by Tiegan Clyne
She picked up the letter and read it aloud. “You were warned. Thus ever will it be for the faithless.”
/They’re newts!/ Charlie exclaimed. /All the witches and all their familiars!/
Matilda looked into the aquarium in horror. There were indeed thirteen large newts with thirteen smaller ones, all crawling over the top of one another, trying to reach her. The largest newt, bumpy and green with a golden blaze down its back, stretched up one webbed foot toward her in silent supplication. Matilda couldn’t hear anything at all.
/Are they talking?/
“I think they’re trying to, but they can’t. They’ve been rendered magicless.” She took a deep breath and looked around. “This has to have been done by that Xander person.”
/Now what?/
She tried to pick up the aquarium. It was awkward, but she could manage it… just. “I can carry it, but I’ll have to put your basket on top of it.”
/That’s all right./ He hesitated. /Do you want me to get a wagon?/
“You can do that?”
He sounded embarrassed. /It’s the only thing that I can summon, but I promise you, it’s very helpful./
Matilda chuckled despite the gravity of their situation. “Yes, Charlie. Please summon a wagon for us. I’ll remember that in the future - I’m sure a wagon will come in very handy in the future.”
Charlie preened and meowed at length, and then a red metal wagon appeared, standing on thick black tires. Matilda struggled with the aquarium and its newt cargo until she got it safely loaded into the wagon. Charlie hopped back into his basket, and she put him gently on top of it.
“Here we go.”
He snuggled down into his blanket nest, and together they took the newts back to their bent little house.
They put the aquarium near the fire where the newts would be warm, but not close enough to cook the unfortunate creatures. She put a shallow dish of water in with them and consulted some of her textbooks to confirm what a newt was supposed to eat. She sat at her kitchen table and pored over the books.
“Bugs, worms… tiny fishes….” She closed her book. “I don’t have any of those things here.”
/Oksana might./ He sat at the side of the aquarium, watching the newts closely. Matilda suspected that he was enjoying the sight of Mehitabel reduced to an amphibian after flaunting her feline beauty for so long. /I think we should tell the Administrator./
“True.” She leaned on her elbow and looked at the little creatures in the glass cage. “One of those newts is Susannah.”
Charlie let out a sound that could only be called a snicker. Matilda knew she should have scolded him, but in truth, she was enjoying the schadenfreude quite a bit, herself.
“Let’s go to the Academy and see if Administrator Winterhex will see us,” Matilda said, closing her book. “On the way home, we can check in with Oksana.”
/I.../ Charlie looked over his shoulder at her, then back at the newts. /I think I should stay here to watch them. I mean, to make sure they don’t drown. They may not be as smart as normal newts./
Matilda saw through his excuse. Once a kitty, always a kitty. “Okay,” she said, smiling at his very mild predatory instincts. “Call me if there’s a problem.”
Charlie looked up at her. /You’ll hear me, won’t you?/
“You’re my familiar, silly. Of course I will.”
He purred. /Just making sure./
Matilda went to the Academy with the note she had found in the park. The gates had been closed for evening curfew, something that was imposed on Devil’s Night for the comfort and safety of the mundanes in Button Landing. It was a way to keep the students out of trouble, and of giving them plausible deniability when they got into trouble anyway. Some of the students’ favorite targets for Devil’s Night pranks lived across the river.
She went to the intercom on the gate and pressed the sigil. It took a long time, but finally an irritable woman’s voice responded.
“We are very sorry, but the Academy is closed. Please come back in the morning.”
“I need to speak to Administrator Winterhex,” Matilda said quickly. “It’s about her daughter, Susannah.”
There was a long silence. Matilda was about to turn away when the gate shimmered and clicked open. She waited for the heavy wrought iron to slide out of the way before she walked through.
The gate opened onto the circular drive in front of the Academy’s portico, and as Matilda approached, the administrator appeared at the front door, tying her black silk kimono’s belt. Her face was covered with a green mask, and the beauty treatment made her look even more like a witch than she normally did.
“Greenbottom,” she greeted coldly. “What about my daughter?”
“I went to the Devil’s Night coven meeting and the witches and their familiars had all been enspelled, and this was on the site.”
She handed over the note, and Agatha read it. “Thus ever will it be for the faithless,” she spat. “I’ll show him faithlessness! What sort of spell?”
“He turned them into newts.”
Agatha stared at her. “You must be joking.”
“I wish I were.”
“All of them?”
“And their familiars, yes.” She gestured vaguely behind her. “I took them all home so they’d be safe. He put them in a mundane aquarium.”
Agatha’s eyes pinched, and Matilda thought she looked like she was suffering a rapid-onset migraine. The administrator sounded offended. “Newts are so passé!”
Matilda had certainly heard a million jokes about witches turning people into toads, but never newts, except for one popular comedy film. “Yes, ma’am,” she said noncommittally. “I was hoping perhaps you’d know a way to change them back.”
“I must research it. Nobody has cast that spell in a hundred years.” She sniffed. “Leave it to an outcast first-year warlock to come up with something antique.”
“Antiques are quite valuable in their own way,” Matilda said. The administrator glared at her. “May I have access to the spell library? I might be able to help.”
