Season of the Witch

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Aunt Hilda waved her spatula admonishingly at him.

  I ran for the door. Harvey hadn’t answered his phone last night. He must be absolutely humiliated. The last thing he needed right now was Aunt Zelda. I had to save him.

  Saving him was not the problem.

  When I got to the door, I found a broad-shouldered miner’s son on our porch. The wrong one.

  “Aunt Z.!” I exclaimed. “That is not Harvey! That is his brother, Tommy!”

  “I have been trying to tell her that,” Tommy said mildly.

  “Oh.” Aunt Zelda frowned, then waved off the whole situation with her cigarette. “I did think he looked slightly different than he does usually.”

  I seized her by the elbow and dragged her away from Tommy and the door.

  “Like, that he had a different face?” I hissed.

  “Mortals all look the same to me,” Aunt Zelda whispered back. “They both wear simply hideous flannel shirts. It’s like they’re trying to confuse me.”

  “I give up,” I told her. “Let’s go, Tommy.”

  I dashed outside, grabbed Tommy’s flannel sleeve, and began dragging him down the porch steps. Tommy’s face was baffled. I didn’t blame him.

  “Goodbye, Other Harvey,” called Aunt Zelda.

  I made an apologetic face at Tommy.

  “She’s a character, your aunt,” Tommy remarked.

  He didn’t seem unduly bothered by the fact that my aunt couldn’t recognize my own boyfriend. I guess the whole town expects us to be weird, but I couldn’t help feeling ashamed. Aunt Zelda and Ambrose are always dismissive of Harvey. Aunt Hilda is kind to him, but Aunt Hilda is kind to everyone. Sometimes I wonder if she’s kind to Harvey in the same way she would pet a dog.

  “You could say that,” I said. “Er, not that I’m not pleased to see you—hi, Tommy!—but I’ve seen more of you in the last few days than I have in years. Can I ask what you’re doing here? Where’s Harvey?”

  Tommy opened the door of his red truck for me. “Harvey asked me to take you to school. He said he had a surprise waiting there for you. He said it was an apology for last night.”

  I scrambled into the truck, assailed by a fresh wave of guilt. “There’s no need for him to apologize to me.”

  Tommy got in behind the wheel. “Sabrina, what happened last night? Harvey was gone for a while, and when he came back, his shirt was …”

  “Was it pig’s blood?” I asked, and then changed my mind. “Wait, maybe don’t answer that. Maybe I don’t want to know.”

  Tommy’s eyebrows were practically in orbit. “Does this have anything to do with your aunt talking about music?” he guessed.

  “Maybe I don’t want to talk about it at all.”

  Tommy nodded obligingly, and drove on through the woods. Some of the leaves on the trees were turning gold. It felt like only yesterday the trees had been all summer green.

  “Harvey’s been really weird lately,” Tommy offered at last, his voice soft. “I think it’s my fault.”

  I twisted my hands together in my lap. “It’s not your fault, Tommy. It’s mine.”

  “Oh,” said Tommy. “Did you guys have a fight?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how to explain. We drove in awkward, terrible silence until we drew near Baxter High, and Tommy drew in a deep, incredulous breath.

  “Oh, no, no,” he murmured. The truck slammed to a halt, and Tommy grasped my elbow. I stared up at him, alarmed by the sudden urgency in Tommy’s usually easy drawl. “Sabrina, please don’t break up with him. He’s gone too far and I’ll tell him so, but you’re his world. Please don’t break my little brother’s heart.”

  “I would never break up with Harvey,” I answered, bewildered.

  Tommy gave me a brief, strained smile. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  He leaped from the truck, and I leaned forward in my seat, peering through the windshield. For a moment I only saw the familiar redbrick and crenellated rooftops, the middle roof flat and the other two coming to sharp peaks, of Baxter High.

  Then my eyes fell on the black iron railing around the school, and I saw what Tommy had seen. It felt as if the brightness blurred my vision for a moment, as if I was staring into the sun, but I was only looking into the hearts of flowers.

