The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 10

CHAPTER TEN

here’s your family?”

Mika glanced up at Altamira, sitting on the other side of theW cauldron between them. She’d been lucky, she supposed, that it had taken a whole week for someone to ask that question. Given she’d already had to field questions like, “Do witches’ reproductive organs work the same way as other people’s?” (Rosetta), “Why do some people call a penis a willy?” (Altamira), and “Would you prefer poison or decapitation?” (Terracotta), this should not have been the question that threw her.

“Keep stirring,” Mika reminded Altamira, partly because the mixture in the cauldron did need stirring and partly to buy herself a few more seconds.

“You didn’t answer the question,” said Altamira, who felt it was her duty to point out any failings in others.

Mika added a drop of lavender essence to the cauldron. “I don’t have any family,” she said. Amazing that she could be so used to that fact and yet find it so hard to say out loud every single time. “I grew up in Primrose’s house, remember? My mother and grandmother were both witches, so I was pretty much on my own from the start.”

“If you never knew your family, how do you know your mum and grandma were witches?” Altamira pointed out reasonably.

“Primrose told me, and I have no reason not to believe her.”

“And the reason all our parents died when we were little is because of the spell that went wrong?”

Mika hadn’t been the one to tell the children about the fact that witches were always orphaned young. They’d already known; it was one of the few things Lillian had told them. Mika, who had always suspected that Primrose

had made up the spell-that-went-wrong story, had been astonished to discover that this mysterious spell was apparently talked of elsewhere, too.

“Like I said before, I have no idea if a spell really did go wrong,” Mika said now. “But yes, whatever the reason, that’s why our parents died.”

Rosetta, who was working at the other, bigger cauldron, spoke up. “If you’re a witch,” she said quietly, “does that mean you’re more likely to give birth to a witch?”

“Based on what we know, yes,” said Mika. “Anyone’s child can be a witch, but a witch’s child is far more likely to be one, too.”

“Wait!” Altamira cried. “Does that mean I mustn’t ever have babies? But I like babies!”

“First of all, you’re seven,” said Mika. “You’ve got a while to go before you need to worry about that. Second of all, witches do have babies. I exist, don’t I? We don’t always give birth to witches. We’re just more likely to.

Many witches choose not to have biological children because of the risk of,

you know—”

“Dying soon after?” Rosetta asked.

“I was going for a euphemism, but that works,” said Mika. She hesitated, wondering how much she could appropriately explain to them. “And yes, some witches choose to take the risk because they want children very much, but sometimes the choice is taken out of their hands altogether. Now can we get back to our potion-making?”

Terracotta had not come to this lesson. Mika knew she was practicing the simple spells she’d taught the girls so far, because Rosetta had told her so, but Terracotta had missed about a third of their lessons. She typically turned up to a session or two, became reluctantly captivated, and promptly decided not to come to the next lesson just to make sure Mika never forgot that she didn’t like her one bit. When they were thrown together outside of lessons —at mealtimes, in the firelit front room in the evenings, or when it was Mika’s turn to keep an eye on the children playing outside—Terracotta either ignored Mika entirely or, alternatively, discussed methods of murder in the most matter-of-fact voice. Mika had decided to be amused because the alternative was to be extremely, extraordinarily frustrated.

Other than this, and it was admittedly a small thing, her first week at Nowhere House had gone very well. Over the course of their lessons, she’d watched the children’s confidence and control grow; she’d taught them the properties of her eight Can’t-Do-Withouts; they’d foraged for ingredients and brewed potions together; the girls had stayed up late one night so she could show them how to harvest moonlight; and Mika was quite certain she had Nowhere House’s reserves of power well in hand.

There’d been a few other hiccups. Altamira needed constant rescuing from the well-meaning but overenthusiastic magic that tended to gather around her; Jamie seemed to be going out of his way to avoid being in the same room as Mika; and Mika had had to firmly quash Ian’s and Lucie’s hope that she would be able to teach How to Be a Woman of Colour as well as Witch 101.

The latter had taken her by surprise, and she’d had to point out the obvious: that just because she was a witch and just because she had brown skin, it did not mean she had answers to all the questions the girls would inevitably have about their own identities. But she’d said so kindly because she knew that, mistaken as Ian and Lucie had been in assuming she could be everything to everyone, all they really wanted was for the kids to have the opportunity to know others like them.

