Rei was bored again, even though there were things to do and people to meet. The sense of dullness always made her feel like she was doing something wrong, as if at any moment, Constable Stuart would show up in front of her store, bang on the door with his chubby fists, and yell for the whole town to hear, “Now you, young lady, ain’t doing things right!”
This cycle of boredom and fear had been festering for three years now, but Rei told no one about it. After all, there was nothing that could justify her feelings. She ran possibly the most interesting store in Renaissance – Magic Moments, a specialty spell shop her mother, Edith, had set up 33 years ago. It was a meaningful job, but she was getting tired of the same old spells she had to cast for people.
For example, during the annual Renaissance Matchmaking Ball, all the eligible women would come flocking to her with the request to look beautiful with the RazzleDazzle spell. In the end, it was still fair game as the men would end up enchanted by all of them, and had no choice but to get their mothers to choose their wives. There were also the more insidious requests to bring temporary humiliation to others. Rei was more careful with these requests, and only agreed if there was truly a justified reason. Little Billy had come crying to her last week about his classmates stuffing him into the toilet bowl during recess. She used the PoopMe spell on those bullies so they would have excrement oozing out of their schoolbags for the next three days. Self-glorification or revenge. It was one or the other and Rei was getting increasingly stifled with the narrowness of human nature.
The store door opened and broke Rei out of her thoughts. It was Emily Hyde, the mayor’s daughter. Now why would she need a spell, Rei thought to herself, Emily was beautiful, rich, came from a loving family and was adored by the people of Renaissance. Rei made it a point to sit up a little straighter and gave a polite smile. “Good afternoon Miss Hyde, how can I help you today?”
Emily took a deep breath while twirling her red locks, as if she was psyching herself up to answer the question. “Good afternoon Miss Rei. I was just wondering, by any chance, do you happen to have a spell to make me fall in love?”
Rei jolted up from her seat. She had never received such a spell request. In the past, she had a few weeping housewives who would ask her to use the FallBack Spell on their husbands so their marriages could be saved. “Miss Emily, your request is rather unusual. If anything, most people don’t need help falling in love.”
Emily sighed. “Just let me know if you can do this? My father wants me to marry Constable Stuart in three months’ time and well, you know, I don’t feel anything for Stuart even though I know he is a good man. But I know this marriage would be good for the family and the town and I just don’t want to fight Daddy on this. I figure the only way to make this work is if I could fall in love with Stuart. Then, everyone would be happy.”
Rei took out a dusty tome from under the cashier. Her mother’s spell book, the Sunn family treasure that had been passed down for three hundred years. “Let me see what I can do,” she replied as she began flipping the pages.
