The Scars We Bear
Chapter 13: Sir Walter's Storm
If there was one thing Eva disliked more than anything else about the start of the new school year, it was Sir Walter's wet week. It had been raining all week and she was quite certain it was worse than it had been last year. The fifth years, who were on the top floor in the corridor next to the teachers' wing, had started complaining that the roof was leaking and, according to Mrs. Tapioca, the kitchens were sufficiently flooded. In the potions lab, the mini-cauldrons were being used to catch drips and the courtyard had effectively become one giant puddle.
It was that giant puddle that Eva, Leah and the rest of the now second years had to trudge through to get from the gates to the doors and safely into the castle. It was safe to say that none of them were too impressed as they stood, soaked through and freezing cold, in the entrance hall after being forced to go on a cross-country run with Miss Drill for PE. Nobody moved, not fancying the detention that would likely occur if Miss Hardbroom caught them tracking muddy water all the way up to their rooms.
Eva raised her hands and, with a flick of her wrists, cast a simple drying spell over herself. Leah followed suit, and soon everyone was casting drying spells on each other. This was all well and good until someone shrieked in alarm and they realized they were standing in a good six inches of water.
"Now look what you've done!" Mariam Hallow turned to the twins. "You've triggered the foster's effect!"
"Now look what you've done, you foolish girl!" Grandmother snarled.
Eva stifled a cry as the older woman backhanded her hard across the face.
"Us!" Eva exclaimed, crossing her arms. "It was you lot who started repeating the spell. You should have known better!"
They had learnt all about the foster's effect from Miss Cackle in spells class and Eva and Leah made careful note of it. The foster's effect didn't exist in Wonderland after all.
"Yes, but it was you who came up with the brilliant idea to start casting drying spells in the first place!" Penelope argued.
The second years all started arguing with each other after that and Miss Drill was at a loss as to what to do about the fact that the entrance hall had been reduced to a shallow lake. Luckily, Miss Hardbroom appeared on the landing at the top of the stairs, having heard the commotion and come to investigate.
"What on earth is going on down there?!" She shouted above the din.
All the girls fell silent at the familiar sound of their form mistress' less than pleased tones. They all moved, sloshing through the water, to stand to attention.
"Well?" Miss Hardbroom demanded. "I am waiting."
Mariam pointed at Eva and Leah, who sighed inwardly. "It was them Miss. They triggered the foster's effect."
The potions mistress raised an eyebrow at the two sisters, clearly waiting for an explanation.
"We cast drying spells on ourselves, Miss. Then everybody else started repeating the same spell and caused this." Eva explained, motioning to the water covering the floor.
Miss Hardbroom sighed. She raised her spell-casting fingers and muttered a spell that made the water vanish. "I want 300 lines from each and every one of you: I must not be foolish with my magic. On my desk by tonight. Is that clear, year two?"
"Yes Miss Hardbroom." They all chorused as one, before heading up to their rooms to change.
o0o
Undisclosed location - many years ago
It was dark. The young woman could scarcely see where she was going, blinded by the pounding rain and endless night as she was. The wind, tornado strong and unyielding in it's fury, threatened to throw her off her broom into the blackness below. Thunder crashed, like something breaking in the giant's kingdom above and when the lightning followed suit, tearing open the sky with it's blinding, momentary light, it revealed the endless trees of the deep forest below.
She pushed on. There was no time to stop, no time to rest. The storm was the perfect cover for a runaway witch and she intended to make good use of it. There was very little chance of her tutor being able to track her in this and if she could make it through alive, she'd finally be free.
She knew she was far from the city, from her prison. She'd traveled pretty far north, but she still feared it wasn't far enough. The dragon would look, after all. She always looked. She'd contemplated leaving the country altogether, but she didn't know where else to go. North was the best option she could come up with. It would be easy enough to find some time-forgotten village to hide in.
As another flash of lightning lit the world, something in a clearing below caught her eye. She squinted through the ran as the light faded, certain she'd seen a building down there. All of a sudden, a strong gust of wind sent her rolling and she clung to her broom for her life. She felt herself falling, her broom losing altitude as it was battered by the storm. By some miracle, she managed to avoid the trees but failed to steady her broom, which seemed intent on failing her. The last thing she remembered seeing was the outline of a house appear through the rain.
The next morning dawned grey and wet, though the storm had finally come to an end. A middle aged woman made her way down a dirt path towards her small tearoom, observing the damage done by the storm as she went. She dearly hoped her café hadn't been damaged too.