  The morning sky was hazy blue, the brightest blue of summer barely lost. The black fence surrounding the school was usually like a line drawn, cutting sharply across red building and blue sky. Today there were bright splashes of color twined through every wire link, splashes of crimson and yellow and lavender and green. Soft petals fell on the ground where groups of students walked, and to get to school they had to pass under an arch of starry color. The links of the fence had become silk ropes woven with a dozen different floral colors, and the steel frame of the fence was clustered with flowers so thick and bright they seemed like a woman’s necklace shimmering with rubies and sapphires and garnets.

  There were flowers of all kinds, but mostly roses. They looked like enchanted roses, which I’d read were always tempting to touch with hidden thorns. Their long stems were knotted around the wire of the fence or poked through the gates. Witches’ roses decorating the outside of our school. The whole fence, almost the whole school, had been turned into a flowery wreath. Just for me.

  Harvey was standing beside the brightest point in all his bright handiwork, his face vivid and expectant as the flowers. Roz and Susie were standing beside him. They didn’t just look skeptical or stunned. They looked upset.

  I fumbled the door handle three times, then managed to get out of the truck. By that time Tommy had already dashed up to the others and was talking to Roz and Susie while cupping Harvey’s elbow. Then he headed straight for the principal—who was not going to take this well; Principal Hawthorne did not strike me as a fan of romantic gestures on school property—while calling out for the nurse.

  I frowned. For the nurse?

  There was brightness on the ground as well as suspended in the air. Red splashes were blooming on the earth at Harvey’s feet. My mind lied to my eyes for a moment and told me they were flowers, only more flowers.

  I ran to Harvey’s side. His eyes, downcast by Tommy’s approach, shone brilliant when he saw me.

  “Sabrina! Do you like it? I made it for you.”

  I could not choke out my thanks past my horror. Instead, all I could do was tug on Harvey’s sleeve and bring him stumbling along with me and away from everyone else.

  Once we were a little distance apart from the growing crowd, I let go of his sleeve. With carefulness that came too late, with terrified gentleness, I used the very tips of my fingers to turn Harvey’s artist’s hands palms up.

  His skin was scored with the cruel marks of thorns, palms slashed open. Even as I stared, fresh bright blood, red as roses, welled up in those ragged wounds.

  I threw my book bag down on the ground and rummaged through its contents, emerging with the pouch of dried herbs Aunt Hilda made sure I always carried.

  “Give me your hands, Harvey,” I commanded, and he laid his poor, wounded hands in mine as trustfully as a child.

  Close up, I could see the places where the thorns had bitten too deep. If he was left to himself, it would be weeks before Harvey could draw without wincing. He’d done this to make me happy, and not cared if he lost what made him happy. I hadn’t been thinking selflessly of him, I’d selfishly wanted him to reassure me, and now he was hurt. I dropped a kiss and a tear onto his curled fingers, overwhelmed by how guilty I felt, and how sorry I was.

  There was a note of genuine horror in Harvey’s voice. “Sabrina, are you crying?”

  “No, of course not.” I whisked another tear from my eye, dabbed the herbs carefully on the cuts with a fingertip, and tried to concentrate. “Rue and valerian, mint and basil. Cure all and save all, save every person born.”

  Harvey blinked down into my eyes. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a—poultice,” I told him. “Some herbs. An herbal remedy. To sto
p your cuts from stinging.”

  “They hardly sting now,” said Harvey. “Sabrina, I’m sorry I scared you, but look. I’m not hurt at all.”

  His face was frighteningly vulnerable, eager to please and not sure how he’d failed. He was so easy to hurt, and I’d never meant to, but I had hurt him. I fought down dread and wrenched my eyes from his face to his hands.

  The magic had worked. I’d fixed him. Where there had been a crimson hatch of cuts was now just normal crisscrossing lines across his palms, beneath the tacky, fast-drying trail of blood mingled with herbs. No harm done.

  The stomp of Tommy’s boots echoed over Harvey’s shoulder. Because I was holding Harvey’s hands, I felt Harvey flinch, and I tensed, stricken with a sudden impulse to push Harvey behind me and fight anything that dared threaten him.

  But then Tommy put his hands on Harvey’s shoulders, grip obviously light. When Harvey glanced around, he saw his brother’s face, and all the tension went out of him. Whatever it was Harvey feared, it wasn’t his brother.