Agatha drew herself up haughtily. “You most certainly cannot, and you will not. You were last in your class as I recall, and you were fortunate we accepted you in the first place. You may be a hereditary witch, but you are a half-blood - your father was human.”
“I am aware.”
“That’s why you were born in Button Landing.”
“Again, I am aware.” She nodded. “I understand, though. If a full-blood witch could get herself turned into a newt by an antique spell by an outcast first-year warlock, then a half-breed certainly wouldn’t be able to help.”
Her words were spoken sarcastically. An antique spell required an antique response, and if there was anything that Matilda was good at, it was things that were old and outmoded. Agatha, though, misread the tone.
“I’m glad to hear that you’re being sensible. Go home and concentrate on your hideous furless cat and your… whatever it is that you do.”
“He isn’t hideous, and he isn’t furless.”
Agatha sniffed. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
“And your opinion is wrong.”
The administrator glared at her. “I do not have time to argue about your familiar. I have my daughter to save.”
“Good luck,” Matilda told her sincerely. “I don’t want to keep them any longer than I have to.”
She left the Academy grounds, feeling very annoyed and insulted. She was tired of people denigrating Charlie, and she was also tired of being underestimated. Any witch who’d passed Spellwork 4 could cast any spell she found in any spellbook, and the administrator should have known that. She resolved to get access to that library as soon as morning came.
In the meantime, there were newts to feed, so she went home by way of the Familiar Emporium. The lights were all off, but a candle burned merrily in a jack-o’-lantern whose face resembled a cat’s. She knocked on the door.
It took a moment, but then
she heard footsteps approaching. Oksana opened the door. She was dressed in a painter’s smock over her black witch’s dress, and green paint was smeared down her cheek. She smiled. “Matilda! Hello! Come in.”
Oksana stepped aside and led her visitor into the living quarters behind the empty familiar chamber. Lights blazed all around the room, illuminating a canvas bearing a half-rendered green kitten. None of those bright lights had been visible from the outside, and Matilda made a mental note to find and learn that spell.
Once they were inside her private chambers, Oksana closed the door and embraced her. “So good to see you! Where Charlie?” She narrowed her eyes. “He not cast off, is he?”
“Cast off? Certainly not. He’s at home, watching the newts.”
Oksana blinked her green eyes. “Newts?”
“Yes… we, uh, found an abandoned aquarium filled with newts, and I need to know what to feed them.”
The emporium’s mistress rushed over to a desk and came back with a receipt. “It look like this?”
She pointed to a minimalist description of a fish tank. Matilda knew the pet store the merchandise had been purchased from; she had shopped there in the past and would do so again. “It could be.”
“Ooh, this bad. This very bad. Those newts… were they people?”
“At one time, yes,” she nodded. “It’s Susannah and her coven.”
“Supposed to be your coven too.”
Matilda sighed. “Well, Susannah didn’t think so, so here we are. And she’s lucky that I wasn’t, otherwise Charlie and I would be newted up and in that aquarium, too.”
Oksana took her back into the emporium. “Not many people cast newt spell anymore,” she said as she busily packed up a bag, “but sometimes newts happen. Here. This is food for them. Be careful not to let the crickets go… but Charlie might like to chase them, so okay.”
“How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing! Is enough to think of Susannah eating bugs.” She snickered. “But we shouldn’t leave them that way for long. I will look into spells that create newts, and maybe you look into spells that create newts, and we find some way to reverse it.”
She rolled up the edges of the paper bag so she could carry it more easily. “The administrator was going to do the same thing.”
Oksana made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Pssht. She no witch no more. She send all her power into her last baby. That what happen with seventh child of seventh child.” She nodded sagely. “That good thing to avoid.”
Matilda chuckled. “I’m sure it is. Luckily, I don’t have to worry about that.”
“Lucky neither of us do.” She walked Matilda to the door of the emporium, pausing only to add a few toys and treats for Charlie. “Now… you give these to newt girls and go to bed. Tomorrow is busy day.”
She nodded and stepped back out onto the street. She looked down at the carved pumpkin. “That’s very nice,” she said.
“Thank you. I carve it myself.” Oksana grinned. “But tonight Devil’s Night, and pranksters out and about. Be careful you don’t get spelled on.”
“I will.” She held up the bag. “Thanks.”
“Back at you!”
Oksana closed the door, and Matilda turned for the walk home.
Chapter Seven
Matilda thought about her conversation with Oksana all the way back to her house. Charlie met her at the door, his tail high and his eyes bright.
/I think they’re angry,/ he told her eagerly. /There was a newt fight when you were gone./
“Did anybody get hurt?” she asked, hanging up her hat.
/No. Newt fights aren’t very impressive./ He trotted beside her as she walked over to the aquarium with her purchases. /Do you have newt food?/
“Yes, indeed. Crickets and mealworms.”
Charlie shivered and said in a delighted voice, /That’s disgusting!/
“It certainly is.” She opened the aquarium and loaded the food dish with the squirming booty she’d brought back from the emporium. The newts fell on the insects, ravenously hungry. Matilda shook her head. “They’re going to be horrified when they come out of this.”
