The Witches #12

 
As a child Sap had many, many ambitions. She was entranced by every aspect of the world in a way her parents didn’t understand; she looked at each dawn with wonder and delight, her eyes so wide as if she would take it all in and never forget a second. More times than they could count they would find her out of bed in the middle of the night gazing at the moon, the clouds, the shadows, the night animals, dancing amongst the rain and thunder or lying beneath a sprawling oak. She had never slept easily, her questions too loud and too many, her curiosity waking her as those around her slept on - she worried about missing even a moment. 
    As a child she was short and what some people called “muffin shaped” and what she called “I am a child, mind your own business.” Her hair was cropped and curly, a caramel brown that sparkled with sunlight, and she had a penchant for dungarees. When she was a little older she developed freckles: one day they were not there, the next they were, like hundreds of stars had kissed her. They became her favourite part of herself.

A year later she broke her nose, shoulder and wrist in a broom accident. All the injuries healed, but she was left with a scar that cut through one eyebrow and disappeared into her hairline, slicing a line through her freckles and dividing them forever. For two years she refused to fly, although not for the reasons everyone seemed to believe. She wasn’t afraid. She was mad. She was furious and heartbroken that her freckles would never be the same, that something so stupid and feeble and avoidable had stolen her favourite part of herself and she could never change it.

As an adult (relatively unchanged except now she only wore dungarees) Sap realised there were spells she could learn that would remove the scar, but by then it was as much a part of who she was as her smile, and more than that… she had forgiven it, the twisting scar that had changed over the years just as she had. She looked at it and saw not a reminder of what she had lost, but simply herself.

For all her dreams, adventures, wonder and curiosity, there was one thing Sap was never interested in: being queen.

Having been born of a certain bloodline, her many relations found this: amusing, hard to believe, irritating, infuriating and a waste of her potential, but Sap stood firm. She knew the throne was not the place for her, that there was a whole world of more suitable, passionate candidates, even if they didn’t have sixteen uncles and aunts who had held the crown before them.

She decided to open a flying school and a broom shop and there was nothing she loved more than a day spent in the air, flying beyond her knowledge and seeing where the wind took her, collecting ingredients and feathers - so many feathers - for all the brooms she wanted to make and all the magic she wanted to do.

She led such a wonderful life and she enjoyed it so very much.

 And then, aged fifty, after five decades of ruling her life exactly the way she chose, Sap became queen. The weight of the crown atop her head broke her heart, but she did not cast it off. She accepted it for one reason and one reason only: so that she could change the rules.

Her shop and school and a thousand more adventures were waiting for her, would wait as long as it took, and she could not wait to rejoin them.

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