Chapter Text
Through the skylight above Hecate’s head, the moon, with her gauzy cloaks that swim around her like shoals of silvery fish, is only just about visible. The storm tonight is ferocious, unrelenting, and Hecate spares a thought, several thoughts, for any person or animal that might be without shelter.
She has the latest instalment of Flora and Fauna suspended in front of her, opened to an article about the many trials and tribulations of growing shrubs throughout the seasons. Her arms are wrapped securely around Pippa, who still flinches at every crack that falls across the sky, even with a muffling charm in effect. In their cocoon, at least, Hecate prays that Pippa feels safe.
“Olivia Shrew has clearly never encountered a single plant outside of a textbook,” Hecate grumbles, stroking a hand through Pippa’s golden curls. She dots a gentle kiss against her temple, drawing her closer. “Honestly, Gro-Enhancer for the winter months? That is utter nonsense. My hydrangeas bloom perfectly without such gimmicky coddling.”
Pippa snorts, curling her fingers around Hecate’s kneecap. “Your hydrangeas are probably scared of your wrath,” she teases, digging in her nails as another clap of thunder booms through the room.
Hecate hisses inwardly, wincing, but she schools her expression before Pippa sees. A little soreness is bearable if it brings Pippa a modicum of comfort, though Hecate pries Pippa’s vice-like grip from her leg, bringing her knuckles up to press each groove to her mouth.
“It seems to be getting angrier,” Pippa says in a whisper, her voice strained and distant as if it’s holding back a deluge of tears. Her lower lip wobbles. Hecate is struck by how young she looks, how much like the girl from her memories who gushed over every opening bud and each tiny creature, and it plucks at the strings of her heart.
A familiar guilt clots in her throat, an overwhelming sense that she should have been there, could have been there, to nurse Pippa through thirty years of storms. These days, however, it dissipates quickly, giving way to an influx of gratitude and warmth.
She is here now.
“It will ease soon,” Hecate states resolutely, working her fingertips against the tense knots that line Pippa’s shoulders. She skims the shell of Pippa’s ear with her nose, dusting a kiss over her jaw. “It will ease soon.”
It’s too early for bed, really, but being under the covers provides Pippa with some solace and Hecate isn’t complaining. Her own limbs ache in ways that she’d forgotten were customary after a night of mingling, and she’s glad to be back in their sanctuary, free from small talk and, dare she say it, free from tradition.
They’ve only recently returned from what was quite possibly the worst Cackle’s faculty banquet on record, and that is saying something.
The atmosphere, to begin with, had been stilted at best. As if, instead of colleagues and friends, they were a group of castaways stranded on a desert island, with nothing whatsoever in common other than a mutual interest in locating the nearest food source.
Which, thanks to Miss Tapioca, had proved to be an exercise in futility.
Unreliable and harebrained as ever, she’d dozed off at some point during proceedings and snoozed through the majority of the affair, which was how Hecate had found herself elbow-deep in pie dough, muttering a string of profanities that she wasn’t even aware that she knew. Pippa, predictably, had found the who scene hilariously entertaining, simultaneously increasing Hecate’s annoyance and making it absolutely impossible to maintain a scowl.
She had rubbed Hecate’s back, trying to soothe, assuring her that they were, as always, a team. And then, without any thought for her beautiful dress and painstakingly primped hair, she’d kicked off her heels and tied back her curls, rolling up her sleeves to shape little parcels into flowers. It was hardly the most streamlined or efficient way of preparing the pastries, but Hecate hadn’t cared at all. How could she?
It had taken everything in her not to succumb to the tears that had needled against her eyelids, blurring her vision.
Pippa’s laughter had floated throughout the kitchens, tinkling like bluebells if they made a sound, which they don’t. Still, the sweetness of her motions, the easy way that she had fluttered her floury hands over Hecate’s forearms, kissing her cheeks and pressing her thumb over the ridge between Hecate’s eyebrows, was something impenetrably grounding, and precious, and theirs.
Between them, with the aid of a few baking spells, they’d managed to cobble together enough refreshments to see everyone through the evening.
