Friends and Familiars

A book of spells shouldn’t be a journal, but documenting the process helps me understand the spells that are unique to me. And I just think it’ll look better with pictures.

So, hello, notebook! My name is Jade Wickerton and I live with my mom and her fiancée, Eleanor, in a big old Victorian home in Candlelight Falls, Massachusetts. I’ve been preparing for this moment up until I turned 16 on August 28th, 2002 because...

I’m officially a witch!

That means I have magic beyond enchantments and basic spells now, like Mom and Eleanor. I just can’t use it as flawlessly as they can yet, but one thing I can do pretty amazingly is conjure pictures!

I’m a collage artist. Finding the right images can be a frustrating journey sometimes, but now I can just ⊹ magic ⊹ them into existence! I just visualize an idea and the image forms on the page, and I can tweak it to my liking!

Mom and Eleanor were surprised I’d discovered my “witch’s talent” the same night. New witches usually take between three days and three weeks to find theirs. It’s the one thing that comes so naturally to you that you don’t need a ritual to cast it. I’m so happy mine is art-related!

Mom told me that I shouldn’t always rely on magic for my art, but it’s not like I’d lose my collage skills if magic somehow disappeared one day. I get what she’s saying, though. I’d miss out on a ton of other images and materials if all I did was conjure my own.

I wonder if my new school has an art class...

Mom and Eleanor attended the Stellaluna School for Witches, and that’s where I’ll be in September. They don’t remember everything about it, being over 300 years old (and looking in their mid-late 30s, thanks to witch blood). I’ve always dreamed of going, but I hate the thought of leaving my best friend behind. His name is Lucas Arroyo. He’s a mortal and can’t know I’m a witch, otherwise I’ll lose my powers forever.

The Rules of Witchery

  • A witch must tell no mortal that they are a witch (obviously)
  • Witch-mortal marriage is forbidden (stinks, but understandable)
  • A half-mortal child will inherit magic, but the witch parent will be penalized (ouch)
  • A witch cannot use their magic for charity (never?)
  • A witch cannot use their magic to conjure anything they do not own (stealing is bad, yeah)
  • A witch must respect copyright law (this one seems oddly specific, but okay, I guess)




    • I broke the news to Lucas after my birthday party and he seemed okay. We’ll still see each other, just not during school hours. I can still be his assistant for the talent show. He was happy about that. Even happier when I showed him a collage I made him!

    He asked me how I did it. I told him a magician never reveals their secrets! *wink*

    Lucas is such a good magician that I almost thought he was a witch when we fist met. He taught me a lot about stage magic and he deserves the success he’s achieved. There was one time when he really needed my help in the middle of an act, and I couldn’t not help him with my own magic. Just once. That experience made him all the more a believer in the supernatural, but I pretend to have little idea of what he’s talking about.

    Anyway, before we can even step foot into Stellaluna, every witch needs a familiar. Familiars are spirits in animal bodies. A familiar’s job is to help a witch grow into their full magical potential, aside from being a companion.

    Eleanor has a cavalier King Charles spaniel familiar named Windsor, nicknamed Windsnore because he sleeps so much. Oddly, that’s his special power: becoming a conduit for his witch’s spells when he’s slumbering.

    The witch community has a website that only witches can access, and there’s a list of available familiars. My mom keeps insisting on a cat. I’d rather have an owl since they can fly and are way cooler. Sorry, Mom, but cats are kind of overrated.

    Mom’s old familiar, Samhain, passed a few months ago, and she did the witchy thing and had him stuffed. We can still sometimes hear him meowing at night, and he is LOUD! Reassuring for Mom, obnoxious for Eleanor and me.

    Sometimes I think Mom might be infected with toxoplasmosis. Witches are quicker to contract it than mortals are, and it has more of an insane effect on their brains. One witch did the unthinkable last year and the entire world witnessed it. After she was found and her magic was revoked, the High Coven fixed everything and wiped the event from all mortal memories. Mortals remember nothing, unlike us, but we’re not supposed to talk about it. Nobody got hurt, it’s just really embarrassing.





