Season of the Witch

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Nick shrugged too. That was one of the best things about him, Prudence had always thought. He was one of the few witches she’d met who could pretend to be magnificently indifferent as well as she did. Sometimes when they were together, the sheer force of both their façades made them seem almost real.

  Maybe she liked Nick a little too.

  “Is this about us creating all those super sexy illusions?” Prudence bit out. “Was it too sexy for you to handle?”

  “Nothing’s too sexy for me to handle. Still, it’s not my favorite thing you do,” Nick admitted. “Things can be real as well as magical. But it’s not entirely that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nick, his voice soft, and if he was going to be soft Prudence had no use for him. “Don’t you ever feel like there must be something more?”

  “More than eternal beauty, awesome power, and a life well spent in the hellfire-warm bosom of Satan?” Prudence sneered. “I really don’t.”

  Whatever Nick meant, it’s clear he doesn’t think he could find this something more in her.

  “Did you meet someone?” demanded Prudence. “Did you meet someones?”

  Nick smiled in a way she was not familiar with and did not like. Seeing Nick Scratch dreamy-eyed made Prudence feel unwell. “Almost.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe I’m waiting,” said Nick, “for the key to every secret in the universe.”

  Prudence scoffed. They were all broken up, then. She’ll tell her sisters later, and cheer them up the only way she knows how: by hurting someone else.

  Maybe she can go find that half witch.

  Sabrina annoys the ever-loving Satan out of Prudence. Everyone at the Academy talks about her: the half-mortal daughter of the former and late High Priest. If Edward Spellman had married one of his own kind, his child could have been High Priest after him. As it is, she’s a joke. People shake their heads pityingly about her, more than they ever did about Prudence and her sisters. It’s nice to have someone lower on the social scale, but unlike the stupid, happily oblivious mortals, aware enough to understand how low she is. The Weird Sisters can always find time in their day to make how inferior she is clear to Sabrina.

  The first time Prudence ever saw Sabrina, Sabrina was walking hand in hand with her aunt Hilda. The coven whispered about Hilda Spellman: too soft, everybody agreed, and her commitment to the Dark Lord was doubtful at best. She’d gone too easy on that cousin she’d raised, and that was how he went wrong. Hilda had eyes blue as heaven: simply horrible.

  No doubt the woman would be too soft with the half-mortal girl too. They looked too soft, Sabrina in a yellow raincoat and a knitted scarf, kicking up red and gold leaves. Her aunt was fussing over Sabrina, adjusting her scarf. Prudence leaned her cold cheek against the cold bark of a tree and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see any more.

  After Nick broke up with them, Prudence searched for Sabrina, but she didn’t find her until Sabrina was already walking around the curve of the road onto Spellman ground, past the sign for the Spellman mortuary and the tree that spread its branches over the small cluster of graves out front.

  Prudence wasn’t scared of anything, but she wasn’t fool enough to cross Zelda Spellman on her own turf. Nobody talked about Zelda being too soft.

  Prudence would come back for Sabrina another time, with her sisters. She was about to turn away when she saw a curtain twitch, in a small window in an upper story of that house of slanting roofs and many windows. A boy was in the window, looking out for Sabrina’s coming.

  Prudence eats boys for a snack and has room for apples of knowledge after, but this one’s a five-course meal with chocolate cake for dessert. Well done, Sabrina, Prudence thought for a startled moment, and wondered what Sabrina was doing messing around with some pathetic human boy when she had all this at home. Then Prudence realized this must be the wayward cousin.

  When the cousin saw Sabrina, his face changed. He’d looked a little sad before.

  It made Prudence wonder suddenly how it would be to have someone waiting for you. To get a smile like that, wide as an ocean and bright as the sun, just for walking up the lane.

  Sabrina must be used to it.

  Prudence advanced through the trees, wandering closer to get a better look.

  The cousin swung the door casually open for Sabrina as she climbed the front steps, though he must have moved fast to get from the window to the door in that time. He slung Sabrina’s stupid schoolbag on his shoulder, and she tugged at the little velvet scarf around his neck, and the door of the Spellman house closed behind them.

