1

Blood mingled with the dirt in her mouth.
Jo spat, clearing the disgusting taste that lingered. At least one of her teeth had been loosened, a large lump was swelling above her right eye and her ribs ached from the kicking they had just received. She groaned.
“Look at her,” came a jeering voice from somewhere above her. “It’s pathetic! Stand up you coward!”
Fury fizzled through her veins as she lay face down in the dust. Clenching her fists, Jo pulled herself painfully to her knees, and then her feet, facing her attackers.
The tallest of them, the ringleader, was only a few inches taller than she. He sneered at her, despite the bruises and scratches on his face. That had been her doing, she thought, burning with fierce pride. Outnumbered three boys to one fifteen year old girl, she thought she had not done badly. The other two stood slightly back, on either side of him. Neither of them were free of wounds either.
Jo wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “I don’t think it’s me who’s the coward, do you?” she said quietly, aware as she spoke of the swelling pain.
Norman, the leader, sniggered. “It doesn’t matter what we think, witch.” He pushed her, and she nearly fell again. Stumbling, Jo managed to regain her footing.
“Isn’t it about time you got the message and cleared out? We don’t want your kind here!”
Jo snarled at him. “My kind? What is my kind? Tell me that!”
The two boys behind Norman looked at each other and grinned.
“Freaks!”
“Demons!”
“Witches,” whispered Norman, drawing close to her trying to force her to run or look away.
Too late he realised his mistake. Jo saw her anger reflected in his shocked eyes as she drew back her fist and, with all her might, cracked him hard in the nose. Her knuckles stung as they connected with a satisfying crunch. He fell back into the other two, who caught him, swearing.
Jo stood her ground as they helped Norman to his feet, holding his heavily bleeding nose. The boys started towards her. Jo did not run.
She hated them, wanted to hurt them, she could hurt them, she could make them pay, make them suffer, all she had to do was raise a hand, she could do it, she could hurt them…
The boys stopped dead in their tracks, staring, open mouthed. Then, as one, they turned tail and ran, shouting for their mothers as they did so.
The tingling that had filled Jo’s body started to subside; she looked at the hand she had raised towards the oncoming attackers. It glowed with a fading white light.
“Damn,” she muttered. She had done it again.
Turning, Jo made her way slowly home, limping slightly.

Thankfully her mother was not in the kitchen when she pushed the back door open. However, the oldest of her younger brothers was, thirteen year old Jerry, who looked up at her from his sandwich, his eyes growing wide.
“What the bloody hell happened to you?”
“Nothing, mind your own business,” snapped Jo, going to the water pump and holding a cloth under the cold water. She pressed it to her swelling eye and winced, sitting down at the kitchen table as she did so.
Jerry stood up and came over to her. “They beat you up again didn’t they?”
“Can’t imagine what gave you that impression.”
He leant against the table, a familiar smug impression on his face. “Dad’s going to be so mad at you!”
“What!” said Jo, looking up sharply and then wishing she hadn’t as the pain in her eye sparked. “Why will he be angry at me? They were the ones who beat me up!”
“You must have provoked them again,” replied Jerry. “Did you, you know, do it again?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah you do!” said Jerry, gleefully. “You did, didn’t you? You did it again! You’ve been told not to!”
“So what if I did!” Jo jumped to her feet, anger once again mounting inside her. She squared up to her brother, unaware they looked very alike as they stood practically nose-to-nose. “What if I did magic? So what? There’s nothing wrong with it! And I didn’t do it until after they beat me up; they had it coming to them! So you just…just…just shut up all right!”
“Josephine!”
Jo stopped with her arm lifted to slap her brother, who took his chance to kick her on the ankle. She roared, and made to grab him, but he was far too quick and darted out of the room, dashing around their mother.
“Never let me see you hit your brother again!” Mrs Hooper said angrily.
“I didn’t…he started it…”
“But you were about to!” replied her mother, “And I’ll see to him later, never you mind that. But firstly, Josephine what on earth has happened to you?”
The tears Jo had fought so long to control boiled out of her, and spilled down her cheeks as she told her mother the whole story.
Mrs Hooper said nothing throughout; she just held her daughter and let her cry herself out.
“Oh my darling,” she said finally, after Jo had fallen silent, and her mother had satisfied herself there were no serious injuries. “This is not the first time this has happened and I fear it won’t be the last. They just don’t understand.”
Jo looked up into her mother’s grey eyes, and sought answers she had never properly been given there. “I don’t understand Mum. All this time I know I’ve been…different…been a…a…freak!”
“Josephine!” her mother said sharply, “Don’t – ”
“It’s true!” sniffed Jo, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Everyone else says it and it’s true! Why can no one else do what I do? Even the wizards won’t explain, they think a girl with magic is something dangerous or something, and sometimes I think they’re right, sometimes I get this feeling that I want to hurt people, and I know I could and I can’t always stop it…”
“Josie, hush.”
Jo blinked, and fell silent.
Her mother looked her over. “Maybe you are right. Your father and I haven’t always been straight with you…” she paused and sighed. “Go and clean yourself up and get an early night. We’ll talk about it in the morning. I need to speak to Dad first.”
“But…”
“In the morning, Josie,” said Mrs Hooper firmly. She kissed her daughter goodnight and sent her up to her room.

Jo stripped off her torn and dirty dress and stood in her underwear in front of the mirror of her tiny attic room. She examined the bruises gingerly on her prominent ribs. Her mother was on an ongoing mission to feed her up, but no matter how much Jo ate, she always remained skinny and boyish. She was hoping that one day she would simply just fill out, but although she was steadily growing taller – and she was already a head higher than the other girls of her age in the village – the bust and hips she secretly longed for, looked set never to come.
Pulling her nightdress over her head, Jo started to run a brush through the tangled mess that was her long dark blonde hair. The tugging motion made the bruises on her face throb and she stopped and leaned closer to inspect them.
The long nose was not broken this time, although it was permanently slightly off centre from a previous encounter with Norman. Her lip was swelling visibly, and the lump on her eyebrow nearly obscured her right eye, it’s normally brilliant grey-blue colour dulled by her recent bout of crying. Jo breathed a large sigh, her breath clouding the mirror.
When the mist cleared, it was not her face that stared back at her but the blind eyes of an old woman, gnarled, creased and toothless.
With a yell, Jo stumbled back and fell across her bed, shutting her eyes.
“Josephine?” came her mother’s voice from two floors below.
Trembling, Jo forced herself to sit up and look in the mirror, though she was petrified of seeing that ancient face again. The reflection that looked back at her however was her own; pale and terrified.
“Josephine!” Jo’s head swivelled in panic towards the sound. It was her mother again. “Are you all right?”
“Y-yes!” she called back, still breathing heavily. “A…a bee flew into my room! It’s gone now.”
Seemingly satisfied with this, her mother resumed whatever it was she had been doing.
Jo got up and walked unsteadily over to the mirror. She touched her hand to it and fancied it felt warmer to the touch than the cold room should have allowed it to. Then she shook her head and finished getting ready for bed, avoiding looking at it again, unable to shake off the feeling that she was being watched.
Climbing into bed, Jo placed the jar of fireflies she kept on her bedside cabinet, and blew out the candle. For as long as she could remember she had been afraid of the darkness. It was a deep, inexplicable fear that she could not always comprehend, she just knew that the thought of being alone in the dark filled her with such a sense of dread that she could hardly move.
However, as she tossed and turned trying to get to sleep, Jo for the first time in her life wished she could get used to the dark, if only to stop her gaze from sliding every few moments back to the mirror.