The Enchanted Writes Book One (6 page)

She looked down at the wand.

“We do not have much time; I have pushed her
into the warehouse for now, but my wall spell will fail. This is a
powerful witch, and it will take a full Witch Hunter to overcome
her.” Brick turned, but still had his hand clutched over hers.

There was no more fighting this situation.
There was no more doubting what was happening to her. All Henrietta
could do was stumble forward, her heels clicking loudly against the
uneven bitumen, but her grip never failing around her wand.

Brick was by her side, crossbow in hand, and
when they reached the wall of magical symbols and she hesitated, he
clamped a hand over her back and pushed her through.

Henrietta sucked in a breath, squealing as
she stumbled through the magical symbols. In her mind, her face
would singe off the second she touched them, but nothing of the
sort occurred. She managed to walk right through them as if they
were nothing but air. They did crackle though, and a few of them
collected around her as if they were feathers and she was tar. She
patted at them, shaking her arms, trying to dislodge them, Then
Brick slammed into her side, wrapped a hand around her middle, and
pulled her out of the way.

A shot of fire, as if propelled from a
flame-thrower, blasted past her, and would have collected her if
Brick hadn't moved when he had.

Henrietta didn't have time to scream, much
less splutter, because at that point, Brick wrapped his hand tight
around her wand. “Write something in the air, and do it now.”

So she did. As she fell to the side,
Henrietta wrote fire.

It was on her mind. Considering her day,
fire seemed to be about the only thing she could think of.

When she finished writing the word, the most
spectacular thing occurred. A circular symbol appeared at her feet
and then a fireball shot right out from it. The fire swirled around
the edge of the symbol, collecting into a ball, before flying
forwards right towards the witch.

Henrietta still hadn't seen the creature in
full; the abandoned warehouse was dark, and all she could catch was
a glimpse of two long hands with equally long fingernails. They
were gaunt and painfully thin.

The fireball launched right towards
them.

There was a scampering sound and someone
appeared to take a quick, desperate breath. Once again it sounded
like the cry of a child, but it changed into the most horrible of
screams.

“Don't pause, keep writing,” Brick
commanded, and then he moved his hand over hers and brought the
wand up.

Ice.

It popped into her head, and the second it
did, she started to write the word.

As had occurred with fire, a symbol started
to appear at her feet, and then a great rush of crackling ice shot
around it and up towards the witch.

The witch screamed again, and the ice
slammed right into her, those two hands plastering to her side from
the force.

Henrietta still couldn't see the creature,
but she was catching glimpses of it, beyond the hands to its torso,
to the ends of its unkempt, scraggly black hair. It felt so
nightmarish seeing it in pieces like this, as crackles of her
spells lit up the creature in spurts.

It was wearing rags, a simple skirt and top,
but they were burnt and dirty. It had the hollowest eyes,
dark-rimmed circles underneath them, the pupils wide, the irises
pale. It was thin, ghostly thin; she could see the bones in its
arms and legs, and its cheeks were high, its neck long and
gaunt.

So this was a witch. Apart from the long
fingernails, she could have passed for a human being, a sick,
horrific-looking human being, but a person nonetheless.

Henrietta stood there, but once again Brick
leaned into her. “Do not stop, Witch Hunter; you must keep
fighting.”

So she did.

This time she wrote the word wall. It formed
before her mind, somewhat like the ice spell had. The second she
wrote it, magical blue crackling outlines of bricks shot from a
symbol under her feet and appeared before her. As they did, as they
formed a solid wall, the witch screamed and shot fireballs from her
hands.

It was a frantic thing to watch. Horrible
too and terrifying, and it made Henrietta shiver. Fire began to
crack up along the witch's skin, as if she was made of stone that
was breaking under heavy weight. The witch hurled her hands
forward, as if they had been yanked by heavy ropes, and the
fireball collected off her skin and shot towards Henrietta.

It didn't reach either her or Brick; it
slammed into the wall.

“Excellent,” Brick admitted through a quick,
snapping breath.

