Now all I wanted to do was hug my cousin. I could only imagine the flooding memories, the distress she must be in. I reached forward and she fell into my arms, sobbing even harder.
“It’s all going to be alright,” I heard myself say. “Don’t worry. Everything will be OK”
And it was – kind of.
We worked out a lot of answers after the evil spell faded and everyone reawakened. My parents figured that the reason I wasn’t affected by the curse was because of the necklace in my pocket. The one I spelled with magic that night. It wasn’t a falling down curse after all. My parents were right. I fell down the stairs of my own accord. In reality, I had mistakenly caused the chain to protect the wearer from curses for the next two days.
My family laughed at my stupidity that had saved all our lives. For once my miscasts worked out to my benefit. I even scraped up a pass on my Curse exam. Kaydon passed, too. With flying colours, naturally.
Then we killed the witch hunters who were pretending to be Ariel’s parents and we all lived happily ever after. Just kidding. We aren’t murderers!
My grandmother, an excellent caster, spelled them into thinking that they were normal people who didn’t believe in witches. She spelled them to want to move far away from our town. It worked swimmingly.
Ariel was sent to rehabilitation, and you can imagine how elated Aunt Debra was when she saw her beloved daughter. And Aunt was finally able to tell us what happened that fateful day.
The witch hunter pursued them relentlessly and in desperation Aunt Debra told Ariel to hide while she got help. When she returned to find Ariel, her child was gone. Aunt Debra assumed that the witch hunters had kidnapped and killed her baby girl. That’s when she went crazy on us. Overwrought with guilt and mad as a hatter. She was right about the kidnapping though.
But now that Ariel was back and safe in the arms of those who loved her, Aunt Debra was ready to do everything to make it up to her daughter.
Ariel was on the path to recovery. She still had a voice in her head constantly telling her that being a witch was wrong, but she knew it wasn’t hers. After all, they conditioned her for eight years. It’s not easy to get over something like that. I’d see it in her eyes sometimes. We would be chatting happily and suddenly her vision seemed to cloud over, and she’d be in some forlorn place and lost, a million miles away.
“Are you getting better?” I asked her a few weeks later.
“Just … just thinking,” she replied. “I know what the truth is, but it’s hard to forget everything they programmed me to remember.”
Time, I knew, was what it would take, as with most things.
“It’s alright,” I reassured her. “We’re all here for you. And I’m here to show you just how fun magic can be. Witches aren’t evil – well, most of us aren’t. Don’t worry. You’ll see.”
A few months later, when Ariel was stable, we had a family get-together to celebrate her home-coming and recovery. Guess who showed up as the entertainment? None other than The Spell Casters! The very band that our crazed grandfather claimed he knew and was a part of.
“He was telling the truth, the old kook,” Kaydon said, when he saw the band. They even invited grandfather to play a few songs with them. Who would’ve thunk it?
All grandfather’s stories were probably true. After countless attempts at begging, he finally told us about how he got the scar across his eye. I would love to tell it to you but it seems we’re out of time. Let’s save that tale for another day…
***
Tell us: Did you enjoy reading some pure fantasy for a change?
