Pennyweight III

There were three things that happened next. Twice was an accident and the third was chosen. And something else happened, which was neither accident or chosen but perhaps fated as is the way of human love.

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It is a minute past midnight. The clocks are dividing the silences. Listen; the night and day are the same to the city. Once and twice. Tick to tock. Regular and breathing. Into the sodium concrete and golden sky, the hum and the haze of urban life. The air and ground are made one.

Ashley Caroline Thompson lies on her unmade bed. She is staring glass-eyed at the ceiling and wearing a pair of knickers and tee whose weight is just right. Nothing else. Her half-naked body quivers at the very cusp of buoyancy.

But bigger is bouyant. So she breathes in. Rises. She breathes out. Falls. The fingers of the air slip under her and over her, invisible bedsheets shed and remastered. For those awake and those dreaming.

She holds a deep breath, rising almost horizontal until her body tilts and approaches the dimpled plasterwork. She kisses the dust and space of the ceiling, pushes off. Floating.

"I'm gonna go fucking crazy with this" she whispers.

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This is the first accident.

It concerns getting washed. Loose now that slow accumulation of urban grime, to hair and arm and curve and breast, an arm thrown out and a sleepless night to gaze...into a shapeless space which is lighter than the dust which alights on a girl who is lighter.....

Ah. But there is this bathroom, shared, on the landing at the back of the house, down half a flight of stairs. And that was the first problem. Walking down stairs is actually harder than walking up, she realises. I have to swing my body out and try to follow it in such a way that it looks like I'm actually falling onto the next step.

So Ashley totters down the stairs, pj's, slippers, bathrobe. The pockets of the latter bulged with several rolls of coins, shifting about her stride. With her ankles exposed there were only so many places to apply ballast. She was on the last step when John  passed her from behind, unexpectedly.

"Back late?" He enquired, casually, rubbing his eyes. Ashley almost jumped, which would have been a mistake, as she would likely have shot up the stairwell, bumped her head, and caused a LOT of questions to be asked.

"Umm sure." She mutters, guiltily, realising that she was clinging to the bannister. She forced herself to let go, expecting her buoyancy to betray her at any moment.

"Looks like you're a little worse for wear" He grinned, trying to straighten his tie under a shock of dark hair. "Student lifestyle, eh?".

Then he was gone, pushing forward to the haste of the day. Walking straight past an enchanted girl and out to the Oyster and the city. Ashley watched him go, as if it were the most unbelieavable thing in the world

So set the bathroom door closed; white-tombed, the shower running like cold rain, Ashley waits for the flush of heat down dead pipes. She hops lightly from foot to foot there, feeling the unnatural pause as weight struggles to catch up with her. The room is spacious, with an angled roof and open skylight. Steam rises in the air, spooling playfully around her if it knew her secret. Ashley brushes her teeth, gargled, closing her eyes to see yesterday in the same mirror. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid magic. Screw the coven. I'm gonna be stuck this way forever. How am I supposed to hide it from my parents? How am I going to have a serious relationship with anyone now? She tried to be angry at Hollie but realised she couldn't. Some other feeling else was already there.

Unburdened by weight, she moved as carefully as a climber, handhold and poise to the taps as she shed her robe. Sideways, her legs floated gracefully up, scissoring horizontal in wave of steam. Ashley pulled herself under the water's reign, letting it press down on her naked upness, pinning her in a cage of raindrops. What did she want, really? What did she really, really, want? She sat there with legs folded tight beneath her, holding the bathtub like bars. The rivlets formed between her breasts, traced down invisible valleys to a secret tenderness, disguising her thoughts in rain. She released the sides and nearly killed herself.

At once, the water pushes her out from under, spun from the centre of the gyre with a sudden whoooosh. She folds backwards, legs frictionless against the wet surface, and then no surface at all. In a moment, in a whirl of steam and motion, she hit the ceiling. Then slipping and sliding upwards to the open skylight, to arms thrown wide as the eyes stare, clasping its threshold with a rush.

Above her naked bum is the cold clear blue which is freedom and magic and death.

Death breaks all enchantments. Hollie said. There was a girl in Wales or something similar. They pulled her body out of the North Sea. Ashley knows this to be true. She saw it on Crimewatch.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. For a long moment she holds herself pinned against the glaring sky, feeling the bouyancy of her body betray her. Spent water drains down her neck, breasts, trickling from toes like a constant tether. As if to kill her where it once saved her. A car honks in the street outside. Move your ass out of there.

She pulls herself down with the shower rail, holding herself under the water to be safe. Her breath is heavy in the white-flush of adrenaline, shivering to the heat. The thought of floating away like a lost balloon...uncontrollably rising at Holli's command...her pale flesh made helium-light by the other girls' touch... was it fear or excitement that made her recoil?

