Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful

by Paula Guran

  “How boring,” said Emma, although the rest of us would have liked to go there, at least for the afternoon, it was so peaceful.

  And then, for days, we saw nothing. But finally, in the ghost’s mirror, appeared the ghost of a mouse, small and gray, staring at us with black eyes.

  “He’s hungry,” said the ghost. Emma handed her a piece of gingerbread, and she nibbled it gratefully, although we knew that wasn’t what she meant. And from then on, we called her Mouse.

  “If you’d only apply yourself, Rose, I’m sure you could do it,” said Miss Gray, as Miss Osborn, the mathematics teacher, had said at the end of the school year while giving out marks. Rose scowled again, certain that she could not. And it was Justina whom we saw next.

  “It’s only a book,” she said. It was a large book, bound in crimson leather with gilding on its spine, and a gilt title on the cover: Justina.

  “Open it,” said Miss Gray.

  “How?” But she was already reaching into the mirror, opening the book at random—to a page that began, “And so, Justina opened the book.” The rest of the page was blank. “Who writes in it?” asked Justina, as the words “ ‘Who writes in it,’ asked Justina” wrote themselves across the page.

  “That’s enough for now,” said Miss Gray as she reached into the mirror and closed the book. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  On the day that Rose finally saw herself, the rest of us were grinding bones into powder and putting the powder into jars labeled lizard, bat, frog. Mouse was sewing wings on a taxidermed mouse.

  “That’s it?” asked Rose, outraged. “I’ve been practicing all this time for a stupid rosebush? It doesn’t even have roses. It’s all thorns.”

  “Wait,” said Miss Gray. “It’s early yet for roses,” although the pink roses—La Reine, she had told us—were blooming over the sides of the Randolph house, and their perfume filled the laboratory.

  Sitting in the cottage afterward, we agreed: the first lesson had been disappointing. But we rather liked grinding bones.

  Rose’s heart swung in her chest like a pendulum when Miss Gray said, “It’s time you learned how to fly.” She told us to meet in the woods, at the edge of Slater’s Pond. Mouse was late, she was almost always late. As we stood waiting for her, Emma whispered, “Do you think we’re going to use broomsticks? Witches use broomsticks, right?”

  Miss Gray, who had been looking away from us and into the woods, presumably for Mouse, turned and said, “Although Emma seems to have forgotten, I trust the rest of you remember that a lady never whispers. The use of a broomstick, although traditional, arose from historical rather than magical necessity. All that a witch needs to fly is a tree branch—the correct tree branch, carefully trained. It must have fallen, preferably in a storm—we are fortunate, this summer, to have had so many storms—and the tree from which it fell must be compatible with the witch. The principle is a scientific one: a branch, which has evolved to exist high above the earth, waving in the wind, desires to return to that height. Therefore, with the proper encouragement, it has the ability to carry the witch up into the air, which we experience as flying. Historically, witches have disguised their branches as brooms, to hide them from—those authorities who did not understand that witchcraft is a science. It is part of the lamentable history of prejudice against rational thinking. I myself, when I worked with Galileo— Sophia, I’m afraid you’re late again.”

  “I’m sorry,” mumbled Mouse, and we walked off into the woods, each separately searching for our branches, with Miss Gray’s voice calling instructions and encouragement through the trees.

  Justina’s branch was a loblolly pine, which only she could ride: it kicked and bucked like an untrained colt. Melody rode a tulip poplar that looked too large for her. It moved like a cart horse, but she said that it was so steady, she always felt safe. Rose found an Osage-orange that looked particularly attractive, with its glossy leaves and three dried oranges, now brown, still attached, but they did not agree—she liked to soar over the treetops, and it preferred to navigate through the trees, within a reasonable distance of the ground. When she flew too high, it would prick her with its thorns. So she gave it to Emma, who rode it until the end of summer and afterward asked Henry to carve a walking stick out of it, so she would not forget her flying lessons. Rose finally settled on a winged elm, which she said helped her loop-de-loop, a maneuver only she would try. Mouse took longer than all of us to find her branch: she was scared of flying, we could see that. Finally, Miss Gray gave her a shadbush, which never flew too high and seemed as skittish as she was. Miss Gray herself flew on a sassafras, which never misbehaved. She rode side-saddle, with her back straight and her skirt sweeping out behind her, in a steady canter.

