By Any Other Name

by Kayti McGee

  “Exactly.”

  I pouted for a bit. “What was she like?” His face softened.

  “Beautiful. Impetuous. So, so talented. I miss her so much. It isn’t fair that—” this time it was himself he cut off.

  “Talented at what? My only superpower is reading.” Mother had tried me in piano, ballet, and art lessons as a child and I was worse at each one than the last. Books were the only place I excelled, reading early and often and well above my grade level.

  “I doubt that, child. But reading is good. You should stick with that.” I noted he didn’t answer the question.

  “Do I have any other family here, then? You said this is home.” I wanted desperately to ask about the man who got Luna pregnant, but given the conversation so far, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the circumstances of my conception. Not all children are made with love. His next words made me glad I hadn’t pushed.

  “We were the last. Now it’s just me.” Rune’s eyes were bright again, but I didn’t really know how to comfort him.

  “Now it’s just us.” Me and him. Our numbers had doubled. But he was already shaking his head.

  “I’m afraid not. How did you find me, anyway?”

  “Some guy at Ella’s told me the way. A little older than me, black ponytail. Lots of tattoos. A little… intense.” The memory of him was clouded, though. Like all I could really remember was his outline, and his eyes.

  “It may already be too late for you, then.” His face was filled with unbearable sadness. “Leave here. Find a creek, baptise yourself in the waters there. The crystals that form the bed of the aquifer will help mask your energy. Make you invisible again. Then you go. Run as far away as you can, and don’t come back. And whatever you do, stay away from the mountain.”

  There wasn’t much to say to that. It seemed like he actually believed the stuff coming out of his mouth, even though he’d just called other people hippies and whack-jobs.

  It was clear to me that he’d suffered a breakdown after the loss of his sister. I couldn’t exactly sympathize, I had no frame of reference. No siblings of my own. But I could imagine. So I’d leave his house. But like hell was I running anywhere. In a day or two, once the shock of seeing his sister’s face on me wore off, I was sure he’d want to spend more time together. How could he not? He’d obviously adored Luna.

  There was a certain creepy amateur local historian I could probably get more answers out of as well. I’d spend the next week at the cafe if I had to until he came back in.

  And in the meantime, I’d now had three warnings not to go prowling around Juniper Hollow. That was reason enough to do it. Third time’s a charm, and all that. Everyone always seemed to think they knew better than me what I should be doing. My parents. My ex-boyfriend. Now the uncle I’d never even known about before last week. I was sick of being bossed around. This was my past, my blood, and I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew more about it.

  Or at least had a good hard think.

  I wrote my number on the windowsill, in a tiny spot unmarked by the repeated designs.

  And when I climbed back in my car, I only drove down to the end of the street and parked again. My glovebox held a half-bottle of cheap red wine, because one never knows when one may require some. This seemed to qualify. So I tucked it into my purse, checked the pepper spray again, and walked into the woods. Not too far, I wasn’t good enough with direction to find my way back. Maybe fifty feet or so in, far enough that I could no longer see my car, a flat stone beckoned.

  I sat, unscrewed my wine, and took a long swallow.

  “Here’s to you, Luna,” I said, and poured a splash onto the ground.

  The earth swallowed the wine as greedily as I had, and every bird fell silent. All life in the woods seemed snuffed out for a moment, dead as my birth mother. A shiver ran down my spine. The air froze solid.

  Then he stepped out from behind a tree, green eyes glowing.

  And I knew with every ounce of certainty in my bones that I had made a terrible mistake.

  Five

  Thorn

  As soon as I reached the foothills, as soon as the last human disappeared from view, I cut through the air like a ghost and emerged in the forest behind Rune Underwood’s cabin. The girl was just pulling up the drive. I heard tires crunching gravel, an old chain rattling, and the weary, bass woof of a guard dog.

  I closed my eyes and continued to listen.

  What I heard did not clarify the situation. If anything, it muddied the waters. Rune Underwood was no mere friend to Rose. He was family; he was her uncle. Her late mother’s name was Luna. They were witch names, to be sure: Rune, Rose, Luna...

