Chapter Text
Hecate wakes up, more or less, to cold so intense it’s barely recognizable as cold at all. There's a heaviness, a feeling of solidity, as though her blood's been turned to iron ore and suspended in place. She struggles to focus; something was happening, something she had a responsibility to stop, but the ice had crept into her bones and it had been a struggle to move, much less to do – what? – the thing that needed to be done.
She does have the sense, strong and sour in her mouth, that she failed.
There are sounds now, muted and ghostly, voices trying to get through the cold – it's a little easier to tell now that that's what it is, just cold. She thinks whatever words are being spoken beyond the cold will have to chip their way in, ice shard by ice shard, until it all cracks and shivers open. But that doesn’t seem to be happening, and at any rate the freezing is already in her marrow, so there’s no chipping deep enough anyway. She closes her eyes. The darkness behind her eyelids is not black but grey, like clouded ice.
“-----,” she hears, and ignores it. Then. A sudden shock of warmth, circling her wrist. Invasive and somehow cloying. Against the warmth she suddenly remembers again what freezing means, and begins to shake.
“M-ss H-rdbroo-”, she hears, the sound of the words patchy and fading in and out. “Mi– Har—oom, try and –”
That warmth again, this time on her palm. It’s as unpleasant as if a dog were peeing on her.
“--hear me?”, she hears, and reluctantly opens her eyes. Things are blurry for a moment, then begin to resolve. She realizes she is lying full-length on a couch, with a worried face looming inches from her own. The face belongs to Julie Hubble.
Oh, hell.
"Miss Hardbroom," she hears now, the words gaining in clarity and definition, as if the fuzz of frost's melting off them. "Can you hear me, Miss Hardbroom? Come on, come back to me, now."
Come back to you?! Hecate wants to say. In what universe could anyone reasonably consider there to be a possibility that I could ever come back to you? I have never been with you. There are few people I have met whom I could be said to have been with less than I have been with you, and even fewer whom I would like less to be with than with you. Do not flatter yourself that I might –
But something is happening; the ice crystals are crowding into her brain again. A second's pause, and then that unpleasant warmth is on her shoulder. With effort, she manages to incline her gaze to look. Julie's hand is on her shoulder, rubbing.
"Don't worry, Miss H,” she seems to hear, the northern accent strong in that haitch. "I'm a nurse, you know. We'll have you round in no time."
Normally Hecate would take pleasure in explaining for Ms. Hubble the differences between ordinary nursing and the sort of advanced spellcraft needed to counter the effects of powerful dark magic like the spell that had left Cackle's a frozen wasteland, but when she tries to open her mouth she finds her jaw isn’t working. Curious. Experimentally, she tries to move a finger. Nothing. She tries again, mustering all the strength she can, eyes zeroing in on that hand. It lies there inert. The word paralysis drifts through her mind idly, with no particular urgency, and she closes her eyes again.
“Now, now, none of that, Miss H.,” she hears. “Open your eyes. Look at me.”
Hecate doesn’t bother, drifting through the grey. Someone in the background says something she doesn’t listen to.
“Yes, I think I’ll have to,” comes Julie’s voice.
Suddenly that warmth is everywhere, enveloping Hecate, a shock so total against her frozen body that it feels almost like pain. Hecate’s eyes fly open, raking over her body frantically. Julie Hubble is on her knees by the side of the couch, and Julie Hubble is hugging her.
Hugging her.
Hecate lets out a small grunting noise that’s the most she can manage and begins fighting to move in earnest. She can almost feel bits of the ice cracking and falling aside as she struggles. “There we go,” comes Julie’s voice, approvingly, and Hecate struggles harder, desperate to tell Ms. Hubble that she, Hecate Hardbroom, would not deign to be approved of by Julie Hubble. As she thinks this her thoughts seem to get cloudier again for a minute, and she wonders if she’s drifting back into the grey, but this time that cloying, invasive warmth won't go away, is instead spreading through her body. She keeps struggling, though whether she’s struggling to get out of the ice or get out of Julie Hubble’s arms she’s honestly not sure.
