The Once and Future Witches

by Alix E. Harrow

  Nearly an hour later she taps her thumbnail against the skin of the apple and grins at the delicate tink-tink sounds it produces. “Well, I hope our sister has her head on straight by the full moon.”

  Bella makes a distracted mmm? noise without looking up from her book. Juniper sets a small, heavy object in its pages. Bella peers at it through her spectacles and gives a soft gasp. “What—how—”

  “Electa taught me one of her mama’s old songs. I thought there might be something to it.” She plucks the heavy thing from her sister’s book and holds it up to the light. It’s round and lustrous, glowing yellow as butter: a small, golden apple.

  Juniper grins at it, this thing that fell out of storybook and song to shine in her palm, real as anything. “Think I found our third spectacle.”

  Ferrum rubigine, pernay o chronoss.

  A spell to rust, requiring salt, spit, & considerable patience

  The night after Agnes Amaranth shattered every stein and bottle in The Workingman’s Friend, Mr. August Lee knocks at the door of Room No. 7 in the South Sybil boarding house.

  Agnes is bent over a map of New Salem with a handful of other Sisters, debating the best routes to approach their third spectacle, when a man’s voice husks, “Uh, hyssop,” from the hall. The room falls still. Worried glances dart like swallows between them.

  Juniper rises from the bed, reaching for her red-cedar staff the way a man might reach for a loaded pistol. “It’s fine, June. It’s just Annie’s cousin.”

  Juniper has already whipped open the door to reveal the lanky, shockingly dapper Mr. Lee. His shirt appears to have been ironed and his summer-straw hair looks as though it suffered a recent encounter with a comb; in his left hand he holds a red burst of carnations.

  He touches a polite hand to his cap. “Evening, ladies. I’m here at the request of a Miss Agnes Ama—”

  “We know who you are. What’re these?” Juniper snatches the carnations and inspects them. She plucks a few petals and crushes them between her fingers, sniffing suspiciously. “Don’t think my Mama Mags ever used these in her witching. What properties do they have?”

  Mr. Lee is struck briefly silent by the uncivil young woman and her green-lit glare. “It’s not—they’re not a spell. They’re flowers, for Miss—” Mr. Lee looks a little frantically around the larger-than-it-ought-to-be room and finally spots Agnes leaning her hip against the kitchen table, fighting a smile.

  She loses. “Let him in, June. Give me those.” Agnes rescues the flowers and arranges them in a chipped porcelain vase. They sag forlornly over the edge, looking distinctly misused. “So glad you could join us, Mr. Lee. You’ve already met my younger sister, Miss James Juniper. This is Miss Beatrice Belladonna, Misses Victoria and Tennessee Hull—”

  Agnes circles the room, introducing both her sisters and Sisters. Mr. Lee, in an attempt to recover his footing, assays a charming smile at a pair of girls from Salem’s Sin; they return looks of such surpassing coldness that Agnes almost feels sorry for him. He redirects the smile to Bella, whose polite but profound disinterest is somehow even more crushing. Mr. Lee’s gaze swings back to Agnes in desperation.

  She gestures to one of their mismatched chairs. “Shall we begin?”

  In the end Mr. Lee’s first lesson in men’s magic is not so much a lesson as a hostile interrogation. Bella perches in a seat next to him with her little black notebook propped on her knees, interrupting every six or seven seconds with probing questions and obscure remarks (“How do celestial movements alter the efficacy?” “Are all your spells in the imperative rather than subjunctive mood?”). As Mr. Lee fumbles through answers that are mostly long pauses and pained expressions, Juniper sits on his other side, mangling the words at the top of her voice and complaining when they produce no obvious results (“Some good men’s magic is. What’s Latin for horseshit, Mr. Lee?”). It’s clear that whatever work Mr. Lee did in Chicago—Annie said he was a lineman who became one of Debs’s left-hand boys, charged with arson and inciting to riot by the state of Illinois—it hadn’t prepared him for two hours with the Eastwood sisters.

  Looking harassed, Lee withdraws a pinch of salt and a bent nail from his vest pocket and chants at the nail in rough-cut Latin until it looks marginally flakier and redder, as if it contracted a sudden rash.

