Page 26 of Enchanted Village

All yesterday afternoon, with thoughts of Fox Bar and the threat of its opening looming over her, Margaret had scrubbed and polished until her fingers were raw. Bernie had jumped in to help her, carrying the dirty rags to the sink and dunking them in water before carrying them back to Margaret. She’d lit the candles when the sun went down so Margaret could keep working and had even tried her claws at sweeping with her tail. But even with the pair of them cleaning together, working for hours, they’d barely finished a corner of the pub. Margaret had turned from it to the rest of the space, finding it as soot-covered and blackened as before.

She’d had a choice then: keep cleaning through the night with no chance of opening the following day—the exterior with its broken window and sign remained another challenge entirely—or get some rest and attack it again the next morning.

She had been tempted—briefly—to call on Liza and see about some magic after all, but then she remembered the fuss she’d already made about doing it by herself. And besides, it was her pub and her responsibility. Still, she was so exhausted . . . in the end, she’d fallen asleep trying to decide if her pride would win out or not.

Now that she was awake, Margaret stretched, doing her best to avoid disturbing Bernie asleep beside her. She’d hoped a good night’s sleep would make everything a little better, but on the contrary . . . anxiety returned full force.

How much longer until Fox Bar opened? And could she get the pub in shape, in fighting form? Would her regulars abandon her?

And what was she going to say to Silas Birchwood when she saw him again? How would she explain her running off?

Not that she would see him again, necessarily. He probably wouldn’t want to see someone who darted away from normal conversations. And, she reminded herself, she had to focus on the pub.

Margaret worried her lip. She needed a break from all of it. A reprieve. And she knew just how to get it.

She got up and crossed to the landscape painting above her desk. It was a landscape painting of a garden, one crafted with the most brilliant, vibrant colors Margaret could image. There were swooshes of green and purple for the many flowers and herbs, muted blue and gray for the small pool of water in the corner. In the spring, the garden was alight with vegetables and herbs, spilling over with plump tomatoes and the crunchiest of carrots. But now, even in the winter, there were still sparks of color at every turn, and a soft bed of grass to lay on and look around at it all. Already, Margaret itched to be there, to reach out and touch it.

And so, she did.

Travel by painting was not a simple thing. To create the connection between a real place and a work of art, one had to be both an artist and witch of great renown and skill. Margaret’s grandmother had been such a person, and she had crafted the portal during her final year at Emberwind Academy. So in love had she been with the garden she’d grown there as a student, she couldn’t bear to leave it behind. And she hadn’t needed to—she had simply created a portal between the garden and the old pub she had just purchased to run on her own. When her work was discovered, the headmaster had been so impressed that he’d sanctified the portal and put it under the official protection of the school. In doing so, Margaret’s grandmother had bound her pub to the garden and, thus, the school.

She could never have known that this connection would haunt her non-magical granddaughter. She probably could have never imagined any granddaughter of hers would be without magic, but that was a sorrowful thought for another day.

Now, Margaret needed to be there, in the garden. And so, she touched her hand to the painting, breathed in the scent of rainwater on leaves, and whispered her grandmother’s incantation.

Take me to the place where thoughts run free.

It was simple and burned into Margaret’s very bones. One moment, she was feeling the buzz of foreign magic under her fingertips, and the next, she was toppling into the painting itself and landing with a thump in the garden’s soft grass. She opened her eyes to find the color here was just as vibrant, just as beautiful, but here, she could touch it. Here, she could feel it, the wet grass squishy under her bare feet. She should’ve grabbed her boots, but it was no matter. She wasn’t working in the garden today. Just borrowing some of its clarity.

The garden itself was spelled off and encased in flowers. Although it sat on the Emberwind grounds near the forests that surrounded the stone castle, one couldn’t walk into the garden unless they knew the spell that granted access. Students who walked over this patch of ground were redirected without even realizing it, the magic carrying them back to the castle. Of course, she could see the familiar profile from here, all spires and flying buttresses and grand towers with glimmering windows.

Was Silas up in one of those towers? For a moment, she let her heart ache just a hair. Just like with Hex Hollow itself, she was somehow both part of it and not part of it at all. Welcome and unwelcome, an undeniable thread in the fabric but one that stuck out and ruined the design.

