The Promptuary Page 5

To her left, at the head of the table, the librarian appeared to have satisfied herself. She slouched in her chair and sipped a cup of coffee. Blowing across the black liquid to cool it, she looked over the cup at Anaïs and smirked.

  'I could get used to this,' she said.

  Anaïs rested her elbow on the table and cupped her head in her hand. 'I'm sure you could. Remind me not to get too close to you next time you're eating. I wouldn't want to become part of the meal.'

  Immi grunted at her but was too self-satisfied to muster a reply. Anaïs looked across the table at Nan.

  The shade folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. 'Please eat something, Anaïs.'

  Anaïs wasn't particularly hungry. She never was. She reached out to the nearest plate and pulled it towards her. She selected a slice of pepperoni pizza. She nibbled on the crust but it wasn't to her liking and she discarded it. She hooked her hand around a dish of stoneless green olives. She slid it under her chin and popped one her mouth. They were good. She shovelled them into her mouth in one long, continuous flow, only pausing when the dish was empty.

  The food made her lethargic. Her five-year-old body gave up on her. Her eyelids drooped and it required all her energy to keep them open.

  'Nan,' she whimpered, 'I'm really tired.'

  'Then sleep, Anaïs. You've done enough for one day.'

  Anaïs yawned. 'Ok.'

  She pushed the olive dish aside, folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them. Her eyelids fluttered and then shut. The last thing she heard before she fell asleep was the familiar snipe of the librarian.

  'Wow! That's quite an after-dinner dip.'

  Food And Trains And Time

  Witches require very little food to survive. They can't do without it altogether, but a little goes a very long way. If anything, food is more a symbolic thing associated with celebration. The witch metabolism is excellent at conserving energy. As everything about the physical growth of witches progresses at a leisurely pace, this should come as no surprise.

  The fact that the dining table was so heavily laden had more to do with choice than anything else. If the scent or mere nibble of a piece of food is enough to sustain you for a day, then it’s nice to have a wide variety of options to choose from.

  In an emergency a witch can even conjure up a phantom smell to get her through the day. Naturals are also prone to this strange phenomenon. It actually has a quite fantastic name: phantosmia. It is also known as an olfactory hallucination, which conjures up all kinds of visualisations. However, it is not visual at all; it pertains to the nostril.

  For naturals this affliction can be distressing and unpleasant. Quite often these episodes are triggered by perfectly non-mysterious factors. Sometimes it is outside influences at play, but usually a natural's neurones are simply running rogue. The root cause stems from the brain. Like many other properties in the universe, witches have found a way to control this nasal sensory peculiarity.

  Neurones are electrically charged nerve cells which send signals in the body. Astrocytes are star-shaped cells which provide the glue, connection, support and protection of neurones. Witches are able to harness the amazing cerebral superpower of astrocytes and redirect neurones at will. They do what most naturals do not. They put all that wasted space up there to good use.

  The naturals among us who experience phantosmia perhaps have witch tendencies they are unaware of. There is, after all, a little bit of witch in everyone. Although witches can control their cerebral signals much more efficiently than naturals, and can invoke this sensation at will, the effect is not permanent. It will gradually wear off. It is not a satisfactory substitute for physical sustenance. Fast food chains have made a dubious science of something similar and use certain chemicals to trigger the opposite—recurring hunger. But we are getting off track here. Let us just sum it up by saying witches can stave off hunger, but not indefinitely.

  On the subject of tracks, witches also encouraged the advancement of the railroad. Not merely so they could eat in comfort but in order to get around faster. Horses and other animals had previously been used, but, unfortunately, entities made of flesh and blood do not respond efficiently to magic. Every living thing has a mind of its own and controlling them requires a great deal of energy. Not only that, a restaurant looks slightly out of place when towed by a team of horses. As I have said before, attracting attention to yourself as a witch is not conducive to getting the job done.