  The kitchen was around the back, a cozy room with skull-patterned wallpaper and hanging herbs. Prudence could see teal-painted cupboards as she moved nearer, walking softly through the twigs and leaves scattered over the ground. The aunt with the silly fond eyes was attending to something bubbling on the black iron stove, and beamed as if with startled joy when the cousin and Sabrina whirled in. It made Prudence want to scream. The cousin was literally enchanted not to leave the house. Sabrina had lived there all her life. It couldn’t possibly be a surprise to see them.

  Sabrina snapped her fingers, and faint music started to play. She and the cousin wove around the kitchen chairs, half dancing and half play-fighting, ducking under the bundles of dried herbs, as the aunt threw up her hands in mock dismay and laughed at their antics.

  “Don’t you know I’m only human?” Sabrina sang, like it was a joke between them, instead of a hideous truth she should be ashamed of.

  Sabrina still had hold of the cousin’s scarf, and the cousin ducked his head so she could loop the velvet around his neck again, leading him on a leash and dancing backward while he sang the next line of the song to her. Something about being there for her, while Sabrina wagged a finger at him, mischievous and young in a way Prudence had never been. Then the cousin seized hold of the aunt’s waist, and the three of them were suddenly dancing in a ridiculous conga line around the kitchen table.

  Something more, said Nick’s voice in her mind, yearning, as if he’d instinctively felt a lack she hadn’t. Not until she saw what she was missing.

  Prudence turned away, abruptly sick of them all, and stormed off through the woods.

  Prudence had been forged by fire and hammered by countless blows into something harder than stone, the dark jewel in the bone crown of the coven of the Church of Night. There was nothing Sabrina Spellman had that Prudence envied.

  She returned to the Academy and sang in the Infernal Choir. She has always been the best singer, and every time she thinks Lady Blackwood will be impressed with her. Her High Priest’s wife will see Prudence has amazing potential, and she’ll invite Prudence to a special private dinner with her and Father Blackwood. Except that never happens. Every time, Lady Blackwood glares at Prudence, and seems to hate Prudence more.

  Prudence spends hours plotting ways to get her heart’s desire. She wants to sit on a throne of skulls, revered by her entire coven, dark and glorious as midnight. She wants what any witch would want, but she wants it harder.

  Sometimes, going to sleep between the cold walls of the Academy, in the circle of dormitory beds, Prudence allows herself to admit certain things that she could not with a waking mind.

  If she had only one wish, she thinks at those times, it would be for Father Blackwood to be her real father, and the Weird Sisters her real sisters.

  That night, Prudence lets herself dream of how it would be to have what Sabrina has, even just for one day.

  She would run up the steps of the Spellman house, and that beautiful boy would be waiting to open the door for her, with such a smile. That sweet-faced woman would be cooking in the kitchen, making all the food she liked best. When it was night, she’d curl up under the soft blankets in that fancy wrought-iron bed in her very own room, and she’d be warm.

  She’d be home.

  The trees seemed to open up as I ran to the clearing, branches and thorns
bending backward for me, green grass beneath my feet like a carpet being rolled out to welcome me.

  I crashed through the trees into the clearing, and the silence.

  The spirit of the wishing well was lying on the riverbank, her skirts spread out on the grass. The grass did not even bend under her body. Her skirt seemed to be made of the same stuff as her skin, some magic liquid only a touch more solid and opaque than water that glistened like tears.

  I pulled up short and said blankly: “You’re not in your well.”

  “I was waiting for you,” the spirit of the wishing well told me in her shivery, silvery voice. “I was hoping you would come.”

  She gave me a shimmering beckon, and I felt the same urge as in the Hall of Mirrors. I went to sit by her side. Her smile was moon-bright, if the moon had chosen to shine only on me.

  “I am so glad you are here,” said the spirit. “But you look sad. Why is that?”

  I hesitated. She reached out and took my hand in hers. Her skin was cool, but so was moonlight, and that was made for witches.