Miss Tapioca owes Pippa a lifetime supply of custard tarts, and Hecate a year’s worth of grovelling.
After that calamity had been resolved, the stiff chatter had resumed. Most of the attendees stood in awkward clumps, intercepting canapés and staring at each other as if under hypnosis, and the whole ordeal had settled like a bad bout of queasiness in Hecate’s stomach.
That was until Ada, of all people, in one of the most irresponsible moves imaginable, spiked the punch at her own event. It was the kind of reckless stunt that Hecate might have expected from Dimity, but certainly not from a headmistress. Other than, well—perhaps she wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if Pippa had done something similar, but that’s different. Pentangle’s is a law unto itself.
Needless to say, after the adulterated drinks began to circulate, tongues had significantly loosened and Gwen’s foxtrotting had spiralled out of control rather rapidly. Why Algernon had thought it acceptable to start a conga line was anyone’s guess, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Hecate.
Definitely not.
They’d made their excuses, and Pippa, obviously, had insisted on saying farewell to every single person in attendance, which had taken far too long in Hecate’s opinion. She had wanted, desperately, to get home.
It was almost unthinkable, at first, the notion of moving away from Cackle’s. For all its faults, the school had been the backbone of Hecate’s life for decades, the very substance that she lived and breathed. Its battlements and flagstones were as much a part of her as her own skin.
But there had also been the exhilarating, almost cosmic prospect of sharing a space with Pippa that was just theirs, again, that had outshone any reservations. Somewhere that they could be together, always, not bound by the confines of their schedules and duties. They had settled on a location between Cackle’s and Pentangle’s to make transference more sustainable. Equidistant, of course.
And now they have a little cottage of their own, chock-full to the rafters with light and laughter and chaos. Wisteria and honeysuckle pour across the brickwork, lupins and cyclamen brighten the window-boxes, and begonias and fuchsias trail from hanging baskets by the front door, greeting all visitors with their fragrance. The garden is vibrant with lobelias and nasturtiums, lilies and gerberas, and dahlias—dahlias everywhere. It reminds Hecate of a Monet canvas: colourful and captivating and enchantingly lovely.
It is the place that Hecate has the privilege of returning to after each gruelling day of chalkboards and detentions, though, in the spirit of honesty, those have decreased in frequency in recent years. She suspects that there is some correlation between her waning discipline and her decidedly good moods, but it’s not a matter that she chooses to probe further.
Tucked beneath the blankets, with Pippa flush against her abdomen, she can’t worry herself with such trivial subjects. She winds a strand of Pippa’s hair around her finger, humming. A river of magic whirs in her stomach, even now, at having Pippa so close to her. Even with years of friendship and years of intimacy and years of love between them, her eyes sting, and the room feels like it’s spinning.
Eager to regain her equilibrium, Hecate wets her lips, quirking an eyebrow. “Do you think Mildred noticed that we were a little merrier than anticipated?”
Stumbling over the threshold with her shoes in her hand had not been her finest moment. Mildred’s owl-eyed expression and immediate offering of a glass of water had been mortifying and then some.
Pippa giggles against her neck, shaking her head back and forth. “Oh, please, Hiccup. A few goblets of punch is hardly a crime.” She walks her fingertips over Hecate’s shirt buttons, before dipping them into a gap between the fabric. She smirks. “I think we might have been less conspicuous if you hadn’t insisted on walking the length of the den in a straight line, which you promptly butchered.”
Hecate tuts petulantly, her nostrils flaring. “Perhaps it was the way that you demolished an entire bag of banana liquorice without stopping to blink.”
A ribbon of affection twines around Hecate’s ribs at Pippa’s answering chuckle. “Perhaps.”
The bubbling throb of devotion wins out and Hecate, lifting her hand into the air, conjures constellations above them, tracing the details of Pippa’s face as her smile springs to life. The stars cartwheel and somersault, orbiting around each other as they fall into their assigned patterns.