Which was far from easy, of course. Like Mika, the girls had an intersection of identities that put them smack dab in the middle of a small minority in Britain. They were witches, they weren’t white, and they’d been born far away. Much as they might all wish otherwise, there would always be people who would question whether they were British enough, normal enough, anything enough. And the one place they might have all found something close to acceptance and kinship, in a community of diverse witches, was a place that didn’t exist outside of a measly couple of hours every third month.

“Damn it, Primrose,” Mika said under her breath. Since their first lesson, this had become Altamira’s go-to response to any inconvenience, and it had only been a matter of time before Mika had found herself saying it, too.

Now Mika left Altamira to her stirring and went to check on Rosetta’s cauldron. She’d handed Rosetta her spellbook at the start of their lesson, opened it to a relatively simple energizing infusion, and had set her the task of brewing her first potion entirely by herself. Rosetta, whose skill far outstripped her confidence, had been terribly nervous at first, but the moment she’d started work, her nerves had been forgotten.

“This looks good,” Mika said, peering at the gently frothing mixture inside the cauldron. Eyeing Rosetta’s stirring hand, she added gently, “It helps to stir in the same direction the whole time. Potions like consistency, so maybe you could decide at the start whether you’re going to go clockwise or anticlockwise and then stick to it. Your wrist won’t thank you, but you’ll get a better potion out of it.”

“That makes sense,” Rosetta said, her cloud of black curls bobbing as her serious brown face brightened in a smile.

Mika’s heart constricted. Rosetta reminded her so much of her younger self. There had been a time when Mika, too, had been shy and serious. She had been desperate to please, and had tried in vain to contort herself into a shape that her nannies and tutors would deem lovable. It was obvious that Rosetta had absolutely no doubt whatsoever that she was loved, but there was still something there, something painfully familiar in this child that made Mika want to reach out and wrap her arms around her.

Rosetta was lonely. It was obvious she loved her sisters and adored her caretakers, and was for the most part an extremely happy young girl, but Mika knew loneliness. She’d seen it in the way Rosetta had latched on to her the minute she’d arrived, and in the way she’d asked wistfully if it would be such a bad thing if more people knew about witches, and in her endless questions about what life was like as an adult witch. Rosetta spent time online. She watched TV and played video games. She knew there was a whole world outside Nowhere House. Unlike Altamira, who was still young and content, and Terracotta, who wanted their small, closed circle to stay that way, Rosetta, the shyest of the three, was also the one most interested in what was outside the gates.

On impulse, Mika said, “I was thinking of going into Norwich to see this bookshop I’ve heard about. Would you like to come with me?”

Mika regretted it as soon as she said it. The bookshop was in the very heart of Norwich, a good forty-five minutes away. It was miles outside Lillian’s wards. And Norwich was a small city, but it was still a city and cities were full of people. She had no business inviting Rosetta to leave Nowhere House for the first time in years, let alone to go into a city almost an hour away, and she certainly had no business getting her hopes up before checking with one of the other adults.

Rosetta’s eyes widened. “Can I? Am I allowed?”

“We can ask, can’t we?” said Mika. “I reckon Ian would go for it, especially if he gets to come along! And, you know, part of the reason I’m here is to help the three of you open up your world a little, so this seems like a good way to give it a go.”

“Okay,” said Rosetta. Her excitement was tentative, but it was there.

There was no way Mika was going to dash her hopes now. She would get Rosetta to that bookshop if it killed her.

“No.”

Everyone looked at Jamie, unsurprised. Well, they shouldn’t be surprised. No one who knew him could possibly have expected him to agree to this particular piece of reckless, irresponsible lunacy.

“You’ll have to forgive him,” Ian said to Mika. “Jamie doesn’t mean to be rude, but he can’t help picturing the apocalypse round every corner.”

“I do mean to be rude,” Jamie snapped. “I always mean to be rude when someone suggests putting one of those kids in a stressful, unprecedented situation and expecting fuck all to go wrong. It’s not safe to take them past the wards.”

“It wasn’t safe,” Mika countered. “There’s still a risk, I admit that, but it’s a much, much smaller risk now that I’m here. I can keep a lid on the magic. That’s my job.”

