Ruby snatches the book next. It takes her even longer than Mabel to get the spell right, but she manages eventually. Her globe of light glows a little red, and still it comes and goes in a blink.
On and on the girls practice, passing the book between them. Some get it right away, like Maxine, some take longer. It’s a comfort to know they are as hungry for this as I am. No one can make the light last.
The book finally lands in my lap. The words feel pointy and too big in my mouth. “Déanann máthair dúinn ár.” I stumble. First, there is nothing. Then, from the back of my throat, the palms of my hands, my diaphragm, everywhere, the power sparks awake and with it a small, blinding sun held between my hands. Hovering above the ground, shining as clear as day. The warmth is fleeting.
Something inside me goes very still. I stare at the light until my eyes water, then I shake out my hands and release the pressure in my chest. The moment lasts only the length of a few heartbeats.
“Congratulations,” Maxine says.
“On what?” I ask.
“Your light came the quickest and burned the brightest. Our little witch queen.”
Her compliment makes my heart swell with pride. This is something I want desperately to be good at.
I’m not yet sure who I am. But I could be this. Powerful. Reckless. It’s intoxicating.
No one says it, but by the looks on their faces, I can see they understand. The magic we’ve been taught at school is small. It is magic that allows us to manipulate existing objects in small ways. To above all things be good girls, good wives and daughters. Some girls, like Lena and Maxine, are connected to the magic in a way that gives them the ability to see and feel things others can’t. But this spell book, for the first time, has given us all the ability to create.
I don’t want to be good. I want to create something, be something.
After everyone has had a turn with the book, Maxine declares we’ve had enough fun and stashes it back in her satchel. Ruby tries to snatch it from her, but Maxine is quicker. The circle of the twelve of us erupts in protest, but Maxine points to the stars, cresting the horizon over the dark of the tree line, and declares, “We only have so much time left. Let’s not waste it all on school.” She pulls another bottle of wine out of her satchel before anyone can disagree with her.
Cora takes a long swig and passes it to Maria. There are sparks in everyone’s eyes.
Girls scatter across the field, dancing and laughing and violently alive.
The bottle makes its way to me. Sticky sweet, acrid and burning, it reminds me of the paint thinner the workers used last summer when Mrs. Carrey insisted we spruce up the shop.
A group of girls to my left begins a game of “Ring around the Rosie,” and they grab my hand, pulling me into the fray.
I forget to fall down at the end of the song, and Maxine shouts from across the field, “The instructions are in the lyrics, stupid!”
“I refuse to be so easily manipulated by a song!” I shout back, as Cora side-tackles me to the ground.
The alcohol loosens our limbs and our tongues, and my head begins to spin so badly, I stay on my back right there on the grass, the damp leaching through my coat.
It would be easy to let myself slip away, nice even, to let the alcohol blur my thoughts to nothing and return to my warm bed.
The ground is cold. Black wax from the candles pools on dead leaves.
Yes, it would be easy to slip away, but William would be so disappointed in me.
Maxine, having crossed the field to sprawl out next to Lena and me, rolls over on her side and props herself up on an elbow, a storm-cloud-dark smile spreading across her face.
“It seemed like time you finally had some proper fun. Our lives don’t only have to be classes and avoiding Vykotsky’s withering stare.”
“You had me fooled,” I reply, staring at Maxine like the curious thing she is. A blurry-around-the-edges kind of person, made up of equal parts affection and sharpness, the unwilling mother and mentor to all who come to Haxahaven under her wings. For the first time, I think about how lonely that must be.
It’s in this moment that I consider telling her I plan on meeting the note leaver tonight. There’s a chance she’d understand, a chance she’d help.
But if she stops me, I might never find out who it is, and I’m not willing to take that risk.
Aurelia joins us next, lying down next to Maxine, sporting a crown of small white flowers. She drops a matching one on Lena’s head.
Then, one by one, girls lie down with us, draping their loose limbs over friends, resting heads on shoulders and stomachs, lying out like a constellation.
They laugh and talk about classes, things they miss about their pre-Haxahaven lives, and all the boys and girls they love back home.
An image of Oliver standing in the morning sun floats into my mind, and I brush it away just as quickly as it came.
Aurelia tells us about a cousin who knew a girl who knew a girl whose family made a fortune in steel. The girl was shipped over to England to marry a duke and live in a castle.
“Wouldn’t that be dreamy?” Aurelia sighs. “To be a duchess?”
“It sounds like a bore, to be honest,” Maxine replies sharply.
Aurelia offers a sad, small “Not to me” under her breath.
“I have no patience for tea parties,” Maxine continues. “I’d like to move to Cairo and train Arabian horses and climb the pyramids.”
“I’d like to be a nurse, I think,” a girl to my left says—Alicia, I think her name is. “Maybe help people who actually have tuberculosis.”
“Hey!” Maxine interjects. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, any one of us very well could have tuberculosis.”
Next to her, Maria dissolves into a fit of giggles.
“Well, I’d just like to marry a boy who really, really loves me,” Aurelia sighs, eyes fixed on the stars. “Duke or not.”
