Season of the Witch

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Harvey blinked. “Heaven and earth. That’s the quote. Shakespeare, right? There are more things in heaven and earth …”

  “If you say so.” Nick wore the beginnings of that mocking smile again. “I really wouldn’t know.”

  Harvey would usually have been afraid to say what he was thinking, but these past few days there had been no fear. Heedless grand thoughts kept spilling out of his mouth with none of the usual doubts stopping him, and he could not stop the flood now.

  “There are cassowaries. The northern lights sometimes shine red and blue as well as green. And there are fish that glow neon, and all those things are real. There are amazing sights in the world, things that seem like miracles and sound like stories, but they’re true, and while you’re waiting to see marvels, there are the miracles at home that remind you they’re true.” Harvey stopped talking, felt past the luminous confidence that he must have sounded incredibly foolish, and muttered: “You know what I mean?”

  Nick was shaking his dark head emphatically.

  “No. Not at all.”

  Harvey felt even more like a total idiot.

  Nick hesitated, a longer pause than any before. Then he said, in a soft voice: “But it sounds nice.”

  Harvey nodded, encouraged. “Yeah. You know how sometimes, things hurt so much, and you can’t figure out why, and you don’t know how to put all the pieces together so they make sense?”

  Nick bit his lip. “I do try to work things out a lot. I don’t … always succeed.”

  “I hardly ever do,” said Harvey honestly. “But sometimes I walk into school, and I see a girl, and suddenly everything that was murky goes crystal clear. Or I go into my house and I think something bad might happen, but I see my brother instead. Or I walk through the woods, and up to a girl’s house, and the door opens, and it doesn’t matter if there is fog or rain. Everything makes perfect sense. Everything shines.”

  Harvey was silent for an instant, thinking about his brother. There was something he’d been really concerned about, but he couldn’t seem to hold on to any worries. He tried hard for a moment, so hard his head hurt with the effort, and still he couldn’t remember.

  Nick’s voice was questing away from softness, where he’d seemed somewhat lost, and back to cynicism. “Oh, a girl?”

  “The girl,” corrected Harvey.

  “There are a lot of girls,” Nick remarked. “I wouldn’t want to limit myself if I were you. In fact, if we’re talking about the marvels this world has to offer, the world is filled with a great many very attractive—”

  “Not like this one,” Harvey said, positive. “Not a girl who changes the world. Love makes the world make sense. You’d have to be an idiot not to want the key to every secret in the universe.”

  “So you like her because she’ll give you all the answers?”

  “She is all the answers,” said Harvey. “It’s not about what she gives me.”

  A little boy tugged sharply on Harvey’s loose, worn jeans. He had the expression of someone who might have been waiting for some time while a loser made a weird, impassioned speech about love.

  “Sorry!” Harvey was mortified. “What would you like?”

  The kid cheered up at once. “Tiger!”

  Harvey began to paint a tiger on the kid’s face, a big splash of orange and bold strokes of black.

  “Wow, okay. Hey, mortal, do you normally talk to strangers like this?” Nick asked faintly, but the hard edge was gone from his voice again.

  “No,” said Harvey, absentmindedly. “I get nervous talking to strangers.”

  “You could have fooled me!” Nick exclaimed. “I mean, launching into deep philosophical conversations about, like, feelings … I normally just have sex with people, or curse them, you know, normal stuff …”

  Harvey was focused on painting a tiger face and not really paying attention, but he did register that this bizarre boy had just said the word sex in front of a kid. He shot Nick a scandalized glare.

  “What?” Nick said. He was looking somewhat shaken. “I mean, it’s fine. It’s good. I like it. I think. It’s just you don’t understand. There are people who have hearts as hard and cold as the highest stone wall.”

  “Sorry,” Harvey said. “But that’s garbage. Hearts aren’t walls. You might build walls around your heart because you don’t want to be hurt, but that seems really sad. It would mean not feeling anything at all.”

  Nick bit his lip. “I’ve had … feelings? Not recently. But in my life. I’ve had—some feelings? I’m capable of talking about feelings.”