Margaret shook her head, moving faster through the garden to her favorite place. Ironically, the magical section of the garden had always called to her, the spot where spells and charms long ago cast by her grandmother nurtured the finest potion ingredients this side of the country. There were jerriwinkles that were key to making Margaret’s famous rum, kitten-flowers that added just the right smoothness to her whiskey, pumbalills for sweetness in her wine. Margaret might not have had enough magic for that blasted school, but this she knew like the back of her hand. With the press of her fingers, she could coax the perfect amount of nectar from a flower. Years of watching her grandmother and mother bury their hands in the dirt had taught her how to encourage the proper growth of a vegetable and temper the soil to be its most fruitful. Here, she was at peace, even more than at the pub, maybe. Because here, she answered to no one—not guests or fellow shopkeepers. Here, she was truly alone in a place that understood her at her core. She had never even brought Liza here. It was too special to her to share.

She would stay here for a while, Margaret decided. She checked her watch. She still had time.

She pulled the nectar from a flower and let it drop on her tongue. The sweetness spread, and with it, an idea. Her eyes caught on the jerriwinkles again, inspiration for a new drink blooming in her mind. Without a moment’s hesitation, she stood up and began moving around the garden, plucking a blossom here, taking a pinch of a powder there. She retrieved the mixing utensils she kept in a trunk off to the side and set to work, stirring and tasting and dreaming. She flew around the garden like a woman possessed until, at last, she tasted it and thought: This. This was it. This was perfect.

It was made for Christmastime, she thought. It had just the right mix of warmth and spice, the kind of drink that patrons would say tasted like cozy in a cup. She could picture Liza sipping it with a book on her lap, but she could also picture mothers ordering it after shopping all day with their daughters. She could see kids from Emberwind settling near her fireplace, gloved hands wrapped around mugs, chatting about their winter plans. For each person, it would give them something. It would give them an anchor, give them something to hold on to during the hustle and bustle of the season.

She sipped her creation again, and for a moment, Margaret had no worries. No fears.

But, alas.

Moments like this could never truly last.

Chapter Thirteen

Silas had done his best to make his classroom feel warm and inviting, a considerable feat with the stone walls and floors. He’d brought in a handful of plants to hang about, plus a handful of posters in bright colors with signs like Dreams don’t work unless you do! It was a bit at odds with the distinctly cold, academic vibe of the castle as a whole, but they were better than the ominous portraits that had been there when Silas inherited the room.

And it wasn’t all bad. In fact, Silas’s favorite part of his classroom was the long, large window that overlooked the school grounds. He had several other smaller windows that dotted the room, but this one was taller even than he was. He could stand at it, peering out, and see nearly the entirety of the west side of the campus. In the spring, he’d been told, the grounds were brilliant green and peppered with flowers. Now, however, that winter was creeping ever closer, shaking off the last of fall from the trees, everything was slightly duller, slightly less saturated. But Silas didn’t mind. There was a richness to the brown and gold of the leaves that still clung on, and he could imagine how everything would look with a layer of snow. He watched as students and staff moved across the cobblestones and grass. There was a cluster of them near a tree, blankets laid out and textbooks forgotten.

Farther up, the grounds seemed to turn shimmery, as if there was a smudge on the window that kept him from seeing a particular space clearly. But no matter how clean Silas got the window—and he’d tried—there simply was no making out that space. He wondered if it was some kind of charm and had even asked Elliott about it. His uncle had ventured it might well be an illusion charm, but what it was hiding, Elliott couldn’t say. Silas had tried, naturally, to find the source on foot, but there was nothing there when he went to look. That, or he’d gotten turned around, a common misfortune that befell him at the school.

“Professor?”

Silas turned, finding a group of his students waving him over. He’d been doing his rounds, walking laps around the room while his students engaged in a lab. The room was full of teenagers bedecked in goggles and gloves who had swapped their usual cloaks for lab coats. They were paired off to handle the task at hand: Essentially, they were making glowsticks in their beakers, one of Silas’s favorite labs from his own organic chemistry classes in college. He’d shown them how to do it with the Wittig reaction using benzyltriphenylphosphonium chloride, and his students were excitedly pointing at the various glowing substances in their beakers across the room. Silas liked this group in particular because it contained a range of ages; since his class was new, Elliott had made sure it was open to all years. This one had filled up with the widest range, and there were seventh-year students working with fourth- and fifth-year students. It made for a fascinating dynamic that usually worked well.