“What if you can’t? Lillian never even tried.”

“Lillian never tried because she was never here,” Ken said mildly.

Jamie scowled at him. Had they all lost their minds?

“Jamie—”

“Let’s say, hypothetically, that Mika can’t keep the magic in check,”

Jamie said flatly. “Let’s say the worst happens. Then what? Are we supposed to assume Mika will be able to protect Rosetta from the pitchforks and police?”

“You would have been a natural on the stage, dear,” said Ian, patting him affectionately on the arm. “In the real world, however—”

To Jamie’s surprise, it was Mika who interrupted. “Jamie’s not wrong. I don’t know about pitchforks, but it’s always possible that someone will call the police. But,” she went on, and the tension in his shoulders ratcheted right back up, “in my experience, most people who witness an unintended burst of magic tend to think it’s a cool trick. They ooh and ahh a bit and then move on.”

Okay, that was a good point. He tried not to scowl. “What if someone records it on their phone?”

“A video is even easier to dismiss as fake,” said Mika. “And all of this assumes something will go wrong, which is very unlikely.”

“It’s a risk—”

“You asked me to come here to help prepare the girls for the world outside Nowhere House,” Mika reminded him.

“I didn’t ask you to come here,” Jamie reminded her.

Ian, most bafflingly, had stopped injecting himself into the argument and now had his chin propped in his hand, watching them with a dreamy smile on his face. Jamie gave him a narrow look, decidedly mistrustful.

So far, as was typical, Ken and Lucie hadn’t said anything, but now Lucie offered, “I’ve no doubt I’ll spend the whole time you’re gone counting the seconds until Rosetta’s back safe and sound under this roof again, but I also have no doubt that this very short, ordinary trip will make that child very, very happy. And Mika’s right about the fact that we have to

do this sooner or later, or what’s the point in doing any of this? So if we’re putting this to a vote, I vote yes.”

Jamie was furious, both with Mika for suggesting this and with himself for standing in the way of something he knew would make Rosetta happy.

“I vote no,” he said brusquely. “It’s too soon.”

“I vote yes, obviously,” said Ian.

Everyone looked at Ken. “I think it’s an excellent idea, Mika,” he said gently. “I know you know what you’re doing, and Rosetta will love it, but as a first step, it feels too big. It would be safer to take Rosetta ten minutes down the coast for fish and chips.”

Mika nodded like she understood. “We could do that instead. I don’t mind where we go. I just thought she’d like the bookshop.”

“Ken’s always so sensible,” Ian said fondly.

“Seriously?” Jamie demanded. “Ken’s sensible, but I get accused of picturing the apocalypse?”

Ian beamed at him. “I have to keep Ken happy. For sexual reasons.”

“Ian,” Jamie groaned. “No one wants to picture their great-grandparents

having sex.”

“Of all the nerve! I’m not that old!”

When the laughter subsided, Jamie rather reluctantly steered them back to the problem at hand. “So that was two votes no and two votes yes. And with my tiebreaker, that—”

“Your tiebreaker is a pain in my arse,” said Ian sulkily. “Mika, my dear, couldn’t you have had a little forethought and suggested this next week, at which point you would have been out of your two-week trial period and we could have given you a vote?”

“I’m getting a vote next week?” Mika looked astonished.

“Of course,” Ken replied. “You’ll be well and truly one of us then.”

Mika continued to look stunned, like it had never occurred to her that she might be considered part of something, and Jamie found he violently hated it. He was livid that she was so surprised by such a simple gesture.

Hadn’t she ever been treated as anything but an outsider?

“So shall we suggest Ken’s fish and chips idea to Rosetta?” Lucie asked.

“No,” Jamie said abruptly, only too conscious of the fact that he’d lost his fucking mind. “Do the bookshop thing.”

Four astounded faces swung round to him.

“Excuse me?” Ian spluttered.

“I’m not repeating myself, Ian.”

“Well,” said Lucie. Her voice wobbled with laughter. “Well.”

God, they were all the worst.

“You could come, too,” Mika said to him, her brown eyes so bright they reminded him of looking directly into the sun. “To the bookshop. If it’ll

make you feel better about it.”

That was not what he’d had in mind.

He looked away. “Okay.”