  He looked away and carefully began to straighten all the sketches that he’d messed up. Harvey was appeased. It was difficult to hold on to any negative thoughts, the way he was feeling right now. Shock or worry, fears or doubts, they slid off the shining surface of Harvey’s mind. He put the last touches on the tiger, which was turning out well, and began to hum under his breath.

  “You seem … really happy,” Nick ventured, sounding lost again.

  Harvey said: “I am.”

  He stepped back and showed the kid his tiger face. Behind him, he heard Nick murmur something he didn’t catch.

  The sunlight hit the mirror. The tiger face was even better than Harvey had thought. It seemed so real that for a moment, Harvey could have sworn he saw the painted whiskers twitch.

  The kid’s face split into an incredulous grin. Harvey grinned back at him and made a little roaring noise. As he put the mirror down, the glass caught Nick’s reflection too, winking at the kid and smiling secretly to himself. That smile wasn’t mean at all. Maybe none of them had been, Harvey thought, with that new all-encompassing feeling of warmth for everybody in the world.

  Harvey never wanted to be fearful or suspicious, not of anyone. He just hadn’t been able to help it. But now, suddenly, he could do better.

  Maybe Nick was just lonely, or unhappy. Harvey tilted the mirror and flashed him a bright smile in return.

  Nick seemed distinctly pleased. “These sketches are pretty good. Do you draw a lot?”

  “Often as I can.” Harvey was taken aback but gratified by the sudden interest. “When my dad isn’t watching.”

  Nick’s nod was approving. “I like a rebel.”

  “Do you draw?”

  “Not like this. Sigils for rituals, that sort of thing. For school,” Nick explained. “For the advanced classes.”

  “Oh, the advanced classes,” said Harvey. “Nerd.”

  It occurred to him as soon as he said it that this was not a great thing to say to someone you had just met. Tommy often called Harvey that, and Harvey liked it. The word sounded soft in Tommy’s mouth, affectionate. Harvey hoped the word hadn’t sounded harsh in his own mouth.

  He didn’t think it had.

  Nick was running his hand through his almost-black hair, still smiling. “Whatever, farm boy.”

  Harvey didn’t have any friends who were guys, and didn’t really have any experience in what was okay to say to them or not. Most guys in school sneered at Harvey for liking art, only having friends who were girls, and not wanting to talk about football. Harvey always had the uneasy feeling that whatever flaw his dad saw in him, the guys at school could sense too.

  It would be nice, he thought with sudden hope, to have a friend who was a guy.

  “Do you like football?” Harvey asked.

  Nick blinked. “What’s football?”

  Harvey grinned. “That’s how I feel about football as well.”

  The line of kids that had seemed endless was at an end, and all over the fairground there were children with pretty designs or fantastical paintings on their faces. The kids were brightening up the fair, and Harvey thought he might have brightened up their day. That was all Harvey wanted, to add a little light to the world. The sky was getting darker, but that meant the horizon was a line of pure gold.

  It was as though every shadow of fear or doubt had been stripped from Harvey’s eyes, and whatever he saw shone.

  Sa
brina was talking to one of their teachers by the Ferris wheel. Shadows had leaped from leaf to leaf until they turned the trees entirely dark, but the Ferris wheel was a delicate circle of lights. They gleamed on Sabrina’s shining bob, dancing at her ears in the slight breeze, interrupted by the tiny darkness of her hairband. He saw her sneak a look over at the stall and note that the line was gone. In profile, he saw the curve of her oddly wise smile. She knew he’d be coming to her soon.

  “That’s her,” Harvey told Nick. “The only girl in the world. That’s Sabrina. Isn’t she the most beautiful thing under heaven?”

  Nick’s voice scraped a little. “Oh, hell yes.” He drummed his fingers restlessly on the side of the stall. “So that’s the famous Sabrina. I thought it might be.”

  Harvey frowned, puzzled, but then he was distracted by the flare of sudden lights. The little girl with the butterflies painted on her face got into one of the carriages on the Ferris wheel with her sister. As the carriage jolted into motion, colored lights bloomed around it, creating the shape of a butterfly with its wings outstretched. The wings dissolved into a ruby-red rose, soft petals unfurling.