  “Let me see your hands,” said Tommy. Harvey displayed his hands, palm up as if to prove his innocence, and Tommy sighed with relief. “I thought—I only saw them for a moment, but I thought you’d actually hurt yourself. Where did you even find all these flowers?”

  “The flowers were growing in the woods.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Tommy. “There was a ton of gorgeous roses growing in the woods. I guess someone planted a giant romantic woodland garden. You’re in trouble, and you’re an idiot.”

  Neither of them knew there was dangerous magic in the woods, that some witch must have grown these roses and then forgotten them. Neither of them knew witches were real.

  “Sorry,” Harvey mumbled. “I only wanted to do something nice for Sabrina.”

  Tommy’s hug was engulfing; Harvey pulled in roughly with Tommy’s hand cupping the back of his head.

  “You were pulling a dumb stunt, is what you were doing.” Tommy pressed a kiss against the side of Harvey’s head. “You big dope. This ends now, all right?”

  “All right,” Harvey answered in a small voice.

  I stood helpless and silent, watching them, looking at my friends and the incongruously cheery line of flowers.

  I’d almost moved to defend Harvey from Tommy, but I should’ve known better. I’d kept my secrets, and that had kept us all apart.

  If we weren’t witches, I would know Tommy well enough to understand him. If we weren’t witches, Harvey and I would both know each other’s families better. Harvey could come in and sit at our kitchen table, as I sometimes suspected he would like to. Aunt Hilda could fuss over him, and we wouldn’t be afraid of letting out our secrets, because I wouldn’t have any secrets from him.

  His brother wasn’t the one who had hurt Harvey. My cousin and I had done that.

  Right now, I wished we weren’t witches at all.

  Zelda Spellman knows that Satan deserves her wholehearted devotion. She intends to give it.

  She can allow no faltering on her dark and midnight path. But though Zelda tries to stride forward, obstacles are constantly placed in her way.

  Witches live their long lives on the knife-edge of danger. The massacre in Salem and the other massacre, the one that happened in their own town, hang over the heads of every witch like a bright sword that will cut down all their glorious shadows. Witches starved in the ice and had to eat their own. Witch-hunters dared descend on a branch of her own family, the proud, ancient family of Spellmans, in England. If witch-hunters want to come for Zelda Spellman, they are more than welcome to try.

  Zelda isn’t afraid for herself at all.

  People seem surprised to find that Zelda loves babies. Zelda has spent centuries wondering why people are such fools. She has received no answer on this subject as yet.

  What’s not to like about babies? Babies are splendid. Babies do not disappoint you or leave you. They have sweet-smelling heads, and plump, juicy flesh, and endless potential to serve Satan. Zelda is the finest midwife their coven has ever seen, and she often revels in the sin of pride because of it. A shame Hilda doesn’t have half Zelda’s gifts, Zelda often thinks smugly, while she is cuddling a new little darling for the Dark Lord after another triumphant birth.

  It is a bitter irony that the appearance of the baby Zelda loves best brought tragedy. When her niece, Sabrina, was transported by magic away from the crash that killed her parents, Zelda had looked upon her adorable little face and known that Sabrina’s father, their brother, Edward, the pride and joy of the family, was dead.

  Sabrina’s mother’s family wanted to take her. Father Blackwood, the new head of the Church of Night, offered to take Sabrina in and raise her with the delightfully evil orphans in the Academy of Unseen Arts. Zelda cannot help admiring Father Blackwood’s commitment to Satan, and also the trim figure he cuts in a brocade cloak. The Dark Lord has given Father Blackwood many gifts, including that of a sweet behind.

  But Zelda said no to Father Blackwood. To Diana’s family, she said, Never approach Sabrina again or I will rip off your faces and you will die, faceless and screaming. Hilda had to make Diana’s family forget those threats, which is a pity as Zelda thought they were convincing and beautifully worded.

  But then, Hilda’s always been the weak and sentimental sister. Their brother, Edward, was so magnificent he could not be challenged, so certain that the Dark Lord spoke to him that everyone else believed that when Edward Spellman spoke, he did so in Satan’s own voice.

  Edward is gone. If Edward could be taken, any one of them could be.

