by CJ Bridgeman
“Then tell me.”
“Where do I start?”
Felicity flicked her eyes down to her mother’s journal as it rested in her hands. “Start with this,” she said. “Tell me why you want it so badly.”
Oliver followed Felicity’s gaze and had to try harder than usual to hide his desire for the book. If only his hands weren’t tied behind his back, he would shape a spell that would leave the wretched girl trapped behind a wall of ice, and then he would simply pluck the book from her shivering hands and leave her cowering uselessly in a corner until the others came. How frustrating and pathetic it was that the only thing that stood between him and his innate powers was a string of ordinary rope.
He raised his eyes to meet hers once again and delighted in the discomfort this caused her. It was time to tell her the truth - well, some of it, anyway.
“It’s a spell book,” he said simply.
Felicity stared, her expression betraying her disbelief.
“But not just any spell book, of course,” Oliver continued. “It’s the book of the Spellweaver. It contains instructions, notes and plans for the most powerful magic in existence. Healing magic, destructive magic, defensive spells - all of it is in that book, and no one, not even me, has ever seen it. Even the Grandmaster himself couldn’t imagine the kind of power contained on those pages.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Felicity interrupted him. “Just what are you talking about? Who’s the Grandmaster?”
Oliver shook his head impatiently; he had faltered. He had to stay conscious of the fact that Felicity was ignorant of the things he took for granted. He had to be more careful what he said.
“That doesn’t matter,” he said dismissively. “What does matter is that you understand exactly what it is that you’re holding.”
“But what you’ve said - it’s impossible,” Felicity insisted. “I mean - spell books? They’re... they’re for kids’ stories and - and - and they don’t exist!”
Oliver rolled his eyes. This was already becoming more taxing than he was prepared to endure. She knew so little that it was almost amusing.
“You think I would come to your world voluntarily? To become one of you, to go to your school, to spend time in those ridiculous lessons by choice?” He snorted. “I did it because I had to find that book, because what’s contained within it is worth putting myself through all of that.” He leaned forward, staring at her even more intently, and lowered his voice. “You’ve seen what I can do,” he said darkly. “You’ve seen what I’m capable of. Is it really that surprising to know that others can do it, too?”
His words seemed to have the desired effect. Felicity shook her head helplessly; the truth was sinking in. In spite of all she had already seen, it was clearly difficult for her to accept that there were forces in the world that she didn’t understand, but she had asked for the truth and he had provided it.
He knew that it was now time to up his game and take the next step.
“Take your mother, for example,” he said. “She could do it.”
Watching Felicity react to his revelations made putting up with her incessant ignorance completely worth it. He revelled in the power he had over her; he didn’t even need his magic. He saw her head snap up, her eyes widen and her expression twist into a look of shock, confusion and disbelief. Her breath caught in her throat. He could almost hear her heart skip a beat and then its rhythm begin to quicken. All of this he absorbed and relished.
“Yes, she could do it,” Oliver repeated deliberately. “She was one of the most powerful of us all.”
“No,” Felicity breathed. “My mother was - she was normal. I would’ve known -”
“You knew what she chose to tell you,” Oliver said. “Come on, Felicity. You’re not stupid. Think about it.”
She didn’t want to think about it, but she couldn’t help it - and immediately she knew that Oliver was right. All of the time her mother had spent away from home, all of the empty conversations the two of them had had... it seemed so obvious now that her mother had been keeping secrets from her, and Felicity had always felt that she had never really known her. Had it not been for her mother’s handwriting in the strange book of spells, she wouldn’t have believed it.
But it made perfect sense.
Oliver wondered where he could go next. He knew he couldn’t tell her everything, but what he had revealed so far had shaken her so much that she was hungry for more. It was possible that she wasn’t even aware of it yet, but Oliver knew. He could see her beginning to drop her guard as her desperation for knowledge grew.
She flicked through the pages of her mother’s journal. “But this...” she said quietly. “This is all... it’s gibberish. I can’t even read it.”
“I can.”
She looked at him.
“I can read it,” he repeated. “I can tell you exactly what it says.”
Felicity withdrew. She pulled the book close to her chest. “No,” she said.
“Don’t you want to know?” Oliver asked. “It’s your mother’s handwriting, isn’t it? They’re her words. Aren’t you curious?”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t have to untie me,” Oliver pressed on. “Just show me a page or two. I can read it to you.” He saw the look of worry flash across Felicity’s features. “Look, my hands are tied. I can’t cast a spell just by reading it - not like your mother could.”
There was silence in the cellar for what seemed like an age as Felicity considered his request. She was being honest when she said she didn’t trust him, but she wanted to know more so badly that it hurt. She could feel a tight tugging sensation at her chest and found herself short of breath. Everything was so overwhelming, so unbelievable that she felt insane for even believing it - but she did. She believed every word that came from the mouth of this untrustworthy boy who had tried to harm them, even kill them. She needed him to tell her more.
