Magical Influence Book One (2 page)

Damn. She had a point.

I wasn't about to go over, pluck up
the spade, and actually bother to dig around in that ridiculous mud
pit though. I would take my grandmother's word for it.

“There is still a lot you must learn about
magic.” As my grandmother passed me, she flicked her curls again,
and headed unashamedly to the patio, splashing mud everywhere as
she did.

I narrowed my eyes at her, stopped
short of shaking my fist, and headed over to the spade to at least
cover up the hole. Even though I was damn sure that no one could
see into the yard, I didn't like the idea of somebody accidentally
catching a glimpse of a deep mud pit. Who knew what they would
think.

After I had filled it in, and had
grumbled at every splash I had gotten over my stockings and skirt,
I finally went in to find my grandmother helping herself to a
sandwich from the fridge. She was still covered in mud of course,
as was the rest of the kitchen now.

“You have a lot to learn about the
subtleties of spells and enchantments,” she shoved the massive
sandwich in her mouth and took a hearty bite.

I crumpled up my nose as I watched her
eat, noticing every single time her muddy fingers tracked across
the bread, lettuce, and cheese.

“Influence magic is very, very context
sensitive,” my grandmother brought up her hand and waggled a finger
my way. “The difference of one single ingredient can change the
nature of a spell.”

I knew all of this, I really
did. But I was still kind of right here. Regardless of what kind of
spell my grandmother had been casting, she shouldn’t have been
doing it outside in the yard where everybody could
see
... Okay
nobody could see, but it was still outside, and that was too
visible for me.

“Couldn't you have done it in the bath?” I
flopped a hand behind me, indicating one of our many bathrooms.
“And when exactly are you going to clean yourself up?”

She shrugged her shoulders and took
another enormous bite of her sandwich. For an old lady, she still
had a ravenous appetite. She could, and previously had, eaten us
completely out of house and home.

“A bath? How am I going to make anything
grow if I'm standing on enamel and ceramic? You need to be
connected to the ground.” Mary latched her hands onto her muddy
pants, placing her sandwich down for a second, and pulled them up
as she danced on the kitchen floor, splashing dirt everywhere. “You
should know that. It's in the details,” she brought up a finger and
pointed it at me again, “every single little detail. If you want to
learn how to influence the world through magic, you must be ever
sensitive to everything around you. Gather facts, my dear witch,
and you will gather power.”

I nodded my head, even though what I
really wanted to do was roll my eyes. I had to keep reminding
myself that while my once powerful grandmother was now heading full
force towards dementia, I still owed her respect. Because
underneath she was still the same woman, just at a different stage
of life.

“Anyhow, enough lessons, they do so tire
me. How was your day at work, my dear?” She grabbed up her sandwich
and went back to cramming it in her mouth.

I brought up a hand and tucked
my hair behind my ears as I tried to do a quick mental calculation
of how much time it would take me to clean the kitchen of all this
blasted mud and dirt
. “Fine, I guess,” I said distractedly.

“It can't be that fine; you sound as if
you have been forced to endure the trials of Hercules himself. Has
anyone been making you fight water monsters? Have you had to steal
magical apples from the gods?”

I smiled pleasantly, if you
call pleasant thin-lipped, stiff, and entirely
unhappy
.
“Just the same old business.”

Though I was technically a witch, and
I wasn't a particularly bad one, it didn't pay all the bills.
Especially when you lived in an enormous house that was crying out
for repairs and had to keep on buying hundreds of dollars of
groceries a week to keep your grandmother fed.

One of these days, if it were
ever possible, I would love to live off my magic alone, but I
doubted it would ever arise. There wasn't that much call for
witches these days, not because people didn't like magic, but
because they didn't know about it. It was particularly hard to make
a living off something that was entirely secret, that
you couldn't
advertise, and that you couldn't tell anyone about unless they
already knew it existed.

It hadn’t been like this
hundreds upon hundreds of years ago, or so I had been told. When
magic had been more widely
practiced, accepted, and known about, many witches
had lived off their trade alone. Then the dark ages had come along,
or something like that, witch hunts and whatnot, I wasn't really
that up on the history, all I could tell you was that in the
21
^st
century it was practically impossible to get along only
being a witch.

“You should open your heart to the
possibilities of magic. It can be practiced at every single moment
in the day. A true witch understands the power of context and
influence,” my grandmother reminded me for about the thousandth
time.

I knew that lesson, but it wasn't one
I required repeating today. What I really needed was for my
grandmother to clean up this mess, have a bath, and maybe, just
once, not trash the house while I was out at work.

“I don't suppose we had any requests
today?” I asked as I walked over to the kitchen table, frowning at
the dirty dishes.

How they had
un
-cleaned
themselves, taken themselves out of the cupboard, and stacked
themselves back on the table, I didn't know, and I didn't want to
ask. Probably some ridiculous spell my grandmother had
attempted.

“Unfortunately not, my dear, but my new
herbs arrive tomorrow, and I'm very excited about it. I imagine the
love potions I'll be able to make from these, and the special
healing tonics, will be quite fantastic.”

I listened to my grandmother with half
an ear as I stacked the dishes and took them over to the
dishwasher, making sure to frown their way, as if that would
help.

“You have signed your custom papers this
time, right?” I turned over my shoulder to face her.

“Of course I have.”

