The Night Sorceresses

by Erica Griswold

  Rosaria banged on Lillithia’s bedroom door, waking her up from a sound sleep. Lillithia opened the door, and Rosaria stumbled into the room. Lillithia saw what she was holding and the horrible welt on her hand where the octopus had stung her. “What happened to you?”

  “I found a Sea Sorceress’s cauldron, and when I tried to dip it into the water to collect water for the voice spell, a little octopus stung me!” Rosaria said.

  “Where did you get that cauldron?”

  Rosaria took a deep breath. It was confession time. “I took it from Willow.”

  Lillithia’s face turned red with anger. “Did you ask her if you could take it?”

  “No, but I was going to put it back in her bag before she woke up!” Rosaria whimpered.

  “What did the little creature look like?” Lillithia asked. She grabbed the glass of healing potion and handed it to Rosaria. Rosaria guzzled it down, but her condition continued to deteriorate. Her legs suddenly went numb, and she collapsed on the floor. “It was a little octopus with rings on it,” Rosaria said.

  “Good God!” Lillithia gasped. She ran out of the room and returned with a glass of Basilisk anti-venom. “Drink this up! It’s the most powerful anti-venom Victor has.”

  Rosaria drank the anti-venom and felt her strength begin to slowly return to her.

  “A Blue-Ringed Octopus! You know, you’re lucky that you lived long enough to make it back to the castle. What am I supposed to tell Victor if you die?” Lillithia scolded.

  Rosaria saw there was enough water in her jar to make her voice potion.

  “I feel better now,” Rosaria said. The numbness began wearing away from her legs. She hobbled to her feet.

  “You know what Victor said about using Willow’s stuff without her permission!” Lillithia growled. Rosaria sighed.

  “Now, go put that cauldron back in Willow’s bag,” Lillithia snapped as she crawled back into bed. Rosaria stood up and walked to the door. She decided to try to make the spell anyway. She stopped in her room and got the sailor’s vocal cords out of the space behind the brick in the wall. She walked down to the chemistry room and took the shell out of her bag.

  She lit a candle, placed the cauldron on the table, and poured the water in the cauldron. Rosaria wrote the spell down on a piece of paper, tore up the paper, put it in a bowl, and held her candle down in it, letting the paper catch on fire. Rosaria sang, “Sea foam boil and sea foam bubble. Give my voice the song that makes women weep when I drag their lovers to the deep.”

  She watched as the paper singed and turned to soot. When there was nothing left there but soot, she blew the flames out. She poured the water and soot into the cauldron and then put the barnacles in.

  Rosaria put the sailor’s vocal cords in, and when the vocal cords hit the water, she felt a jolt of electricity that was so strong, it pushed her backward. As she fell, there was a clap of thunder in the room, and a ghost of a young woman suddenly appeared in a flash of lightning. Her face was furious, and as suddenly as she appeared, she was gone.

  Rosaria hit the apparatus, causing it to fall to the ground and shatter. I’m in trouble now! she thought. There was no way she could keep her mess a secret from Victor. She had been shocked by the electricity, but she was not hurt.

  Rosaria took being injured twice in the same night as a sign that she should not ever use the shell again. She began sweeping up the broken glass, when she heard the one sound she’d hoped she wouldn’t hear that evening: footsteps.

  The door swung open, and Victor stood in the doorway. In the candlelight, Rosaria could see his face turn red with fury. “What are you doing down here at this hour? And what happened to my apparatus?” he growled.

  “I-I was making the hypnotic voice potion I told you I wanted to make,” Rosaria said.

  “Where did you get that Sea Sorceress’s cauldron?” Victor gasped when he saw the shell.

  Rosaria knew that Victor could sense lies. She decided there was a small chance she would get a less severe punishment if she told the truth. “I got it out of Willow’s bag,” Rosaria confessed.

  “Is she aware that you are using it?”

  “No.” Rosaria hung her head in shame.

