by Rebecca Brae
by
Rebecca Brae
For all the beautiful souls in the corners and at the margins. Persevere. Be you. This world is interesting and magickal because of you.
Forward
I WAS SURPRISED and honoured to receive Dean Peuturella Bloodroot’s request to provide my old diary and letters to Grimoire College as a reading aide for first semester students. I had not thought my troublesome entry into professional life of interest to anyone, save myself, but I would never refuse an appeal from my favourite potions professor and good friend.
Though it has been many season cycles since the trials depicted herein, I hope they are of some use to you, my beautiful budding Scion of the Moon. If nothing else, let these pages stand as an example to never give up on yourself or your dreams. I started out doing everything wrong, but I learned and improved, and in doing so became a stronger person and witch.
Special thanks goes out to my talented friend Magda, who generously offered to replace my atrocious sketches with hers. If it were not for her, you would all be very confused and possibly slightly nauseous. I have left in two of my original drawings so that you are aware of the depth of service she has done you.
If you find yourself confused by any of the characters or terms that follow, please refer to the reference sections at the back of this tome.
Have fun, my witches!
Hester Digitalis Wishbone
Moondias, Wolf Moon 15, 209
I NEVER SHOULD have left my hovel this morn. You know that funny tingly feeling you get when pondering a decision? The itchy, crawly sense that whatever you decide will profoundly affect the rest of your life? Well, trust me, spend more time thinking about it than it takes to suck down your gruel. And don’t ever forget to check the expiry date on your prosthetic adhesive. When that stuff goes, it really goes.
Everything was going so well. I was the ugliest, filthiest, vile old hag this village had ever seen. One of the peasants told me so.
The crone who previously held my position had no work ethic. Her curses were generic and lacklustre. She never bothered to learn about her subjects. For instance, Abathonda is terrified of finding loose hairs and Markus is obsessed with counting things. I can get them both at once with a hex that causes people’s hair to fall out whenever they are around!
She also had no pride in her appearance. Would you believe there was only one crook in her nose? I have three. That’s how dedicated I am. And each of them is a marvellously bent specimen of hag-tastic art.
There’s a fine line between a sinister, imposingly crooked nose and a nose that looks like it was accidentally slammed in a door. When peasants see mine coming around a corner, they quake down to their very souls. I’ve heard them say it feels like it’s hunting them, following their every move, aiming ominously at them, thrusting threateningly at their tender bits, just waiting for them to take their eyes off it for an instant, and then twitch, bam . . . done in by the nose. If my nose alone inspires that much respect, imagine what chaos my halitosis wreaks on this sleepy village!
Ah, but the higher you fly, the farther you fall. And I’d be surprised if the grubs in the Ascariim deep mine didn’t hear my splat.
It all started last eventide when I wagered a bet with my best friend, Magda, that I could make everyone in the tavern think their skin was melting. She was a little too skeptical, which raised my hackles. Admittedly, I had unsuccessfully attempted a similar spell last season cycle, just after our graduation ritual—let’s just say our graduating class had a distinct “eau de rotting flesh” that would not quit—but I’ve learned a trick or two since then.
There is a chance I was a bit short-tempered and not as careful as I should have been. It probably had something to do with my consumption of a few too many fermented ghoul eyes. I must have accidently added a pinch of powdered albino salamander livers instead of ground rat bones (NOTE: Remember to label my spell component pouches).
I ended up summoning half a juvenile phoenix that was understandably confused at its sudden change of location, not to mention its lack of a left side. Creature summoning never was my best subject. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I burnt out the Resplendent Toad tavern . . . and my magick.
I didn’t even notice the latter until I arrived home and unsuccessfully tried summoning a fire elemental to heat my tea. You hear horror stories about this kind of thing happening to your third cousin’s friend’s brother, but you always think, “not me” or “I bet So-and-so was just being dramatic.” Here’s hoping my life doesn’t end up as a moral fable to keep young witchlings on their brooms. I’m sure it’ll be fine. This has to clear up. At some point. Right?
