Witch - By Fiona Horne Page 0,22

a dud, and that someone would walk in and wonder what on earth we were doing with the large bowl of incense on the table emitting somewhat toxic smoky plumes into the air.

‘Focus, focus, focus,’ Brenda murmured, and I started to feel irritated. Focus on what? That I was in over my head and spun-out that she was expecting me to make this feather change colour, which was scientifically impossible? But I needed to suck it up and deal with it. It had been my idea to form a coven and do magic, after all. I knew I was lucky that Brenda was sharing the wisdom of her ancestors with me. Still, I wanted to throw the stupid feather on the floor and go to the beach. It was a hot, sunny day outside.

Dean was out enjoying it. Brenda had sent him on a hike through the hills to pick some desert sage – a herb his Chumash ancestors had used. It would have been the job of the shaman to gather the sacred herbs for the tribe. The Chumash had carried and burned desert sage for protection, and Brenda said it was beneficial for anyone new to magic to carry a piece. I wanted protection from Mr Barrow’s persecution so I hoped Dean would bring back a ton of it. Brenda had given him a thorough briefing on what it looked like and where he would most likely find it, as well as some sage advice about gathering his spoils from higher up on the plant, in case a dog had peed around the base. ‘You’ve got to be practical as well as magical,’ she had said brightly, sending him off carrying a lunch bag containing a sandwich and cookies. Talk about getting it easy.

Meanwhile, my mind was wandering and my butt was going numb from sitting on the wooden chair for so long, but Brenda kept insisting that I focus. She had also given me a sharp piece of purple amethyst crystal to hold to supposedly help magnify my magical powers, but as I gripped it harder and harder in frustration all it seemed to do was burn a hole in my palm.

I looked intently at the feather. White contains the seven colours of the light spectrum, so a different colour was in there somewhere – I just had to reveal it.

All of a sudden the front door of the cafe swung wide open and light streamed into the room.

‘Hey, Vania, are you in here?’

Bryce! His presence gave me a renewed jolt of energy.

I looked at the feather in my hand. It was now a pulsing flow of colours, like a fluffy rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet!

Bryce came to stand in front of me. ‘Awesome!’ he said.

All I could do was stare incredulously at the feather, my mouth opening and closing like my nickname.

‘Excellent, Vania,’ Brenda crooned. ‘Now you can wave it through the smoke.’

I passed the feather through the incense and saw it start to sparkle. There was a crackling sound as the sparks popped.

‘It’s not going to catch fire, is it?’ I asked Brenda, worried I was about to burn down her cafe.

‘No, Vania,’ Brenda said soothingly. ‘You have just harnessed the power in the ninety per cent of your brain that most of us generally don’t use. That noise you’re hearing is your own brain cells firing. The sparks are a visible expression of your inner magic. Everything is energy, as you know.’ With a flourish she whisked the feather from my hand and it immediately stopped sparkling and went back to its original colour.

‘Time for something to eat,’ Brenda said. She put the feather away in a drawer at the side of the cafe. Bryce and I sat there in silence – I think we were both in shock – as Brenda brought over some sandwiches and iced tea. She had told me before we started with the feather today that it was important to eat something after you did magic, to ground any excess energy so that it wouldn’t fly around and cause something weird to happen (as if making a feather look like it belonged in a disco wasn’t weird enough).

I was amazed – and thrilled – that I was able to make magic happen. And I hoped that the more skilled I became, the safer I’d feel, until I could forget about the tea-leaves omen, which had continued to pop in and out of my thoughts