by E J Elwin
I looked around at the bed. Connor wasn’t there. I couldn’t see anyone through the translucent white curtains around the bed. They were very thin and reminded me a lot of a wedding veil— or a shroud. I pulled them open.
I was in an airy bedroom with plain white walls and a high ceiling. The only other furniture besides the bed was a tall wooden wardrobe set against the opposite wall and a cushioned armchair next to the bed. A small knit blanket was crumpled on the seat. Had Connor been sitting there? He had to be around here somewhere. If I survived the explosion, then he did too. Harriet must have swooped in at the last second. I imagined her flying into Portland on her broomstick and telekinetically moving the bazooka’s rocket out of its trajectory.
I rose from the bed and walked to the window. Beyond the thin bright blue curtains was a breathtaking view. This house, or hospital, or whatever it was, was at the top of a large hill right at the edge of the ocean. It was a beautiful sunny day and the ocean was a perfect deep blue, the color of Connor’s eyes. Puffy white clouds spread across the sky in the kind of elaborate formations that I could remember picking out shapes in as a child.
Then I remembered. The edge of the ocean… Seaside. We’d made it to Seaside! This was the house of Harriet’s two witch friends that we’d nearly died trying to get to! I had no idea how it happened, how Harriet had pulled it off, but I was excited to find out. I bounded toward the bedroom door and then remembered I was naked. I opened the tall wooden wardrobe and found a lone garment, a fuzzy, bright red bathrobe hanging from a wire hanger. Connor or Harriet must have left it for me. I threw it on, tied the belt around my waist, and opened the bedroom door.
I found a long hallway lined with closed doors. To the left was a wide staircase that curved downward out of sight to the lower floors. At either end of the hall were two tall windows that stretched nearly to the ceiling. An incredibly long Persian rug in a rich red color ran along the hall from one end to the other. If this really was a house and not a hospital or hotel, it was the biggest house I’d ever been in. It looked like dozens of people could comfortably live here.
I walked to the staircase and looked over the banister. It appeared that I was only on the second floor but it felt much higher. The house had high ceilings and the ground floor was much further down than it would be in an average house. A massive silver chandelier stocked with currently unlit candles, hung between the two floors. It reminded me of Harriet’s chandelier back in her little kitchen. It looked like it would be difficult to light these candles where they were, unless you could do it by pointing your fingers at them like Harriet could with her fireplaces…
I crept quietly down the staircase. As I passed the chandelier, I glimpsed a sumptuously decorated living room below. When I reached it, my eyes were first drawn to the massive brick fireplace set into the far wall. It stretched all the way to the ceiling and curved slightly, looking like a wavy path running up the wall. I had never seen a design quite like it.
The room was awash in elegant antique furniture. At the center was a shining wood and crystal coffee table surrounded by four armchairs and a red velvet couch. The chairs were draped in black lace with rose patterns, and reminded me of the cushiony couches in Rue’s Ice Cream Parlor. The red couch was adorned with dozens of puffy pillows, and also reminded me of Rue’s.
There were several expensive-looking lamps mounted on thin-legged wooden end tables, along with clusters of unlit white candles set in silver holders. The hardwood floors were covered in plush, vibrantly colored carpets; hues of purple, green, and blue swirled into mesmerizing designs which made the floor look like it were in motion. A magnificent grandfather clock stood against the wall, its gleaming silver pendulum swinging serenely back and forth. Next to it was a polished oak cabinet as tall as the wardrobe in the room upstairs. It reminded me of my parents’ liquor cabinet except that it was much bigger and had no window to display what was inside.
The place felt like a cross between the tastes of a rich old grandmother and an eccentric artist, and I was sure it belonged to witches. There was nobody else in the room and yet it felt so… alive.