  Her voice flowed over me like a river over a stone on the riverbed, moved by its currents. “Tell me.”

  Then I poured it all out: the spell Ambrose and I had done, the doubts I had, the way I wanted to be a witch but keep hold of the mortal life I cherished, the way my aunts always spoke as if that would not be possible, the way the Weird Sisters said that I didn’t have what it took to be one of them. Harvey, and my parents: that my parents had found a way, and I wanted to be like them, and I couldn’t see how.

  When all my secrets were poured out, I lifted my gaze to her face. I’d read the phrase her eyes were pools before, but this woman’s eyes were literally pools: crystal lakes, with the image of my own pain caught in them.

  “Oh, my dear,” whispered the spirit of the well. “I am so sorry. From the first moment I saw you, I knew that you had great potential for power, but now I see you have a great heart too. Of course they don’t understand you.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Those unworthy witch girls,” hissed the spirit, her voice like a dammed river breaking its bounds, angry enough to be almost menacing. “Your mortal friends, your family, this cousin Ambrose of yours with his cold, fickle heart. Especially Ambrose. If that spell goes wrong, it was your cousin’s spell, not yours. His fault, not yours. None of them can understand you, because none of them feel as you do.”

  “Being half witch and half mortal,” I whispered.

  “It’s more than that,” said the spirit of the wishing well. “You’re more than that. You’re made of finer stuff than they are. You’re special. You’re better in every way.”

  I remembered how she had spoken of me wearing a crown. As if she had seen me, somehow different than I was now, seen the me I wanted people to see.

  I licked my dry lips. “What did you mean,” I asked, “when you said I was born to be a witch of legend?”

  The spirit smiled a gleaming smile, and murmured one word.

  “Look.”

  She gestured to the stream she was lying beside, and droplets fell from her fingertips as though she could summon a tiny shower of rain. The droplets rained into the clear waters and turned them silver, stopped the rushing course of the river and turned it smooth. I leaned over and found the river had become my looking glass.

  Only, as in the Hall of Mirrors, somehow my reflection was transformed.

  In the glassy waters was a girl beautiful as the dawn, but somehow I knew she was me. That girl was tall as I would never be, with the glamour of my aunt Zelda and the sweet softness of my aunt Hilda and the fairy-tale-princess beauty of my mother’s photograph. That girl walked with her head held magnificently high through the halls of Baxter High School, her hands alive with pale fire. Everybody knew she was a witch, and they only admired her more for it. She was so strong that nobody ever dared touch her friends.

  I stirred and asked: “How—?”

  There were ripples in the pool, as if in answer: Suddenly a whole world blossomed around the beauty who was me. I could see my friends by her side suddenly, Roz with her eyes clear and brilliant with admiration, Susie striding in perfect confidence that she was safe with me. And Harvey, holding my hand, his lips moving as we walked, making the same shape over and over again. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew Harvey was saying I love you, and it was real, and it was right, and it was perfect.

  “Do you see?” asked the water spirit eagerly. “Do you see what you could be?”

  “I see …” I said, faltering.

  “Shall I show you more?”

  The waters rippled again, and the surroundings of the magical beauty changed. I saw myself walking home on the path through the trees, and the Weird Sisters came flying toward me, Prudence first, all their faces lit up with welcome for their sister. And then we did magic together out in the woods, and they were amazed at the magic I could do. I could turn the sun to the moon at noonday.

  “Don’t you want to be as beautiful as the morning?” asked the spirit.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “But—”

  “Don’t you want to be a queen among witches?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “But—”

  “Be brave enough to want,” said the spirit. “If you are brave enough, you could have your heart’s desire.”

  That towering, magical, gloriously powerful beauty turned her radiantly white-gold head back to the path as if she heard a call. She sprang up and ran back to the path through the woods. She was fast as if she flew, and nobody in the world could catch her, unless she wanted to be caught. On the curving road stood my cousin, not just in jeans and a shirt but in a jacket and boots. He was free but coming home, because his home was with me. I’d never cared that much about beauty, but this, getting to be both magical and beloved, was all I wanted. Ambrose pulled me into a tight hug, and I knew what he was saying too: I love you, cousin. We walked together and I knew what waited for us around the familiar curve in the road. My home, with my aunts, but not only my aunts. My mother and father waited for me there, as eager to see me as I was to see them. They all loved me, I was so beloved, because I was lovely, because I was all things lovable, and that meant I could keep everything I loved.