When she entered the clearing, she gave the building a careful once over. It looked mostly unharmed. The same, however, could not be said for the still form lying in the grass nearby. A black shape, nondescript but stark against the vibrant green grass, lay unmoving just off the path. The woman was so focused on it that she nearly tripped over the broomstick lying haphazardly in her way. She looked from the broom to the shape on the ground, eyes going hide with realization.
A witch.
She must have gotten caught in the storm last night. The woman thought as she hurried to the fallen witch's side. She rolled her over onto her back and brushed long, wet black hair away from her face. She was young, barely twenty and near skeletal. She was breathing - there was a steady rise and fall of her chest, but she was ice cold and soaking wet.
The woman pulled out a handkerchief and wiped gently at the mud on the witch's face until she was some semblance of clean. She tried to wake her up, but to no avail. There were no signs of injury aside from some slight bruising and scratches on the young woman's face, but she wondered, worriedly what she was hiding beneath the high collar and long sleeves of her thick black dress.
She straightened up and brushed off her knees, before hurrying off towards the front door of her establishment. Not for the first time, Mrs. Gloria Cosy was glad to be friends with a witch.
Several minutes later, Mrs. Cosy returned with the reassurance that help was on its way. When she knelt down next to the witch, she found the younger woman was stirring slightly.
"Oh, you're waking up. Can you open your eyes, dear? You're safe." She spoke, hoping to help the witch back to the land of the living.
She groaned, lips twitching slightly and eyelids fluttering. She shifted and her eyes cracked open, immediately blinking in the bright daylight.
"There now." Mrs. Cozy said as she saw almond shaped brown eyes fix on her. "Are you hurt? Oh dear." She worried. "Were you flying in that storm last night? Now, I'm not a witch myself, but that seems like an awfully dangerous thing to do. You could have been killed!"
She moved to help the witch as she pulled herself up, but the young woman jerked away from her touch. "I'm fine. Please, don't touch me." There was fear in her eyes, but it was gone as soon as it had appeared.
"I'm sorry, dear. I didn't mean to frighten you." Mrs. Cosy reassured. "Are you sure you're not hurt, dear?"
The witch didn't reply as she looked around at their surroundings. "Where am I? Who are you?"
"I'm Gloria Cosy. Now, you're rather in the middle of nowhere up here. Where are you headed?" Mrs. Cosy frowned.
"I don't know."
The older woman regarded her curiously. "Well. I've just called a friend of mine. She's a witch, you know. The head of a witch school not far from here. She'll help you, don't worry."
The witch didn't answer. She looked up when she saw a figure on a broomstick in the distance. Unbidden, she started to tremble, certain she'd already been found. She relaxed slightly when the other witch drew nearer and she saw it was not her tutor.
"Oh dear." She said when she landed. She helped the other two up and gave the younger witch an appraisal. "What's your name, dear? I'm Amelia. Amelia Cackle.
The young woman looked at her apprehensively. "Constance Hardbroom."
o0o
Present day
The last day of Sir Walter's wet week ended with a bang. The night was dark, a void where the world once stood, and a thick layer of clouds blotted out the moon and hid the stars from view. Hidden in the endless blackness, the trees protested against gale force winds that forced them to bend and break. The same winds whipped around the castle, chilling the already cold corridors and tearing tiles from the aging roof. Rain pelted the sodden earth and flooded the cobbled courtyard. Thunder crashed overhead, shaking the ancient castle to its core, before lightning flashed, ripping open the sky like the claws of a great beast slicing the very fabric of reality.
Leah Mills stirred in her fitful sleep, snuggling deeper under her thin blanket in an effort to hide from the cold that seeped in under the door and between the shutters. She let out a strangled sound that soon turned into a scream masked by the raging storm.
Leah screamed as the red hot blade pressed into her delicate, pale skin. She couldn't stop the tears that spilled down her cheeks at the agony of the heated metal. She hadn't meant to cause a storm. It had just happened, a reaction between her magic and her emotions. Eva always said it was best to mask your fear with anger, but Leah always masked her anger with fear. She didn't show anger, because she knew angry little girls only made Grandmother angry. Leah didn't like it at all when Grandmother was angry.
"Now fix it!" Grandmother barked, as she shoved Leah out onto the balcony, with such force that the tiny girl nearly flew over the railing. It wasn't supposed to storm in Wonderland.
