The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  I study the small magical textbook we’re given during Practical Applications and memorize as many spells as I can. The magic starts small. I make my bed with a wave of my hand instead of touching the blankets, or I flip a page with my mind.

  I tell myself I won’t sneak out again, but I am a rotten liar, even to myself. If I am going to trek beyond the walls of the school, I want to be prepared.

  Progress is slow. It takes three days to magick a leather-bound book across the room. It takes another two to be able to unlatch and open the window, then close and re-latch it with my mind. How quickly magic goes from awe-inspiring to tedious.

  I’m staring at a handful of hairpins, trying to levitate more than one, when Lena comes in early after dinner one night.

  “What are you doing?” she asks me.

  “Practicing.”

  She pauses in the doorway for a moment, her eyes narrowed, then crosses the room and plops down on my bed next to me. “Get on with it, then.”

  An orange cat I’ve never seen before slinks in the open door behind her and hops between us, nestling in the middle like we’re all old friends.

  The cat lays her tiny head on my duvet and watches me fail. I don’t have any success manipulating more than one pin at a time. Lena peers at me in silence as I try so hard, I give myself a headache.

  Lena snorts. We’ve been eating meals next to each other but haven’t spoken much since the night in the woods. It’s as if we’re both so scared of what the book means for our future that we’re putting off dealing with it entirely. I’ve been so glum, I can’t imagine it’s been easy to talk to me.

  Between the book, the notes on my bed, and my mother, I am in desperate need of a friend, but I am terrified of being a burden.

  I throw her a glance. “Any tips?”

  “I’m sorry, manipulation isn’t my strong suit.”

  “I see you in class—you do just fine.”

  “I’m capable of it, but it doesn’t come as easily to me as it does to you.”

  “Will you tell me what it’s like to see the future, then?”

  She scrunches up her nose. “It’s like… remembering something that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Can you tell my future?” The question escapes my lips before I grasp what I’m asking.

  She rolls her eyes. “I’m not a carnival act.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I just meant—”

  “I know what you meant. Besides, I can’t control it like that. I see things I’d rather not more often than I see anything of use.”

  “Like what?”

  She sinks back into my pillows and takes a few breaths. “Something bad is coming,” she says rather calmly, looking up at the ceiling.

  A zip of adrenaline goes through me. “Soon?”

  “Soon enough. A few years, I think.”

  I hesitate to ask the next question, but I do it anyway. “How bad is ‘bad’?”

  She shakes her head. “I’ve been seeing the same visions for a while. The land turning to razor wire and ash, the air into toxic fog—sometimes I see my old classmates choking on it. It’s a war, I think. But it’s not like one I’ve ever read about.”

  The room feels colder; my muscles are tense suddenly. I tug my cape around my shoulders, though it doesn’t help much with the chill. “How do you know the visions are real?”

  She sighs deeply. “The other clairvoyants are seeing the same ones.”

  “That’s not good,” I respond.

  “No, not good at all,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “Is there a way to stop it?”

  “I don’t know, but the others say that visions of danger and doom have plagued clairvoyants since the beginning of time. Part of being who we are. But I intend to find my way home before the world goes to hell.”

  “Home?”

  “The Genesee Valley. A few hours from here. It’s where my tribe is, my people, my parents.”

  An awful part of me is jealous that she has someone to miss, someone to miss her. A home to dream about returning to.

  I hate my envy. “I’m afraid to let myself love things anymore. I fear it’s making me a subpar friend.”

  Lena is silent for a moment; I’m learning she’s someone who considers her words carefully. “Perhaps we’re well matched. I’ll leave this place as soon as I’m able. I’ve not been good at cultivating relationships in the meantime. My heart is somewhere else.”

  “Will you tell me three things you love?” I ask. William and I used to play this game; it’s a relief to find someone else to talk to this way again.

  She thinks for a moment. “Maple candies, romance novels, and my mother’s cooking. You?”

  “Long baths, ice cream, and the rare occasion I win at cards.”

  She smiles. “Play you after dinner tomorrow? You’ve got to get out of this room.”

