Work Text:
The third time Hecate cancelled her date with Pippa that week was the last straw. Straight from the mirror call, Pippa had transferred directly into Hecate’s chambers at Cackle’s Academy and put her foot down.
“You really need a holiday—away from Cackle’s. It’s causing you far too much stress.”
A bewildered Hecate summoned just enough strength to protest. “But it is my career, Pippa. I have responsibilities—tonight, I am on detention duty. There are many people who depend upon me to run the school—”
Pippa shook her head. “I’m sure Ada can cope without you for a few days. If the entire school falls into chaos, you can blame me personally for bringing about the apocalypse. But I assure you, nothing bad will happen.”
Whenever someone made so bold a statement as that, something untoward was almost certain to occur. Hecate narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“Consider it a research trip if you like,” Pippa continued lightly. “We can visit plenty of historic sites. And I know just the place that has those in abundance.”
The following day, Hecate was already beginning to regret agreeing to Pippa’s suggestion of a holiday. She had packed a modest-sized carpet bag borrowed from Pippa, equipped with Featherweight and Expansive Interior Enchantments—apparently levitating luggage would stand out where they were travelling—and where it was that they were going was still a complete mystery to her. Surprises were not usually something that Hecate enjoyed, and the fact that Pippa both knew of her dislike for surprises and had not yet informed her of their destination spoke volumes about her expectations of Hecate’s reaction.
“All set?” said Pippa, brightly smiling at Hecate, who was standing stiffly in her less voluminous travelling cape.
“I suppose,” Hecate returned begrudgingly, looking down at her garments. Apparently a more casual appearance was necessary—and she was forbidden from wearing her pointed hat, though it was allowed in her carpet bag. “Having no clue as to what you have planned, I have done my best to ready myself.”
“Excellent. There’s just one thing we need to do before we can go—where’s Morgana?”
Hecate concentrated on her bond with her familiar, requesting her presence. Not long after, the sound of cat paws jumping down from a height could be heard from the bedroom, and in swaggered the beautiful long-haired cat, blinking her olive green eyes up at Pippa in greeting, noticing then her familiar—the dusty-furred bruiser of a cat Pepper—slouched lazily over Pippa’s matching carpet bag.
“Right,” Pippa said in a business-like fashion, and then raised her hands to cast a spell.
“What are you doing?” Hecate stopped her, alarm pitching her voice higher.
“Making them travel-sized.” Pippa smiled mischievously. “You don’t want to leave her behind, do you?”
Brow darkened with distrust, Hecate crouched to give Morgana’s head a comforting stroke—mostly for her own benefit, for Morgana seemed entirely unbothered. “Is this wise?”
“Of course,” replied Pippa, with an elevated amount of confidence that did not reassure Hecate at all.
Hecate watched as she raised her hands towards Pepper first; pink sparkles danced around him until he shrank to roughly the size of a small newborn kitten.
“Oh, look at him!” Pippa exclaimed, scooping him up in her hand and planting a kiss on his forehead. “Pocket-sized for our convenience.”
Grumbling, Hecate permitted Pippa to follow suit with Morgana. Her heart swelled as she retrieved the miniature Morgana—smaller, yet just as fierce. She had never seen her so minuscule, but it reminded her of when they had first been introduced. Are you all right? she thought through their bond.
Morgana did not report back any stress—she was unused to things being so large, but perfectly happy to snuggle into an inner pocket of Hecate’s cape.
“Dare I ask how we are reaching our destination?”
“Oh!” Pippa said, producing a round hand mirror from her own bag. She secretively glanced into it. “It seems clear.” She took Hecate’s hand, and transferred them away from the sanctity of Hecate’s chambers.
When they materialised, Hecate found herself in what looked like a beautiful Victorian entrance hall. At the far end was a reception desk with the concierge conveniently turned away—but at the sound of their footsteps approaching, the concierge greeted them.
“Welcome, ladies. Are you checking in, or will you be dining with us today?”
With a charming smile, Pippa said, “We have a room, but we’ll also be taking afternoon tea at noon.”
“Excellent.” The concierge found them on the system using some kind of illuminated panel behind the desk, and produced a pair of rectangular cards. “We have the Honeymoon suite ready for you now, Miss Pentangle.”
