Witches in Flight Read Free Page A

visitor—but four-year-old boys
didn’t possess quiet genes.   Even
ones who that eventually grew up to be accountants started off as loud little
boys, and Aervyn was no future accountant.
    A giggle in the hallway suggested his guest had arrived.   And was taking a small detour past the
kitchen first.   Which was
understandable—Vero’s cookies tempted witches far older than four.   He was also reasonably sure his wife
would send a cookie or two his way after she’d loved on Aervyn just a little.
    He gently touched the old, lonely place in his heart for the
children they’d never had, and was grateful for all that his wife had done to
fill it.   There wasn’t a witchling
in California who hadn’t been made welcome in Vero’s kitchen, where cookies,
milk, advice, and love were doled out freely by the most generous heart he’d
ever known.
    Without her, he might have thought his life’s work was
accounting.
    And while he still had a fondness for neatly lined-up columns
and musty ledgers, he knew well that his legacy belonged with WitchLight.   A witch could hope for no more than to
put their power out into the world and have it find root and multiply goodness.
    He was a very fortunate witch.
    And a distracted one.   A gentle mind touch was all the warning he had before a small boy hopped
up into his lap, fingers wrapped around a cookie offering.   “Vero says this is all we get to have
until after we eat lunch.   But
she’s making cheesy-moon sandwiches and purple soup, so I bet we’ll like that
pretty well.”
    Melvin nodded solemnly.   He’d never been brave enough to ask what his wife put in her purple
soup, but very few witchlings protested its sweet goodness.   “Well then, let’s enjoy these cookies
now, shall we?   I see you brought
two—perhaps you can tell me which one’s bigger.”
    Aervyn studied the problem carefully for a moment.   “This one’s fatter, but…” he tapped
Melvin’s other hand.   “This one’s
got more bumps, so I think it’s the biggest one.   You eat that one.”
    In more than three years of sharing cookies, Aervyn had never
failed to offer up the biggest one.   When other people talked of the most powerful witchling in generations,
it wasn’t the scope of Aervyn’s magic that held Melvin in awe.   It was the size of his heart.
    Melvin took a bite, inhaling cinnamon-y goodness and small-boy
cuddles.   “So what should we do
with ourselves after lunch?”   He
loved visits from the small ones—life was never boring with a pint-sized
imagination around.
    “Well, I already found a frog today, and glued the wheel back on
my fire truck, and practiced my rhyming.”   Aervyn happily crunched on a cookie.   “We could have Vero teach us a new song.   I liked the last one about the jingle bells.”
    Melvin smiled.   Listening to his wife teach a small boy to sing a Christmas carol in
July was one of his fonder recent memories.   “I’m sure she’d be happy to do that.   She’s been teaching Elsie some pretty
tunes lately.”
    “Really?”   Aervyn
brightened.   “Is that why Elsie got
all brave and did the big circus tricks on the flying trapeze and everything?”   He polished off the last of his
cookie.   “She needs a sparkly
costume, though.   All the people in
the circus are really shiny so you can see them better when they’re way up in
the sky.”
    Melvin was fairly certain a spangly leotard would have done in
Elsie’s bravery altogether.   “Not
everyone loves sparkles quite as much as you do, my boy.”
    “It’s okay.”   Aervyn
reached up and patted his cheek.   “You have lots of shiny stuff in your mind, so you’re really easy to
see.”
    What a lovely and disconcerting thought.   “My mind’s shiny, is it?”
    “Yup.   Just like
Auntie Nat’s.”   His small visitor
hopped down.   “Mama’s is a little
shiny, and Uncle Jamie’s sometimes, and Elsie’s was shiny when she dared Lizard
to say a poem.   But