The happy, computerized tones of Winter Wonderland shattered the silence and my concentration. I groaned and threw my head back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. Every other day, I had no visitors, no calls, nothing but time to myself. Today, I wanted to use that time to read a new book. Alone. Uninterrupted. And today, I was suddenly the most popular person on the block.
Gone away is the bluebird…
Soft blue light glittered from the algae trapped within the icicles above my head. The harsh yellow light of day had faded to black outside my windows, allowing the gentle, pulsating bursts to reach every corner of the room and shade the translucent frozen decorations I’d fashioned over the years with the colors of the ocean in its various moods. I sighed and picked up the plain, thin sheet of ice serving as my bookmark from the spot where I’d discarded it on the sofa next to me.
In the meadow, we can build a snowman…
I removed my right glove and traced three delicate circles in the ice with my fingernail, and then I withdrew my finger from the cool surface and jerked it just slightly to drop Frosty the snowman’s top hat on the smallest circle. His face appeared below it, one tiny dot emerging at a time, until his smile curved upwards as thin lines scratched out and up from the middle circle to wave at me. I smiled back. Maybe I could make him answer the phone. That would be an interesting challenge.
Later on, we’ll conspire...
Maybe too much of a challenge right now. I pulled my glove back on and placed Frosty between the pages of the book, right between his proposal and her rejection. The couple would still be in turmoil when I got back. Unless Frosty worked his magic and turned them into the next big Hallmark Christmas movie. Now, there was a story.
In the meadow, we can build a snowman…
“Hello?”
“Hi, Lily!”
I suppressed another groan and slumped against the kitchen counter. “Hi, Crystal.”
“So, what do you think of the new book?” she asked in a sing-song voice
I frowned and held the mouthpiece to my chest, leaning around the corner to look back down the hall at the living room. She was up to something.
“Lily?” I heard her muffled voice ask.
I sighed and put the receiver to my ear again. “You charmed the book.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to make it sound so bad. I just wanted to see your honest reaction, because I knew you wouldn’t tell me what you actually thought. Although I’ll admit it was mean of me to call you at this point in the story. So much for a straightforward, happy ending, huh?”
Anger froze my blood solid. “A visual charm? Crystal!”
“Oh, please,” she dismissed me. “Like you didn’t mess with me with that snow globe. Who enchants something to teleport five feet in a random direction every hour? I thought I was going crazy.”
I didn’t suppress the groan this time as I pinched the bridge of my nose. “That was a prank. You’ve been watching me all day,” I grit out between clenched teeth.
“No, I only checked a few minutes ago. Although I have to say, you looked at the author’s picture for a long time.”
A visual charm that recorded information. As inappropriate and invasive as that was, and as much as she irritated me, I had to appreciate her skill. She was always at the top of our class in charms when we were kids.
“Is there a point to this conversation?” I grumbled.
“I’m so glad you asked,” she said, her typical cheer in the face of my ire as obnoxious as ever. “He’s coming to your house tomorrow.”
“What?” I shouted, my eyes flying wide open.
“I told him about how good you are with enchantments, and he’s interested in hiring you to enchant his next book for a more immersive reading experience. I didn’t understand all the details, but it sounded like it was perfect for you. Unless you finally got a job?”
And there it was. The subtle implication that I was wasting my skills and my life in a backwater town that didn’t have any magical opportunities, or even other magic users. This was also a perfect segway for her to go into my dating life—or lack thereof—and from there, it was only a matter of time until I snapped at her and we entered a chilling argument that resulted in both of us hanging up and not talking to each other for another month.
“You should have asked me before you agreed to that,” I said coolly, dropping my free hand to my side and clenching my fist. Ice wove through my glove and cracked in my grip.
“Would you have said yes?”
“You gave him my address,” I retorted, ignoring her question. “What if he’s some kind of creep? What do you really know about him other than he’s handsome, rich, and famous?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
I groaned again and slammed the phone on the hook. My veins were getting freezer burn. I tore my gloves off and stormed outside, dropping to my rear on the front porch, propping my elbows up on my thighs, and clutching the back of my head as I squeezed my eyes shut. One, two, three frozen breaths, fogging up the air, fragments of ice falling with light tinkling sounds to the ground.
