The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  “We work together.”

  William had left his position as Judge Callahan’s errand boy a year or so before, and I was seeing less and less of him as the months went on. All I knew was that he was working at a gentleman’s association as an assistant. The club was filled with important men. Do well enough there and they might mentor him in business, he told me whenever I complained.

  “You work at the club too?”

  “Aye.”

  “What do you do there?”

  “Doesn’t much matter.” He opened his mouth as if there was something more he wanted to say. I gave him silence, but he didn’t take the opportunity.

  William’s face was properly buried in his pillow now. “I feel awful. Why’d you make me drink so much,” he mumbled.

  “Oh it hardly seems fair to blame me,” Finn trilled.

  “All that whiskey you gave me. I won’t be able to work tomorrow.”

  “I’ll cover your shift, don’t you worry, but you know the real loss is yours. Tomorrow is Sunday, so Boss will be wearing his—”

  “Purple suit.” William completed Finn’s sentence with as much of a laugh as he was able, given his state.

  “I’ll paint you a stirring verbal portrait upon your return, my friend.” Finn patted William’s back and stood up from where he was perched at the end of the bed.

  “No! Don’t go!” William shouted. “We have to write more songs, or we’ll never get the musical off the ground.”

  “The musical?” I prompted.

  “Seemed like a good idea to write a musical together three whiskeys ago.”

  “My name will be in lights, Frances!” William exclaimed.

  I sighed heavily. “Time to sleep, William.”

  “You never let me have any fun.”

  “Seems that you have plenty of fun for the both of us,” I snapped.

  “Not fair, I work so hard…” My brother trailed off, closing his eyes.

  “You work hard?” I mocked him. “I’d show you that my hands are bleeding from all the work at the shop today, but I’m wearing these gloves because this apartment is so cold, I’ll lose all feeling in my hands if I don’t. But it’s fine, I understand. We’ve both had a long night, you with your friends. Me reading our mother Charles goddamn Dickens until she relaxed enough to fall asleep without you here.” Sadness welled thick in my throat. I wanted to punish my brother, but instead I’d only made myself look like a fool in front of his friend. The tears were stupid, as tears almost always are.

  “Mmm sorry, Frances.” William rolled onto his back and raised his arms from the bed like he meant to hug me, but they collapsed heavily back to the mattress.

  “Sorry doesn’t do me much good now. Just sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” Our mother used to say there was something about the middle of the night that always made things seem worse than they were.

  “Good night, my friend,” Finn said with a pat on William’s head.

  I walked Finn to the door, because it seemed like the polite thing to do.

  “Nice to meet you, Frances… finally,” he said in the doorway.

  “Finally?”

  “Your brother thinks the world of you.”

  I didn’t return his smile. “Don’t let him drink that much whiskey again.”

  Finn reached for the dead bolt at the same time I did, and our hands brushed, just barely.

  “They’re nice gloves, for what it’s worth,” he said, head ducked low, not quite meeting my eye.

  “Well, you never know when guests might come by, and to be caught without my gloves would be quite the society scandal,” I joked, but it didn’t hide the edge in my voice.

  “Well, I’ll be happy to report to the society pages your good manners remain intact,” he said, which was kind, because he felt how cold the apartment was, heard my humiliating outburst at William. He could have chosen to embarrass me, but he didn’t. I don’t remember if I said good night, but he did, halfway out the door with a final glance back at me like he was searching for something in my face.

  I scrub a hand across my eyes and try to clear William from my brain. Some memories sting more than others.

  I don’t know how long I napped for. It’s still light outside, but the hallway is silent, and the courtyard is empty. Wherever the classrooms are, they’re far from this wing.

  I amble through the room for a few minutes, poking through the drawers and closets of my roommates. I don’t find anything interesting. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe a diary with entries like Help! Their capes are beautiful, but they won’t let me outside. Instead I discover uniforms identical to the one laid out on my bed, a few books, scattered papers and inkwells, a bottle of lilac perfume, and pair of pearl earrings thrown carelessly on a chair.

  All this rifling through drawers is beginning to make me feel like a criminal. I need to take a walk. To taste the pines this mansion seems to be living inside. All my life, I’ve lived in the city—among sirens, the buzzing of factories, and smoke billowing into the air. The silence of Haxahaven is so unsettling, I can’t stand it. Maybe this would all feel less surreal if I could touch something alive.

  I rush down the steps, the eyes from the oil paintings and photographs following me as I go to the door.

  My fingers are outstretched, reaching for the brass handle, when Maxine’s voice cuts through the hall like a knife. I hadn’t even seen her in the foyer.

  “What are you doing?” She’s sitting on a silk settee against the wall, a book in her hand and a horrified look on her face.

  “Taking a walk in the park?”

  “No. No, you’re not,” she snaps. I don’t know what it is I’ve done, but Maxine’s tone makes it clear it is no small mistake.

  “I just—” My eyes well up with tears like they always do when I’m embarrassed. God, I wish the past twenty-four hours contained less crying. I won’t let more tears fall.

  “You are never, ever to leave this building by yourself. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I say, though I don’t understand at all.