Hecate assumes that it’s pleasing to watch, but she can’t seem to avert her gaze from the streaks of amber that gleam in Pippa’s irises, the faint blush that tiptoes along her cheekbones. Every day she seems more and more beautiful to Hecate, foolishly sappy but true. She really needs to spend less time with Dimity. Her brain cells are drying up.
Her attention shifts, abruptly, as a flash of movement sails across the doorway.
Cue the havoc.
A small bundle of dark ringlets dances into the room in the most outrageously pink nightdress that Hecate has ever seen, dragging a ratty-looking toy rabbit, by the leg, along behind her. Morgana is tucked beneath her other arm, cradled between the crook of her elbow and her shoulder, very patiently accepting her less than regal position. Her long body and tail dangle like a feather duster melting towards the earth.
How Hecate always fails to hear her footsteps is a mystery that she will never understand. She reminds Hecate so much of Pippa, popping up out of nowhere and everywhere, spritely and luminous and grinning madly.
Hecate hastily retrieves Morgana from her predicament with an exaggerated exhale. The cat slinks to coil at the end of the bed, apparently unperturbed.
Pippa beams at the interruption. “Lux, honey, I’m not sure Jemima will think too fondly of being used to polish the floors.”
“That’s because Jemima does not think at all,” Hecate mutters under her breath to Pippa, setting her journal aside. She’s not even going to delve into the fact that Lux appears to be sporting a pair of holographic fairy wings that she was most certainly not consulted about.
Lux’s lips are a very incriminating shade of bubblegum, as are the tips of her fingers. Hecate cringes.
Harnessing her strictest expression, Hecate folds her palms together. “If that is what I think it is around your mouth, it had better not be.”
It’s difficult not to break character when Lux’s eyes widen and she hides her hands behind her back. “It isn’t.”
Athena, have pity.
“Lux Angelica, how many strawberry eclairs will there be in the box when I count them tomorrow?”
Lux’s nose wrinkles, and Hecate can see the cogs in her mind turning. She suspects that Pippa, the sly little traitor, is holding up the correct amount of fingers over her shoulder. The telltale tingle of her magic travels over Hecate’s skin and she surmises, also, that she’s making the appropriate changes to the quantity downstairs.
Brilliant.
Lux sticks out her chin, trying in vain to lick the icing from around her lips. “Five.”
Hecate gets the distinct, infuriating impression that she’s biting back a laugh. Somehow, like Pippa, she sees straight through Hecate's stony demeanour, slipping underneath her thorns and grasping her heart with delicate hands. It’s mystifying, and marvellous.
It does, however, make bedtime rather an uphill battle.
“Is that so?” Hecate asks wryly, though her lips tick up of their own accord.
Peals of joy and squeaks of delight tumble across the sheets as Lux clambers up onto the bed, rather unceremoniously planting herself between the two witches. Morgana bats one eye open at the sudden jerk of the mattress, before closing it again with a purr.
“Mhmm,” Lux chirps, smiling up at Hecate. She strokes her thumb over Lux’s cheek, observing her tenderly. Pippa threads her arms around the little being, resting her chin on top of her head. It’s a sight that makes Hecate’s body feel as if it is losing its definition, dissolving into the atmosphere as each atom is replaced by felicity.
Merlin, take the broom handle.
Dimity will be suffering the consequences for this on Monday, make no mistake.
Resuming her original undertaking, Hecate crosses her arms. “Did I, or did I not, ask you to put a fastening spell on the lid, Pipsqueak?”
Pippa’s tilts her face to the side, feigning a puzzled frown that is entirely unconvincing. “I don’t recall.”
“Pippa.”
Pippa waves a dismissive hand in the air. “Don’t blame me, Hiccup. You were rushing me out the door and wearing that mulberry dress. If you seriously expected me to be even remotely clearheaded then that’s on you.”
Hecate blushes, peering across at Pippa with watery eyes. She clears her throat, twisting her fingers in her lap. It is monumentally inconvenient that Pippa always knows just the right thing to say to make her bones leave the building.
“Yes, well, ah, more importantly,” Hecate says, flustered, fumbling over her words, “why is this little witch not in her bed?”
