The Once and Future Witches

by Alix E. Harrow

  But witch-tales are for children, and Agnes doesn’t like being told what to do. She shuts her door so hard the cross-stitched verse swings on its nail. She listens alone to the uneven thump of her sister’s footsteps.

  Three circles woven together, or maybe three snakes swallowing their own tails: Beatrice has seen this shape before. Beatrice knows to whom it belongs.

  The Last Three Witches of the West.

  It’s the sign the Maiden left carved into the trunks of beech trees, the sign the Mother burned into her dragon-scale armor, the sign the Crone pressed into the leather covers of books. Beatrice has seen it printed in blurred ink in the appendices of medieval histories and described in the journals of witch-hunters and occasionally mis-identified in Church pamphlets as the Sign of Satan.

  It doesn’t belong in the modern world. It certainly doesn’t belong in the City Without Sin, carved into a door on a tower that shouldn’t exist.

  Beatrice escapes the labyrinth of the West Babel slums with her skin humming and her fingers shaking. She flags down a trolley and lets the electric whir drown out the rising hustle of the city, the calls of west-side street vendors and the misery of the mills and even the memory of her sisters’ faces, fresh and sharp as mint-leaves in her mouth.

  (They’re alive and whole and their daddy is dead. The thought is deafening, a flood of hope and dread and hurt.)

  Mr. Blackwell isn’t yet at his desk when Beatrice arrives at the library. Beatrice is relieved; there will be no one to see her pale-faced and rumpled in the same dress she wore yesterday.

  She left the window open overnight and her office smells cool and damp, as if she is stepping into a starlit wood instead of a cramped room. The Sisters Grimm lies open on her desk, its pages rippling softly in the breeze.

  Beatrice flips to the final page of the final story, traces the verse in faded ink. The wayward sisters, hand in hand. She thinks the spell looks somehow even fainter, as if it’s aged several decades since Beatrice last saw it; she thinks she might be losing her mind.

  She turns back to the title page: The Tale of Saint George and the Witches. Mama Mags’s version was nothing like the Grimms’, all neat and cheery. The way she told it the Last Three had not flown to Avalon in terror, but in a desperate attempt to save the last remnants of their power from the purge. They’d built something—some great construct of stone and time and magic—that preserved the wicked heart of women’s magic like seeds saved after the winnowing.

  Sometimes Mags said Saint George had simply torched their working along with the Three themselves. Other times she said it had vanished along with the isle of Avalon itself, drifting out of time and mind, lost to the world. But, she would whisper with a wink, what is lost, that can’t be found, Belladonna?

  (Mags had always called them by their mother’s-names—the old-fashioned second-names given by mothers to daughters—but St. Hale’s had found the practice blasphemous. Eventually Beatrice had learned to forget the heathen indulgence of her mother’s-name and become merely Beatrice.)

  Beatrice has heard similar portents and promises over the years, has even heard it given a name: the Lost Way of Avalon. It’s an absurdity, she knows—the Last Three themselves are three-quarters myth and witch-tale, generally only taken seriously by oracles or zealots or the occasional seditious schoolgirl—and Beatrice doesn’t see how witchcraft could be bound to a single place or object.

  And yet.

  Yesterday Beatrice stood beneath the light of strange stars in the shadow of a black tower, where her sister saw the sign of the Last Three.

  What is lost, that can’t be found? The words Mags taught them alongside a hundred other songs and rhymes. Senseless, silly, utterly insignificant to the grand warp and weft of time.

  Unless they aren’t. Unless there are words and ways waiting among the children’s verses; power passed in secret from mother to daughter, like swords disguised as sewing needles.

  Beatrice removes her little black notebook from its drawer and writes out the entirety of The Tale of the Sleeping Maiden. She stares out the window, thinking of maidens and drops of blood and tall towers surrounded by roses and truths wrapped in lies.

  There’s a strange wriggle in the corner of Beatrice’s eye. Her gaze flicks back to the desk: there is an odd, many-fingered shadow cast over the Grimms’ book.