Write any spell that comes to mind,
Henrietta thought to herself. Her fingers tightened around her
wand.

Wind.

She wrote the word before her, her wrist
twisting.

A new symbol appeared at her feet, and it
was accompanied by a quick burst of air that caught the ends of her
jacket and skirt. Soon a vicious wind whipped around the circle and
then shot forward at her magical wall. It pushed into the bricks
and they flung forward, right at the witch.

The bricks fell against the creature, and as
they did, a roaring magical wind slammed into her too. The witch
brought up her arms, tried to protect her face, and let out a
ferocious cry.

“Don't—” Brick began.

“Stop,” Henrietta finished off his sentence.
That was what he was going to say.

It also gave her an idea.

Freeze.

She wrote the word, and the most curious of
symbols appeared at her feet. Something that was not wind, that was
not fire, that wasn't even visible, rushed up from the symbol and
spread through the room around her.

The bricks stopped tumbling and the wind
stopped roaring, the tails of her jacket and skirt stopped brushing
against her legs too. In fact, everything stopped. From the dust
filtering through the air, to the horrific cry of the witch.

Everything froze.

Even Brick did. The only thing capable of
movement was her.

She had to replace this spell with something
more useful.

She had to figure out some way to end
this.

She didn't want to write end. Who knew what
would happen. If writing the word freeze had made everything
freeze, end could destroy the entire world.

So Henrietta thought, and she thought
blindingly fast.

Float.

She wrote the word, but as she did, she kind
of hoped that the spell would take effect on her and not the witch.
It was a fleeting thought, but as it appeared in her mind, it made
Henrietta change the direction of her writing; rather than write
towards the witch, she brought her hand back and wrote the word on
her own chest.

It worked. A new symbol appeared at her
feet, this one a vibrant turquoise color that reminded her of
tropical waters. She started to float and so did Brick. The moment
he did was the moment he began to move. The freeze spell had
obviously worn off and been replaced. He turned his head to her,
his surprise evident.

Before he could say anything, Henrietta
turned to the witch. She saw that familiar red crackle of fire
begin to race over the creature's skin.

Henrietta had to do something; now that they
were floating in the air, the two of them were sitting ducks.

Hole.

She wrote it as the word formed in her
mouth, and she said it out loud too.

Something horrible happened. A massive
gaping black void opened up in the ground. Everything in the
warehouse dropped away. From the old crates, to the broken and
rusted 44 gallon drums, to the piles of yellow magazines and trash.
They all fell through the cavernous hole that was now the ground.
The hole was deep, impossibly deep, and pitch black. Where it led
to, she had no idea.

Only one thing mattered. The witch. She
looked down at her feet for a split second, gave a cry, and fell
through the hole.

The fire along her skin extinguished and the
black darkness below engulfed the witch.

Henrietta was shocked, and it was such a
powerful, tactile sensation, that she crumpled her shoulders and
arms in, wrapping herself into a ball as she floated above the
giant, enormous hole.

“Quick, bring the floor back,” Brick
snapped, “before this spell dissipates.”

She wrote floor, and soon the floor
reappeared below them. Her float spell stopped with a snap, and she
fell about half-a-meter down until she flopped face-first onto the
floor with a thud.

Brick managed to land on his feet, and
snapped up to a standing position. “Warrior Woman Henrietta,” he
began, and there was a distinctly proud note to his voice. “You
have vanquished your first witch,” he was almost cheering.

Henrietta lay there with her face pressing
into the cold musty floor for a few more seconds. She tried to
process what had happened. Magic, witches, giant holes forming over
the ground....

She heard a soft barking that grew
louder.

She flopped over onto her back, and then
forced herself to sit up, not caring that her ridiculously short
skirt showed far too much.

Barney. Her beautiful old corgi was now
resting in Brick's arms, and the mutinous dog was licking the man's
face.

She scampered to her feet. “You give me back
my dog.”

Brick handed Barney over.

Henrietta opened her mouth, readying for a
volley of whatever torrid frustration, anger, and accusations she
could think of. They dried up. For the love of god, she had fought
a witch.