  The shimmering reflection fell on Sabrina, as if she was being picked out by a spotlight, her smooth hair dyed deep, sudden crimson. The rose became the first star of evening, seven crystalline points spinning as the Ferris wheel did, and Sabrina’s gold hair was now snow white. Harvey drew in a deep, wondering breath and fumbled for his pencils. Things like that sometimes happened around Sabrina, as though she changed the world just by moving through it. His magic girl.

  He reached for the paper, and as he did so his gaze fell on Nick, whose hand was lifted as if framing the star between his fingers. Nick’s eyes were wide, the darkness of them filled with dazzling white light.

  On the soft exhalation of his wondering breath, Harvey said: “How lovely. It’s just like magic.”

  He set his pencil to paper and drew Sabrina under the Ferris wheel, focused on the movement of the colored point across the blank page, turning what had been nothing into a reflection of beauty.

  “So …” Nick cleared his throat. “Are you down to share?”

  “What?” Harvey realized what Nick was asking and pushed the glass bowl of gumballs in Nick’s direction with his free hand. “Sure.”

  Nick took a gumball with a slow, pleased smile. “That’s great.”

  Over the fairground, where the dome of the sky was deep blue, descending into green, copper, and the final line of gold, fireworks bloomed sudden and silent as flowers in shadow. Streaks of brilliant red cut through the dark like bleeding stars.

  Harvey said, thrilled: “Oh my God.”

  “He doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Nick muttered. “I don’t see why he should be getting the praise.”

  Harvey was distracted by the dazzling array of colors, the delicate curves of daffodil yellow and white clusters of baby’s breath and bright blue dots of forget-me-nots joining the rose red, the looping lines of leafy green. It was as if the night sky was a dark stranger that had come carrying a bouquet of lights.

  “Nothing like this happened at the fair last year,” said Harvey. “This is amazing.” He became aware that even in the dark woods there were flowers blooming, their colors sudden and dazzling. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed them before.

  “You’re drawing a picture. You like it.” Nick sounded glad. “But that’s nothing. I can—I bet the whole Ferris wheel could just come loose and roll around the whole fairground and light it all up.”

  Harvey stopped drawing the picture.

  “If the Ferris wheel came loose and rolled around the fairground, then—”

  Nick’s expression was eager. For some reason, he’d rolled up his sleeves. “It would be exciting and artistic?”

  “People would be crushed and killed. That would be—”

  Nick made a face. “Messy?”

  “A horrible tragedy!”

  “Oh, right,” said Nick. He began to roll down his sleeves with a disappointed air. “Lucky it won’t happen, then.”

  Harvey nodded, briefly appalled by Nick’s morbid imagination. The twinge of unease passed like every other worry was passing these days: as if swiftly erased by a hand drawing the story of his life, not allowing for any unharmonious mistakes. Nick might be like Sabrina, who loved horror movies with a deep and inexplicable passion. Harvey brightened at the thought.

  “Do you want to come meet Sabrina with me?” he asked.

  Nick’s face lit up momentarily. “I’d like that very much. Let me think about it for a minute.”

  Harvey nodded. “No rush.” He shoved pencils, paints, and papers into his bag, still thinking happily of horror movies and potential double dates. He’d often thought that it would be great to find someone smart and nice for Roz. Harvey realized that given what he’d seen of Nick’s personality thus far, Roz’s dad would probably not like Nick, but maybe that didn’t matter.

  “Hey, are you single?”

  “I can be,” Nick said easily. “If it matters.”

  Harvey frowned. “What does that mean?”

  Nick made a soothing sound, as if hushing a cry. “Don’t worry about it. Sabrina is waiting for you.”

  Her name woke a memory. Harvey felt suspicion rise in him, and then the suspicion almost slipped through his fingers again, as he felt the almost overwhelming urge to stop worrying and be happy. This time he thought of Sabrina, and managed to hold on.

  “You said,” Harvey told Nick slowly. “You said So that’s the famous Sabrina. What did you mean by that? What’s going on?”