  “Neat,” Juniper sneers, “if you’ve got a year or two to spare.”

  Lee slaps a hand on the table, his charm hanging in ragged tatters around him. “Listen. This exact spell took out a mile of track in Chicago and got me beaten damn near to death. When you’re out on the front lines—”

  Agnes thinks he might be warming up to a real speech, full of aggrieved passion and chest-thumping, when one of the other girls at the table gives a soft, devastating snort. “You wouldn’t know a front line if it bit you, boy.” It’s Gertrude Bonnin, the clay-colored woman from one of the Dakotas.

  Mr. Lee looks at her, not so much offended as despairing, and Juniper slings an arm around Gertrude’s stiff shoulders. “Our girl here fought in the Indian Wars out west, Mister Lee. She and a bunch of other girls busted out of their boarding school—using Saints only know what kind of witching, because she won’t tell us—and joined their mamas and aunties on the front lines.”

  Gertrude pats Juniper’s arm and says, without a trace of apology, “Not every word and way belongs to you.”

  “What about the uplift of women around the globe? What about the universal union of our sex, and the comradeship of womankind?” Agnes is fairly sure Juniper’s store of three-syllable words has just been exhausted; she suspects her sister is quoting from a pamphlet they received from the Witches’ Franchise League in Wales. It was accompanied by a substantial donation to their cause from a Miss Pankhurst and an invitation to the summer solstice ritual at Stonehenge.

  Gertrude gives another of her devastating snorts. “When I see you out west, standing beside us against the U.S. cavalry, I’ll consider us comrades.”

  Juniper flicks the bent nail at Gertrude in response and mutters about stubborn Sioux girls and useless men. At this point the Hull sisters intervene, insisting that they wouldn’t need Mr. Lee at all if instead they summoned the dead souls of their ancestors for instruction. Juniper makes a lewd suggestion about where Victoria can stick her crystal ball, and the tone of the evening descends thereafter.

  Mr. Lee watches the rising debate with his jaw slightly slack and his blond hair tousled. Agnes sidles closer and pitches her voice beneath the noise of the room. “What’s the matter, Mr. Lee? Is this not how you pictured our little women’s club?”

  “I . . . not entirely.” He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “What’s all this?” He nods at a pile of black felt and silken scraps, a scattering of dark feathers.

  “Oh, nothing that would interest you, I’m sure. Just another show.”

  For some reason this provokes another of his bright, boyish grins. “My what sharp teeth you have, Miss Eastwood,” he murmurs. “Will you be sprouting wings? Riding broomsticks across the Thorn?”

  Bella, who was apparently eavesdropping, begins to say something about the absence of historical evidence that witches specifically preferred broomsticks, and that such stories likely refer to any number of spells for flight or levitation—but Agnes interrupts her on the grounds that it’s boring and no one cares. “That information is for Sisters only, Mr. Lee.”

  “August, please.” He looks up at her with a dare in his eyes. “And how would one petition to join the Sisters of Avalon?”

  Agnes never liked to back down from dares, either. “Bella. The roster, if you please?”

  Bella hesitates for a long second before sliding her little black notebook across the table. Lee writes his name beneath the others—AUGUST SYLVESTER LEE—and tosses the pen down like a dueling glove.

  “And now your oath, sir. Prick your finger and draw a cross, then repeat after me.”

  “Witchcraft? Are you sure a man can work it?”

  “Are you sure you’re
a man? You strike me more as a mouse.”

  August barks a laugh before he pricks his finger and speaks the words. The two of them grin a little giddily at one other until Juniper squints over at them and mutters darkly, “Oh, for the love of God.”

  Later—after most of the Sisters of Avalon have slunk back through the halls of South Sybil and out into the damp green darkness of the June night, after August left with a tip of his hat so low it was nearly a bow and Agnes watched him go with a hand on her belly, reminding herself the price a woman paid for wanting—Bella clears her throat.

  She’s standing at the door with her black notebook tucked beneath her arm, looking back at Agnes with deep lines around her mouth. “Be careful, Ag.” It’s almost a whisper. “I heard Annie saying he’s just here for a month to lie low. I don’t think he’s the type to stick around.”

  “It’s not—it’s none of your damn business,” Agnes hisses back.

