Page 71 of The Hocus Pocus Handbook

Perhaps they must defeat their own internal enemies to regain external agency? There must be something I can do, some way I can help. The heaviness of truth settles on me like a drunken gruagach.

I never imagined myself as a hero, but I might be the only one who can save them.

33

A Spell for Mettle and Moxie

Everyone is frightened sometimes. This charm will help you to marshal your boldness and take heart. No matter how dire a situation seems, you can face it, though a magical boost may help. Heroes do not emerge fully fashioned with a sword in hand. Instead, they battle fear and worry at every turn, and yet, despite knowing all the terrible things that could happen if they do this difficult thing, they still choose to take that path. That is courage.

You have spent your whole life fearing to take up space, afraid you’d be sent away from the only home you’ve ever known. I’ve done my best to assuage those fears, but I’m aware that you still carry deep wounds. For you, my dearest daughter, I hold fast to the hope that you’ll one day believe what I’ve always understood: You’re a treasure.

This one is best cast at midday, and be firm in your convictions. You’ll need:

Agate, carnelian, and jade

Basil and lemon balm

A silver censer

Burn the herbs in the censer with the spark of your magic. Clutch the agate, carnelian, and jade in your left hand. And speak aloud what you fear. Breathe in the smoke and out again. Push it forward, until it dissipates. Once it clears, your fears will be dispelled as well, and you’ll feel stronger, ready to confront any situation. This applies to emotional strength, primarily, but if you cast the working fiercely enough, there may be some physical impact.

You may not realize how potent you’ve become, but then you’re so careful that I can’t imagine you harming anyone with careless wrath.

In fact, as a wee one, you took great pains to help all the little creatures. You and Tara hatched a clutch of abandoned lizard eggs in the stable loft and didn’t tell me. The two of you took such good care of them that nobody knew. Until they grew up, had babies of their own, and the palace was eventually overrun with lizards.

I smile when I think of swarms of lizards. And you.

Thea

In this dream, I’m very small.

This is the first house I lived in, a large and luxurious manor that felt too big, too empty. The pattern of the stone mosaic on the floor is symmetrical, slate gray—or is it blue?—smoothed to a preternatural shine, while the walls are washed a cool white. I walk through various rooms: a bedroom that nobody sleeps in with midnight velvet hangings, a library crammed with books, and a parlor overlooking an exquisite garden full of night-blooming flowers so rare that if they exist anywhere else, I’ve never seen them.

When I lived here before, I wandered around alone for what felt like a long time, crying, until the cook took pity on me and let me sit in the corner of the kitchen. Like always, I was looking for Rain and Fen and not finding them. They should have engaged someone to look after me, but I have never factored into their considerations. I exist and they feed me. That is the extent of our interactions.

Their indifference is breathtakingly cruel.

Today, they’re in residence. The staff is buzzing about it, and it’s like we’ve been visited by the gods when they’re present.

I creep up to the library door. These are my “parents,” though I’ve only seen them a few times. They’re gone a lot, and they seldom speak to me—or even glance at me—but I’m always looking at them. Their wondrous beauty makes me ache; I can never compete with the child they lost, the one they never stopped trying to find. The one I can’t replace.

I hear them talking, but I can’t hear everything, and they don’t even notice when I slip into the room and curl up in a corner. I wrap my arms around my knees, trying to make myself smaller, always smaller. If only I could disappear and stop being the wrong child, the wrong person. Unwanted.

“What are we supposed to do with her?” Rain asks.

Fen shrugs. “I don’t know. I feel sorry for her, pitiful little thing.”

Rain says, “Can’t we leave her with Mudge? He seems to like her.”

“Shouldn’t we formalize the arrangement?” Fen asks.

I love Mudge. He takes me out into the wildlands, and I don’t feel sad there. There’s no one to tell me that I don’t belong. I would prefer to stay with him if I was offered the choice. Not that I will be. Rain and Fen don’t seem to think of me as a person, not even a small one. That means my wishes are irrelevant.

I fight the urge to cry. Loneliness is a weight on my chest, tightening, tightening, tightening, until I can’t breathe. Light flashes, white-hot intensity.

Rain and Fen are gone. Shadows deepen, slithering toward me like shades of dead things that want to swallow me whole. Into that silence comes a little scratch-scratch-scratch at the back of my mind, and at first I try to resist, imagining it’s some awful intrusion. But then it starts to feel familiar.

I know this person, don’t I?