Fully focused on her attempts to get free, she misses it when the ice on the walls evaporates. She’s just about regained a rudimentary range of movement, is just beginning to be able to put together broken little fragments of words –
– when Ada materializes in front of her. Ada, fully melted. Ada, in full control of her magic.
Hecate begins to shake again.
***
It takes a while to piece together what’s happened. Once she has it all clear, Hecate wants to curse Julie Hubble into oblivion -- not that that’s an option anymore.
Because Julie had come to a frozen castle to find a museum of ice statues, and she’d hugged Mildred until the ice block around her had melted away completely. She and her daughter had then decided that this meant that Julie was capable of rescuing everyone in the castle with… hugs. She had started with Miss Hardbroom, thinking her the most powerful witch on the premises, the one who could best help to make things right for the others. So she’d hugged Hecate, and touched her, and tried to bring her back to life. And she’d succeeded, barely. But only barely. She’d brought Hecate back to a half-frozen half-life, trapped somewhere between the real world and the suspended state she’d been in. She’d laid her out on a couch and tried to nurse her back to health. And while she was doing that, Miss Mould had restored the Founding Stone, and all of the ice statues throughout the castle had melted. But not Hecate. Neither here nor there, frozen nor thawed, she had lain half-paralyzed on the couch, watching this happen around her. Watching the others become human again. Become witches again.
While Hecate had lost her magic.
At first that part wasn’t clear. It was easy enough to dismiss her inability to summon her magic when she was still barely able to move. She hardly felt in touch with her body at all, much less with the magic that had always run through her blood. But after the Founding Stone was restored, Ada had summoned healers to see to her, and after days of noncommittal dithering, Hecate had finally gotten one of them to tell her the truth. And the truth was that no one knew how Julie had half-cured her, and no one knew how to make the cure complete.
The healer Hecate likes best is a tall wizard with a straightforward, levelheaded manner; the badge on his robe reads HEALER HEMLOCK. “I have some suspicions as to what’s happened, Miss Hardbroom, but suspicions are all they are. And I don’t think you’ll much like them. I don’t like them myself.”
“Why is that?” Hecate says. She’s still lying on the same couch on which Julie had placed her. She’s able to move a little bit more now, enough to prop herself up against the cushion and give the healer a direct look. He returns her gaze levelly, and she knows he’ll be honest with her.
“What Julie Hubble did a few days ago shouldn’t be possible. A nonmagical person dissolving magical ice flies in the face of everything I thought I knew about the witching world. Mildred Hubble was fully rescued from ice by physical contact with her mother, who has no magic –”
“She is the descendant of witches,” Hecate says.
“But there’s no magic in her blood. Believe me, that was tested,” Hemlock says. “I do think that her being nonmagical was part of why she was able to pull Mildred out of the ice – if she’d been magical she’d have been drawn in and frozen herself. But the mechanism of the melting… that’s something else entirely. Now, I’ve consulted with my fellow healers, and a few suggestions have been made as to what happened. I have to say I don’t think much of them personally, but as I’m at a loss to suggest anything less fantastical –”
“What is this ‘fantastical’ suggestion?” Hecate demands. Her fingers quiver a little as they lie on the couch; she’d be drumming them anxiously if she could be.
Healer Hemlock hesitates, then speaks diffidently. “There is a branch of magic that the other healers feel may hold some explanations. A branch that is more… modern than traditional. Some call it philomancy –”
“Philomancy! You mean… love magic?” Hecate nearly chokes on a noise, half sardonic laugh and half disgusted scoff, that forces its way out of her throat. “That sensationalist hogwash that Weird World Weekly is forever wittering on about? Soulmates and twined magic and tangled fatelines and – and –”
“I know. I’ve always thought it to be pseudomagical nonsense as well. But the fact remains that Mildred was rescued from the ice by a woman without magic, and that the only field of magic, no matter how… unorthodox… it might be, that has any suggestion to offer as to how this happened is the field of love magic.”
