A Witching Well of Magic

by Constance Barker

  A Witching Well of Magic

  By

  Constance Barker

  Copyright 2016 Constance Barker

  All rights reserved.

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  “Silence, the evil wizard yelled. I will hear no more complaints from you. You are my prisoner now, and I shall lock you in my highest tower, Princess Isabella.” Wendy looked down at her four year old daughter, red-haired and freckled, as Bailey frowned with concern. “You look confused.” She closed the storybook around her forefinger. This look was getting to be familiar fast—Bailey always had it before she asked a question.

  It had become apparent very quickly that Bailey was not an ordinary girl. Normal in the way that all little girls had certain tendencies, mostly gleaned from adult women that they saw in the world around them, to Wendy’s growing lament; but not at all ordinary in the usual sense at all. She never asked the question you expected.

  “Why does the wizard want to put her in a tower?” Bailey asked.

  Wendy pursed her lips. “Well, maybe that’s the way of evil wizards.”

  “But then he has to walk all the way up and all the way down the tower to see her,” Bailey reasoned. This was the same girl who put her blocks away largest to smallest. She was like Ryan in that was, somehow; efficient.

  “What makes you think he wants to visit her?” Wendy wondered. It wasn’t a very good story, she had to admit—there were plot holes. But the Wizard and the Princess was, for some reason, one of Bailey’s favorites, and she had no end of questions about it.

  “Every time he kidnaps Princess Isabella,” Bailey postulated slowly, as if this were a regular event in the world of the story, rather than just the same story read again and again, “the Prince Princely comes and saves her, and the wizard is always sad at the end.”

  Wendy tapped her finger on the book for a moment. “Well, I imagine he put a lot of work into kidnapping the princess,” she said thoughtfully. She’d learned quickly that Bailey, along with asking questions that were far from ordinary, also expected far from ordinary answers. Anything too mundane frustrated her. “What do you think?”

  Bailey paused to consider this, walking her fingers back and forth across the blanket, lightly chewing her lip—a habit Wendy was trying to break her of but which indicated she was deep in thought. After a moment she said, “I think the wizard is lonely, and he puts Princess Isabella in the tower because he wants her to be able to see all of the world so she’ll want to stay.”

  It was possible that Bailey didn’t quite grasp the meaning of ‘evil wizard’, but she certainly seemed to be getting a hold on the meaning of ‘best intentions’.

  And that was the crux of it. No matter how many stories Wendy read to her, Bailey tried to justify the actions of the old witch, or the black knight, or the evil wizard—she wanted to see the best in them, to see them redeemed or understood; sympathized for.

  “Well,” Wendy said, “perhaps you're right. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. I always thought that he put her up there so it would be hard for her to escape.”

  At this Bailey shook her head. “She has long, long hair, Mama. The Prince climbs up it, remember? She could just climb down it herself.”

  “Hm, maybe,” Wendy said, unconvinced. “But she hangs it over the edge for him, out the window. How could she climb down it?”

  As though it should be obvious, Bailey frowned up at her again with that tiny mouth, her beautiful green eyes squinted. “She would cut it off and tie it to something,” she said, exasperated. “Hair grows back. But if I was Princess Isabella, I wouldn’t escape.”

  “No?” Wendy raised an eyebrow.

  “No. The Wizard is probably just angry because he’s lonely; if she stayed, I bet he would be nice. And he has magic.” She said it like it was a precious treasure.

  And Wendy agreed with her, and hugged her close, and praised her for being such a clever little girl. She hid from her, however, the sliver of worry in her gut. One day, she knew, it was entirely probable that Bailey would learn too late that when it came to magic, there was very little that was worth treasuring and had already cost her so very, very much; and that lonely wizards were every bit as dangerous as sad or angry ones.

  Chapter 1

  Bailey Robinson squinted her eyes, as if it would somehow help, and bit her lip as she tried to focus the full force of her will on the wick of the tall, tapered candle before her, intent on seeing it spontaneously light itself according to natural laws she only recently learned existed.

  She was seated cross legged on the floor in the attic of Grovey Goodies, the only bakery—and coffee shop—in Coven Grove and, as she learned just two months before, headquarters to the actual Coven of Coven Grove. Chloe Minds, Aria Rogers, and Francis Cold were more than just the trio of middle aged bakery ladies who had showered Bailey with treats all through her childhood—they were witches. And so was Bailey.

  Or, she would be if she could ever actually do any magic.

  The spell, Aria assured her, was as simple as they came. Just move your hand like this, focus your eyes like so, say these words at just this tempo and pitch, think these things in this order, feel your magic running through you and into the wick, and presto, the candle would light. She had said that six weeks ago, and informed Bailey that she would learn no more magic until she could accomplish this task. It would, Francis assured Bailey, take her no time at all.

  Only Chloe seemed skeptical, but she kept that to herself; or tried to. Chloe had the same inherent gift as Bailey did, which was to read and sometimes see the thoughts of others. As such, even though Chloe knew how to keep Bailey more or less out of her thoughts, they had a certain rapport and Bailey had come to realize that she knew how Chloe felt most of the time; and Chloe knew how she felt.

