witch hat atelier au

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Amelia is a watchmaker's daughter.

Now if anyone were to ask her what she planned to do with herself she wouldn’t have a clear idea of how to respond. Her mother's business is a niche, homely place between a jeweler and a mercer. The first floor was dedicated to the craft. Along every shelf and on every makeshift bench was a watch. The second floor was where she slept and ate. It wasn’t exactly told to her that she’d be doing this for her whole life. Her mother never brought it up. It was other people- the jeweler, the mercer, their neighbors- they brought it up in passing. Will little Ame grow up into the business? Her mother never answered those questions in a straightforward manner. Amelia never thought about it too hard. In the back of her head, she knows that question rests there.

Naturally, she sort of assumed she’d find something else to do. She was fine doing this. She was only eleven. She had plenty of time to figure it out.

She had far less time to deliver her mother's latest work.

“Make sure to get a cap!” Her mother is yelling from the front room. She’s setting up the shop for the day. Amelia can hear the rattling of crates as she brings out the watches. There’s an inherent antsiness that comes with that noise. Sound in a watch shop should be the ticking of a clock and the footsteps of customers, as her mom says. The rattling of anything meant some glass was bound to get scratched. Her mother was hurrying. “A cap, Ame, did you hear?”

“It’s not that cold!” Amelia calls back. She has a box on the back workbench. A lot of the tools were too big for her to handle, but gift wrapping was easily one of her personal favorite things to do. She ties the box with a ribbon. On the lid of the box are little holes. She uses rings to fill them, hooking the lid against the bottom of the box and preventing it from opening. Her delivery rested inside, a watch warmly waiting for its new home.

Her mom shouts, “You’ll get that cap!”

“Ugh.”

She makes a detour up to her room. It’s barely autumn, but her mother frets about these delivered no matter the month. It could be mid-summer and she’d find something to be worried about. Amelia thinks she’s just uncomfortable letting Amelia complete these deliveries. It only makes Amelia more determined to tackle the task at hand. She feels like she has something to prove.

The woolen cap on her head makes her feel like less of a paragon of rebellion and more like a marshmallow.

“Can I go now?” Amelia calls. She’s rushing her box into her backpack. It’s safer there than in her hands. One tumble down the road and its curtains for the little trinket.

“Yes, go out, but be right on back! I know you like the market over there, I don’t wanna see you buying anything!”

Amelia grumbles.

“What was that?”

“Nothing!” Amelia says. “Don’t you have a shop to run? Bye!”

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To her credit, Amelia makes it twenty minutes before her delivery is interrupted. The road between her hometown and her destination isn’t treacherous by any means. It’s an hour-long walk, but not undesirable. The farmlands along the road give her plenty of cows and goats to marvel at. She sneaks a few scritches behind horse ears as she makes her way down the road. In the distance, a leviathan looms near the thicker forests. It has a long neck, jagged spikes along its back and leading all the way up to the spike ball on its tail. Amelia can’t see its head from where she’s walking. She hopes it looks like a dragon.

It’s when she comes to a bridge does a voice fall on her ears.

Amelia looks over the side. The bridge isn’t that large, maybe forty feet in length. It doesn’t have a fence guarding it either. She peers down at the creek below and finds there’s a person lying there, their legs half submerged in the water and the rest fetid in mud.

Amelia leaps down. Muck kicks up from her landing and she wades down to where the person is struggling to drag themself free from the creak.

“Hold on, I can help,” Amelia says, wobbling as she picks and chooses where she steps. “Are you hurt?”

The person moans. Amelia crouches down to loop her hand under their shoulder and help lift them up. They sway dangerously. Their cloak is soaked to the brim. The hood over their head is matted all the way down to their nose. She can see all kinds of mud cakes up over their face.

They list heavily against Amelia. Amelia worriedly pushes them forward, “Can you hear me?”

“I can.” The person rasps. “Sorry. I fell asleep.”

“In the creek?” Amelia asks incredulously.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You’re weird,” Amelia says. She helps them up the bank where it’s the steepest. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to put that much effort into it. By the time the both of them have reached the road, the person is able to stand on their own feet. They sigh. Their fingers are reaching down to touch where Amelia’s hand is gripping their arm.

