The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  The blood in my veins goes as cold as the blood running down my shins.

  Mrs. Vykotsky turns her icy gaze on me. “You really must exercise better control of yourself, Frances.”

  I stare at her in stunned silence. I didn’t anticipate being called upon like this. My classmates turn to look at me too, and I wish I was anywhere but here.

  She continues, a smug look on her face. “There was once a witch who became rather notable for her ability to control the bodies of others. Her name was Gudrun the Sorceress, and her own coven burned her alive in 1066 when she was nineteen. Would you like that? Would you like to be burned alive?”

  I assume her question is hypothetical, but the silence stretches on and on. My classmates’ faces have turned to expressions of confusion and disgust. Finally I give her an answer. “No, ma’am.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Beside me, Sara sucks in a noisy breath to keep her nose from running.

  “Oh, will you stop your sniveling, Miss Kowalski?” Mrs. Vykotsky snaps. She fans her bony hands out across the papers scattered on her desk. “It is late and I am very tired, so let’s take care of this quickly. Miss Rosales, the allowance the school pays your family both in the city and in Puerto Rico will be cut off permanently. Yours on the reservation, too, Miss Jamison.”

  “No, please!” Maria shouts. “They won’t be able to eat; my sister will have to leave school!”

  My heart cracks at the panic in her voice.

  “Well perhaps you should have thought of Josephina before you broke the rules. Maybe she will join us here sooner than you think.”

  Maria’s lip trembles, but she does not argue further.

  Lena stands stock still, but the vials on the back shelf rattle. She scrunches her eyes closed, and they quiet.

  I can do nothing but watch in horror as the truth dawns on me. When I first arrived, I thought the stipends for the families of working-class girls were the most generous thing I’d ever heard of. Now I recognize them for the tool of obedience they truly are. I’ve never before been grateful that I have nothing left to lose, no job, no family, nothing I care any particular amount about, other than William and my mother. It’s perfectly, horrifyingly evil to control the students this way. I don’t know if I’ve ever been more frightened of anything than I am of the unfeeling expression on Mrs. Vykotsky’s face. What kind of person could destroy someone’s life without blinking?

  She glances up at Sara and Cora, who stand trembling like leaves beside me. Mabel holds her head high; she clenches her jaw hard.

  “You too, girls,” Mrs. Vykotsky says. “Your family’s allowance is also being suspended. I have no interest in your tragic stories or your tears. Because this is your first offence, the allowance will be reinstated after three months, pending a flawless record.”

  Sara and Cora nod vigorously, tears still streaming down their rosy cheeks.

  On and on she goes through all eight girls, ruining their families’ lives with a self-satisfied smirk.

  I keep my teeth clenched. The blood on my legs has dried, and it itches. I want nothing more than to scrub this horrible night off me.

  After what feels like a long while, Mrs. Vykotsky leans back in her chair and presses her hands together as if in prayer as she examines Maxine. “Oh, Miss DuPre, you always are an interesting case.”

  Maxine’s glare back is a direct challenge. “My family is based in Paris now, and you’ve never paid them a stipend,” she snarls.

  “Your driving privileges are revoked. As is the leniency I’ve afforded you until now. It’s time to grow up. Another infraction and we’ll take your solo room away as well. You can sleep on May’s floor. Or is it Maria you’ve been spending so much time with? I never can keep up.”

  Both May’s and Maria’s eyes go wide at this. Maxine stares down at the floor. A single sniff escapes her. I’ve never before seen her look small.

  “You need to learn you’re not in charge here. It’s time to be humbled,” Mrs. Vykotsky chirps with a smirk.

  I am next. A part of me is morbidly curious to find out what she thinks is important enough to me to punish me with.

  “Ah, Miss Hallowell, you have been a fascinating pupil, so quiet in your classes, but not untalented. You don’t yet understand that we are trying to help you.”

  She waits for me to respond, but I don’t give her the satisfaction.

  Mrs. Vykotsky glances at Helen, then back to me.

