A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping

by Sangu Mandanna

“Marvellous work,” Clemmie said to Sera. “I was just thinking this morning that what we really needed in our lives was not a new fireplace or a nice car but, in fact, a resurrected fucking rooster.”

This was a place of fables and stories and peculiar magic, and such a place, he was certain, had no place in the real world.

It seemed at first glance like ridiculous theatre, unnecessary and a bit silly, but at the heart of it, weren’t they just a handful of people trying to be good to one another?

For a moment, the world was quiet and still. For a moment, it was just Sera and the horizon and the few valiant, twinkling stars of magic that had never left.

“It’s not a competition. Alex gets to have their feelings about the shitty thing that happened to them, and you get to have your feelings about the shitty thing that happened to you.

“Your foot’s not ugly. It’s never been ugly. It’s held you up all your life, even when it hurt. Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s so much strength and beauty in that.”

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

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.

Their unwavering hope for the future hand in hand with the desolation of their pasts.

That, Luke could understand. History was how he made sense of the world, after all, and what was history if not a collection of stories to make the incomprehensible comprehensible?

Theirs was a friendship that did not talk about the things that cut deepest, but it understood that those things were there, and respected them, and gave them space.

And what she saw, for the first time, was not ugliness at all but pain so enormous and consuming that it had felt like dying. I’m sorry, she said silently to her past self. I’m sorry I hated you. I’m sorry I wasn’t kinder. All the shame that had been tangled up in the memory was annihilated, leaving only compassion and regret in its place.

“So that’s the fabled witch wine? Famously enchanted in a secret brewery at the foot of Ben Nevis and aged for exactly twenty-two years and twenty-one days? Renowned lowerer of inhibitions and provoker of orgies?” “What?” Matilda demanded. “And I’m not allowed to have any? Rude!”

“If I wasn’t gay and your grandma, I’d be very attracted to you right about now.”

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.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Van Gogh, is the nine-year-old’s artistic ability not quite up to your lofty standards?”

“You’ve built a beautiful world, Sera Swan.”

It’s what you do. You always expect to leave, so you’re always waiting for it.

“Does it make you happy?” “Yeah.” “And is it doing anyone any harm?” “No?” “Then who the fuck cares what anyone else thinks?”