Well, this wasn’t good. Mika had been five years old the first time she’d floated off the ground by accident. The next day, she’d had a new nanny and a rare unscheduled visit from Primrose.

It hadn’t happened much after that. She’d learned to quickly control that particular bit of magical mischief.

She’d also been alone. There had been much less magic around. Altamira, just seven years old, in a house with two other young witches and more magic than Mika had ever seen in one place, didn’t stand a chance.

But that was why she was here, wasn’t it?

“Can you get yourself back down to the floor, Altamira?” Mika asked.

Rosetta turned, surprised. Altamira blinked, looked around, and burst into delighted laughter. “I’m floating! Look, Rosetta!”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to be very boring and grown-up for a minute,” Mika said apologetically. “I know you’re having fun, but levitation isn’t safe if you can’t control it.”

Altamira gave her a puzzled look. “You mean because I might fall? But I’m only a little bit off the floor anyway. It won’t hurt.”

“It’s more about whether or not you can get yourself back down. Can you?”

Altamira uncrossed her legs and wiggled them. Nothing. She closed her eyes and screwed her face up, concentrating. Nothing.

“Have you ever cast a spell before?” Mika asked her. “On purpose, I mean?”

“I think so,” Altamira replied. “There’ve been a couple of times, haven’t there, Rosetta? Like that time I really wanted a plum off the tree, but it was too high for me to reach, so I just concentrated on it for a minute and wiggled my fingers and asked it to fall into my hand. And it did!”

Mika smiled. “That’s good! That means you already know that the first thing any good spell needs is intent. You want something, so you figure out a way to make it happen. In your case, you wanted the plum, but it wouldn’t have been enough to just look at the plum and think I want it. A spell needs the how as well as the what. You had to figure out how you might get the plum. Which is what you did. You asked for it to fall into your hand.” Mika was quite certain she was explaining this very badly, not least because her own understanding of witchiness was nebulous, but she knew she had to try or there was simply no point in her being here. “Sometimes, for simple spells, that’s all you need. How and what. And all the magical energy that’s inside you and around you will do what you asked.”

“So you’re saying that when we cast a spell, it’s pretty much just us talking to magic?” Rosetta asked.