  “Is the magic you’re learning not enough for you? Are you not satisfied with having power most would sell their souls for? Are you truly that selfish, Miss Hallowell?”

  “Not selfish, ma’am. Curious.” Maybe I am selfish, but it isn’t for wanting to learn magic.

  “You want to see what this power of yours can do?” Mrs. Vykotsky sneers. “If you insist on learning a difficult lesson for yourself, I’m sure a teaching moment can be arranged.”

  I don’t know what to make of her threat, but it sends ice sluicing in my veins.

  “You sweet girls,” she continues in a voice that’s anything but sweet. “I remember what it was like to be young. But something you have to learn is that you don’t always know best. Magic, like all urges, is to be controlled.”

  With sharp teeth digging into bottom lips and tear-streaked faces we nod.

  “Very good.” She claps her hands against the mahogany of her desk. “You girls should be off to bed. Miss Hallowell, we will have a chat tomorrow.”

  It makes me feel itchy all over to think of how closely we’ve been watched without our knowledge.

  Maxine once warned me that at Haxahaven someone was always listening. I was naive not to have taken her warning to heart. She was reckless to not have heeded her own advice.

  Mrs. Vykotsky dismisses us, and no one says anything to the others as we climb the stairs to our rooms. It’s quiet for a minute—the only sounds are our feet against the carpet and Sara’s and Cora’s incessant sniffling.

  Things turn sour at the second-floor landing. Cora turns to me, Maxine, and Lena—her sadness becoming anger. “I hope you know that this is all your fault.”

  I open my mouth to respond but close it when I realize I have no response. She’s right.

  “I’m sorry.” Lena’s voice is strained, her eyes big and sad.

  Maxine stomps into her room and slams the door. Maria follows her inside, and the sound of muffled shouting comes soon after.

  Alicia shakes her head at me in disgust before marching off to her own room. May follows her, her narrow shoulders slumped.

  I wish I could tell them I would do anything to take tonight back, but my regret fixes nothing. No amount of guilt in the world can turn back time.

  In our room, Lena holds a candle while I pick the remaining slivers of glass from where they’ve embedded themselves in my legs. The only sound is the clinking of the shards against the porcelain bowl and Ruby’s snoring.

  My emotions are boiling over—rage, mixed with sadness, mixed with embarrassment. There’s a deep sense of frustration, too, at getting so close to having everything I wanted—magical education, friends, justice for my brother—only to have it all ripped away. Stupid. I’ve been so stupid.

  Lena plinks another shard of glass from my calf into the bowl. “Thank you,” I whisper to her.

  She doesn’t look up, just continues her work. “I feel like it’s my fault,” she says.

  I shake my head. “It’s Mrs. Vykotsky’s fault.”

  “I should have seen it coming.”

  I extend a hand and place it on her forearm. “You know as well as I do that’s ridiculous.”

  The crease between her eyebrows disappears, but the sadness in her eyes remains, just another thing I can’t fix.

  I wash the dried blood away and slide into bed feeling raw all over.

  I toss and turn for hours, and by the sound of Lena’s ruffling sheets, she does too.

  When sleep comes, it comes violently, like being thrown into an
icy river with chains bound around my ankles.

  Finn is waiting for me, standing in the woods around a raging bonfire. I’m so relieved to see him alive and in one piece, I burst into tears.

  Confusion, then worry crosses his face. “Are you all right? Wait, of course you’re not. That’s a silly question.”

  I hiccup in a breath, “No—no, I’m fine, it’s just—” I sob again despite my best attempt to swallow it down. “Where were you?”

  He closes the distance between us and wraps me in a tight hug. A vague sense of surprise that he can touch me in this dream space is overtaken by the relief that floods through my body at his embrace.

  “What happened?” he asks into my unbound hair.

  “We went to meet you in the woods tonight. Me and all the others, but you weren’t there,” I sob.

  He rubs my back in slow circles.

  “I came as soon as I could, but by the time I arrived, all I found was broken glass and a burned-out patch of ground. What did they do?”

  He just listens and nods until the story is done and the tears are finished.