  Sometimes Zelda can only sleep because Hilda is resting in the bed next to her own, Hilda’s even breathing her lullaby. Sometimes Zelda thinks it would be easier to be one of the coven’s orphans. I would die of loneliness, she thinks the next moment, and then tells herself, no, she would be able to serve the Dark Lord with single-minded devotion.

  She would die of loneliness. That’s her secret. She is not the true servant of Satan the coven believes. She is an oath breaker and an abomination. She loves her family more than him.

  But nobody ever has to know that.

  Sometimes the lullaby of Hilda’s breathing doesn’t work, and Zelda has to creep up the stairs to the attic, to see Ambrose is alive. The wretched boy kicks off the covers and twists them, as if he is making hangmen’s nooses or ropes to escape towers in his sleep. Someone has to straighten the covers out. Ambrose might catch a cold.

  Hilda gallivanted off to England for ages and returned with a ridiculous boy in tow, which is so typical. Zelda highly disapproved of Ambrose from the first. He never listens, can’t be trusted, can’t be still. He’s always laughing at her, and even when he isn’t, it’s like he is: He has those laughing eyes. He is her disgrace, her burden, her family’s bad apple.

  He is hers, and Zelda would kill anyone who tried to take him away.

  It’s a burning shame that Ambrose committed a crime and besmirched the family name, but Zelda thinks the punishment was very fitting. Satan guided the coven’s hand there. Ambrose will be under Zelda’s eye forever. It’s better for him to stay home.

  Next Zelda steals softly into Sabrina’s room. There is never any need to straighten Sabrina’s covers. She sleeps under the sheets on her back, flat as a corpse or a good girl. She hugs a big stuffed rabbit toy in her sleep. Zelda offered her a lovely real stuffed fox, but Sabrina said no. The silly girl doesn’t know what’s good for her. Zelda worries about that.

  When Sabrina was little, Zelda would walk the floors by night carrying her. If Sabrina wanted to be held all night, that was fine with Zelda. Sabrina slept better when she was being held and rocked. Sabrina would clutch at people with her tiny fists when they tried to put her down, and her grip was amazingly strong. Zelda believes that Sabrina got that tenacity from her. Sabrina’s not soft like Hilda, not unsteady like Ambrose. Zelda raised her and trained her to be the perfect witch.

  These days, Sabrina is so close to her dark baptism. Zel
da doesn’t want to disturb her sleep.

  After checking on Sabrina, Zelda goes outside and sits in a graceless way she would never permit anybody to see, and buries her face in her knees.

  Oh sweet Satan, the shame if anybody ever did see. They would think she was weaker than Hilda.

  When Zelda feels most insecure and irritable, she knows she kills Hilda too often. Kept safe under Spellman ground, Hilda can’t leave her. If Zelda kills Hilda, for a few moments Zelda is certain nobody else can. And when Hilda crawls from the Cain Pit in front of their house, sometimes Zelda can pretend Edward will follow Hilda, and her sister and her brother will both come home.

  Zelda knows she has to let Sabrina go out into the wide world of shadows waiting for her. Sabrina could be the pride and joy of the family reborn. Zelda wants that with terrible, clawing ferocity. She tries to crush out her fear for Sabrina, half mortal and wholly precious, her terror that Sabrina will be reckless, will be disobedient, will be lost. She tries to silence the voice inside her that screams Sabrina is in danger.

  Sabrina’s dark baptism will go perfectly. She will make Zelda proud.

  Zelda feels sometimes as if her heart might break, but she knows her heart must not be divided.

  I talked fast and convinced Principal Hawthorne that the flowers were an art project meant to celebrate Greendale.

  “Like the fireworks at the Last Day of Summer fair.”

  Principal Hawthorne frowned. “I didn’t know they had fireworks at the fair.”

  “Well, they did,” I said. “Ask anyone. Harvey chose the school because—what better place than Baxter High to showcase civic pride? Right, Harvey?”

  Harvey, a bad liar, flushed and muttered: “Right.”

  “That was some quick thinking in there, Sabrina,” Tommy complimented me afterward, when we had gotten away with the promise that we would take down and clean up all the flowers ourselves. “Now Dad never has to know. But you and I will be talking about this later, Harvey.”