A handful of spells

by Artemisia Bly

a novel in 7 chapters

Chapter 1 – Discovery

Flick. Flick.

Caitlin Leo was in a foul mood.

The walkway had been nice and smooth when she began, but now bits of gravel popped up through gravel, piling up one upon the other, making the garden walkway look like a family of moles had just moved in.

Flick.

Another finger snap, another stone popped up.

Nini, the family's longhair gray tuxedo cat, watched the stones cautiously from under a nearby bush. Caitlin felt badly for spooking her with these moods, but could she help it if those kids on her bus didn't know how to say things so that a person could understand them? Getting laughed at by a whole busload of students because she'd misunderstood yet again was beginning to get just a bit old.

Flick.

Enough stones on that molehill, on to another. Momma pitched a fit if any soil got rearranged near her prizewinning dahlias or the vegetable patch, so Caitlin had to restrict herself to the walkways. She didn't let her see just how she'd moved those stones – the first and only time she had let people see how she could move things without touching them, their eyes got squinty and dubious, and pretty soon Erin Buckforth and her clique were running around the playground yelling to stay away from "Carrie, weirdo witchy Carrie."

A motion in the sky caught her attention. Hawks throve in the area, drawn by the huge old oaks that grew in this part of central Massachusetts, and she loved to watch them spiraling in the air. But the shape was wrong, and this bird looked on a mission, flying straight across the sky, rather than watching for dinner in lazy circles.

"Blabla blaba Cait, don't forget blablabla the mail" came a voice from behind her. She turned to see her mom silhouetted against the screen door. Half of the words had sounded like mush to her, but Cait didn't need to understand all the words to get the gist; she was very practiced in working out what people were saying when only some of their words were understandable.

"Yes, Momma, I'll go get it" she answered, and she got up to go to the mailbox at the end of their walkway. The comfortable former farmhouse was painted white, with a front gable over the porch, framed by two ancient oaks and a sugar maple that lit up in three shades of red-gold every fall.

She looked up again – the bird was closer now, a redtail hawk -- and it looked like it was heading for her. But whatever it was carrying didn't look like prey. Weird.

She stood and watched as the hawk landed on the mailbox, a rolled-up piece of paper in its claw; it stared and bobbed its head at her.

"Somebody's playing a prank," she told the bird, as it continued to stare and began to click its beak in an annoyed fashion.

"OK, OK. Is that a letter for me, or something?" She carefully reached for the paper, fully expecting the hawk to spook and take off, but it just bobbed its head, ruffled its feathers, and began preening as she read the writing on the outside. Yep, there was her name, all right, in black ink, with the thick-to-thin line of a dip pen, like the crowquill used in her art class. "This thing should be in a museum" she thought as she carefully untied the cord that held the paper rolled up, and began reading.

"The Salem Witches' Institute is pleased to welcome Caitlin Leo to its incoming class of firstyears …" An odd feeling began to grow inside her.

"Transportation has been arranged for all new and returning students; scheduled departure from Boston's Long Wharf will be at exactly high tide on September 9th. Upperclass students only may elect to arrive at BWI via commuter rail from Boston." And at the end of the letter, "We await your immediate reply." The redtail clicked its beak and bobbed its head as if saying: "So write already!"

"Cait, the mail!"

"OK Momma!"

Caitlin stuffed the letter in her pocket and retrieved the mail, reaching under the claws of the fidgety bird, which continued to sit and stare. "Heck of an elaborate hoax," she thought as she handed her mom the mail and grabbed her pen and sketch pad ("Going to practice your drawing? Good day for it Cait."), then bounded back outdoors, and wrote, "I only read stories. I don't go and live in them." Handing the letter to the hawk, who happily flew off with it, she sat back down on the front step to watch it disappear against the clear May sky. Smart bird, whoever trained you! she thought.

She decided to keep the letter to herself for a while. Hoax it may be, but she liked the daydream and didn't want any grownup shooting it down.

The next few days passed uneventfully. On the following Tuesday after school, her mom ran some errands, and Caitlin tagged along so that she could browse the shelves of the local bookstore. This place was her haven: one place where she knew she'd not run into those louts she called her classmates. The books there were always interesting, and sometimes the other customers were interesting, too. And if a conversation should start, no loud background noise drowned it out; the shopkeeper liked to play classical music, at a nice, quiet level. As she scanned the bestseller rack, a person came alongside her, also browsing, caught her eye, and spoke softly, but clearly: "Salem Witches' Institute is not a hoax. Magic is real, and you've got it", then vanished behind the next range of shelves.

A grownup is in on this prank? Sket-chy. Skeevy, skanky, sketchy. Unless it isn't a prank at all – she felt dizzy, as a sense of excitement knocked at the back of her brain. Maybe it isn't a prank! No longer able to concentrate on the books, she battled that thought all the way home, as her mom cast anxious glances toward her unusually quiet daughter.

