Millie
A continuation of
Modern Magic: Stories of the Overbury Shops
by R.S. Holt
Millie narrates events of December 2016
Author’s note
This is a shortish story narrated by Millie, now fourteen (eleven/twelve in Modern Magic), which continues the narrative of MM. I’ve been pressed to write MM material for Young Adults, but writing as Millie has convinced me that I can’t do this well (Elizabeth my main checking reader says that she believes she never was a Young Adult even at that age, and I have to say I feel the same). However, Millie’s story clarifies points about magic which are important to MM and gives further details of Overbury, so I make it available in case anyone wants to follow up these subjects.
The best evocation of an otter that I have found is in Robert MacFarlane’s book of poems The Lost Words. Otter is the best poem in the collection, I think, and remarkably it is the only one to imagine transformation from human to animal: “Run to the riverbank, otter-dreamer, slip your skin and change your matter . . . ”. However, Millie cannot refer to it as she is writing in 2016 and The Lost Words was published in 2017.
I hope that the setting and characters are reasonably self-explanatory. The one point which the reader needs to know from MM is that when Geoffrey was twenty-two and Millie was eleven, he realised that he was in love with her, but he has resolved, and kept to that resolve, to give no hint of how he feels and to keep away from Millie as far as possible . . .
Many thanks are due to the choir of St. Leonard’s Church, Streatham, London SW16, who allowed me to attend one of their rehearsals to gather material for Chapter 3. The choirmaster is based upon the conductor of a school orchestra many, many years ago.
M
Prologue
Leander’s Furniture
Small Street, Overbury, Hampshire. January 2016
Dear Alice
I’m going to confess something. I hope you won’t mind what I say. I’m trusting that you’ll tell no-one else.
It’s this: I don’t like Transforming into an animal.
Of course, when I followed you Transforming experimenters into the Pinewood, I had no idea what you were trying to do. I joined the circle and held my wand as did five of you: you, Pip, Luna, Ivan and Geoffrey. My mum wasn’t holding her wand and was straightening something in the middle of the pattern of magical objects. The attractive scene and chanting were suddenly cut across: there was a flash of white light, and I found myself assaulted by a mass of sensory experiences and strange, urgent needs; from a human perspective, I was at the wrong height; from some other perspective, the open glade was the wrong place; I shot forward in fear, and found some relief in the Pool.
I saw enough of the other Transformers to gather that we were animals, and I reasoned that I could not be a water vole because I had a big tail. Otter quickly occurred to me.
My whiskers were just one example of sensory overload which I was still human enough to find tormenting. The scientific term for them is vibrissae, and indeed they were endlessly vibrating, bristlingly alert, jabbing my cheeks and my whole head with a jumble of messages which I could not pick out and interpret.
Eat, eat, eat said a command in my head. I dived, smelt and looked with a terrible food lust, caught the ripple of a silvery body, fastened my teeth on it, dragged it to the bank. I had no sooner taken a bite from its shoulder than I was gripped by fear of a thieving rival otter. Somehow I knew I must spraint, mark with dung all round the Pool, and I gobbled fish, newts and a dead pigeon in a fever of impatience until I’d digested them enough to spraint every significant object, every log, stone, rise of ground, stopping to do this every few minutes. Hunting, eating, sprainting continued for the two hours which is the usual duration of a spell.
It seemed as though I was an otter for longer than two hours, but as I felt my heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s I concluded the quicker the animal’s metabolism, the more it must seem as though there is extra time within human time – the quicker one acts, the more events crowd in and somehow make time stretch.
I adjusted to my routine only enough to watch Pip and Luna for a short time. They were beavers. I had sufficient human thought to wonder at their purposeful but calm gnawing and pushing of small tree trunks, leaves, waterweed and mud. Surely their food was very low in nutrients and digestibility, and yet they weren’t eating continuously. I could only conclude that their metabolism was slower and their sleep shorter than mine. My need to sleep became overwhelming, and I forced myself with my human mind to make for Pip’s cabin so that I could wake comfortably as a human, but I returned to human form as I emerged from the Pool.
At the debriefing with the other Transformers, I was astonished at their calm, appreciative reports of their experience.
Perhaps the trouble is the animal I Transform into, an otter. The only book I’ve found helpful in understanding how I feel is Being a Beast by Charles Foster, published in 2016 by Profile Books. He says:
Being an otter is like being on speed . . . nearest . . . drinking a double expresso every couple of hours before having a cold bath followed by a huge breakfast of still-twitching sushi and then a nap, and then keep repeating it until I die – which I would do most authentically by running in front of a car or from septicaemia from an abdominal wound . . .
They spend more than three-quarters of their lives asleep . . . The remaining six hours are spent in frenetic killing.
They have a resting metabolism about 40 percent higher than animals of comparable size. That rises massively when they’re swimming . . .
They are land animals who dabble, impressively but precariously, in the water. They’re much more stoat than seal . . .
wanderers . . . six miles or so of water . . . might need to cover thirty . . . More than half of the dead otters autopsied have been in recent fights. The injuries are typically very unpleasant . . . underbelly . . . genitalia . . . long enough to be hit by a van.
What can I do to get close to these jangling, snarling, roaming, twitching bundles of ADHD, other than acknowledge that, like them, I’m a pretty shabby evolutionary compromise with a short attention span, poised on the edge of an ontological precipice? [ontology: understanding of being oneself]
Foster goes on to assert that an otter’s horizon is extremely limited, in sensory perception and in curiosity. He concludes that because of the top-speed consumption and metabolism and large territory requirement, “Most otters, most of the time, are alone.”
I watched a TV programme, Supercharged Otters, filmed and narrated by Charlie Hamilton Jones. He describes his subjects as “shy but restless . . . supercharged with spirit and determination . . . incredible predators . . . energetic and inquisitive.”