  “Who are you,” I spoke into the silence, “and why have you come?”

  Wind rushed through the aspen. Round, yellowed leaves tumbled along the forest floor. I knelt and traced a rune for clarity in the earth, then another for vision. I needed to get rid of the girl. Hadn’t I followed her for that purpose? Or had I followed her to learn more about what she was? Had I already decided to spare her because of her beauty and because of her name?

  My lips curled and I shook my head. Don’t be a fool, I warned myself.

  When Rose left her uncle’s house, I followed, flickering through the trees. Night comes down fast in autumn, in the mountains. One moment, bars of sun are slicing through the canopy—the next, shadows fall. It was barely half past four and gloom filled the wood. My strength grew with the coming dark. I didn’t need to look at the sky to know that a waning gibbous hung there in a net of stars. The moon was in my blood.

  In nine days, it would be the dark of the moon. Then, unlike the other Blackmane witches, who professed to feel their highest efficacy at the full moon, I would reach the height of my power. I had always been a darkling thing.

  “Audi vocem meam,” I spoke, “amor vocem meam, sequitur vocem meam, voluntatem, voluntatem tuam.” I moved along the inner border of my family’s land, drawing strength from the earth. Warm wind eddied around me, carrying my voice upward. Soon, the sound of it filled the air. I ceased to speak and yet the whispery chant continued, faster and faster, like a current, like a zephyr.

  The girl’s car stopped. She came into the forest, but she didn’t come to me the way she should have come, stumbling and stunned, a sailor to a siren. My concentration broke. The wind died down and my voice faded to silence.

  No spell of mine had fizzled in the last fifty years.

  That damned ward...

  I stalked into the clearing where Rose sat on a stone, a bottle of wine in her hand and her eyes infuriatingly clear.

  As soon as she saw me, she leapt up and stepped back. I watched the awareness dawn on her face: Mistake, I’ve made a mistake. She cast a wild look over her shoulder. We were alone and the night was coming.

  “I told you to stay out of the woods,” I said.

  She dropped her bottle and scrabbled for something in her coat pocket. Her arms shook as she brandished a tiny can of pepper spray, the nozzle pointed directly at me but the cap still firmly in place.

  “Stop!” Her voice only quavered a little.

  I paused and held up my hands in a “don’t shoot” gesture. “You probably want to take off the cap.”

  Embarrassment flushed her face, or maybe she had sampled the wine. I had to admit, she looked properly witchy in the woods with her wine and her wild red hair. I wouldn’t have minded kneeling in the leaves and doing a spell or two with her.

  “I know,” she stammered. She removed the Mace cap and resumed pointing the pitifully small canister at me. “L-look, I want to talk to you, but not here, so...” She took another step back. “So go away, okay? I’m having a... a private moment.”

  “We are going to talk,” I said, “and it is going to be here, now. Rose, I told you to stay out of the woods.” I took a step toward her and her eyes went fully round. The tang of fear filled the air. It was bitter and thick. I wondered at it the way humans wonder at the night sky. How awful, to feel that afraid
, and how intoxicating.

  “I’m going to use this if you take another step. I swear. Get back.”

  In response to her threat, I curled my fingers to a fist and whispered, “Pulvis.” The can of pepper spray disintegrated. A fine, sand-like substance filtered to the ground.

  I tilted my head at her. Your move, I thought. If she had magic in her, surely now was the time to use it.

  She didn’t.

  Instead, she reacted like any human seeing real magic for the first time. Her paper white skin, improbably, went a shade lighter. Her mouth worked speechlessly. She shook her hand and rubbed it on her coat and her breath came fast, choppy and shallow.

  “Calm down,” I said. “Have a seat.” I nodded at the rock.

  She plunked onto the stone table and stared up at me. Her face had gone weirdly calm. If I had to guess, she was either thinking I am dreaming or I am going to die. Whatever the case, shock had resigned her to her fate.

  Rose was made of stronger stuff than most mortals, though. I had seen people faint dead away in the face of magic, their minds unable or unwilling to accept it.