  She draws the page cautiously away. It’s unchanged, except perhaps that the ink is a shade paler and the paper slightly thinner. Older.

  The shadow-hand retreats as she watches, coiling back into a dim corner of her office and lying still, as if it were an ordinary shadow cast by a bookshelf or desktop.

  A cold foreboding spins over Beatrice’s skin. She has the sudden urge either to fling the book out the window or clutch it tight to her chest, but before she can do either there’s a wooden knock against her office door.

  Beatrice flinches, picturing police or witch-hunters or at least Miss Munley, the secretary, but she feels a silent tug and knows, quite suddenly and illogically, who is standing in the hall beating her staff against her door.

  Her youngest sister glares at her as she opens it, mouth thin and eyes hot. “If you wanted to run off, you shouldn’t’ve left a breadcrumb trail behind you.” She waves her staff in midair, gesturing at the invisible thing between them.

  “Oh! It must be a leftover effect of yesterday’s—events. A spell was begun but not finished, like thread that wasn’t tied off properly.” Beatrice can see from Juniper’s expression that she doesn’t particularly care what it is or how it got there, that she is just a half-step away from an act of violence. Beatrice swallows. “Ah, come in. I’m sorry I ran off this morning.”

  “It’s about that tower, isn’t it? You know what it is.” Juniper gives her a searching look.

  I think it’s the Lost Way of Avalon. The thought is heady, dizzying, too dangerous to speak aloud even in the soft-shadowed halls of Salem College. “I don’t know. I’m considering some s-some possibilities, is all.”

  Juniper watches her with a narrow-eyed expression that says she doesn’t believe her and is weighing whether or not to make something of it. “Alright. I can help you consider them.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “And I’m joining the suffrage ladies, like I said. You know where to find them? They got an office somewhere?”

  “Three blocks north, on St. Patience. But . . .” Beatrice wets her lips, unsure how much she should or shouldn’t tell her baby sister who has become this prowling, perilous woman. “But I’m not sure the suffragists have anything to do with that tower, or the sp-spell we felt.” She stumbles over the word, recalling the hot taste of witching in her mouth.

  Juniper shoots her another sideways look. “I might not have a lot of fancy schooling like you, but I’m not stupid. You don’t get Devil’s-fever from standing around and watching, Bell. Mags said it comes of working witching stronger than yourself.” Beatrice is opening her mouth in confession or denial, but Juniper is already looking past her. “Maybe you’re right, and they didn’t have anything to do with it. Still. Seems to me they’re the same thing, more or less.”

  “What are?”

  Juniper’s eyes reflect the bronze shine of Saint George’s standing in the square. “Witching and women’s rights. Suffrage and spells. They’re both . . .” She gestures in midair again. “They’re both a kind of power, aren’t they? The kind we aren’t allowed to have.” The kind I want, says the hungry shine of her eyes.

  “They’re both children’s stories, June.” Beatrice doesn’t know if she’s telling her sister or herself.

  Juniper shrugs without looking away from the square. “They’re better than the story we were given.” Beatrice thinks about their story and doesn’t disagree.

  Juniper’s eyes slide to hers, flashing green. “Maybe we can change it, if we try. Skip into some better story.” And Beatrice sees that she means it, that beneath all Juniper’s bitter rage there’s still a little girl who beli
eves in happy endings. It makes Beatrice want to slap her or hold her, to send Juniper home before New Salem teaches her different.

  But she can tell from the iron shape of Juniper’s jaw that she wouldn’t go, that she’s charted a course toward trouble and means to find it.

  “I—I’ll take you to the Women’s Association. After work.”

  “And I need a place to stay.”

  “What about Agnes?”

  Frost crackles down the line between them at the mention of her name.

  “I see. Well, I rent a room a few blocks east. You’re welcome to stay until . . .” She isn’t sure how to end her sentence. Until women win the vote in New Salem? Until they call back the Lost Way and return witching to the world? Until the sullen red is gone from Juniper’s eyes?

  “Until things settle down,” she finishes lamely. Her sister smiles in a way that makes Beatrice suspect that things, whatever they are, will not settle at all.

