A New Witch in Town (Not to Mention the Cat) (A Modern Tale about the Witches of Springsville Book 2) Read online

  Kim widened her eyes in surprise. “A coronation? I didn't understand there was going to be a coronation.” She wrung her hands. “What... How...?”

  “Kim, my dear, I understand you don't like to show off and to be the center of attention, but you need to be officially introduced to the witches' world. I know you aren't that kind of person and, believe me, I appreciate you a lot. The prophecy left us confused and wondering what your arrival meant, but probably we all expected a queen in the old meaning of the term. Someone who sits on a throne and commands us. Believe it or not, we would obey such a queen, taking into account that she is here to do good for us and the whole world. But you don't act that way, and as far as I can see it now, you aren't going to change your attitude that much. Instead, you might be supposed to be a sort of mental, even spiritual guide. I don't know. What I know is that the whole community, and I mean the worldwide witch community, is expecting an official presentation.”

  Kim blushed, sliding down in her chair. “I'm sorry I'm not what you expected. I feel guilty because I feel I'm betraying your hopes. At first I was upset at having been turned into a witch. Now I like the possibilities my magic gives me, and I like all the friends I have made, but I would love just to be a normal witch, not a queen.”

  Isidora nodded. “Yes, I understand. We like you a lot, however you are. I think you'll develop stronger powers with the passing of time. You might turn into a powerful and determined witch in the future and lead us I don't know where. But I cannot show you as my community and I now know you to all the other communities. We don't have the time to let you meet each of them and have them love you as we do. What we can do is to introduce you to them, as they expect. With a big official ceremony.”

  “We had a party already,” Kim replied, not very convinced.

  “That was to celebrate your discovery of the shields and the way to dissolve them. Many witches arrived, but not all of them.”

  “Do you mean all the witches will participate? Millions of people?”

  “Yes. Well, yes and no. Some witches will have to remain in their territory to check and protect them. We might have turns so that each witch will have the opportunity to see you.”

  The door opened, interrupting their conversation. They both turned to look at it, surprised that nobody had knocked to ask for permission to come in. Aunt Adeline tottered to the chair next to Kim and plopped down on it. Then clapped her hands, as to take off some dirt. “Oh!” she exclaimed in her feeble voice.

  Kim saw Isidora go pale and widening her eyes. She looked again at Aunt Adeline, who was now quietly looking out the window with a peaceful smile.

  “Adeline, my dear. What... what happened?”

  Aunt Adeline widened her smile. “Problem resolved!” she exclaimed and, without any other explanation, she tried to get up.

  Isidora brought her hands to her face and, even whiter than before, mumbled, “Adeline, what did you do?”

  “What? Who, me?” Her candor was disarming.

  Isidora stood up and shouted “Lucille, Ravyn!” then quickly moved to get out of her office followed by Kim, who still didn't understand what was happening.

  Then she entered in a room facing the other side of the building, the one towards the center of the town.

  Again holding her head in her hands in despair she shouted again, “Lucille, Ravyn!”

  “What is this fuss for?” Lucille exclaimed behind them. Then realizing the gravity of the moment, she paled and continued. “What happened, Isidora? You look like you've seen a ghost.”

  “Look at the antenna,” and she pointed to the tall building where the antenna had been placed.

  Ravyn had just arrived too and, open-mouthed, looked out the window together with Lucille and Kim. There was no sign of the antenna.

  “What happened?” Ravyn asked, looking at Isidora, who was bringing her hand to her heart. She had never seen her grandmother lose her temper that way and was afraid she might feel ill. She approached her and gently made her sit on a chair. With a gesture of her hand, she made a glass of water appear and offered it to her grandmother, who slowly sipped it. Then she looked at Lucille and Kim in an unspoken question.

  Lucille raised her shoulders in a silent I don't know while Kim replied, “Aunt Adeline must have done something.”

  Lucille and Ravyn replied in unison, “Oh, no!” and both rushed out of the room.

  After a few seconds, Ravyn peeped out from behind the door and asked, “Where has she gone?”

  Again Isidora replied with a gestured I don't know and turned to Kim, who looked embarrassed, not understanding what the situation was about. Aunt Adeline must have done a spell to make the antenna disappear, but this didn't seem like a big problem to her.

  “Can't you just make the antenna appear again?”

  Isidora gave a sad smile. “I wish we could! You cannot reverse a spell if you don't know which one has been used. Has the antenna just become invisible? Has it been sent somewhere else? There might be a place with a big, inexplicable problem. Has it been sent into the past? This could change the present. Has it been sent to the future? Into space? What if it hits a satellite, and how will its presence be scientifically explained? Until we know what she did we cannot do anything, and in the meantime, they will discover its disappearance and this will create a huge fuss. Such a thing could undermine our secrecy.” Isidora pulled back her hair with her hand and sighed heavily.