Otters are also graceful and playful; I appreciate that, but that’s more from the outside, it’s not being an otter, or not for me.
The animal you become is supposed to reflect your own nature, or part of it. My mum, by encouraging me to the opposite, lets me know that she thinks me nervous, highly-strung, socially inept.
Did I get what was right for me? Why then did it feel wrong?
I was deeply interested, at our debrief after our first group Transformation, when Geoffrey said that he hadn’t felt entirely himself as a bird, a merlin. However, no-one in the group expressed what I’d felt, distress, to find myself in such a strange form and strange world. I was still more relieved at a later meeting when Geoffrey found he could Transform into a badger. Would I feel more myself if I changed into a different creature?
As it happened, none of the other Transformers met a creature of their kind. Isn’t Geoffrey the only one who could – a bird of prey or a badger? There could be no beavers in the Pinewood or Hampshire besides Pip and Luna. Ivan Pringle became a jackal-headed Egyptian hybrid, a duplicate of which is unlikely in the extreme. There are no deer in the Pinewood besides you, Alice, or at least no fallow deer. Pip a few years before had seen an otter in the River Bury in the Pinewood, and he sometimes sees otter droppings, spraint, on the banks now, so there could be rival otters, and they travel very long distances, using waterways as highways through every sort of territory.
At the debrief, I just ticked a questionnaire sheet. I think the others took my reluctance to talk as coming from my guilt at joining the adult gathering without permission.
As you know, I Transformed twice after that. Once was with some of the group in the Pinewood when Geoffrey wanted to try to become a different animal, in which he succeeded, and the rest of us Transformed too, unintentionally, into our original animals. I noticed that sacrifice was involved, and I introduced this to complete the spell when Geoffrey Transformed to a merlin to show a group of would-be Sun Wizards what our Moon group could achieve. As you’ll recall, that was in the British Museum at night. My last time as an otter was when Eleanor became Geoffrey’s assistant and we introduced her to Transformation, Eleanor replacing Luna who was pregnant. Pip didn’t want to Transform any more without Luna, and you had learnt to Transform by yourself, using bread for the sacrifice. Our group practice ceased.
I was very glad. I hadn’t been so frightened the second and third times as I’d used my human consciousness to make myself keep close to the other Transformers, who would have protected me from another otter. But I’d still felt a confused mass of perceptions, fears and lusts.
I have been strongly warned by everyone not to use my wand for anything at all without a Gifted adult being present.
My success as a young Moon Witch has counted against me.
You’ve asked me, Alice, to summarise my development.
Being Gifted isn’t like other human abilities, which generally show early and develop fast into adolescence. We Gifted folk have to think at least ten years later. Eleanor didn’t discover all her Powers until she was in her early thirties, and you and Luna couldn’t use all your Powers until I came along and we could form a coven of Moon witches, when Luna was in her early thirties and you had just turned sixty.
A Gifted youngster gets a wand at about eleven and keeps it close, usually under their bed. At first, holding the wand feels like being buffeted by warm winds as Powers swirl through one’s head and body, and the parent or Instructor should stand behind with a hand over the novice’s hand, to steady the Powers. About once a week, the parents take a session of small skills such as target practice, lighting a candle, making an egg boil, turning things different colours for a few minutes, slightly lifting and lowering an object – dull stuff, and youngsters may object just as they might to piano practice. Plenty of eighteen-year-olds struggle to do these things, and the Instructor probably retains a hand on the student’s back, or at least stands behind with their own wand raised. There are also mild potions which are supposed to prevent dizziness and headache from Gifted practice. Any youngster who fiddles aimlessly with their wand or uses it too often or without an Instructor is just going to make themselves ill and the wand confused, and the Instructor will take the wand away, which will delay the development of a bond between wand and user.
I could do all the standard first exercises when I was eleven. My mum has now locked away my wand. She emphasises that this is not a punishment for having joined the coven unbidden. It’s because I could do too much by myself. We only get my wand out for practice. I’m sure it misses me. I talk to it each time it returns to my hand, and it then sends out a little glow.
I think my mum is expecting me to ask for another Transforming session, and is relieved that I haven’t, because of course she doesn’t accompany me and she can’t be sure I’m safe. I don’t like to have to say it, but I rather agree with her on this point. Alice, I hope you’re not disappointed. When I’m older, I’ll either cope better with being an otter or I’ll Transform into another animal.
I suppose, if the others ask whether I want to join them for another session, we’ll have to say that I want to leave this for a while.
Yours sincerely
Millie Roberts.
M 1
“Mistress loves you.”
I pressed my forehead into Charlie’s dark, warm, freshly brushed flank. He wasn’t mine. He belonged to the stables’ owner, Mrs. Lyons. However, he knew me as well as any human, and better than most. I cleaned out his stable and brushed him every weekday afternoon after school. Mrs. Lyons would never let me ride such a big horse, and one which could be difficult at times, but that didn’t matter to me. I was happy to watch when he was taken out by her son and a few other strong riders. I got on well with the smaller horses I mucked out, and rode on Saturday. But I only had long conversations with Charlie.
In the next stall, my schoolfriend Anna was finishing brushing a chestnut mare. I tidied the tack and put away our shovels and brooms. We returned to the lane which led from our school to the east end of Small Street.
“Oh no, she’s doing it again,” murmured Anna. I glanced back in time to see a girl behind us change her walk from little scampering steps to slow paces. “She’s doing that grandmother’s footsteps thing,” I said (referring to a version of musical statues in which players creep up behind one person when he or she is turned away). “We’ll have to wait,” sighed Anna, and we did. The girl, Evelyn, joined us. We silently resumed walking. Evelyn pushed her glasses up her nose and walked awkwardly half a pace behind us.
“We’ve been to the stables,” I said, just to fill the silence.
“Did you stay to practise the piano?” asked Anna for the same reason. “What are you playing?”