  “I just didn’t want you to form any attachments that might be . . . unwise.”

  “And what about the lovely Miss Quinn? Is she a wise attachment?”

  Bella’s face goes gray, her shoulders hunching around some unseen wound. “I—I don’t know what you mean.” She sweeps from the room.

  Then Agnes is alone, feeling like a snake or a shard of glass, something that hurts if you hold it close.

  At the next meeting of the Sisters, Beatrice chooses a seat beside Miss Frankie Black. They work side by side, stripping lace and buttons from a pile of old skirts and donated blouses. There are more Sisters now, in need of more witch-robes.

  Beatrice engages Frankie in an airy discussion of family and background, basking in the southern sprawl of her accent, before asking casually if Frankie happens to know Miss Cleopatra Quinn.

  Frankie looks at her slantwise. “Yes.”

  “Oh, I thought you might. And are you . . . close?”

  “Quite close, at one time.” Frankie’s voice is very even, but Beatrice’s heart gives a double thump at that quite. She thinks of all the things Quinn doesn’t tell her, the work she doesn’t share.

  “Well,” she says lightly, “I’ve just lately become acquainted with her. She’s quite . . .” She trails away, unsure what word she meant to say (enigmatic, compelling, consuming).

  Frankie turns to face her directly. There’s an unmistakable shine of pity in her eyes. “Look, you should know before you get your heart broke: Miss Cleopatra has . . . other interests, and they will always come first.”

  “Other—?” Beatrice would give any sum of money to prevent herself from blushing. “The Colored League, you mean?” She abhors the note of desperate optimism in her voice.

  The pity deepens. “No, not the Colored League.”

  “She’s a member, is she not?”

  “I don’t believe she’s been to a meeting in months. Maybe ever.”

  “Then I—I don’t know what you mean.” But Beatrice does.

  She feels her elaborate theory—that Quinn was a clandestine operative for a women’s rights organization—collapsing like underbaked bread. There was a much more obvious reason that a beautiful woman with an understanding husband might make private calls at unlikely places, might disappear for periods of time without saying where. Beatrice remembers her first meeting with Quinn, the blinding smile, the daring derby hat, the effortless charm.

  A woman like that could do much better than a bony librarian. Beatrice wonders wanly if she was the only woman to escort Miss Quinn to the Fair.

  Frankie sniffs and reaches out to pat her hand. “Don’t fret. You’re hardly the first.”

  Following her conversation with Frankie, Beatrice is more careful. She no longer permits Miss Quinn to loop her arm through hers or accompanies her in public. When their eyes meet—gray to gold, cloud to sunlight—Beatrice looks away after a single second (she counts in her head, one-one-thousand, drawing the syllables long and slow).

  The last time Quinn visited the library, Beatrice suggested stiffly that there was no need for Miss Quinn to make the trip up from New Cairo quite so often, as they had finished reviewing the Old Salem materials and found nothing more exciting than a few desiccated rose petals and a pale tatter they thought was lace, but which turned out to be the shed skin of some long-dead snake. Everything else—the court transcripts and diary entries, the ledgers and letters—was either painfully mundane or mysteriously fragmented. A promising journal with the final pages ripped out; a little girl’s letter to her aunt with entire passages faded away to nothing; an account from one of the Inquisitors who burned the city, which ended: After the fire died and the screams faded—and I tell you I shall hear them till Judgment Day—Judge Hawthorn had us comb the ashes for days. Whatever he sought he did not find.

  “If the secret to calling back the Lost Way exists, we may be reasonably certain it’s not in the Salem College Library.” Beatrice met Miss Quinn’s eyes (one-one-thousand). “Surely your time would be better spent pursuing—other possibilities.”

  Quinn opened her mouth as if she might object, but the expression on Beatrice’s face made her close it. “As you wish, Miss Eastwood.” It’s only after she’s gone that Beatrice notices she left her derby hat behind.

  Beatrice spends the rest of the week working alone. She transcribes the chapters she is assigned; she adds more witch-tales and rhymes to her little black notebook and fills page after page with notes and theories and failed experiments (Solstice and equinox offer amplification? Maiden’s blood & Crone’s tears—Mother’s ???); she squints at innocent shadows as they glide across the floor and keeps her threshold lined with salt. Mr. Blackwell blinks as he steps across it and asks Beatrice mildly if she’s been feeling well.