  “I take it you’ve never seen anything like that?” I said.

  She shook her head numbly.

  “And you aren’t lying to me?” I pressed.

  Again, the barest shake of her head.

  I frowned, my brow creased. Someone had placed a potent warding spell on Rose, yet she seemed unaware of it, just as she seemed unaware of witchcraft altogether. Up until half an hour ago, Rune Underwood had been a stranger to her. Her mother had perhaps been a witch, but her mother was dead and Rose had lost the path. Why?

  More—I couldn’t fathom how this girl, who thought a keychain can of pepper spray was a suitable defense in the woods of Juniper Hollow, posed any threat to the Maven of the Blackmane Coven.

  Rose’s wine had gurgled into the ground, for the most part. I stooped and collected the bottle: Barefoot Sweet Red Blend. My nose wrinkled.

  “Surely you can do better than this,” I said. I set the bottle beside her. A few mouthfuls sloshed in the bottom and maybe she needed them. She strained away from me, her shoulders hunching inward. She gave me a crazed look, as if I were actually going to mock her taste in wine before murdering her.

  I wouldn’t do that to her. In fact, I had decided I wouldn’t destroy her tonight at all. The excuse I would present to Marion was that I suspected Rose of being a witch.

  The truth, as is the way of the truth, was much more complicated.

  “Have a drink,” I said. I tried to make my voice warm and tranquil, not betraying my growing unease. Soon it would be night. Soon the Blackmanes would be out in the woods. I couldn’t risk them finding Rose or seeing us together.

  Rose lifted the bottle to her lips with admirable steadiness. She drained it, wiped her mouth, and calmly met my gaze.

  “Are you going to kill me?” she said at last.

  Truly, she seemed to me then to be the bravest human or witch I had ever encountered, because I had taken many lives, and I had seen that horrible question in many eyes, but I had never met the soul with the courage to ask it. I crouched at her feet, half in reverence, half in a gesture of amity. I gazed at her earnestly. “No. I’m going to help you, but you need to listen to me. You know what your uncle said, about washing yourself in the valley waters? You need to do that. You need to do it now.”

  Rose processed my words for a longer while than I liked. The realization that I had overheard her conversation with her uncle must have paled in comparison to my trick with the pepper spray, because she didn’t question it. Even strange things are relative in the land of the strange. She looked back toward her car.

  “And if I want to leave?” she said.

  “Then I won’t stop you.” I straightened and backed away.

  She took another several minutes to consider that. She stood and dusted off her coat. She stepped toward her car, hugged herself, and turned back toward me.

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “You shouldn’t,” I said. “You trust your uncle, though, don’t you?”

  She rocked on her heels. “Well, he seemed kind of out there, but...” She eyed me.

  “But not so much anymore, right?” I turned and started into the woods. “There’s a stream not far from here.”

  I didn’t know if she would follow. I kept moving nevertheless, my thoughts a jumble. So much for my vision. So much for my clarity.

  I had all but disappeared into the shadows when I heard her hesitant footfalls behind me. Relief rushed through me. She was going to let me protect her, and I was perhaps the only person in this valley who could.

  I cast my senses ahead of us and walked briskly, forcing her to half-jog to keep up.

  About a quarter of a mile from the stone table, I stopped beside a trickling creek. Rain had been scarce that year and the streams were shallow or dry. This one, at least, ran clear over a bed of stones. Rose wouldn’t have to coat herself in mud.

  For the second time that afternoon, a wayward thought fled through my mind—that she would look perfect streaked with mud, like a druid priestess, a warrior queen.

  She stopped a safe distance from me, animal caution in her pose.

  “Here.” I gestured to the flashing water.

  She looked from me to the stream and back.

  “You’re wasting time,” I said. It was dark, so dark, and Marion walked these woods in her hundred forms.

  Rose edged closer to the water. “How am I supposed to...” She shrugged off her parka, pried off her boots, and crouched, shivering, beside the stream. She dipped her fingers in the current and yelped. “It’s freezing.”

