Young Witch (Book #1, Young Witch Series)

Chapter 5

The following year, Jessamine learnt how to write invitations to balls and teas, learnt how to curtsy to different ranks of people, and was started to be taught how to dance. She grew bored with these things, and spent much of her time in the kitchens, where she continued to practice her cooking, and helping the maids to clean. She made herself more dresses, and started to help the gardeners to work the gardens her peers took for granted. She continued to sneak away from the school as much as she could, and practice her skills with her magic. She finally learnt how to throw a knife and have it land point first, and hilt first at her target. Then she started practicing with her magic. She was glad she did this outside, and where no one could see her, as many of her shots went in directions where they shouldn't have.

She learnt how to call things back to her, and send them away from her, and soon started using these skills in the kitchen, which made the cooks lives easier when she was around.

She started to learn how to dress for balls, and choose outfits and menus for a ball. All things the teachers told her she would need in life when she married. She was sentenced to bread and butter suppers when she stated that she had no intention of ever getting married, and found many of her classes pointless.

Tanza was amused to hear all this when she got back, and continued to supervise as she practiced with her power.

When she over-reached her power again, he simply told her that all magic had a price, and let her continue with her studies.

She started to notice that Conrad was well behind where she was with magical control that year, and told him to practice. He slapped her across the face for that comment, and she promised herself she would never let him hit her again. She started watching the way her papa and brother treated the servants, and saw that many of them were scared of both of them. She resolved to find a way to make life better, and asked her papa if she could start practicing handling the household accounts, as she would have to learn to later when she grew up. Lord Devall handed them over without a second glance, and she began to manage all of the household accounts when she went to school the following year.

She started to ask Tanza all about his life when she came home next, and he started telling her tales of her ancestors. That was when she realised that her family was starting to lose standing with other families. She realised that they had once been amongst the top families of the kingdom, but were slowly losing land and money to pay debts her papa and brother were amounting in things like fine clothes and food. She also started to realise what kind of man her papa was, and resolved to call him father from that day forward.

When she realised that he only helped the wealthy, she asked Tanza what she could do to help those less able to pay what was asked. Tanza taught her how to make potions. He showed her how to create cakes and recipes that could turn hair blue, or purple, how to change someone's eye colour, how to change their hair length, and many other things that her father's clients came to him for. She realised that all of the potions contained no special ingredients, but were just spells said while cooking, and that she had to be the one to find words that worked. Soon, she amassed quite a bit of money from the servants, as they came to her for her potions, that seemed to work better than her fathers.

That was when she tried her first potion out on herself, and turned her brown hair a bright golden blond, and her grey eyes to blue. Her father and brother never even noticed.

She made quite a bit of money with them at her school too, and asked her teachers how she could invest what she earned, and how to better manage the household accounts. That was the year they discovered she could use magic, and sent her to the magic classroom, where she learned nothing new, and asked to spend time better studying investing and mathematics, which was promptly denied.

Sitting in the boring magics class, she learned that not all magic was physical. As soon as she learnt this, she started to practice this with her own things, and learnt how to use magic to defend herself, by doing things like making the air hard around her to stop things thrown at her, and other such defences.

When her magic teacher saw how she spent his class, he began to teach her defensive magic properly, and she rapidly progressed under this teaching, and he recommended to the rest of the teachers that she be allowed to study the extra class content she wanted to with regard to mathematics and investment, as she was going to have magical learning beyond his ability to teach soon, and needed something to keep her mind occupied, or she would be getting into more trouble than she was currently.

Reluctantly the teachers agreed, and they hired a teacher to start teaching her the finer points of mathematics and investment to her, and showed her how to run an estate. They also hired someone else who could show her more on the uses of magics that qualified magic users were expected to know. She began to learn all the theory behind the things she knew, and fully understand how things in the magical world happened.