Free Spellweaver by CJ Bridgeman Page B

and
dressing gown, for her window was still stuck open, she nestled
beneath her thick duvet and flicked through the pages of her
mother’s notebook, just as she did every night. The words glared at
her, challenging her to understand them and mocking her when she
failed. She muttered them under her breath. She had looked online
to find a translation to the words that were not in English but
could find none. It was gibberish to her. She wondered how Mr
Oakley had come to have been in possession of the book, and why he
had been so desperate to get it back. You don’t know what you’re dealing with, that’s what he had said to her the
last time she had seen him. The words chilled her more than the
bitter winter air.
    She drifted off to
sleep before she even realised it, and when she awoke it was
Christmas Day.
    There were no bells.
Felicity pushed the covers aside and got dressed, eager to be out
of the flat before her father got up. She had arranged to meet
Hollie and Jamie later, for the two of them were not looking
forward to sharing the Christmas spirit in the style of the broken
Clarke family. She opened her bedroom door and stopped abruptly
when she saw the Christmas tree standing by the
television.
    Her father had been
sitting on the sofa when she came in, but he stood up when he saw
his daughter. He shuffled awkwardly on the spot, clearly unsure of
what to say, before he settled for: “Merry Christmas.”
    Felicity looked from
the tree to her father and then back again. He was holding a
beer.
    He noticed at her
attire. “Are you going out?”
    She nodded.
    “Oh.” He lowered his
eyes. There was a pause, and then he put his bottle on the table
and retrieved something from beneath the tree. “Well, open this
before you go,” he said, and handed it to her.
    Felicity looked at the
gift. It was small and rectangular, and was poorly wrapped in thin,
cheap wrapping paper with festive cartoon figures all over it.
Aware that her father was watching her expectantly, she slowly
unwrapped it, and was surprised by the flicker of excitement that
stirred within her.
    It was a trinket box
of some kind. Made of wood that had been finished in a dark
varnish, it had intricate floral patterns carved all over it. On
the top was a brass inlay of a rose.
    “I thought you could
put your, uh, mother’s things in there,” her father
explained.
    Felicity turned the
box over in her hands, feeling the grooves of the carvings with her
fingers. When she turned it upside down she caught sight of a white
sticker that read: £6.99.
    Her father’s shoulders
slumped. “Uh, sorry. I uh, forgot to take that off.”
    Felicity held the box
in her hands and stared at it for the longest time. This was the
first Christmas gift she had received in many years; she couldn’t
even remember exactly when it was that her mother had stopped
buying them for her. She felt strange and warm, and didn’t really
know what to do.
    “Thank you,” she said
quietly.
    Her father nodded,
smiling slightly, and then he sat back down on the sofa and resumed
his vigil of the television. Felicity had originally planned to go
out that morning, to escape the flat and wander around town before
meeting her friends, just to avoid spending any time with her
father. But the gift and the Christmas tree changed her mind. With
the box still in her hands, she slowly sat down on the sofa beside
him. He didn’t look at her.
    Later that day, when
her father announced that he was going down to the pub, Felicity
went to meet Hollie and Jamie at their father’s house. It was in a
different part of the neighbourhood, a part where trees lined the
streets and the tall, terraced houses were surrounded by black iron
fences. Each house was at least three storeys high, and that didn’t
even include the cellar. Felicity had visited once before and had
been naturally intrigued as to why the twins had been sent to
Greenfields when their parents could have easily afforded to buy
them a private