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Holli wakes up at 1am in the morning. There's a tapping on her window.

Not the door, the hollow pine numbered and named for a studio flat. Not the laughter of drunken friend in the early hours, reverberating the hall outside. Just the cool thrum of glass under human hand; holding a fragile pitch of bells. A midnight cathedral tolling for her.

Holli sits up in bed, her heart is racing and the duvet already aside. The long yellow and white tee is hot with sweat bordered on the autumn months. She rolls out of bed, hair brushed back one-handed, through the half-dark.

Vaguely, she remembers she is in the student block.On the third floor.

When she opens the blinds, another girl is perched nonchalantly on the windowsill outside, barely six inches wide, with her feet strung over a 40ft drop. The leaves of a tall oak tree wave black on black on the green beyond, and beyond them, the stars.

"What the f….Ashley!  What are you doing here?”

“Couldn’t sleep. Let me in, would you? Pleeeeeeease.”

“Someone could see!” Holly hissed, fumbling with the lock.

Ashley shrugged, her body giving a strange wobble as if throwing off responsibility, the need for explanations.

“There’s no one about. Besides, didn’t Stuart say people didn’t notice magic unless it was happening to them?”

“You are impossible!” Hollie grimaces, the window opening.

Ashley slips her legs inside, her body gliding fluidly through the gap like moonlight. Her trainers don't leave mud on the wooden slats, all but refusing the floor.

"Get your coat on, Hols.  We're going somewhere" she says.

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Mediaeval history, midcourse essay. Ashley lies on Holli's bed, laptop open before her. Her weight barely folds into the duvet, but she holds that soft smell of evening about her. Musk and primrose oil and girlish surrender. She looks up suddenly.

"I just thought. When they had witch trials, were those real? Real witches I mean?"

Holli is sitting at the nearby desk. But now she wrinkles her nose, looks puzzled. "Yes, well, some of them anyway. But you can't put that in the essay! "

"Why not? It makes more sense than them being about a problemised reaction of the hegemonic discourse to female power, or whatever we're supposed to write...."

"Ashley!"

"S'ok, I'll quote you as a source...footnote 6: Holli Smith - witch. 2nd Class."

Holli doesn't usually notice when Ashley is teasing her unless she tries very hard. There’s that slight flex of a pointed tongue, sea-wet and the smile breaking like a wave.

She throws a soft toy at her.

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This is the second accident.

Catherine's birthday. The midnight station is vodka-bright and empty. The four of them have missed the last train and the cab is going to be simply fucking ages. They sit on the bench where a clock watches them through little numbers. Ashely leans backwards and closes her eyes. Invisible stars wheel overhead. Part of her wanted Hollie to come, but she didn't know how to explain it to her friends. She kicks off her shoes and relishes the sensation of her legs rising out unbidden, relaxing. She yawns as if stretching and tucks them under the bench again before it looks weird.

There's a buzzing noise from somewhere. She opens her eyes wearily and roots through her handbag. Her new mobile; the one that doesn't come with the embarrassing floating-in-mid-air app. Which she thinks is funny because Catherine has seventeen balloons and nobody worries about them.

Silver and bobbing and bright; they jostle like clubbers above her, eager for her easy blonde charm. There were twenty-one but the evening spent four to squeaky voices and violence. Her age regressed with each loss, leaving her giggling and barely standing, loving all.

"I need to...." Catherine pauses in a streaked confession, but her hair tangles with the thought. "...just want to say....loo!". She announces, without apparently recognising the discontinuity.

She sets off down the platform. Then stops suddenly, turns unsteadily, swears at her heels, and hands her bouquet of balloons to Marcie. "Look after these". She wobbles off again, hopping from one foot as if trying to take off. Clare follows her, throwing an apologetic, protective look back to the other girls. There's a long pause, the sense of the universe drawing breath before the plunge.

"Me too". says Marcie, jumping up from the bench suddenly; she thrusts the knotted strings back at Ashley.  And Ashley, without thinking, puts down her handbag and reaches out to take them.

Marcie doesn't look back.

Ashley must be half asleep or something or she'd notice. And it is very gentle - later she thinks there may be no more than a few grams in it. She clutches the balloons tight....and the balloons hold her, test their mischievous pull against her and find her wanting. Slim cut jeans slide free of the seat, kissing the air with the apex of her femininity. Up and up and.....Ashley is five foot from the ground when her eyes widen and she almost screams. She clenches tighter in that moment, waving her legs through an invisible tide (too strong an upwards current),  OhGodI'mFloatingAway, and stops abruptly.

The balloons bounce and nestle against the slatted glass ceiling, leaving their impossible human swinging lightly beneath. The hanging clock stares Ashley in the face, oblivious, its seen lost balloons before.