“Thank you.” The stranger mutters. “I’ll give you a gift for your trouble.”

“Oh,” Amelia says. “No, that’s okay.”

“It’s not a problem.” The person says and then oddly tacks on, “Enjoy.” Amelia blinks, bewildered as the person extracts themself from her arm and begins their trek down the road as if they hadn’t said anything particularly strange. Amelia stands there staring after them.

What gift? She smiles sardonically. Okay, kooky.

She hefts the straps of her backpack up her shoulders and keeps walking.

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The market in this town sells magic items.

It’s not that witches are rare. Amelia sees them come through her shop every once in a while. The pointy hats are hard to miss. Her town doesn’t have a place for magic retail. Here, the markets are filled with wondrous oddities. There’s a harpy stand that sells glowing stones. Traveling sea folk offer silky clothes. A bookstore that says WITCHES ONLY. Ink, quills, parchment, all kinds of wares. Here, in the sea of people browsing each stall, pointy hats dot the crowd. Amelia spots them as she leaves the town. Eccentric capes and ponchos, beautifully long ribbons flowing from their caps. Some have strange creatures floating by them. Others are performing magic, whether kicking their shoes and bursting into flight or waving their hand and a book lifts up into the air. The casual simplicity of magic is a wonder to behold.

It’s something to be born with. Magic is inherited in families. Amelia has no such blood. It’s still nice to look at.

She beholds it for four seconds before hightailing it back home.

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When she goes in through the front door, her mother is occupied with a witch.

Amelia perks up. A witch in a crowd is one thing. A witch in a watchmaker's shop is something that makes her grin. She wants to make a joke about it. It feels silly to say.

This witch has a lavish blue cape. It’s split down the middle into a V. It’s the kind of cape that hugs around the shoulders and clips in the front. A single pin keeps it there, the metal the shape of a clock hand. Her hat is pointy as all the rest, two long flowing ribbons of blue and brown draping down to her shoulders. It stands out against the dark navy color of her hair. The witch is holding up a silver watch to the light, a gloved thumb running over the glass face of it with interest.

Amelia trots her way around the counter. Her mother glances at her with amusement.

“Good delivery?”

“They tipped.” Amelia chirps. She’s placing her backpack on the counter. There’s a plethora of coins inside she’ll have to count out for her mother, but she knows she’ll have to wait till the shop is clear of customers to do that. She can’t help it at this point. She stares at the witch.

The witch is otherwise occupied with the watch in hand. She says, “The material isn’t mixed, you said?” Her voice is velvet smooth, with a darker rumble in her words that sounds like a lazy storm passing far overhead. Amelia is fascinated.

Her mother says, “Not at all. Pure silver.”

“Excellent. Will you accept an electrum?”

“Oh.” Her mother startles. Amelia blinks up at her. “Why, yes, I just need-” She glances at Amelia’s backpack. “I have some coins to pay you back for that, yes.”

The witch glances down at Amelia. It’s possibly the first time in her life she’s ever been the subject of their attention. She offers a smile even as she hunkers lower to the counter. Her mother is grabbing the backpack and peering inside. She breathes in surprise.

“They tipped this much?”

Amelia preens, “I did a good job.”

“Yes.” Her mother laughs. She’s fondly reaching down to brush her hand by Amelia’s cheek. She cups her hand just above her ear. Amelia leans against it happily. “You certainly did a good-”

She stops. Amelia looks up at her. Her mouth is open mid-sentence, her lips parted slightly and a letter rolling off her tongue, but there’s no sound. Her hand is still touching the side of Amelia’s face. Amelia blinks and laughs.

“Mom? Did you break? It wasn’t that much money.”

Not even a flicker of movement. She’s not blinking either. Wary, Amelia reaches up to touch her mother's hand. It’s warm, but no matter how much she tugs, she can’t move that hand. Amelia frowns.

“Are you messing with me right now?”

“Stop.” The witch says. The breathlessness in her voice startles Amelia. Amelia whips her head up to look. The low rolling storm in the witch's voice is now a crackle of lightning. Her eyes are wide. Her jaw is tense. “Do you know what you’ve just done?”

