by Katie Penryn
Felix was right. But what was it?
*
By the time I came downstairs, Felix was waiting for me in the study. He’d prepared the basket of magical goodies we had to take with us to the dolmen to summon the High Council of the Guild of White Witches: a sprig of bay leaves, the last of our supply of cognac, the silver goblet and a box of matches. All that was missing was the precious jewel. I was much too tired by that time to go and search for one in the brocante as I usually did. I dragged myself upstairs to my room again and rifled through my jewelry box searching for something with a gemstone, something I wouldn’t miss too badly if I sacrificed it at the dolmen.
I was torn between a small ruby and a chip of sapphire. The ruby was set in my gold baby bracelet which I hadn’t been able to wear since I turned five. The sapphire chip sat in a tiny silver ring my first boyfriend had given me when I was twelve, far too small even for my little finger. So I had to choose between the end of my early childhood and the first symbol of the onset of maturity. I took the ring.
*
When I returned to the study with my booty, Felix greeted me with his idea for a new spell.
“I’ve remembered what we wanted you to learn. It’s not a spell of grave importance, so I’m sure you’ll be able to learn it quickly.”
“What is it?”
“We’ve always wanted a spell to clear up litter. Put your Book of Spells down on the desk and turn to the index and I’ll see if I can find something suitable.”
Felix couldn’t touch the book and I couldn’t read it. We made a right pair. Our solution was for me to turn the pages and for Felix to find the required spell and teach it to me. So far, this had worked well for us both.
“Ready?” I asked him to give him warning to close his eyes against the bright flash which always accompanied my opening of the book.
The gems embedded in the antique leather cover encompassed all the colors of the rainbow. Whenever I lifted the cover, they fused into a flashing prism of blinding white. Experience had taught us to shield our eyes from this magical effect.
I flipped the pages over to the index and Felix leaned in closer to read the pages and give me instructions on whether to leaf forwards or backwards through the index.
“There’s nothing under litter,” he said. “What do you suggest?”
“Try tidy up, clear up… collect?”
I flipped the pages again until Felix said, “Whoa. There’s a spell for collecting stuff. You say collige plus whatever it is you want. Does that make sense?”
I trawled through my mind thinking back to the Latin I had to learn as a precursor to my law degree. Of course, collige was the imperative, the do-it form of the verb which went colligo, colligere, colligi, collectum. Bingo!
“That’s the one. Now we need the Latin for litter. Google it.”
Felix opened up his laptop and tapped away.
“Got it. The Latin for litter is lectica. So you would say collige lectica, I guess.”
“Collige lecticam,” I corrected him, adding an m to make it an object.
The words were hardly out of my mouth before there was a mighty crash and a Roman litter complete with drawn purple velvet curtains landed on the carpet beside my father’s desk. I stared open-mouthed at the Ancient World’s version of a people-carrier.
“Where the hell did that come from?” asked Felix as dumbfounded as I was.
The litter swayed from its impact with the floor. I grabbed hold of one of the canopy supports quickly to prevent it from tipping over and smashing everything on the desk.
Felix followed suit and between us we managed to set it firmly back on its legs. The door burst open and Gwinny came running in calling out, “What’s happened?”
She took one look at the still swaying imperial purple curtains and sat down on the floor with a bump.
“What have you done, Penzi?” she asked me. “There isn’t anyone inside that thing, is there?”
I hadn’t thought of that. Felix took a quick peek.
“No, it’s empty or should I say, unoccupied?”
“Thank goodness for that,” said my mother levering herself of the floor and straightening her clothes. She squeezed past the litter, pulled out a chair and sat down. As she did so, she noticed the Book of Spells lying open on the desk. She threw a wry glance my way.
“Oh no, Penzi. Not that. You screwed up a spell?”
I haven’t mentioned this before, but my mother was also a white witch, but one who’d given up practicing some years before. The book had been hers originally.
“Obviously, but I don’t know how,” I answered not pleased that Gwinny had a chance to find fault with me.
Felix clicked his fingers. “Got it,” he said. “That was the problem.” He clicked his fingers again and I realized what he meant.
He was right. I had forgotten to cross my fingers when I uttered the words of the spell. Saying collige lecticam without crossing my fingers had set the spell to working when I’d only meant to say its name.
So the spell had manifested itself, but that didn’t explain why we had a Roman litter sitting in our study when we’d wanted a spell to clear up garbage, as I said to Felix.
Gwinny laughed. “You made the classic dictionary mistake, Felix. You didn’t check back the other way, Latin to English, to make sure you had the correct word.”
Felix gave one of his harrumphs and tapped at his laptop again. He had the grace to grin when he got his answer. “You’re right, Gwinny. It says a lectica is a kind of litter or portable couch and is historical, from Roman antiquity.”
“What were you trying to find?” asked Gwinny.
I explained I was learning a new spell to add to my progress report; that we’d chosen an easy one–so we thought–to have litter tidied up by magic.
Gwinny laughed again, almost scoffing at our inexperience. “No one would think you were amongst the most intelligent people I’ve ever known. You have to be careful with magic, more precise. If you can’t find the right word in Latin, you have to try synonyms or similar concepts. Why don’t you try garbage or rubbish?”
