Page 10 of Best Hex Ever
Dina hadn’t been one of those girls, not at first. She’d played it cool, staring at the back of his head in maths class and admiring his tanned forearms in PE. But then he asked to borrow a fountain pen and she lost all her remaining chill, melting into a spluttering, bumbling mess.
That night, Dina did something she really shouldn’t have. She waited until her parents were asleep, and snuck into the living room where her mother kept her spell books. She knew she couldn’t cast a love spell—all the books on witchcraft she’d read made it quite clear that that was impossible. But what about a fate spell? A spell to draw herself and Luke together, until eventually he wouldhaveto fall in love with her. Teenage Dina was too naïve for her own good.
The spell had a lot of components. A red rose petal harvested during a full moon; a white candle, left outside all day to soak up the sunlight; a piece of paper with Luke’s name on it; and finally a spoonful of honey, poured onto the candle, to bind him to her. It would take time to prepare, and thankfully the summer holidays were just around the corner.
Dina spent most of her holiday preparing for the spell in secret. When the first week of the new school year came around, she was ready. Except, when she saw Luke again, he’d grown some peach fuzz on his upper lip and wouldn’t stop talking about his video-game kill ratio. Whatever ounce of infatuation she’d had for him over the summer had dissipated almost immediately.
Dina remembered hiding away the candle and the rose petal in her drawer, and not thinking of them again until she met Rory.
If Luke had been a teenage infatuation, Rory was the first reallove of Dina’s life, and had inspired the realization that Dina also desired women.
Dina had met Rory when they were both nineteen, fresh out of sixth form and straight into bakery school. Dina knew she wanted to open a café, and although she was already a talented baker, even without the assistance of her magic, she was sure there was so much more she had to learn. Rory wanted to be a pastry chef and had dreams of moving to Paris. She had a short black bob that curled a little at the ends, and eyes so green they looked like moss after the first spring rain. Dina suspected that there was a witch in Rory’s family line, as now and again a spurt of magic would flash around her, before fizzing into nothing.
Dina remembered the tanned skin of Rory’s forearms as she kneaded dough beside her in the student kitchen, the way desire had bubbled up within her. They’d started dating, and Dina had fallen head over heels for Rory within two weeks. She was young, she had no guards up, no expectations. She only knew that she loved Rory and wanted to be with her. She was a little foolish.
As can often happen in relationships between two women, things got serious fast. Dina would spend multiple nights a week at Rory’s flat, baking and fucking until sunrise.
Rory was the first person outside of her family and close friends that Dina told about her magic. One evening they were alone in the library, reading about the colonial history of chocolate, when Dina used her magic to heat up their paper cups of cold tea. The more she showed Rory her magic, the more Dina mistook the expression on her girlfriend’s face as delighted awe—when, in fact, it was shock.
When Dina scored highly on her tarte tatin recipe, Rory sneered that she’d only got that score because she’d cheated with magic. In the weeks that followed, Rory would blame Dinafor every low score she received, every time something went wrong with a recipe.
She should have realized what was happening. Her witchy instinct had sent her flickers of warning that telling Rory about her magic wasn’t a good idea, but she’d resolutely ignored them. She should have walked away then with a bruised heart, and not waited around for a broken one.
They agreed to take a break over the Christmas holidays, to see if they could salvage their relationship in the new year. Dina was hopeful—they still spoke every day. Dina had gone home to her parents, Rory to her family in Dorset.
She’d even revealed to her parents that she was dating someone named Rory.
“Oh, I knew it! You’re glowing, just look at you,” her mother had said, pinching Dina’s cheeks. “It’s good to have a man in your life, habiba. I like the sound of this one—Rory. A good name.”
Dina was ready to blurt out that she was in fact dating a woman when her mother said, “Maybe one day I can be a grandmother.” She said it with such hope in her eyes, and Dina was struck by the realization that if she came out to her parents now, she’d be crushing that hope. So she kept her silence. Her mother wasn’t exactly traditional, she was a witch after all, but she had been raised in Morocco in the sixties, not a place with a booming queer community. A comment here and there from her mum had suggested to Dina that she was very happy forotherpeople to be queer, just not her daughter.
As that holiday had worn on, the stream of text messages from Rory had slowed to a trickle, until one night Dina woke up to a text that said:I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.
Dina couldn’t bear it. She needed Rory. A memory from years before resurfaced, and she dug through her childhooddrawers to find it. The rose petal, now dried between the pages of a book, the candle charged by moonlight. The scrap of paper.
Sitting on her bedroom floor, Dina scribbled Rory’s name on the paper, lit the candle, and performed the spell. Nothing happened immediately, though Dina felt the spell take effect. It was as if she was suddenly able to sense Rory at the periphery of her mind, an invisible string connecting them. The fate spell had worked. She saw a text on her phone from Rory:I’m on my way, baby, I’ve missed you. It’ll take me a couple of hours in the car.
An hour later, Dina felt something strange down that string, and her heart jumped to her throat, as if she were suddenly inside a falling elevator.
A call came in a moment later, from Rory’s phone.
“Is this Dina?” a man’s voice on the other end said.
“Yes, is everything all right? Where’s Rory?”
“Rory’s okay, but she’s had a bit of an accident on the motorway. We’re taking her to hospital now.”
“Oh god. Fuck. Can I talk to her?”
“I’m sorry, but she’s unconscious at the moment.” The paramedic gave Dina the details of the hospital they were taking Rory to, and she ran to her car immediately. She wouldn’t remember much of the drive or arriving at the hospital—it was one big stressful blur. All she could think was that she could no longer feel the tether between herself and Rory—how much danger was Roryin?
It was the early hours of the morning when Dina was finally allowed to see Rory. She looked so small in that bed, the clinical lights making her skin even paler than usual. One side of her face was bruised, her lip scratched. The doctors explained that Rory had been speeding down the motorway and the car had slipped on ice.She was speeding to reach me fasterwas all Dina could think, guilt seeping through her. What had she done?
Dina sat by Rory’s bedside and cast a small healing charm on her. It was the least she could do. When Rory awoke, she didn’t smile at Dina. She just stared at her with bitter accusation in her eyes.
“You did something to me, didn’t you?” she said. “With your magic.”
Dina wanted to denyit.