“What?” Amelia asks, affronted. She glances frantically at her mother who still isn’t moving. “Done what? I don’t understand.” She doesn’t want to deal with weird witchy stuff. She shoves her mom but all it does is make Amelia’s feet slide against the floor. No matter what, her mother is not budging, not even a fraction. “C’mon, what the heck is this?!”

She backs away. Her heart is thudding against her ribs. She was confused. This had to be some sort of prank. This felt too absurd not to be. The witch is still looking. It’s with less accusation this time. There’s pity now.

“Do you know what you’ve just done?” The witch asks again. It doesn’t sound like a demand this time. It’s a question, rolled gently to Amelia like she was a cornered animal.

Amelia shakes her head, “No! Is this magic? What is this? I didn’t do anything!” There’s only one magical thing in the shop and Amelia bristles. She points at the witch, “Did you do this?”

The witch ignores her. She strides around the counter. Amelia sputters. Customers weren’t allowed back there, but it was also the casual air of which she did that. It infuriated Amelia. The witch looks over her frozen mother with a frown.

“This isn’t magic.” The witch says. “It’s a curse.”

“What?”

The witch glances at her warily, “Naturally, I’d assume it’d be the watchmaker who was cursed, but if that were the case the curse would be instantaneous. It had to be you.”

Amelia doesn’t like being accused of anything, much less nonsense she doesn’t understand. She rises to her impossibly short height and bites out, “I didn’t do anything.”

The witch mutters, “It had to be- no.” She looks at Amelia closely, “Have you met anyone strange? Anyone with an odd hat?”

“Not an odd hat,” Amelia mutters, resisting the urge to point out to the woman she was currently wearing an odd hat. A memory of the creak finds her. She falters, “There was… a stranger. They were really weird. They were asleep by a bridge.”

“Do you know what they looked like?”

“They had a hood over their face.”

The witch swears. Her expression is pinched. Amelia doesn’t like that. She closes in on the witch, trapping their wrist between her hands and tugging. The witch doesn’t even budge. She looks down at Amelia thoughtfully, but with solemness there that made Amelia’s skin itch.

“Please, if you know what’s going on,” Amelia begs with every tug against the witch’s sleeve, “if you know, you have to fix it.”

“There’s no reversing a curse.” The witch says.

“That can’t be true.” When the witch doesn’t even twitch, Amelia says louder, “I said fix it!”

“There is no fix. Curses are a forbidden form of magic. It’s-” The witch cuts herself off with a fierce shake of the head, “It’s outside your concern.”

“What are you talking about?” Amelia demands. She feels frantic now. The witch was losing interest and she was losing her mother. “That’s my mom. If you can’t fix her, how can I do it?”

The witch appraises her, “Your curse is a common one. It’s one many seek out, either in harebrained quests for immortality or some nitwit dream to become a mannequin. It’s a curse of love. It preserves that love in time. Nothing will ever happen to them.” She looks meaningfully at where her mom is frozen, her eyes trained down on the space in front of her. She still hasn’t moved. The sweet expression on her face feels too good for that pose. Mannequin.

Amelia steps back. She feels cold.

“I did that?” Amelia asks. Her voice cracks.

The witch crouches before her. Her eyes are glass gemstones of electric blue. She reaches forward and gently takes Amelia’s hands in her own. Amelia feels a lump in her throat.

“You did.” The witch confirms. “But it’s not your fault it happened. You can’t control a curse.”

“But-” Amelia’s vision blurs. She stumbles out the gate with her words, frightened, “But why? Why would anyone curse me? I didn’t- I didn’t do anything wrong.” She sniffles. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t.” The witch reassures her.

“How can you tell I’m cursed?”

“It’s too much to explain right now.” The witch exhales. She glances back at Amelia’s mother with a wary eye. “I’ll have to report this.”

Amelia doesn’t know why that makes her nervous, “To who?”

The witch eyes her consideringly. Amelia looks back, uncertain, but wanting. After a long moment of deliberation, the witch says, “It’s against our laws as witches to speak about it to outsiders. Even if you’re cursed, you still aren’t a witch.”

Amelia clenches her jaw.

The witch smoothes over ruffled feathers with a soft, “But I can teach you to be one.”

She wasn’t expecting that. Amelia can barely comprehend those words. All of this feels like a joke. There are a few moments where she soaks it in. When it settles she laughs.

“What?”