She walked towards him, and it was only as she stood directly in front of him that she realised how tightly she was grasping her mother’s book. Her nails were digging into the soft, leather cover. Oliver’s gaze had once again shifted; he was looking at the book with a hunger that was rather unsettling. It seemed that he had eyes for only two things - the book, which he regarded with an impatient, frustrated longing, and Felicity herself, for whenever he wasn’t staring at the journal, he was watching her with that penetrating stare.
She took a deep breath and flicked through the pages, randomly stopping somewhere near the middle before turning the book around to face Oliver. His eyes consumed the words as they traced them eagerly. He muttered under his breath. When he was finished - which was mere seconds after he had started, so quickly had he read the page - he leaned back in his chair. Even Felicity could sense his disappointment; it was very badly concealed.
“That’s a defensive spell,” he said. “A shield of sorts. A shame... I was hoping to see something more impressive.”
“But what does it actually say?” Felicity asked. “You said you’d read it to me.”
Oliver rolled his eyes and sighed. “Very well,” he said. “But don’t expect to understand a word of it; it’s in a language that isn’t spoken in this world.”
And then he uttered the words that were meant to produce the magic, and that was the moment when everything changed. The first thing she noticed was Oliver’s voice. It wasn’t that it became deeper, it was that its bass suddenly became more prominent. She could suddenly feel it vibrating in her chest like music turned up too loud. For a fleeting second, it made her feel slightly sick.
His voice wasn’t the only thing that changed. As he spoke, the air around him seemed to blur as if in a haze of heat above a burning fire. Everything became distorted. It made Felicity dizzy, and she had to put her hand out to steady herself.
She had heard and felt this before. She could recall the exact moment. It was in the alleyway back in September, when she had first encountered Oliver’s magic. As soon as he had
started speaking those strange words, she had felt unwell for a moment. It was such a small part of the unbelievable things she had seen that she had quite forgotten about it, but now that she remembered, it took her back to the fear she had felt that night, and the feeling was not pleasant.
It was over. Oliver had stopped reciting and was looking at her curiously as she stood unsteadily in front of him. The headache and the feeling of nausea subsided.
“That can happen when you haven’t been exposed to a high level of magic before,” Oliver said as she regained her balance. “It disorients you.”
“That was... magic,” Felicity said, believing it completely for the first time. She knew it was magic. It had to be.
“A defensive spell, like I said,” Oliver replied. “But I can’t cast it with my hands tied. I need to form the gestures that go with the words. That’s how magic works - for most of us, at least.” He paused. “I could show you if you untie me.”
Felicity squinted and rubbed her forehead; the pain had completely gone. “Those words,” she said, ignoring Oliver’s last statement. “What do they mean?”
“They’re the incantations necessary for creating magic,” Oliver explained. “Words are powerful. You can hurt someone with a lie. You can heal them with encouragement and positivity. But where I come from, words have a new meaning altogether. Words can hurt you physically, tear your flesh apart like a sword - and they can knit the wound back together afterwards with just as much ease. That’s their power. Without words, we’d just be animals.” He paused and looked her directly in the eye. “Did your mother teach you nothing at all?”
It was a fine example of how words could be used to damage feelings, for that last statement stung. But Felicity had noticed something else; something that he had said. As her brow furrowed in concentration, she realised he had said it more than once. “Where you... come from?” she ventured hesitantly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Oliver didn’t respond. Had he been able to, he would have folded his arms defiantly. The next moment of silence informed Felicity that she was not going to get anything else out of him, for now at least. With a final glance behind her, she picked up her mother’s journal and hurried up the steps of the cellar as fast as she could.
10.
Jamie was waiting for Felicity when she emerged from the cellar.
“Hey,” he said to her. “Are you okay?”
She thought about this. Her heart was still racing. Her head almost ached with the new and confusing information that it was still attempting to absorb. Her hands were shaking with nerves. She didn’t know whether to simply accept everything that she had just been told or to hide and hope that it would all go away. In short, she wasn’t okay.
But that wasn’t what she said. Instead, she settled for: “I’m fine.”
The two of them headed into the lounge. “You were down there for a while,” Jamie continued. “Hollie told me that you had things to speak to Oliver about.”
“Where is Hollie?” Felicity asked.
“She went to back to Mum’s,” Jamie replied. “She can’t stay away for too long. I’m slightly more fortunate; mum isn’t exactly bothered if I disappear. Not as long as I do my homework, anyway.” He paused, clearly waiting for Felicity to say something. When she didn’t, he asked her: “So what was it?”
“Hm?”
“What did you need to speak to Oliver about?”
Felicity sat on the sofa and shook her head somewhat helplessly. “It’s all so messed up,” she said. “He told me things that just... couldn’t be true.”
“Like what?”
She looked at Jamie. His face was a picture of concern. She wondered briefly whether or not she wanted to trust him, but this time the answer came easily, much more easily than it had in the past. She wanted to tell him everything.
So she did, and she felt so much better afterwards. The tension in her body seemed to fade. For Jamie’s part, he listened attentively and in silence, nodding every now and again as if he understood everything she told him. It was a very different experience to talking to his twin.