“Mumble mumble,” said Evelyn.
Anna and I exchanged a glance. Fortunately I could resolve the mystery. “One you used to play. Grieg’s Butterfly.”
“Oh that,” said Anna. “So you’re doing grade seven?”
Evelyn raised her head, nodded, and resumed her hunched-over walk.
“You used to play that brilliantly. So fast, so light,” I said.
We’d reached Small Street. Anna just smiled at us and raised her hand in farewell. She turned left, eastwards, towards the farmhouse which her family had made into a luxurious home. I called after her, “See you at seven.”
After we’d walked a minute, Evelyn surprised me by muttering something in which I caught the words “grand piano”. “Yes, that’s right,” I said. “But Anna wanted to concentrate on swimming and riding.” I didn’t add, as I could have done, “Indoor swimming pool. Stables, but she prefers coming to the group and trying different horses. And good at whatever she chooses.”
M 2
We reached Leander’s, my family’s rented furniture business and home. My heart sank. My mum was at the door, looking for me, and I knew that she’d invite Evelyn in for tea. I knew also that she wouldn’t have done this, unagreed with me, if Evelyn hadn’t been Gifted.
Evelyn responded to my mum’s warm and pressing invitation by poking her head down to the ground even more and repeatedly touching the bridge of her glasses. “Why can’t she just say that she’s got homework to get through before choir?” I thought impatiently. “Perhaps your mum’s expecting you?” asked my mum, and Evelyn looked up and nodded. As though there was no such thing as the telephone.
Noises from Tom and Ben grew louder; Tom called out, “Hold him while I clean out his hutch. I’ve got him. I’m throwing him! Catch!”
I had to hurry through the shop and kitchen to a glazed porch or boot room round the back door, to the hutches of our guinea pigs. I say that I had to; I knew Tom and Ben were almost certainly teasing, but I wouldn’t take the risk that they weren’t. Our mum had told us a story about a guinea pig, or sometimes she said hamster, which her brother had thrown into the air and caught and which had died straight away, presumably of a heart attack. Ben and Tom were teasing: all three guinea pigs were safe in their hutches, which were two old sideboards with the drawers replaced by a wire netting front. The boys laughed heartily as I ran across the kitchen. I felt a spurt of irritation with my mum. Why had she been daft enough to tell them the story?
I heard my mum say, “Would you like to see the guineas?” Evelyn hovered near. Mum put on the television and Tom and Ben sprinted to the sofa. Evelyn knelt down, slowly and quietly opened a door, and slowly and gently put her hand on a guinea pig (Malcolm, Ben’s name choice). I felt a little more respect for Evelyn, even though I didn’t like her touching our guinea pigs, uninvited by the boys or me.
Mum beamed. “Pretty, aren’t they,” she said, pushing a piece of lettuce through the netting to Tom’s Dorothy. “See the one with rosettes in her fur?” Evelyn nodded and moved her hand slowly to stroke Rosetta (my name choice). Why can’t she say anything? I thought. Evelyn stood up, and she did manage to murmur “Thank you, Mrs. Roberts,” and “Goodbye” to me as she left.
As I hurriedly munched through beans on toast and a poached egg, Mum said, “Why don’t you want Evelyn to tea?”
I didn’t bother to deny it. “Oh, Mum, she’s so drippy . . . She follows Anna and me around all the time . . . I especially don’t want to share anything Gifted with her . . . that’s in my own time. Anyway, I haven’t got time today to be social. You know it’s a squash to do homework between the stable and choir,” and I opened my maths book and laid out my geometry instruments.
“Pity Anna’s not Gifted,” said Mum as she turned off the television and silently pointed at Tom and then at his school bag.
This conversation meant more than may appear. I knew that Mum expected me at just turned fourteen to be giggling in my room with a bunch of girls, listening to boy bands or trying on makeup or whatever. And the arrival of a Gifted girl of my age in the neighbourhood should have led to immediate sharing of interests, especially wand games and experiments under the care of one of our mothers. Evelyn had arrived one year late for the start of our secondary school, Overbury Comprehensive. Mum had at first made a point of welcoming her because she was without a dad and she and her mother were not well off. Mr. MacDonald had died in an accident ten years before, without his wife being able to claim insurance or compensation. Mrs. MacDonald now did low-skilled work in an office in Overbury. However, soon after the MacDonalds came to Overbury, Mum and Dad got divorced; Dad had already spent their small savings and gone to Spain. He gave us nothing. We were no better off than the MacDonalds in any way, so Mum could no longer appeal to my generosity towards Evelyn.
My mum regarded me as quiet and shy and anxious. She gave the impression of being confident and jolly. I knew, however – and her trials with Dad had particularly revealed – that this was a front; she worried, especially over her family, and she was louder than she needed to be with other people just because she found social encounters difficult. This was why she was impatient with me: she made an effort to be pleasant and easy with people until it almost came naturally. She didn’t understand that I felt that if I was given time, such forwardness would be less effortful, and thus in the end more natural. To be fair to Mum, she hadn’t had that option. She’d been brought up above a pub, soon had to be a barmaid, and had now turned to being a shopkeeper. She’d grown to enjoy the work. She thought I could make a similar transition.
M 3
Anna knocked at seven o’clock. Mum and I gathered our music books and we gathered Tom and Ben too. The friend with whom the boys usually spent Tuesday evening had a tummy bug. We walked down Small Street and the length of Main Street, past Market Square and the Town Hall, to the River Bury. We crossed the big bridge over the Bury, fields lying ahead, and then took a path to one side and a small bridge back over one branch of the River.
