This was not the response I was expecting. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
She busies herself with a piece of lint on her sleeve, trying to avoid eye contact.
“Fi?”
“I just think you might be putting two and two together and making five.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“The snow melting … like, it probably just melted on its own, Maeve.”
“But… It didn’t.”
“Do you have any proof of that, though?” asks Fiona, with a face like she’s picking a scab off a little too soon.
I think for a moment. “Well, no,” I admit. “But I know it was. I was in the circle and…”
“And the water drops fell on your head. It sounds very cinematic and everything, but…”
“Cinematic?”
“It’s just hard to believe.”
I’m silent. How could she think this? After everything we’ve been through? After everything else she’s been willing to believe, this is where the line is?
“I think if you were there, you would understand,” I plead. “If you cast a spell with me, you would know how it feels. Everything feels … more real, somehow?”
“I don’t think I want to know how it feels. It seems a bit … deluded.”
My eyes sting with hurt. Deluded?
“I don’t understand. You believed the whole thing about the White Lady. All that. But this is too far? The fact that … that there’s real power out there, and we can access it?”
Fiona bites her nails and looks uncomfortable. “I’m sorry! I just don’t believe that a sixteen-year-old girl in her bathroom can control the weather! We’re not in X-Men.”
I start packing up my lunch, throwing my uneaten banana back into my school bag.
“Maeve. Don’t.”
I can’t sit with her right now. I love hanging out with Fiona. But I spent too long stuffing myself down to impress girls at St Bernadette’s. The longer I sit here and listen to her tell me that I’m not capable of magic – real magic – the more I’ll believe it, and the less likely I’ll ever be able to do it again. The epiphany of yesterday, the sense that I could channel the bad parts of myself into good things, is not something I can afford to let go of. Not when Lily feels so close.
“I just want to be alone, OK?” I blurt. “It’s not personal.”
“It is.”
“OK, it is, but I’m not mad at you. You don’t have to believe me. But I have to believe me. It’s the only way I can find a way out of this.”
“OK,” she says reluctantly.
“Friends?” I say.
“Friends,” she agrees. She smiles weakly at me in confirmation. “Just promise me you won’t hurt yourself.”
“I promise.”
And I leave. I leave the art room. I can’t believe it. It’s like something from a play: exit Maeve. The only time I ever leave a room is to storm out of it. But I laid a boundary with Fiona, a clear one, and even if it seems objectively crazy to do so, it feels like the right step. Uncomfortable, but correct.
After school I head down to Divination to ask the shopkeeper about spell ingredients.
“Maeve,” she says pleasantly. “How’r’ya keeping?”
“I’m OK,” I smile back. “I’m actually getting into spells, a little bit.”
“That’s gas! Well done, Maeve. Congrats. Any good ones so far?”
“Well, I think…” I venture this slowly, not wanting to convince another person that I’m insane. “I think I might have helped end the cold snap.”
“Ah, now, was that you?” She smiles, her face weary. “Thanks be to God! I’ve been trying to work on that myself for about a week.”
“Is that what you were doing the other day? When we were last here? I thought I heard you chanting something under your breath.”
“I was.” She nods. “I was working away on a few things, to be honest.”
“Like what?”
“Ah, it’s all a bit complicated. But whenever there’s a shift in energy, there’s always a knock-on effect, you know?”
I remember Sylvia, and how she talked about weights and counterweights in the magical world.
“Like a see-saw,” I say.
“Exactly. Although I think of it more like Jenga. Or dominoes. It’s all just games, stuff knocking other stuff out of the way, or pushing it forward. A bar fight between every known force in the universe, all sliding around Kilbeg. I can feel it in the air.”
“And how is that –” I try to look for the most magical word I know – “manifesting, I guess?”
She fixes her eyes on me, considering her answer. “Well, on sensitives, Maeve Chambers. On sensitives.”
My face must look idiotic and confused, because she starts laughing at my blank expression. “Now, tell me this isn’t the first time you’ve heard that word.”
“Sensitive?” I repeat. “Like, when your feelings get hurt easily. Is that what you mean?”
“Not quite. Being a sensitive is a word we use to talk about people who … well, let’s say they’re tuned into a slightly different frequency. They’re on a higher plane.”
I stare at her, mute.
“I’m not being very clear, am I?” She starts again slowly. “A person who is a sensitive might have a greater natural access to magic. They might come to spells or tarot easier. They might … I don’t know, find that certain magical skills, like telepathy, come to them naturally.”
I stop dead. My mouth is completely dry, and I keep flapping it open and closed. “I … uh … am I a …?”
“A sensitive?” The shopkeeper smiles. “Yes, Maeve Chambers. You’re a sensitive. I knew from the first day you came in.”
“Are there … a lot of us?”
“Hard to say. You’re the first I’ve met in a long, long time, and I tend to run in the kinds of circles where you meet more than average. Most never get to find out. They just spend their whole lives feeling a bit too big for their own skin.”
“Are you … are you one?”
“Me? No. Heaven was, and that didn’t go too well, but I’m just an enthusiast. A good study. A kitchen witch,” she laughs. “A village crone.”
Heaven. Her sister. She’s mentioned her before, I think. The first