  Hush a bye, baby, bite your tongue,

  Not a word shall be sung.

  A spell for quiet, requiring a clipped feather & a bitten tongue

  James Juniper wanted Bella to skip work and head straight to the suffrage ladies, but Bella insisted that she had “obligations and responsibilities” and made Juniper sit on a teetery pile of encyclopedias while she worked, which lasted until Juniper got bored and slipped out the door to wander the hushed halls of the Salem College Library.

  It’s still early, and there’s a stillness to the air that reminds Juniper of walking the mountainside just before dawn, in that silent second after the night-creatures have bedded down but before the morning-birds have started up. It feels secret, stolen out of time, like you might see the ragged point of a witch’s hat or the gleam of dragon-scales in the shadows. Juniper closes her eyes and pretends the wood-pulp pages around her are wet and alive, pumping with sap instead of ink. She wonders if her sister ever stands like this—missing home, missing her—and feels a fragile sprout of sympathy take root in her chest.

  She hears the rattle-creak of a library cart and opens her eyes to find a prissy, toothy woman hissing at her in a whisper that’s several times louder than a regular old speaking voice. She goes on about library hours and permissions and “the stacks,” although none of the books looked stacked to Juniper, and Juniper is about to cause what Mama Mags would call “a scene” when an affable-looking gentleman with tufty ear-hair rescues her and herds her back to Bella’s office.

  Bella blinks up at them through her spectacles and says, “What—oh. I’m so sorry. Thank you, Mr. Blackwell. My sister has never been fond of the rules.”

  There’s a little pause, while Bella attempts to glare at Juniper and Juniper attempts to dodge, before the hairy-eared gentleman says softly, “I didn’t know you had a sister, Beatrice.”

  Juniper feels that fragile sprout of sympathy wither and die. The truth is that her sisters ran off and never looked back, never even spoke her name, and they’re only together now because of happenstance and a half-spun spell.

  Juniper feels Bella watching her and works hard to keep her stupid eyes from filling up with stupid tears.

  Mr. Blackwell looks between the two of them with lines of concern crimping his brows. “I never liked the rules much either, to be honest,” he offers. Then he bows to Juniper as if Juniper is the kind of lady who gets bowed to. “Lovely to meet you, Miss Eastwood.”

  He leaves them alone together.

  Juniper perches back on the encyclopedia stack to wait and doesn’t say anything. Neither does Bella. For a few hours the office is quiet except for the scritch of Bella’s pen and the kick of Juniper’s heels against book-spines.

  At noon Bella screws the cap back onto her ink bottle and stands. “Well. Are you ready to join the women’s movement, Juniper?” She gives her a small, not very good smile that Juniper guesses is supposed to be an apology, which Juniper neither accepts nor denies. Instead she shrugs to her feet, toppling the encyclopedias behind her.

  Bella looks her up and down—muddy hem to briar-scratched arms—and sighs a little. “There’s a washroom down the hall. At least brush your hair. You look like an escaped convict.” Juniper barely suppresses a cackle.

  It turns out brushing her hair isn’t enough. Bella produces a stiff woolen dress from her office closet. It’s one of those respectable, pocketless affairs that obliges ladies to carry stupid little handbags, so Juniper can’t take so much as a melted candle-stub or a single snake tooth with her. Bella informs her that this is the precise reason why women’s dresses no longer have pockets, to show they bear no witch-ways or ill intentions, and Juniper responds that she has both, thank you very damn much.

  In the end Juniper goes to see the suffragists entirely disarmed, except for her cedar staff.

  She doesn’t know what she was expecting the headquarters of the New Salem Women’s Association to look like—an embattled army camp, perhaps, or a black-stone castle guarded by lady-knights—but it turns out to be a respectable-looking office with plate-glass windows and oak paneling and a pretty secretary who says “oh!” when the bell rings.

  The secretary is Juniper’s age, with hair the color of cornsilk and a crookedy nose that looks like it was broken at least once. Her eyes slide between Bella and Juniper and return to Bella, apparently deciding she’s the more civilized of the two. “May I . . . help you?” Her eyes flick back to Juniper during the pause, lingering on the sawed-off edges of her hair.