  Following the introduction of trains—and people took some convincing before they were readily accepted; beasts of iron and steel are scary things if you've never seen them before—witches had them stationed at strategic positions around the globe. The railway never would have become so widespread, and in such a short time, had it not been for the witch community.

  There are the obvious transport benefits but, more than anything else, the train is synonymous with relaxation. Especially in the case of a long journey. You are assured of getting to your destination, but it won't necessarily be at speed.

  Not everyone finds rail travel positive. For some a train is a trap. A vehicle which they would rather get off as soon as possible after they have boarded. If you are stuck for hours on end in any mode of transport it tends to get tedious. However, in comparison to smaller vehicles, trains do have the advantage of allowing you to stretch your legs.

  Naturally, a witch train will need to have a few extras. If you are going to so much trouble, you might as well put magic to good use. Otherwise it would be a wasted opportunity. Thus, the spectacular interior Anaïs had been confronted with. It should be noted that witches not only have private railway cars, but entire railroads. Over time these have become increasingly onerous to run and maintain. The main problem being: a railroad is a little difficult to conceal. They are just plain big. Not only that, they are complicated pieces of engineering. Unfortunately, real train systems cannot be broken down, folded up and put away in a box like a toy.

  Witches not only maintain their own private lines, they also borrow public ones on occasion. Sometimes, you need to get your locomotive from one part of the world to another. You need the connections. There is no need to have permanent lines all over the place. Temporary use of existing ones will suffice.

  Unfortunately, increased traffic on existing railroad networks has meant they have become incredibly congested. Often they cannot cope with what they already have. Throw a ghost train into the mix and you will surely create havoc. In general, witches have a knack for timing, so this is not necessarily a problem. But why make your life more difficult than it needs to be? The overriding reason witches use rail travel is for relaxation, recuperation and to get in a decent meal. Keeping a strict timetable does not necessarily figure in the equation.

  There has been one unfortunate by-product. Witch advancement in railways has had serious ramifications for the natural world. We now keep time by trains. Initially clocks had only one hand, a natural progression from the sundial. There was no need to count the minutes and seconds. Every town kept its own time. If you travelled to a neighbouring town there could be as much as an hour’s difference in official time. In order for trains to operate efficiently, even witch trains, time had to be adjusted. It had to be standardised. If we go back a century or so we will see that keeping time had less importance. Now we do more than just set our clocks by it. We set our entire lives according to the swing of a mechanical hand.

  This advancement in timekeeping has not necessarily been a good thing. Now the entire world tries to fit itself into a regular schedule. There is even such a thing as Coordinated Universal Time. Please! The human race has a distinct lack of coordination and nothing is universal. Nature thrives on irregularity. The earth itself is not perfectly round and does not revolve at a constant rate. Nature has done, and always will do, its own thing in its own good time.

  If it had not been for a witch desire for comfort and mobile dining rooms we may not find ourselves now forced to live on a fictitious standardised time. We would
be following the movement of the sun, which is the natural way of adjusting our inner clocks. Perhaps we would all feel a lot better for it. Witches do not always make the correct choices but, thankfully, most naturals don't know this and have no idea who to blame.

  Teenage Dreams

  Anaïs looked at her reflection in the mirror. It wasn't her. Partly it was, and partly not. She had changed and quite dramatically. She had aged. Curiously, it didn't bother her. She wondered why that was. Shouldn't she be freaking out? She wasn't. It was weird, the fact she didn't feel a thing, even stranger than the ageing thing. It left her cold, emotionless. As if it was normal, an everyday occurrence.

  She studied her body and casually ran her eyes over its form. She guessed she was sixteen, maybe seventeen, certainly not five or six. Her hair was longer. It wasn't straight anymore. Now it was wavy, the tips terminating in tight curls. It was a different colour, too. Blonde had darkened into brunette. She didn't like it. The first chance she got, she decided, she would hack it all off. Maybe she could do something radical with it. She toyed with the idea of dyeing it purple. She could shave it. Perhaps even a mohawk would look good. Whatever, it was too normal, too ordinary. She preferred extraordinary. Of course they wouldn't like that. The Organisation liked a smooth-running ship. Don't rock the boat, it might sink. No excesses, no anomalies, don't draw attention to yourself. If she went wild with her looks she would stand out and that wouldn't do. As a witch you had to blend in, be one of the crowd.