“What about you, Frances?” Maxine asks. “What do you want to do when you’re free of this place?”
“I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest. I always assumed I’d die a seamstress.”
“Bleak,” Ruby quips.
“What do people usually do when they leave?” I ask, recalling that I’ve asked this once before—when I first arrived at Haxahaven. But now I yearn for a more specific answer. One not clouded in ambiguity and cautionary tales.
“It depends on the girl and what she can do,” Maxine replies. “Some of the girls from wealthier families, like Duchess Ruby here, go home and marry a suitable fellow, only using their magic for basic household tasks, hiding their true identities for the rest of their days.”
“You say that like money is some evil thing,” Ruby replies, twirling a small ruby ring around her pinky finger.
“Not evil. Just perhaps not the only thing,” Maxine says, rolling her eyes. “Some of the girls from worse circumstances use their gifts to start businesses. I know of at least three running wildly successful flower shops in the city. The clairvoyants can typically make a living as psychics, performing parlor tricks at parties. Manipulators are good at menial jobs—you can wash clothes and clean apartments in record time. See, Frances, you could very well still die a seamstress.”
“A dream come true,” I deadpan.
“And then there’s us sorry Finders. The only good I can do is here at Haxahaven, collecting girls from the greater tristate area and bringing them into our ranks. You may be destined to die a seamstress, but I am destined to die here,” she finishes sadly, her joking bravado cracking to reveal the deep dissatisfaction within.
I reach over to touch her hand. “You’re going to die on the top of a pyramid if I have to push you off myself.”
I am overcome with sadness, not only for Maxine, trapped by her powers, but for all of us. Similarly trapped by our circumstances and our magic and the terrible misfortune that befell us when we had the bad sense to be born female.
Ruby could be a Gibson g
irl or a picture star like Mary Pickford; her cruel smile and masses of blond hair seem made for the stage. Instead she is a tool to be used by her wealthy family to maintain status. I heard her speaking to Aurelia yesterday about her mother’s latest letter. Her mother is speaking of getting a private physician to look after Ruby’s condition. She’s afraid the boy Ruby is supposed to marry, a boy drowning in railroad money, is going to lose interest if Ruby’s “tuberculosis” doesn’t soon resolve itself.
Then there’s Aurelia, so poisoned by expectations that she be sweet and good all the time that she’s had no space to develop any resolve of her own.
Maxine could do anything she wanted, if anyone gave her half a chance and she cared less for Haxahaven.
And Lena deserves every good thing in the world. She should be home, where she wants to be, instead of trapped within the walls of a school she never asked to attend. Though we are learning magic, we have been taught all our lives to remain small, and even here we seem to be in cages of our own making.
Does it break their hearts too?
“So, Frances—seamstress it is?” Maxine asks, tone joking.
“I want to use magic to help people. To protect the ones I love. I’d like for this to matter.”
“Here, here!” she cheers, raising the bottle of communion wine to the sky. A few others join her toast, draining what little remains in the bottles.
“Well, we’ve had our fun,” Maxine declares. “Time to return to our humble home.” We blow out the candles and carelessly shove the objects from the pentagram back into Maxine’s bag.
An awful part of me considers snatching the spell book, shoving it under my coat. But I resist the temptation.
And just as she led us in, she leads us out of the meadow, though we’re significantly stumblier than before.
The moon is full and bright, looking down on us from the middle of the sky.
Desperation makes me daring.
I haven’t forgotten why I’m here.
It’s reckless, stupidly so, but at least this is danger of my own creation.
With buzzing in my head and iron in my veins, I take a breath and step off the path. Break away from the chorus of girls ahead of me, careful to slip away undetected.
I’m two steps into the trees when I hear the whistling.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The tune floats through the darkness of the forest so softly, I have to pause for a moment to make sure I’m not imagining it.
It’s coming from the left and up ahead, a haunting, jaunty tune that sounds like something my downstairs neighbor Mr. O’Sullivan would have played on his fiddle. The floors in my old building were so thin, I could hear everything. I hated how late he’d practice, especially since his playing got worse when he was a few glasses of whiskey deep, but I almost miss it now.
The sound of the whistling pulls me like a tether deeper into the woods. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or the magic pulsing through my veins, but I feel ready for this, for whatever I’m about to find.
At the sound of my boots crunching through the underbrush, the whistling stops.
“Who’s there?” I whisper-shout.
The only answer I get is the footfalls of heavier boots, very much not my own.
The pounding of my heart feels more like anticipation of the inevitable than fear.
“Hello?” I ask the darkness once more. Still I receive no answer.
“Déanann máthair dúinn ár,” I mutter clumsily. I’m not sure it’s even the right spell. Nothing happens.
The forest is very, very dark. The canopy of leaves blocks out the moonlight here, and it feels an entirely different world from the meadow I shared with my friends.
Someone whistles a single low note. I can’t tell how close they are.
I curse and focus on the fluttering in my chest. “Déanann máthair dúinn ár,” I command the magic once more.