I nodded my head. At least one
thing was going right. Because I really didn't need a knock on the
door from the police ready to drag my grandmother away for
importing God knows what into the country. She did so love her
herbs, and I understood how important they were to magic, but in
modern times a lot of the substances she wanted for her spells
were
... to
put it mildly... absolutely freaking illegal. We’re not just
talking dried lizards that could bring in various bacteria and
viruses, we’re talking freaking narcotics. The kind of thing that
would get you in a great deal of trouble, and the kind of thing I
really didn't need to deal with on top of all of the other hassles
that were already assailing my life.

Last time my grandmother had tried to
import her latest bunch of new herbs, I'd spent almost two hours
down at the customs office, trying to get them to understand that
she was old, and she didn't really understand it was illegal to
import sleeping pills en masse from South America.

To my grandmother, they contained a
substance that was absolutely necessary for various nocturnal
enchantments; to the police it looked like she was trying to set up
her own illegal pharmacy.

Pressing my fingers into my brow, I
soon finished stacking the dishwasher. Loading in the soap and
turning it on, I patted it several times as if in warning. I really
didn't need the dishes to unstack themselves and wind up on the
table again.

“Patting it won't do any good, but a chain
would,” my grandmother commented. “I think there's a lock somewhere
out in the shed, and you remember that old ship’s anchor we dredged
up one day from the bay? You could put it on top, I'm sure it would
get the impression then,” Mary pointed through the window towards
the shed.

Chaining up a dishwasher, locking it
up, and popping a ship’s anchor on top to weigh it down so it
didn't unstack itself was not something that ordinary people had to
deal with.

Well welcome to the extraordinary.
Yes, it's full of magic, but I can't exactly claim it's full of
fun.

“I'm going upstairs to have a shower.
Please do me a favor and hop in the downstairs bath?”

Granny appeared to consider my
words for a moment, then she clearly got distracted as she watched
a flock of birds fly past the window above the kitchen
sink
. “My oh
my, they're practicing weather magic. Rain is on the way,” she
brought up a hand and waved at them.

Birds
practicing weather magic. If we
weren’t both witches, such a statement would lead me to conclude
that my grandmother's slip into dementia had turned into a
landslide. But I understood, I understood perfectly.

We looked at the world in a
different way. Magic made you do that. If you
practiced it, it completely
changed your perspective. It wasn't just witches and wizards that
could do potions, spells, and enchantments; anybody and anything
that followed the correct steps practiced magic as well.

The squirrel that hoarded nuts,
dug them into the ground, and left them there for the winter,
practiced a type of growth magic. The butterfly that flapped its
wings over the Amazon, was
practicing a kind of chaos magic. The giant blue
whale that swum through the ocean, breaching to the surface only to
swim back down again was practicing a type of wave
magic.

Everywhere, everything was engaged in
some kind of spell. You just had to know what to look
for.

Flicking my eyes up at the flock of
birds as they flew out of view, I scratched my neck. I wasn't so
angry at my grandmother and the mess that she had created to forget
that I was a witch. And I could clearly see the exact path the
birds flew through the sky, the speed, the angle, everything, and I
understood what it meant.

Rain. I didn't have to look up the
weather report to confirm that fact. I just understood
it.

It was instinctive.

It also made me rub my brow even
harder. Rain meant more mud. Because no doubt the moment I left for
work tomorrow morning, my grandmother would trot out to the shed,
pluck up the spade, dig holes in the garden, and get up to more
mischief. And even though I didn't particularly care about the
state of the yard, I didn't want mud everywhere.

Deciding it was thoroughly time to
give up, I waved a hand at my grandmother, walked out of the
kitchen, up the stairs, and to the shower.

I was lucky enough that our house was
so large that I practically had an entire level to myself. A level
where my grandmother hardly ever went, and one I could keep just as
clean as I liked it. It was beautifully decorated too, a testament
to all of the lovely objects that I had collected over my life;
silk cushions from India, paintings and prints from Paris, carved
statues from Thailand, and mahogany furniture from
Britain.

It was my oasis away from the crazy,
the mud, and the purple-rinse curls.

By the time I made it into the shower,
I was finally calming down. I was sure to let the water practice
its magic. It had a unique way of washing over you, collecting not
just the mud and grime, but the sorrows and sadness and troubles,
and flushing them down the drain.

It wouldn't last forever; I lived in a
rundown mansion with a perpetually crazy grandmother, and we were
both witches. Trouble had a way of stalking me.

But for those few minutes I was
happy.

Chapter 2

I rolled out of bed that morning with
a hint of a strange dream haunting me. It was just a feeling at
first, a presence, like a shadow at the edge of my
vision.

If I’d had the time, I would
have plucked up my dream journal, written about it, possibly
meditated, maybe tried to draw a picture, even selected a
color and a word to
describe the feeling that was building up within me.

Dream magic, after all, was some of
the most rewarding that you could practice.

I didn't have the time though. Instead
I pushed myself up, made my bed neatly, chose some work clothes,
and trotted down the stairs, growling softly when one of them
practically cracked underneath my foot.

This house really needed a lot of
work. Far more than I could afford.

“I'm heading out early this morning,” I
said loudly as I walked towards the kitchen, hoping my grandmother
would be somewhere close by, but not willing to track her down.
“Don't get into any trouble.”

There was no reply.

I grabbed some toast quickly, downed a
glass of water, tugged my bag onto my shoulder, and headed to the
door.

As I reached towards it, turning the
door handle, I felt a sense.