  Kim still looked confused. “Can't you just... ask?”

  “Oh, my dear!” Isidora's laugh was bitter. “Ask Aunt Adeline? By now she won't even remember we talked about an antenna, even less that she made it disappear.” She stood up and went back to her office.

  Ravyn arrived with them. “She is in the tearoom. She is taking a nap and having tea at the same time,” she said. “Needless to say, she doesn't remember anything.”

  “Can you go back and stop her before she did it? Whatever she did,” Kim timidly intervened.

  Isidora shook her head. “No time traveling, I'm afraid.”

  Kim bit her lower lip thoughtfully. “What if you ask her what she would hypothetically do to resolve that problem?”

  Isidora tilted her head to one side and, after a few seconds, exclaimed, “That could work! Let's try it.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The three witches rushed to the tearoom, where Lucille was trying to keep Aunt Adeline awake to ask her about the spell.

  Isidora told her, “Forget it, tell her instead that someone has built an antenna and ask her how she would suggest resolving the problem.”

  Lucille frowned. Then, understanding what she was up to, she chewed her gum quickly and tried again to wake Aunt Adeline, slowly shaking her. The old witch didn't want to wake up and started snoring quietly. She shook her more vigorously, without having any effect.

  Lucille shook her head and looked at Isidora. “What shall I do? I cannot shake her roughly, poor thing!”

  “Maybe make her sip coffee...” Kim intervened.

  “A decaffeinated one,” Isidora said and handed an espresso to Lucille to try to get Aunt Adeline to sip it.

  The old witch sipped a little and then spat out the coffee onto Lucille's face, who was chewing her gum, open-mouthed.

  “Bleah!” Aunt Adeline exclaimed. She scowled and, lips pressed tight, she addressed Lucille, who was still in shock. “What did you do to my tea, you evil witch!”

  Lucille rolled her eyes and cleansed her face with a spell. “Adeline? Are you OK?”

  “Of course I am, you damned witch. You, you... what do you want?” Her face showed her rage and Lucille couldn't help a smile.

  Isidora intervened. “Adeline, my dear, I wonder if you could help us.”

  “Uh? Of course. Tell me.” She tried to sit up and adjusted her skirt with her skinny, trembling hands.

  “We have a big problem. Some people put an ugly antenna on a roof, and it ruins the view. Can you suggest a way to get rid of it?”

  “Easy
. Just ask them to take it off.”

  “We have already asked, but they don't want to. What would you do?”

  “Me?” Aunt Adeline yawned and wasn't quick enough to cover her mouth with her hands that arrived in place too late. “I would wait for you to find a solution.” And she slowly drifted off again to dream.

  “Oh. Mission failed.” Isidora looked at the witches around her.

  “How much time has passed since Adeline made the antenna disappear? Half an hour, maybe? Luckily the antenna isn't working yet because they'll start their service in few days' time. But by now somebody might have noticed. I hope they aren't trying to test it already. We must act immediately.”

  “I'm sure we will solve it! Things could be worse,” Kim added with a smile to light the heavy atmosphere. That moment her phone rang.

  Seeing who was calling, she rolled her eyes. “Things are already worse!” she exclaimed, looking at the other witches, before answering.

  “Mom?”

  “Surprise, surprise!” her mother said.

  “Hi, Mom. How are you?”

  “I'm arriving! I can't wait to hug my sweet granddaughter. And you too, of course.”

  “What? What do you mean, you are arriving?”

  “I'm coming to visit you. I'll be there later tomorrow, right.”

  “What?” Kim said again, in an unusually high-pitched voice.

  “I was supposed to leave for a meeting in Washington but at the last minute, the meeting was canceled. I was ready to leave, and with the project stopped, free from work. I decided to take a few days' off, and here I am, coming! I've made the necessary changes to the plane ticket. I will leave tomorrow morning and should be at your house in the afternoon.”

  Kim had started sweating blood.

  “Hello? Are you still there? I cannot hear you!”

  “Yes, Mom. What a nice surprise,” she said, lacking conviction.

  “I'll call you as soon as I get near. Bye.”

  Kim turned to the others, her face turning pale, her eyes dull. “What did I tell you? Things can always get a whole lot worse!” She gave a sigh and whispered, “What a disaster... I'm not ready to cope with her while I still cannot fully control my powers, and I'm not sure about Aurora's behavior.”

  “Oh, here you are!” Hylee exclaimed, entering the tearoom holding a hand to Aurora, who ran to her mother and hugged her legs.

  Kim looked at Hylee with a dull expression, and Hylee couldn't help checking her watch. “We are not late, are we? I'm sure you told me to bring her to you at...”

  “No, sorry, I was just lost in my thoughts. Thank you for bringing her here. When we have to leave, I always have a hard time taking her away.”

  She turned to Aurora and told her, “Grandma is coming to meet us.”

