A Wild Conversion

by Katherine Gilbert

  Her eyes burned into Reginald.

  “I will leave that to your and your family’s conscience.” She watched them. “William will be staying, as well, to see that the conversion of Salem is carried out in peace, so if you show any inclination to return to Hester’s plans or ways, there will be consequences.”

  This didn’t entirely take on the man’s crimes either of having killed his own sister or using her to finally raise the demon, but there had, admittedly, been mitigating circumstances for both.

  It also brought up a far more important topic, Emma needing to know. “What do you mean by ‘the conversion of Salem’?” It sounded downright Orwellian.

  Tillie smiled. “I assure you, you’ll like it.”

  Emma listened.

  “Hester’s magic and compulsions have torn deep into this community. You’ve forgotten many basic magical truths. You’ve stopped partnering for love. You don’t know the types of conversions or help those preparing for them. You allow almost no nonhuman influences—Brandon being about the only exception.”

  She nodded to the centaur, who returned it gravely.

  “And you allow those who are ‘magic poor,’ as you put it, to be treated as lesser creatures. And that says nothing about how disturbingly lacking in diversity this place is.”

  Clearly annoyed, she shook her head.

  “It’s true that Hester was only building on existing prejudices, but she raised them to a terrible level. You’re all going to have to work very hard to bring the community back to what it should have been all along.”

  Her eyes were nearly burning, her anger quite evident.

  “Magical communities should be havens for all. There is no room for prejudice and hate.”

  All of this was exactly what Emma had always wanted for the place, but she was still a bit worried. After all, dictatorships could come in many forms.

  Clearly foreseeing her fear, Tillie held up her hand, laughing slightly now. “There are no loyalty oaths or reeducation camps.” She shook her head. “We just need everyone to start trying to open themselves again to recognizing the needs of those around them.”

  This sounded lovely but was low on details.

  Tillie nodded toward her spy. “I’m leaving William here to send reports, although I’ll be certain every person in Salem has the ability to contact the Council one-on-one, if they have questions or feel something’s going wrong again. I’m not leaving anyone in charge. You may all arrange that in whatever way works for you.”

  Well, it certainly sounded good. Emma decided she could fight the changes if they proved negative, her thoughts moving elsewhere.

  “If Hester’s aim was to breed a power she could control, how did she also manage to come up with me and Frederick?”

  Looking over to her beloved, she smiled.

  “We had compulsions put on us, but she still never managed to access our magic.”

  Smiling sagely, Errol spoke for one of the first times. “Ah, my dear, that is one of the profundities of trying to do wrong. No matter its plans, evil always sows the seeds of its own destruction.”

  As this was an eternal truth, no one said anything much more.

  There was one other question, Emma looking to Penelope.

  “What do you mean by Frederick’s three teachers? I’m not certain I’ve taught him much of anything.”

  How did you really teach a seer?

  Frederick raised an eyebrow at her but said nothing.

  Penelope filled them in. “Every sorcerer has three teachers who train them in all the aspects of either magic or life they need to understand to convert successfully. You’ve undoubtedly had them as well, even if you weren’t aware of it.”

  Well, there was Benjamin. Emma looked around the room. Other than the basic schoolteachers many years ago, though—all of whom had been very nice and instructive but none of whom had left a lasting impression—she was a little stumped.

  Smiling, Tillie saw her difficulty. “I believe in your case, it’s been your grandfather, Natalie, and your grandmother.”

  Emma knew her disbelief showed clearly, but the other sorcerer just shrugged.

  “Admittedly, the latter of those was more as a counterexample of anything you’d ever wish to be, but she did show you all the ways that magic can be used for the wrong things, if you let it. Benjamin showed you both the things you want to protect and how to have the strength to do so.”

  Her look moved.

  “And Natalie gave you the comfort and support to be able to find yourself and your way in your magic.”

  Her smile was warm.

  “It seems they all did a rather excellent job.”

  Blushing, Emma didn’t know what else to say to this, so she let it go, still wondering just what she could really teach a seer. Brandon seemed a much better teacher, but she already understood that the choice wasn’t a conscious one.

  Gaze warm on her beloved, she hoped. Maybe there was something she could give him besides her love.

  This question settled, she pondered the future. It appeared that she was going to have a huge number of people living with her—or, more rightly, she would be living with them, since many of them far predated her inhabitance of the house. It was a good thing the place was so big. Clearly, it was going to be a big old mess.

  As she squeezed both her companions’ hands, her smile widened. She couldn’t wait to begin.

  Epilogue

  Frederick

  The next three months were eventful, to say the least. While most of the town had reacted to the end of the compulsions—as well as the stop to Hester’s pulling of them all back into a distant and terrible past—with considerable happiness, there were still a few holdouts who wished to live in another century.

  Frederick, however, was not at all among them.

  While he had disliked knowing that his friends and patients would believe him to be dead in a train crash, there was little which could draw him back into that time happily. The more he had been around Emma’s more open and accepting ways, had started to see this town flourish, the more he had never wanted to return.

