The Magic Between Us

Betsy sat on the floor with Hedgehog across from her, a wide grin across her face.

"Wow, you're really getting good at this!" Betsy said happily as Hedgehog used the wand she had given her to levitate a golf ball between the two of them.

"Thanks," Hedgehog said, concentrating keeping the sphere between them before she dropped it. It bounced away under the coffee table.

"Dang it," Hedgehog muttered, but Betsy retained her optimism.

"Hey, seven seconds is a new record!"

Hedgehog wiped her brow, a little sweat beginning to bead on her forehead. "Magic takes a lot out of you," She admitted.

"It does, but the more you practice, the less it drains you." Betsy assured her. "Okay, now let's try some basic transmutation. Now, don't expect to turn rocks into gold on day one, but just try to—"

The door to Betsy's cabin flung open, startling both the witch and the camper. In the doorway stood Susie, wand gripped tightly in her hand, a furious snarl across her face.

"Just what on earth do you think you're doing?" she growled, her words barely escaping through her clenched teeth.

Hedgehog was frightened, she had never seen Susie this angry, not even at the party she and Oscar had thrown for her. She looked to Betsy for comfort, but found none.

The equine witch knew she had messed up, and unfortunately, it was her breaking the rules instead of Susie. There was a terribly tense silence before Hedgehog felt her wand fly from her hand and into Susie's. With a clench of her fist, she snapped it in two, a puff of pink smoke escaping and curling into nothing.

Hedgehog immediately got to her feet. "Hey!"

Susie's evil glare turned to her, and for the first time, Hedgehog felt herself shrink beneath it.

"Back to your cabin!" With a flick of her wand, Hedgehog disappeared. With the witnesses gone, she focused on Betsy, who had now gotten to her feet. It was one thing to yell at her, she deserved it. But to snap at her favorite camper was a bridge too far.

"Did you think I wouldn't find out?" Susie hissed, taking a step towards her. By now, Betsy had steeled herself against Susie's wrath.

"Yelling at me is one thing, but you had no right to do that to Hedgehog's wand!"

"You're gonna talk to me about rights?" Susie shot back, barely controlling her anger as her intact wand shuddered in her fist. "We do not! Teach! Campers! Magic!"

"Susie, calm down!" Betsy shouted back. She may have been the head counselor, but what right did she have to barge into her cabin and start screaming? "I was teaching her the basics for goodness sakes, I wasn't showing her how to perform the seven wonders!"

"I have half a mind to send you out of here for good!" Betsy was taken aback by the mere suggestion. Hedgehog was an entry level magic user at best, and it took years to even begin to approach her level. "If I ever catch wind of you doing this again, it will be the last time you use magic on this island!"

Before Betsy could muster a counterargument, Susie stormed out as quickly as she came, leaving Betsy in the lurch before she raced after her, fully ready to give her a piece of her mind. The commotion drew Alice outside, who quickly asked Betsy about the shouting.

Alice physically stopped Betsy in the grass between the cabins. "Whoa, what's going on?"

"I—she—just came in and started—" Betsy began, unable to string together a coherent sentence.

"Okay, let's take a breath," Alice instructed, putting both hands on Betsy's shoulders to try and calm her. "Now, tell me what happened."

Betsy explained the situation, and instead of being reassured by her outrage, Alice's expression was one of reluctance, as though she knew something Betsy didn't.

"Susie... well..." Alice began, "She has kind of a... unique relationship with magic."

"Unique like she wants to hoard it all?" Betsy replied bitterly.

"It's... look it's not my story to tell, but..." Alice hesitated. "I... I can't really blame her."

"What?!" Betsy replied in shock.

Alice held her tongue, unsure if her next words were the correct ones to diffuse the situation, or inflame it further. "If you want the whole story, then you know where to find it," she pointed towards Susie's cabin.

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Susie sat at her writing desk, the light from a single candle burning next to her, it's flames casting dancing shadows around her spacious cabin. Sure, she had electricity, but sometimes she preferred the old ways. The following day would mark the anniversary of an event that she both appreciated and despised, a memory that she was successfully able to push out of her mind every other day of the year. In front of her lay a stack of weathered old parchment, correspondence from an era that seemed now to be only the memory of a memory. She had read each letter countless times on varying occasions.

They were all sent to her, but she sent none in return. It was all she could do simply to read them, and not break completely. Susie gritted her teeth, the frustration mounting in her heart. She pounded a fist on her desk in anger, making the candle jump, spilling a bit of hot wax onto the oak, and threatening to topple over. She rifled through the letters again, scanning each one.