Three years. Three years since we’d graduated from witches school, and she was still on my case. No, not her. Aunt Gemma, Crystal’s mother and the self-appointed matriarch of the family. She’d probably guilted Crystal into calling. And sending the book. And charming it. And setting me up on a blind date with a complete stranger under the guise of a job opportunity.
If he could get into my yard.
I opened my eyes and sat up straight, the corner of my lip lifting into a smirk as I surveyed my property. The stone wall surrounding my yard was about five feet tall, glistening with starlight reflecting off the solid sheets of ice from my earlier rampage. I stood, shaking off the light dusting of snow that coated me from my breathing exercises. That was it. If I could pull it off, that would be the answer. It would buy me a few days of peace and quiet, anyway.
I inhaled and exhaled slowly, forcing the cold to gather in the fingertips of my right hand. An uncomfortable warmth filled the vacancy it left behind elsewhere, but I took another deep breath, focusing on my hand, lifting it palm-up until it and my arm were in a straight line parallel with the ground. The blanket of snow around me shuddered, and I held my breath, my heart pounding with nervous excitement. Another shudder, blurring my field of vision with white and sending a wave of vertigo through me.
If this didn’t work, I’d be sick and stuck with a blind date.
Another breath.
The snow lifted, an inch, then two, in a steady, even blanket reaching to the furthest corners of the yard. I curled my fingers in, and it rushed to my hand all at once, forming a massive ball of solid white. My feet were burning hot, but my hand was wonderfully cold, and when I twisted it slightly, the ball rolled slightly to the side. I smiled and brought it to my lips. This was it. One chance to get this right. Everything had to happen within a second.
I closed my eyes, took another deep breath, held it, envisioned what I wanted to happen.
Then I opened my eyes wide and blew a single quick puff of air. The snowball exploded in a blinding swirl of white. I shoved my hand up as far as I could reach, splaying my fingers wide and forcing the lingering cold out of my body, and then I snapped my hand shut into a tight fist, pushing the cold in the air further out and away, following it to the limit I set.
“Stay.”
My hand dropped to my side, and I dropped to the porch, all my strength gone with the cold. The snow swirled softly through the air, falling to the ground and rising again until it reached the top of the clear globe of ice encasing my yard.
I’d done it. I’d made a living snow globe. With a rectangular base made of the stone wall surrounding my property.
The cold seeped slowly back into me as I watched the snow dance through the air. A solid sheet of ice filled the opening that had led to my sidewalk, and while I lamented the loss of my morning paper, I could always Google my favorite comic strips. That was all I wanted from the paper, really. And it wouldn’t be forever. Just a few days so I could decompress from Pipaluk’s heat cubes and Crystal’s invasion of my life.
Oh. The charmed book.
I sighed and climbed unsteadily to my feet, weak from exhaustion. It was a lot healthier for me to do something like this over a longer period of time, but Crystal had forced my hand. I stumbled inside, keeping one hand on the wall for support until I reached the kitchen, and I was about to unplug the phone when Pipaluk’s excited call from earlier flashed through my mind.
If whatever he had in mind would help reduce recovery time for me, I wanted to know about it as soon as he figured it out.
I turned the ringer off. It would be easy enough to check for messages later and delete any from Crystal or Aunt Gemma.
I was panting when I reached the living room. The book was where I left it on the sofa, still closed. Safe enough. I was the enchanter in the family, not Crystal, so the book probably wouldn’t start following me if I ignored her too long.
My vision was blurring.
I made it to my bedroom and collapsed on the bed. My breath rose in clouds of steam as an uncomfortable heat brought sweat to my skin. Great. No blind date, but I’d still be sick. Thanks, Crystal and Aunt Gemma.
“Happy birthday!”
And now, I was having auditory hallucinations. That sounded like Frosty the snowman.
