A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping

by Sangu Mandanna

the most intolerable, an anachronistic and malevolent old man who looked like he had one foot in the grave already. Luke, for one, couldn’t wait for the rest of him to catch up.

Visiting her past wasn’t exactly a pleasant stroll down memory lane. It was a lane of teeth, crooked and sharp, and the pleasant stroll was more of a panicked scramble to find what she needed without slicing herself open on the sharpest edges.

Deceitful people like Albert Grey assume everybody else is just as deceitful as they are.

“Inanimates are spells cast on inanimate objects,

“Animates are spells cast on living things,

Bindings are extreme Animates,

Adaptables. The least common, least understood sort of spell. Is

There isn’t one way to cast an Adaptable spell. Rigid, literal thinking won’t cut it. These sorts of spells are like soft clay in the hands of the witch casting them.”

“Why a glass teapot, of all things?” “Well, you need something transparent so you can see how each ingredient behaves when it’s added in,” Sera explained. “Glass is also made from sand, and sand’s one of the best conductors of magic. And it’s a teapot because it’s comforting.

quietly, devastatingly upset.”

people trying to be good to one another?

“I’m not asking it to be easy. I’m asking it to be possible!”

“Why do you find it so easy to be kind to me and so difficult to be kind to yourself?”

November sped by, the colours deepening into the warm, lazy, saturated tones that marked the end of autumn. The rolling hills yellowed into soft olive shades, and in the woods at the top of the hill, dark and spiky evergreens mingled with the toasted golds, burnt oranges, russets, and deep poppy reds of the oaks, birches, and poplars.

Late-blooming wildflowers added pops of white, lilac, and scarlet.

Like his lonely and her lonely fit perfectly into the empty spaces at the other’s side, saying nothing, asking nothing, just keeping each other company.

acts of defiance by people who could not or would not go gently down the path the world had decided was inevitable,

resistance had an opposite, surely that opposite was resignation, and

sort of old, familiar friendship where talking about nothing in particular was the kindest, most comforting thing they could do for each other.

The other things, the big things, were understood but went unsaid because sometimes saying things out loud made them hurt that much more.

Handala, a little boy who never grew any older and never would, either, not until he got to go home again.

you can love the home you’ve made with the whole of your heart and still know the land it’s built on will never claim you.

didn’t ask Sera what was bothering her that afternoon, and even if he had, Sera couldn’t have told him because she wasn’t sure she even knew.

didn’t, couldn’t, change the memory, because that night had already happened

pain so enormous and consuming that it had felt like dying.

All the shame that had been tangled up in the memory was annihilated, leaving only compassion and regret in its place.

sliced the peaches and layered them over the biscuits, then added a second layer of biscuits on top.

splash of rum into the condensed milk, drowned the sliced peaches and broken biscuits in it, and found some double cream in the fridge to pour over the top.

He took little pieces of me, to keep me small, to keep me smaller than him.

little pieces of me keep chipping away, bit by bit, and each time something goes, that version of me dies. Sometimes it’s big things that do it. Sometimes it’s small, stupid things.

she doesn’t care about what other people think of her. She hasn’t yet let the way other people have treated her change her. She’s so completely, extraordinarily sure of who she is and just lets herself be that person.

it was much easier and that my parents liked me much better when I wasn’t so me.

made yourself into what you needed to be to survive,

Giving in instead of fighting. Retreating instead of standing my ground. Resigning myself to the inevitable instead of resisting.”

he, who could see right through her, had not seen this about himself, how much had she, who could see him as clearly as if he were glass, not seen about herself?

His eyes were flames of the fiercest, iciest cerulean. She had forgotten that the hottest part of a fire burns blue.

icy, implacable calm, learning how to take away the satisfaction of someone seeing him react,

This is the life I wanted. This life of contentment and unexpected excitement, of little everyday joys, where I don’t just get to be myself but also get to be embraced as myself. It’s miraculous.”

when something good happens, something you’ve dreamed of for a long, long time, you’re filled with this wonderful, dizzying, joyful conviction that there’s nothing in the world beyond your reach.

Spend a bit more time with todays and a bit less time with yesterdays and tomorrows.”