A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping

Your magic knew exactly who you were. That’s why your spell was a shield, not a sword.

Spend a bit more time with todays and a bit less time with yesterdays and tomorrows.

Theirs was a friendship built on the unspoken, shared understanding that you can love the home you’ve made with the whole of your heart and still know the land it’s built on will never claim you.

There is always a little magic in the heart of a person who loves it.

You’re still here, they said, those echoes of all the Sera’s that ever were. You went up in flames, but you’re still here. You’ll go up in flames again, but that’s ok, you know what to do now. You’ve done it already.

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.

the magic of a lit window on a dark night, the magic of the wild green land, the magic of birds' nest boy hair and trampolines and hot tea and glacier eyes lit with laughter, the magic of living, living, living. That was the magic that made wildflowers bloom.

This was a place stitched together by resistance, by acts of defiance by people who could not or would not go gently down the path the world had decided was inevitable…

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.

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.

transmutation. She saw the memory through his eyes. 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.

Some people simply weren’t winter people. Sera, on the other hand, was the most winter person to ever winter. No matter how tedious it was to keep the firewood topped up and keep casting the heat spells, no matter how annoying the inconsistent hot water and temperamental boiler, this was her time.

Also, I hope you have an umbrella. It rains apple blossom tea in this room every Sunday.

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?

That was inspiring,” Matilda said admiringly. “If I wasn’t gay and your grandma, I’d be very attracted to you right about now.

Like little pieces of me keep chipping away, bit by bit, and each time something goes, that version of me dies. Sometimes it’s big things that do it. Sometimes it’s small, stupid things. A dead great-aunt. A leaky roof. Exile. Ugly posters at the pub. Lost magic. A fight with a friend. It’s like the world gets just a little less magical each time, and I get a little smaller. And every time I close my eyes, there’s a huge, dark emptiness where the stars are supposed to be.

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.

I’m at my wits’ end,” Sera informed her. “My wits, as it were, have ended.

Albert, it seemed, had forgotten that his history might be a legacy of power, but hers was a legacy of resistance.

The thing a great many witches never understood about magic was its heart. It grew in the bones of witches, just as it had once grown in long-lost creatures like wyverns and six-tusked elephants, but what so many of those witches did not realise was that what it wanted was to be loved. It could be tender in one witch’s hands and violent in another’s, it could be vast or it could be small, it could be a night sky or teeth or lightning, but the one thing that never changed was that what it sought and what it repaid, above all else, was love.

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

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.

The earth doesn’t want me and the water could drown me, so I don’t belong anywhere anymore, and the ghosts remind me of that more than anything else. I talk about them like they’re not me because they’re not, because they left me behind, one after another, and each time, they’ve left me smaller and heavier,

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.

Well. Well. Did it hurt? When you fell out of whichever Norse myth you came from?

You went up in flames, but you're still here. You'll go up in flames again, but that's okay, you know what to do now. You've done it already. The dying wasn't what mattered. Unfurling your scorched feathers from the ashes and getting up again. Growing. Staying. That was the part that really mattered.

Sera would happily read a good book on the screen of her phone if that was all she had to hand, but there was something about the ink, paper, and dust of an old book that simply couldn’t be beaten.

Magic for family. Magic for home. Wasn’t she really just trading one kind of magic for another?

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

And it’s a teapot because it’s comforting. I mean, that’s probably not the actual reason witches have used teapots for centuries, but I’d like to think it is. Who doesn’t enjoy looking at a teapot?