I padded over the soft colorful carpets in my bare feet and into the room beyond, which was bathed in sunlight. I’d never known anyone who had one in their house but I knew what it was: a sunroom. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a spectacular view of the ocean and the sky. There were wicker armchairs draped in lace with rose patterns like the chairs in the other room, except this lace was white. There was also another wood and crystal coffee table, only this one bore a mug of something steaming. I looked around. There was nobody in the room. Then—
I jumped and held in a scream. A man sat in one of the wicker chairs. I hadn’t been able to see him from behind the large back. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, with a husky build and a bushy brown beard that came down to his collar. He sat upright with his hands folded neatly in his lap.
“Excuse me, I’m so sorry!” I said. “I’m just looking for—” I paused, noticing that his eyes were closed. He didn’t stir and made no indication that he’d heard me. He could have been sleeping, but who slept sitting upright with their hands in their lap? “Um, sir? Hello?” I reached out a hand and waved it cautiously in front of his face. “Sir? Are you, um…?”
I didn’t know what to do. I’d already disturbed the man and couldn’t believe he was sleeping, and yet he didn’t open his eyes or acknowledge my presence. I reached out to wake him but thought better of it. I shouldn’t touch a mysterious not-quite-sleeping man in a strange new house. It was another thing Harriet and Connor would have to explain to me when I found them.
Just then, as though they were heeding my request, I heard Harriet’s voice. There was a door beyond the sunroom that was slightly ajar. My heart leapt with joy and relief, and I excitedly tip-toed to the door, not wanting to startle anyone or interrupt something. I reached for the curvy brass doorknob but then paused as I heard Harriet speaking. She sounded like she was in the middle of a deep, involved conversation. I stopped for a moment to listen.
“…never imagined it could hold any weight. And I thought I’d seen everything.”
“You never believed in it even a little?” said a woman’s voice that I didn’t recognize.
“Well, I heard the story, we all did,” said Harriet. “But that’s just what it was to me.”
“Jasper always believed it,” said the woman I didn’t know.
“How about you?” asked Harriet.
“It was a nice thought,” said the woman. “I didn’t have my hopes up, though. But now…”
“I know,” sighed Harriet. “How do I even begin to explain it to Arthur?”
“Explain what?” I opened the door onto a bright roomy kitchen with white wooden cabinets. What at first like green streaks of paint on the wood turned out to be vines, real vines curling into and out of the cabinets. It made the room look like a greenhouse. Harriet sat at a table with a woman who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She had wavy blonde hair that came down to her shoulders and wore a purple bathrobe. Harriet wore one just like it but in lavender. Two steaming mugs sat on the table in front of them, and it was clear that they’d just woken up a short time ago.
“Arthur!” Harriet started to rise from her seat but I leapt forward and hugged her before she could stand.
“Thank you,” I said. “For whatever you did.”
She held me tightly. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said into my shoulder.
We broke apart, and I looked around at the blonde woman who watched us with a soft smile.
“Arthur, this is Jessica,” said Harriet. “An old friend of mine.”
I reached out a hand to Jessica but she put down her mug, stood up, and wrapped me in a warm hug. I was surprised and a little shy. No one had ever introduced themselves to me this way. She was tall, a little taller than me, and radiated an incredible scent. It was the smell of roses, and not processed chemical ones from a bottle, but fr
esh ones right out of the earth.
“I’m so glad to have you here, sweetie,” she said, examining my face. She had bright green eyes, the color of fresh limes. “Would you like some tea?”
“That’d be great, thank you,” I said, flustered. She went to the stove where the kettle was, and I took a seat at the table next to Harriet. “Thank you so much for having us. This is your house, right?”
“It is,” she smiled.
“It’s amazing,” I said.
“Thank you, sweetie.” I’d only ever heard people use the word ‘sweetie’ sardonically. Jessica used it sincerely, and what was more, she packed a lot of genuine affection into it.
“So you’re a—”
“A witch too? Yup.” She had sensed the question before I asked it, just as Harriet had the first night we talked in her kitchen. I wondered if all witches had this intuition or gift or whatever it was.
