by Katie Penryn
It was her Book of Spells.
Why had Dad’s lawyers sent us Mum’s magic book?
Chapter 2
Despite the address on the outer package, perhaps the book hadn’t been sent to all of us. Jimbo stretched out his hand and took the edge of the cover between his finger and thumb to open it, but he was unable to lift it. It was as if the whole book had turned to concrete. He shook his head in disbelief and gestured to me to try.
When I touched the worn red leather, the strange buzzing ran up my arm again. I winced and snatched my hand away.
“Ouch. It gave me a shock.”
Jimbo came round the table to stand next to me and put his arm around my waist.
I gave him a quick squeeze. “Don’t worry. It wasn’t a bad one. Just like when you touch the car on a hot day.”
Jimbo nodded his head towards the book again. This time I was prepared for the buzz and tingle and I didn’t let go. The cover flipped open but jerked shut again almost trapping my fingers.
Jimbo opened his mouth to talk to me but as before his words were silent. He mimed wrapping the book up again in the parchment.
Once the book was out of sight again he said, “That’s weird, Penzi. Why can you talk when we look at the book but I can’t?”
I was damned if I knew. Maybe it would all be explained when Sam came home and read the letter to us.
However, to me it wasn’t just weird it was intimidating and brought back memories of all those afternoons after primary school when my mother would sit me down in front of the strange book. The more she tried to get me to read and study it, the less I could.
Every session ended with me in tears and my mother stamping round the room saying, “You have to learn this, Penzi. It’s your birthright.”
Whatever that meant.
All that came to an end when my absentee father paid us a one-day visit when I was ten. I don’t know what he said to my mother, but after that the school arranged special reading lessons for me, and my mother left me alone with my homework.
*
Zig and Zag rushed out of the kitchen to the front door. Sam was home. A rush of cold air and summer sleet blew him into the hallway. The dogs gave him their usual rapturous welcome nearly knocking him off his feet. He threw his backpack down on the floor and followed us into the kitchen where the re-wrapped parcel lay on the table without its cord and seal.
“Oh you started without me after all?” he said shaking his wet blond hair back from his face.
“No, silly,” I said handing him a towel. “We only wanted to find out what was in the parcel, but it doesn’t make much sense.”
I put the kettle on and asked Jimbo to make us all a cup of tea while I set up my laptop to receive Sam’s dictation. Sam tossed the towel on the counter and fetched the letter and document from the hall table. When we were all ready with our tea in front of us, I passed my headphones and mike to Sam. He was used to having to dictate letters and work related texts for me, and I would play them back when necessary. I wouldn’t have made it through university and my legal training without his help.
“Right, I’m going to read all the way through—no interruptions—then we’ll discuss it,” he said adjusting the fit of the headphones. “The letter first.”
He opened the envelope. His eyes fell on the contents while he was unfolding the pages. He let out a gasp. His eyes squeezed shut as he shook his head.
A chill wind blasted through the kitchen rocking us all from side to side.
“What is it?” Jimbo and I asked together when we had steadied down enough to speak.
Sam slowly opened his eyes again. “Bad news, I’m afraid—”
“What?” asked Jimbo.
Sam dropped his hand to the table still holding the letter. He hesitated for a second before looking up at us again, his face tight and pale.
“It’s Dad. He’s only gone and died in Africa,” he blurted out.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Dad? Dead? Are you sure?”
Sam nodded his head in slow motion.
“How?” I asked.
“Give me a chance. Let me read the whole letter through slowly while you listen.”
And he began:
We regret to inform you that your father, Sir Archibald Munro…
And so went the first page. Our dad, a world famous anthropologist, hence the merit title, who had spent all his working life in Africa, bar brief trips every few years to Europe to visit us and give lectures at Oxford, had disappeared while researching witchcraft amongst a cannibal tribe in the hinterland. The local police had carried out extensive searches but hadn’t turned up any trace of him either alive or dead.
“Did the cannibals eat him up?” asked Jimbo coming round to sit on my lap.
I pulled him close. It was a scary idea for a nine-year-old boy. “It’s possible,” I said at last. “But it’s probably disrespectful to suggest it because it sounds like a bad joke.”
Sam flattened the letter out on the table and scanned it again silently. “It wouldn’t have been a joke for him.”
He read on.
Our absentee father’s rare visits to his wife and family had coincided with the conception of each of us. His last visit of any length being nine months before Jimbo was born. Jimbo had never seen his father. Dad had always provided well for us having bought the house in Notting Hill Gate when I was born and paying a generous allowance into a trust account for us.
The thick document was his Last Will and Testament. Fortunately, the lawyer had taken pity on us and summarized the main terms in his accompanying letter.
Our house in Notting Hill was to be sold because it would fetch a higher price than my father’s holiday house in South Western France. The proceeds were to be put into a trust to pay our living expenses, tuition fees as necessary and for a complete modernization of the French house.
So we would have to pack up and move to France.
Chapter 3
“And leave all our friends behind?” asked Jimbo, his face crinkling up with fear at the enormity of the move. “To go to some stinking house in France that I’ve never even seen and live with foreigners? I don’t want to go.”