The Bury south of Overbury has two equal branches which meet again half a mile downstream, thus forming a large island called Abbey Park. The Abbey church was not damaged in the Reformation because the nuns there followed an austere regime, there was no significant artwork to be erased, and Overbury had no other main church and one was needed at that end of town (the eastern half of town being served by the small St. Botolph’s). The island was given to a family who pulled down the convent and built a manor house, which was destroyed in the Civil War, so that the more recent house sits a ruin next to the intact church. The island is now a public park. Each branch of the River has a bridge, and the ways are equidistant into town.
Tom and Ben sat in the nave, and Mum, Anna and I joined the altos in the chancel. Tom pointedly took out his geometry instruments and sat on a cassock to use a pew seat as a desk. He had tried to convince Mum to let him and Ben stay at home. He argued that Andrew Melrose, the son of bakery owners who are in our Gifted circle, had been entrusted with a house or shop for a few hours at a time of since the age of fourteen, younger than Tom now. Mum had paid no attention, not even bothering to reply that Andrew was serious and mature, and Tom the opposite; nor had she taken any notice of his claim to be unable to complete his homework divorced from his computer, which he knew Mum would never let him have in church.
We first went through Janacek’s The Lord’s Prayer. Mr. Clare the choirmaster said, “Good pitch, good modulation, good phrasing, even good Czech – as far as I can tell. But we’re still at a British tea party. It needs to be hearty, it needs to be strongly felt, it needs resounding basses, it needs to be peasant! Think rough!” And he was right. As the piece swelled towards the end of our second rendering, I felt as though I could stretch out my arms and lean back on the strength of the sound; my breastbone and even my skull felt the vibration. (There’s an additional interest for me in this sensation: it’s very like performing magic.)
Beside me, Anna trilled like an alto bird, her voice not strong but clear and exactly on pitch. Evelyn was looking up and her lips were moving but I couldn’t tell if any sound was coming from her. She was kept in the choir because she loved music; she had hardly any voice. I was – I am - somewhere between the two.
“Once in royal” announced Mr. Clare, and we stirred with interest. For the past three years, the first verse had been sung by a boy whose voice had now broken and who had left the choir. “Millie, Evelyn, Anna”, said Mr. Clare. “And from the west end, please, to get your walk to take the time of the verse.”
Using three people was not so radical as using us young altos. Everybody smiled and said “Congratulations.” No. I couldn’t do it. I could tell from the flurry of glasses-pushing beside me that Evelyn wasn’t happy either. Anna whispered to us both, “Come on, let’s do the best we can, see how it goes.”
We trooped down the centre aisle and turned. The organ gave us the first note, Mr. Clare raised his arm, we came in on time, we sang the first line, wobbly but not as bad as I expected. Anna remembered to walk forward and Evelyn and I fell in with her pace. Mr. Clare was bobbing energetically in time, and I noticed that his socks were brightly striped and his shoes were loose; there was a flash of orange and black stripes at each beat of the stately music. To keep from giggling I looked up at the altar. My voice and feet froze. Floating above the altar, biting in time to the music, was a set of false teeth.
Evelyn also froze, gazing upwards. The rest of the choir were standing facing each other in the chancel with heads half turned to the west end, and Mr. Clare was facing us three. Anna frowned at me and her voice petered out.
The teeth rose and fell above the altar in time to the continuing organ.
Tom and Ben. I looked. They were rolling on their pew in silent laughter, and Tom actually had his wand in his hand, fully visible if anyone had glanced his way. I strode forward, pushed Tom’s hand down, turned to Mum in the choir. There was a clatter as the teeth fell behind the organ, but no-one took any notice.
“What are you about, young lady?” snapped Mr. Clare.
“I’m sorry, Mum!” She looked very annoyed too. “Evelyn,” I said. She wouldn’t meet my imploring look; of course she couldn’t say what had happened in front of everyone, but she was hanging her head right down, and I was convinced that she wouldn’t tell to my Mum at all, and that everyone thought only I was at fault although Evelyn had stopped singing and walking at the same moment as me.
Anna said, “Come on, let’s try again.” Tom and Ben were still nudging each other and laughing at me. To my horror I started crying. What was it that came to a head at that moment? The fact that no-one was listening to me; that no-one could, because the only person who ever would was Anna, and I was cut off from her by magical secrecy, and also because she wouldn’t have been so bothered by Tom and Ben, but then she didn’t have to put up with them and my Mum’s incessant favouritism – or so I saw it. I said, “Sorry, not well,” took my coat from the pile in the side aisle, called “Mum!”, and went outside.
“You’re going to have to manage your nerves better than this!” exclaimed Mum with Tom and Ben dancing beside her, Evelyn trailing behind, and Anna still at the porch putting on her coat. I just stopped in my tracks and pointed silently at Tom. He and Ben laughed again. “What?” asked Mum.
“Grandad’s teeth. Above the altar. Chattering. Bouncing up and down.” Mum’s mouth twitched. I continued, “Tom had his wand stretched right out in full view! You should do a Forgetting on everyone straight away just in case!”
Mum said “Back!” and turned in to the church again with Tom and Ben running in front of her. Mrs. Shoesmith the Rector’s wife had just opened boxes of cakes and paper plates on a trestle in the large porch, and was now sitting on the foot of the font whilst the choir carried on with “Once in royal”. “No cake!” called back Mum, as though Evelyn, Anna and I were to blame. She bent to speak to Mrs. Shoesmith, then beckoned to Anna and spoke to her; Anna looked mystified and shook her head; Evelyn was questioned and hunched to the side but eventually nodded slightly. Mrs. Shoesmith left the church. “Home!” said Mum.
Mum glanced all around in the churchyard. She edged behind Evelyn, drew her wand and jabbed Evelyn in the back, caught her as she fell backwards and sat her on a gravestone.
Anna was open-mouthed. Mum seized Anna from behind and jabbed and lowered her too. “That’s cleared that up. Mrs. Shoesmith saw nothing,” said Mum.
Then we saw Mrs. Shoesmith walking back towards us.