“Okay,” said Felix resorting to Google once more. “Here we are: purgamentum.”
Gwinny stood up and leaned across Felix. “Yes, that’ll do. The examples given use it in the plural: purgamenta. Now, what does that make you think of? So much of English is based on Latin.”
Not to be outdone by my mother’s knowledge, I ventured, “Purging. Getting rid of unwanted stuff.”
“There you go,” she said walking back around the litter to the door. “Now, get the spell right this time.”
I caught hold of her arm. “But Gwinny, what are we going to do with this thing? Can we send it back to where it came from?”
For the third time she laughed at me. “Oh Penzi, Penzi. That’s way above your present novice level. We’ll have to find somewhere to put it. Maybe we can sell it as an antique in the brocante.”
Felix must have seen how irritated I was. “Let it go, Penzi,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll put it on the veranda, but for now let’s test the spell.”
I picked up the waste bin and emptied the crumpled paper and other rubbish around the floor.
“Ready?” I asked.
Felix nodded.
I waved my arm to indicate the study area, concentrated hard and said, “Collige purgamenta!”
Everything we’d discarded earlier zoomed back into the bin.
Felix high-fived me and said, “Now, let’s get that report written. It’s getting late.”
Felix took the file out of the drawer, sat down at the desk and filled in the box for me. He passed it across for me to sign.
“Email or in person?” he asked.
“I’ll give it to the Chief Witch in person tonight,” I said putting it in the basket with the other items we’d need later on.
Chapter 5
At half past eleven we went into the kitchen to collect Zag. The process of answering the summons o
f the High Council of the Guild of White Witches required the presence of a natural being. As Felix and I were both supernaturals, he a shifter and me a witch, we’d taken one of the dogs with us before. Both dogs were asleep, and the kittens were tucked up with Zig in her basket. Zig was yelping softly as she dreamed, but Zag opened an eye as we approached.
“Zag we need you. We have to visit the High Council of the Guild of White Witches tonight,” I whispered softly not wanting to wake the others up unnecessarily.
He opened the other eye and raised his head. “Does it have to be me?”
“But you always like to come with us.”
“Not tonight, Penzi, if you don’t mind. I have a splitting headache. Why don’t you take one of the new kittens? After all, cats and witches, they go together.”
Felix bent down by Zig’s basket and stroked the kittens. “Aren’t they too young, Zag? The High Council can be frightening. Zig hated going with us.”
I knelt down beside Felix. The larger kitten, the male who was called Slinky, a handsome ginger tabby sat up and rubbed my hand with his head.
“Felix, the witches were kind and gentle with the cat we took with us at Christmastime.”
I picked Slinky up and tickled him under his chin. He began to purr and knead my chest. “Slinky, we have a job for you to do tonight. Would you like to come with us to meet the High Council of the Guild of White Witches?”
He stiffened and made to jump out of my arms, but I restrained him just in time.
“Slinky, don’t be scared.”
“I heard what Felix said,” he mewed.
“But you also heard what I said: that the witches love cats… and we do need one of you to come along with us tonight. Time is running out. So is it a yes or a no?”
“They won’t shout at me? I hate it when you people start shouting. The fishermen down at the harbor were always shouting about the place.”
“They’ll probably spoil you with cuddles. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you, not even the Chief Witch.”
“All right then,” Slinky said, relaxing into my arms again.
Felix disappeared to fetch the cat carrier from the hall cupboard. As soon as he returned, we wasted no time in stowing Slinky into it, picking up our basket of magic requisites and exiting the house. We’d already decided to go to the dolmen where we had first met the High Council, the one on top of a wooded hill out in the countryside.
We’d reached the outskirts of the town when the steering wheel turned to concrete in my hands, forcing me to wrench it round with all my force to keep the car straight on the road. And our speed dropped right down.
“Oh no,” I said as a whap-whap-whap reached me. “We’ve got a flat.”
“Pull over,” said Felix.
“Can’t we make it on three tires?”
“In a dire emergency. If you had a herd of angry rhinos chasing you, but not in normal circumstances. It’ll take me ten minutes to change the wheels.”
I’d pulled over and stopped while Felix was lecturing me. I switched off and jerked the handbrake on and banged my hands on the wheel in exasperation.
“Blast. We’re not going to make it in time. Goodness knows what the penalty will be. Last time the Chief Witch warned me punctuality was expected of every witch.”
Felix was already out of the car and calling back at me, “Penzi, stop moaning. Let’s get it done. Stuff happens in life. We can’t control every little thing.”
I hopped out and went round to help him. Having lived in Africa for so long where many of the roads are barely passable, Felix was handy when it came to changing wheels. Anyone watching would have taken him for a rally driver so fast did he get the job done. Minutes later we were on the rural road leading to the dolmen with Felix holding on tight as I edged the car over the speed limit. With no traffic on the roads at that time of night I judged the risk worth taking to avoid a scolding.