Pippa slipped the cards from the desk, thanked the concierge, and began to lead the way to a red-carpeted set of stairs. Hecate swallowed down questions of how much this cost—if this were a hotel, it was extremely tasteful, and seemed to be a wonderfully preserved, possibly Georgian, building.
“This is the key,” Pippa told her, pressing the card into her hand. “Don’t lose it. We’ll be needing these to get back into the building and our rooms.”
“It’s nothing like a key,” Hecate protested, curling her lip at it. “This is an Ordinary establishment, I see.”
“Ordinary by nature of not being magic, but far from it otherwise. Would you like to see inside?”
It was only due to decades of discipline that Hecate did not gasp in delight at the suite within. The rooms were gorgeously furnished with antiques, from the dark wood armoire, to the table and upholstered chairs, and most of all, to the glorious four-poster bed with sumptuous green and gold damask bedding.
“Were you expecting something pink?” Pippa murmured, with a knowing keenness to her eye. Hecate could not hide anything from her beloved.
The afternoon tea was held in the drawing room, where they enjoyed the performance of a string quartet over a sumptuous tower of finger sandwiches and delectable desserts. Hecate requested a different pot of tea every time the waiter called around, actually quite enthusiastic to try the teas sourced from across the world.
“So, have you guessed where you are yet?”
Hecate thought for a moment. “Britain, surely— likely England. A city—and based on my rather lacking knowledge of architecture and my more keen understanding of you as a person, my supposition would be—London.”
“Clever deduction. I know you’ve never been to a city before, and I thought—why not jump into the deep end?”
“I hope it will all be this calm,” Hecate warned her.
Pippa winked. “Well, what’s a trip to the city without a little hustle and bustle?”
After several hours relaxing in their suite, when night had begun to fall, Hecate was to discover what ‘a little hustle and bustle’ entailed—they were to venture further afield via the dreaded public transport—but Pippa made it clear her priority was Hecate’s comfort. It was some comfort to be enfolded in her embrace when they began their descent into the London Underground. The shifting staircase may well have been dragging them down into hell, but at least she was being held.
The platform was easily located, owing to Pippa’s knowledge, and featured attractive tilework on the walls—but the curved wall on the other side of the soot-blackened track was emblazoned with off-putting advertisements. “I can see why the locals call this ‘the Tube’. It truly feels like we are in one,” Hecate said loudly over the racket of the trains rattling by on other platforms.
“Wait—” Pippa replied, digging something out of her bag. The first object was fluffy and pink, to Hecate’s dismay, but one she handed her was thankfully black. “Ear defenders—to block out the sound. I know you’ll get overwhelmed by it soon, so I think it’ll help. Put them on like this.”
Hecate placed the two soft cups over her own ears, mirroring Pippa.
“You’ll be able to hear me clearly, now,” came Pippa’s voice into her cocooned ears. “They’re linked to the wearers’ voices, so we can block out most of the unwanted sounds and not each other.”
It was something that Hecate truly appreciated, for when the train came hurtling towards them around the bend in the tunnel, she was not nearly as startled as she might have been. The train doors opened with a dulled chime, and once the passengers had swarmed off, they alighted.
Although over half of the seats were taken, Pippa muttered, “Good—not too busy. There are two together here.”
“This is not too busy?” Hecate asked incredulously, while wincing slightly at the state of the seat upholstery. She could see exactly the grime where thousands of people had sat—but also, the fabric was printed in most atrocious geometric pattern that for some reason, she could not drag her eyes away from.
“I understand why I was not to bring a fuller cloak,” Hecate remarked. It was awkward being boxed in on either side by the arm rests and having to navigate an ankle-length garment.
To her brief surprise, Hecate felt Pippa’s hand grasping her own. It was a welcome sensation amidst the many people around them, and the lights overhead.
It was a literal breath of—well, not quite fresh—air as they left the station on the other side, emerging onto a cobblestone street was buzzing with people under a cool, cloudless night. The Underground had been too warm—and even though the air here was heavy with pollution, at least she was not trapped in the miasma of somebody else’s body odour.
Hecate patted the small lump in her cape pocket to make sure Morgana was still all right. She had, of course, been asleep since before they had travelled on the awful Tube—the lucky creature. Gazing around the area, Hecate noted the buildings here were quite charming—the station itself, Covent Garden, was faced with red-tiled arches, and while another of the buildings was quite prison-like in its gridded structure, its face was teeming with plants and mosses.