Responding to my words, an orb of blinding white light sparks to life between my thumb and forefinger before winking out. I’m surprised the command worked. I hadn’t really expected it to.
The whistling and crunching of boots stops.
I look up, blinking away the spots in my eyes.
A deep voice cracks the darkness. “Hiya, Frances.”
The gasp that exits my body is as involuntary as the shriek that follows it. I stumble back a few feet, banging my ankle badly on a rock. Pain shoots up through my leg. I curse, and force myself back upright.
In the trees is a boy close to my age, and devastatingly familiar, built like a wall—broad shoulders and muscle tone. Light brown hair falls in curls around his head, and under his eyes are deep, bruiselike purple shadows, visible here even in this low light.
It’s him, it’s him, it’s him, my brain sings.
With heavy footfalls, he steps back a few feet and puts his hands up in front of his chest in a show of surrender. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare ya,’ ” he says in a thick, singsongy Irish accent.
“I’m not scared.”
He lifts the lantern he’s holding to illuminate his face. He has the jawline of a statue and the kind of aquiline nose that’s begging to be broken. He’s just frightened me so terribly, I think seriously about doing it myself.
It’s him.
He grins. “Good. I’m sorry this was the only way for us to speak.”
I’ve never trusted snake-oil salesmen or boys who grin without reason.
He steps forward two paces. I step back two paces. He extends his hand. I step forward to shake it because I don’t want to be impolite. It is surprisingly warm and solid.
“I’m Finn D’Arcy.” He quirks a reassuring half smile as he says it.
“We’ve met before.” It isn’t a question.
He nods. “Aye, I wondered if you’d remember.”
“You were in my apartment.” I’m confused. “And now you’re here. Why?”
“William and I worked together,” he says like it explains anything.
“I remember—you brought him home drunk one night.”
“William didn’t always know his limits.”
“Yes, I know.” I take a deep breath. “Are you the one leaving the notes?”
“Yes.” He shrugs a hand through his curls and looks at the dark forest floor. “I’m sorry it had to be like this, but there was no way they were ever going to let the likes of me walk into that fancy school o’ yours.” His lilting accent teases me. Or maybe that’s just him.
“Then how are you getting the notes to me?”
“Cat burglary. Lock picking. General brilliance.”
Confusion makes way to annoyance. “And you couldn’t have just met me in my room? Why make me trek all the way out here?”
“Couldn’t risk having your classmates run into me instead. I apologize.”
“But why? Why leave the notes at all?”
His posture is casual as he shoves his hands in the pockets of his rough-spun work pants. “One month ago, you waltzed into my head in a bloodstained white blouse, with a pair of scissors in your hand. I remembered you from that night last winter. I knew who you were, and thought you might need help.”
Before I can stop myself, I take another step forward. “You’re having the dreams too?”
“I’m a walker.”
The wind picks up, sending leaves flying through the thicket and tangling my skirt in my legs.
“You say that like I know what it means.”
“A siúlóir. I can enter dreams.”
“Enter dreams?”
With all the magic I’ve learned about in the past month, I should be less surprised to hear that someone has been walking through my head.
“William was my friend. I wish I could have done more to save him.” His face is open, honest. Despite my better judgment, I believe him.
“I plan to get justice for him. I’ve been waiting and waiting for someone to help me.” My voice cracks on the last two words.
Finn
cocks his head. “William would have done anything to protect you. He’s gone, so I figured someone else should probably try.”
“I don’t deserve a life of my own until I find who took his.” It’s a horrible thing to say out loud. It comes out more dramatic than I intend.
Finn must not agree, because he lets out a sad laugh. “You think your brother would have wanted you to become a crusader?”
The sound of his chuckle makes me defiant. “He wouldn’t want his killer to walk free.”
“If you’re so determined, at least let me offer you my protection.”
I lift my chin, hoping the words come out as sternly as I feel them. “I intend to be so powerful, I won’t need protecting.”
Finn smiles at me like he’s proud of me. It reminds me so fiercely of my brother, it nearly makes me stumble backward.
“Maybe I can help with that, too. One step at a time and all that,” he says.
I’m dizzy with new information, or maybe it’s just the wine. “Did my brother have magic too?” It’s a big question to ask. It hurts to imagine my brother living a whole life I knew so little about. I’m angry at him for knowing about magic and not telling me. I used to joke that William couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. Apparently, I was wrong. The feeling makes me both sick and furious.
“No, not a lick. He was an errand boy.”
It’s a shame. My brilliant light of a brother deserved this so much more than me. This power should have been his.
He continues, “I saw your little group. The spells are barely working. I can teach you more than how to create a single spark of light. I can teach you how to use the book, if you’d like.”
The book. The thought is thrilling, but I still don’t know what to make of Finn’s declarations.
“You were watching us?” Watching us in the meadow, watching me at school, watching me in my dreams.
There’s a beseeching look in his eyes, like he’s searching for something in me. “If you’re determined to learn, let me help you do it safely.”
“Was the book your doing too?” If he was breaking in to leave me notes, it wouldn’t be horribly out of character to bury a book in Forest Park.
The Witch Haven Page 12