  “Good. Come with me, then.” She gives me a strained smile. “Your timing is impeccable. It’s time to meet the great Vykotsky.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Set against the starkness of the great foyer is a large black door that yawns like the mouth of something with teeth. It’s early evening now, and the marble floors glow pink with the sunset outside. Maxine picks up the handle of the golden eagle–shaped door knocker and lets it fall from her long fingers. The hollow thud of the door reverberates through my bones.

  “Come in,” an icy voice calls from inside.

  “Good luck!” Maxine replies cheerfully—a little too cheerfully, from what I’ve come to expect from Maxine.

  I take a breath, turn the brass handle, and step inside.

  The room is low lit, swathed in black velvets and dark wood. The back wall is made up entirely of shelves containing tiny dust-covered jars and vials. The vaulted ceiling is adorned with dried bouquets of baby’s breath and sprigs of herbs hanging upside down on long strings of twine, hovering just above my head. A white woman, perhaps sixty, sits at an ebony desk covered in delicate whirring brass instruments, stacks of yellowing papers, and a small pile of dried-up inkwells.

  Like her office, she is dressed entirely in black velvet, from her floor-length dress to her cape, identical to those the other women wear, save for the fabric and the monstrous moonstone brooch secured at her throat. Her snow-white hair is piled atop her head in a pompadour. She sits as straight as a board in her chair, her eyes narrowed, looking down her pointy nose at me. All the while, she drums her fingers along the desk, so pale they are nearly translucent, purple veins popping out at each knuckle. She looks like the kind of woman Mrs. Carrey might get along splendidly with.

  “You must be Miss Hallowell.” She speaks after a moment of examination. Her voice has the dignity and pointed pronunciation of the upper class. The kind of voice that, through force
of sheer habit, nearly has me reaching to my pocket for an order form, asking what kind of dress she’s looking for.

  I take a single, careful step inside; my boots sink into the plush carpet. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please, won’t you take a seat?” she offers, gesturing to the straight-backed velvet armchair across from her.

  The overstuffed cushion is so tall, my feet barely graze the carpet. I can’t help but swing them back and forth like a child.

  The woman spends a moment looking me up and down with a gaze that makes me feel like my insides are being spooled out for her inspection.

  When she is satisfied, she speaks. “It is important to me that you know, first and foremost, that Haxahaven is a place of healing.”

  “So is this a sanitarium or a school?”

  She purses her thin lips. “Both, in a way, I suppose.”

  There are ten thousand questions I want to ask this woman. Why was I brought here? How did you find me? But the questions stick in my throat like a hunk of stale bread, so I stay silent under her intense stare.

  She must sense my discomfort. “You are safe here, and very welcome.” But something about the way her mouth curls around her teeth makes a chill spider-walk down my spine.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “I suppose you have many questions for me, but please allow me to first give you the speech I give all our new girls. I realize that what I’m about to tell you may sound rather suspect, but I need you to trust me. Can you trust me, Frances?”

  I nod, even though I trust this woman about as far as I can throw her.

  She smiles, like she’s pleased. “Some may call what we can do magic, but it is simply a function of your divine self. Of your soul. The same soul that inhabits every other human on this planet. We just have the ability to use… more of it. To manifest it in ways uncommon in the general population.”

  I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Maybe she’s a liar, or this is an elaborate joke. “Magic?”

  “Yes, Frances, magic. Like the way those scissors soared across the room and into that man’s neck.”

  Nerves ricochet through me. “How do you know about that?”

  “Inference.” Mrs. Vykotsky smiles in the particularly annoying way the old smile at the young, with pitying condescension. She is at once a frustrating and terrifying woman.

  “I’m too old to believe in magic. It would be easier for you to tell me the truth.”

  Again, she smiles. “You think you’re smart.”

  “I don’t think I’m anything, ma’am.”

  “Allow me to prove you wrong.”

  She raises her hand from her desk, and her pen levitates right along with it.

  My stomach lurches. I close my eyes, as if I can blink away witnessing the impossible. It hurts to look at, like my mind refuses to take in what I’m seeing. “How’d you do that?”

  “Magic.”

  The simplicity and impossibility of the pen floating in the air sends a fissure through my brain, cracking everything I thought I knew of the world in half. “Do it again.”

  And she does. One by one she levitates each object on her overcrowded desk. She sends a hard candy wrapped in purple foil drifting across the room, where it settles in my lap.

  “Eat it,” she offers.

  I feel like I did the first time I rode the subway, the lurching nausea and sense of amazement. There’s an undercurrent of fear, too, the sensation of hurtling through darkness. “No thank you. I have a lot of questions.”

  With each of the objects now firmly back on her desk, she keeps her hands folded carefully in front of her. “I’d imagine so.”

  But I feel the thing inside me, the thing that sent the scissors flying at Mr. Hues, and it whispers that she’s telling the truth. It’s there in my gut, something golden and inexplicable, something awake. I try to let it all settle in. This truth. What she’s trying to tell me by not telling me. Magic. I have magic. Which means… My eyes dart to hers. She can see me putting everything together, piece by piece. Mrs. Vykotsky leans forward, waiting for me to say it. “I’m… a witch?” The word is so ridiculous, I almost don’t get it out.