  Pity wrenched at me. I knew that this was fast becoming the strangest night of Rose’s life, but I was determined it should not be her last.

  I stepped over the narrow flow of water once, twice, three times, and laid my hands on the stone bed. “Calefacto,” I coaxed. The mountain knew me and I knew the mountain. Between every two trees was a doorway I recognized. For me, the icy water turned tepid, then warm, and then hot as a bath.

  “Try now,” I said.

  Rose dipped her hand in the current and stared at me steadily. “What are you?”

  How I wanted to tell her, to answer her, and to bring her into my world. All the life I lacked, she seemed to possess. She would reanimate me. And I would get her killed.

  “Cover yourself completely. Quickly.”

  She swallowed noisily and nodded. She removed her sweater and socks and stepped into the water wearing only leggings, a black camisole, and burgundy nail polish. The stream was a mere sheet; she had to kneel in it and scoop handfuls of water onto herself. The silvertone drops rolled down her soft arms.

  That bulky sweater had hid her figure completely.

  “Stop staring,” she whispered.

  Staring. So I was. I lowered my eyes and told her to hurry.

  “I’m trying. It’s not my fault you chose a kiddie pool for this.”

  My grim expression cracked slightly. Now was not the time for jokes. Rose’s mental fortitude impressed me, though, as did her resilience.

  “This actually feels amazing,” she mumbled.

  I stole a glance. The things I could have shown her, if she thought a heated stream was amazing...

  She had loosened her hair and was attempting to dip the bright waves in the water. Baubles clung to her thick lashes.

  “Rose, hurry,” I said in a low voice. “We need to go.”

  A violent feminine energy spirited toward us. Rather than speeding up, Rose froze, our eyes locked. “Why?” Her hair straggled over her shoulder.

  I tried to gauge the speed of the approaching being.

  We didn’t have time to get back to her car.

  “You need to let me help you,” I ordered. “Please. Stay still.” I crouched in the stream and began pouring water over her skull as well as I could. Every time my fingers brushed her hair, a wicked rip of power warned me away. I gri
maced. “Stop.”

  “Stop what?” She barely breathed the question. “You’re scaring me.”

  “You should be scared. I told you not to come here. Stop fighting me. I can’t help you like this.” What I needed Rose to do was witchcraft 101: To relax her intention toward me so that I could work around the warding spell. We didn’t have time for a lesson, though. I gathered her hair into a rope and soaked it in the stream. Rune Underwood was right; the waters of Juniper Hollow would help to cloak Rose’s presence from other witches. I would do the rest. “Listen, you need to be calm. You need to—” I winced. Every contact was like a cattle prod.

  “I’m hurting you,” she realized aloud.

  “Yes,” I hissed. Our contact couldn’t have been very pleasant for her, either. “Try to stop. Try to relax. Tell me about something you like. Focus on it.”

  “I... I like reading.”

  “What books? Keep your voice down.”

  “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.”

  Stream water soaked into her clothes and hair. She began to recount the plot of the book, shuddering as she did. I clasped her face. With each passing second, the pain of our contact faded, and the witch in the woods drew nearer.

  “Keep going,” I whispered. “Evanescet, indeprensus, inobservatus, in tutum meas pallio zeli.” In my mantle safe, I prayed.

  “The wolves are c-constantly chasing them...”

  The cloaking spell took all my focus. The water became glacial again.

  I raised a finger to my lips for silence, stepped out of the stream, and waited. If Marion appeared, I would have to kill Rose then and there.

  Marion did not appear.

  It was Imogen who materialized, her cream-colored slip and hands dark with animal blood. Her eyes strafed over the scene: My damp jeans, the stream, the otherwise empty forest. At least, I hoped it appeared empty. Rose had gone still as stone behind me. Imogen’s eyes did not catch on the girl; they moved smoothly past her and back to my face. She flashed a feral smile.

  “Thorn. I thought I heard you playing.” She sashayed toward me.

  I gave her hands a meaningful look. “You’ve been playing too, it seems.”