  “Don’t be mad,” said Nick. “It’s not my fault you don’t know anything.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  His voice was sharp in his own ears, like a warning telling Harvey that he should be afraid. The stall was a small wooden cage full of shadows. Nick rose from the stool, and it shouldn’t have been menacing, Harvey was taller than Nick, but it was. Nick moved forward in a purposeful prowl, and Harvey jolted back. It was as though a mask had fallen from Nick’s face, his eyes doorways into darkness, and Harvey was struck with horror at the realization of how stupid he had been. This was no friend. Harvey thought, with cold, creeping certainty: This was an ancient enemy.

  “And this looked like it would be such a fun night too,” Nick murmured, sounding mildly regretful. There was no light left in his eyes. “But no, now is not the time. Seems like a whole lot of drama amid the cotton candy. I don’t want to make a bad first impression.”

  Smoke from the fireworks seemed to be filtering through the air, making Harvey’s mouth dry. “I don’t understand.”

  “You will, farm boy,” promised Nick. “But not tonight. Forget.”

  “Sorry?” Harvey asked, stunned. As if he could.

  Nick nodded. “I am, a little. This is meant to be a blessing, but—what a shame for you—I’m not really the blessing type.

  Blind your mind and blind your heart

  Let these painful thoughts depart.”

  “Wait—” Harvey said desperately.

  Nick blew him a kiss and dropped him a wink. Nick’s dark amusement was the last thing Harvey saw before a blanket seemed to fall on his struggling thoughts, smoothing everything out, muffling his senses.

  “What were you going to do before you met me?”

  He was right there, but Nick’s voice, almost idly curious, seemed on the cusp of hearing. He was slipping out of sight somehow.

  Harvey blinked hard as his vision blurred. “Go on the Ferris wheel with Sabrina—tell her I love her—I’ve never told her—”

  “Oh.” Nick’s voice was soft. “Seems like you should do that, then.”

  Harvey nodded in a quick, jerky motion, a puppet manipulated by careless hands. The searching, bewildered look faded from his face. He stumbled away from the stall, his steps faltering at first but then growing surer as he walked toward Sabrina.

  “See you later,” murmured Ni
cholas Scratch. He moved farther from the light and out of memory, grinning a sharp, wicked grin and chewing his gum.

  A witch’s day out can turn dangerous.

  The Last Day of Summer fair ended beautifully, and the rest of the weekend was nice. I went out for coffee with Roz and Susie, and when I came home Ambrose opened the door for me and Aunt Hilda was making Aunt Zelda’s favorite dinner. Everybody seemed entirely cheerful, not at all as if Ambrose was keeping secrets from me or Aunt Zelda had killed Aunt Hilda a few days ago.

  I tried not to think about any of it, and I was mostly successful.

  On Monday I came downstairs to find Ambrose flirting with the lady who delivered the mail again. He was wearing jeans and a real T-shirt he hadn’t slept in, so he probably liked her. He gave me an unusually bright smile and an enthusiastic wave as I came down our split-level staircase.

  “Hello, cousin!”

  “Is she your cousin?” asked the mailwoman.

  “That is why I call her that, yes,” said Ambrose. “Seems like an odd nickname.”

  “I just meant—” She blushed one of those easy, deep redhead blushes, a red tide rushing to drown her freckles. “Since you’re African American.”

  I came to stand at Ambrose’s elbow and eat my cereal at her with concentrated hostility. “What do you mean by that? So he can’t be my cousin?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said.

  I finished my cereal and grasped hold of Ambrose’s elbow, holding on tight. Ambrose nudged me away gently.

  “It is pretty ridiculous,” he said. “I’m not African American. I’m British. There is a Union Jack in my bedroom. Which you won’t be seeing.”

  That was what he was upset about? I stared while the mailwoman made her escape, glaring at both of us. I thought we might have a lot of things lost in the mail for the next few weeks—until Aunt Zelda rerouted the mail delivery again.

  Ambrose wandered over to the windows. I wondered if he was watching the woman leave, but when I came closer I saw his face was tipped up to the sky, his eyes narrowed. He lifted a hand, finger and thumb tracing the path of birds flying through the air.