by E J Elwin
“My arm! My arm!” he wept.
Sylvie spat on him and then turned to us, flicking her hair out of her eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked Hortensia.
Hortensia nodded, panting. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
She stepped forward and hugged Sylvie, and right at that moment, a cool wind blew through the trees, even though the night had been still up until then. Hortensia barely noticed as she released Sylvie and turned to hug Lizzie. The wind blew again, stronger this time. Leaves flew up from the ground and down from the trees, not blowing away like in a normal wind, but instead flying around us in a wide circle through the trees.
The man who lay curled in the fetal position suddenly jumped up, but rather than try to attack any of us, he bolted after his friend who was also getting to his feet. Sylvie and I both made movements to run after them when they were abruptly stopped.
Whack! Whack! Both of them were smacked hard across the face, but it wasn’t a person doing it. I had to blink several times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
It was the trees. The branches from the trees on either side of the men had come alive, no longer wooden and rigid but flexible and pliable as whips, snapping and curling through the air like an octopus’s tentacles. After four lightning-fast lashes across the face for each, both men dropped to the floor side by side and out cold.
I took a tentative step toward them, watching the trees apprehensively, but they were back to their normal state, firm wooden branches swaying a little in the wind, but otherwise behaving like any other trees I had ever seen— that is to say, not behaving at all.
Then I saw her. Jessica stood beneath the branches of one of the trees that had just come to life, her arms out to her sides, palms up, the way Harriet looked when she used her power of telekinesis. I couldn’t recall Jessica mentioning a specialized gift of her own, but I now realized what it was.
I remembered when she hugged me that morning, how she smelled powerfully of roses fresh out of the earth. I remembered the green vines laced across her white kitchen cabinets; the rose patterns on the lace draped over the armchairs in the living room; the gates in front of the house shaped like vines, the metal carved into roses and leaves; the peculiar growth of trees directly outside the front door, which had made me wonder how they’d been grown there…
Jessica had some kind of power over nature, could control trees and plants, maybe even make them grow at will. She could certainly weaponize them effectively. I approached her and saw the fury on her face as she looked at the two men on the ground. I was about to say something but she spoke first, and I knew instantly that she was casting a spell:
“Creatures so foul, villainous swine
Cowards in the dark, bereft of a spine
The pain you inflict, to you will return
You’ll suffer in spades, and maybe you’ll learn
Bloodlines cut short, futures erased
Rapists these two, masses of waste…”
The two men twitched like they’d been jolted with electricity.
“What are you doing to them?” I asked.
“Giving them gonorrhea,” she said calmly.
“Really?” I asked, looking down at the men.
“Mm-hm,” she said, not taking her eyes off them. “Late stage. They won’t be procreating.”
I watched as the two men twitched again at the same time. “Good,” I said.
“A pox on your blood, a wrath which you earn
Urethra now sting, and testicles burn!”
The men twitched together one final time and then were still. “Well, that’s that on that,” said Jessica cheerfully.
“How do you come up with these rhymes so quickly?” I asked.
“It’s a gift,” she said, “one all witches have. You’ll see. It develops with time.”
The girls watched us in wonder, Hortensia with a wide-eyed look very similar to the one Connor wore when he climbed out of his own grave and saw Father Gabriel’s corpse.
“That,” said Sylvie, “was awesome.”
Jessica laughed, and Lizzie and I grinned. Hortensia managed a conspiratorial smile despite her bemusement and her recent attack.
“I’m Arthur, by the way,” I said.
“Hortensia,” she said.
We both went in for a hug. After sixteen years without any introductions by hugging, save for maybe a few with family members when I was a small child, I had now had two in one day. We broke apart and I saw that the wind was back, and this time it didn’t stop. Leaves swirled around us and the tree branches danced and swayed.
“What’s going on?” asked Hortensia loudly over the wind.
Jessica, Sylvie, Lizzie, and I all knew, but before any of us could begin to explain it, all of our attention was brought to a sudden flicker of bright yellow light that had popped up in our midst. The five of us watched it flutter in front of us, and I realized what it was: a firefly.
Fireflies were rare in Oregon and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one. We watched it hover there for a few seconds, and then a second one appeared, equally vibrant with the same yellow glow. Two seconds later, a third one appeared, then a fourth immediately after it. They danced in the air in front of us, soaring around and over each other.
I looked around at the girls, the yellow glow reflected in their eyes, then the four fireflies flew above our heads in a neat line and into the trees. I bid them a silent goodbye, assuming they were leaving, and then a most unusual sight unfolded above us.
The four fireflies returned— followed by about a hundred others. The trees were suddenly ablaze with dozens of tiny sparkling yellow lights, which descended on us and gathered right where the first four had been. They swarmed together in a giant ball, a flickering sun made up of many tiny parts, bathing us all in their light. They were like a giant glowing crystal ball, or like the ball of light that had come to me in the Halfway Place to bring me back to Earth.
The ball shrunk but grew brighter, pulsating with light as the fireflies gathered closer together, and I squinted against the brightness. Then they exploded.