“I’m sorry for interrupting, by the way,” I said. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, I just—”
“No, no, it’s okay,” said Harriet, reaching out and resting her hand on mine.
“Um, so what it is that you needed to explain to me?” I asked. “And where’s Connor?”
I looked around at the large kitchen. At the end of the room, there was a sliding glass door that opened up onto a balcony which looked out at the ocean, but there was nobody there.
“Arthur…” Harriet sounded hesitant and nervous, which was unlike her. She glanced at Jessica, who pursed her lips and looked down at the kettle on the stove.
“What?” I asked. “Where is he?”
“Arthur…” she repeated, and this time, her voice broke. “Connor didn’t make it.”
The room flickered before me, like the lanterns at the giant party before they went out. I heard what Harriet said but couldn’t fit the words into my brain.
“W-what?” I asked, blinking rapidly as if I was having trouble seeing.
“Arthur, I’m so sorry,” Harriet said, a tear falling down her cheek.
“What?” I repeated louder, because what she was saying didn’t make sense. Connor and I were together during the explosion. We’d held each other as it happened. I didn’t remember anything afterward until this morning, but I remembered that part as clear as the sunny day outside. If I made it out of there perfectly fine, then he had to have too.
“But you saved us!” I got out. “We were about to be dead but you got us out of there!”
“I didn’t,” said Harriet quietly. “I was here.”
“Then who did?” I glanced at Jessica who was watching us with concern. The kettle on the stove started to steam.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” said Harriet. She took a breath. “It was you. You brought yourself here.” I gaped at her in confusion, and then she said: “Arthur… you’re a witch.”
The only sound in the room was the high-pitched whistle of the steaming kettle.
“What?” I briefly forgot all other words. I stared at Harriet, my face frozen in bewilderment. There was some prank being played. This was Connor’s morbid idea of a joke. Any second now, he was going to burst into the room and he and Harriet were going to have a good laugh at me.
“You’re messing with me,” I said. “This was Connor’s idea.” I looked around at the door. “Connor!” I called. “Connor, this is so mean!”
“Arthur, it’s not a joke,” said Harriet.
“Sure it’s not.” I turned to Jessica, who was watching us intensely. “Are you in on this?” I asked her. “We were nearly killed last night and I’m really not in the mood for jokes.”
She shook her head and started to say something but just then the kettle’s whistle rose to a shrill screech. She jumped and hurriedly turned the stove off. Harriet grasped my hand.
“Arthur, I swear to you this isn’t a joke,” she said. “You’re a witch. You have a gift that saved you and brought you here.”
I looked into her bright blue eyes and a voice inside me whispered that she was telling the truth, but I immediately dismissed it. I was determined for it to be a joke because it was too terrible and crazy to be true. Then I remembered something, and a smile broke across my face.
“You want to know how I know you’re joking?” I asked slyly. She only looked back at me with a puzzled expression. “You said only women can be witches!” I said triumphantly. “At your house, you told Connor only women are witches and that’s just the way it is!”
I looked over at Jessica, sure that I would find her smiling and admitting her involvement in the prank. Instead, she looked away and began pouring hot water into a porcelain mug.
“I did say that,” said Harriet, “and that is the way it always has been. Until now. You are the first and, to my knowledge, the only male-born witch in the world.”
Her words hit me like a smack in the face. Small cracks formed inside me as the illusion began to fade. I felt like porcelain, like the mug on the table, about to break apart. Still, I held on desperately to the hope that it was all a joke.
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted, “say I’m a witch. A special, magical man-witch with powers that brought me here. How did I do it? I don’t even remember it!”
She glanced at Jessica, who walked back to the table with a mug of tea. She set it in front of me and then sat down, looking as solemn as Harriet.
“Jessica and I both saw it happen,” said Harriet. “We were in the living room, about to cast a spell to try to find you and Connor when… you appeared.”
“Appeared?”