  “I’m so sorry, Fran.” He sighs as if my story is weighing on him like a physical thing.

  I laugh through the hiccuping sobs. “I hate when people call me Fran.”

  “Franny?”

  “I hate that one too,” I say into his chest.

  He unwraps his arms, and I immediately miss the warmth of them. “Why were you late tonight?” I ask him. I pray there wasn’t another body found.

  He takes a seat on a log; a breeze that smells of dying roses rushes through the trees. “Someone threw a brick through the window of the drawing room with a severed finger attached.” His tone is grave.

  I blink in surprise and revulsion. “I’m sorry? A severed finger tied to a brick?”

  He nods, looking a little pale. “One of the more disturbing things I’ve witnessed at the Commodore Club.”

  “Do you think it’s related to the boys on Sheepshead Bay?” With Mrs. Vykotsky’s eyes always on me, how will I ever be able to do the resurrection spell now? The thought of coming this far only to fail makes me nauseous.

  Finn’s soft voice breaks into my thoughts before more tears pool in my eyes. “I think it would be foolish to dismiss it.”

  I shudder. “What did the others say?”

  “Boss had Higgins take it to our contact in the police commissioner’s office. They said they’d look into it.”

  “Will they genuinely look into it?” I know better than to believe the police.

  He pulls a hand through his hair, making his curls look even more disheveled than usual. “Who’s to say?”

  The breeze stops, giving way to grim stillness.

  “I should have never told you about the finger through the window. Now you’ll never come to train with us at the Commodore Club.” The sentence has the cadence of a joke, but the edge in his voice tips his hand.

  “You know I can’t leave Haxahaven. But you should also know it takes more than a finger to scare me off.”

  “You still want to stay, even after tonight?” I hate the way he’s looking at me, like I’m a fool.

  “It isn’t that I want to stay. It’s that I have to. I don’t know what Mrs. Vykotsky will do to my mother or my friends if I run off.”

  “Boss is desperate to have someone with your abilities join, and I think having you would be the grandest thing in the world, so what if I encouraged him to sweeten the deal? If you come join us, there’s a good chance we’ll be able to release your mother from the hospital. We have the political connections to make it happen.”

  It’s the most tempting offer I’ve been given so far. I briefly savor the thought of me and my mother both back in Manhattan, her free of her real sanitarium, me free of my fake one. But I long ago learned that when things sound too good to be true, they usually are. Finn’s intentions may be pure, but without a plan, his offer is empty.

  “Perhaps,” I say, noncommittal.

  “All I ask is for the opportunity to try.”

  The way he looks at me makes me want to hide under my hair. I feel particularly raw tonight after the dressing-down by Mrs. Vykotsky and the crying jag in front of Finn.

  I want him to take me into his arms again and tell me I’m special and good and tonight wasn’t my fault.

  I realize I haven’t responded to him. We’re staring at each other; his face is so earnest, I’m tempted to do anything he wants me to.

  I wake up with a jolt, gasping for breath, the ghost of Finn’s arms still around me.

  * * *

  Mrs. Vykotksy lets me stew for a few days, she’s awful enough to release the anticipation of waiting for a punishment is torture in itself. Then, finally, one morning Helen comes to fetch me from the dining room, a false smile on her face. “Now, please, Frances,” is all she says.

  In her herb-choked office, Mrs. Vykotsky sits as stony as ever, but her eyes shine with the fury of a lightning storm.

  I’m struck with a wave of fierce hatred, seeing her sitting there at her desk, smug and self-righteous.

  “Sit,” she commands as soon as I enter.

  I do as I’m told.

  “Good morning, Miss Hallowell. I do believe I’ve come up with a solution to the unfortunate tiff we seem to have found ourselves in,” she chirps. “You want to do magic in the real world? You want to see what happens to girls who think they’re invincible?”

  “I don’t think I’m invincible, ma’am.” My voice is flat. I refuse to give her the satisfaction of getting a rise out of me.

