Sleeping With The Fishes

Chapter 22

The speed at which all of this felt like it was going was dizzying. It felt like absolutely no time at all passed before six-thirty came around and it was time to go to the library. Jason, Charlotte, Sophie and I all piled into Jason’s car–mine was still in Portland, as Jason and I decided to drive home together–and made our way down to the library.

“Oh, hello, dears,” Rose, the long-time librarian said as we walked in. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen all of you. Well, except for Charlotte of course. She was here two days ago.”

“Hermione,” I heard Jason whisper, but I was too stressed to giggle at the joke. My entire magical future was at stake here. As if sensing my anxiety, Jason wrapped his arms around my shoulder as we exchanged pleasantries with Rose and headed deep into the library toward the stairs leading up to the second level.

“It’s going to be ok,” Sophie told me, squeezing my hand. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Sophie’s right,” Jason told me. “It’s going to be fine.”

“Remember: plead guilty, explain what happened, and beg for a lenient sentence,” Charlotte insisted. “You have mitigating circumstances, they should factor that in.”

I nodded, thanked the three of them, then headed up the stairs. Halfway up it felt like I’d walked through a sheet of water; everything felt cold and wet, but there was no visible change to my exterior. That must have been the enchantment to stop anyone else from coming up to the second floor of the library.

Not that anyone ever went up there to begin with.

As I walked up the stairs and onto the second level, my breath caught in my throat. All of the tables had been re-organized and moved against the far wall in a long row, leaving a large, open space in the center of the room, with a single chair in the middle. Behind the tables, seated in the remaining chairs, were the people that I assumed made up the Witches’ Council.

To say they were intimidating was an understatement.

The only witches I knew in my life were Lisa and Charlotte, and also my second grade teacher who had long since retired and moved to Florida. They all looked completely normal. These people didn’t.

There were five women and four men. All looked to be at least a hundred years old, and I couldn’t guarantee that they weren’t that old. They all hair pure white hair, except for one witch who had died hers a hot pink color, and I did my best not to stare. All were dressed in pure black, although they were wearing human clothes–suits, and in one case a long dress–rather than robes. Light shone from behind them, making them harder to see, but I could make out scarred faces and I was pretty sure at least one glass eye.

I took a deep breath and tried to relax. After all, I’d seen the maximum punishment available. This council wasn’t about to smite me on the spot. I hoped.

“Angela Martin,” the witch in the middle of the group said as soon as I sat down on the chair that was obviously meant for me. I hadn’t felt this much like a scared little girl in the principal’s office since, well, I was a scared little girl sitting in the principal’s office. To be fair, it had only happened once, and it was really Sophie’s fault. But that wasn’t important right now. “You have been summoned in front of the Witches’ Council, charged with ignoring Article 23.1 of the 5^th directive of the Charter of Witches and Wizards. Do you understand this charge?”

“Yes,” I replied, my voice coming out as little more than a squeak.

“Do you plead guilty to this charge?”

“Yes,” I replied again, my voice sounding more confident than ever. “However, I would like to explain mitigating circumstances that led to my breach of the article. I was acting to save the life of my long-term boyfriend.”

“Silence!” the witch roared, and I cowered in my chair. “This proceeding does not allow for justification. Either you broke the rule, or you didn’t, and you’re admitting that you did.”

“Hold on, now, Charlene,” the witch in the dress said. “I know we’re not supposed to hear justification, but this sounds like it could have some merit.”

“Millenials, they always have some sort of excuse as to why their rule breaking is acceptable,” one of the Wizards on the other side of the table replied. “If we allow excuses for rule breaking, well, we’d be no better than the communists,” he muttered, almost to himself.

I couldn’t quite understand what excuses and communism had to do with each other, but decided to keep my mouth shut.

“I don’t care, Charles. No one cares about your dumb communism theories, that ship sailed long ago. I want to hear what the girl has to say,” another witch said.