Her mouth was open, her lips slack, her skin
deathly white.

Brick looked at her, but at the same time
ran his hands over his jacket smoothing it, and then fluffed up his
collar until it was stiff against his neck. He brought two fingers
up to his hat and tipped it at her. “Well done. You have
successfully taken hold of your destiny.”

She shook her head mutely.

“You may now return home. You will need to
sleep. I fancy you will also require time to... adjust.” Brick
smiled widely. “I will see you tomorrow night.”

“Sorry?” her voice shook.

“To hunt more witches,” Brick said as he
took several steps back. Without another word the bugger did a jump
that saw him land like a cartoon character on the heavy metal
rafters, swing around and then do a fantastic somersault right
through the broken glass skylight above.

There was a soft pattering of feet on the
roof, followed by silence.

Which left Henrietta Gosling standing in
ridiculous boots, with the shortest skirt in the world and the
gaudiest jacket ever, clutching her dog to her chest with one arm
as she held a magic wand with the other.

Eventually she walked home, though she was
damn sure to keep to the side streets, and as far away from traffic
as she could.

For a good half hour after she arrived home,
she sat on her bed, or walked around her room in her heels,
listening to the sound of them clicking on the floor, and watching
herself in her full-length mirror.

Several times she tried to tug off her
jacket or skirt, but for some reason she couldn't get them off.

It wasn't until about half past midnight
that she came up with the idea to write her own name with the magic
wand. When she did, a reverse transformation occurred. When she had
written the words Witch Hunter with her hairpin, she had turned
into exactly that. When she wrote Henrietta Gosling with her wand,
there were all sorts of lights, symbols, and sparks, and she landed
on her bottom in her bathrobe.

Then Henrietta Gosling went to bed.
Seriously, what else could she do?

It had taken Henrietta maybe two hours to
pull herself together that morning. In fact, it had only been an
angry call from her boss that had made Henrietta walk out of her
room and face the day.

She couldn't stop mumbling to herself.

“You're mad, you must be mad,” she told
herself as she stared at the hairpin she had propped up in her
bath. At first she'd placed the hairpin on her kitchen table, but
within minutes the damn wood had started to singe. So after an age
of experimenting, she had settled on the thick ceramic of the bath,
which was about the most fireproof thing she had in the house.

Now she was staring at a sodding hairpin in
her bath as her arms were folded up over her knees.

Maria had given her an ultimatum. Unless
Henrietta got off her butt and got into work before noon, Henrietta
would be out of a job. She did not want to be unemployed again.
Considering her infamous run of bad luck, few people would offer
her a job. In fact, Maria had been the only person willing to
employ her. So it would be a big deal if the diminutive Italian
woman fired Henrietta.

But, seriously, she had transformed into a
Witch Hunter last night and had managed to produce magic by writing
it in the air with a wand.

At first, after she'd woken that morning,
Henrietta had been inclined to write the whole thing off as a
terrible dream. Then she had tried it again. In an attempt to prove
to herself that it was an ordinary hairpin, Henrietta had brought
it up and written the words Witch Hunter. The whole transformation
had occurred again, this time trashing her kitchen in the
process.

It had been the conclusive evidence
Henrietta could not turn from. The hairpin was magical, and so was
she apparently. Unless she got off her butt, dressed, and got down
to Sizzle Cafe in the next 45 minutes though, she would be an
unemployed, underfed Witch Hunter.

So Henrietta pulled on her clothes, but only
after standing for a full 10 minutes in the mirror telling herself
that she could get through the day, that she could be normal, and
that nothing was going to happen.

Before she had run out the door and down the
street, Henrietta had glanced back at the hairpin. She didn't like
the idea of keeping it there in her bath; for all she knew when she
came home it could have burnt her house down. Plus... she had to
admit she didn't like the idea of leaving it full stop. She seemed
to have the strangest of connections to that hairpin, and it gave
her such reassurance to pick it up and hold it in her hand.