I was hoping my magick would return after a good sleep, but it didn’t. This morn, I tried to put on my hag glamour . . . and . . . nothing. No cracked, sallow skin. No stringy grey hair rearing like angry snakes in a malodorous wind. No boils erupting with puss. Not even a measly wart.
In times of crisis, it’s best to fall back on what you know. So, ultimately, I blame Grimoire College for the following debacle.
Our teachers constantly hammered into us that old-fashioned costuming and theatrical makeup should underpin every glamour. It was an archaic concept, as outdated as our prehistoric Profs. After all, weaving a quick, clean illusion was far more efficient than spending an hour individually gluing on moles and warts. Nobody understood why they wanted us shackled to these ridiculous magick training wheels. We weren’t toddlers. So, most of us ignored our kits. I certainly did. Until this morn.
Stratified layers of dust slid off the case as I yanked it out from under my pallet. This should have tipped me off that maybe, just maybe, my plan needed some rethinking. But, no. I was so intent on getting out and pestering the peasants that I didn’t pay any attention to my gut.
When I glued the kit’s nose on, my enthusiasm waned. It only extended about an inch past my real nose and was more hooked than crooked. Every time I inhaled, the sides of the prosthesis clamped my nose shut like a vise. After experimenting for a while, I decided I could make it work. The nose looked like it was pulsing—in and out, in and out—and it produced a memorable, wet, sucking hiss.
I slapped on some wrinkle cream and stuck a huge hairy mole on the apex of my chin. If I crossed my eyes, I could just see the hairy bit over the tip of my new nose. I was quite pleased with it, but the standard boil needed work.
After staring in the mirror at the craterous red-blue mound on my cheek, I decided puss would improve its lacklustre appearance. I mixed a glob of adhesive with the yellow skin paste and created a reasonable likeness. I spread the milky-yellow substance over the boil and down my cheek, and had to admit it wasn’t bad. I mean, it wouldn’t ooze or anything, but it gave the impression that it might if it felt like it.
My look was starting to come together, but I had to do something about my hair. No self-respecting village hag would be seen in public with fiery red locks . . . unless they actually were on fire, which wasn’t a feasible option. I dug through my supplies. A palmful of crude oil darkened my hair. After dusting on a combination of flour and cremated toad feet, I managed to create a suitably repulsive stringy nest.
I had a spot of trouble getting the red contact lenses in. It feels decidedly unnatural to stick something in your eye on purpose. The eyebrow was much easier. One glob of adhesive and voila: Instant Menace. There’s nothing like a thick mono-brow to really freak people out. It occurred to me that it was possibly meant to be a moustache, but it worked well enough as an eyebrow.
I donned my hag rags, popped in a set of uncomfortable dentures, and studied my new visage in the mirror. A hunched, putrid old creature peered back at me, and I felt confident I could pull it off. I smiled and took a closer look at the s
harpened brown teeth. Someone had done a smashing job on them; there were even bits of food stuck between the incisors.
I slid two blood capsules and a fake severed finger into my belt as I hobbled outside. I believe in being prepared. Plus, it’s always fun to have a piece fall off while accosting someone.
As I’m thinking back now, I do remember noting a faint vapor rising from my boil, but I was so focused on getting to work that I ignored it. It must have been an interesting effect—a smoking boil has an element of surprise over a regular old purulent one.
I practiced a few intimidating scowls on my way to the village square and realized I couldn’t move my brow or lips. My face felt like rawhide stretched over a drum. The wrinkle cream was clearly not all it was cracked up to be. Figuring it was too late to do anything about it, I scrunched up my face as much as possible and hoped that I at least gave an impression of supreme pain and misery.
