Madeline-Ashleigh and the Flame Tree Flowers

I would like to say, for the record: 1) No-one was actually hurt, and 2) It was not entirely my fault! Isla, and Issy-Rose, and Charlotte should share the blame too.

Anyway, it started when Charlotte, Issy-Rose and I were in the lounge room after school. I was sitting on one end of the couch, on my phone, flicking between Angry Birds, and my group chat with Isla and Zoey (currently called “cool conjurers club”). Charlotte was sitting on the other end of the couch, wrapped up in her emerald green cloak, feet tucked up under her, reading some book.

Issy-Rose was on the floor, playing with her barbie dolls. She, and her two dolls were all wearing pointed witches hats; Issy-Rose’s in vivid scarlet, one barbie in pink, and the other in green.

“Oh no! I accidentally turned her into a frog!” Issy-Rose exclaimed, waving the pink-hatted barbie doll around, “Ribbit! Ribbit!” she bounced the green-hatted barbie up and down.

Flash back to that time last year, when Zoey accidentally turned one of our not-a-witch friends into a frog.

Issy-Rose thought that whole frog incident was hilarious. Every time I thought she’d let me forget it, she’d start talking about how some frog by the river was actually a person who’d accidentally been cursed by their friend. Or, you know, play acting it out with her barbies.

I flung my last bird off into the void, leaving one smirking green pig behind. “Level failed!” the screen declared.

She hadn’t even been a frog that long! We fixed her before the end of lunch!

My phone vibrated, and I switched back to the group chat.

Here’s where Isla’s share in the blame comes in.

She’d sent a link, to a video called .❀。• *₊°。❀°。~Make Your Own Flower Petal Rain~。°❀ 。°₊*• 。❀. (I don’t think I copied out the sparkles perfectly, but you get the idea). So, of course, I watched it.

Well, first I pulled my earphones out of the front pocket of my hoodie, where they had managed to knot themselves around my wand. So, I had to spend a minute untangling that. But like, after I’d untangled my headphones and plugged them in, I watched the video.

On screen, a witch wearing a lavender coloured hat and matching cloak explained a spell to conjure a rain of flower petals. She said it could be used with any flower (and, you know what, she should share in the blame too), but she was going to demonstrate with rose petals.

She went over the backlang incantation (or conmaglang if you prefer) (that’s constructed magic language) (you know, the constructed language used for magical incantations), repeating it several times. Then, she showed the wand flourish for flowers, followed by the up-down movement for rain, again repeated several times.

Then, combining the incantation and the movement of her wand, she cast the spell. There was a brief flicker of lemon yellow light, then pastel pink petals began drifting gently down around her.

The video cut to the witch in cosplay as Haruhi from Ouran High School Host Club. Rose petals fell around her, and the theme music played, “kiss kiss fall in love…”

And, listen. There is no way I could have watched that video and not wanted to try the spell. So, I went back and listened to the incantation again.

“erujnock ebover im…” the witch began again on screen. I mouthed along with her.

“Watcha doing, Maddy?”

I just about jumped out of my skin. I did drop my phone, which thumped to the floor, pulling my headphones along with it.

Issy-Rose was right in my ear. Her barbie dolls were lying abandoned on the floor, and she was standing next to the couch, leaning into me.

“Just… watching how to do a spell,” I said, and picked up my phone.

The video was still playing. It had got to the point where the witch was standing in a rain of rose petals.

“Ooh, cool!” Issy-Rose said, “Can you do that? Can I do that?”

“Um, I haven’t tried yet, but probably? Hopefully?” I said, “Do you want to see how it’s done?”

“Yes!”

So, she squidged up next to me on the couch. I offered her an earbud, then restarted the video.

We watched it a few times, repeating the incantation back and forth at each other. Then, I pulled out my wand.

“Remember what Mum said about doing magic indoors.” Charlotte said.

Ah. Yeah. What she’d said was, “don’t."

“I wasn’t actually doing magic!” I said.

But I supposed she had a point (I was just thinking about flower petals all over the carpet at the time. I was foolishly yet to consider the ways the spell could go wrong). So, I shoved everything in my pocket—phone, earphones, wand—and Issy-Rose and I headed for the back yard, out through the laundry door.

I passed Mum in the hallway. She asked, in the carefree tone of someone not expecting a magical mishap this afternoon, “What are you up to?”

“Uh… trying a new spell?” I said, hesitantly. Mum is typically leery of new spells. Something to do with permanently defaced walls (long story short, pencils do not make good substitutes for wands. I’ve never figured out how to get that floating drawing off the wall), and, uh, friends being turned into frogs.

Mum frowned, “don’t forget your hat,” she said,

“I won’t.”