  I smile too. And it feels real, finally. “Absolutely.”

  She pops up from my bed and walks over to her own. “One last tip,” she offers. “Don’t let them catch you practicing. They don’t mind you using the magic, but they don’t like it when you get good at it.”

  “Why train us at all, then?”

  “Women are supposed to be competent at everything, but experts at nothing. Haven’t you heard?” Her voice is thick with sarcasm, but the tiniest smile breaks through the gloom.

  “Good night, Frances.”

  “Good night, Lena.”

  * * *

  I beg Maxine to let us examine The Elemental, the spell book she found buried in the park, but she tells me it’s too risky. I’m beginning not to care about the risks.

  I grow more and more restless. It feels at times that my soul is trying to wiggle out of my body using any cracks it can find, like a mouse in a tenement looking for warmth.

  One Thursday morning I awake to another note. The folded square of parchment is resting on the pillow next to my head, bathed in the dawn light. I bolt upright and pick it up by a corner. It unfolds for me, revealing the same bold scrawl as before.

  Tonight. I’ll be waiting for you in the woods that border the east field. You will not know me, but I will know you. We are on the same side.

  I’m so desperate for something to happen, this time, I feel more relief than fear at its arrival.

  At breakfast I sit next to Maxine, who sections a grapefruit with great concentration.

  Between bites of my sticky bun, I sigh heavily. Maxine pauses her work on the grapefruit to look up at me.

  “You’re rather out of sorts this morning.”

  I look at the frosting on my hands and not at her. “I didn’t sleep very well.”

  “Did the ghosts keep you up?”

  My eyes snap to hers. “Are there ghosts here as well?”

  She snorts. “Not that I know of, but who’s to say, really?”

  “That wasn’t funny.”

  “Not to you.”

  “Is it possible to leave after dark again?” I ask her.

  Maxine purses her lips. “No.”

  But she’s chewing on her cheek and has a wicked glint in her eyes, so I have a feeling her answer is a half-truth.

  “I could go alone. I managed it last time.” Under the table I pick at my nails.

  She rolls her eyes. “You only partly managed. What is it that you’re looking for, Frances Hallowell?”

  “Please, Maxine. Please let us study it.” I don’t dare mention the spell book here with all the other girls listening. I also don’t mention the new notes that have arrived. I haven’t spoken of them to Lena and Maxine since the first one, and they haven’t asked. I know what their response would be. They would try to convince me it’s a prank, or worse, they would try to stop me from trying to meet the note leaver entirely.

  “Perhaps,” she says, and takes a slow sip of water.

  “Please.” It comes out more desperate than I mean it to. “It has to be tonight.”

  “Tonight?” She sounds surprised. “I don’t know if I
can make arrangements that quickly.”

  “Then give me the key.” Maxine rolls her eyes at me—it was a long shot. “Please, Maxine, I just—” I struggle to find an excuse that will make sense to her. “I just need to be out of this school for a while. I’ll do it alone if I have to.”

  She pushes back from the table and stares at me; she knows I’m telling her the truth. I will find a way. Reluctantly she sighs, her eyes roam the room before she leans to whisper in my ear.

  “At eight p.m. meet me at the base of the staircase. Tell your roommates. All of them.”

  * * *

  “You’re going to wear holes in the carpet if you keep pacing like that,” Ruby snaps. It’s 10:55 p.m. and I’ve been circling the room for the better part of an hour.

  It wasn’t difficult to persuade Aurelia and Ruby to join me tonight—a meeting cloaked under the secrecy of darkness is enough to lure anyone as bored as we are. But Lena is nowhere to be found, and it makes me nervous. I want to wait for her, but the fear of Maxine leaving without me stops me.

  It’s October, and I throw an overcoat borrowed from Aurelia over my uniform, leaving my dark hair loose around my shoulders.