  Chloe seemed to feel that Bailey might have some trouble.

  And she was right. After six weeks of thinking about the ‘essence of fire’—whatever that was—and stumbling through the ancient Greek rhyming couplet, and flicking her fingers just so, again and again and again... still, the wick remained stubbornly un-incinerated, which was what Bailey was aiming for at this point.

  She closed her eyes a final time. Now or nothing, do or die—make that wick burn bright and high. It wasn’t the actual couplet. Oh no. Whoever originated the spells Bailey was expected to learn by heart had either actually been an ancient Grecian, or had at least had a fetish for difficult languages. All the ones Bailey had seen were in ancient dialects of Arabic, Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, or some other complex, foreign, more often than not dead, tongue.

  But practice had, at least, improved her invocation. The couplet rolled off her tongue, lilting and snapping in alternating syllables that sort of reminded
her of a tiny spark crackling into a minuscule flame.

  As she did, she sought that calm, endless center of herself; the inner Ocean, as Francis called it, and willed the tide of it to rise. In it, she had learned, were all the natural elements—earth, air, fire, water, and the elusive spirit that no one seemed able to clearly explain. “You’ll understand later,” Aria had assured her on the subject. It was the patent answer to all the things Bailey didn’t know; which was most of them.

  She moved here hand ‘like this’, as she’d been taught and practiced countless, endless times as the final syllable fell from her lips and pulled at that inner ocean with her mind.

  A tiny, almost invisible and possibly imaginary weft of thin smoke may or may not have issued from the tip of the candle wick.

  Bailey let out an irritated sigh, and resolved to call it quits for the day. She stood, stretched her stiff back and her achy legs, and rubbed her face with both decidedly un-magical hands. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after. Or next year. In the last two months, she’d started to lament ever actually learning to do magic at all. At least, nothing especially useful. She could work up a slight breeze with the wind charm that Francis had taught her—but on the coast of Oregon, breezes were not in especially short supply.

  She resisted the urge to kick over the candle and the candle holder, and instead stalked to the other end of the large attic loft to leave. It was well insulated, either by design or by magic, against the noises from the bakery below, and when Bailey opened the door to the stairs leading down, it was like switching a radio on. The hubbub of Grovey Goodies’ daily business chattered away as it almost always did in the afternoon.

  Once, a few months ago, she wouldn’t have had time to waste away an afternoon trying to learn magic. She’d have been busy running tours at the Seven Caves—the highlight and single tourist attraction of Coven Grove, as well as the ancient mystical center of the Coven’s magic. All that was over now, though. Poppy Winters, the owner of the Seven Caves Tours, was in prison and had closed the business in her indefinite absence.

  It was selfish of her, Bailey thought. Bailey could have run the place herself. Then again Poppy had also murdered Martha Tells in a fit of greed driven rage, so... it was pretty much par for the course with Poppy.

  Bailey came to the end of the stairs, which exited into the back store-room of the bakery. She grabbed an apron off of a hook and tied it on. She didn’t actually work at the bakery, but it was the best idea they had for how she could come and go without making people wonder why Bailey Robinson was spending so much time there. Secrecy, it turned out, not unsurprisingly, sort of came with the territory of being a witch.

  In the front of the house, where all the action happened, in Bailey’s opinion, Chloe, Aria and Francis all scurried about nimbly in the business of boxing or bagging baked goods and preparing coffee and tea, and being the jovial, winking lady bakers the town knew them to be.

  Well, Aria and Francis were, at any rate. Chloe was trapped at one end of the long counter by a short, thin woman in her seventies or possibly as old as time itself—it was hard to say with Rita Hope, which is who Bailey knew the woman was. She had her usual green bonnet on over the bun of her downy white hair, and leaned on a knobbed wooden cane while she waved her knobbly hands. That’s what Rita Hope most reminded people off—a gnarled and knobbly willow tree, curled with age but still somehow supple and very much vital and alive, and loud.

  “I liked it better when it was quiet around here,” Rita was saying to Chloe as Bailey approached the only exit from behind the counter. “All this awful business, and now everyone’s here to see the murder site. At least we could just turn them away before. Now, once word gets out, everyone for a thousand miles is going to come traipsing through the town to bother me.” She glanced at Bailey almost dismissively, and pointed at Chloe’s patiently passive expression. “And mark my word, that young man will be nothing but trouble. Mark my word. I know these things.” She tapped the side of her nose with a bent finger.

  “Pardon me,” Bailey muttered as she made her way past the two women.

  “Oh, Bailey,” Chloe said, “actually, this is perfect timing. Mrs. Hope was just telling me that the touring office has opened back up. Some new owner...” she raised a questioning eyebrow at Rita.

  Rita waved a hand, “Something Rivers, I don’t know. Out-of-towner. Can’t trust ‘em.”

  “Yes, a Mr. Rivers,” Chloe said. “If you think you’d want to, maybe you should drop by and introduce yourself.”