Finally, she came upon the last letter, the calligraphy much different from the others.

She read this one much more carefully than the others.

"Madame DuBois Academy for Girls"

It was her acceptance letter, dated in the 1800's. The letter included her name, as well as the names of the other girls who had been accepted. Her eyes ran down the list, stopping at a name she only thought about once every decade or so.

'Ramona'

She blinked, a tear threatening to escape the confines of her eyes. She set the letter down with the rest of them, and turned towards the candle. With a puff of air, darkness swallowed her cabin. In the pitch black of the interior, she found her way to her back door. She walked outside into the pale moonlight, glancing up at it. It wasn't unlike the night that changed her life forever.

She glanced at the marking she had drawn on the back of her cabin. Susie had only drawn it twice. Once on the wall of her cabin, and another on that infamous night. She couldn't help but look away. She put her fingers to it, tracing the rough wood on the outside of her cabin. The rune was burned into the wood. She fell to one knee, her palm against the center, tears now flowing freely down her cheeks as she fought a losing battle against her sobs.

Between flushing the tears from her eyes and staring down the grass for what felt like hours, a voice nearly startled her out of her skin.

"Susie?"

She recognized that voice. It was the same witch she'd just harshy chastised for teaching a camper magic.

"W-what do you want, Betsy," she replied, trying to quickly gather her composure and failing.

"Listen, I just wanted to tell you that..." Betsy sighed. Even though she didn't believe she was in the wrong, she swallowed her pride. "You're right, it's not my place to teach the camper's magic... that isn't why they're here."

Susie was still sniffling as she finally began to pull herself together. "Good..."

Even though that was probably the best she was going to get, something still bugged her. How did she know she was teaching Hedgehog magic? It certainly wasn't Hedgehog, and she had been careful not to let Alice know.

"How did you know I was teaching Hedgehog magic?"

Susie scoffed, before getting to her feet, wiping her eyes.

"You checked out all the beginners magic books out of the restricted section of the library," She replied. "Did you think you were being sneaky?"

"Not really, but to be honest, why do you care?" Betsy asked, finally getting to her main point. "Hedgehog knew a few parlor tricks, at most. Was all that yelling necessary?"

Susie took a seat, her back against her cabin, and patted the grass next to her. "I really hate you sometimes, Betsy."

"I know," Betsy said.

Susie pulled her knees to her chest. "Alice put you up to this, didn't she?"

Betsy crossed her legs and looked up at the full moon. "She told me there was a reason you... really didn't like anyone but us using magic."

Susie sighed, and looked to Betsy, their eyes meeting. "Well, I guess it is about time I told you."

"My parents and I were from London, and we moved to America when I was ten. They had just had a civil war or some such, and my father was a trader for the East India Company. They sent us to New York City."

"New York City?" Betsy asked. "That must have been fun!"

"No, it isn't like it is now, it was squalor. Luckily, we had the money to live in a nicer section. My mother was a constant worrier because I was her only child, and she dreaded the idea of sending me to a girls school within the city to mingle with the 'colonists'."

A realization fell onto Betsy like a sack of potatoes. "Wait a second...how old are you?"

Susie glanced at her. She held up a finger and swirled it around in the air, producing a small white tube with a filter on the end. She put the filter to her lips and snapped her finger, her index finger maintaining a flame. She flicked the fire away and took a drag, slowly releasing the smoke. "How old do you think I am?"

Betsy's eyes widened, she had never seen Susie smoke before, and never even suspected she did.

"Uh... I know we have a fifteenth birthday party every year, but I just thought that was kind of an inside joke..."

Susie huffed, smiling gently. "You didn't answer the question."

Betsy scratched her head. She certainly didn't look any older than fifteen. "Eighteen?"

"Swing and a miss," Susie replied. "I'm one hundred and forty one."

The breath nearly left Betsy's lungs. "W-what?" She surely had to be kidding.

"How... how is that..."

"I was getting to that, if you'd stop interrupting," Susie admonished, taking another pull from her cigarette. "My mother finally found a place she felt comfortable sending me: Madame DuBois Academy for girls,"

Betsy gasped. The counselors had to learn the history of the island before starting their jobs, and the first thing the island became after it was discovered was a girls finishing school.

"So, you were... IN Madame DuBois?"

"That's right, class of 1894... or, I would have been." Susie sighed, flicking the ash from the tip of her cigarette, watching the smoke curl into the night sky. "I arrived at the Island in the fall. Believe it or not, I was a shy kid, and I had some trouble making friends..."