  Her figure was different. No baby fat. She was long and slender. Everything was elongated. She didn't like it. Too many sharp edges. Even her face had changed. It wasn't round anymore. It had stretched and her chin stuck out. She pulled some faces. She smiled and the dimples in her cheeks failed to appear. That was a shame. She liked them.

  She stepped up to the mirror. She gently grabbed the corner of her mouth and gingerly tugged at her skin. It stretched taut over her cheekbones. She pushed and prodded it, leaving red spots on her face. Her eyes looked tired. They were way older than the rest of her body. They had seen too much. How old was she really? If she was physically in her late teens then mentally she would have to be forty, fifty or maybe even sixty. She bared her teeth. They look pretty good. At least she hadn't lost any of them. She ran a finger along her incisors and poked around in her mouth. She went too deep. She choked and dry retched. It made her eyes water. She cleared her throat and swallowed. Don't do that, you idiot. She dried her wet finger on her leg.

  What was going on? She couldn't have aged so much in one night. Not like this. That just didn't happen. It had to be a dream. She pinched her cheek. It didn't hurt. She was right. It was just a dream, a glimpse into the future. Only it was odd. Under normal circumstances her dreams were terrifying. In the past she'd had such vivid ones. Usually she was being chased by something or someone. She had doubts. She was confused. Maybe it wasn't a dream after all. She usually never realised it when they were happening.

  The fact she felt no emotion whatsoever bothered her. Why was she being so nonchalant about it? Her body had transformed. She looked around the room. Maybe something would jump out of a cupboard or from under the bed and attack her. She raised her fists and took a boxer's stance. C'mon, I’m ready! Give me your worst. She waited. Nothing. She exhaled slowly and dropped her shoulders. Seems I'm in control here. Good, keep it that way. She kept her fists up and swivelled around, running her eyes over the room again. Stop this. Better not raise any demons. She relaxed and let her arms fall. She shook them loose and flexed her legs. They were long. That felt good. No more puny baby legs. She felt like running. She jogged on the spot, pumping her knees. She stopped, breathing deeply, her heart pounding. No, don't do that. Don't push it.

  She took one more look at her figure in the mirror. She could live with it. If that was how she was going to turn out, then it was acceptable. She hadn't put on heaps of weight or anything. It looked like she had kept fit. If she wanted to, she could do stuff to it. She could work on it, improve it. What a relief to have a body that could do so much more. Maybe that was why she wasn't concerned.

  She climbed back into bed. It was warm under the covers. Just go back to sleep.

  She closed her eyes and let the images of her future self play through her head. Somehow it was comforting knowing that one day she would change. But there was no need to rush it. She should be content with who she was. The dream was showing her what she could become. She wouldn't be like that when she woke. She would still be baby Anaïs. She had heaps of time to grow. She was a witch, after all. She breathed in deeply, exhaled and let the shroud of darkness descend before her.

  Breakfast

  Anaïs was astounded. 'A week! I slept for a week?'

  'Yep,' said the librarian, drily.

  'And what have you been doing?'

  The librarian sighed and folded her arms. 'Going stir-crazy.'

  'I can imagine.'

  'No, I don't think you can,' said Immi, shaking her head. 'Can we please get out of here now?'

  'I think you should eat something.'

  Anaïs turned to the shade and looked at her with a dour face. 'I'm not hungry, Nan. I just woke up.'

  Nan was insistent. 'Humour me. You need to have something. You've been asleep for a week.'

  Anaïs relented and dropped her shoulders. She knew better than to go up against her. The caretaker would never back down. 'Fine.'