“You materialized right in front of our eyes,” she said, “on the floor in front of the fireplace. You didn’t have any clothes on and we had no idea what happened. We thought you were dead at first but you were clearly breathing.”
I watched her face for a twitch that would indicate a suppressed laugh, but none came.
“We tried to wake you,” said Jessica, “but you were in some sort of enchanted sleep. I thought of looking up some spells to pull you out of it, but enchanted sleeps usually run their course before too long. We put a sheet around you and Harriet levitated you up to the bedroom.”
“I sat by the bed for a while in case you woke up during the night,” said Harriet. “I was so relieved you were okay, but…” Tears welled in her eyes. “Arthur, I’m so sorry about Connor. I wish we could’ve been there to help you…”
Jessica rose from her seat and went to one of the vine-laced cabinets. She returned with a box of tissues and handed one to Harriet. “Thank you,” said Harriet, wiping her eyes.
The cracks inside me got bigger, but my eyes were still dry. “But how do you know Connor didn’t escape too? If I’m a— witch, and I have a gift that saved me and brought me here, couldn’t it have done the same for him? We were hugging when we— when it happened. There was an explosion and I was hugging him. Couldn’t my gift have saved him too? Maybe he just ended up somewhere else?”
I looked from one to the other of them, desperate for any hint that I was right.
“I’m afraid that isn’t possible,” said Harriet. “What you achieved, traveling over such a long distance and coming to us in the way that you did… Only a witch could do that.”
“But how do you know it isn’t possible?” I insisted. “Male witches were apparently not possible until now, and you told us that teleporting isn’t possible, and isn’t that what happened? I disappeared in Portland and reappeared here! How do you know Connor wasn’t sent someplace?”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” said Jessica, “but it doesn’t work that way.”
“But how do you know?” I was getting frustrated. How were they so certain how it worked when this was all so new, even to them?
“I know,” said Jessica, “because my brother saw what happened.”
“Brother?” I asked, confused. Then I remembered the man I had seen in the sunroom, the man in the armchair with the bushy brown beard who appeared to be sleeping. “You mean the guy out there?” I asked, point
ing toward the sunroom.
“That’s my brother, Jasper,” she said. “You met him?”
“He was sleeping… I think.”
“I’m sorry, I hope he didn’t scare you,” she said. “He does that, meditates randomly all over the house. Wait ‘til you come across him in the middle of the night while getting up for a glass of water…”
So he’d been meditating. That explained why he’d been sitting so upright. “You say he saw what happened?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“It’s his gift. Seeing. He can lay hands on someone and see things they’ve experienced.”
“Gift?” I asked, puzzled. “He’s a witch too?”
“He is.”
“But I thought—” I said, looking at Harriet, “you said I was the first male witch?”
“Ah yes,” said Jessica. “Sorry, it’s a little confusing. Jasper used to be my sister. He was born a girl named Beatrice. He created this persona in the cauldron.”
When I still looked confused, Harriet spoke. “Remember our disguises around the cauldron? With the blue flames?”
I nodded, thinking of Connor, his hair turning brown and his face morphing into James Dean. I felt the cracks inside me deepen and spread, but I had to understand what was happening.
“That’s how Beatrice became Jasper,” said Jessica. “He wears the Concealment Crystal in a ring on his finger. He, or she at the time, didn’t intend to create a permanent disguise, but he said he felt a lot more comfortable as Jasper and so he decided to stay that way. The disguise works as long as he keeps the crystal on. This was about ten years ago, and so I just came to accept that I now had a brother named Jasper. He’s still all witch, though.”
I nodded to indicate that I understood.
“Anyway,” she went on, “Jasper’s gift is Seeing. Harriet’s mother had the same gift. He can look into the future and also see things in the past that other people have experienced. He just has to touch them. So when you showed up and we couldn’t wake you to find out what happened, we asked Jasper to help us. All he had to do was a put a hand on your forehead and he saw everything that happened last night, from the moment you all were attacked at Harriet’s house until you arrived here.”
