A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping

by Sangu Mandanna

“This,” said Bradford Bertram-Mogg, materialising beside Luke with the air of a horseman of the apocalypse and scowling up at Posy, who was nimbly pirouetting on the very edge of a balcony in her quest to reach a particular leaf on a vine, “is what comes of allowing foreigners into the Guild.” “Not that it should make any difference, but we’re Scottish,” Luke said coldly. “Exactly,” said Bertram-Mogg.

what he had never realised was that his magic, recognising that it was not and had never been loved by the man who wielded it, had simply decided not to play along. It did as it was told because it did, after all, have a boot on its neck, but it did not do one bit more. Meanwhile, across the country, a certain innkeeper was about to discover that when you hold tight to the little magic you find, when years go by and the world loses much of its colour and still you refuse to forget the magic, magic will go out of its way to show you that it remembers you too.

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?

And yet, for some reason, it felt like that was exactly where they were supposed to be. Like this was a thing that had, somehow, become important. 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 fairy-tale peculiarities side by side with the quiet, ordinary things they dreamed of. 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?

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.

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.”

Here, at last, was the season of hot chocolate topped generously with whipped cream and mulled wine laced with cloves and satsuma slices. The season of curling up on the sofa under the weighted electric blanket, with a piece of perfectly sugared shortbread in one hand and a cup of boozy coffee in the other, while the fairy lights twinkled soft and gold across the mantelpiece and along the curtain rods.

what an incredible, joyful act of resistance it was to simply exist.