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A young feline girl stood on the top deck of a moderately sized clipper ship, a mountaintop piercing the otherwise serene blue sky in the distance. She was dressed in a light blue jumper, her pink hair blowing about her face as the wind pushed their vessel towards the island growing larger on the horizon. In her arms she clutched a doll, a dapper looking elephant in a suit, with buttons for eyes. She hugged it close to her chest as the sea spray rose over the bow.

"Come along now miss, it's almost time to make berth," A panda in a sailor suit said, ushering her back below deck with the other girls. The ship was well maintained enough, as to be expected of a vessel carrying the progeny of the well-to-do. The room was full of her classmates, some playing games or talking, and still others sleeping or simply waiting apprehensively by their bags. Susie decided the latter was her best option, taking a seat by her bag. Susie wasn't feeling very social. It was bad enough that their family had been uprooted from the only home she'd ever known, but she also had to leave her friends behind as well. The very idea of having to start over with no friends seemed daunting and impossible.

Susie exhaled deeply, feeling the sway of the ocean beneath her. Despite her protests, her mother and father stood firm in forcing her to attend school on an island in the middle of nowhere. At least if she were going to school in the city, she could be home every night, getting tucked in to bed by her mother and father, surrounded by her toys and her favorite servants.

Soft laughter drew Susie's attention from the floorboards. A group of girls had been glancing at her, before looking away quickly and giggling. She hugged her doll closer to her chest, hoping they'd ignore her. Truly that was all she could hope for this academic year: go to class, and be ignored.

She was also acutely aware that she seemed to be the only girl over the age of seven that had a doll. If the others had one, it was at least stowed in their bags.

"Oi!"

Her greatest fear was becoming reality before her eyes. A much older looking girl came striding towards her, flanked by two others.

"Well who do we 'ave 'ere?" the older deer girl with brown fur and white spots said. "What's your name?"

Susie could tell this was no attempt to make friends. Her heart began to beat faster as she summoned the courage to answer.

"Susie Mcallister," she said timidly.

"Susie Mcallister," the older girl repeated almost mockingly. "And how old are you, Mcallister?"

"T-ten,"

"Hm..." the older girl replied. "Don't you think ten is a little old to play with dolls?" Quicker than Susie could react, she snatched the doll from her grip, holding it out in front of her. Susie leapt up from her seat and jumped for it, only to find it just out of her reach.

"Hey! Give me back Oscar!"

"That's what you named this thing?" she scoffed, dangling it in front Susie as she continued to desperately try to get it back. "What's a ten year old doing with a rag doll anyway?"

"My daddy gave it to me when he came back from India!" She replied breathlessly, growing tired from attempting to rescue her doll. "Give it back!"

The deer girl looked down at her, still holding the doll hostage before noticing something Susie was terribly self-conscious about.

"Bloody hell, girls!" She laughed before continuing "Look at the size of those eyebrows!"

The three older girls burst into laughter, which had now garnered some attention from the rest of the girls below deck.

"They're like caterpillars on her face innit?" One of the girls mocked in between fits of laughter.

By now Susie had stopped trying to retrieve Oscar. Tears threatened to stream down her cheeks, and in one blink, they began running freely. She wasn't sure how long the torture would have gone on if not for the ships bell signaling that it was time to disembark.

"Aw, did we hurt your widdle feelings?" The mean deer girl said. She tossed the doll at Susie's feet. "C'mon girls, let's leave the baby with her doll."

Susie quickly snatched up Oscar and held him close, vowing never to let her guard down with him again. She pushed her face against his plush suit, the material growing damp with her tears. There was movement all around her as the other girls readied themselves to get off the ship, but Susie paid it no mind. She would prefer to be last off the boat, if it meant no one would notice her, and thus lessening the opportunity for them to say cruel things to her.

As the below deck area began to thin out, Susie managed to dry her eyes, though they were still red and puffy, and more than a few sniffles still tried to escape. There was no mommy or daddy to run to here, only the cruel girls and hopefully a sympathetic instructor or headmistress if she was lucky.

She heard footsteps on the planks coming towards her. She could only pray it wasn't those mean girls from before, coming back for a round two, but she didn't dare look up, just in case it were.

"Hey, are you okay?"

The tone in the voice was vastly different than the cold sneer the older girls had accosted her with. With this in mind, she looked up from her doll. A sheep girl with flowing, curly hair and a gentle smile looked down at her.

"I saw what those girls did, that was mean."

Susie sniffed up her tears and tried to pull herself together. "Yeah... I'm okay."  She replied. "My name's Susie."

The girl put out her hand, and Susie shook it. "Nice to meet you Susie, my name's Ramona."