  That said nothing of the pull of the other realms he could now walk with a thought, as well.

  All of this was nothing to his real reason for staying, of course. Nothing beyond death—and possibly not even that great mystery—could separate him from Emma.

  Since his first night here, they had shared a room and a life together. She had taught him not only many things about his own magic but had unlocked senses and sensations he had never before imagined—and he was well-aware, thanks to their shared minds, that he had more than done the same for her.

  He was very thankful for the strong silence spells she had put on their room, or he would have been deeply embarrassed by some of the sounds which emerged. Still, none of her extended family—by blood or friendship—ever questioned their bond. Everyone seemed perfectly happy to leave their private lives be.

  This made sense, as they were not alone in starting new lives together. Benjamin and Penelope had partnered immediately, as well, as they had always been intended to. Benjamin still ran the house, with his mother’s occasional help, while Pen split her time between her magical schools in 19th-century, mundane Salem and this one. Where she found the time, he didn’t know, but, as time magic was one of her many skills, she could presumably make it if necessary.

  It wasn’t that the rest of their lives were uneventful, either. Although no one had tried to put anyone in official control of the town, almost everyone seemed to look to Emma as their unofficial leader.

  For the first few weeks after the change, she had been called upon night and day to settle disputes, approve civic plans, figure out what to do with the spells which had wrecked the trains into their community so often—always as part of some plan of Hester’s or her cohorts—or just to generally calm down everyone, as the Magical Council searched through everything to be certain they had missed no areas of destruction. She had finally ca
lled a series of town meetings to arrange methods for handling these various processes, so she wasn’t called away from their bed quite so often.

  Frederick had approved wholeheartedly.

  The changes the town had seen were immense, as well. While, in certain ways, it retained its nineteenth-century, rural atmosphere, it was growing bigger and far more technologically advanced. Only about 15% of the community still dressed in the styles Hester’s influence had impressed upon them—as little as she had ever followed it herself—leading to what he would have thought of as a truly shocking display of women’s legs, and sometimes other bits, back in Boston.

  While he and Emma still preferred the older fashions—for himself, because he had been raised in them, for her, because she knew just how heart-pounding he found her in them—Natalie, for example, had apparently reverted to what was standard for 21st-century society, lounging around happily in jeans and a t-shirt, always with some strange slogan or image on it. She had told them more than once that she had never realized how uncomfortable she was before.

  Frederick had made certain that his beloved knew that he wasn’t enforcing a dress code upon her, but she would just smile and whisper something in his mind about the way he filled out his pants. It had taken him six months of such treatment before he could stop blushing.

  The town was going in exactly the direction the Magical Council, and his beloved Emma, had always hoped, then. While no one could—or was trying to—control those few who held to the prejudices of the past, everyone else simply got on with their lives around them. No matter how much happier most them were, they all understood that there was no helping some people. There would always be those who simply couldn’t be happy unless they had someone to look down on.

  The majority of the people simply shrugged off this truth and let the few naysayers be—or, at least, tried to help them past whatever personal problems made them so desperate to spread their misery.

  The term “magic poor” had even pretty much disappeared, except for discussions of the bad old past, and those with what had once been deemed the more minor powers, such as Trudy, were being recognized more fully. She actually had a storefront downtown right next to her partner’s, where she used her happiness magic to either cheer up those who were having difficulties or to counsel them, listening to what was making them unhappy and then giving extremely sensible advice on ways they could find to either extract themselves from the situation or at least to cheer themselves up occasionally, if there was nothing to do but endure it. At the moment, hers was the best attended shop in town.

  The town was not devoid of outside or more multicultural influence now, either. It no longer resembled the Boston he had grown up in, where anyone who wasn’t white tended to stay to very different areas and ways of life than their lighter-skinned neighbors. Now, witches and sorcerers of all backgrounds had taken up residence, and the roads even occasionally had a car or truck on them, as well as the many wayfarers—although everyone had agreed that any moving vehicle had to have very strong safety spells on it before it was allowed in. Too many children still played in the streets to have it any other way.

  Frederick loved his new life here, almost least of all for the powers he was still in the process of understanding and acquiring, although they had opened a part of his heart and soul which connected him so strongly to the world that he now nearly ached with his empathy for others. He had thought more than once that it was a good thing that he wasn’t still, officially, a doctor—although he did sometimes see to, mostly minor, complaints—as he wasn’t certain he could withstand his patients’ pain.

  Patel Distaff had evidently been right. His conversion was proving very gradual, and eye-opening, indeed.

  Still, it was the happily-chaotic atmosphere of the house which he loved the most. Well, aside from his adored Emma.