M 4
Mrs. Shoesmith had turned back from the foot of the bridge. She lumbered towards us with a semaphore of waving arms, and eyes and mouth round with concern.
“Don’t go this way,” she said. “Another dead otter. Not fully grown. Let’s go by the bridge on the other side.”
Of course, Tom and Ben ran forward to see, Mum followed them and I followed her. The young otter was stretched right across the narrow bridge. It was not a terrible sight, freshly dead, not squashed, but Mrs. Shoesmith stood with a hand shielding her eyes as she tried to shoo us away (remarkably unsuccessfully considering her name). Mum looked with concern at me.
In several sessions of group Transformation I had turned into an otter for two hours at a time. The rest of the group had become other creatures. To show Mum I was not badly affected, I asked, “How has it died here?”
Mrs. Shoesmith answered, “Perhaps run over at Main Bridge and dragged here by a dog or a mink. Or perhaps killed by one of them here. You know there are still mink down the Bury despite efforts to get rid of them.”
“I thought there was a drive to catch the otters and relocate them downstream away from the busy roads,” said Mum.
“The volunteers couldn’t catch any, couldn’t find their holts, their burrow entrances, to net, controversial anyway, they swim such a long way, couldn’t find their pathways to set traps, don’t know where they go except that they keep getting killed around Overbury,” puffed Mrs. Shoesmith as we re-entered the churchyard in order to exit the other side. “Oh, what’s happened to them?”
Anna and Evelyn were still on their tombstones looking groggy.
“Sickness going round the school, Millie’s had it too, that’s why we’ve left choir practice early,” said Mum. She took a silver box from her bag, said “Sniff”, and held it out to Anna and Evelyn in turn. I knew it was a vinaigrette of sage and mugwort, standard to help recovery from a spell. “Come along, everyone, we’re going home this way.”
Evelyn soon turned westwards to the small council estate where she lived. We said goodbye to Anna as we reached Leander’s and she carried on eastwards to her farmhouse.
“In the kitchen,” said Mum shortly. She pointed to the kitchen chairs. “Wand,” she said, holding out her hand to Tom, and she put his wand in the wall safe at the back of the larder. We knew that this meant that he could no longer keep it under his bed, and would only use it for practice once a week, with less control because he’d been separated from it. Nonetheless Tom was proud that he’d done enough with the wand to merit this limitation. “Good Levitation, wasn’t it?” he asked me teasingly. Ben guffawed and Tom smirked.
Mum gave us each a hot chocolate and said “Teeth. Bed.” The boys ran up the stairs with Ben chanting “Teeth, teeth, teeth”.
I followed them up the stairs without responding to Mum’s “good night”.
The boys had spoiled the rehearsal by us three girls and perhaps our chance of a Christmas performance. If I’d done such a thing, Mum would have shouted at me at least. They’d risked being seen by the whole choir when they did magic. I couldn’t even think what their punishment for this should be, it was so bad. Mum could have started with no football; to me she’d have said no riding; but these weren’t enough. And yet it seemed she was doing nothing.
Doubtless Mum had magicked Evelyn because she didn’t want Evelyn’s mother, and potentially other Gifted folk, to know what Tom and Ben had done. Of course it’s very bad for one Gifted person to magick another and Mum had taken a chance that Mrs. MacDonald wouldn’t realise that Evelyn had been magicked. She’d had to magick Anna because Anna had seen her magick Evelyn.
I could do far more with my wand than Tom could, and he’s a year and a half older than me. In fact since I was eleven I’d done more than most people can when they’re eighteen and start Instruction. Tom had no idea of this, nor that I’m a Moon Witch and can Transform. He didn’t even know that Mum now kept my wand in the safe.
M 5
“It’s inevitable. And Britain would lead the way. Britain and the Netherlands would make excellent planning partners on this. Then the rest of Europe would be interested. It’s unfair to no-one. It’s the only responsible thing to do.” That was Pip.
“It’s impossible. And I have to say it would be cruel to attempt it. But no-one would attempt it. No country would try to control what can’t be controlled. China had to give up on that. And it would be cruel to so many people who need our help.” That was Luna.
Geoffrey made a long “Mmm”, then continued, “Depends upon the country’s usual style of dealing with people, rather than upon the particular aim . . . “
The voices faded as I crept downstairs. My plan had worked every bit as well as I’d thought it would.
Our class was doing geography projects. I’d told Evelyn that, whatever subject she chose, she’d get extra marks if she included a section on possible effects of Brexit, and that Pip, Luna, Geoffrey and Eleanor had interesting and contrasting ideas on this.
This was the only subject on which Pip and Luna disagreed. Pip thought that every country should have a population policy, and that for the enormous majority of countries this should be to keep its population stable, especially so for the U.K. which, as is well known, is for several reasons a favourite for temporary and permanent immigration and also a substantial source of emigration. He considered that the yearly figure for the latter should provide the next target for the former, a quota limitation. Luna thought we have a duty to provide a refuge, never mind the numbers. Having new listeners, Evelyn and Mrs. MacDonald, and the mere mention of the B word had been enough to set them off.
Mrs. MacDonald, Evelyn and I were in London for music exams, me grade 4 piano and Evelyn grade 7 (for which she’d get a high mark; I’d heard her Butterfly as I waited my turn). Now we were at Attic Street in Bloomsbury for afternoon tea before going with Pip and Luna to a Christmas carol concert at the Albert Hall, and we were meeting Anna and her mother Mrs. Bennett there too; and then – this was the part I was most looking forward to, and very generous – Mrs. Bennett was paying for Evelyn and me and our mothers, and herself and Anna, to stay overnight at a four-star central London hotel, with treatments in its spa the next morning, and lunch there, before Mrs. Bennett drove us back to Overbury. There was no way I could match that as a Christmas present to Anna, but I knew she’d be delighted with whatever little thing I got her. I felt mean for having pretended that the exams would stretch into the afternoon, but the Bennetts couldn’t visit Geoffrey’s wand shop. Of course they knew Pip and Luna, the owners of my family’s premises and owners and operators of the bookshop opposite, and they knew Luna’s former ward Geoffrey vaguely, but thought he worked in modern furniture in Harrods. Pip and Luna were leaving baby Matthew with Geoffrey’s assistant Eleanor and after the concert returning to sleep at the wand shop.