  She surveyed the dining table and yawned. She picked up a cocktail sausage and plunged it into a bowl of tomato sauce. She munched loudly on it. Anaïs looked across the table, her eyes flicking from one woman to the other. They both looked on with disdain.

  She had woken a few moments earlier in a child's bed, her own bed, complete with princess canopy and all. In fact, the entire bedroom was an exact copy of her room in Amsterdam. Even the baby toys had been there. At first, Anaïs had been confused about where she was. She had stumbled to the door, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. She had opened the door and leaned on it, waiting a moment for her head to clear. Beyond the door was the landing at the top of the stairs in the entry hall. Above her, through the glass ceiling, the view outside was of a clear, bright-blue sky. She had screwed up her nose at it.

  Anaïs had proceeded downstairs and found Nan and the librarian in the dining room. The nanny had greeted her with a broad grin. The librarian had snarled at her. She had an inkling that she had been asleep for a long time, but was genuinely surprised when she found out how long it had actually been. She usually got by with catnaps and, once or twice a year, a full night's sleep. A week was out of proportion with her usual rhythm. Apparently, she had been more exhausted than she had first thought.

  Anaïs finished the sausage and picked at her teeth with a fingernail. She stood at the table and looked across at the women. 'Who put me to bed?'

  Nan's voice rang in her head. 'I did. Well, not completely on my own. The butler helped. You fell asleep at the table.'

  'Really? I must have been really tired.'

  The cocktail sausages were good and she grabbed another one. She ploughed it into the bowl of sauce, shovelled a glob of it onto the sausage and dripped it over the table on the way to her mouth.

  'Anaïs! Mind your manners.'

  'Sorry,' she murmured through a mouthful of sauce and sausage.

  The librarian tapped her foot impatiently. Anaïs finished eating. The librarian slid a napkin across the table. The little witch picked it up and wiped her face with it.

  She eyed the women. 'Satisfied?'

  The librarian shrugged and grunted.

  'Not really, but I suppose it will have to do.' Nan walked around the table and knelt down beside her. 'How are you feeling?'

  Strangely the caretaker's face was at eye level. 'Fine,’ said Anaïs. ‘Why do you ask?'

  'Oh, I was just wondering. Do you notice anything different about yourself?'

  'Nope.'

  'Look.' Nan pointed at her legs. Anaïs looked down.

  She
was dressed in a set of bright, purple pyjamas. They were her favourites. She scratched the back of her head. How has all my stuff been transported from Amsterdam? Even if it had somehow magically moved, it shouldn't exist. Everything would have been destroyed in the explosion. The train was full of surprises. Perhaps the butler could tell her.

  The fact she was wearing her own pyjamas was one thing, but not as unusual as the state they were in. There was something not quite right about them. They were uncomfortably tight, an extremely snug fit, and the pyjama legs only just reached below her knees. She looked at her sleeves. They were also undersized and barely covered her elbows. Had their magical transportation caused them to shrink? Or was it something else? Anaïs flushed with panic.

  She looked frantically around the room. A full-length mirror hung on the wall next to the door. She dropped the napkin and rushed across to it. She stumbled as she moved. Her legs felt unsteady and the sudden movement made her light-headed. It took a moment to regain her balance and bring everything into focus. She stood in front of the mirror and stared at her reflection. Her jaw dropped. She had grown. And not just a little. A good twenty centimetres had been added to her height. She hadn't attained the age she had experienced in her dream, but had certainly made progress towards it.

  Anaïs spun around and glared at the women. 'Why didn't you say anything?'

  'Say anything? I'm surprised you didn't realise it when you woke up,' said Immi. 'There's no point telling you stuff like that. You wouldn't believe me anyway.'

  Anaïs frowned at the nanny. 'Nan?'

  'You just woke up. You're always grumpy when you wake up. If I'd said something before you were fully with it, you would have given me an earful.'

  Anaïs eyed her. 'And what makes you think you won't get one now?'

  Nan knew better than to get into an argument and bit her lip.