Lux wriggles under her gaze, jutting her jaw forwards in a way, Pippa thinks, that is so much like Hecate. A crumb is stuck to the corner of her mouth which is, admittedly, more reminiscent of Pippa.
There’s a slight pause as Lux drops her chin against her shoulder, shrugging sheepishly. “I thought Mummy might be frightened,” she explains simply, running sticky fingers over Pippa’s sleeve with a wonky little smile.
Hecate thinks that she might start sobbing. She wonders, in fact, if she might be already.
Lux, like Hecate, loves storms. One of her favourite things is counting the seconds between the lightning and the answering jolt of thunder, guessing how many miles away it is. But she has Pippa’s heart.
“My brave girl,” Hecate ekes out, speaking thickly against the bulb in her throat. She wipes at her eyelashes with one hand and grazes Lux’s cheek with the other. “My brave, kind girl.”
Pippa is openly crying as she frames Lux’s face with her fingers, pressing her forehead against her brow. She’s never been one to conceal her emotions, and having Lux has only made her softer.
Lux has made Hecate softer, too, more than she likes to admit. It seems drastically improbable that all of her fourth-year pupils passed their midterms, but her mark book suggested otherwise. She’d even written, on Bellamy Curtain’s report, ‘an exceptionally affable student.’
‘Affable.’ She must have a screw loose.
“Thank you, my little moonbeam,” Pippa croons, peppering Lux with kisses. “I’m much better now that we’re all together.”
When she’s free from her mother’s clutches, Lux shuffles away, picking up the glowing star that sits in the lantern on Pippa’s nightstand. She spins it between her fingers, feeling over each groove and edge, before twirling it through the air like a comet.
Pippa barely notices the quakes that clatter across the landscape, or the flashes that engulf the room. She slides her palm against Hecate’s, regarding Lux’s movements with a contented smile. After a short time, Lux slips the star back inside the lantern. With a dramatic sigh, she flops onto her back, tracing the shapes of the glittering lights with her fingertips.
She peeks up at Hecate with a very serious expression. “How do the glowworms get so high up in the sky?”
Hecate struggles not to let her eyes leave her head.
Glowworms? Mercy’s sake.
She can take three guesses at who it was that filled Lux's mind with such twaddle, and she won’t need two of them. She looks at Pippa incredulously.
“Magic,” Pippa replies, tapping the end of Lux’s nose. “Isn’t that right, Hiccup?”
For the love of goddess.
“There’s…magic in everything,” Hecate responds, slightly creakily, which at least is the truth. A lecture about the chemical composition of the universe will have to simmer on the back-burner for now.
Lux points to Sirius, the brightest star, and grins happily. “She’s the prettiest of all.”
“The prettiest…glowworm?” Hecate grimaces, and she can sense Pippa smothering a chuckle in her periphery. It won’t be so funny when Pippa finds herself awake at an ungodly hour, dealing with their tiny tornado. If she thinks she’s getting her usual Saturday lie-in, Hecate has news for her.
Lux’s features conflict, displaying a mixture of agitation and sympathy. She looks at Hecate like she’s grown a third eye.
“You’re so silly, Mama. That one’s not a glowworm,” she states, as if Hecate’s question is so ridiculous that she feels sorry for her brain.
Maybe Hecate is silly, because she’s having a hard time keeping track of this discussion. She rubs her temple, endeavouring to stitch the threads together.
“It’s not?”
“No. That’s Grandma Jillian.” Lux hurtles on, unaware of the way that Hecate’s magic is itching under her nightshirt, clamouring to escape her skin, “Papa told me.” She hugs Jemima against her neck, flapping her ear against her cheek. “She talks to me when I can’t sleep.”
Hecate feels like her heart has fallen out of her chest. She can almost see it in front of her, thrashing in her lap. Pinpricks of light speckle her vision as she chokes on her own breath. Pippa appears stunned beside her, staggered, chewing at her lip and offering Hecate a slightly pained smile.
Sparks crackle from Hecate’s fingers as she flexes them around her timepiece. She stares at Lux for what seems like a century, before sweeping a curl behind the girl’s ear. “What does she say?”