I arrived late because of my additional morning activities, so the first peasants I came across were already hauling wheat bales out to the fields. I sidled up to a young girl and pulsed my nose at her. During one particularly vigorous inhalation, my left contact somehow lodged itself on top of my eyeball. I tried ignoring it, but it is overwhelmingly irritating to have something stuck in your eye—especially something you intentionally put in it.
Squinting as threateningly as I could, I pointed at her. “You are a wicked ’irl.” Enunciating the words around my bulky dentures and tight lips was challenging. “May your sp—”
It was at this point that my teeth hurled themselves at the startled kid.
Stunned by their desertion, I struggled to salvage the hex. “May your spiteful tongue split . . . and your teeth fly from your deceitful mouth.”
Bending to retrieve the mutinous dentures, which now lay at the girl’s feet, I slipped both blood tablets into my mouth and came up drooling. As I rose, I noticed thin trails of smoke curling around my head.
This was when everything else that could go wrong, did.
Whoever made those stupid capsules should be transmuted into an incontinent worm and left in a puddle. There was so much blood in my mouth that it surged down my throat and up my nose. My spluttering cough liberally sprayed the girl, and although that temporarily emptied my mouth and allowed me to breathe, the froth trapped in my prosthetic nose continued swelling to volcanic proportions.
Then the infernal itching started. The insidious burning spread everywhere I had applied that blasted adhesive. Not only was my nose drowning me, it felt like a thousand fire ants had crawled in and started a disorganized conga line. Incidentally, this is also when a rather large crowd of villagers gathered—it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call it a horde or mob.
My choking and snorting morphed into a gurgling screech as the steaming latex boil caved in and fused to my skin. I managed to rip most of it off before I inhaled another snootful of the ever-expanding blood goo.
I tore the prosthetic nose off with a howl of pain and threw the wretched thing as hard as I could. It sailed in a perfect arc through the air, spewing pink foam, and landed point down between the ample breasts of the village baker, who promptly fainted.
Next to go was the mole. It offered little resistance, but the mono-brow was another matter. That thing was determined to stay on. It took three determined yanks to free the furry mound. I’m glad it got caught in my rags when I dropped it. I think I’ll keep it in case I find a way to re-attach my real eyebrows.
What the peasants thought was happening, I’ll never know. You’d think someone tearing bits off their face would be terrifying. But, no. By the time I raised my smarting head from the horse trough, the villagers were guffawing so hard that some were literally rolling on the ground. I’ve never been so humiliated.
I know it’s usually better to face your mistakes head on (though, I have also proved that facing your mistakes can occasionally be foolhardy: For instance, when a mistake involves a roided-up orc in heat or a dragon experiencing severe intestinal disruptions), but this was more than I could bear. I turned and ran. Adding insult to injury, the severed finger chose that moment to fly out of my pocket. I didn’t stop to pick it up. In retrospect, I probably should have, because I later heard a kid asking someone to pull his finger; which in actual fact was more my finger than his. I’ll never get it back now.
As soon as I closed the door to my hovel, I had a good cry. The activity proved more useful than usual. It finally dislodged the contact from my eye. I spent the next several hours washing my hair. The combination of flour, cremated toad feet, and crude oil creates something akin to cement. I eventually removed most of it with a mixture of liquid ammonia and sand. This did nothing to soothe my stinging face.
And that awful wrinkle cream took its time wearing off, but I am happy to report that I have now regained control of my face. I read the label and, would you believe, it’s actually meant to get rid of wrinkles. Why is it called “Wrinkle Cream” if it’s really anti-wrinkle cream? I’d like to kick the alchemist who came up with that gem.
I also found a warning on the adhesive bottle (in tiny print) advising immediate disposal once past the expiry date. That stuff must be designed to expire quickly. I’ve only had it for four season cycles. And I don’t remember a single teacher warning us about that.
The union scryed me while I was cleaning up. I didn’t answer and they left a message asking me to contact them. I just know they’re going to tell me I’ve been fired and I can’t deal with that right now. I’ll scry them back next sun. Maybe by then I’ll figure out some way to explain what happened.