  Maxine is standing with all of the high-headed grace of a queen at the base of the stairs. Not in uniform, she’s wearing a man’s white shirt tucked into riding trousers, a loose waistcoat and brown leather shoes. Her blond hair bobs around in a loose bun on top of her head. Maxine is beautiful in the way boys are allowed to be, in a way that feels like defiance instead of a performance.

  Surrounding her are eight more girls, among them Mabel, Sara, and Cora. Some are still in their uniforms, or states of partial uniform like me, while some are in clothes from home.

  Right when I think she’s not coming, Lena strides over from the sunroom, shooting me a look that lets me know I’m toast if this all goes sideways.

  “I believe some of you are acquainted,” Maxine announces as I join the group. She gestures around the circle. “Frances, Lena, Sara, Cora, Mabel, Maria, Aurelia, Ruby, Rebecca, Emily, May, and Alicia.”

  I don’t know Alicia, Emily, or Maria, though I’ve seen Maria hanging around Maxine before.

  While the rest of the girls make small talk, I sidle up to Maxine. “Are you going to explain to me why I had to invite Aurelia and Ruby along?”

  “We need thirteen,” she replies with a shrug.

  “Why thirteen?”

  “From what little English is in this book, I gather it takes thirteen to make a coven.”

  Coven. The word alone is a thrill. But thirteen will make keeping this a secret difficult.

  “Where are we going?” Lena asks.

  “To the Blockula,” Maxine says with a wicked smile.

  “Is that allowed?” Aurelia asks as we creep closer to the door. A rumble of agreement ripples through the group.

  “For tonight, yes. Fear not little chickens, and follow your mother hen,” Maxine trills. “I believe it’s time we had a little fun.” Slung over her shoulder is a leather satchel, and I pray it contains the book I can’t stop thinking about.

  She leads us through the entryway and out the front doors into the cool evening, skipping and prancing, waving her arms a bit in the air. There are no staff members to stop us. No Helen on patrol. The entryway and porch are empty save for the thirteen of us. A familiar thought nags the back of my mind. It shouldn’t be this easy. But it feels good to brush away the voice in your head when it says things you don’t want to hear.

  Maxine skips down the lane leading up to the school, and we follow her like she’s the Pied Piper and we are the children of Hamelin.

  She pulls the skeleton key out, unlocks the gate, and the thirteen of us spill into the park, a plague of girls.

  “The Blockula, the Blockula!” she sings, and I notice now some of the girls who have been here a long time like Maxine have joined her. “We’re going to the Blockula!”

  We follow a narrow dirt path through tall oak trees. In the daylight we might’ve passed a few families, babies in prams, old women walking arm in arm, but in the dark there is no one to give us disapproving glances.

  The path opens out onto a large lawn, completely devoid of people. With its browning grass and dying purple asters returning to the wet fall earth, it looks like a cursed kingdom from a fairy tale.

  The sky is dark and clear, bathing the meadow in silvery light from the wash of stars overhead.

  Maria throws her hands up in the air, delighted, and yells, “The Blockula!”

  Lena speaks up first. “This is absurd. What is the Blockula?”

  “Oh, my dear Lena, I am so glad you asked,” Maxine replies, hands on her hips, the commitment to theatrics unwavering. “The Blockula is where the devil holds court with his mistresses, and tonight we are his mistresses!” She does a twirl and releases her hair from its pins, sending it in a cascade down her shoulders.

  Lena and I both share a laugh at the show Maxine’s putting on, but Aurelia’s whisper is genuinely frightened. “The devil?”

  “Come, come, my dears!” Maxine skips farther out into the field, swinging her leather satchel as she goes.

  The group is skittish, all darting eyes and worried faces trailing behind Maxine and Maria. I’m not sure what I pictured sneaking out to look like, but it certainly wasn’t this.

  Directly in the center of the meadow, Maxine drops her satchel and demands that we all gather round.

  “Dear sisters, old and new, tonight we honor our powers, our sisters, and our foremothers, the witches who came before us.” She reaches down into her bag and pulls out bottle after bottle of communion wine, whiskey, and something clear in a glass kitchen jar. “Let us toast!”

  She pulls the cork on a dark green bottle of wine and takes a hearty swig.