  “If that’s the word you wish to use. The truth is you possess an extraordinary ability. It is who you are.”

  My vision tunnels. I grip the armrests of the uncomfortable chair; I need something solid for purchase.

  “I can do what you do?” I say. “Move things with my mind?” I can do impossible things?

  “Magic is derived from the human soul; it is as varied as humanity itself, but yes, with proper training, you’ll have the ability to move things with your mind.”

  “How?” How is it that the world is entirely different from what I’ve been told?

  “Few people are gifted with the ability to perform what is commonly called magic. This ability is typically awoken by a traumatic event. You can think of your ability as your very soul being expanded. The explanation as to why is between you and your god.”

  The knots in my chest uncoil just enough to breathe again. “How long does it take to learn?”

  “Depends on the person. Girls are usually with us for a number of years. Think of this time as your magical secondary education. It is our sincerest hope that you find your time with us valuable and instructive.”

  Years. I file the information away to panic about later, but I can’t get lost in nerves just yet, I have too many questions. “Can you bring the dead back to life?” I try to feel the weight of what I’m being told, but the only thing I can think of is: William.

  Mrs. Vykotsky swallows. “If only.”

  Disappointment burns through me. I settle back into the chair. What good is having magic if it can’t bring him back?

  “Our job is to keep you safe. If thousands of years of history have taught us one thing, it is that the world is not kind to women who possess power. I will give you exactly one warning, Frances—you will do what we say, and we will keep you safe. You do not want to be a witch in the world alone, nor do you want your power to eat you up from the inside out. Do you understand?”

  This time I’m honest with her. “No, ma’am. I’m afraid I don’t.”

  She leans forward with the grace of a snake. “Are you familiar with the Great New York City Fire of 1845?”

  I shake my head.

  “The story I am about to tell you does not begin with the fire, but rather, it ends with it. In the 1840s a group of idealistic witches left our beloved Haxahaven for the thrill of the city. They took their magic and their youth, and they set up a coven in a copper-roofed building on Broad Street. There they lived together, and there they practiced their magic recklessly, on street corners and at parties for anyone who could pay the right price. It was small magic. The manipulation of objects, identifying the first initial of someone’s secret love.” Mrs. Vykotsky pauses for a moment to gauge my reaction. If I’d been born seventy years earlier, I would have wanted to have been friends with these women, but I don’t get the impression that’s the reaction the headmistress wants from me, so I nod solemnly.

  She purses her lips and continues, voice grave. “But word got around about the witches and their warehouse, and those who would prefer to keep magic to themselves burned the warehouse to the ground. All thirteen of the witches died, as well as thirteen more civilians and four firemen.” My blood runs cold, imagining the horror of it all. “The fire commissioner never could explain why the warehouse was encircled with salt and gunpowder, but those of us up here knew what it meant. Witches are not stupid, Miss Hallowell. We are not reckless. And we heed the warnings we are given.”

  “But who burned down the warehouse? Why not fight instead of hide?”

  “We hide because that is how we protect young witches like you and your classmates. We do not fight because there are many with gunpowder and matches and very few of us.”

  Her answer makes me angry. How completely predictable, how infuriatingly boring that women with mag
ic can be so easily intimidated by ordinary men with guns and matches. “How few of us?”

  “There are one hundred pupils here, and we gather every magical girl from the tristate area. I trust you can do the math yourself.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’m not here to debate you. I’m not here to be your friend. I am here to keep you safe. It is an obligation I take seriously. Your days will be filled with coursework. You’ll take three classes as a student of Haxahaven Academy. Magical History, Practical Applications, and Emotional Control. I trust you’ll find them… illuminating. We do ask that you don’t practice your abilities by yourself without the guidance and safety provided by a skilled instructor.”

  I nod. The gesture feels too small an acknowledgement for the storm raging in my head. I want to shout or smash something.

  “This is a school, a safe haven, and yes, in many ways a magical sanitarium. Our disguise as a tuberculosis hospital is intentional. We will train you, and you will return to your life. In time, controlling your magic will be as easy as breathing.”

  I think of my life spent sewing until my fingers bled. Returning doesn’t sound like a happy ending.

  But I also think of Mr. Hues and the noise he made as he drowned in his own blood. I don’t mourn the man, but I would very much like to avoid killing someone again. Learning how to control this thing doesn’t sound so terrible.

  “You lived alone, correct?” she asks me.

  “Not alone exactly, above the shop I worked in with the other girls. I moved in four months ago.”

  “So no family?”

  I have no interest in talking about the unpleasant, so I say, “No, ma’am.”

  “That’s good then. For most girls, the school sends a stipend home to make up for lost income. We tell the families it’s a grant from the state. But it doesn’t appear it will be necessary in this situation.”

  “No one will miss me.”

  “That’s no matter. We’re your family now.”

  Her words ring in my ears. It is exactly what Mrs. Carrey said to me my first day at the shop, on a day much different than this one. But Mrs. Vykotsky is staring at me across her ebony desk with a smile I did nothing to earn plastered on her face, and it doesn’t feel like the protection of my previous mentor.