  Victor’s eyes grew as wide as saucers. His face turned maroon with anger. “Why did you steal from her? You know how important it is for the coup to go precisely as we planned! You’d better be glad that your rooms are in the other part of the castle, or else she would have heard that noise just now!” Victor snapped.

  “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” Rosaria whimpered.

  “It had better not! What happened to your hand?” he asked, taking note of the huge scab that had formed where the octopus stung Rosaria.

  “I went to the shore to get the ocean water for the spell. When I dipped the shell in the water, a small octopus stung me,” Rosaria said.

  “Of course strange things happened when you used the Sea Sorceress’s cauldron! Who knows what could have happened to you! You might have drowned while standing on dry land! You can get electrocuted as if you touched an electric eel! You can get stung by jellyfish and octopuses, and who knows what else can happen! Unlike Willow, you, Lillithia, and I don’t have fairy magic! I told you not to use her things without her permission when she came, didn’t I?” He shoved his forefinger in Rosaria’s face. “Now, we have to keep Willow on our good side, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rosaria whimpered.

  “Now, go put that cauldron back where you got it and go to bed! This behavior won’t go unpunished!” Victor growled.

  Rosaria slowly walked to the door of the chemistry room. She stopped and turned toward Victor. “Sir, I have some questions.”

  “Go put the shell back first,” Victor mumbled.

  Rosaria walked back upstairs. She gently opened the door, careful not to wake Willow, and opened the wardrobe door. She found the bag and gently placed the shell inside before quietly closing the bedroom door and breathing a sigh of relief. She walked back down to the library and closed the door. Victor was sitting at his desk, reading a large book.

  “Sir, I wanted to ask you something,” Rosaria said.

  Victor looked up from the book he was reading. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Willow is a Weather Sorceress. How did she get a Sea Sorceress’s cauldron?”

  “Well, perhaps she was friends with a Sea Sorceress she has not told us about yet,” Victor said. “Or perhaps because sorcerers are rather hard to come by, she was just the best one to protect it. When a sorcerer or sorceress dies, their most prized possession finds the best sorcerer or sorceress to protect it if it hasn’t already been given or willed to another one.”

  He looked back down at his book. “Now, go to bed. I have to think up a good punishment for you.”

  Rosaria sulked as she walked up the stairs and went to bed. She could not go to sleep, dreading whatever punishment Victor was going to give her in the morning. Rosaria knew he was a powerful warlock and could do just about anything he wanted to her.

  She lay for several hours, trying to sleep, until she saw sunlight beginning to break on the horizon. She was startled by the sound of someone knocking on her door. “Come in,” Rosaria said. The door opened, and she saw Victor standing in the doorway.

  “I have thought of a punishment for you, and I want to talk to you about it before you go down to breakfast.”

  Here I go, the moment of truth. What will my punishment be? Rosaria wondered. “All right, what is it?” she asked.

  “I will wipe your memory of everything you did last night. That will be today’s spellwork lesson since I should shame you for going through people’s things without their permission!” Victor said. Rosaria was terrified. What if he wiped her whole memory? She knew he was capable of doing much worse to her, and kept her mouth shut.

  Willow awoke to the sun streaming through her window. She got dressed and ran downstairs. The three others were eating breakfast in total silence. Rosaria stared into her
bowl of oatmeal and stirred her spoon around in it, obviously sulking about something.

  “What’s wrong, Rosaria?” Willow asked.

  “I’m getting my memory wiped,” Rosaria answered.

  Lillithia dropped her spoon in her bowl of oatmeal. “What?” she shrieked.

  Victor said, “I caught Rosaria going through my own personal spell books last night. I have to teach her a lesson for her mistake!”

  “What kinds of memories are we going to learn how to wipe?” Lillithia asked.

  “All kinds of memories!” Victor said. “Of course, we are going to start this lesson after you have taken your daily quiz; that way you won’t forget the information you learned yesterday. I’m sure the three of you studied last night.”