We all jumped in surprise as the fireflies went suddenly wild, flying all around us like a fiery yellow cyclone. I found Jessica in the windy, glittering chaos and saw that she looked ecstatic. She stepped back from the dazzling swarm of lights that now encircled me, Sylvie, Lizzie, and Hortensia.
I felt glued to the spot, like the fireflies were keeping us locked inside their circle. Then, just as the shimmering creatures had burst in all directions, there was an explosion of energy in my chest. Everything inside me— my heart, my blood, my mind— was electrified, supercharged, and I was suddenly delirious with joy. It was the kind of unadulterated euphoria I had felt as a child when I first rode a bike by myself. Then I saw myself in Rue’s Ice Cream Parlor, saw Connor’s smile over his strawberry ice cream, felt his lips and his embrace even as the world around us crumbled…
Heat rushed out from my chest, through my veins, and down to my fingertips. I looked down at my hands and gasped. They were on fire. Bright yellow orange flames with glimmers of red burned fiercely from my wrists to my fingertips. I could feel the heat coming off them but there was not even a hint of pain. It felt like I had just slipped on some very warm, comfortable gloves. I looked around at the others and my stomach fluttered in amazement.
Sylvie had left the ground. She looked simultaneously startled and exhilarated as she hovered a few feet above the rest of us, continuing to rise ever so slightly like a ballon caught in a gentle draft. She put out her hands as though trying to swim through the air but remained where she was. I couldn’t hear what she was saying over the loud rush of the wind but I thought I could read her lips, and many of her words had the letter F in them.
I looked around for Lizzie and thought for a second that she had left the circle, but then she appeared out of thin air. As I watched, her left arm vanished— then reappeared; then her right arm and right leg vanished, and reappear
ed; then her face and head vanished. Goosebumps ran up my neck as I looked at a headless Lizzie, then the rest of her body disappeared, before she fully materialized once again. She looked more frightened than anything but there was awe there too, like a child slowly adjusting to an amusement park ride they’d at first found scary but were now enjoying.
I found Hortensia in the swarm of fireflies and briefly couldn’t work out what her power was as she looked just like she had back in the restaurant. I hadn’t been paying attention when Jessica explained it. I looked closer and saw that the fireflies weren’t just flying around her, they were flying through her, and so were leaves and bits of twig. She looked as solid as we all did but had become incorporeal, like a ghost. She was meant to defy death by stoning; it made sense that her gift would allow things to pass through her, leaving her entirely unharmed.
The flames on my hands grew and burned brighter, like they’d been sprayed with lighter fluid, before settling back down, shrinking, then finally going out. Sylvie shot up a few feet in the air, her hair grazing some tree branches, before she slowly came back down to the ground. Lizzie remained completely visible and the fireflies no longer passed through Hortensia.
The glowing creatures made one last revolution around us before rising as one back into the trees. I instinctively went after them, wanting to watch their departure into the night sky, and was followed by Sylvie, Lizzie, Hortensia, and Jessica. We came to a break in the trees and reached the crest of the hill which, as I had guessed earlier, overlooked the darkened ocean in the distance. The fireflies twirled in shimmering spirals as they rose high into the air and vanished into the night.
We stood there in stunned silence, and then a light streaked across the sky. Then there was another, and another… and then there were many. Great twinkling silver tear drops were falling from the starry night sky. Shooting stars. No. They were meteors. We were watching a meteor shower. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d witnessed one, but I knew that they didn’t last very long, a few seconds at most. A few seconds passed, but this shower kept going. It was beautiful, wondrous, sparkling like diamonds, like precious jewels glittering over black velvet.
I glanced at Jessica and saw a single tear roll down her cheek.
“With joy, the stars themselves will weep…” she said.
I remembered her mentioning those words that morning in her kitchen. They were from Ursula’s prophecy and I’d had no idea about their meaning, but it was now unfolding in the sky before my eyes. That part of the prophecy was now fulfilled. The Sacred Four had finally come together.
When the lights finally faded away, the five of us continued to stare at the sky, entranced, and then Hortensia broke the silence. “Okay,” she said, “what just happened?”
“You’re a witch,” said Sylvie without preamble. “You have magical powers, like we do. That’s what happened to us just now. Those were our gifts.” Hortensia opened her mouth to respond but Sylvie cut across her. “I know, I know, it sounds like a joke. Lizzie and I just found out about it earlier tonight, but it’s true.”
“It doesn’t sound like a joke, actually,” said Hortensia.
All of us, including Jessica, stared at her.
“I’ve always dreamed of being a witch,” she said. “I read a ton of books about it after my mom told me that some of our ancestors were accused of witchcraft.”
“Ah, well that makes this a lot easier!” said Jessica. She reached into her purse and brought out the final silver necklace with the black Cloaking Crystal hanging from it. “This is for you,” she said. “It prevents your magic from being detected. Go ahead and put it on. I don’t know if you came across the Brotherhood of Armin in your books—”
“They’re still around?!” asked Hortensia. “I thought they faded out after the Burning Times!”
