30Chief Witch
Walter was sick of politics, which was rather unfortunate as this was his current responsibility in Crenshaw.The peril of life in a magical world, he supposed.
Childhood stories of magic always seemed so glamorous… or exciting, at the least. Being snatched by faeries. Outwitting trolls. Facing dragons to steal an artifact from their hoard. Instead, it was gossip and dire proclamations, ego and sensitive feelings.
I’m tired of being an adult,Walter thought for the 412th time. He didn’t want to be involved in potential mutiny. He didn’t want to be privy to all of his friends’ and neighbors’ secrets. And he certainly didn’t want to be the one to try to stop them from making stupid choices.
Like creating a thrice-damned serpent in the woods.
These days, of course, all clandestine meetings that might get dangerous involved either Sondre or Prospero, so the alternative to meeting at the Congress building—and Walter shuddered at the thought before he even had it—was allowing them into his home. He’d rather kiss an angry bull than let those two into his haven. The Congress building also increased Walter’s innate magic, a benefit to being the current chief witch.
“Perish the thought of letting them both in here,” he muttered, as that particular thought continued to worm around his brain. His home might not be fancy, but it was exactly the way he wanted it to be.
Unlike some of the residents, Walter’s home was an intentionally modest place staffed with three well-paid hobs. He had a kitchen, a water closet for the necessary deeds, a bedchamber with both a bed and an armoire, and a sitting room with a peat-burning fireplace. It was positively mundane. Gloriously so.
His bedroom window was charmed with images of angry waves and green hills, but that was his one and only concession to admitting he lived in a land of magic.
After all this time, he loved being in Crenshaw, but he remembered his early years of rage. He remembered wanting to burn it all down and go home. In fact, he remembered hating every witch he met because he couldn’t go home—so he understood the witches like the current headmaster. Sondre was piss and vinegar, fists and fucking. He was like a much, much younger Walter, which meant dealing with him was emotionally exhausting.
We are irritated by our own flaws in other people.
Grumbling about having to go anywhere at all, Walter hauled himself toward the front door and snagged one of the dozen scarves hanging by the door. This one was a rich purple, like the darkest part of an iris petal, and several spring greens. It was pointedlynotin a plaid pattern.
Walter draped it around his neck, and then he pulled on a more or less matching cap. Wearing it made his hobs happy, and it kept his balding head warm. Sure there was magic for such things, but nothing beat a good woolen cap.
Once of his hobs, Grish, appeared and held out a mug and a chunk of bread coated in honey and a wee bit of butter. Butter was a rarity what with giving up their limited space in Crenshaw for cows, but every so often, Lady Prospero would hand him a container of the stuff. Blackmail was beneath her, but bribery? That was her domain. She bought his patience and understanding with butter—and who could blame him?
“Hidden under the honey, boss,” Grish said with a grin. “Since you’re walking and eating.”
Walter nodded as he accepted his breakfast. “Good man, Grish. Good man.”
His hobs were akin to family. He had no wife. No kids. No siblings. No parents. Those people had all been left behind a couple hundred years ago when he’d been swept from the slaughter on the field and into Crenshaw. When magic woke, it was in a person, not a family, so witches arrived with no ties. No one here had non-magical family members. And since they lived so cursedly long, no one had babies anymore. There simply weren’t resources to support little ones.
Somewhere in a box was a bloodstained bit of plaid he’d worn when he’d arrived here. Walt had left the blood in the weave. The fight had been lost, and even if it hadn’t, Walter thought wearing a plaid without a clan at his side felt like a never-healing wound.
This was his home now, and he understand the whys and ways of it. That didn’t mean he liked all the rules. Sometimes, all it took was “it’s always been that way” for many people to accept things, but the elders remembered the changes. They were sentenced to mind the law because they understood, remembered, and could explain it.
As he pulled the door closed behind him, Walt walked into the heart of Crenshaw in search of the witch who had summoned him.
C.W.
THE SNAKE STILL STANDS.SHE MADE CHAINS, TOO.THIS IS A NEW MAGIC.WE NEED TO CALL THECONGRESS.
PROSPERO
Crenshaw felt more like home than he ever thought it would. He stepped to the right, knowing from hundreds of walks that the third stone from the wall was loose. The edges of this world were deteriorating. There was a cracked window in more than one house. The little detailsweren’t getting attention because the world seemed to be fracturing. It hadn’t been like that when he first arrived.
A metal-framed window opened from the bakery at the corner.
“Bit of a chill today,” Colleen said in her way of greeting. That one was the queen of the obvious. Heart as big as a dinner plate, but not a gifted conversationalist at the best of times.
“Thankful for hobs who knit!” Walt said cheerily, flinging the edge of his garish scarf over his shoulder. It made his beard puff up as the bottom bits were now under the scarf.
Colleen laughed. She had returned with the supplies Mae had needed for the people with lung complications. Walt considered stopping by to get one of the “puffers” as people had taken to calling the containers of medicine to inhale, but that would mean people knowing he was falling to the sickness, too.
That won’t do.
He was well aware that it was coming, and he wasn’t terribly convinced that fighting it was what he wanted. The first woman he loved was long gone. The witch he loved, Hestia, was back in the Barbarian Lands—and he was not sure continuing on after more than three hundred years was necessary.