I skidded to a halt at five past midnight. We jumped out of the car. Felix snatched up Slinky and his carrier; I took the basket of magic ingredients. We scrambled up the hill in the moonless night as fast as we could, arriving out of breath and full of apprehension. Felix put the carrier down beneath the dolmen, clearing a space amid the usual empty beer cans and cigarette ends to do so. He had to soothe the trembling ball of fur poor little Slinky had become after the sudden stops in the car and the hurried ascent of the slope. I stood the silver chalice on top of the dolmen and filled it with cognac and laid the bay leaves and the ring with its precious stone down beside it.
“Ready?” I asked.
Felix lit the cognac and as the blue flames spun up into the dark night sky, we linked hands and paced three times clockwise around the dolmen, almost running; anything to make up for lost time. The expected blinding flash blasted through the clearing and bounced off the tree trunks. Thank goodness Felix had put Slinky under the dolmen to protect him from the light.
As it faded and darkness crept back, the High Council of the Guild of White Witches shimmered into appearance above us, the seven members seated around their council table. I held my breath and waited for the Chief Witch to blast me with her sharp tongue.
“So, Mpenzi Munro,” she said looking down her long nose at me, “you’ve deigned to answer the High Council’s summons at last. We discussed your lack of punctuality at our last meeting if I remember rightly.”
I didn’t reply, hoping that she would take my silence for an apology.
“Well, what have you to say for yourself?” she asked leaning further out to glower down at me.
“Your Ladyship, we had a puncture on the way here and had to stop and fix it. It cost us ten minutes. We’d have been early but for that.”
“A good witch always plans for contingencies, Mpenzi Munro. Make sure you see to it in future.”
“Yes, your Ladyship. Here’s my study record,” I said holding it up high so she could reach down for it.
“Huh!” she said taking hold of it and passing it to the secretary to read out loud.
Even to me, it didn’t sound impressive. I’d done little in the way of improving my magic skills since Christmas. I hadn’t been called upon to learn any new spells. Life had been simple with no challenges from the power of evil.
As if reading my mind the Chief Witch rebuked me. “Mpenzi Munro, it is not good enough for you to wait until circumstances force you to increase your repertoire of spells. You should be studying the Book of Spells every day so as to be ready when called upon.”
I gave Felix a quick nudge with my elbow. He was the one who’d said I should learn magic as and when it was needed. He nudged me back. The Chief Witch was waiting for my reply.
“Your Ladyship, I did learn the spell for clearing up litter without its use being necessary.”
She snorted as she checked the date of my entry in the record. “Today. You learned it today. Seems a bit fishy.”
“Yes, your Ladyship. I’ll try to do better. Honestly, I needed to concentrate on my family and on organizing our new home. What with all the murders and such, we hadn’t had time to settle in properly.”
“Excuses, excuses. I expect better from the daughter of Sir Archibald Munro.”
She surveyed the ground around the dolmen.
“Filthy litterers,” she said. “What are people coming to? Perhaps you’d show me your new spell.”
I reached sideways for Felix’s hand. The spell was so new I wasn’t sure I’d be able to remember it. I crossed my fingers against accidents and muttered it under by breath to him. He squeezed my hand and whispered, “Go for it.”
The High Council had never asked me to cast a spell in front of them before. I had to make up for my meager study record for the past few months. I inhaled deeply three times to still the panic that threatened to turn me into a quivering jelly.
“We’re waiting,” the Chief Witch called down to me.
Here we go. I uncrossed my fingers and shouted out, “Collige purgamenta!”
A whirlwind
blew into the clearing, swept up the cans, empty packets and other more unsavory items, and shot them into the empty litter bin at the end of the dolmen.
“That’s better,” said the Chief Witch. “And a good, clean spell. Well done, Mpenzi Munro.”
I bowed my head and Slinky meowed.
“Did I hear a cat?” she asked peering down at the dolmen.
Slinky poked his head out of the carrier.
“Oh, what a cute little kitty. Pass him up to me please.”
Felix took Slinky out and raised him up into the air until the secretary could reach down and take him. I expected Slinky to be frightened, but the little traitor was purring his head off. The witches passed him along from one to the other and back again, each witch making a fuss of him.
The Chief Witch broke up the love fest. “That’s enough, ladies. I have unfinished business with Mpenzi.”
Felix received Slinky from the secretary and put him back in the carrier.
What did the Chief Witch want with me now?
“What’s this I hear about you ordering a day bed for your own use?” she asked.
That took my breath away. What was she talking about?
“You know you are forbidden to benefit personally from your magic. Where would we be if white witches all over the world ordered what they wanted from the powers of good? Think of the corruption.”
Oh, she meant the Roman litter. Now I had to confess to making a bad mistake. I hadn’t realized the High Council tracked everything I did.
“Not everything, Mpenzi Munro,” she said. “Just the magic you use. You are a novice under our tutelage.”
“Your Ladyship, it was an error. I meant to learn the spell for getting rid of litter and used the wrong Latin word. I didn’t know how to send it back.”
The Chief Witch rolled her eyes at me and the other six witches tittered.
“Very well, we’ll let it go this time, but you must be more careful in future. You could wreak havoc even at your lowly level. Have you learnt your lesson?”
