Sticky Witch XII
Acting like Spiderman hurts
Rosen is part of the Mundane Magecraft team engaged in house restoration, protection, and charm work across Southwest England. Her team has been called in to deal with an angry water spirit at the Avon Docks, which has already damaged a crane and a ship. Rosen’s running repairs, but will she survive the fallout? Catch up with the last episode or read the entire story (for free) from the beginning.
You don’t have to be close to a sea-spout in order to get wet. It’s perfectly possible to do so within 50 feet, bringing a whole new meaning to a walk on the wild side.
In my case, I got soaked during the world’s most unhinged scramble up the side of a ship. Spiderman couldn’t have made better time than I, squelching on and off the hull with magic. It’s not something I would have thought possible at high speed, but terror is persuasive. By the time I dropped onto the deck, my hands were stinging and my knees were sore.
The ship was lurching now as though it were on the open sea in a storm, its hull shuddering under assault. John half-dragged, half-carried me to the wheelhouse where the crew and the hull-climber had taken refuge. We needed help just to open the door against the wind and climb inside. As soon as it slammed shut, the noise dropped, warmth seeped in, and I realised how sodden my clothes were. In the corner, the Captain was updating the port authorities with metronic calm on our status, whilst one of the sailors bustled forward with the first-aid kit. They were all wearing life jackets.
“Roz, you’re hurt,” John said.
I snapped back to him, aware it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken. l lifted my hands up to my face, realising in a muted sort of way that I’d scraped the top layer of my skin off. My palms were bright red, and my finger pads were wet with blood. I didn’t feel any pain, but that was probably the adrenaline at work.
“If you do her hands, I’ll do her legs,” the sailor said. He led me toa chair, whilst a second crew member wrapped a foil blanket around me. Oh great, now I felt like a crisp packet.
“How bad is it?” I asked John, who was dabbing at my fingers with an antiseptic wipe. A moment later, I felt the same sting on my knees. I glanced down - yep, there were two ragged holes in my trousers where the fabric had been ripped out, and my skin was a mess. I began to feel sick.
“Hey, keep your eyes on me and report,” John ordered softly. He stepped sideways as the ship dipped starboard and grabbed the first-aid kit as it slid off the side.
“I knitted the worst of the stress fractures,” I said, staring at his chin. It was soft with stubble - when had John last shaved? “It's holding there, but the spirit could tear the hull elsewhere. I think we…” The sailor to the left of me shouted, causing the rest of us to turn in his direction.
The waterspout had widened, sucking the Morning Pride into it’s wake. I felt the reciprocal tug of the mooring lines before the ship bounced back and collided with the dockside with a sickening crash.
I gripped the side of the chair, convinced we were going to sink or capsize. A small part of my brain was shrieking at me that this was ridiculous - we were in a harbour for God’s sake - but that spout was not natural and neither was the situation.
“Lyahamba!” shouted the sailor, pointing.
The spout was twisting away, its top bending towards the harbour mouth as though someone had plucked a thread from its funnel. I squinted - I could see something small and black on the harbour wall. The captain had picked up his binoculars and tried to move forward with a muttered exclamation.
John gave me a small shake. “Release them.”
I blinked. “Sorry.” I had not realised I’d stuck everyone down. I undid my death grip on the chair and allowed everyone else to move. The captain walked to the starboard window and stared at the harbour wall.
“Yisangoma!” The captain said. “He must be mad.”
“What’s he doing?” John asked.
“He has a stick in his mouth.”
We looked at each other and the crew - I think we were all equally baffled. Outside, the sea-spout continued to move away from us and towards the magician on the wall. The captain stared, transfixed.
“He’s calling to it,” he said.
“Please, let me look,” said John, hand outstretched for the binoculars. “I might be able to advise.”
It took him a short while - a witch’s lifetime - to focus on the man despite the moving deck. I knew the moment he had from the visible jolt across his body. “It’s a flute”, John said, astonished. “He’s whistling up the wind!”
“You’re kidding me,” I echoed, with the same disbelief. “Who is he?”
“No one we know. White hair, beard, raincoat…wait - he’s signalling…”
We all glared at John impatiently. At the same time, the wind dropped, leaving the boat calm. I switched my gaze to the window, just in time to see the spout dissipate. With a metal grumble, the ship sagged, listing ominously towards the port.
“I’ll be boon-doggled,” John said, finally. “He calmed it down from a full tempest, and now he’s guiding it out.” He pointed to the playful swell of water which gambolled next to the harbour wall, in direct contradiction to the waves.
“Thank goodness,” I said with relief. “We should pro’bly get out of here.” I was starting to slur my words as the impact from the last few minutes kicked in. “I want pancakes.”
*
There were no pancakes on board, although I did get tea and malva pudding, thanks to the crew. The hull was battered, but still intact, which was John’s prognosis for me, too.
I refused the stretcher and safety evac, in favour of a quick walk to the ambulance. Surprise, surprise, it was staffed by my favourite medic, Liam. He gave me his trademark grin, and I melted a little inside.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said, putting an extra spin on his accent. “Twice in two days is too much.”
