Annie’s desperate, sugar-laced attempts to try to patch up the rift that had sliced itself so suddenly between them.

Unsurprisingly, Annie hadn’t slept a wink, but this time it couldn’t be blamed on a twisted, sinister, generation-spanning hex.

Her own guilt and tangled, complicated feelings kept sleep far at bay, as well as the pain and rejection that Maeve was emanating in the bedroom just below, rippling upwards to Annie’s heart.

She had heard Hal treading the porch boards below as the sun came up, while she stared at the ceiling with bleary eyes.

She had hoped that he’d accept a cup of maple coffee as a peace offering, just as he had that first morning.

They could recapture that time and end whatever was between them on a peaceful, understanding note.

But the moment she stepped onto a particularly creaky step in the staircase and revealed that she too was awake, Hal had promptly strode off into the woods with his hat pulled low.

In the distance, she heard the canter of Mage’s hooves.

Hal didn’t want to speak to her, didn’t even want to see her. He probably never would again.

But what choice did she have? He would soon forget her. They had both agreed: they didn’t go together and they didn’t belong.

Following a hasty reply to Selcouth’s letter so that Annie couldn’t change her mind, it had been arranged that Morena would, at precisely 3 p.m. and not a moment before or after, call upon Maeve by summoned transference.

Just as Annie had brought Morena to them all those weeks ago near the school, the Sage Witch would ensure that Maeve and her newly settled magic would transfer instantaneously to a new foster placement pre-arranged by the coven.

Annie explained the plan as gently as she could, but Maeve only gave her a look that could have killed her if there was an appropriate, murderous spell to accompany it.

Fortunately, Maeve settled for shoving past her on purpose with a sharp shoulder and heading out onto the porch to spend her final hours at Arden Place on the swing, gazing glassily onto the meadow with Karma nuzzling forlornly on her lap.

Of course, the cat knew that something was deeply, deeply wrong – familiars always knew.

The devastating thought of Maeve being taken from her care and having to start again in yet another unknown place was almost enough for Annie to break.

Maybe she could trigger Maeve to cause some kind of ‘accidental’ sorcery fire, just enough for them to sigh and tell the coven that they’d better stay at the cottage a couple more weeks. ..

That might keep them together for a while longer, but would still only be delaying the inevitable.

Nothing this precious could last. And surely it was better for everybody to sever these ties today, before their strange little bond grew even stronger and more painful to pull apart.

And who’s to say that it was severed anyway?

Maeve would come around, eventually. They could still be friends.

Deep down, of course, Annie knew that Maeve’s fierce pride would ensure that that would never be the case.

She would see her around at Hecate House in a few years’ time, when she had grown up into a young woman that Annie didn’t know.

They would give each other polite waves across the atrium and would both try not to remember the times they’d shared at Arden Place.

There was no returning from this decision for the girl.

Annie finally managed to zip up her stack of suitcases that had accumulated through summoning spells over the weeks (even magic struggled to fasten them closed) and knitted together the weightless luggage spell that had impressed Maeve back in the canteen.

Puffing her messy, falling hair out of her face, no longer big and bouncy, but hastily scrambled back into a claw clip, she realized the time with a jolt.

It was mere minutes to three o’clock. She had desperately hoped that Maeve would come to say goodbye herself, concede to a truce so that their final moments together could be happy ones.

But that wasn’t very Maeve. There was still so much to make sure that she told her before they were apart for good.

Annie sprinted down the stairs, tripping over her own feet, hurtling around the spiral staircase at breakneck speed and skidding over the floorboards so quickly that she almost levitated (maybe she even did, a bit) before bursting through the front door.

‘Thank the universe, you’re still here,’ she blurted out.

Reluctantly placing Karma on the ground, Maeve rose to her feet from the swing.

‘Don’t know why. I should have taken off last night.’

The two witches stood face to face, both unable to quite put into words how they were feeling. Annie, who had planned to say so much, couldn’t find a single word that felt correct.

‘Please don’t make me go.’ Maeve tried one more time, finally allowing her tears to fall.

‘We both have to go home.’

‘But this is my home.’

Maeve’s shoulders rose and fell. She blew out a steadying breath, trying to be tough as she always did, but a sob changed into a hiccough, which morphed into a frustrated, angry sigh of resignation.