I detoured to my bedroom, to pick up my own pointed hat, a black one wrapped in pink, and purple, and blue ribbons. And, more importantly, enchanted with all the standard protections; fireproof, waterproof, UV resistant, the like. Made, as all witches hats are, to withstand the odd misfiring spell. While I was at it, I pulled on my cloak—deep blue, with a similar array of enchantments—over my hoodie.

That done, I found Issy-Rose and Charlotte waiting for me just outside the laundry door. Charlotte was leaning against the red brick wall, also now wearing her bright blue witches hat, with its big saffron yellow bow and absurdly large brim (“for hiding under”). Issy-Rose was bouncing on the balls of her feet by the clothes line, hat balanced at a precarious angle.

“Right,” I said, and went to stand next to Issy-Rose, grass wet from the earlier rain sticking between my toes.

“OK. What sort of flowers should I make?” I asked.

A mistake. I should have just gone with rose petals.

“Um...” Issy-Rose hummed, tilting her head up and tapping her chin theatrically. She looked to the side, at the garden bed with the grevillea. Behind her, at the Chinese elm. Back towards the house.

“Ooh, the flame tree ones!” she said.

This is where Issy-Rose is to blame.

We have a flame tree—what we call a flame tree, anyway, though I believe they’re also called coral trees—out the front of our house. More of them line our street. At the moment, they’re these scraggly, thorny things, that have lost most of their leaves. But the flowerbuds are sprouting, and soon they’ll be covered in brilliant vermilion flowers, a similar colour to Issy-Rose’s hat. They’ll line the street in red, and flowers carpet our front yard.

Still not considering how the spell could go wrong, I said, “OK, the flame tree ones.

Picturing the flaming red flowers, I raised my wand, and began the incantation.

Finally, Charlotte’s portion of the blame.

As I recited the spell, she said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if, instead of flame flowers, you got, like, actual flames?”

Well. As I moved my wand in the motion for rain, the image of bright, fiery embers falling over us sprung crystal-clear to my mind.

A burgundy red glow formed around me. Then, before I even finished the incantation, there was a blinding flash of light. Spots danced before my eyes. I stood, startled, and tried to blink them away.

Then blinked some more, as bright sparks continued to form before my eyes.

The bright sparks of burning embers, suspended in the air.

They began drifting gently down around us, a brilliant orange rain, trailing tendrils of smoke, exactly as I had pictured.

Issy-Rose looked up at them in wide-eyed wonder. I watched, frozen, as a spark landed on her hat. It smouldered, a glowing dot on the hat’s red brim. Only for a moment, before it fizzled out.

Then it struck me. I had conjured a rain of fire over my sister.

“Rain!” I yelled, “rain!” I waved my wand wildly up and down, in a vague approximation of the rain motion, “erujnock, um, water!”

Another flash.

Like someone had emptied a bucket over my head, water crashed down on top of me. I spluttered, and tried to wipe the water out of my eyes. Instead, I almost took an eye out with my wand.

Issy-Rose looked like a drowned rat, blinking water out of her eyes. Her hat had fallen off, and lay sadly in a puddle beside her.

Charlotte was still leaning against the wall, wet cloak pulled tight around her, hat pulled low over her face.

Mum burst out of the laundry door.

Ah. I had sounded rather frantic yelling ‘rain’, hadn’t I

“What happened?” she demanded, looking around at her sodden children.

“Nothing!” Charlotte, Issy-Rose, and I chorused,

“You’re soaked! Why are you soaked?” she asked,

We glanced between each other.

“...rain?” I tried,

Mum looked up at the overcast sky. It still looked like rain. It could have been raining. Admittedly, it wasn’t. But still.

Mum was clearly sceptical.

“Don’t worry, I’m not on fire,” Issy-Rose said.

“You’re not on fire?” Mum’s hands flew to her hair. I thought she was going to start pulling it out.

It was supposed to just be flowers. It could have just been a nice rain of red flowers. Imagine. It would have been so pretty.

Mum took a deep breath. She released her hair. “I’ll go get some towels,” she said.

For a moment there, I thought she’d let the fire comment go. After all, Issy-Rose was, indeed, not on fire. There weren’t even any falling embers any more; the water I’d conjured had successfully drowned them all.

Then Mum said, “and then we’ll talk about Issy-Rose not being on fire.

That was when the first one appeared. I watched as it drifted slowly downwards, a bright vermilion flower that caught in Mum’s dark hair.

A second appeared, and fell past her nose. She went cross-eyed watching it.

“What?” Mum said.

Another fell. And another. A gentle rain of flame tree flowers pick up around us, as pretty as I pictured. Issy-Rose giggled, and started jumping to try and catch the flowers.

Then, as if she wasn’t to blame for the spell going wrong in the first place, Charlotte said, “Huh. It actually worked.”