Page 12 of Muddled Magic

“For the longest time, your brother Marten wanted to become a robed elder. It’s a dream he chased every day since he fixed his mind on it. This was years ago, Meadow, not just last week. He focused on strengthening the weaker aspects of his magic, of learning things he did not necessarily enjoy but knew would make him an asset.”

“But I’m stronger than him, maybe not physically, but in every way that matters.”

“But do you want to be a robed elder?”

“Of course,” I sputtered. “What else is there?”

She chuckled softly. “Many things, actually.”

Pausing, she took another sip of her tea. I realized I hadn’t touched a drop of mine and gulped it down. It was supposed to calm the nerves, and mine were like leaves caught in a storm.

“You believe becoming a robed elder is the natural evolution of your life,” she continued. “That’s understandable, but that is not what it means to be a robed elder. To be a member of the Circle of Nine is to sacrifice your wants and needs for the good of the coven and the family. At present, you view it as a step to more power. Which isn’t to say you’re vain and power-hungry—I know you’re not, Meadow. And because of the sacrifice required, we usually do not induct anyone so young. Yet, the power balance must be maintained. Hence, Marten.”

“You talk about sacrifice, about giving up your wants and needs for the good of the family, and you pick him?” I pointed to the closed office door and to my brother on the opposite side of it in the hall. “He’s the most self-centered, arrogant, horrible member of this family!”

Grandmother did not offer her opinion on the matter, simply fixed me with one of her unreadable stares.

“You need to ask yourself what you really want,” she finally said. “The others certainly have. They recognize their talents and desires and pursue them to make the family strong. But you… you’ve just gone day by day without any thought to the future, naïvely thinking that the stars will align just for you and drop whatever opportunity you wish in your path. Because you deserve it simply because you are the most powerful witch of your generation.”

This meeting was not going at all as I’d planned. Me, naïve? She made me sound like I was no better than a butterfly flitting from flower to flower. Thistle thorns, she’d basically called me thoughtless. Directionless. Self-entitled, even. Anger mixed with shame and embarrassment, and my wounded pride, and I found myself digging my nails into the armrests.

“I don’t say these things to hurt you, Meadow, but to bring awareness. What do I always say to you?”

Not looking at her, I spat out the word, “Focus.”

“On your lessons, on your magic, on your life.” She finished her tea and stood, smoothing out her black robes, which my unscheduled visit had prevented her from changing out of. “Marten will retain his spot as a robed elder. And perhaps, when it is time for another elder to retire, you will join him.”

But I’d have to suffer him in the meantime. His jeers, his smug smirks, lording my failure over me. And then, if I was lucky enough to be chosen next, I’d have to endure his “Nice of you to join the party” and other such inflammatory remarks. It was unbearable, but not more than what had just happened in this office.

I felt duped, like the rug of my life had been yanked out from under my feet. All those years of studying, of practicing, of learning everything I could, of pleasing everyone else—my worth was in that time. And that time wasn’t being rewarded. Even acknowledged.

“You know what I want?” I shouted, erupting from my chair as tears sprang to my eyes. “I want to go into that forest. To explore. To see the wild places beyond these walls.”

Grandmother wasn’t a tall woman, but I swore she grew another twelve inches, her presence filling the entire room. The yellow flames in the hearth guttered, the office darkening despite the sunlight streaming in from the wide windows. Her ivy-green eyes glowed with power. “I forbid it.”

“So that’s what happens when someone tells you want they want that you don’t agree with? You simply forbid it? Maybe I’m the compliant pushover Boar says I am because you made me that way! Always seeking your approval, always trying to live up to the potential you say I have but never seeing it come to fruition. Terrified of rejection?”

The angry tears were coming in full force now, but my voice remained strong. “I’ve had a fascination with that forest since I can remember. And why not? I’m a green witch, after all! And it’s not a gap year in Europe like Otter or finding a spouse like Boar or running off to Ireland to explore the fairy mounds like Great-Uncle Hare did, it’s just fulfilling a thirst of discovery that you cultivated in me!”

“Meadow—”

“Who knows?” I barked a laugh. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Maybe I’ll even find a shifter in those woods and pull a Lilac and have a little tryst out in a sunlit glen!”

“ENOUGH!”

The tea set shattered, and the flames in the hearth ballooned in a burst of heat and light. Anyone else would’ve toppled over from the power of her voice, but I was my grandmother’s prodigy, and I only slid across the rug, leaning into it like I would a headwind.

I was panting from the exertion of keeping upright, but when the darkness of the room faded and my grandmother seemingly returned to her normal height, she was the picture of cool detachment.

“Get out,” she ordered.

Finding the door unlocked, I wrenched it open, met Marten’s fearful, wide-eyed gaze, and stormed out of the office.

CHAPTER SIX

I finished picking tomatoes with Aunt Hyacinth, weeding eight rows simultaneously in a frightening but controlled burst of magic, but Aunt Peony wanted nothing to do with me when it was time to make the sauce. “If you’re not cooking with love,” she said, “then you’re not cooking at all. Shoo.”

So I slapped together a sandwich and took my late lunch on the go to find Otter. My carefree cousin and his music were guaranteed mood-boosters, not to mention the antics of the kittens, and I really needed a boost. I also wanted to be alone, which was next to impossible with a family as big as mine. Even in the furthest reaches of the manor, someone was bound to find you. If not a family member, then one of the cats we kept to keep the vermin down, or a chicken or a goose who’d lost its way and needed returning to the flock. In short, an interaction or a responsibility would always find you.

---