Magic for the Malcontent
A Travel-Inspired Story
Gemma Thorton was a witch of the highest order. She’d paid gravely for the honor with large parts of her soul without understanding what it would entail. Magic was a disappointment, to be sure, but having sacrificed so much for it, she felt obliged to stay the course despite its flaws.
For starters, Gemma didn’t find joy in the power, just obligation. Society had a view of witches that was better suited for the dark ages, not the nineteenth century. There was some truth to the stereotypes — witches were always women and possessed unique skills because of their magic — but mostly they became expectations people placed on her. She didn’t mind dressing in the classic all black, but she did detest using her power on inanities like healing the sick and turning cruel husbands into frogs. But since Gemma didn’t have a different idea of what to do with her magic, she kept up appearances.
Gemma went so far as to join a coven. She’d done it out of a vague sense of duty but mostly so as not to raise suspicions. Nothing made people — magical or not — more wary than a powerful woman living on her own. Gemma played along with witch politics and became a martyr to the causes of others until she could feel the seams of heart straining.
The ache started dull. Just a shadow of pain that loomed a bit too large some days but lurked undetected on others. It grew until it was always there, sitting like a stone on her chest. Gemma excused it as normal. Surely all witches must feel the weight of their life’s work pressing down on them.
In response to being waved away, Gemma’s ache grew into a rage so strong it consumed her. It perched on the edge of her lips, threatening to tumble out as a scream instead of an incantation. It itched her fingers, inciting them to scrawl her anger into the coven’s grimoire, rather than a spell. It leaked out of her in snapped replies, slammed doors and a sharpness that made many people cry.
One day her anger prompted her to set a whole town ablaze because the grocer didn’t have toadstools. It was enough of a misstep that she confessed the ache’s existence to another witch. It turned out many witches lived without all-consuming rage. More often, they were joyfully swept up in the experience of possessing magic. Their lives weren’t always easy, but after a few conversations, Gemma realized that she was experiencing something altogether unusual for her kind.
What to do with this information was a riddle. Unfortunately, Gemma didn’t have the patience for puzzles. What she did have was magically extended lifespan, giving her plenty of time to decide what to do next.
Eventually, she concluded that she needed a new direction. People had vocations to guide them. She assumed that hers, witchcraft, was the source of her temper. Gemma hypothesized that if she switched careers, her anger would calm and the ephemeral thing she remembered as happiness would return.
She spent a few years as a teacher. She’d taught the coven’s newest members, so it felt like a natural choice. But after evaporating many disrespectful students with an annoyed flick of her wand, she decided that she didn’t have the proper temperament for education.
Next, Gemma was a farmer. She drove a family off their land with a swarm of aphids, then set about trying to grow apples. The tedium of watching fruit slowly materialize was too much for her. She cast a spell that instantly ripened apples and another to collect them. It worked beautifully the first year, but when other farmers started to poke around with pitchforks, she decided being skewered over mealy apples wasn’t the path to happiness.
She was a baker, a secretary, a prostitute and a number of other professions available to women at the time. None of them lasted long. Gemma found that her short temper, fits of tears and lingering melancholy followed her wherever she was employed.
Then one day in her latest role as a seamstress’s apprentice, her long life changed. She was hours into fitting a customer for a new dress when the awful woman groaned her regrets about the fabric she’d chosen. It was too plain, she remarked. Not at all like what they had in Europe, she continued. Why was the supply here so awful, she wondered.
Gemma dutifully nodded as she passed pins to the seamstress but felt her familiar anger rising at the constant complaints. The feeling became so intense that she excused herself to the storeroom before she pushed pins into the woman’s eyes instead of the fabric.
Upon entering the tightly packed room, Gemma collided with the very bolt of fabric that her customer despised. It really was a pretty material, but in this state Gemma had no empathy for inanimate objects. She hoisted the fabric above her head and threw it. It collided into its brethren with a crash and an explosion of colors that whizzed around the room like shooting stars. As the colorful streaks met fabric, the materials changed. Some grew threaded vines with embroidered flowers that looked almost real. Others swirled with marbling like the inside cover of a leather-bound book. Wherever her anger-induced magic touched, the fabric became more than what was possible from the loom alone.
Gemma knew that what she had inadvertently created was special. It was more sumptuous and beautiful than the European fabrics the entitled woman had described. It was so special, in fact, that Gemma decided to steal it.
It wasn’t the worst thing she’d done, but she felt bad about the theft. The seamstress who was training her was a patient teacher who kindly overlooked Gemma’s poor customer service. But Gemma had been alive long enough to know that when an opportunity presented itself you had to seize it. Out of respect for her mentor, she decided to seize it in an entirely different town.