ADDENDUM: I just tried a minor illusion and found out my magick is still kaput. How long is this drought going to last? I’m a witch. What am I supposed to do without magick?
Tydias, Wolf Moon 16, 209
SO, AFTER CONFIRMING my magick was still defunct this morn, I scryed the union back and made a complete ass of myself.
Turns out, they weren’t contacting me about what happened last sun, they wanted to inform me that my familiar has been selected and will arrive shortly. This would have been a relief, except I’d already launched into an explanation of the unfortunate incident. Everything snowballed from there . . . down a really steep hill . . . collecting more and more crap as it went . . . and then it careened off a cliff . . . and went splat. Again. Which pretty much describes my life at the moment. Splattity-splat-splat.
In the middle of my recounting, my union agent transferred me to a job satisfaction agent who, after hearing the details, transferred me to a job security agent, who then transferred me to a work equality agent, who transferred me to a job safety agent, who gave me the choice of being transferred to a job suitability agent or a work placement agent. I chose the work placement agent, who suggested I speak with a job mediation agent to assess whether my current position was salvageable.
At this point, I began to wonder if I was being passed around the office like a five-legged frog in show-and-tell. At least the job mediation agent kept things short. My story must have gotten around to him already, because I didn’t even have to tell him who I was.
He told me to cool my broom, in my hovel (he was very explicit about that part), while he contacted the village council. He muttered something about no direct contact between parties during mediation, which sent me into a tizzy wondering how I was supposed to host a party if I couldn’t leave the hut to get supplies. With no finger food and only half a jar of fermented ghoul eyes, it would be a pretty miserable gathering.
I didn’t panic for long. I hadn’t even finished polishing my scry mirror when his face popped back into view.
The news was not good. The town council wanted me gone. The mayor said there was an opening for village idiot, but I agreed with the agent that it probably wasn’t a sincere offer.
Thus began another long series of transfers around the union—back to the job safety agent who recommended I consult a specialist about my loss of magick; to the job suitability agent who sugges
ted finding a position more in line with my age (ageist much?); and finally, to a particularly patronizing hedge witch who advised me to attend therapy until I was able to effectively deal with my “ghoul eye habit.”
After saying “no” to the hedge witch four times with no indication she heard, my frustration boiled over and I terminated the scry. I do not have a fermented ghoul eye problem. I was just out with a girlfriend having a bit of fun. Even a hag has to let her hair down once in a while. Terrifying the masses is surprisingly stressful. It was just plain old bad luck that my slight overindulgence ended so disastrously. It could have happened to anyone.
When my head stopped spinning, I contacted the union job bank in Aestradorra. I thought adding my name to their list would be simple. Not so. Turns out, new clients have to book an in-person appointment with an employment counsellor.
I scheduled a meeting for next sun but I don’t know how it’s going to go. What work can I do if I can’t cast spells? And if I can’t work, I can’t pay down my student loan. And if I can’t pay the loan, I’ll end up assigned to some government-run love potion sweatshop. And that damn rose puree is impossible to wash off your fingernails. I don’t want red nails. It’s so . . . vamp.
This has been the most depressing sun of my life. Well, maybe it ties with when jerky-Justin and I broke up. Haven’t thought about him for a while. Isn’t that just the soggy slug on my pizza. I desperately need a cathartic junk food binge, but all I have is one pathetic Mean Cuisine meal left over from my failed diet last moon. Yet another reminder of how much I suck. And I really don’t fancy downing a bucket of water to dislodge the fungus-stuffed bat wings and dry-grilled spider eggs from my throat.
I think I’ll skip the meal and curl up with a hot cup of nettle tea (with just one fermented ghoul eye to calm my nerves) and watch other people be brain-numbingly foolish. At least there’s still some charge left in my crystal ball. There must be someone out there having a worse sun than me, and I’m going to find them and watch.