It sounds weak, flimsy, but it’s all that Hecate can manage.
“She says, ‘Shut your eyes and tuck up your toes.’ And she says, ‘There’s no need to be afraid.’” Lux yawns, stretching out her arms above her. “And sometimes she says, ‘Sleep, little snowdrop. Tomorrow is beautiful.’”
‘Sleep, little snowdrop. Tomorrow is beautiful.’
Reality sieves away. Hecate is vaguely aware of tiny arms wrapping around her waist and a weight settling over her legs, of Pippa whispering to Lux in a hushed, frantic tone, but she can’t make out anything in the room.
Instead, she hears her mother’s voice, quick to comfort and reassure through nights of restlessness and fevers and nightmares.
“Sleep, little snowdrop. Tomorrow is beautiful.”
It’s something that she'd never told anyone, not even Pippa. Something that she’d barely even remembered, because she’d kept those memories in a dusty compartment, gathering rust.
She feels Pippa’s hand curving around her wrist, the gentle pressure of nails wandering up and down her forearm, worried eyes scanning her frame for signs of distress. Hecate, however, finds that she’s grinning, blissful, blinking back tears of awe.
She eases Lux against her chest, burying her face against her hair. “Please—please tell her that I said thank you.”
Pippa smiles at Hecate with wet cheeks, kissing her knuckles and twisting the ring on her finger. “Me, too.”
And, just like that, an immeasurable peace unfurls between them.
It’s only when Lux yawns again that Hecate’s instincts return. “I think it’s time that one particular little witch was heading to bed,” she utters firmly, swooping a hand down Lux’s back.
Beseeching eyes, which jump open theatrically, peer up at Hecate from under Lux’s lashes. Pippa’s eyes.
“Not yet, Mama. Pretty please will you tell me the story about the little bear again?” A sullen bottom lip pops out and her brow creases. “Just this once.”
‘Just this once,’ otherwise known as every single night if Hecate isn’t careful.
She hesitates, hissing in a breath through her teeth. Meeting Lux’s pleading expression head-on is a significant lapse in judgment, because it’s a slippery slope from there.
“Grams told me it’s her favouritest, too,” Lux helpfully supplies, squeezing Jemima against her cheek.
“I see,” Hecate declares drily, clicking her tongue. “‘Favouritest' is not a word, sweetheart.”
She glances across at Pippa, which proves to be another hapless misstep. The hopeful smile stretched across Pippa’s features is irresistible. Frankly, Pippa is baseline irresistible, which is the cause of at least half of Hecate’s dimwitted behaviour.
Endeavouring to say no to these two matching grins is effectively chasing a rainbow.
“And Papa said, ‘Hec’te is the best at telling stories,’” Lux sings, resting her crown over Hecate’s collarbone. The wire of her fairy wings pokes Hecate in the ribs.
“Did he, now?” Hecate scoffs, scratching her long nails against Lux’s scalp in a spiral formation.
“Yep! And later, I heard him say, ‘Our girls are—’” Lux squints, scrunching her nose in concentration. “It sounded like, ‘fudging superb,’” she exclaims, dragging out the letters experimentally, “and Grams cried, but I think she was angry with him.”
Pippa splashes out a laugh, high and clear, and Hecate pinches the skin between her eyes.
“Right, well, I think that I shall be having a little talk with your grandfather.”
“You do tell that one wonderfully, darling,” Pippa drawls with puckered lips, her hand trailing across Hecate’s ribcage, “and Mildred said that Lux was so good for her tonight.”
Twin pouts are cast in Hecate’s direction. Fantastic.
Honestly, she’s not sure which witch in the bed is worse. It’s a miracle that she has even a scrap of dignity to her name.
Hecate narrows her eyes in amusement. Her nostrils twitch as she folds her arms over her midriff, simulating exasperation. It’s an overt bluff.
“Did your mother put you up to this?” Hecate quizzes Lux in a stern stone, and Pippa’s faux innocence is comically transparent. The blonde witch huffs in protest, sticking out her tongue at Hecate.