  “Yeahhhh!” Aurora clapped her hands and gave a huge smile.

  “Is something wrong?” Hylee asked the group, noticing everybody looked upset.

  “We have a problem. Aunt Adeline made the antenna disappear, and we don't know how to bring it back. But most of all, we don't want non-witches to see it has disappeared.”

  Aurora put her little hand on her cheek and exclaimed, “Oooohhh! Where was it?”

  Lucille pointed out of the window at a tall building in the center of the town. “Can you see it?”

  “Yes. Make another one.” Aurora carelessly said.

  The witches looked each other. Isidora sighed. “I wish I had the same quick mind. My dear Aurora, you saved my day. Does anyone remember how it looked?”

  The other witches shrugged.

  “They look all the same,” Lucille added.

  “Don't be silly, Lucille! We need to do a good job. People from the other buildings would consider a different antenna as weird as no antenna at all. Let's try to make a similar one, at least.”

  One hand and her face stuck to the window, Aurora suggested, “Put that thing around it while you search for the real antenna. That thing...” and moved her other little hand in the air, as to show something.

  “What?” Kim asked

  “That... fox? Like clouds.”

  “A fox? Oh, fog, you mean!”

  Aurora nodded vigorously. “So people won't be able to see it clearly and won't notice your one is different.”

  “Not the right season but could work, at least for a while. The weather has been quite funny this year. In the meantime, we can help Adeline remember her spell,” Isidora replied thoughtfully.

  “Good job, little witch!” she added, addressing Aurora, who reacted by straightening her back and thrust her chest out.

  “OK, let's start working,” Isidora said. “It's a beautiful day. Let's start by adding some clouds and have the sky totally covered in, let's say, five minutes.”

  She moved her arms, taking an invisible thing with her hands and bringing it over the town. The sky started being scattered with little fluffy clouds that slowly grew and, after a while, covered the sky. Isidora kept on moving her hands like an orchestra leader and the clouds darkened and lowered. The beautiful afternoon had turned windy and ashen.

  “Ravyn, please give me an image of an antenna. I only have a rough idea how they look,” Isidora exclaimed.

  With an elegant movement, Ravyn made a photo of an antenna appear in her hand and passed it to her grandmother.

  Isidora looked carefully at the image while a mist started growing on the town's higher buildings. The mist grew thicker while Isidora placed the fake antenna and then became thinner while still making the buildings' roofs barely visible.

  “Good. The whole thing has taken no more than 15 minutes, but I'll leave the mist until we can get the real antenna back.”

  The witches remained near Isidora, looking at the spells.

  “We still haven't resolved the problems. Either the antenna’s disappearance or the antenna itself. We must talk about it and do some brainstorming to come up with a quick solution.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Back in her office, Isidora offered a cup of coffee for Lucille and for Kim, who had followed her, together with Aurora, who sat on the antique Oriental rug talking to Mrs. Daisy who had appeared out of thin air.

  Isidora looked at Kim, who kept sighing and biting her lips.

  “I understand your mom is coming to visit you, Kim. What a nice idea, I will be happy to meet her,” Isidora said while sipping her tea.

  “What? Oh, no! She's not the kind of person you might like!”

  Isidora frowned and set the delicate china cup on her desk. “Why not? What's wrong with her?”

  Nothing is wrong with her, but everything is wrong with you. You are the witch! Kim thought but answered, “She is... She is very materialistic. She is an engineer and has made her whole life a matter of scientific proof and mathematics order and laws. And everything must be according to those laws, from the house to the food to... to even feelings.”

  “And?” Isidora asked, leaning towards her.

  “She won't understand about all this...” She gestured with her hand in every direction. “This magic! She would probably bring me to a mental institution and make sure I won't get out of it anymore.”

  Isidora smiled. “Magic doesn't exist,” she replied slowly.

  “What?” Kim looked at her, eyes wide. “After all you did to convince me I wasn't mad, now you say magic doesn't exist? What about the spell you just made, or those I made?”

  “Well, magic exists but doesn't exist. At least, not in the way you think. Magic is perfectly in accordance with your mom’s beliefs, so I don't think I would dislike her.”

  “What do you mean?” Kim said in an uncertain tone.

  “Think about electricity and try to imagine what a person from 500 years ago would have thought of a light lamp. Witchcraft! Evil art! And of the phone? They would have thought of a person imprisoned inside an evil item! Or television. Or even only a photo. Have you ever heard what primitive tribes thought of photos? That the person taking them was stealing their souls.�
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  Kim frowned, not understanding what she was getting at with this line of reasoning.

  “Kim, my dear, we are using natural possibilities, just as electricity, and all other modern devilries do. The day new scientific discoveries will prove their existence, much of our magic will be considered just as normal as we now consider normal the electricity, radio waves, and so forth.”