“Luna, ever the bleeding heart,” I said to myself as I tiptoed across the wand shop floor and down the workroom steps. I flicked my torch along the shelves of magical substances in alphabetical order, and slipped three phials into my satchel: frankincense, jasmine oil, myrrh. I scurried back up the steps, into the loo where I was as quick as I could be, and back into the sitting room. Mrs. MacDonald was denying Scotland’s economic dependence upon England, at the same time insisting this didn’t matter anyway. Eleanor was saying, “It’s more unfair on London than upon Scotland or Northern Ireland, we were seventy per cent to stay, and we understand what money the whole nation could lose . . . “ Only Geoffrey looked round when I re-entered the room, and he offered me a sandwich. Evelyn didn’t look up from her frenetic note-taking.
M 6
The cool water mercifully received and soothed me. I had secretly bought a meal of fish and chips in Main Street and eaten it in my room after supper, nearly gagging, but anything to be free from the craziness to eat which wasted so much of my time and thought as an otter; and it worked to some extent, although I couldn’t help feeling along the bankside for crayfish as I swam, just in case.
I shifted to the middle of the river and told myself to keep my head above water so that I wasn’t too distracted by fish, although I could feel them swish near me.
I couldn’t waste time because I had five miles to swim and back again, all in two hours. I was going upstream to Main Bridge at Overbury, checking all the while for otters, otter holts, any sign of them, and this time not primarily from fear of a rival but to be able to inform the volunteers trying to stop the spate of deaths around Overbury . . .
I’m writing long, breathless sentences just as I recall the urgency which I felt with every task as an otter but especially with this one . . .
As I’ve written to Alice, I admire otters as graceful, playful creatures, but I don’t feel any special link to them. I could hardly explain my expedition to myself. It felt like a leap into freedom and courage, although no-one would know except me.
It had taken me a few weeks to reach this point.
I had had to pretend to have much more difficulty controlling my wand than was really the case. Mum had at last said with a sigh that the only remedy was for the wand to return to my room. She was thinking that the only penalty she’d imposed on Tom was to put his wand in the safe, and that I had shown no sign of being untrustworthy. I didn’t have to raise any of these arguments – I knew what she was thinking.
I had taken Tom’s bike in the middle of the night, ridden to the Pinewood, and tried all I knew to Transform, to no avail.
At Geoffrey’s shop, I thought I might as well “borrow” the magical substances he’d contributed to group work.
I returned to the Pinewood at night, and this time Transformed.
My written explanation to Alice had eased my irritation at the attitude to me of the Transforming group: that including me in Transformation was a special privilege. This when it was possible that my presence at the first Transformation, making a coven of three Moon Witches with Alice and Luna, had made the whole thing work. And who had really been interested in my response to the experience? But in my head my writing had broken their patronising attitude and Mum’s picture of me as timid. Now I was doing something by myself – even something I found stressful.
Having made so much clear to myself, I was disconcerted to find that swimming with all my might against the river current was washing away my burning energy and I was enjoying my own strength. I had of course chosen a night with a full moon and little cloud. The dark outlines of the trees gave way to dull, flat grazing meadows with small groups of dozing cows. The riverside was flat and bare too, no places for holes or for tunnels in undergrowth. However, there was every chance that this was still an otter highway, and I smelt carefully all the time, without however catching a whiff of any water animal or of otter spraint – sweet-smelling marking droppings.
Eventually I reached Abbey Island, where there was plenty of undergrowth on high banks, and what looked like an animal tunnel, and – without me having to track or search, without a warning scent or sound – extremely suddenly – on a grassy promontory, outlined against the moonlit sky – there was a big, old female otter. I trod water and simply stared. She turned and simply stared at me.
It’s hard to convey what that stare did to me. I’d wondered whether I might communicate some sense of danger if I found an otter or otters, even persuade them to follow me back to the Pinewood where I’d left yet more fish and chips in several layers of plastic bag in my bicycle basket. I’d thought this whilst knowing the food rivalry and extreme territory guarding which dominated my otter thought and surely theirs. This otter’s stare was cold and absolutely alien. I don’t say she knew I was human inside. I felt her complete lack of human thought. There was no communicating with her. That was what was important.
With all the speed I could muster, I swam under the small bridge, then a short way further to Main Bridge, saw and smelt nothing of otter places, swam back on the Island’s other side, where I smelt otter, one powerful female otter, as I passed under the other small bridge, and on for another mile or two, at last allowing myself to catch a delicious brown trout and eat it in the water without landing on a bare bank.
I reached the Pinewood and its Pool, crunched up a passing frog, left a few spraints carefully on prominent logs, and found a bed in bracken, far enough from the Pool’s edge so that I wouldn’t roll into it when I woke as a human. I must have nearly used my two hours, but I was absolutely exhausted and falling asleep as I stood. I curled up and knew no more.
M 7
I awoke to hearing my name called. After a few minutes of snuggling back, stretching and yawning, I suddenly realised where I was and that I was being called by Luna. Oh, blast and double blast (an expression I’ve picked up from Pip and Geoffrey).
“You go round that way and I’ll go this way,” said Luna. “We may spot things from different angles.” Crunch crunch as Luna and whoever started off through dry leaves.
The day was fully light. I’d Transformed soon after midnight. Therefore I must have slept outside as a human for some hours in December. Surely I should feel colder, even in my coat, woolly hat and mittens. I looked down. Fur. Dense brown fur. Triple blast - bugger (an expression caught from the goblins).