What do I do now? She thinks. Oh. The obvious. Ashly lets go of a balloon. Slowly, so slowly, she settles back down. She grabs her handbag greedily and slips her shoes back on, grateful for the weighted soles that have kept her safe all evening. She plays the remaining balloons from hand to hand, feeling their lift translate through her body. Just like in a cartoon. Cartoon balloon. Unreal.

Catherine and Clare come out of the toilet, supporting each other. As they draw close, Ashley gestures to the errant balloon apologetically.  "I lost another balloon." She apologises. Catherine shrugs. They probably won't get them in the cab anyway.

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The bus stop stands like some deserted checkpoint between Sainsburys and the Premier inn. They are waiting for the bus back to campus, alone and diffident in a diffident world. The sky is muddy grey, flat and toneless where it presses down on the fields at the edge of town. Compressing their silence to a pain. Holli sits in the muted brown of autumn whilst Ashley is restless and red and erratic. She paces the bounds of the concrete shelter; turns and paces again. As if afraid of the question, the sky shifts, sun-shafts grow shuttered and cold about her.

"So, how did you become a witch?" she asks.

"You don't become a witch. I’ve always been one."

"Really? What was that like? I mean, finding out you could do stuff?"

"Umm...I suppose I didn’t. Even after I did magic for the first time. At least, the first time I noticed. I was just confused and a bit frightened. In the end Stuart had to tell me.”

"You had to be told you could do magic?" Ashley raises an eyebrow as if this confirms Holli is completely dopey.

"That's not weird." Holli says, defensively. "Lots of witches don't know they're witches. I mean it sounds weird. But that's how it is. Magic hides even from its practit… ....practitioners....and the first time you're..."

She pauses and shifts slightly.

"You know, when Stuart told me? Right after school. This bloke I'd never seen before walked up to me and told me right there. 'Holli Smith? You're a witch'. Just like that" she laughed, " next to the zebra crossing on Sutton Road.  'Course I thought he was a stalker because he was like, 30-something and I was 17."

"I guess that would be pretty freaky." Ashley sucks on her pen. "Did he turn you into a toad to prove it?"  

"Ash, Warlocks don't....oh...nothing so dramatic. He just said 'we'll talk about it tomorrow, forget about it until then.' and wham. I just did. Walked home with a dull smile thinking about geography and that was that. I just woke up the next day with an urge to skip school. I didn't know why. Well, of course I know now but I didn't then. I just turned left instead of right and kept walking up to Herne hill. Must have gone about 5 miles. Didn't even take the bus and it runs right along there. And it was raining. And when I get there there's Stuart and half a dozen women I don't recognise. And the first thing I notice isn't the circle of candles and the cauldron, its the fact that they're all holding umbrellas. And I'm there thinking 'why don't I have an umbrella' and 'is this some sort of BBQ?'...which was pretty hopeless, really."

"So...then they turned you into a toad?" Ashley leans forward, curious.

"Ashley, being transformed doesn't wo...oh stop it. Look, they just explained everything and it just seemed right, somehow. I can't explain it. Yes, there was magic, but what they were saying was true, it just resonated with me and who I am. Afterwards Eliza - have I told you about Eliza? I think I can tell you about Eliza? I mean, she just sat me down in her car, gave me some tea from a thermos, and drove me back."

"Wow. What did you do then?"

"Ash, I skipped school! I was so, so embarresed! I got such a telling off! And I had to lie. It's easier now with a place of my own, but back then. I wasn't thinking about magic or anything I was just worried about what I would tell my mum."  

"Hang on...how come you didn't know you were a witch if you did magic before  you met, Stuart?"


“Well, I didn't know what I was doing was, like, magic. I was a bit of a late developer in witch terms. I only did it once or twice. Like healing a small tomato plant on my windowsill."

“How can you do magic by accident?

“I didn’t know! It just happened. One minute it was dying on my windowsill and the next it was flowering again. I was just in my room, wasn’t even looking at it at the time.”

“Then how do you know you did it?”

“I felt it.“ Holli shuffles, "There's....umm...when you use the gift for the first time..."

Ashley scents weakness. She remembers the night and the circle. The connection of first enchantment. Her mouth opens in swirl of realisation and fear and delight.    

“You were….” she lets the accusation form before she can stop it.

“No! No I was not!" says Holli, her eyes suddenly wide, betrayed utterly.

“You were masturbating!" Cries Ashley gleefully.

"Stoppit. Stoppit. Stoppit!" hisses Holli, hunching up, standing. "I was not"

"You're turning redder than a beetroot." laughs Ashley. "And you went to an all-girls college as well. You sooo can't tell me it didn't happen."

Holli pushes Ashley, half-heartedly. But the other girl grabs hold and they tussle. The wind picks up, sending a swirl of leaves about them both. Ashley's feet leave the ground and they gyrate, unevenly, imperfectly, humanly. One holding the earth, resistant, the other the sky-promise. The tension between them winding through the narrow pathways of the heart.

