Magic didn’t live in a specific organ. It wasn’t in her heart or lungs or stomach, but itfeltlike it was in her low center, in some nebulous space she couldn’t name properly.The center of me.Wherever it was properly housed, Ellie found that energy, feeling increasingly like her entire body was being shocked as she filled to the brim with the energy that was hers and added to it magic that was not hers.
“Is thatyourmagic?” Ellie whispered to Prospero. “I can feel extra magic. Not mine.”
“No…?” Prospero whispered back. “I don’t think it’s me.”
Somethingwas giving her more energy than she ought to have. Ellie let it filter into her vision, that strange seeing without looking that seemed to accompany her acts of creation. She would use this magic to build a barricade.
“The barrier used to look like thorns, right?” Ellie could picture it, could picture walking past it, stepping through the illusion with another person. There were guards who were flopping on the ground.
How do I know that?It was a memory. She was certain of that much. It was part of what Prospero had stolen from her memories.
“Yes.” Prospero’s voice was a rough whisper at Ellie’s side, but notreason enough for Ellie to open her eyes. “Whatextra magic, Ellie? I don’t feel anything. Is someone else here?”
Ellie shook away the questions her memory raised. “I can see what ought to be here, what it should look like.”
Then a childhood fairy tale came to the top of her consciousness.Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by briars.It was a satisfying image, and Ellie begin to magically tug at a few berry bushes she’d seen nearby. The roots of the berries burrowed under the soil until new shoots burst through the ground in green eruptions near the place where the illusory briars were missing.
“Taller,” Prospero whispered. “Please?”
The thread of fear in her voice was enough for Ellie to tug again at that reservoir of magic that wasn’t hers. She pulled it into her body and used it to weave thorns into a ten-foot wall. It wasn’t solid. A person might be able to see glimpses through it.
And a saw or modern machine could tear it down.
Despite the wall of thorns that now squatted there, it was still possible now for someone to wander into Crenshaw, but not accidentally. To come into their home would require tools and concentrated effort—but it wasn’t quite enough. Ellie saw several pebbles in her mind’s eye, and she pulled them across the soil. As she pulled them, she felt like she heard as much as felt the earth shaking. Her body trembled.
“I have you,” Prospero assured her. She moved so she was behind Ellie, the familiar warmth of her pressed to Ellie’s back. Her arms wrapped around Ellie, steadying her. “I’m right here, love.”
But Ellie couldn’t comment yet. She pulled on her magical well again, using the energy inside to force pebbles and stones into a conglomerate boulder that was far from pretty—or natural. It held together, though, as if heat melted it.Like cookie dough with chocolate chips and fruit inside.Ellie smiled as she turned the stones into a person-sized rock.
Then Ellie opened her eyes to gaze upon the thorn wall she’d constructed. “No one can get in or out without teleportation.”
Prospero half released Ellie and stepped forward, so they were side by side now. “Thank you.”
“It’s my home, too,” Ellie said dismissively. She didn’t know how to say “I want to protectyou” without frightening Prospero further away from her, so she kept the words inside for now.
Prospero stared at her, as if seeking injury or wobble. “Are you… well?”
“You mean, am I about to fall into a coma-like sleep like I usually do when I make larger things?” Ellie asked. “No.I’m not sure why… but it was like I had all this extra magic to… make stuff. I feel amazing.”
The guards had returned and were staring at Ellie like she was something horrifying. Hob after hob after hob popped into existence in the woods, and as Ellie stared at them she knew exactly where the magic had originated.
Prospero took several steps away again, peering at her curiously and then staring at the stoic faces of at least a dozen hobs. Clancy from the castle was there. Bernice was, too. So was Grish, the hob who had answered the chief witch’s door. They stared at her.
Their magic was what I felt!
Ellie curtsied. She wasn’t entirely sure of the protocol for thanking someone for sharing magic. The guards were watching both witches and hobs.
“I couldn’t have done that”—she gestured at the barricade—“without you.”
The hobs smiled, as if they were of one mind, and in that moment Ellie was vaguely unsettled by their attention.
“Was that what I needed to do? Why I’m here?” she asked, because she had an ongoing suspicion that the hobs were plugged into everything that happened in Crenshaw.
“Crenshaw witches and their magic should stay in the place we built for magic,” an unfamiliar hob, wizened and tinier than the others, pronounced. “Your magic is useful in keeping magic here.”
It wasn’t an answer, not wholly, but Ellie still felt a little better hearing the words of approval. Then each hob nodded at her and Prospero and popped away. In a few moments, they were alone at her newly made barrier with the guards.
Ellie looked at the guards, who were watching her with expressions ranging from fear to curiosity.