“I’m serious.”

Amelia stops laughing.

“I’m not born a witch. I can’t learn.” Frustrated with this, she demands, “You’re a witch. Why can’t you help? If you can’t help, how do I-?”

“Curses are still being researched to this day.” The witch says. Her gaze is a focused blade. “My name is Kronii Ouro. I’m a researcher of curses myself.”

“You know about these?”

“I know about all of them. I identified this curse immediately. It’s from years of study.”

“If you can’t know, then how can I-?”

Kronii shakes her head, “You’re cursed. With you under my care, it makes it simpler for me to research and study how it works. We can find answers.”

It felt too good to be true. It was overwhelming. Instinctively, Amelia looks toward her mother. She’s hoping for an encouraging nod or a wary shake of the head. Her mother hadn’t moved.

“Will she be okay?” Amelia asks.

“She can’t be moved.” Kronii murmurs. “She’s frozen in time. There are protections we will put in place to make sure this place stays unvisited.”

“We?” Amelia repeats.

“The Convocation,” Kronii says. “It’s too much to explain right now.”

“Who are they?” Amelia demands.

Kronii stands up. Amelia takes a step back as the witch rises to her full height. She towers over Amelia. Despite this stature, her expression is mellow. She turns and makes her way to the storefront. She flips the sign from open to closed.

“Not here,” Kronii says. Her elbow is moving back her cape to reveal a few satchels tied to her belt. She reaches into one and pulls out a flat, ovaline stone. It had blue lines glowing on it. Kronii presses it against the door. There’s a clicking noise. Amelia wasn’t expecting the witch to lock the building.

“What did you do?”

“It’s a locking spell,” Kronii says, stashing that stone away and retrieving another from her satchels. She says it casually like it wasn’t that big of a deal. She isn’t explaining either, to Amelia’s frustration. She’s retrieving a larger stone. This one is white with grey patches on it. It has blue lines on it too.

Kronii comes to stand in front of her. She kneels down, the stone held aloft in her hand. The full brunt of her attention makes Amelia shift on her feet.

“It’s your choice,” Kronii says, holding the stone out in her palm. “Place your hand on this and you’ll be my responsibility from here on out. If you refuse, I’ll be leaving.”

“But-” Amelia glances over at her mother.

“She won’t be moving.”

“I know.” Amelia bites out. “I just-” She didn’t want to leave it like this. She felt the need to remain vigilant here and protect her mother. Despite what Kronii said, she felt like she was leaving her helpless.

“She’ll be safe,” Kronii reassures. “It’s up to you what you want to pursue.”

Amelia didn’t have a clue. She can’t learn magic, that’s what she’d always been told. This witch is looking at her with utmost seriousness. The blue of her eyes is lightning sharp. This isn’t a prank. Amelia swallows roughly and places her palm over the stone.

Kronii doesn’t quite smile, but it’s a near thing. “What’s your name?”

“Amelia Watson.”

“Welcome to my tutelage, Amelia,” Kronii says. The world around them is starting to smear with blue colors. Amelia startles. Stars are whirling around them. Bright lights flash before her eyes. They’re caught in an electric maelstrom. The stone is a beacon of light between their hands.

Just as quickly as it began, it’s over. Amelia shakily exhales. The blue settles down, disappearing into quiet nothingness. Her surroundings have changed. The watch shop is gone. There’s golden wheat tickling her elbows. Kronii rises to stand, casually pocketing the stone as if something marvelous hadn’t just happened.

“What?” Amelia breathes.

“It’s a portstone. I’ll explain later.”

Amelia is too bewildered to be angry about hearing that again. She takes in the fields around her. There are windmills tolling gently over a hill. An autumn forest blooms in oranges and pinks- pinks?- and there’s the whinny of stables nearby. Up ahead and cutting close to a path through the wheat grains, a tower looms. It’s a tall building, looming up high to rival the height of the windmills far away. The roof of it is brimmed with lanterns hanging from the roof that drapes down at varying heights from chains. A giant clock face glows at the top of it. Dotted down the thick of the tower are windows in a rounded triangle shape.

Amelia feels like she’s in a fairytale.

“That’s-?” Amelia breathes.

“My home,” Kronii says. “My Atelier. This is where you’ll be staying.”

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