Leah fell to her knees, trembling violently as she wrapped her small hands around the bars of the railing. She closed her eyes against the burn of the fresh cut on her arm, well aware of the blood running from it in scarlet rivers, mixing with the falling rain. Leah focused, reining in that deep set fury, born from the inability to stop her own suffering, and dragging it down into the catacombs of her mind, like a sailor being sucked under the raging seas by the hideous creatures beneath, and locking it away, never to be seen again.
The rain stopped, the thunder ceased and the trees stood still. The sky cleared, allowing a timid sun to peak from behind the breaking clouds.
The storm was over.
Leah may not have visibly shown her anger, but she'd let it slip, escape from its confines to feed and gain control of her magic. She vowed never to let that happen again and from that moment on, she held both her emotions and her magic with an iron fisted control unheard of in a child so young.
Leah opened her eyes cautiously and gazed upwards at the calm sky. She'd done it, she'd stopped the storm.
"Good girl." Grandmother praised, though her voice was bittersweet. "You've finally done something right. Now get out of my sight!" She snapped.
She grabbed Leah by the arm, the same one she'd cut earlier, which caused the small girl to scream in pain before being flung across the room towards the doorway.
Constance had been roaming the halls, checking up on the girls, who all seemed a bit restless on that particular stormy night. She would never admit it, but checking on her young charges in the dead of night to ensure they were as they should have been always helped to ease her mind when she couldn't sleep.
Her feet landed on the last step and she turned to look down the darkened second year corridor. All was quiet. She stood there for a moment, watching the lightning flash through the window at the end of the hall. It was when the flashing ceased briefly to make way for another rumble of thunder that she heard a scream, masked by the storm, that cut off abruptly.
She knew exactly where it must have come from. Drawing her eyes away from the window, she looked to the door in question in time to see flickering candle light come to life and trickle out from underneath. Constance moved quietly, so as not to disturb the rest of the girls and knocked lightly on the door before pushing it open slightly.
Leah was sitting up in her bed, clutching a lit candle in her hands. Her breathing was fast and her eyes were wide with fear. Eva was still asleep in her own bed, clearly having not been awoken by her sister's scream. Leah's eyes snapped up when the door opened and she shrunk back a bit. "Was that you who screamed, Leah?" Miss Hardbroom asked, keeping her voice low.
The small girl stared back with wide blue eyes. "I-I'm sorry, Miss, I didn't m-mean to."
"I know you didn't, Leah." She came across the room and sat on the edge of the bed. "Was it a nightmare?"
Leah looked away, toying with a loose thread on her blanket. She hated admitting to her shortcomings.
Constance sighed and reached out to direct the girl's face back towards her with careful fingers. "You have nothing to be ashamed of. It's not your fault." She said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle, kind in a way she only ever saved for the twins.
Leah flinched at another crash of thunder and scooted closer to the teacher. "Does it ever get better, Miss? Will we ever stop being afraid?"
Constance sighed and her guarded heart broke. The girl sounded so small and vulnerable in that moment. All she wanted was to make them feel safe, to see that they didn't have to be afraid anymore, but she knew, better than anyone, that deep set fear never faded. "One day it will get easier, I promise. I know from experience that your fear of your. . .abuser will not go away, but I will do everything in my power to keep you, and your sister, safe. I won't ever let her hurt you again."
Leah knew those words to be true. She was proud of herself for learning to trust her form mistress. "I know you won't Miss." Leah said and, albeit tentatively, wrapped her arms around the woman's waist.
Constance stiffened, taken by surprise and unsure of how to react. Normally, she would have scolded any pupil who dared to do such a thing as hug her, but Leah was different. Carefully, she wrapped her own arms around the small girl and, a little awkwardly, held her close. It was then that she realized she wanted nothing more than to make her feel safe. She rubbed soft circles on her back as Leah leaned her head on her shoulder.
"You're safe. You'll always be safe with me."
Leah couldn't help it when she let her eyes slide shut. She had never felt so safe and warm in her life. She thought that if Miss Hardbroom was the closest thing she could have to a mother, she'd be okay with that.
Constance lost track of how long they stayed like that before she realized Leah had fallen back asleep and she smiled softly as she gently stroked a black curl away from the girl's face.
In a dark corner of the small room, the translucent outline of a young man smiled. His girls were safe at last, free to try and heal. He need not worry any longer, for he knew that, although she was not their mother and although she may wear a frosty mask, she did love them and he knew she would protect them and care for them.