Apparently, Hecate has two stubborn children to contend with.
Lux brings a finger up to her lips, and it takes every ounce of willpower within Hecate not to laugh. She arches an eyebrow, pressing, and Lux reluctantly nods.
“I cannot believe that you’d involve our daughter in a mutiny,” Hecate admonishes, shaking her head. “The oldest trick in the spell book, Pippa Pentangle. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Oh, I’m sure I am,” Pippa chuckles, without a hint of remorse. “I can’t help that it’s our favouritest.” Hecate glowers at her.
Lumbering forwards unsteadily, Lux giggles, only to be caught by Pippa. “I can’t believe you told on me!” Small shrieks resound through the room as Pippa tickles Lux under the chin, lavishing sloppy kisses over her cheeks. She squirms, flailing her arms as she reaches for Hecate.
“Save me, Mama,” Lux squeals, wiggling feverishly, scrabbling to escape Pippa’s roving fingers. Hecate laughs, lifting Lux into her lap and hugging her tightly.
With a happy sigh, Pippa rests her head against Hecate’s clavicle. Hecate loops a slender arm around her waist, pressing a palm over the plane of her stomach. Tears once again patter against the backs of her eyelids.
She remembers Pippa’s swollen belly rippling beneath her touch, the countless hours spent rubbing sore ankles and weaving every new protection charm that she’d managed to learn from the pages of thick tomes and horribly modern literature.
“I love you,” Lux mumbles into her shoulder, her voice laden with sleep, nuzzling a warm nose against Hecate’s skin. The words are muffled, but they scatter through Hecate’s bloodstream like the purest kind of light.
Lux.
“And I love you,” Pippa smiles sweetly, giving Hecate a chaste kiss. Pippa's version of chaste, that is, which is arguably a bit more enthusiastic than most. Hecate feels like she might implode from the sheer affection that detonates inside of her chest, showering over her like a flurry of rose petals.
She looks down at the simple band on her finger and nearly weeps. She thinks back to a hand-fasting ceremony overflowing with their loved ones, Elodie’s arm hooked through her own as she’d led her to the centre of the circle. She thinks of Pippa gliding towards her fringed by Humphrey, her hair tangled with sunlight.
Two glittering dresses, silver and gold.
She thinks of their mornings. She thinks of frantic checklists and missing shoes and performing slapdash braiding spells on Lux’s hair as they’re halfway out of the door, invariably running late no matter how much planning goes into the execution.
She thinks of sticky kisses and bickering and broken heirlooms and her desecrated bird table, turned into a fairy mansion by tiny hands. She thinks of telescopes and picnics and tea parties and blanket forts. She thinks of her two favourite voices, promising that they love her every day without fail.
Hecate beams, so broadly that her cheeks hurt. She strokes Pippa’s jaw, giving her another kiss, and tightens her hold on Lux’s middle. “I love you, too,” she returns, just as she always does. She can’t ever imagine not telling them over and over, and somehow meaning it more each time.
“And Jemima,” Lux insists, bringing the rabbit up to nudge Hecate’s face.
“And Jemima,” Hecate agrees, too overwhelmed by adoration to dwell on how truly nonsensical it is to do so.
Like honey, the love between them will never spoil, will taste just as sweet millennia from now. It’s a terribly sentimental thought, but one of Hecate’s dearest. She dares to believe that she will have this, them, for the rest of her life, which may well turn out to be a very long time if Aunt Angelica thriving in her one-hundred-and-twenty-ninth year is anything to go by.
Hecate isn’t scared by the immensity of what she feels anymore. She revels in it.
She settles further into the headboard, crossing her ankles. “Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper,” she begins, basking in the glow of their little family. “A very, very long time ago—”
“Before even you were born?” Lux interrupts, snuggling closer.
Hecate glares at Pippa, who tries to disguise a laugh by placing her hand over her mouth. “Yes, before even I was born,” Hecate continues, her vexation evaporating as Lux curls her little fingers around a pale thumb, “there lived a small boy named Arcas…”