The Magical Year of a Teenage Witch

[IsabellaRose]

Dear Diary,

 

My name is Esme Alcina Chauderon, and I’m a witch. Well, I’m almost a witch. I was born marked, destined to become a witch, but I had to wait until my powers came to me. It was supposed to happen at some point, the year that the universe would open up to me, when my magic would be amplified and the foundations of my witch powers set, when I would come into my power.

They call it a “Magical Year”, and for me it came late, like everything else in my life. It starts as early as thirteen for some witches, and I’d been looking forward to mine the way most girls look forward to their first love. It meant I would move away from my family, be on my own, experience everything it means to be a witch. Supernatural entities would be drawn to me, magic would come naturally, and skills would be acquired easily.

But like my first kiss, my period, and everything else in my life, mine came late. I was seventeen, three months shy of being eighteen, when it came upon me. My inborn talent manifested.

I had a bad day. No, that’s not accurate. I had the worst day ever. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I was failing three classes in school, went to work and lost my job, caught my girlfriend cheating, and when I got home distraught and near tears, my parents sat us down to tell us they were getting divorced. Everything was falling apart.

I felt like giving up, like nothing mattered. I was supposed to be some powerful witch, but instead I was just a failure. I wished I could just go away, anywhere but where I was, and just like that, I did. One minute I was on my bed, depressed and near tears, and the next I was out my window, airborne, flying up into the night sky. It happened so fast, I had no idea what I was doing or how I was doing it. I was just flying.

I was scared because I couldn’t stop. I just kept going up. I started to panic, worrying that I might just keep going up until there was no air. I was pretty sure magic wouldn’t protect me in the vacuum of space. I was freaking out, almost hyperventilating, and then a thought occurred to me. I was doing this. Not anyone else, not some outside power. Me. My power made me go up. I could stop it. As soon as I thought it, I stopped.

I was hovering in midair. I could see darkness below me, the moon on the horizon, and so many stars above, so bright, almost close enough to touch. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and focused my mind. When I opened my eyes, I was still hovering. I thought about heading downward, and slowly, ever so slowly, I descended. It took a while to figure it out, but eventually I made it back home, back in my window and into my room.

I wondered if I could move anything else with my power, and after sliding a pen and a small eraser across my desk without touching them, I used my power to lift them into the air. I lifted my journal off the desk, then my old stuffed bear. Soon I had all the loose objects in my room hovering in the air, and then they began to spin around me. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, my things spun around me. I laughed quietly to myself, then louder as the dance became a whirlwind, then a maelstrom. When my laughter reached manic levels and items were spinning in a blur around me, my mother opened the door, took one look at what was happening, screamed, and then slammed the door shut. Everything fell to the floor.

Naturally there was no discussion. My mother would no longer speak to me, so my father contacted Aunt Cassandra and helped me pack. By noon the next day I was on a train to the city to start my magical year.

Aunt Cassandra is also a witch. Every generation in my family a witch is born. I am the witch of this generation. My Aunt Cassandra is the witch from the previous generation even though she’s only eight years older than me. Before Aunt Cassandra, it had been thirty years since a witch was born into our family, my Great-Aunt Annabelle who was just as much of an outcast from the family as I was. Aunt Cassandra was the only one accepted by her own parents.

Mother hated Aunt Cassandra, hated everything about her and what she was going to become. She was only a child when my parents married, but Mother wouldn’t allow her into our house. When I was born, their second daughter, and I was marked with the sign, she hated me, too. I wasn’t her child, I was the family witch. My little sister was born less than a year after me. Mother needed a baby to love, and she couldn’t love the thing I would become, so she couldn’t love me, even as an infant.

Daddy took care of me, and my big sister Hope was kind to me despite my mother’s obvious dismissal. When my little sister Grace was born, I might as well have disappeared. Middle child syndrome doesn’t even begin to cover it. But I got to visit my grandparents and Aunt Cassandra, at least until she left for her magical year when I was eight. We’d barely kept in touch since.

Now here I was, off to live with her, staring down the aisle of the train that would take me away from everything I ever knew as my father put my baggage in the compartment over my seat. He gave me a hug, told me not to worry, that Aunt Cassandra would help me get settled, that I was about to start an exciting new part of my life. He told me that he was proud of me and how strong I was, that he’d keep in touch. He said a lot of things trying to reassure me, but eventually he had to step down onto the platform. I watched him and both my sisters wave as the train started moving slowly down the tracks. I waved back and felt a strange combination of fear and resignation wash over me.

I’d spent most of my time in my hometown of Orchard Hollow and had never even been outside the five towns in Margrave Valley. We’d hiked and camped in the foothills, but I’d never been over the mountains much less to the city. But as the train pulled out, I remember that Aunt Cassandra had never returned. Now I was off to start my magical year. Would I ever come back to the place I called home?