  They walked into the library. Willow saw the blackboard that Victor used for teaching sitting in the front of the room, and it had five questions written on it. “Now, you have five minutes to complete this quiz. You may all take out a sheet of paper,” Victor said. Willow pulled a piece of paper out of a drawer and placed it on her desk.

  Willow looked at the grandfather clock in the front of the room. The second hand passed the nine. “Fifteen seconds until we start,” Victor said. “Five, four, three, two, one. Start.”

  Willow hurriedly wrote down the answers to all the questions. She knew the answers to all of them.

  At the end of the five minutes, Victor said, “Time’s up. Hand in your papers.” Willow and the others turned in their papers.

  “Who can tell me the answer to number one?” Victor asked. “Read the question first, please.” Lillithia and Willow raised their hands.

  “Yes, Lillithia,” Victor said.

  “What objects make up a fairy ring? The answer is either rocks or mushrooms can make up a fairy ring.”

  “Very good.”

  After they finished reciting the answers for the quiz, Victor said, “Turn to page 597 in The Theory and Practice of Spellcraft.”

  Willow pulled out her book and began flipping through the pages. This must be an advanced spell to be way back in the fifteenth chapter, she thought. She saw the words “Memory Wiping Spells” written at the top of the page. The instructions for a spell to erase one hour of a person’s memory were written under the title.

  “Everyone stand up. We can’t practice these spells correctly sitting down,” Victor said. The three of them stood up and walked to the center of the room. Rosaria winced as she imagined what Victor might do to her. “Rosaria, you are practicing this spell with me. Lillithia, you are practicing with Willow.”

  “Why do the rest of us need to have our memories wiped?” Lillithia asked.

  “Because a memory wipe spell is something you are still going to need to learn. Why not start now?”

  Willow was very nervous. What if something went wrong like yesterday when she accidentally lit the globe on fire? What if she wiped Lillithia’s memory for good? What if Lillithia wiped HER memory for good?

  “We are going to start with the one-hour memory wipe spell,” Victor said. “Now, repeat after me. ‘Memories come, and memories go. Now, an hour back in time they’ll go!’”

  “Memories come, and memories go. Now, an hour back in time they’ll go!” the three students chanted.

  He held up his wand and pointed it at Rosaria. “Point your wands at each other like this,” Victor said. Willow could see Rosaria trembling as she held up her wand. Victor said, “On the count of three, we will all recite the spell together.” Rosaria swallowed nervously. “One, two, three!”

  They all said, “Memories come, and memories go. Now, an hour back in time they’ll go!”

  Willow saw pink clouds come out of the tip of her and Lillithia’s wands. The clouds engulfed both of them, and they smelled so bad that Willow fought back an urge to vomit. She felt her memory of waking up, eating breakfast, and taking the quiz slip out of her mind, but as soon as the smoke dissipated, her memory of the events that occurred earlier that morning came flooding back.

  “How did I get here?” Rosaria squealed. Lillithia looked around confusedly.

  “All right, I want the three of you to tell me what happened to you today from the moment you woke up until now,” Victor said.

  “How am I supposed to do that? I don’t remember how I got down here! Did I sleepwalk?” Rosaria asked. Willow stifled a laugh at the question. She wondered why the spell didn’t work on her.

  “No, Rosaria, you didn’t sleepwalk down here. We are learning to do memory wipe spells, and you were already standing down here.” Victor laughed.

  Willow could not help but laugh also. Lillithia said, “I don’t remember anything either!”

  “Do you remember last night?” Victor asked.

  “Yes!” Lillithia said. “I remember nearly getting killed by Willow.”

  “Well, you won’t be able to remember that by the end of our lesson. We are going to learn one more wipe today, the twenty-four-hour wipe,” Victor said.

  Willow meekly raised her hand.

  “Yes, Willow?” he asked.

  “Um, I remember eating oatmeal for breakfast,” Willow replied.

  The others stared at her with their mouths open. “Well, that’s interesting,” Victor said.