  “Straighten your back,” she would say, as we flew, carefully at first and then with increasing confidence, over the pasture beneath Slocumb’s Bluff, the highest point in Ashton. “Rose, you look like a hunchback. Melody, you must ride your branch with spirit. Think of yourself as Hippolyta riding her favorite horse to war.”

  “Who’s Hippolyta?” asked Emma, gripping her branch as tightly as she could. She had just avoided an encounter with the rocky side of the bluff. Mouse was the most frightened, but Emma was the most cautious of us.

  “Queen of the Amazons,” said Melody, attempting to dodge two Monarchs. Since the day she had seen herself in the mirror, butterflies had come to her, wherever she was. They sat on her shoulders, and early one morning, when she was cleaning the mirror in Elspeth Jefferson’s bedroom, she saw that they had settled on her hair, like a crown.

  That day, none of us were being Amazon queens. Rose was flying close to the side of the bluff and over the Himalayas, in a cloak of egret feathers. She could see the yak she had once ridden, sulking beneath her. She was, for the first time she could remember, perfectly happy. Somewhere among those peaks were the Forbidden Cities. She could see the first of them, the City of Winter, where the Snow Queen ruled in isolated splendor and the Princesses Elizabeth and Caroline rode thought the city streets in a sleigh drawn by leopards as white as snow. She flew upward, over the towers of the city, which were shining in the sunlight. And there were the people, serene and splendid, looking up at her, startled to see her flying above them with her cloak of egret feathers streaming out behind her, although they were too polite to shout. But then one and another raised their hands to wave to her, and the bells on their wrists jingled, like sleigh bells.

  She raised her hand to wave back, and plunged down the side of the bluff.

  “What were you thinking!” said Emma, when Rose was sitting on a boulder at the bottom of the bluff, with her ankle bound up in Miss Gray’s scarf.

  “I pulled out of it, didn’t I?” said Rose.

  “But you almost didn’t,” said Melody. “You really should be more careful.”

  Rose snorted, and we knew what Miss Gray would say to that. A lady never snorts. But Miss Gray had other problems to take care of.

  “Justina!” she called, but Justina wasn’t listening. Serenity Sage was floating over the Alps in a balloon. In a castle in Switzerland, The Mask was waiting for her. He had not been captured by the Inquisition after all, and knowing that he was free had given her the resolve to starve herself until she was slender enough to slip through the prison bars, and then up through the darkness of the stone passages under the cathedral. There, through a rosewood fretwork, she had seen the secret rites of the Inquisition, and they had marked her soul forever. But today she was free and flying in the sunlight over the mountains. For three days now, her grandmother had been sick. Zelia had been sitting with her, Zelia had taken care of everything, and the cut on Justina’s shoulder was healing, although the paperweight with a view of the Brighton Pavilion would never be the same. Three days, three days of freedom, thought Serenity, watching the mountains below, which looked like a bouquet of white roses.

  “Justina!” called Miss Emily. “Are you simply going to float up into the sky? Stop at onc
e.”

  The loblolly stopped, although Justina almost didn’t. She lurched forward and looked around, startled, at Miss Gray.

  “I don’t want to be an Amazon queen,” said Emma, watching from below, “and I don’t want to learn to fly.”

  “How can you not want to fly?” asked Rose.

  “Because I’m not you. How can you never remember to comb your hair?”

  Rose ran her fingers through her hair, which did look like it had been in a whirlwind.

  “Stop arguing,” said Melody. “I’m worried about Mouse.”

  “She’s doing all right,” said Rose. What Mouse lacked in courage, she made up for in determination: she was sputtering over the meadow, her thin legs stuck out on either sides of the branch, her body bent forward to make it go faster, her hair falling into her face.

  “That’s not what I’m worried about,” said Melody. “Have you noticed how thin she’s getting?”

  “You’d be so much better if you practiced,” said Rose. “Melody practices. That’s why she’s the best flyer, after me and Justina.”

  “I don’t think you’re so much better than Justina,” said Emma.

  “You’re not listening,” said Melody. “I said—” but just then a flock of Painted Ladies rose about her, so thick that she had to brush them away with her hands.