  Bailey did miss the caves. And she’d missed running the tours. But at the thought of actually doing the job again, of taking people through there, after having found Martha... “I’ll think about it,” she said quietly.

  Chloe frowned at her, turning slightly away from Rita, whom she likely was eager to escape from. “You sound a little nervous about going back,” she said, even though Bailey was pretty sure she’d sounded neutral. That was their connection, though. She couldn’t hide anything from Chloe; not really.

  “After everything that happened...” Bailey said, but didn’t feel like finishing. She just shrugged a little. “I could check in, and see. At least just to maybe meet the new owner. I’m curious, of course. I suppose I could give Mr. Rivers a little advice. Or maybe even recommend someone to help him run the tours. That is, if he isn’t going to do it himself.” She thought for a moment, and then sighed. “I mean there are a few things he should probably know about the caves...”

  Chloe grinned at her, a knowing, mischievous sort of grin. “Well, I’m sure you could educate him.” She looked at Rita. “No one knows the caves like Bailey does.”

  “What’s that?” Rita squawked.

  Chloe sighed, her face a mask of consternation, but only for a moment. She turned back to Bailey. “I think going to meet Mr. Rivers would be a fine idea. I’m sure he could use a little guidance; he’s not a local. Rita says this is his first day in town, and apparently the place is already open.”

  “Already open and making a ruckus,” Rita snapped. It was impossible to know what she could and couldn’t hear, Bailey observed. Or, maybe she heard just fine and only pretended to be deaf when she didn’t want to answer.

  “Aren’t you normally out of town by now,” Bailey asked Rita.

  Rita rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes. Not this year. Have a nephew whose coming to stay in a few weeks. Not worth it to go all the way down and come back up.”

  Bailey assumed she meant the other way around, but didn’t mention it. “I see,” she said, “well it’ll be nice to have family in town, won’t it?”

  “You must not have a lot of family,” Rita muttered.

  “Rita,” Chloe hissed.

  Rita seemed oblivious. Whether she knew or not, Bailey didn’t know—but it was true; Bailey didn’t have a lot of family. She had Ryan, her adopted father, but that was it. The loss of her adopted mother was a fresh hurt, even though it had happened years ago now. She supposed the loss of one’s mother was a perpetually fresh hurt when it happened so young. Bailey was only twenty now, and it had happened when she was barely through high school. Too young. Too early. To say nothing of missing out entirely on her birth mother, who’d given Bailey up for adoption just after she was born. Her she’d never known, and the pain of it was less, but it was there.

  At Rita’s age, losing people was probably a fact of life. It was easy to see why she might be a little bit careless or callous about it now.

  “Well,” Bailey said, politely chipper though she didn’t quite feel it at the moment, “I’m clocking out.” She took off her apron and handed it to Chloe, who would see that it was returned to the hook in the back room.

  Chloe’s lips were tight, and Bailey felt the gentle touch of the woman’s mind on hers, an unspoken question, “Are you alright?”

  Bailey just gave her a single nod, and then hugged her tight. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And,” she sighed, “I suppose I’ll check in on Mr. Rivers. I’ll tell you how it goes.�
��

  “You watch out for that young man,” Rita Hope said as Bailey slipped past her, shaking a crooked, almost accusatory finger. “He’s got a silver tongue, that one. A charmer. Young men like that are nothing but trouble, I’ll tell you. Nothing but trouble.”

  Chapter 2

  Rita wasn’t wrong. The tour office was swarmed with people, all milling about and buzzing excitedly like overgrown bees. Many of them had rolled up or folded newspapers in their hands. Martha’s tragic murder had gone national, and then viral, and finally the news must have gotten out that the caves were, again, open to tours.

  How it had gotten out so fast, she couldn’t imagine, but if this Mr. Rivers person was responsible he was a marketing genius. Poppy had never seen a crowd like this.

  She pushed her way through the crowd to find that the front doors were locked. Well, no wonder all these people were swarming the office. She peeked inside, and found the lights on, but saw no one in there.

  A heavy finger tapped Bailey’s shoulder. “You see anyone? Is this place even open?” He was an older man, heavyset, and bushy browed; maybe retired. People came through with their RVs from time to time, and they all had a similar look to them—perpetual vacationers, baby-boomers in various states of semi-tropical wear.

  Bailey shook her head. “No one yet. I think it just re-opened, didn’t it? How did you hear about it?”

  The man held up a paper. The headline read, “Infamous Seven Caves to Reopen Under New Ownership after Summer Tragedy.”

  “Oh,” Bailey said flatly. So, the vultures had finally come. Probably Mr. Rivers didn’t even need to work that hard to get the publicity.

  Some of the people in the crowd were positively ghoulish, too. There was a copse of young people all in black, some of them in leather which couldn’t have been comfortable in the late Summer heat. They had pentacle necklaces and ankhs, and heavy eyeliner. Bailey wanted to roll her eyes at them, but for all she knew they were one of the other covens that Chloe had hinted at. There weren’t many, but they were around, and they came in all the colors of the rainbow—and those that weren’t, she supposed, typically on the rainbow proper.