Once finished mashing up her ingredients, Rita begins spooning them onto Finn’s wound. It looks all slimy and disgusting, but smells rather pleasant. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be at all outwardly magical. I’m a sucker for those shiny colours and lights.
“Would you like to be a part of the circle?” Rita asks me, I nod in enthusiasm.
Alvie comes over to sit with us and we all join hands. “All right, clear your minds boys and girls,” Rita begins, and we follow her directions, closing our eyes. “It would help if we could all envisage Finn’s leg healing tissue by tissue, knitting back together slowly until the skin is new again.” I try to do as she says, and the visualisation comes quite easily.
Finn sucks in a breath and says quietly, “The pain is receding already,” his is voice full of surprise.
We stay like that, holding hands and visualising for another minute or two before Rita’s voice fills the room again. “And now withdraw your thoughts.” Slowly I let my mind drift away from Finn’s leg and back to the present. I open my eyes and stare at the poultice, it doesn’t look gross any more, it’s all glittery and shimmering. Finn’s eyes are wide as he takes in the sight of his fairy dust covered wound. I smile and he meets my gaze, shaking his head in wonderment.
“You should go and rest now,” says Rita. Finn nods and rises from his seat, already walking distinctly straighter. He ascends the stairs, still shaking his head but not saying a word.
I sputter a laugh. “Now that’s definitely a first, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Finn speechless before.”
Rita shrugs her shoulders and addresses her mother, who has been sitting quietly beside Gabriel on the sofa all this time. “Mum, I want to go back to the house and see what I can salvage. There might be some things the fire didn’t get to.”
Noreen’s expression is worried. “I don’t think that would be safe honey, it’s only been a couple of hours.”
“I wasn’t asking,” is all Rita says in return, before getting up and stomping into the hallway. I hear her grabbing her goat from the hanger.
“I better go with her, make sure she’s okay,” says Alvie, hurrying out to Rita.
I see Noreen look to Gabriel pleadingly. “I’ll go too,” he says a second later, leaving me alone with Rita’s mum. The front door opens and shuts and they’re gone.
“Come on,” says Noreen, picking up the remnants of Rita’s healing spell. “Help me clean up this lot, will you love?”
I grab the bowl and follow her out to the kitchen. I hand it to Noreen and she begins rinsing it in the sink.
“Rita has always had a mind of her own,” she sighs, drying her hands on a dishcloth.
“I know. I think that’s one of the very first things I noticed about her,” I reply fondly, thinking of how much I disliked Rita when we first met. It’s odd when I consider just how much my opinion has changed since then.
Noreen goes to sit down by the table, wringing her hands, probably because she’s worried about the dangers of her daughter going into a dilapidated house.
She smiles at me then. “I’m glad you came back, Tegan. You’re the first friend Rita’s had since Alvie, and sometimes I don’t know how he even manages to put up with her sharp tongue. I suppose she’s always had to be independent, being the child of a one parent family.”
I sit down beside her and try to lighten the mood. “You know, for a while there I thought that Theodore might be Rita’s father, he kind of reminded me of her somehow. Where must my head have been, eh?”
Unfortunately, my attempt to make Noreen laugh doesn’t work. Her eyes widen in shock and she begins wringing her hands even more urgently now.
“Are you okay?” I ask, caught off guard by how she’s reacting.
Noreen is silent for a long minute before she whispers, “I was so yo
ung and foolish.”
Oh my God. Is she saying what I think she’s saying? Theodore is Rita’s dad. For some reason this revelation makes my heart thump loudly in my chest. And that’s not just because he’s the man who killed my mother. I knew there had to be a reason for Rita’s abilities with magic. This also makes me wonder about myself, and why exactly it is that I have magic in me too. My dad certainly is not a Sorcerer.
I remain quiet, waiting for Noreen to speak again. When she does she looks me directly in the eye. “I was only about your age, you know, when I had Rita. I became pregnant when I was travelling across Europe. I’d been spending a few months in Paris when I started keeping company with a group of Wiccans. I’d never heard of magic outside of fairy tales and story books before then. It was when they convinced me to join them at one of their rituals that I met Theodore.” She stops to take a deep breath, and I can see the memories as they flit across her deep brown eyes.
“He was intrigued to discover that I had been born and raised in Tribane, and began asking me lots of questions about the city. I know now why he was so interested, he hadn’t been able to return since he’d faked his own death, and I could tell him about the place he had once ruled over. His interest in me took me off guard, since he was the leader of the group and everyone seemed to worship the ground he walked on.”
I try to imagine a scenario where Theodore’s interest could be anything other than entirely creepy. But I can’t blame Noreen, surely she was too innocent to see past his flattery.
“What was he like?” I ask, intrigued to know whether Theodore had always been so terrifying and inhuman.
Noreen grins. “Admittedly, he wasn’t the handsomest of men, but he had a charisma about him that made it easy to look past his appearance. We spent a week or two together and within that time he taught me all about the supernatural world that had existed right under my nose. I learned a lot about witchcraft from him, I’ll admit that I was attracted to the idea of being able to do things other people couldn’t. I was so caught up in Theodore’s rhetoric that I became consumed by the desire to use magic to my advantage, to better my position in life. Then one day he disappeared and I never saw him again. I was angry at first and then I discovered I was pregnant,” she stops and grimaces.
“I considered getting rid of the baby, because I was so distraught that Theodore had left me all alone. But I pulled strength from somewhere and determined to keep my baby, it was the best decision I ever made. I was in a dark place for a while, but then Rita came along and changed my entire world. I realised that Theodore was wrong, that magic shouldn’t be used to gain power over others, but instead to better ourselves and the world around us. I returned to Tribane and raised my little girl, all the while teaching her that magic was something to cherish and respect and never to abuse.”