I position my hands.
All this power, itâs like this huge intricate web. Glistening with a glow that grows day by day, spell by spell. Wondrous. Dangerous even. Do one thing incorrectly and itâll have severe consequences. It feels amazing, thoughââlike Iâm a part of something bigger than just what can be seen.
Each fairy has a special web. The web of their power and their spells. Today, Iâll get mine. And my wings. To get them, though, I need to use magic for the first time. Except, I canât use magic without a web. Once I cast my first spell, a web will create itâs way for me. In order to do that, Mother is letting me use hers.
âExcited?â Mother beams, her chartreuse green wings shining in the sun, as she flashes me a bright smile.
More like scared, but I nod. Iâm nine. Itâs around the age most people start magic, but it suddenly feels so young. I donât know whatâll happen if this goes wrong.
âŚbut Mother wouldnât have asked me to do this if she doesnât trust me, right? I know that.
No more delaying. I take my hands out, starting the spell I memorized long ago. A simple growth spell.
I donât need to think about the spell words anymore. My tongue has said them so many times, it speaks them like a second part of me. I focus on the image in my mind: a small lavender pink dahlia blossoming into a beautiful flower. Synchronously, I weave my own piece of string into the web carefully. For a moment, everythingâs perfect.
Until it isnât.
I donât know when things go wrong, but for a moment, along with everything else, I hear Mother scream. âFern! Stop! What are you doing?â
I finally tune into the words Iâm saying. Iâm not saying a spellââIâm saying an incantation. Something I didnât even learn before. I try to stop, but I canât. My voice goes on against my will, darkening and dangerous. Luring me into something vicious.
The garden around me is dying instead of flourishing. Every single plant, every single tree is aging rapidly and withering away to dust.
Mother shakes me vigorously now. âStop!â sheâs shrieking at the top of her lungs, her voice high-pitched and pained, though I can barely here her. âPlease, stop!â
At first, I donât get it. Then I look at her web in horror. Itâs withering away at top speed, dissipating into nothingness.
And then itâs gone.
As quickly at is began, the spell is over.
Mother is staring at me, as if sheâs staring at a ghost. I look at her, and I go white as well. Her wings, her beautiful amazing wings that Iâve always admired, arenât there. Gone, as if donât exist.
And so is her magic.
âââSeven Years Laterâââ
Dark purple smoke wafts through the air in a dark haze of fog, making everything indistinguishable.
I cough. Three old witches float above me, shining in an eery way, smirking too confidently, as they rotate around me in a circle. Altogether, they start an incantation, but one that will take a while. I vaguely recognize it as one to steal magic. A longer one. And my first incant. I listen closer and huff at their words. âMonsterâ they call me. The words tug at an old wound in my heart that never completely healed.
Not that theyâre wrong.
This lets room in for fury. Iâll never forget the shame I had when the fairies chased me away. Said I wasnât one of them. That I was wrong. Unnatural. And a thief. I kept crying that Iâd find a way to give Mother back her magic, but they didnât listen. Mother didnât listen. The ever beckoning question, were they right?
Yes.
But I accept that now.
I raise my hands, pulling on my magic, and starting my own incantation. It comes naturally, without me thinking about it. A big black beacon of hate develops into my hands, building great power.
For years now, Iâve grown my magic. But no matter how hard I try to do a spell, it ends up as an incantation with disastrous consequences. After doing my first feat of magic, I never got a web. Nor wings. Instead, I stole someoneâs magic and it developed into something else. A dark layer I felt around me. My true magic. But it never goes the way I want is to, unless the order is destructive. When it wears thin, in order to feed the layer, Iâll give it hate. And when I donât have enough hate of others?
Iâll give it of myself.
I throw the blast of magic. It turns into fire, when I intend a shield. Typical. It hits the left witch, and suddenly she falters. Proving that the blast is more powerful than I knew, as soon it hits the witch, she disappears into a cloud of thick black smoke.
The right and middle one stop their incantation, suddenly defensive. Another blast extinguishes the right one, this one shrieks and for a moment, I see fires erupt on her before she disappears quick as a wink. The middle one snarls at me, and is suddenly gone but not from a fireball.
âTeleportation,â I scoff, inspecting the area she was just in. âCoward.â
I let the magic clear away from my hands. I can still feel the essence of it on my skin. Can feel the magic taking its irreversible toll on me.
I sigh, acknowledging the sadness for a moment, before leaving the clearing. The place where the fairies once lived before I burnt it down.
I know the truth deep down. Itâs apparent and unescapable no matter how much I try to run from it. I knew it from the moment I cast that first incant, spells being the language of the fairies and incantations the language of the witches.
Iâm a monster. Worse than that, Iâm a witch.