  If a certain scent lingers in the air, Beatrice doesn’t notice (cloves; newsprint; machine oil).

  She sees Miss Quinn a handful of times—at meetings of the Sisters of Avalon, flitting in and out of South Sybil as they plan their third spectacle—but somehow never quite remembers to return her derby hat; Quinn does not retrieve it.

  By the eighteenth of June the summer heat has finally sunk through the limestone and wood-paneling of the library, so that sitting in her office feels like sitting in the damp interior of an animal’s mouth. Even the books look rumpled and disheveled, pages swollen.

  Beatrice works until midafternoon, sweaty and glazed and lonely. Her eyes slide to the derby hat on her desk.

  She stands and tucks it under her arm. It may be unwise to form any particular attachment to Miss Quinn, but surely Beatrice might enjoy her company. Occasionally. She informs Mr. Blackwell that she’s going home early and strides out into the bright haze of the square.

  The trolley deposits her at the southernmost tip of Second Street, where the neat cobbles give way to hard-packed dirt and the stately homes are replaced by hasty tenements, and scuttles north again. Beatrice proceeds on foot, stepping across the invisible line that divides one neighborhood from the next—although New Cairo isn’t so much a neighborhood within New Salem as it is an assault upon it.

  Instead of a neat grid of streets there’s a haphazard tangle; instead of pulled curtains and closed windows there are balconies crowded with flowerpots and laundry and bright awnings; even the churches are suspiciously cheery, ringing with raised voices rather than tolling bells and dour chants. The city has retaliated—passing fussy little ordinances and fines for broken windows, stuffing the entire neighborhood into a single odd-shaped voting district—but New Cairo persists in growing. The Jungle, Beatrice has heard it called, with a sour smile, or Little Africa; Beatrice thinks they’re frightened to say the word Cairo aloud, as if it might summon golden tombs and witch-queens from the air.

  The offices of The Defender are six blocks south, in a sooty red building that hums with the constant churn of the press. The secretary looks up as Beatrice enters. “Cleo isn’t in, Miss Eastwood. Check Araminta’s, on Nut Street.” He says Nut strangely, almost like night.

  After several wrong turns and t
wo consultations with bemused passersby, Beatrice still walks past it twice: Nut Street is a long, crooked alley, deep-shadowed and cool even in the afternoon heat. Red-painted doors and dark windows line the walls, bearing discreet signs: LESLIE BELL, TAILOR; M. LAWSON’S CURATIVES; ARAMINTA’S SPICES & SUNDRIES. Beatrice taps at the door. After a long silence, she turns the handle.

  She smells the spices first: a hundred shades of cinnamon and sage, clove and cardamom. The air itself glows reddish-gold, flecked with motes of pepper and paprika. The shop is filled with rows of tiny wooden drawers and brown paper packages, sacks of garlic and jars of ruby peppers. The floorboards sigh little puffs of saffron and salt as she crosses them. There’s another smell lying beneath the spices, colder and stranger and wilder, that Beatrice can’t name.

  Beatrice edges toward the counter in the back, empty except for a small copper bell. Beatrice is reaching for it when she hears her own name, followed by: “—certain she isn’t holding anything from me. She doesn’t suspect anything. She’s just . . . cautious.”

  Beatrice goes very still, her hand outstretched, her lungs half-full. She knows that voice.

  Someone else says something, low, indistinct. It must be a question, because the first voice responds: “Tomorrow night. The Rose Moon. I told them a full moon was a foolish time for going unseen, but they’re getting cheeky, less careful. Foolish.”

  Tomorrow the Sisters of Avalon work their third act of witching. Right now there are black gowns hanging ready in a dozen dressing rooms and boarding houses; words and ways waiting on a dozen tongues.

  Another question, too soft to make out. The voice that Beatrice knows so well—the voice that has teased and tempted her, that has argued with her over worm-eaten books and stained letters—answers: “The witch-yard, in the city cemetery. Three hours after midnight.”

  It sounds like a report, as a soldier might give to a general. Or a spy to her master.