When she got home, a squirrel – yes, with a letter – waited, flicking its tail at her in the walkway, and nipped at her heels until she bent down and took the little scroll. A prankster wouldn't train a squirrel and a hawk – and this town was too small to hide someone that eccentric. Again, the same old-fashioned ink and the same cord tying it up, and a text which now read: "The Salem Witches' Institute, which is very much a real school, is pleased to welcome Caitlin Leo …" Again that odd feeling, with a bit of nerves thrown in; the pulse pounded in her throat. Real? Or was she just the most gullible dope in Massachusetts?

The squirrel sat and watched, tail twitching, as she deliberated. "You need an answer, too? Well, whatever this is has got to be better than 6th grade with the same jerks who thought I was an idiot since kindergarten. I bet boring is one thing it won't be." She retrieved a sheet of the grown-up fancy stationery she had been given for her birthday, wrote: "To the SWI, I accept, Caitlin Leo, May 2007", handed it to the squirrel, and wondered what would happen next as she went off to finish homework. As she slogged her way through history timelines and long division, she couldn't help but wonder: would she really get to escape those public-school dopes? She pushed her thoughts back into "what-if" territory. Let's see – bubbling cauldrons full of weird things. Eye of newt and toe of frog – eww, she hoped not. Crystal balls and fortune telling, stuff that's in the stars – hey, maybe it would be like astronomy. She liked the six experimental weeks of astronomy her class learned when the school won an experimental grant last year. Oh yeah, there would be broomstick-riding instead of general gym. With her balance, hah. Yeah right, that she'd flunk for sure.

But the school-bus ride home on Thursday clinched it.

She was in the middle of a really good story, about to finish reading an important chapter, when two very unwelcome faces popped up in front of her, Mike Mullin and Jack Stone, their friends sniggering in the background.

"So, you gonna answer Mikey's question?"

"What question?"

"See!" and Jack turned to his buddies in the front of the bus. "Told ya she goes off somewhere else when she's buried in one of these," and he grabbed the book.

"HEY!" But Caitlin wasn't fast enough, the book now flying from hand to hand, everybody laughing, and she only wanted her book back – her fist clenched, and then the bus dipped suddenly on the right-hand front side as if it had struck a pothole.

The bus driver was visibly annoyed as he pulled over. "We've got a flat tire, everyone. Stay put while I fix it, don't go making any trouble." And he glared at the busload of students as he stepped out of the now very quiet bus.

Jack was ready to start making cracks again, but Mike and several of the other students were giving Caitlin odd looks. As she eyed the crescent shapes on the palm of her hand, she got that funny feeling again – did she flatten that tire? Was that Salem school truly for real? After a quick look out the window, she jumped up. "I'm close enough to walk home from here," she told the driver after exiting the still-quiet bus, snatching her book from a girl in the front row as she went.

As she started down the sidewalk, so did the buzz of voices on the bus. "Blablabla find her flying saucer. Blabla beam her up blabla --- haha!"

So it's real. It sank into her mind with the rhythm of her feet on pavement. Since she somehow did make that wheel go flat, then magic does exist, and so then, must that school. The dizziness came back, and that peculiar mix of fear and anticipation that had followed her around lately. It must be real. It's got to be real. It's the only thing that makes everything make sense.

As she neared the house, it somehow didn't surprise her to see a squirrel (the same that brought the letter?) sitting in the middle of the walkway, watching her approach.

She blinked – there seemed to be a kind of shimmer as she looked at the squirrel, then suddenly a tall man in a gray suit and salt-and-pepper hair was standing in front of her.

"Tom Seekins, Admissions Officer, Salem Witches' Institute. You are Caitlin Leo, I believe," and he held out a hand for her to shake. "I hope to have a word with you before your parents arrive home, when I'll explain the school to them. Do you still believe it to be a hoax?" he asked, but there was a smile in his eyes.

Caitlin dared to ask the only question that happened to be in her brain at the moment, still trying to grasp what she'd seen. "Does the suit match your fur, or is it the other way around?"

He broke into a real smile as he answered. "I can wear anything at all, prefer robes to suits myself, but this happens to be less conspicuous if the glamour wears off while I'm in squirrel mode."

A look of worry crossed her face. "Will I get in trouble for making the bus tire go flat? I didn't mean to, but the other kids were teasing me again, and I just got mad. All I did was make a fist and it went pop."

"No doubt at all that you've got magic." He shook his head a little. "This school will be exactly the place where you'll learn to rein in that kind of energy and make it do what you want it to do. Something I guarantee that everyone will be happier with, you included." Then, as her mom's car pulled up, he asked, "Shall I introduce myself to your family now? We have a lot of ground to cover."