Page 9 of Enchanted Village

It had taken him a year to take the classes he needed to get his teaching credential and complete his student teaching. But he couldn’t have imagined that the job he would get would be a job at a magical school.

Silas had always loved magic in the kind of distant way people loved things in their dreams. The first memory that Silas had of magic was his uncle, Elliott Pine, hanging the Christmas lights around the front of Silas’s house without touching them. Silas was nine, so Christmas lights already held a certain mystique. But to see them flying, draping themselves over the old rusty nails Silas’s mother had hung by hand years before, was something Silas’s mind could not compute. It defied gravity, literally. And gravity was something Silas knew a lot about, even back then.

As a result, Silas’s love of magic seemed interwoven with his love of science. The difference was that Silas could wield and manipulate and understand science. Science gave him answers, like when he was twelve and asked, “What are growth spurts?” and “Can bones actually hurt because you’re getting taller?” Science explained things, and even when Silas didn’t like the explanation, he was comforted by the knowledge.

Magic, however, was the ultimate scientific conundrum, a space of a thousand hypotheses waiting to be solved. An undoing and a redoing of everything he thought he knew. Maybe that was why Silas loved it, even though he had to love it from afar, as his uncle was the only magical person in the family, the only reason he knew about magic to begin with.

Then his uncle Elliott had been promoted to headmaster of Emberwind Academy and, consequently, had shown up in his kitchen. And Silas meant that quite literally: One minute, he’d been eating questionable takeout alone, and the next, his uncle was sitting across from him, smiling at him and asking for a cup of water.

“I hear you’ve got your teaching credential now,” his uncle had said, as if he’d been there for a while rather than appearing out of thin air. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

The proposition had been a job teaching at Emberwind Academy; specifically, teaching non-magical science to magical children. Apparently, there had been some growing concerns about the “lack of foundational skills” in recent magical graduates, and Elliott Pine was determined to address the issue.

“You’d need to relocate,” his uncle had said. “I’ve got a spot for you at the Weary Wyvern for now if you want it—I’m afraid the room our former staff member vacated is currently unlivable due to a swamp charm gone wrong—and the pay isn’t great to start, but—”

“I’ll take it,” Silas had said, answering as quickly as possible in case his uncle changed his mind.

That had been in July, and now, Silas had a full two months of educating the young wizards and witches of Emberwind Academy under his belt. Teaching was, as he’d heard, both the best job a person could imagine and the most intense. There was a sense of responsibility that came with being trusted to mold young minds, and it wasn’t one Silas took lightly. He spent hours devising the best lessons, thinking of ways to make non-magical science as exciting as, well, magical anything. Some days, he knew he succeeded. Other days, he simply survived.

And some days . . . some days, he ran across witches carrying magical creatures. Fanged magical creatures.

Silas shook his head as the distracting thought entered his mind. He had a full stack of papers before him on the table, a stack he had carried all the way from the Weary Wyvern to the coffee shop he now found himself in. He had told himself he wouldn’t leave until it was dealt with. And yet, he found his eyes kept drifting to the window to watch people passing by, wrestling with shopping bags or gossiping away. He could’ve waved it off as simply people watching. But then there was the fact that when someone with red hair had walked past, Silas had nearly fallen out of his chair trying to get a closer look, only to see almost immediately that it wasn’t the witch from yesterday.

It was just curiosity. Natural, given Silas’s general disposition, he reasoned. He hadn’t even gotten her name. Would he run into her again? It was these unanswered questions needling at his mind that was distracting him. Nothing else.

He lifted his cup, downing the remainder of his coffee. His coffeemaker still wasn’t working, but even if it had been, nothing it spat out would have been able to compete with the smoothness of the beverage in his hands. There was a sweetness to it that he couldn’t identify, something rich but not overpowering or overly saccharine. The only problem with it was that it was gone too soon, leaving him in need of a fresh cup. Thankfully, he was in need of a stretch, as well, and stood from his seat with his empty mug in hand.

Sugar Spell was a bright, welcoming spot with lots of comfortable booths to slide into. At the front, there was a display of pastries, and while some were recognizable, such as the sticky buns, others had names he’d never heard of. There was also something lounging by the fire that looked vaguely like a corgi but was completely black and had the ears and wings of a bat. As if it felt Silas’s eyes, it lifted its head and looked at Silas before wagging a long, leathery tail.

There were a few witches and wizards sitting together at nearby tables, but the crowd had mostly thinned out since Silas had arrived. The owner, an older witch named Sarah with gray-and-white braids and deep-brown skin, was standing at the front as she waved her wand to stack a variety of mugs on the shelves.

Silas stepped up to the counter, and she started speaking without turning around.

“Back for a refill already? Grading all those papers sure has made you thirsty.”

She looked over her shoulder at him and offered him a warm smile. He put the empty mug on the counter as he chuckled.

“Not sure what you’re putting in that coffee,” Silas said. “But it’s something else.”

Sarah’s smile bloomed into a grin. “Only the best for my customers.”

Sarah flicked her wand, leaving a mug floating in the air momentarily as she faced Silas.

“So, you still settling in all right?” Sarah asked. “Kids behaving? We’re getting close to winter break. That’s when the feral edge starts to creep in. You have to keep a sharp eye when that happens, you know.”

Silas laughed again. Sarah was always teasing him like this, which was one of the many reasons he loved coming in. Another was, naturally, the sweets.

“They’re fine. Good kids. The occasional spell gone wrong that I have to give detention for, but nothing too bad.”

Sarah nodded. “Good. That’s what I like to hear. I have to imagine this would all be a lot, if I hadn’t grown up with it. I can’t imagine going from knowing nothing to, well . . .”

She nodded at where a scrub brush had started doing the dishes of its own accord. At the same time, she saw the mug was still hovering and sent it flying back into place with the others.

Silas agreed. “It’s funny. Every time I think I can’t be surprised again, something jumps out at me. Sometimes literally, of course. Or, you know, yesterday. I was walking along, and then bam—a woman bursts out of the hardware shop with a kerpop—”

“A what?”

“Kerpop, I think she called it,” Silas said. “Or maybe a—”