"Shitshitshitshit. Stoppit." One laughs and the other rages. At another enchantment, only just understood.

The 269 bus comes. They get on together.

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"What do you do if someone, you know, finds you? Doing your witchy coven thing and stuff in the country?"

"Oh, that's easy. We just tell them the truth,"

"What?!"

"We just tell them we're the local Wiccan chapter. Stuart just goes all po-faced and recites a few lines from some "Native American Wisdom" calendar until we're all about to crack up. They always smile, a bit embarrassed, and wander off. Everyone knows Wiccans are crazy and harmless. "

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They sit in a small table at the back of the restaurant. Cheap Americana falls down from the walls in silvered curtains, the bottles stacked between them in a Manhattan skyline. The high-backed chairs form a speakeasy where they whisper between shivering drinks. Holli doesn't drink, so Ashley took her here to be sure. She measures truthfulness into her glass until the shorter girl is brave enough to ask the question.

"What's it like, I mean, being lighter than air?" Holli's eyes are watery and round, the light pulled upwards to a parting fringe.

"Weird. I guess. Its kinda hard to describe. It's the...absence....of having to do stuff that gets me. Like when standing up, there's just no pull on my body. It's like being in a swimming pool." Ashley said. She missed swimming. "Only its like there's nothing to push against and its just the air pushing me. Up. All the time. Even when I'm wearing, like, heavy clothes and stuff, I can still feel it trying to lift me."

Hollie blinked through her cheap mojito that Ashley had pushed upon her. Green mint bewitching eyes. Innocent and longing. She seemed to be trying to say something, as if a distorting glamour holds her back.

"I suppose I'm....I mean....You're handling it sooo well, Ash. Its only for a few weeks, I promise. We''ll figure a way to get you down." Her voice trembles, leaving something unspoken.

Ashley feigns insouciance. "Sure. I mean, it's not too bad, once you get used to it. You've never done that gravas thing before? With anyone else?"

"With someone else? Goddess.....No!" Holli blinks. "it was my first Gravitas. I mean....I don't do enchantments with people. I mean, not alone with anyone else, I....thats..umm...done stuff in Coven....I suppose that doesn't count."

She trails off. So why pick on me, Holli? Ashley thinks, shifting in her seat. She has an itch on her bum and really wants to scratch it. Even with a weighted pair of jeans she doesn't settle into the faux leather and the gentle friction from her buoyancy has become an insistent tickle. A side effect of being all floaty is really needing to be scratched, apparently.  

"So....you're curious to know what it feels like? To float up and up and away?" she lets the sudden question hang like a balloon, as lightly as she dares to the beating heart.

"Oh not really!" Hollie blurts out, too quickly. Her chest rises and falls. "But...it would be cool...but I mean....no....I mean, I know, it's really dangerous. Oh Ashley, I nearly killed you, if you'd kept going up..." "

"Phhht. Yeah, but...there must be a way to do it safely. If you did it with...a friend or something. You thought of something the other day when you saved my life." Ashley reaches across the table and squeezes Holli's hand. The young witch's palm is damp, life-lines folding to tether them.

"Well." Holli shuffles "Even so....I guess I'd feel a bit embarrassed. It just feels like a silly thing to actually want. And I'd be scared."

"So you're not even curious about being a little bit floaty? Up there in the sky? " Ashley lets the tease linger, "Are you Sky-curious, Hol?"

Holli turns beet red and stares into her drink.

"Sky-curious. I...I....bet you are just a little sky-curious." Ashley laughs, half-drunk and half-amused. "Everyone is a little sky-curious".

Holli says nothing, but peeks upwards, the fringe of her hair holding witch-hazel eyes. A curl of lifting static rises about her, and subsides with a heartbeat. Just so.

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This is the third time.

Ashley pauses near the summit. Where the dark sky brims and breaks against the grass. The thin rain relents here, far below a town spilled all sodium-yellow where it is not washed away. Her hand rests on bark and lichen, midnight scents in a secret garden. She clutches lightly to the earth; look down; her boots are brown and knobbly. Sensible shoes for traipsing through a muddy hillside. Sensible shoes to make her just a little less than bouyant. Sensible shoes to stop her floating away.

Ashley spools the heavy twine hand over hand. Its strong; it has to be. She might be entrusting her life to it. Holli fumbles stoutly after her, still voicing some adorable objection, but the wind whips in their hair alike, impatient. It is so in on this deal. It knows some things can't be shut away; they'll have to ride this thing together.

She pulls the plastic dustsheet from her backpack, carefully, letting her hands slip against the cut grips. Almost laughing as it billows fiercely to the touch, dream-sail in gossamer and fairy-white. She has to grip the tree trunk with her other hand before turning to her companion.

"How are you with kites?" she grins.