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When the sun set, Gimble ushered Elliot out her back door, onto a plush lawn on Vashon Island. She should be used to it by now, but Elliot couldn’t shake the feeling she was still on Beacon Hill. On the lawn was a nice fire pit, a small but eager fire crackling away inside the ring of stone. Torches lined either side of a wide path out to the bluff that overlooked the water, and to the ever darkening sky. The last bits of day faded into a soft purple at the horizon, disappearing behind the Olympic Mountains.
Ty and Meryl waited for Elliot at the fire pit, standing side by side. They were both dressed for the oncoming weather — it had already started to mist, clouds pushing away the sunset, the hoods on their jackets pulled up over their ears. Ty held with her a bundle of sticks, though when Elliot got closer, she could see the sticks were brooms, the old kind, made from mostly straight branches and straw. They stopped their warm chatting when Elliot approached, looking her over. Elliot zipped up her hoodie, pulling it back over her shoulders. She looked at both of them, suddenly feeling small and inadequate. All the same, Meryl ran up to her and nearly tackled her with a hug.
“This is so exciting!” Meryl said. “You’re going to have so much fun.”
“Is it easy?” Elliot asked, eyeing the brooms, her ears twitching in thought.
“It’s kind of like driving stick,” Ty said. “Once you get it, you don’t forget it.”
Elliot frowned. Ostensibly she had a drivers license…
Gimble stepped up behind Elliot and gently guided her forward. “I would tell you that this is a very important day in a young witches life, and so on. Picking a broom is fairly pedestrian, I’m afraid.”
“It’s still fun,” Meryl said.
“Plus, you want to get one that feels right anyway,” Ty added. She set the brooms down and arranged them on the damp grass.
“Did you make those?” Elliot asked, watching Ty line the brooms up.
Ty nodded. “Meryl finds the sticks for me when she’s out on duty on the peninsula.”
“On dut-” Elliot started, but Ty was quick to interrupt her.
“I add the magic that makes them go,” she said.
“You can do that?” Elliot asked, almost whispering.
Gimble patted Elliot’s shoulder. “Most of us can, Ty just happens to be the best at it.”
Ty looked away, but not before a she tried to hide a shy smile.
“So,” Gimble said, stepping forward. “Which one strikes your fancy?”
Elliot looked over the brooms. They were, for lack of a better word, brooms. Some of them had longer straw than others, but she wasn’t sure if that made a difference or not. Maybe if you wanted to light the straw on fire and fly on a burning broom. That’d look cool. Elliot smiled a little at the thought, and realized her mind was drifting.
“I think that’s the one,” Ty said.
Elliot looked down. She had held out her hand without thinking, and just out of her reach, one of the brooms hovered, parallel to the ground.
“I didn’t…” She started. She didn’t know how to finish that sentence. “Does it like me?”
“Nah,” Ty said. “I don’t know if it’s thinking about that.”
“It’s more like you’re a good fit,” Gimble said. “Now, grab it and bring it to you.”
Elliot did, carefully wrapping her hand around the broom. There was the slightest tingle when she touched the broom, just a little, and the fur on her arm stood on end.
Gimble reached out her hand and a moment later a broom descended from the sky, sidling down next to her. She took it and positioned it in front of her.
“This next part you know. Get comfortable on the broom, and once you do we’ll work on getting off the ground.”
Elliot stared at the broom for a moment. Slowly, she sat on the broom, like she had seen in so many movies and TV shows. She blushed. This was silly, wasn’t it? Still, Meryl and Ty watched eagerly, excited for her to fly for the first time.
Gimble sat on her broom side-saddle, and Elliot marveled as she lifted her feet off the ground, the broom supporting her weight. “Remember,” she said, “this is about intention. I’m doing this because I intend to. To fly, you need to intend to fly.”
Elliot blinked. She made it sound so easy. She was literally asking Elliot to imagine she was violating the laws of physics, just like- uhp! There it was!
Elliot’s eyes grew wide. Her feet lifted off the ground, just a few inches, the broom lifting her gently. She gasped, and the broom gave way, dropping her back to her feet.
“That’s a good start!” Meryl said. “That was a good five, six inches!”
“Try to find that again,” Ty said.
Elliot took stock of what had just happened, and it was just like what Gimble said: She intended to fly, so she flew. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and concentrated. She felt her feet leave the ground again, and she peeked, just a little, watching the ground slowly drift away from her.
The broom itself was surprisingly comfortable, and she realized the magic was mostly supporting her weight. The broom was just for show, maybe? She didn’t really know what to make of it.
Gimble drifted up to her. “You’re doing great,” she said. “Try moving around.”
Meryl grabbed a broom. She climbed on and sped over to a tree. “Come over here!” Ty picked up her own broom and trotted into a running start, jumping on the broom and gliding to Meryl.
Elliot hadn’t made it to the getting around part yet. She leaned a couple of different ways, but she stayed stable where she was. So then, she figured, the trick must have been the same as flying itself.