  “To magic!” she says, raising the bottle to the sky before passing it to Ruby next to her.

  Ruby, too, takes an enthusiastic swig.

  “Isn’t your mother the president of her Woman’s Christian Temperance Movement chapter?” Aurelia asks, scandalized.

  “My mother is a cow.” Ruby tosses her corn-silk hair over her shoulder before taking another swig and passing the bottle to Aurelia beside her.

  Aurelia takes a smaller swallow, poorly disguises a grimace, then passes the wine on to the next girl.

  Some of the girls make toasts.

  “To our mothers!” or “May we never grow old!” or simply “Salut!”

  Soon the bottle makes its way around the circle to me. Its dark red contents, severely diminished, slosh around the bottom.

  Lena looks over at me. I raise the bottle to my lips and take as big a swig as I’m able.

  It tastes a bit like grape juice gone bad. The burn is worse than the taste.

  I can’t stop my eyes from flitting to the edge of the field. The note left on my pillow said only tonight. I’m still not sure how to break away from the other girls. Being here with them is giving me the first taste of joy I’ve had in a very long while, but I haven’t lost sight of my true mission.

  Maxine has more in her bag than just alcohol, and after she’s satisfied that everyone’s veins are buzzing, she dumps her bag on the ground, sending objects spilling. Strewn in a heap on the damp grass are black taper candles, pewter candlesticks, gold coins, and crystals. There’s even a single pomegranate, sitting red and waxy next to a paring knife.

  And there, amongst all of it, looking ancient and heavy, is the spell book. “Who is ready to do some real magic?” she asks us with a wolfish grin.

  A zip of excitement runs through me, or maybe that’s just the communion wine.

  “Where did this come from?” Sara asks, eyeing the objects with suspicion. She’s not the only one.

  “My job does come with certain perks, my dear Sara. When I was out fetching a new pupil a few months ago, I found this bounty on her mother’s bookshelf, and I believed we needed the contents more than she did. Sometimes robbery is a decision made for the greater good.”<
br />
  I’m relieved that she lied about the spell book’s origins. I don’t know if she’s lying about where she got the rest of it.

  With the confidence and clear instructions of a drill sergeant, she directs the thirteen of us where to sit, cross-legged, on the dying grass.

  In the center of the circle of girls, she lights the candles and places them in a perfect pentagram.

  At each of the five points of the pentagram, she places an object: a clear crystal, a kitchen knife, matches, a chipped seashell, and a bottle of what’s left of the wine.

  Match smoke is carried away on a fall breeze. Next to me, Aurelia tugs her coat tighter.

  “I’ve read through a good deal of the book this week, and I believe I have found a spell for us to practice with.” Maxine stands at the head of the circle. Eyes aloft, licked with flames from the candles, with a proud set to her jaw, she looks, for a moment, like Joan of Arc being burned at the stake.

  She opens to a page with diagrams of hands, a tangle of words, and a small sun.

  Maxine sits, sets the book in the grass, places her hands in a prayer position near her heart, and recites the words from the page. “Déanann máthair dúinn ár…” She makes the bulky words sound elegant, and soon a dim globe of light, no bigger than a few inches across, springs to life in front of her chest. It winks out nearly as quickly as it appeared.

  My classmates scramble over one another, crawling across the circle to get closer to the book.

  Mabel snatches the book off Maxine’s lap. She says the spell once, and nothing happens. Black candles drip wax onto the damp ground. They flicker dimly, waiting like the rest of us. The second time she tries there is only more silence. The rest of us wait with bated breath. When a light finally flickers between her hands, after the third try, the entire circle gasps.

  Maxine shrieks. It’s a shockingly un-Maxine-like sound. The other girls join in the celebration.

  The spell is exciting, sure, but I don’t understand the near- frenzied joy of my classmates’ responses.

  “Why is everyone reacting so… enthusiastically?” I lean over and ask Lena.

  She pauses for a moment, then whispers in my ear, “I think this is the first time we’ve created something from nothing.”