  There were fifteen people living here, all of them well-accommodated and integrated into the whole. They had even grown more accepting of William, as he had proven, again and again, to be absolutely besotted with both Jenny and their child. Even if he did consider himself her protector—given their very different levels of experience and magic—they were otherwise equals, William always listening to and considering her ideas fully, Jenny feeling more than free to challenge him whenever she felt it necessary. While the rest of Frederick’s family, aside from Penelope and Ariel, still lived in the house which Hester had once ruled, Jenny was happily ensconced with the Goodwinters—and Emma had no objection at all.

  He was glad for this acceptance, comforted by all that he had gained.

  One of his chief pleasures now was in seeing his darling Emma’s constant happiness. She had truly enjoyed being able to reconnect with the family she had lost, most of them human now—although one great-aunt and great-uncle each seemed to prefer their feline forms.

  Even Emma’s poor, much-abused mother was starting to recover somewhat, if only very slowly.

  She now walked around like a child in an adult’s body, was being taught about magic and the world with an innocent wonder. Still, she seemed to sense her connection to Emma, would sometimes lie with her head on her lap for an hour, seeking comfort.

  Emma never denied it. The poor woman had already been through far too much.

  There was no knowing, of course, whether Lily would ever be fully capable, but none of them were pushing her. It wasn’t as though they were a wholly normal bunch, anyway. So long as they could heal and bring her happiness as much as possible, that was what was important.

  At least they had finally convinced Sammy of the necessity of wearing clothes, mostly because he had taken instantly to the guardianship of Emma’s tiny half-sister, the little luck witch, Grace, playing tirelessly with her, Livy, and Aubry and Trudy’s child, Austen, as well. In fact, Aubry and his partner were frequent enough visitors to have a permanent room set aside for them. Apparently, Austen and Grace had formed a bond in those few hours together, and no one complained about having these various joyful children around.

  Currently, Sammy was doing his absolute favorite thing: playing with Grace. The two of them rolled around on the floor together, while she giggled and thumped against his chest. Due to her magic, she never got injured, no matter how boisterous he became.

  This was fortunate, as Sammy proved impossible to make less than ferociously energetic. Frederick was just thankful that he hadn’t rolled into him yet, where he also sat on the floor, currently reading a children’s picture book.

  It was a disconcerting image to be part of—and also a bit embarrassing. Still, Natalie, who had proved not only a wonderful friend and solace to Emma but also a tireless teacher to him on the general culture of the modern world and the basics of magic, had lost her patience with him this morning.

  It had happened when he had finally gotten around to asking who Melius was, as she seemed to be extremely fond of taking his name in vain.

  Natalie had finally snapped, “That’s it! You’re going back to kindergarten!” and had sat him down with a book called, Cate and the Seven Little Panthers, which instructed children on Hecate, the founder of magic, and the panthers who represented its seven main branches. Melius, he was only just discovering, was the representative of empathic magic—all the types such as healing and protection.

  It was really rather interesting—and it did make more sense of the well-tended topiary out front.

  He was a bit embarrassed to be learning it as though he were a two-year-old but still memorized what he needed to, until Emma’s voice in his head interrupted him.

  Why, oh why, does seeing you sitting on the floor reading a children’s book with a scowl of pure concentration make me just want to molest you?

  Looking up, he smiled and held a hand out to help her down to him.

  “You’ve always been a big fan of the absurd, my love.”

  He kissed her softly.

  “That’s why you enjoy having all of us around you. Besides . . .” He smoothed his hand down her sid
e, as she smiled. “I want to be able to teach our child about the magical world, not have him or her have to teach me.”

  As always, she looked absolutely beautiful. That was true no matter what her condition, the emu flower shining brightly on her velvet-covered chest.

  “Yes, about that.”

  Eyes teasing, she kissed him.

  “I believe I have you to thank for my current condition.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him.

  “I’m only two months in, and I already wish it were over.”

  Laughing a little, he sympathized. Natalie had explained that pregnancies among the magical could last up to 18 months. The longer the pregnancy was, the more likely the child was to have magical powers—or, at least, so the old folk belief went.

  If that were true, with the two of them for its parents, he had no doubt she was in for a long wait.

  He put aside the book, then, would come back to it later, his hands cupping her face. “How about if I distract you, my love?”

  Smiling, she kissed him, as he helped her rise. “Yes, Everly Spear, why don’t you do just that?”

  They moved off to somewhere far more private, as he heard Sammy singing to Grace behind him, bouncing the little girl high in the air, as he did so.

  “Oh, this house is full of baaaabies, baaaabies, baaaabies. This house is full of baaaaabies—yes, we are!”

  Want More Katherine Gilbert Fun?

  If you enjoyed your first introduction to Tillie and Errol and are looking for a more gothic novel with plenty of magic, then try out Moonlight, Magnolias, and Magic. Here’s a bit where Annabella is trying to discover the deadly secrets of her family home and outwit her evil sorcerer aunt by trying not to become the house’s next victim:

  That only left the doll room.

  My eyes widened, as I realized that the door was open, waiting. And I would never know what it held, unless I searched.