“It’s a bit manic, but hold onto me tightly and walk onwards with purpose.”
Linking arms, they escaped the hubbub of the station, heading into a crowded square around a vast colonnade. Crowds gathered around street musicians and performers, holding aloft the ubiquitous mobile telephones (Hecate had to ask Pippa what they were) to watch the moment on a tiny screen, but Hecate was disinterested in jugglers and men with guitars.
They did not enter the market itself, merely skirting around it, but its glow was welcoming in the darkness. They were to leave that welcome behind though—another street awaited, and they traversed another marked with stripes, veering past a supermarket with a square-columned entrance—until they eventually arrived at an enclosed alley, the numbers 23 and 24 at each corner.
Huddling closer together, Hecate and Pippa passed under an arch to find a narrow pass angling between old brick buildings, with large black-mullioned windows and doorways that broke directly onto the street. But then—Hecate’s heart lifted as she sensed something beyond the Ordinary twinkling ahead of them.
At the end of the row of terraces was a doorway that protruded parallel to the path. Here, a set of stone steps—so worn that the angle sloped down almost into the line of bricks below—led up to a black panelled door, with a lantern jutting out from the wall on a swirling bracket. A round doorknob was placed centrally above a letterbox, and above that, a cast-iron door knocker humming with magic.
Pippa glanced up at Hecate and grinned. “Would you like to do the honours? You didn’t think I was going to force you to spend Hallowe’en around Ordinaries, did you?”
A smile creased Hecate’s eyes unbidden, and she raised her hand to the door knocker, cracking it down thrice.
An entire world lay beyond the opening doorway, glinting with warm light. Hecate unlinked from Pippa’s arm, descending steps that mirrored those they had just ascended—and exited under an archway through to a cobbled street.
The contrast was palpable even in the air—there were very few cars—and those that were present looked like antiques from the turn of the twentieth century, with large, open cabins and small engines powered by potions. On the corner was a cocktail bar, tiled in deep green between warm-toned wooden framed windows. Another shopfront with a decorative window display showed potion bottles of all kinds, curved surfaces glittering with the warm glow from the wrought iron lampposts.
Pippa’s hands smoothed over Hecate’s back as she joined her. “This is Blackthorn Cloister, my darling. It’s one of the hidden districts for our kind in Westminster.”
“It’s wonderful,” Hecate whispered. Her pocket stirred as Morgana made a bid to escape—when her paws hit the ground, she began to revert to her larger cat form, shaking her fur out until it reached its usual length.
The people here were dressed with so much more substance and style than the typical Ordinary Londoner, far beyond the banality of beige—almost all in beautiful flowing robes and smartly tailored capes and cloaks, not to mention—
“You can certainly wear your hat here,” remarked Pippa, now withdrawing it from her handbag. Hecate placed it atop her head with pride.
Blackthorn Cloister seemed to be fully decorated for Hallowe’en, too—carved Jack-o’-lanterns lined the streets and doorsteps, and a host of candles casting radiance at the foot of a memorial, in memory of ancestors past. It was a true haven.
“Where would you like to visit first?” Pippa asked, leaning her head on Hecate’s shoulder.
The sights and sounds were still so captivating that Hecate had no idea which shop would be her first port of call. She had known of the existence of such places in towns and cities—longed for such oases of witching community during her interminable confinement—but she had only ever ordered supplies from periodicals. But there would be more than mere shops here. “Is there— a library?”
“Of course, Hecate. But why don’t we get a drink and a bite to first, my darling? It’s a good thing we’re here for a few days, isn’t it?”
Hecate turned to her beloved Pippa smiling up at her, and leaned down to meet her lips with a sweet, grateful kiss. “Thank you for bringing me here. You were correct—this is a welcome break from Cackle’s. However—forgive me for sounding ungrateful—but why did you book our hotel in the Ordinary world?”
“To show you Ordinary culture isn’t all that terrible,” Pippa said wryly.
Supposing Pippa was correct, Hecate sighed. “I apologise for worrying that you were leading me astray.”
Pippa raised her eyebrows in mischief. “Don’t you want to be led astray?”
“Only by you,” Hecate murmured, kissing her again as their familiars ventured down the street, tails entwined.