I kept as still as possible, but just peeped above the bracken. Luna was slowly going round the Pool one way, examining the ground. In the other direction – Geoffrey.
I felt as though I was blushing deeply, although of course I wasn’t in fact. Why oh why had I “borrowed” Geoffrey’s magic ingredients? And he was not keeping to the edge of the Pool but casting sideways to where I’d left the ingredients in a triangle on the ground. Sure enough, he called out to Luna, “Found something”, she hurried round, and they gazed gravely down. Geoffrey picked up the phials, restoppered them and put them in his pocket.
“If she’s Transformed,” said Geoffrey slowly, “then she could be miles away. She must have not given herself enough time to return. She could be miles upstream or down, perhaps even near the coast. But . . . you know she told Alice she didn’t want to carry on Transforming.”
Luna had her mobile phone out and was punching in numbers and relaying their discovery. She said to Geoffrey, speaking close to the phone so that Pip could hear, “Shall we carry on looking, and end up at the goblins’ as we intended? Then they and we could continue to look here in the Pinewood whilst everyone else concentrates on the River.”
“OK”, said Geoffrey.
More talk by Luna into the phone. “Pip’s going to phone everyone,” she said to Geoffrey. “We need to keep our ears open as well as our eyes. She may be hurt.”
They went back to their mirroring slow walk round the Pool, then followed the River downstream towards the goblins’ tree house and out of sight. They didn’t find the basket with the fish and chips.
I could have run up to them and conveyed who I was. But I was so embarrassed, by Transforming when I’d said I didn’t want to, by failing to return to human form, and by borrowing the magical substances.
I suddenly thought of Alice. She would deal with the situation calmly and without apportioning blame. Surely I could communicate to her who I was and she would know how to return me to human shape. I had to find a fallow deer within the next few hours, and avoid Luna and Geoffrey and the goblins. Or perhaps I would return to myself spontaneously.
I was distracted by being ravenously hungry, and I could smell a freshly dead animal. I followed the scent to the edge of the Wood and tucked in to a rabbit. There was the strong scent also of a fox, and I guessed that it had left its prey when Luna and Geoffrey arrived.
Out of nowhere came a tremendous thudding weight on my back and pain in the back of my neck. I curved round and bit back, but there was another very painful snap as teeth dug at my right front leg and two more thuds as my face was boxed by a right paw and a left paw. It was the old female otter. She dragged the rabbit into thick undergrowth under brambles, which is what I should have done, and she gnawed with feverish hunger and not another glance at me.
I limped away across the stretch of heath between the Pinewood and the hamlet where we leave our vehicles. I hadn’t hidden Tom’s bike because I’d expected to be creeping back up our stairs by 3 a.m., but now in the daylight I wished I had left it more safely, and I went to the drive where we parked to make sure it was alright. It was there; next to it were two more bikes: one was Evelyn’s, one was Anna’s.
M 8
I hid behind a shed and curled up, very relieved to relax. Now that I was away from the Wood I realised how tense I’d been when Luna and Geoffrey were searching for me, and I guessed that I had allowed otter thought to dominate. I now understood that I’d shrunk from communicating with them when they were in their human form. My meal of rabbit, brief fight, and flight across open land made me overwhelmingly sleepy. I’d been woken by Luna’s voice before I’d had an otter’s full sleep. The wood was too full of people at the moment. I’d have my sleep and then search for Alice. Grooming was essential; otters spend hours on this, and of course I had to remove the rabbit blood and my own blood from my leg; but I fell asleep before I was half way through the rest of my fur.
I was woken by warm, wet slobbering at my face and at my still bleeding leg. To my astonishment, a New Forest pony stood back for me to emerge from my hideaway.
“Alice?” I asked.
The pony raised and lowered its head to nod in a most unponylike way. It then walked across the yard to my bicycle and Evelyn’s. Anna’s had gone.
“Evening?” I asked. The pony scraped its hoof four times. Getting dark already.
The pony took a few steps towards the Pinewood. I followed because I was very hungry and I felt I had to make for the River. It stopped, turned back, nosed my leg and waited, bending its legs. I scrambled up a foreleg and onto its back, clinging to its hair, trying not to pull too hard. The pony went by a long way to avoid the steep slope to the Cabin, which eventually we reached. The pony pushed open the door. I was too hungry to resist Binky’s bowl of cat biscuits, although I felt uncomfortable in this human habitation. The pony then nosed at a small open bottle on the veranda bench: my Mum’s magic-recovery vinaigrette. I sniffed hard and long, but it had no effect.
The pony stood alongside the bench and I climbed back on. We went quite a long way along the valley until we came to a giant oak. Sitting huddled against its trunk was Evelyn. She raised a tear-covered face. I jumped off and chittered. Evelyn shrank away to the other side of the trunk. I jumped on and off the pony’s back despite the pain in my leg; at long last Evelyn got the idea and heaved herself on, but she fell off when I tried to get on too, so I limped alongside. The New Forest ponies are all owned and most are used to being ridden, but a real pony wouldn’t have stood still whilst Evelyn grabbed its mane, lay on its neck and tried to hold on with her arms. Our little group wended through the trees and heath and hamlet to a different drive.
“Ouf!” said my Mum. “That was well timed!” I don’t know who was more amazed, me, or Evelyn as she slid to the ground – off my Mum’s back.
Amongst all the questions I could have asked of Mum, I turned to Evelyn and said, “Why were you crying?” And she cried a little again. “You weren’t lost, were you?” I asked. She nodded feebly.
How could anyone be lost? Admittedly there was a maze of paths, some overgrown; but there was the sun, the moss on the trees’ north side, the River, the slopes of the valley, the Cabin, the tree house and the plank bridge leading to it, the way she knew she’d come . . . I was heartened when my Mum rolled her eyes.
