The Witches #10

 The witch Foxglove had known Daphne, Tulip and Lilac almost her whole life. She had witnessed the heartbreak, been a founding member of Lilac’s classical-mage band and collected flora with Tulip on many occasions, although Foxglove’s habit of only looking at mushrooms, spores and other fungi did often leave her trailing far behind.

She had first met the sisters at the beach they holidayed at as children; that first autumn, all of them under eight and refusing to remove their pointy hats even when they went in the sea, Foxglove had fallen into their lives with an ease she had never before felt. They dug motes for her sea to channel through, freed crabs and turtles from the hands of indelicate humans (and a very persnickety elf, who misguidedly believed four young girls would be no great threat) and they swam! Oh they swam until their arms ached and their lungs burned with laughing - and when they could swim no more, Foxglove held their hands and swam for them, moving through the ocean so fast it was like the waves were her broom.

When they could hold their breath long enough, Foxglove took them deeper, showing them the world she called home, the plants she loved, the animals she befriended and the caverns she explored. Her true passion was the breath of the sea, the underwater currents, the way a patch of ocean could be so very still while everything around it moved like a whirlwind. She learned the ways of rips and tides, the pull of the moon and the secrets of whirlpools, wanting to understand it all.

When her new friends asked, she told them the truth: that she was an ocean witch, a water witch, her home among the waves. She had known other children in other seasons, heard stories of land and sea and the fight between them, but these witches didn’t flinch, merely widened their eyes in wonder and acceptance and love.

The day the girls were to leave, that first autumn, Lilac, Tulip and Daphne ran to Foxglove in tears, begging her to come and stay with them in the spring.

‘I can’t possibly wait another year!’ Daphne wailed. ‘I don’t ever want to leave,’ sobbed Tulip, and Lilac just wept and held Foxglove tight.

‘Mama? Mother?’ Foxglove turned to her siren mothers, their windswept kelp hair lashing in the late autumn wind; they looked like a sunday storm, a ocean in the midst of deepest passion, sea spray like a mist catching on their arms, cheeks. They looked at these young girls, witches of the land their daughter had become friends with, and they hesitated, just long enough for Foxglove to turn to them. She didn’t speak, but with her eyes she said, ‘They are good and they are my friends.’

So they nodded and smiled, faces breaking into softness like the sun as they pulled the crying girls into their strong arms, children who had bustled into their lives and showed no signs of leaving.

Eventually the sisters town became as much Foxglove’s home as the sea, or at least a place she always loved to spend the spring; she kept a small pond at the edge of town and a small shed at the base of the garden where she studied storms in a bottle, tide magic and the effect of salt on seaweed growth. 

It was a small space, a garden shed outfitted with buckets and apparitions and approximately all the teaspoons the sisters ever owned - but it was still a garden shed. The perfect size for Foxglove and no more, attested by the fact Daphne had suggested a sleep out in it once and they had lasted all of fifteen minutes.

There was no room for dragons. Not even babies.

‘And Gary doesn’t like… what is that, actually?’ Foxglove asked, looking at the creature held in Daphne’s arms. Gary, Foxglove’s sea snake, hissed from his tank in the shed, pointedly glowing a deep shade of red.

‘I’m not… sure…’ Daphne mused, trying to heft the beast into Foxglove’s arms all the same. Foxglove kept them resolutely crossed. After the whole tadpole event, she was very careful not to accept anything from Daphne without reading a full statement as to what it was, expectations, whether it would evolve into five hundred angry frogs that would refuse to leave for the next year, that sort of thing.

‘I can’t, Daph. I’ve already got the nixie in my pond to deal with. I’m sorry.’

‘Good for you,’ Tulip said, giving Foxglove a thumbs up. ‘We told her not to ask, but she would go ahead. No one forgets that many frogs. I’m surprised you even came back this spring - glad, of course! But I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d wanted to avoid us for a while.’

‘The frogs are… not forgotten,’ Foxglove looked at Lilac, who attempted a wave and failed, ‘but forgiven, certainly. Besides, mama said if I didn’t bring you back with me this year she’d fly over herself. You’ve been away far too long.’

Daphne hummed, turning the creature around to face her and looking it over. Its tail swished and it tried to tuck its beak into her hair, only succeeding in knocking her pointy hat off. Lilac, occupied with herding the six dragons in any direction, so long as it was all the same one, watched as the hat fell to the ground and was swarmed by all but one dragon, the last of which had fallen onto its side in the grass and was snoring.

‘I… I’ll think of something.’

The character of Foxglove is dedicated to my lovely friend Harriet.

  The Witches is a serial story, published every week on Thursday/Friday. See you then!