Page 3 of Never Nix Up

That makes Hazel sit up straight, and her blue eyes seek mine out anxiously. “Oh no! Nothing like that at all. Kit’s lovely, she’s just not a fan of a…” Her voice trails off and I’m not sure where that sentence was going. “If anything, it’s my fault.”

“Your fault?”

She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, before settling on a nondescript “It’s complicated.”

3

Hazel

Ican tell that Finn isn’t really buying the “It’s complicated” line as she goes back to work, and I don’t exactly blame her. But the truth is that I don’t know how to talk to her about it without revealing the existence of the nixes in Wyrten Bridge, and that really isn’t the done thing. The only reason Violet knows is because Chlo got caught up with Trisantona and…

…and that was my fault too.

Not actively; I wasn’t trying to draw the Goddess’s attention to Chlo and Vi, but I talked too much. I’m so quiet most of the time, that when I talk to Trisantona, telling her about my daily life, about the life in the village on her river, I sometimes forget who she is. What she is.

She used one of my paintings to place a compulsion on Chlo and that resulted in… well, it resulted in Chlo and Violet having sex in the river far more often than my own magic is comfortable with. The pagan mortal turned witch has a mini shrine to Trisantona in her shop, and Chlo is behaving less and less like a river nix every day.

That’s not true. Or really fair. Chlo’s family are different from mine. They seem kind and loving. They don’t care that her magic likes plants more than it likes water, and they don’t even seem to mind that she’s sleeping with a mortal. And they’ve never been involved in any of the factions of the community who did the drowning, or the covering up.

That’s why Kit and I are awkward at the moment. She didn’t realise how closely I’ve been working with Trisantona, and Kit and magic don’t mix. I’ve never seen her do a spell, not even when we were teenagers. Not even before Johnny’s death.

And since…

I look over at Finn, and realise that perhaps things getting a little complicated wouldn’t be all bad. Three of us Riverside Shops owners know about the nixes. Maybe it should be four.

I drop my lunch and the Spring Equinox goodies in my studio before I make my way up to the bridge. It’s 7am, early enough that only commuters are up and about—they’ll be getting on the bus in a minute; the school bus isn’t due for another hour, and everyone else is still asleep.

The river, for some glorious moments, feels like it’s mine alone. I slip off my shoes and run down to the riverbank, letting my toes dip into the water. It’s freezing, the way only a river can be in March, and as soon as I stand in its shallows I feel my shadows receding.

For here, standing in the river—inmyriver—I am river nix and river goddess’s acolyte and simply myself, all at once.

It’s a wellspring, refilling my energy, my magic, my essence, and within two minutes I’m feeling completely refreshed.

Then the sun moves out from behind a cloud, and the shadow of the old abandoned church falls across me. It’s a weird building. No one even remembers a time when it was in use, but it’s been there as long as anyone can recall. And for the last five years it’s been home to Trisantona. A church turned temple for a goddess who needed one.

Each morning, after breakfast in Violet’s bakery, I make my way there, and paint for her. Today though? Today I don’t want to. I don’t want my purpose to be someone else’s purpose, and no matter how much I fear what my parents would do if I were out from under the Goddess’s protections, it chafes.

The large oak door to the church is heavy today, as if the temple itself knows that I want out.

“Hazel.” I sense Trisantona move towards me as I enter. I can’t look at her directly, not this morning, so soon after her nightmare. “What do you work on today?”

The columns in the church are wound about with starwort, but in between the plants there are murals. My murals. Made from paint magicked from the earth, goodness knows how. Each morning, my palette is ready and waiting, and Trisantona points me towards a new patch of stone.

So I don’t know why she’s asking me what I’m working on. She decides what I’m working on, as she does every day.

“Hazel?”

I can feel the Goddess move until she is beside me, ever-flowing. Her frame is kind of… ineffable. All-encompassing. She’s river wrapped in a human form, and when she moves it’s as if the river itself is moving. Sometimes I wonder what she must have been like behind the Veil, cut off from this mortal world, and from her river.

“Hazel!” Her voice is commanding this time, and I feel a touch of compulsion colouring her voice. Shaking my head I blink, and then slowly look towards her.

“My Goddess.”

“Are you unwell? It should be very unfortunate if you were to die. You’re an excellent acolyte.”

From anyone else, that might sound like a threat, but not from her. It’s the thing that most amuses me about working for her; her complete incomprehension of what it is to be mortal. She genuinely would see my death as unfortunate, which works for me—I’d rather she want me alive—but at the same time, she doesn’t really understand that such musings might be a little disconcerting.

“I’m not unwell. I’m just tired. Your dreams have been—” I pause and weigh my options “—heavy, of late.”

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