“Do you believe him?” he asked her once she had finished.
Felicity shrugged. “I don’t know,” she sighed. “But we’ve seen him do magic, haven’t we? And some of the things he said... they just - they made sense, you know?”
“And you said that he’s from some kind of... other world?”
She nodded.
“Magic,” Jamie muttered under his breath. “I just can’t believe it exists. And he said that your mum could do it?”
“More than that,” Felicity replied, holding up her mother’s book. “She had this spell book, which Oliver seems to want more than anything.”
“Can you read it?”
“No.”
“But your mum... she could read it.”
“She could read it,” Felicity confirmed. “But she also wrote in it. She created these spells that Oliver wants so badly.” She paused, reflecting. “He says that she was really powerful.”
“And she never told you?”
Felicity’s eyes dropped. That was the part that bothered her the most. Everything else mystified and confused her to the point of exhaustion, but the fact that her mother had been able to conjure spells and enchantments and had neglected to tell her own daughter - it hurt Felicity more than she was prepared to admit.
“She never told me,” she said weakly.
Jamie rubbed his face. “This is crazy,” he said. “What are we going to do? I can’t leave him locked up in my cellar forever. My dad is coming back after new year and he’s bound to notice.”
That wasn’t what worried Felicity. “I don’t know,” she replied quietly.
He looked at her. “Oh, Fliss, I’m sorry,” he said, and then he scooted across the sofa until he was next to her and placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Did Oliver say anything about the people who are looking for you?”
She shook her head.
“Look. You can stay here again tonight if you want. I’ll look after you.”
Felicity smiled unconvincingly. “Thanks. But I really should get back to the flat.”
“Then let me walk you there.”
“No, no, really. I’m fine.”
“Fliss.” Jamie moved off the sofa and knelt down in front of her, forcing her to look at him. “After all you’ve just told me, you really think I’m going to let you out there on your own?”
Felicity shrugged.
“Of course I’m not,” Jamie continued. “You’re my best friend - and you’re a lady. It would be very ungentlemanly of me.”
Felicity had never been as close to Jamie as she was to his twin sister. Hollie was in all of Felicity’s lessons and had always insisted on being her friend, even at the beginning when she had been so desperate to be by herself. But Jamie had always been there, too. He might have been out of sight, in different lessons or off with his own group of friends, and Felicity’s encounters with him were more often than not accidental, since Hollie still preferred not to be seen with him in public, but there was something about the last few days that had drawn the three of them even closer together. Hollie had started to treat Jamie differently; she still made jibes at him and joked at his expense, but the teasing seemed somehow nicer than it used to be, if that were even possible. Felicity supposed that it had something to do with the things that Jamie had done for her, such as the significant act of saving her life. That kind of thing tended to renew your respect for someone.
The three of them were in this together, whatever ‘this’ was; these tales of magic and spell books, of strange people hunting for her and her mother’s journal - they had seen and experienced all of these things together. Felicity had seen how Hollie cared for her and how protective Jamie was over the both of them.
It felt... good.
Felicity didn’t know how she had managed to cope without people like the twins in her life before she had arrived at Greenfield
s, and she swore that she would never be like that again. She had tasted genuine friendship and she was not going to let it go.
She nodded at Jamie’s offer. “Let’s go, then.”
The walk back to the flat didn’t take long, partly because Felicity’s mind was so restless, and partly because Jamie wouldn’t stop talking. She knew that he was only doing it to distract her, to stop her from thinking about all of her troubles, and to a certain extent he succeeded, but as soon as she said goodbye and closed the door, everything just came back again, as inevitable as the tide.
Her father wasn’t there. A note pinned to the fridge by a magnet informed her that he had been called into work for a night shift and wouldn’t be back until the morning.
It wasn’t particularly late - only about nine - but Felicity felt exhausted. She trudged through the flat to her room and collapsed on the bed. It was cold in there; the window was still stuck open, as it had been ever since she had moved in. Without bothering to get dressed into her pyjamas, dressing gown and thick socks, she pulled the duvet up to her chin and stared at the ceiling.
She couldn’t sleep. Her eyes wouldn’t even allow themselves to close. It was quite frustrating, she mused as she tried in vain to force herself into a slumber. She was so unbearably tired and her mind was full of so many anxieties that she knew a good night’s rest would help her think more clearly. But still, she couldn’t sleep.
The Christmas gift from her father caught her eye. It stood still and solitary on her bedside table, the only secret she had not shared with her friends. She hadn’t had a chance to act upon her father’s suggestion to use the box to store her mother’s things, and since sleeping was proving to be so much of a difficulty at present, she decided to do so now.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, clicked her bedside lamp on and stood up. She had managed to weigh the protruding floorboard down with heavy books and other items in an attempt to save herself from tripping up, but had been less than successful. She pushed them aside, lifted the floorboard and peered into the space beneath. The brown padded envelope was still there, of course, though it had caught a lot of dust since she had placed it there several months ago. Felicity had not got it out since then.