Gemma’s fabrics and the dresses she made with them were a sensation. Women rode trains across the country for fittings. She was featured in every lady’s journal. Actual royalty placed fabric orders by the bolt. Gemma was successful by every standard of measurement.
More than monetary success or popularity, Gemma was most proud that she had found a surprising and wholly unexpected use for her power.
All that success felt a lot like what she’d remembered happiness to be. Money softened the sharp edges of life. Praise lit the dark thoughts in her mind. Friends, however fake, filled the echoing quiet of her sad solitude with laughter. Life was as near to perfect as she thought it could be. Yes, Gemma still felt the ache at times but was so busy with the demands of her popularity that she hardly had time to acknowledge it.
Gemma held on to this contented state for eight years before Rosaline came to town. At first, Gemma scoffed at the other woman’s dress shop. That Rosaline had the bad sense to open her store directly across the street from Gemma’s was almost enough to engender compassion, but Gemma was also territorial of the life she’d created. She watched the young woman warily for days. Upon realizing that Rosaline wasn’t magical, just a dressmaker with a dream, Gemma left her competition alone.
It was a mistake. Within months, Rosaline’s sleek, modern designs in understated fabrics took off. It seemed that people were looking for a reprieve from Gemma’s ostentatious creations and a new fashion was forming. Customers left Gemma by the droves.
Gemma spent her suddenly free days trying to hatch a plan. The ache around her heart was returning as frantic fluttering and shaking hands. She dismissed it as nerves, not anger. Dressmaking had healed her of that affliction, surely. That’s why a strategy to reclaim control was so important. During a plotting session, Gemma heard laughter from the street so loud she opened her door to investigate.
A cluster of once-faithful friends were fawning over Rosaline, who was charming everyone in front of her store. Over the clamor of the town’s busy street Gemma could make out the same praise they used to shower upon her. Hearing words once reserved for her aimed at another woman unleashed a familiar feeling within Gemma. The ache that she’d so flippantly dismissed as healed came roaring back. Jealous rage tore through her as a scream.
The unfairness of Rosaline’s accomplishment overwhelmed her. Here was an unremarkable human women finding even more success than Gemma’s powerful, magical self. It was inconceivable that such an ordinary creature could surpass what she had given decades and a significant part of her soul to achieve. It was an atrocity and Gemma wouldn’t stand for it.
In answer to her righteous fury, every scissor in Gemma’s workroom lifted from where it had been cutting fabric, their sharp metallic ends pointed directly at Roseline. They hung in the air for a moment before crashing through the large front windows of Gemma’s store to tear across the street. They cut through the crowd, narrowly missing pedestrians and busting through the side of one unfortunate buggy.
Rosaline’s fans protected the object of their affection, pushing her out of harm’s way, before ruining their stylish dresses by diving into the dirt. The scissors did not follow the women, but instead found their mark in the successful storefront.
With the thump of each scissor making impact, Gemma felt her smile grow. There was joy in the destruction, a satisfaction in undoing the work of another. It made her giddy to see the mess she was making. A cackle rose from deep within, booming out so loud it could be heard over the melee.
As the screams of fleeing townsfolk rang in her ears and the hum of steel being embedded in wood vibrated her body, Gemma began to wonder if it wasn’t her vocation that caused her rage. Perhaps, she thought with unadulterated glee, she was just an angry person.
All these years, Gemma had resisted the dark chaos that twisted around her heart. The path others took to happiness seemed so well-trodden she never assumed that there was another. Now, standing in the physical manifestation of her own emotion, Gemma felt light for the first time since giving herself away for magic. This was something worth devoting her life to.
Sure, being evil wasn’t a normal human profession. But lucky for Gemma, she was a witch and for witches being evil was most definitely a vocation.
Travel is one of my great loves. One reason is that I am constantly inspired. I find myself wondering at the lives of people I see or the backstory of the places I go.
I found the seed of this travel-inspired story while in Yountville last August. I was on my way to a fresh english muffin at Model Bakery when I saw this incredible display. Was it art? An advertisement? There were no signs or explanations. Inexplicably, people were streaming by the scissors without pause. I couldn’t help but be pulled in. After exploring and looking for answers, I snapped a photo and continued on to my Oprah-worthy treat. The scissors stayed in my mind. I knew my story about them would have to involve magic (what other explanation was there for their presence?) but it took me a little while to find Gemma. I hope you enjoy meeting her, despite the rage and destruction.
I was so surprised by the ending! I like that she embraced the anger rather than viewing it as a problem