I was having a hard time coming to terms with the idea myself but I had to keep Jimbo happy. “You’ll make new friends, Jimbo.”
“But I can’t speak their silly Froggy language.”
“You’ll learn to in no time. Sam and I both speak French.”
“Of a sort,” said Sam. “Anyway lots of Brits live in France now. You can have friends of all kinds.”
Jimbo was close to tears. “But I don’t want to leave Zig and Zag behind.”
“They can come with us. We’ll get them doggy passports,” I said giving him a hug.
Sam pushed back his chair and hurried out of the kitchen. When he returned he was carrying an old photo album.
“Remember this, Penzi?” he said putting it down and opening the pages. “Look. This is the album about our holiday last time Dad came to visit us. Before you were born, Jimbo. We spent four weeks in the French house.”
I pulled the album across towards me to within Jimbo’s reach. “See, that’s the house,” I said pointing to a large somewhat misshapen building right on the tip of the most perfect horseshoe bay. “That’s Beaucoup-sur-mer. That means Muchness-by-the-sea. We’ll be living five minutes from the beach. Notice the sand. And all the cute shops. You’ll love the place.”
“What about school?”
“You’ll go to a new school. A French one. And you can play on the beach every weekend.”
Sam closed up the album. He’d been silent while Jimbo and I were talking. Sam had been considering finding a temporary job for six months to earn enough to go travelling for a gap year.
“What about me, Penzi? I’ll have to come with you, won’t I? I can’t leave you to cope with everything on your own.”
“Why don’t you have a quick run through the will? Maybe Dad has provided for
that. Don’t bother to read it aloud today, just skim.”
He ran his finger down the pages and flicked through them, stopping about half way through. “This is the bit about the house. Apparently, the building next door belonged to Dad as well, and he’s left that to us, too.”
“He would have to under French property law. I don’t remember much about that building. Open the album again.”
Sam turned to the photos at the front and we all three peered at the building next door to the house. The photo was out of focus but we made out a large carriage entrance and over that the word Brocante.
“What does that mean?” asked Jimbo.
Sam laughed. “Oh I remember now. Behind those carriage doors there was a glass shop front. Don’t you remember all the junk in that shop, Penzi?”
I stretched my mind back to that summer when I was sixteen and interested in nothing but boys and beach parties.
“Of course, but the shop was always closed. All we saw was a jumble of old furniture and bric-a-brac, all dusty and dingy. Strange for an antiques shop. It was never open. Brocante means antiques, Jimbo.”
Sam read the clause from the will.
I expect my older son Samuel to help his sister re-open the shop. If he stays the course for a year, the trust will pay for any training or further education he desires after this period.
“Sam, you were thinking of taking a year off, anyway. This way you’ll be doing something helpful for the family and you won’t have to earn your own keep.”
Sam dropped the document back on the table. “Yes, but this is a lot to take in all at once, isn’t it? And what about you and your new practice?”
Although I’d been hiding my resentment from my brothers, I’d been growing more and more annoyed as the terms and conditions of our strange inheritance were made clear. What dysfunctional parents we had. A mother who went off to find herself when her youngest child was only two, leaving me to take care of her children. Eighteen I was then and about to start university. And an absentee father who visited us once every seven years or so. Yes, it was great to be provided for financially, but where had been the parental love and attention that we all needed?
And now we had to up sticks and move to a foreign country, charming as France might be, abandoning our friends and changing our way of life.
I was disgruntled. I already had a few clients in my portfolio and was poised for a promising career in law in the great city of London. Now I had to move to some backwater in France. Beaucoup-sur-mer was a pretty seaside town, and I was sure it was a fun place to live, but there’d be no opportunity for me to take center stage in newsworthy trials. I’d have to give up my dream of being a modern day Portia.
Although Sam had reached the age of maturity, Jimbo would be my responsibility for several years to come. I had no choice but to follow Dad’s direction.
Jimbo tugged at my sleeve and turned his face up towards me. “Penzi, you’re awfully quiet. Are you unhappy?”
“Of course not,” I said scrunching him towards me. “But you have to admit. The news is a bit of a shock.”
Sam folded the letter up and was sliding it back into its envelope when he said, “Hey, here’s another note.”
He pulled out a smaller envelope and handed it to me. “Private and Personal: Mpenzi Munro.”
Jimbo handed me the paper knife, and I slit the envelope open. I recognized my father’s writing, but that was even more difficult for me to read than typescript, and so I passed the note to Sam, privacy warning notwithstanding.
Sam read out my father’s last message to me:
My dear Mpenzi, darling of my heart:
The package with the red seal is for your eyes only. No one else should see it or open it, not that they will be able to do the latter. It is your mother’s Book of Spells. I took possession of the book when you were a child because I did not agree with her wish to indoctrinate you in her witchlike ways while you were so young. Not that I have anything against witches. I wouldn’t have married one if I—
Jimbo jerked his head back hitting my arm. “Is Dad saying that Mum’s a witch?”
His body trembled against mine. The idea was too new and strange for him.
“Shush. Let Sam finish,” I said tightening my hold on him to still his shakes.
