Helen Speaks

By Derringer Grant

Is the Magical Year a fad that has had its day, or still a necessary coming-of-age ritual for an adolescent magic-user? Derringer Grant has gone to Barkmouth to find out.

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they must strike out on their own, discover their own strengths and weaknesses and forge their own path. This much is good sense, of course, but what if that meant sending your child, perhaps only 15 or 16 years of age, to live by themselves and deal with potentially dangerous magical forces? That’s the reality for fledgling witches across the world, even here in Britain.

Once considered a necessary traditional practice for a young witch, the Magical Year is now often seen with necessary skepticism. Many suggest that parents intentionally sending their children away at an impressionable time of life, to wrangle with forces that few understand, causes much more harm than good.

The so-called “Magical Year” has been particularly controversial of late, with teen witches Lucy Skylark and Olive Framley at the centre of the St. Bernice’s Field incident, a supposed haunting that turned out to be a travelling salesman who had been accidentally cursed by a neighbour. Skylark, only 16 years old, vanished mysteriously and many felt that the site should be burned and salted to protect others.

Everything seemed to have been returned to normal, but understandable questions remained. Were Skylark and Framley exposed to excessive risk? Or were they the heroes of the saga?

I met Lucy Skylark in her adopted home of Barkmouth to talk about the incident. At first glance, a hand-wringing skeptic’s worries are allayed. Skylark is by no means unprotected and unsupervised – she lives in a pleasant boarding house under the motherly protection of the landlady, who is also Framley’s aunt.

Skylark and Framley’s powers are admittedly alarming to the uninitiated, if also impressive – I witnessed a rainstorm, dramatic plant growth and a slightly fumbled but no less remarkable piece of spell-casting by Olive Framley.

Lucy Skylark is an earnest figure – capable of being commanding and assertive but also a generous friend to those in need, with a sharp problem-solving mind. Making me a cup of tea in the sitting room of her seafront home, she responded decidedly to the accusations that she is too young to be exploring her magic.

“You can’t make a law that stops people being who they are,” she said. “I’m a witch and I have magic. Yes that can be dangerous, but that means I need to learn how to use it well. If we hadn’t been there, Callum would still be stuck, or worse if the mob had had their way and burned The Green Dragon to the ground. Teenagers learning about magic isn’t the problem – it’s a lack of education that’s the problem.”

While her earnestness comes with the naïve optimism of youth, recent news of the investigation into the so-called wishing stone that turned Callum Brett invisible suggests that education into magic is indeed sorely lacking.

I cannot speak for other teenage witches, or say that all such “Magical Years” are for the best. But Skylark and Framley’s friends and neighbours speak of them with warmth, protective over their wellbeing and grateful for their magical aid. It would seem that the world is a better place for having Lucy Skylark and Olive Framley practising magic in it.