    It’s been two days since my birthday and I still can’t find the right familiar. I even went out into the woods and shook a bell like a witch in the old days. Nothing. My mom took me to a witch doctor, but he couldn’t find anything wrong with me. He said something cryptic about finding the familiar I seek within, though. Whatever that means. He also said my familiar would most likely be a cat. I think that was just to shut my mom up.

    In times like these, when some problems can’t be resolved by people like doctors, I do what other witches do: consult the Oracle. In my case, the Tarot.

    I pulled the Fool card three times. Three’s a magic number for witches, so this means the Fool is trying to tell me something. “Take a chance, be spontaneous, go where others might be too afraid or embarrassed to tread.”

    Last time I took that advice, I was a 12-year-old who wanted to become a ventriloquist, and I had the wildest idea to combine ventriloquism with tarot reading. My puppet was a black cat named Lord Sourpuss. We entertained a surprisingly decent number of mortals. Lucas thought we were funny too. (Totally not how we met.) My mom told me *nicely* to not perform for other witches. She's still recovering from the trauma of second-hand embarrassment.

    I guess my first spell should be to summon a compatible familiar. Witches keep track of astrological positions, but not everything has to be perfectly aligned for a spell to work. That’s impossible. You just have to focus on harnessing the energy of the planets and their aspects that are relevant to your spell. Considering it’s almost Monday, I have to work with what’s currently in the sky.

    The Moon is probably my best ally in this case, being the keeper of secrets and the subconscious. In Gemini and in its Last Quarter phase, it’s best suited for a spell for mental decluttering, reassessment of ideas, and releasing old habits. By 7 PM, the Moon will enter the Fourth House of Home and Roots, hopefully laying the foundation and clearing the way for the right familiar to find me. The Moon will also be opposing the Midheaven (Tenth House of Public Image), but I’m not doing anything to win a popularity contest, so I think I’m safe.

    Ingredients:

  • Lock of my hair (to give my familiar a direct source)
  • Yellow rose, fresh from our greenhouse (for companionship)
  • Quartz crystal (empowers the spell)

    • Incantation:

    By the Moon’s light, I call to thee,
    A familiar from land or sea.
    Furred, feathered, or scaly skin,
    Please find me, your desperate kin.





    Oh my stars. The puppet is alive. The puppet is ALIVE!!!!

    This is worse than I could have ever imagined. How can my familiar be a puppet?! I woke up after midnight and heard someone talking in the attic. I was expecting to find a mouse familiar or something. But lo and behold, in one of the trunks was my old puppet complaining about everything, Lord freakin’ Sourpuss.

    HOW am I supposed to explain this to Mom? Or anyone? There is no way I can bring a PUPPET to Stellaluna. Familiars are supposed to be animals, not STUFFED animals! How could this happen?! Something had to have gone wrong with my spell.

    I knew I should’ve asked Mom for assistance. I can’t tell her what happened. Not yet. Stars, help me.





    WHY couldn’t this be my familiar? Oh, that’s right. I didn’t specify “COOL ROBOT” in my spell. Among other things.

    I have never been more thankful for two things: my room being away from Mom and Eleanor’s rooms and my familiar being unable to walk. I spent the day trying to figure out why my spell backfired and a reversal spell. The reasons were so obvious that I wanted to cry. What was I thinking when the Moon was in the Fourth House? And that aspect between the Moon and the Midheaven? No wonder I’m stuck with a puppet from my childhood that has a strong case of the quips. Lord Sourpuss wasn’t offended that I was basically attempting to banish his spirit from this plane of existence. He definitely made me feel guilty about it after making me laugh, so I stopped and am trying to accept my fate with the help of ice cream.

    There is no way this won’t reflect poorly on me tomorrow. My public image is cursed forever. I will be going down in history as the second witch to have a non-animal familiar. The first witch was Marietta Shaw who rejected traditional familiars. She used her witch’s talent of animation to make herself a little sentient doll. Except this is much, much worse.

    I really wish animation had been MY witch’s talent. I would’ve animated a Meow-Chi if that were my only choice. Maybe it could’ve connected to the Internet with magic! Ugh. My attendance portal has yet to manifest, and I am PRAYING with all my soul tonight that it won’t be in the toilet. Why is that even a possibility?!