I’d had some big surprises in this Transformation thing, but I suddenly realised I’d had the biggest of all. “I’m speaking!” I said.
“Yes, well, Geoffrey did as a merlin, didn’t he,” said Mum.
“And I’m still an otter!”
“Are you Millie?” asked Evelyn.
I tried to catch my Mum’s eye, not a possible manoeuvre with an otter face, but I think she knew what my stare meant: could we let Evelyn remember?
“Mum,” I murmured, “I . . . ah . . . I thought you were – you know – someone else . . . And why did you look for me as a . . . a pony?”
“We’ll talk about it when we get home.” She added, “Hop in.”
Yet another surprise. There were two cars in the driveway, and one was ours. Mum drove us to the usual parking place and collected the bikes. Then she spent some time on her mobile telling everyone that we were found.
M 9
“There’s a lot to tell you. I don’t mean about what happened. I mean about whether I can draw any conclusions.
“I’ve learnt that Mum will do something she doesn’t want to in order to keep me safe. As soon as I Transformed, she decided to learn too, and this took her a while. She was very disappointed to become a pony because she couldn’t follow me in the River and even getting to the Cabin took a roundabout route. She also couldn’t leave Tom and Ben by themselves at night, when it was possible I might try Moon magic. But she did all she could, and when she realised it was me crossing the heath, she made the right choice to Transform to reassure me. She failed several times to Transform, but succeeded, strangely, by putting her face against my flank whilst I was asleep. I accepted her first in animal form. Then I accepted her as human, as Alice.
“I’m grateful, but I don’t feel it’s brought us closer. I certainly don’t envisage trying to change into a pony myself to share cosy browsing and breezy canters.
“I’m grateful too for how Mum dealt with Evelyn and Tom and Ben.
“She made Evelyn recount what had happened to her. Evelyn was with the guinea pigs in the boot room with the kitchen door ajar when Luna and Geoffrey came into the kitchen anxiously talking about a return to the Pinewood to look for me; our Gifted friends had already searched for me there that morning. Evelyn was simply being nosey by cycling to the Pinewood. Mum performed a Forgetting with no compunction, and the same on Mrs. MacDonald to cover Evelyn’s absence.
“Anna was on her bike and saw Evelyn on hers, and followed her on a whim because she was so fed up with Evelyn following us, as she told Evelyn when they entered the Wood together. Anna presented no problem because, being non-Gifted, she was Confounded when she entered the Pinewood, by its protective marginal spell, and she recovered and went home remembering nothing except losing Evelyn near the Pinewood.
“I had to stay on a bed of straw behind our shed until Geoffrey was able to return from London the next day. Mum wanted me to be in the shed, but I couldn’t. Geoffrey brought a freshly mixed, extra complex and strong potion for magic recovery, together with the triangle of three substances, to indicate what was to be reversed. I had to have a human-sized dose in a bowl. It was gloopy and tasted disgusting. I took a long time to lap it up.
“Mum managed to conduct all this without Tom and Ben having any idea what was happening. She Confounded them to cover my absence for two nights and my borrowing of Tom’s bike.
“Mum was exhausted after so much spell casting. Just as well she’s strongly Gifted, not many could have managed so much.
“Mum couldn’t do anything magically to hide that I missed the final choir rehearsal. Mr. Clare cancelled our introductory verse, but no-one was sorry; we had not been quite good enough, and we knew it. We had lovely Christmas services and I was glad to be able to just sing and enjoy.
“If there was a moral or conclusion to this story, Evelyn and I would have helped each other and we would have become friends, or all would have been revealed to Anna and we’d have become closer friends. It hasn’t happened like that.
“Is being Gifted more bother than it’s worth? I feel very flat now. I didn’t prove that I’m able to like doing as the others do. I didn’t prove that I’m courageous. I told the otter relocators that I believed there was only the old female left, but I couldn’t say how I knew.
“There, you’re all done.”
I started yet again – what a lot of jumping with surprise I’d done lately. Geoffrey was leaning against the stable door. I just said “He’s ready now,” Geoffrey nodded and I went out and left him with his favourite mount Charlie.
M 10
The next day, Pip called at Leander’s and asked Mum if he could have a word with me. He beckoned me to the boot room, carefully shut the kitchen door completely, and we sat on the shoe racks. Through the glazing to the kitchen, I could see Mum staring in surprise, and then she returned to cooking.
Pip began, “I’m going to say what I want to in a roundabout way.” He paused. “My father was solitary and studious. My mother loved company and amusement. But they were alike in a way. They loved all they did, they enjoyed everything their lives offered them, to the full. Whether it was my dad planting an apple tree or my mother putting apple blossom in a vase, they were happy in each other’s happiness. Of all the people I’ve known, they took the greatest pleasure in the most ordinary things.
“I think it’s not a bad thing that our Gifts develop slowly. So many other gifts with a small g are developing when we’re young. Luna and I have had sections of our lives when we concentrated on some things and put others aside for the time being – including getting married. Eleanor was in her early thirties when she discovered, not only some rare Gifts, but that she wasn’t interested in getting married or having children. At the same time, I feel I was mistaken to be so strongly influenced by my parents that I stood aside from magic completely. But I’ve caught up now.
“All I want to say is: your own choice in your own time. Everyone respects that. Happiness lies in many places. Magic and non-magic.
“Luna and Alice have asked your mother to leave your wand with you, by the way.
“Geoffrey and Luna are outside. We wonder whether you’d like to come out with us?”
“Now? Yes, alright.”
They were there with four horses from the Stables including Charlie. Geoffrey smiled and said, “Mrs. Lyons agrees that you’re old enough and tall enough now to try riding Charlie. If you’d like to?” I nodded, and he held Charlie whilst I mounted and until we all set off together.