  The girl in the mirror was all the things I could never be, and had all the things I could never have, yet somehow she was me.

  “This is how I see you, and I see the truth of what you could be. You could have all this,” murmured the spirit. “If you did the spell with my waters.”

  A spell you can only do with the waters of the wishing well, to unlock your true potential. Only certain witches can do it. The ones with the potential to be great.

  I pulled away from her a fraction, letting her cool hand slip from mine. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “It’s not that I chose you,” said the spirit. “Destiny chose you. I am only a servant of Fate. And you. I am only a humble spirit, but I long to be part of greater things, and do great deeds. Those witch girls who hate you would kill for the power I am offering you, would spill oceans of blood for a drop of my magical waters, but I would never allow it. They could never be worthy. Only you are.”

  She lifted the hand I had dropped to touch my hair. I saw the lock of my hair held in that shining hand: My hair was an ordinary blond, but captured between her fingers the lock was lent the luster of her skin. I remembered the ice-and-gold hair of the girl who was me made beautiful as the morning.

  The spirit smiled a shimmering smile. “I think you must be unique, Sabrina Spellman. I have never let another witch use the waters from my well or stream, but I would let you. It would be my honor to be part of your legend.”

  “Well,” I said.

  “Wish,” she encouraged me. “Only wish for what you want, and your wish will come true. Plunge your hand to the wrist in my waters, and say the words, and have your heart’s desire.”

  I reached out, and plunged my hand into the water past the wrist. The river was cool as her
hand had been, cool as moonlight shining on another clearing in these woods, where I had been born and where I belonged.

  “Mirror, mirror,” whispered the spirit, like a plea, like a prayer. “Make me fairer. Face and heart.”

  “Mirror, mirror,” I whispered back. “Make me fairer. Face and heart.”

  Who didn’t want to be better, inside and out? Face and heart, and the world. The whole world should be more fair, should stop threatening to tear me away from one thing or the other that I loved. If I had the power, I could change everything.

  It was as if I could feel everything changing already. There was a shimmer in my vision, and a sweet taste at the back of my throat as if I’d just drunk something delicious. I could feel the tiny hairs on my arm prickle and be soothed by the flow of water enveloping my skin.

  Then a human voice broke through the sound of trees and wind, the last cool breath of dying summer. Sharp when everything had been going so smoothly, the voice called out: “Sabrina!”

  Mary Wardwell longs to believe in magic.

  She always loved stories, and for a time she wanted to be a librarian, but the idea of being a teacher ended up appealing to her more. There is so much potential in children. Having so many eyes on her when she teaches class makes her nervous, but she enjoys watching their faces light up when they learn. Children look like the beginning of a story.

  She was young and brimful of promise herself, once. She was the only child of elderly parents, growing up bookish and excruciatingly shy, especially with children her own age. She didn’t have many friends, but she took long walks in the woods and told herself everything would be different when she grew up. Once she’d finished her time in school, she kissed her parents goodbye and went off for adventures in the big city.

  Her most vivid memory of the city is being on a train rattling through the night toward her tiny studio apartment. She remembers herself on that train as a young girl sitting at the edge of a threadbare green seat, so frayed there were brown holes and patches in it. The train had stopped in a tunnel for more than an hour, and through sheer pressure of boredom the passengers inside dropped the pretense they were not sharing transport and started talking to one another. There was a boy and a girl sitting across from her, about Mary’s age or a little older, with colors in their hair and piercings, darkly lined eyes regarding her with mingled sympathy and scorn. When the train finally moved, they said they were on their way to a party, and invited her to join them. The mere idea was so glittering, so exciting, that it was too frightening. Mary said no. She said maybe another time.