  She huffs out what might be a laugh. “You’re seventeen. Of course you think you’re invincible. I was young once, as difficult as that may be to believe.”

  I don’t reply, and she takes it as an invitation to continue. “Next Saturday Governor Dix will be holding a fundraiser for Senate candidate James O’Gorman. You’ll attend this fundraiser with Helen and have the city commissioner sign paperwork renewing Haxahaven as a licensed, state-sponsored hospital, another measure we use to keep us safe. The commissioner has other loyalties and has been resistant to our attempts to negotiate the renewal of our charter.”

  I was expecting worse than this. I should feel relief, but it only makes me more anxious. “I thought you were going to throw me to the wolves.”

  She purses her lips. “Perhaps I am.

  “It’s a lesson, Frances. This is how it began with your mother. The trips into the woods, the recklessness. I’m trying to teach you limits, give you as much freedom as I’m able, and save you from losing control like she did. This is for your own good; you’ll see that in time. Every witch who ever burned was once a girl just like you, one who thought she could change the world.”

  I hate her for using my mother against me like this, for speaking about her like she knew her at all. I chew on the inside of my cheek until it bleeds.

  She continues her lecture. “You might even enjoy the fundraiser. I’ve heard such great things about your power.” It doesn’t sound like a compliment from her. I think back to her warning about Gudrun the Sorceress.

  “I’ll do my best.” She’s setting me up for failure, almost certainly, but perhaps I’ll surprise her, like I’ve continually surprised myself.

  “Sometimes we get what we wish for, Miss Hallowell.” She smiles like curdled milk. “Please shut the door on your way out.”

  In Practical Applications class, I’m so unnerved by my meeting with Mrs. Vykotsky, I pierce the pad of my thumb with a sewing needle. As I watch the blood seep into the fabric, I think that in this moment, it hurts to be alive.

  Later I find Lena in the dining room, feet propped up, reading a book at the head of the table.

  “How are you?” My voice echoes off the walls of the empty room. It feels too still without the rush of mealtime. Guilt eats away at me at the sight of her face. What’s happened to her family, I can’t help feel that I am mostly to blame. I won’t be surprised if she never talks to me again. But
she does.

  “Rotten, you?”

  “Mrs. Vykotsky is going to send me to a political fundraiser to manipulate a signature out of a commissioner. My punishment for the woods.”

  “Hmm” is Lena’s only reply. I don’t blame her—it’s such a minor, stupid consequence compared to what happened to her and the others.

  I carefully sit down next to her. “What’s on your mind?”

  She reaches into the pocket of her uniform pinafore and pulls out two diamond-stud earrings. “Maxine gave me these to send to my parents now that the stipend from the school is cut off.”

  “That was kind of her.” I wish I had something, anything, to offer Lena. But as usual, I come up empty.

  Lena frowns. “I suppose. But I’m terrified to send them. I’m afraid if my family tries to sell them, they’ll be accused of theft.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Maxine didn’t either. It’s something the two of you will never understand. You can traipse around New York, you can break school rules, sneak out, lie, and steal. But the stakes are different for me. The consequences are bigger.”

  My stomach sinks. “I’m so sorry, Lena, for getting you into all this. If I could take it all back, I would.”

  She shrugs. “I don’t need to explain to you that I can no longer be involved in any of this.”

  I reach out and squeeze her hand like she’s squeezed mine so many times. And I realize there is something that I can offer Lena. I can let her free of the mess I’ve made, absolve her of any misplaced guilt, any lingering kindness I don’t deserve. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  Lena’s voice is heavy. “Sneaking out was fun at first. It felt almost like a way to get back at this place for all the pain and frustration, but I can’t do it anymore.”

  Something in my throat quivers. “I’m so sorry I put you in this position. I was selfish.”

  “It’s not your fault.” She sighs. “I was not about to back out on an opportunity to learn what it means to feel powerful. And I won’t have you owning the choices I made.” She takes a deep breath and rubs the jewels between her thumb and forefinger. I can barely hear her when she whispers, “I just want to go home before the world ends.”