Sam glanced at Jimbo. “You’re not the only one to be stunned by all this, little brother. Shall I read on?”
I nodded. A nasty feeling of déjà-vu surged through me. One half of me said tell that to the marines. The other acknowledged that odd memories of life with my mother were falling into place.
So, she was a witch? A real one with real magic? So, she wasn’t just a wannabe.
Sam’s voice broke through my contradictory thoughts.
I wouldn’t have married one if I had. Furthermore, the main thrust of my work is research into witchcraft, as you know. Apart from the fact that it was obvious to me on that visit that you were dyslexic and were unable to read the Book of Spells, I considered that you should be allowed to gain your legal majority at eighteen before deciding whether you wanted to acknowledge the talents bequeathed to you in your mitochondrial DNA—
Jimbo shifted in my arms. “What is Dad talking about? What’s mito-whatsit?”
I waited for Sam to answer, bio-chemistry being more his thing than mine.
“You remember Jurassic Park and how they re-created dinosaurs?”
Jimbo nodded. “Yes, they used DNA, didn’t they? It’s what makes us what we are.”
“That’s right. DNA carries our genetic make-up down the generations.”
“And this mito stuff?”
Sam gave me a wink before turning back to Jimbo. “Now, that’s where this gets interesting. Mitochondrial DNA is only carried down the female line. When the code hits us guys, it stops. We can’t pass the DNA on, but Penzi can. And so could our mother.”
Jimbo’s face screwed up with concentration as he processed the import of Dad’s letter. “So Dad’s saying that because Mum is a witch, Penzi is one, too?”
“Not if I can help it,” I said, anxious to put paid to all the witch nonsense.
Jimbo frowned. “But if the mito stuff comes down to us all in our DNA, why can’t we boys be witches or wizards even if our children can’t be?”
Sam looked down at the note and back up at Jimbo. “Dad doesn’t explain, but I would guess being a witch is a special gene that only works if it has the chance of being carried on to the next generation. That would exclude us guys because the gene gets stopped dead with us.”
“Surely you don’t believe this rubbish, Sam?” I said jumping up from my chair, backing up against the kitchen counter and folding my arms against the idea.
“If what Dad says is true, you can’t fight your biological inheritance. If being a witch is in your DNA, it’s in your DNA, come what may. It’s obvious Dad and Mum both found the idea credible.”
“Well, I don’t and I’m not going to accept it. It’s poppy-cock. Anyway, they’re hardly a good example for what to think and believe in life. Take their abysmal parenting skills, for example.”
“I’m only saying that if what Dad says is true, you’ll have to come to terms with being a witch.”
“Never, never, NEVER,” I said banging my hand down on the counter to emphasize my point.
Jimbo called out, “Please stop fighting. Come and sit down, Penzi, and listen to the rest of the note. Why are you so upset? You’re lucky to be a w—”
“I’m not a witch. I’ve told you it’s not possible. I’m a barrister, for heaven’s sake. Whoever heard of a lawyer who was a witch? Logic and magic don’t go together,” I replied taking my chair again.
“There’s only two letters difference,” joked Sam.
“What?” I said, puzzled as usual by anything to do with spelling.
“It’s not fair,” said Jimbo. “I want to be a witch. Why can’t I be one?”
Sam laughed at Jimbo and I joined in. We enjoyed a good laugh after a
ll the weird disclosures and after hearing the sober news of our father’s death. Soon, Jimbo was giggling, too.
When we calmed down Sam pointed out to Jimbo that he didn’t qualify as a witch because he wasn’t a girl. I have to admit I smiled to myself at that. Boys have so many advantages it was good to know they don’t have everything their own way.
Sam picked up the letter again and continued reading:
So, over to you, Mpenzi. Ignore or accept as you please. But, one final point, if you have shared this with the boys, they must swear never to tell anyone about you or the magic powers you possess, whether you choose to use them or not. We don’t burn or drown witches in the village pond any more in the western world, but that doesn’t mean being a witch is socially or professionally acceptable outside the magic community. All my love, Dad.
Jimbo was the first one to speak. “So Dad couldn’t be a witch, but was he a wizard?”
Sam and I both shrugged. How could we know?
I reached for the note. “I’d like to keep that.” I tucked it into my pocket. “You’d better swear then.”
“What do we say?” asked Jimbo.
“It doesn’t really matter as long as you mean the promise in your heart when you say it. How about see my finger…?”
Their solemn oath took care of Jimbo and Sam. As for me, I would never tell a soul. If I ignored the subject, it would go away, and I’d stay safe from my parents’ madness.
I caught Zig’s eye. She seemed to wink at me. Nah. She was only a dog.
Chapter 4
After much discussion that evening we had decided what we would do. All three of us were now reconciled to moving from England to France and from city to country. I was determined to do everything I could to minimize any traumatic effect this shift would have on Sam and Jimbo, particularly Jimbo. We were to leave England for France by car the following Saturday. I reasoned the busier we were the less time we would all have to feel miserable at leaving behind friends and familiar places or to work up fear and apprehension of the new experiences to come.