As the buttercup-yellow sun slipped lower into a pocket of dull cloud, Maeve looked straight at Annie with the pain of a girl who had thought that she had finally found home.

‘Maeve, I’m so sorry. But please, listen to me...’

As sun rays silhouetted Maeve in gold, the girl gave a resigned sigh of defeat.

The faintest flicker of magic turned her translucent, with a waver like a waterfall, and three o’clock fell over the cottage at Arden Place.

Annie could only watch through tears as the accidental, astonishing gem that she had found, like buried treasure, slipped away into someone else’s hold.

One blink more and Maeve had gone.

Annie and Karma found themselves alone on the porch, only the cool, earthy October breeze for company, which picked up across the meadow as though it was trying to chase after the special girl who’d come to stay.

Cascading its way towards the cottage, it caught Annie’s hair on a gust and whipped away the scent of what now felt like home – a golden crispness and fireplace smoke and the sweetest cinnamon sugar.

It stirred the long, pale grass and Annie swore that the faint sound of their laughter at the witches’ ring was still carried along on the wind, wrapped around the cottage like a permanent friendship bracelet.

Annie waited for Hal to return until the sun went down.

She couldn’t even cry any more as she looked out, curled up on the swing, onto the horizon.

She let the soothing motion rock her gently with her feet folded underneath her skirt and Karma on her lap, as dusk sank behind the trees and veiled Arden Place in the evening’s lilac-grey.

‘He isn’t coming back,’ she said quietly into the tear-damp tufts of newly scruffy fur on Karma’s head.

She gave her a small kiss, leaving a trace of pink lipstick behind, then popped her paws down onto the swing to begin her final preparations.

Hal had taken himself far away, off on another adventure that was bigger and greater and more authentic than she could ever be.

Annie took a fond glance around the cottage: half-read spellbooks borrowed from the bookshelves left open, forgotten glasses of rainbow paint water, scatterings of coloured pencils, an always-open jar of biscuits, nests of blankets, matching slippers, discarded Stetsons, crumb-covered cake plates.

Hal would want his house as it had been before she and Maeve arrived and turned it upside down.

Annie wriggled the fingers of her left hand to gather up a sprinkling of magic – a string of pale pink sparks carried itself around the cottage in a glittering loop.

The magic tumbled through the gaps in the floorboards and passed in and out of each kitchen cupboard.

It travelled the length of the shelves, across the carpets, trailed the table and chairs, ran up the staircase.

One final trail tumbled from the ceiling beams and vanished away the ‘Maeve’s room’ words she had inked onto the bedroom door.

A reminder that something so precious and sweet was also impermanent, impossible for her to keep. The stars took every last trace.

Moments later, Annie stood alone in the middle of the bare cottage, which looked just as it had before she had ever worked her magic. The only thing different was the kitchen window, which had been so full of warmth and promise when they’d first arrived. The glow had now gone.

Stepping out onto the porch, shutting the door behind her with a gentle click, Annie took one final inhale of the meadow air, trying her best to remember it as it had been when it was a happy place.

She gathered up Karma, who had been weaving between her ankles, into her arms. Her familiar let out a single lamenting yowl.

‘Don’t give me that, Karma,’ she replied softly. ‘This was never meant for us.’

Like Maeve had once told her, perhaps the only thing to do was to let it go, like a balloon. She had to try and she had to forget.

Annie wriggled her toes in her patent shoes, feeling her transference magic awaken. She raised a hand to cast her magic, almost like a wave goodbye as her fingertips glittered pink. One moment more and the cottage was empty.

Arden Place seemed to give a curious, disappointed sigh, left truly alone for the first time in weeks, as though the wooden walls were wondering where the newly blossomed love that had filled it to the rafters had suddenly been snatched to.

Hooves galloped by, thudding at speed into the soft meadow before pulling up at the porch.

The horse rallied onto his hind legs as two boots landed on the ground in a desperate hurry.

The front door swung open, honest words ready to be spilled and insisted, but they tumbled out into an empty home.

There was nobody to hear them, only the lingering scent of vanilla sugar that settled to the floor in a scattering of rosy-pink snow-like sparks.