“And what suggestion would that be?”
“Well, that it was the power of Julie Hubble’s love for her daughter that rescued her. That love is, in itself, a magical force.”
“Well, what about me, then?” Hecate demands caustically. “Mildred may have been rescued from ice by her mother’s love, but I cannot have been rescued in the same way – unless you are about to argue that Julie Hubble harbors –” She has a little difficulty drawing the next word out of her mouth. “-- l-l…love for me?”
“In fact,” the healer says, awkwardly, “that’s the reason that some of my colleagues consider it a pertinent variable. Mildred Hubble was rescued fully from the ice, but when Julie attempted to rescue you in the same way, it was much less effective. You and she are not close, am I correct?”
Hecate gives him a look.
“Yes, well. I have the impression that Mrs. Hubble –”
“Ms. Hubble,” Hecate says, and has to close her eyes against a grey icicle of headache.
“-- yes. That she has… positive feelings towards you, perhaps, but –”
“I have no use for her,” Hecate says flatly, “and I shouldn’t think she’d have much more use for me.” Because you’re a harridan when she’s around, her mind contributes wryly, before she can stop it. The healer seems startled by the glower she trains on him.
“Yes, well. The argument goes that if you are not close, then perhaps that might explain why the ‘cure’ would have been much less effective in your case.”
“And why, under this… this ‘theory,’ did my magic not return when the Founding Stone was restored?” Hecate demands.
“That might be a better question for some of my colleagues who are better-versed in the lore of philomancy –”
“The lore! The twaddle, you mean, the nonsense – the –”
“-- but for now I think you’d better rest,” the healer says, and his tone is final. “Miss Hardbroom, I want to encourage you, for the next several weeks at least, to try and relax, and to surround yourself with as much positivity as possible. This area of magic is ill-understood, but the one thing that has been supported by research time and again is that negative thoughts and emotions tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy for those trying to fight off the aftereffects of magical ice. I don’t want you to worry if you can help it. And as difficult as it might be, I’d encourage you to have an… open mind, at least, on the subject of philomancy. Because your own responses to it may have a direct impact on its potential efficacy.”
Hecate rolls her eyes, then closes them against a spike of pain. The healer pauses a moment, and she knows what he’s thinking.
“Well,” he says eventually, his tone clearly putting an ending bracket on the conversation. “I’ll be back to check on you in a day or two. Please do message me if there are any changes, for better or for worse. And remember what I said, about negative thinking. I understand that ‘the power of positive thinking’ sounds little less pseudomagical than philomancy does,” he says, heading her off, “but with respect to this specific branch of magic there really is a solid evidentiary base in support of the idea that it is in fact important. If you have any friends to turn to for support –”
Drat this healer and his probing questions. “I will speak to Miss Cackle,” she says, austerely. “I am sure a solution can be found.”
Hecate doesn’t like the way the healer hesitates at that at all.
“Of course,” he says, after a minute. “Well, I’ll be off, then. As I said, keep in touch if there are any new developments. I’ll see you in a day or two –” and he’s transferred away.
Hecate slumps back against the couch again and closes her eyes. The world recedes into the distant, chilly grey realm that it’s mostly been since the Founding Stone disaster. She knows she needs to call Ada – Ada, as the only friend she has, is surely the right person to help her, given what the healer said – but she’s startled to find in herself a low thrumming anger, not just at the healer’s presumption but at the very idea that she needs to surround herself with love and positivity in order to come out of this half-frozen state. Even more than that, she resents the idea that she needs to depend on Ada, or anyone else, in order to come through this. Hecate prides herself on being self-reliant, and not since she was fifteen years old has she allowed herself to be emotionally dependent on another –
“Hecate!”
Hecate’s eyes fly open. She’s imagining it, because she was thinking about herself at fifteen, about emotional entanglements and dependency. It can’t be –
But it is. Framed in the doorway, looking very disheveled, very worried, and very pink, is Pippa Pentangle.