She puttered forward, slowly, a little shakily, but forward all the same. And she moved forward because she intended to.
When she got to Meryl and Ty, Meryl leaned over and hugged her. “Good job!”
“Thanks,” Elliot said, her voice shaking.
Gimble floated to them, somehow looking elegant and serious. She greeted Elliot with a warm smile. “Very good! Now let’s try moving around more. The torches go all around this property. You can follow them.”
Elliot nodded. She started forward, leaving Meryl to slip off of her and hang upside down off her broom. Ty and Meryl followed Elliot and Gimble as Elliot navigated the course. Meryl slowly turned herself upright, but didn’t seem too much in a hurry to.
“So…” Elliot started. “I’ve been wondering… like, about dark magic. I don’t want to do it or anything but… if my intentions are bad, wouldn’t that be dark magic?”
“That’s very astute,” Gimble said. “Dark magic relies on the darkness within you. But that doesn’t mean bad intentions bring it out.”
“Bad intentions help, though,” Ty said.
“This is a good time to talk about principals,” Gimble said. “I know you’ve heard of the Three Fold Rule.”
“Don’t put anything out into the world you don’t want coming back to you three-fold?” Elliot said.
“Exactly that. Magic is tricky. For the most part we play very well together, because it appreciates having someone to play with. But magic also does what it wants. You give it a hole to fill and it will fill that hole.”
“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Ty said. “Magic adores it. Nature seeks to fill a vacuum right away. Magic decides what fills that vacuum.”
“That’s dark magic?” Elliot asked, her eyes wide.
“Dark magic is much worse than that. It’s destructive, not just to whom you inflict it on,” Gimble said, “but to you as well. Dark magic is very agreeable. It will be very pleasing to you, and very easy to look past its transgressions, because it will insure that you do.”
“Always pay attention to your magic,” Ty said. “If something in your gut feels wrong, you need to undo what you’re doing immediately.”
“Your instinct is your best tool as a witch,” Gimble said. “Your instinct is more often than not paying attention to things you’d never see, to the things dark magic counts on you not seeing. Always pay attention to your intuition.”
Elliot nodded. She looked around, realizing they were halfway through a loop of the torches. She was still flying, and it was amazing.
Meryl, who had been listening patiently, finally said, “There’s no such thing as good or bad magic.”
“Meryl…” Ty said, her voice wary.
“You can have bad intentions casting a good spell,” Meryl said. “You can have good intentions casting a bad spell. Magic really doesn’t care which is which. Magic is a tool for you to use.”
“Hey Cheeks,” Ty said. “This isn’t useful.”
“It is what it is,” Meryl said. “Magic uses you one way or another. The only way to use it properly is to lock down your parameters.”
“Meryl was educated in magic differently than we were,” Gimble said. “You’d do best to stay away from dark magic, at least until you master good magic.”
“Do what you want,” Meryl said. “Experiment. You’ll have to anyway. But they’re right, listen to your gut. And if you get in over your head, come get us.”
Ty reached out to pull Meryl to her. “We are very much in a fight right now.”
Meryl dodged and she lifted off into the sky. “Can’t fight me up heeeeeeere!”
Elliot let out a laugh. She banked into a turn, getting faster and shot up into the sky, past Meryl, before drifting back down to her.
“Look at you!” Meryl said.
Elliot looked down at Gimble’s house below, at the torches making what looked like a landing strip, at the little fire, and at Ty and Gimble, looking back up at them. She laughed, in spite of everything, she was floating a hundred feet off the ground on a broom.
“So are you secretly evil or what?” Elliot asked.
Meryl beamed at her. “C’mon!” She darted away, leaving Elliot to chase her. They flew around the boundary laid out by Gimble, Elliot trying to catch Meryl, who always turned too tightly for Elliot to keep up.
Elliot’s stomach grumbled at her angrily, and she found herself sinking back to the earth. Her feet touched down, and Elliot crumbled to a heap on the ground. Gimble ran to her.
“Elliot!” She said, kneeling down next to the raccoon.
Elliot lifted her head. “So… hungry…”
Ty strolled over to them, hands in her pockets. Her tail twitched back and forth in amusement. “Yeah, I guess we left that part out, huh?”
Meryl landed gracefully next to them. “Using magic uses energy. Like swimming, but more exhausting.”
“Like any muscle, it gets easier the more you use it,” Gimble said.
“And like any muscle, you could use some protein right now,” Ty said.
“Oh! Can we go to Dick’s??” Meryl asked, her ears perking.
Elliot sat up. “Carry me. Carry me to burgs.”
Ty helped Elliot up. “Come on, let’s go.” She helped Elliot back to the house.
Elliot slept in the car. She didn’t remember leaving Beacon Hill, and ordering seemed hazy at best. But what did stick was her standing there on Capitol Hill, eating burgers with people who had just taught her how to fly.