“Uh oh, we’ve got to cool you down,” he said.
No, it was a visual hallucination, too. That was definitely his round white face looming over me, the row of coal that formed his mouth turned down into a frown. I looked at him in silence as his pipe bobbed between the black chunks, rather how I imagined it would move in a person smoking pensively. Smoke and a snowman. Not really the best combination. But everybody smoked in those days. Nobody knew about lung cancer yet.
“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “I’ll open the window!”
Not a bad idea, Frosty.
I closed my eyes as a frigid gust of wind and snow burst into the room. Tactile hallucination? It was that, or this was real, and either way, I was fine with it. Frosty wasn’t my favorite Christmas show character, but he was better company than Crystal, that was for sure.
“I was your favorite character when you were seven,” he said.
“Until I started witches’ school and learned that even a first-year student could make a magic hat,” I muttered.
“You were really excited about witches’ school.”
“Mom told me it would be fun.”
“Was it?”
I lifted my shoulders in a slight shrug. “Sometimes.”
“Your eyes are closed. Are you trying to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll go outside and play. And maybe we can finish that book tomorrow. I tried getting them to talk to each other, but she got mad and skipped a few chapters ahead, and he’s really down in the dumps. He was wandering aimlessly from paragraph to paragraph when I left him.”
“I’m sure.”
“Before I go, do you have a sled?”
“The yard is flat, Frosty.”
“Oh. Right. Well, get some rest, and I hope you feel better.”
“Good night, Frosty.”
“Good night.”
He left, humming his theme song until the whistling wind whipped it away. I shivered pleasantly. My enchantment teacher would have been proud. I made a massive snow globe and brought Frosty to life from a bookmark, all in less than an hour and without dying. She always said I had potential. So did Mom.
I turned down so many job offers after graduation to move back here with Mom. Nobody understood why I did that, just like nobody understood Mom’s green thumb. Snow witches and plants didn’t mix, Aunt Gemma said. But Mom already had a full garden blooming in the snow even before Pipaluk moved in next door and teamed up with her to engineer more cold-resistant plants. My whimsical enchantments were going to take her greenhouse to the next level, creating living home decor marketed toward snowbound communities.
Except she died, and without her to keep them alive, so did her plants. And three years later, here I was, a twenty-one-year-old unemployed orphaned witch living off my inheritance next door to a mad scientist in a town that thought BTS’ dance moves were magical.
To be fair, sometimes I thought that, too, and I had literal magic flowing in my veins.
Maybe I should talk to that author. Enchanting books for a more immersive reading experience could be a lot of fun. Almost as fun as listening to Frosty singing “Fake Love” outside my window.
My eyes shot wide open.
Dear Jack Frost, I was in trouble.
I pushed myself into a sitting position, my head spinning just from the effort. Seven snowmen danced and sang past my window in perfect harmony. I needed medical attention, and fast. But I’d trapped myself in a snow globe. Would Tylenol help? Did I have any Tylenol? I couldn’t remember. My head felt fuzzy. I tried to stand, crumpled to the floor, and then crawled toward the bathroom, or where the bathroom was supposed to be. It didn’t help that the solid ice beneath me kept tilting and the open doorway kept moving. This would have been a great time for one of those dancing snowmen to drop his mic and come help me, I thought, but no, my hallucinations had to be solely entertaining. They weren’t even on key anymore.
Somehow, I reached the bathroom. Somehow, I pulled myself up to the counter and opened the medicine cabinet with a shaking hand. Somehow, I got the sadistic childproof cap open. I poured a few pills into my hand and threw them at the back of my throat, choking them down without water.
I remember wondering if I'd grabbed the Tylenol bottle before I passed out.
Date of creation: 08/30/2024
Word count: 2,493
Author’s note: This was my round one, part two entry. The prompt included an image and the following text:
At the age of 7, Lily was looking forward to witches school. But now, at 21, she has to find her place in the world, and that's a challenge no one prepared her for.
Maximum word count: 2500 words
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