  Victor put his wand down so as not to accidentally cast the spell while teaching the students. “Now, the next spell goes like this. ‘Memories come, and memories go. Back yours go to a day ago!’” He picked up his wand and pointed it at Rose.

  Willow and Lillithia pointed their wands at each other. Victor said, “Now, on the count of three, you’ll say that spell. One, two, three!”

  “Memories come, and memories go. Back yours go to a day ago!” Willow said. This time, a blue cloud came out of their wands and surrounded their opponents. Again, it smelled terrible, and the smell nearly made Willow pass out. She felt her memory slip away, but again, it returned to her after the cloud dissipated.

  Lillithia and Rosaria looked around themselves in a stupor, obviously wondering how they got to the library. “What happened? We were taking Willow out to get her wand from the tree, and suddenly, we are here!” Rosaria squealed. A devious grin stretched across Victor’s face.

  Willow decided to talk to Victor after the lesson was over. Why didn’t the spell work on her? She heard Lillithia say the same words as the others did, but again, the spell didn’t stick.

  “Well, Rosaria, I have an explanation for this time jump. Extraterrestrials abducted the four of us when we were going out to get Willow’s wand, and we have no memory of what happened aboard their ship. Remember when we saw that grey flying cylinder in the sky?” Victor asked.

  Willow wondered if Rosaria’s spell had made Victor go crazy. Rosaria and Lillithia ran over to one of the windows and looked outside. “There are no flying cylinders in the sky!” Lillithia exclaimed.

  “It has already left,” Victor said. He pointed his wand toward a shelf. A strange-looking book with a metal circular-shaped object on the cover floated out to Rosaria’s desk. The book opened on its own to a page with a metal cylindrical-shaped object with wings flying through the sky. The two women huddled around the book, but Willow stayed at her desk.

  “You don’t want to look to see what took us all?” Victor asked Willow.

  Willow turned her wand over in her hands, knowing full well that they did not get kidnapped by anyone the day before. She wanted to talk to Victor about it in private. “No, that’s okay. I don’t want to see it.”

  “Now, turn back in your books to page five. We will now practice transporting ourselves from one place to another,” Victor said.

  Willow and the others turned back to page five in the beginning of the book. She read the description under the spell.

  It read,

  “Imagine you are somewhere you can travel to. Think of the name of the country, state, or city. The place your heart wants to go must be in alignment with the place you say you want to go. Wave your wand over your head three times and say, ‘I
imagine I’m in (say the name of the place you would like to go here)! Time and space now make it so.’”

  Suddenly the thought of going to the library her mom had talked about popped into Willow’s head. Her heart gave a leap, but she wondered if she was better off staying with Victor.

  “Now, I shall demonstrate traveling from the library into the dining room for you,” Victor said. He walked to the library door and closed it. “I am closing the door and locking it to show you that there is no way I can walk out of the room. He put the keys on his desk and stood several feet away. Victor held his wand above his head and waved it three times. “I imagine I am in my dining room! Time and space now make it so!” he said.

  He suddenly disappeared into thin air. Rosaria jumped and squealed, startled. She heard knocking on the library door, and squealed again. “It’s me!” Victor’s voice called. Rosaria picked his keys up off the desk and unlocked the door. Victor walked into the room, grinning broadly. “See, it’s not as hard as it looks.” Willow stared at him with her mouth hanging open. Victor locked the door again.

  “Now, the three of you are going to try it, but I request that you don’t go anywhere outside this castle in case you should have difficulty casting the spell again to bring yourself back here,” Victor said. Willow tried to imagine that she was in her bedroom in the castle, but she longed to try to go to the library her mother had told her about. She tried desperately to put the place out of her mind.

  “Now, are the three of you ready?” Victor asked.

  “Yes.” Rose and Lillithia said, but Willow wasn’t so sure that she was ready.

  “Okay, you know the drill by now. On the count of three, you recite the spell.” He counted out loud. “One, Two, Three!”

  Willow waved the wand over her head and said, “I imagine I am in my bedroom. Now time and space shall make it so.”