/If they come out of this./
“Oh, they will.”
She sat down in her rocking chair, and Charlie hopped up into her lap. /Did you get an idea of how to de-newt them?/ He snickered. /They’ve been newt-ered./
Matilda laughed and pulled him up into her arms, settling him onto her bosom, which he so adorably called her kitten shelf. He snuggled in. “Not exactly, but when I talked to both Administrator Winterhex and Oksana, and they’re both going to research ways to reverse the spell. But Oksana said something that got me thinking.”
/What was that?/ He tucked his head under her chin and purred loudly.
“When I was leaving, I said ‘thanks,’ and she said ‘back at you.’”
Charlie purred more loudly. /She’s silly./
“She is, but it got me thinking. Instead of just reversing the spell, why don’t we reflect it?”
His purr stuttered. /Reflect it? Can you do that?/
“It’s easy enough to do with smaller spells. I don’t know how much power this one takes. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t… I just need to know the right incantation.”
/Do you need to know who cast the spell in the first place?/
“I think I do. Xander Melrose.”
/He’s a troublemaker. The Council witches said he was powerful,/ Charlie fretted. /I hope he doesn’t come after you./
“So do I.”
They were quiet for a moment, listening to the chirping of the surviving crickets in the newt cage. Matilda thought about how the Administrator had spoken of the newt spell as being antiquated, and she thought about her sources for antiquated knowledge. The obvious answer presented itself: her grandmother’s spellbooks. They were in the care and keeping of her mother over in Button Landing, and they’d been packed away for Matilda’s entire life. Her mother had abandoned her magic to marry Matilda’s father, and witchery was a forbidden topic in her girlhood. Her decision to enter the Academy had strained her relationship with her parents, something that she had never ceased to regret.
She sighed deeply, and Charlie looked up at her, placing one paw gently on her cheek. /You’re sad./
Matilda smiled. “Was that a guess?”
/No. You’re feeling sad, and I feel what you feel./ His eyes brightened. /Our magic! It’s meshing!/
She hugged him close, his sweater tickling her nose and making her suppress a sneeze. “Oh, you’re such a fine familiar! Those other witches lost out when they didn’t take you!” Charlie rubbed his cheek against her face, and she stroked his head. “Yes, I’m sad. I’m thinking about something I haven’t thought about in a long time.”
/If it makes you sad, stop thinking about it./
“It’s not that easy, sweetheart.” She sighed. “I think I know where I can find books to help us with our problem, but it’s tied up in a lot of family nonsense.”
Charlie nodded his head sagely. /So go to the Academy library./
“Administrator Winterhex won’t let me use the library.”
He stood in her arms, flabbergasted. /Why not?/
“Because I’m only half witch.”
Charlie’s little mouth fell open, but he closed his jaws again with a click. /Why, that’s… that’s speciesist!/
Matilda had to smile at his feline outrage. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
/Well, just for that, we should leave her little witchling as a newt and put her in her office./ He threw himself back down onto her chest with an audible, “Hmph.”
She stroked his back through his sweater. “You know we can’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.”
/Well… no…./
“I think it’s time we went back to Button Landing. There’s someone I need to speak to.”
They went to Button Landing on the ferry’s second to last crossing. The only other passengers were a trio of young men who whispere
d and laughed together in a corner near the prow. They were clearly talking about Matilda and Charlie, but she paid them no mind.
Devil’s Night had clearly been active. The trees near the ferry station were draped in toilet paper, and Matilda could smell the stench of rotten eggs. The three young men ran away from the ferry, clutching bags to their chests, and she wondered what mischief they were planning, and what they’d been up to on the Button Hollow side of the river. They were mundanes; if they’d been in the magical part of the city, they’d probably been up to no good.
She walked to her parents’ house with Charlie in his basket. The air was biting, carrying the hint of the winter still to come, and it blew fallen leaves across the sidewalk in front of her. They skittered like fleeing mice, and Charlie’s ears pricked up as he watched them go. There was a whisper on the wind, but she couldn’t quite make out what the voice was saying. It made her shiver.
The streetlights flickered out overhead, and she heard the sound of running feet in an alley they’d just passed. She couldn’t tell if the steps were approaching or moving farther away, and she gripped her broom in both hands, prepared to use it as a quarterstaff. The three young men raced past her, hooting like crazy people, and this time the bags they clutched were empty.
Charlie’s ears flattened against his skull. The ne’er-do-wells vanished into the darkness.
Another set of footsteps approached them. Though the streetlights had been extinguished, there was still enough ambient light that Matilda should have been able to see who was coming toward them. She saw nobody, and it frightened her. She held Charlie’s basket tighter.
She felt a presence crowding close, and then hot breath touched her ear as someone unseen whispered, “You escaped me once. Do you think that you can do it again?”
Matilda’s pulse raced and a lump of fear settled into her throat, unmoving. She recognized that voice.
/Xander Melrose,/ Charlie said. /We’re not afraid of you./
The invisible warlock chuckled. “You should be, little one.”
Matilda found her voice. “I have no quarrel with you. Leave us alone.”