I’d love to,” I agreed, tongue firmly in cheek. Liam had an uptuft of hair at his temple just calling for someone to smooth it down. “There’s got to be a better way to get your attention than hurting myself.”
He chuckled as I sat on the ambulance floor, legs dangling over the edge. His humour faded a bit when he saw my red palms with the blue plasters, decorating my fingers like a row of small hats. “How did you do this? Magic misfire? A duel?”
“Ship’s hull”, I replied, resisting the urge to lean into him. In my defence, it had been a long three days, and he smelled delicious. Liam patted me on the shoulder before moving towards the back of the ambulance. I heard plastic trays open and shut.
“When did you last have a tetanus jab?” he called out.
I shrugged. “I can’t remember,” I yelled back.
Latika appeared then. She had ditched the waterproof in favour of an embroidered jacket that matched her bright pink beanie hat and darker pink lipstick. She looked fabulous, making me even more aware of my drowned clothes. Liam came back with a disposable phial in his hands. He did a double-take at Latika, then focused on me.
“I’m giving you a tetanus booster to be on the safe side,” he said. “It goes into the thigh, so we just need you to drop your trousers. Let’s get you into the van and close the door.”
“I’m going to struggle with my hands like this,” I said, wiggling my fingers. Manoeuvring wet denim with raw skin was not going to work.
“I’ll help,” Latika offered. “I’ve done it for my baby sisters all the time.”
If I could roll into a ball and die of embarrassment, I would have done so, then.
“Sounds good,” Liam said cheerfully. I looked up to catch him checking out Latika, his eyes flicking between her face and her slim torso.
He wouldn’t be interested in me anyway, I told myself, and almost believed it.
*
Aidan walked me back to the car, where I stripped off my wet layers, snuggled under a blanket and slept. He manfully held his tongue about sailors and friction jokes until we were both back at our parents’ higgledy-piggledy cottage. The whole thing was a money pit with a thatched roof and unexplained hollow spaces in the walls. Aidan still lived there, supposedly in one room but spreading his collection of sneakers and Star Wars models through the house. It was a constant battle over surface space with Mum, who owned two cats and two hundred paintbrushes. Dad mostly stayed out of the way, in his shed or on the joint allotment with the neighbours. Today, however, he was in the kitchen, watching the morning news. I recognised our local MP, smiling as he entered 10 Downing Street. Underneath the ticker tape said Malcolm Anderson for Home Secretary?
“Smug git,” Aidan muttered. Since he was a paid-up card-carrying member of the UK’s Communist Party, I ignored the jibe. Dad turned off the TV and enveloped me in a hug, before supplying me with Mum’s dressing gown.
I suppose I should describe him at this point. Dad’s as tall as Aidan, with more hair in his beard than his head and a paunch to match. He’s also strong, in the way the North Pole is strong; so sure of his place in the world that you can bend gravity round it. Dad’ll never light the world on fire nor lead it, but when everything’s broken, he’s the man you turn to to fix it.
I sagged in his embrace.
“Mum’s gone shopping and your bed’s made up,” he said. “I’ll get the kettle on, petal.”
Dad’s other quality is listening. He did so, without interruption, to my story of the past three days, as he brewed tea and sat us down. “Sounds like a mess,” he said finally. “Like water in a house.”
Dad fits bathrooms for a living.
Aidan swung on his chair next to me at the kitchen table, earning a ritual slap across his head from Dad. It had been going on for years, to the point where both of them do it automatically. I tapped my mug as I tried to work out the analogy.
“Do you mean a magical leak?” I asked. “Because that’s why we repaired all the henges around Europe. Places like Avebury are supposed to stop rogue magic from manifesting.”
Dad shook his head. “I mean, it’s not a coincidence. When a shower leaks, things start out small. You get musty smells or low water pressure. Your bills go up. Then you get a clue by the peeling wallpaper or a watermark on the ceiling, or a fungal corner, at which point it’s already too late and you’re looking at structural damage. You need to work backwards to the source, which might signal as something insignificant”
Aiden looked amused. “Are you comparing Avebury Henge falling over to dry rot?” He exchanged an incredulous look with me-or tried to-when he saw I was taking it seriously.
“No one realised the scale of the subsidence with the houses,” I said thoughtfully. “That’s like the low pressure in your water leak problem.”
“Magic isn’t water,” Aidan said flatly. He had refused magical testing, but it’d been a constant subject at the dinner table for years. “You’ve always told me how hard it is to summon and control.”
“It’s changed,” I said. “Up until now, it’s mostly been human witches or mages screwing things up. But Em’s convinced that the earthquakes are not human, and John says the same for the Avebury. I know there wasn’t any human agency behind that poltergeist attempt, and Glenda’s convinced that wild magic is back. That siren water spirit was the biggest elemental I’ve ever seen.”
Dad looked into his mug, as though he were reading the dregs. “For the first time in my life, I find myself agreeing with the Hale witch. If it’s that big, Rosen, you need to speak to your brother. Mark’s the expert.”