“Silence!” the witch in the middle cried once more. I held my breath as the rest of the council stopped talking. “We will hear what the witch Angela Martin has to say. But make it short, criminal,” she said to me. “We are not so young as you, we have better things to do with the time we have left than listen to sob stories.”

I cleared my throat, hoping my voice would hold. I managed to splutter out the Cliff Notes version of what had happened in about two minutes flat. I did my best to stick to only the relevant points, and made sure to point out that Jason was my long-time boyfriend, that we were talking about moving in together, and that he would have died had I not intervened.

When I was finished, there was silence among the Council. Finally, the lady in the dress spoke.

“You know, I sometimes feel as though we are slipping behind the times. Young people today often take steps we would not have considered before marriage; it does not mean they are less committed to themselves. I did not move in together with Jacob before our marriage, and sometimes I feel as though many of today’s youth are in more committed relationships than we were at the time. After all, I had only known Jacob for a month then.”

“Yes, and I wish we had moved in together as well; I never would have married you had I known you had a penchant for leaving your unmentionables strewn all around the bedroom as though they were decorations,” the wizard sitting next to the witch said, and the whole table burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Laughter was good, right?

“You’ll all excuse me,” the witch Charlene, in the middle, said eventually. “This is a Witches’ Council, should we not be attempting at least a modicum of decorum?” The laughter died down and one of the other wizards chimed in.

“I don’t think it makes a difference at all whether or not they were serious, they weren’t married. I take the opposite view of Darla, I think young people these days consider their relationships in general to be far too disposable. The divorce rate in this country is astronomical; think of how many humans there are out there who know our secret but are divorced from their witchy spouses.”

“They are all well aware of the consequences of telling anyone,” Darla said in a bored-sounding voice. “Relationships are breaking down more because women are more independent and don’t feel terrified of being out in the world alone anymore. Of course, scaring a woman into being with you is obviously the only way you could get one, so I can see why the change is annoying you.”

I bit my lip to hide a smile, this Darla woman had some spunk to her. A few other members of the council snickered, I couldn’t help but notice. Maybe this council wasn’t as terribly intimidating as I once thought.

“All right, enough bickering,” Charlene said. “I propose that we give Angela Martin a low sentence, since as she has explained, she did not act out of reckless disregard for the law, but simply in defense of a man with whom she is in a solid relationship. This is not the time or the place to discuss whether the current laws are appropriate,” she continued, sending a glare down the table toward Darla. “I suggest a three-month removal of Angela Martin’s magical powers. All in favor?”

I looked up and down the table as six of the council raised their hands. Only three disagreed. That meant it was going to go through, right? Six was over fifty percent of the council; I really hoped they didn’t need a one hundred percent vote.

“So it is done!” Charlene announced. “I sentence you, Angela Martin, to three months of revoked magical powers. Your personal power will remain, since we are aware you use it to do good in the world, but you will be unable to cast spells during that time. Your powers will return to you on the 29^th of December at eight pm. Council dismissed.”

There was a flash of light, and the next thing I knew, the entire council had disappeared and everything in the room had gone back to normal. Rather than sitting alone in the middle of an empty room I was surrounded by the tables the council had been using.

I sat there for a moment, stunned. Had that really just happened? Three months without magic. Well, without spells. I was allowed to keep my personal power, which meant at least I could still talk to animals. Still in a daze, I looked around, realized everything was over, and made my way back downstairs. Charlotte had her nose in a book, of course, but Jason and Sophie were practically pacing around the bottom of the stairs.

“So? How did it go?” Sophie asked as soon as she saw me.

“What happened?” Jason asked as well. Charlotte closed her book and looked up enquiringly.

“I’ve lost the ability to do spells for three months,” I said. “I can still speak to animals, though.”

“Good,” Charlotte said. “That’s about the best you can have hoped for. I didn’t want to tell you, but it was written in the book that the shortest sentence ever given in the past was a year of lost magic.”

“Wow, I got off really easily then,” I said, my eyebrows rising. Suddenly, my stomach began to growl. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. “Come on, let’s get something for dinner and I’ll tell you guys everything that happened.”