I was amazed at how much she already knew, and how unshaken she was by it all.
“They’re still very much around,” said Jessica, “and they’ve managed to hunt down more witches in the past few months than they have in a long time. Now, they’re after the four of you.”
“Four—” Hortensia’s eyes went wide. “You don’t mean— not the Sacred Four?”
Sylvie, Lizzie, and I gaped at her in astonishment.
“The four super witches immune to execution?” she asked. “That’s mentioned in a book I have called Marvelous Magical Myths for Moppets!”
“Oh, that alliteration!” said Jessica. “Ursula would be proud. She was the witch who prophesied you all four centuries ago. Most witches do indeed believe you to be nothing more than a myth fit for a moppet. I was one of them until just last night. We’ll tell you all about it, but right now, we have to go. Unfortunately, you weren’t wearing your Cloaking Crystal during that fabulous light show, which means your magic may have been detected—”
Just as she said it, there was a rustling in the trees behind us. The five of us whipped around. I clenched my fists, bracing myself for masked men with guns to come out of the trees. I didn’t know exactly how it worked yet, but I now had the power to conjure fire from my bare hands, and I was ready to torch any member of the Brotherhood who crossed my path.
There was another rustling, a scuttling, like an animal, and then we saw it.
A large black bird emerged from the shadows of the trees, looking directly at us. It had gleaming blood-red eyes with a matching pointed beak, and was all black except for some flecks of white in its plumage. I saw its long curving neck and realized what it was: a swan. I had seen swans in Oregon before, but never a black one. There was also something sinister about this one, something unnatural…
It was still for a few seconds, its beady red eyes trained on us like it was about to attack, then suddenly its wings fanned out, much larger than I would have expected, and it pelted toward us. All five of us reflexively ducked out of the way but it seemed the bird hadn’t meant to attack us, instead soaring over our heads and out toward the ocean—
Before it could clear the trees however, a tree branch came alive and whipped out at it, and the bird squawked in pain, a few feathers breaking free from its wings. The branch lashed out menacingly but the bird managed to escape, flying forcefully off into the night.
I looked around and saw Jessica with her hands outstretched toward the trees, a look of apprehension on her face as she watched the bird fly away.
“Was that a swan?” asked Sylvie incredulously.
“That was no ordinary swan,” said Jessica, her voice full of foreboding. “That was her. The traitor. The witch who’s been helping the Brotherhood. She’s a shapeshifter.”
A chill ran through me as I remembered the lanterns in Portland popping off one by one. That had been her work, the mysterious witch who, for some insane reason, was helping the Brotherhood find and kill other witches. She had helped them find us. She had helped get Connor killed…
“Shapeshifter?” asked Lizzie.
“What do you mean, helping the Brotherhood?” asked Sylvie.
“We’ll explain,” said Jessica, “but we have to go. The Brotherhood won’t be far behind.”
“Where are we going?” asked Hortensia.
“My house,” said Jessica. “It’s safest. I just need…” She knelt down and squinted around at the ground, searching for something. She finally straightened up, took a breath and said:
“A lash from a tree, tonight she weathers
The witch who betrays, bring me her feathers.”
The few black feathers that had fallen from the swan’s wings zoomed up from among the leaves and twigs on the ground into Jessica’s hands.
“Jasper can do something with these…” she said. “Alright, let’s go.”
She started down the hill and the four of us followed after her, passing the two men who had attacked Hortensia, still unconscious on the ground.
“What about my parents?” asked Hortensia. “They’re both in the restaurant.”
“The Brotherhood isn’t interested in any of
your parents,” said Jessica. “One thing that sets the Sacred Four apart is that you’re the first witches in your family lines in a long, long time. None of your moms are witches. Also, the Brotherhood doesn’t know who any of you girls are. They know who Arthur is, and who our friend Harriet is— they tracked them here from Wineville— but they don’t know who you are just yet, which means your parents are safe. You can call them from my house.”
We reached the bottom of the hill, and the small concrete lot behind the restaurant looked just as unremarkable as it had a short time ago, with its flickering yellow lamppost and metal garbage can with the lid still open. We walked around the building to where the parking lot was.
“Those were some sweet moves back there, by the way,” I told Sylvie.
“Thank you,” she smiled. “My mom started me on Taekwondo when I was four. She said she didn’t want me to be a victim.”
“No fear of that,” said Jessica.
**
“Do you see anyone following us?” asked Jessica, as we pulled onto the road.
I craned around in my seat and looked out the windows. There were taxi cabs and people on the sidewalks enjoying their late night in Seaside, but no dark van prowling after us.
“Doesn’t look like it,” I said.
They’d have to have a back-up van, I thought with satisfaction, as I remembered what Connor and I had done to the last one. I thought of the Patriarch and his angry burned face, his bulging insane eyes, right before he shot his bazooka. He must have been furious when he heard that I survived.
“So what happened to you?” Sylvie asked Hortensia in the back seat.