  Bella offers a polite smile. “Hello. I’m Miss Beatrice Eastwood and this is my sister, Miss Jame—”

  It is at that moment that Juniper recalls the wanted posters currently spelling out her name in all capital letters across half the city, and intercedes. “June. Miss June . . . West.” She glances at her sister, who looks like a taller, skinnier version of her. “We’re just half-sisters, see.” She can feel Bella giving her a what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you look and ignores it. She sticks her hand out to the secretary. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Bella clears her throat pointedly. “Anyway, we—well, my sister—half-sister, I suppose—is interested in joining the Women’s Association.”

  The secretary beams at them in a way that makes Juniper think they don’t get fresh blood all that often, says, “Oh, of course! I’ll fetch Miss Stone,” and skitters into the back rooms. Juniper catches an angled glimpse of desks and stacks of paper, hears the businesslike chatter of working-women, and feels a familiar lonesomeness well up in her throat, a sisterless hunger to be on the other side of that door.

  “Please do make yourselves comfortable,” the secretary calls as the door shuts.

  The two spindly chairs in the office don’t look like they can hold anything heavier than a canary, so Juniper stays on her feet, weight hitched away from her bad leg. Bella stands statue-still, hands politely clasped. When did she get all proper, all ladylike? Juniper remembers her as a creature of sighs and slouches and soft-tangled hair.

  She watches the clatter of the street through the window, the carriages and trolleys and iron-shod horses. Sober black letters hover over the scene, painted backwards on the inside of the window: HEADQUARTERS OF THE NEW SALEM WOMEN’S ASS’N. A thrill sizzles through her.

  A day ago she was lost and reeling, spinning through the world like a puppet with its strings cut. And now she’s here, with the smell of witching on the wind and the promise of power painted on the window above her. And a whole pack of brand-new sisters waiting just on the other side of the door.

  Juniper shoots a sideways look at Bella, all prim and nervous, and hopes politicking proves thicker than blood.

  The secretary comes bustling back into the room accompanied by the white-wigged lady who made the speech in the square the day before. She looks older and tireder up close, all cheekbones and worry lines. Her eyes are a pair of brass scales, weighing them.

  “Miss Lind tells me you’re interested in joining our Association.”

  Juniper ducks her head, feeling suddenly very y
oung. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh. Well, I was there yesterday at the rally. I liked what you said about e-equality.” The word feels silly in her mouth, four syllables of make-believe and rainbows. She tries again. “And what you said about the way things are. How it’s not fair and never has been, how the bastards take and they take from us until there’s nothing left, until we don’t have any choices except bad ones—”

  Miss Stone raises two delicate fingers. “No need to do yourself a harm, child. I quite understand.” Her eyes harden from brass to beaten iron. “But you ought to understand—whatever your personal troubles—the Women’s Association is no place for bloody-mindedness or vengeance. There are no Pankhursts here.” Juniper doesn’t know what a Pankhurst is. Miss Stone must intuit this from the blankness of her expression, because she clarifies, “This is a respectable, peaceable organization.”

  “. . . Yes, ma’am.”

  Miss Stone pivots to Bella. “And you?”

  “Me?”

  “Why are you joining us today?”

  “Oh, I’m not—that is, you certainly have my sympathies. But I’m awfully busy at work, and I just don’t have time—”

  Miss Stone has already turned away from her. She addresses Juniper again. “Miss Lind will add your name to our member list and discuss upcoming committee meetings you might join.” Juniper tries to look eager, though she finds the word committee unpromising.

  “And will you be making a contribution to our Association fund?”

  “A what now?”

  Miss Stone exchanges a look with her secretary as Bella hisses, “Money, June.”

  “Oh. I don’t have any of that.” Never has, really. What work Juniper did back in Crow County was paid in kind—jarred honey or fried apples or cat-mint picked on the half-moon—and Daddy never let them see a cent of his money. “I’m between jobs, see.”