  We all learned to fly, although it took longer than we expected, and by the time we could all soar over the bluff—except Emma, who preferred to stay close to the ground—the summer storms had passed. We could feel, in the colder updrafts, the coming of autumn.

  Despite what Emma had said, Rose was the best of us, the most accomplished flyer. She had explored the Himalayas, had found each of the Forbidden Cities hidden among their peaks, including the city that was simply a stone maze, the City of Birds, where she had practiced speaking bird language, and the temporary and evanescent City of Clouds.

  Autumn was coming, and these were the things we knew: how to, in a mirror or still pond, see Historical Scenes (although we were heartily sick of the Battle of Waterloo and the Death of Cleopatra, which Miss Gray seemed to particularly enjoy); summon various animals, including possums, squirrels, sparrows, and stray dogs; turn small pebbles into gold and turn gold into small pebbles (to which we had lost another pair of Emma’s earrings); and speak with birds. We could now speak to the crows that lived in the trees beside the Beaufort’s cottage, although they never said anything interesting. It was always about whose daughter was marrying whom, and how that changed the rules of precedence, which were particularly arcane among crows.

  We thought of them first, when we decided to do something about Mouse.

  “Can’t we ask the birds? Maybe they know where she is.” Melody sat curled in a corner of the green sofa, like one of Miss Gray’s cats. “We haven’t seen her for days.” But the crows, who told us everything they knew about mice, knew nothing about Mouse.

  “Try the mirror,” said Justina. “If we can watch the Battle of Waterloo over and over, surely we can see where Mouse has gone.” We were startled: since we had learned how to fly, Justina had seemed more distant than ever, and although she still spent mornings with us at the cottage, she always seemed to be somewhere else.

  The only mirror in the cottage had once been in the Beauforts’ front hall; it was tall and in a gilt frame, the sort of hall mirror that had been fashionable when old Mrs. Balfour and Mrs. Beaufort, Emma’s grandmother, had ruled the social world of Ashton, whose front halls had to be widened to accommodate their crinolines. When Adeline Beaufort entered the house after Grandma Beaufort’s funeral, she said, “That mirror has to go.”

  Justina wiped the dust from it with her handkerchief, which turned as gray and furry as a mouse.

  “Please,” she said, as politely as Miss Gray had taught us, because one should always be polite, even to dead alligators, “show us Mouse.”

  “Not Cleopatra again!” said Emma. We were sitting around Justina, who sat on the floor in front of the mirror. “You know, I don’t think she’s beautiful at all. I don’t know what Mark Anthony saw in her.”

  “Please show us America,” said Justina. “And nowadays, not in historical times.” We were no longer looking at the obelisks of Egypt, but at a group of teepees, with Indians sitting around doing what Indians did, we supposed, when they weren’t scalping settlers. We had all learned in school that Indians collected scalps like Rose’s mother collected Minton figurines.

  “Thank you,” said Justina. “But here in Ashton.” We saw a city, with buildings three or four stories high and crowds in the streets, milling around the trolleys and their teams of horses. “That’s New York,” said Melody, and we remembered that she had lived there, once—when her mother was still alive. Then ships in a harbor, their sails raised against the sky, and then Emma’s mother, staring into a mirror, so that we started back, almost expecting to see ourselves reflected behind her. She spread Dr. Bronner’s Youth Cream over her cheeks and what they call the décolletage, and then slapped herself to raise the circulation. She leaned toward the mirror and touched the skin under her eyes, anxiously.

  Emma turned red. “Parents are so stupid.”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Justina patiently, “but we really want to see Mouse. No, that’s—what’s Miss Gray doing with Zelia?” They were walking in the Balfour’s garden, their heads bent together, talking as though they were planning—what?

  And there, finally, was Mouse.

  We saw at once why Mouse had been missing our lessons with Miss Gray: she was tied up. There was a rope tied around one of her ankles, with a knot as large as the ankle itself.

  “It looks like—the dungeons of the Inquisition,” said Justine.

  “It looks like the old slave house at the Caldwell plantation,” said Melody. It had burned during the war, and other than the slave house, only the front steps of the plantation, which were made of stone, remained to mark where it had been.

  “It’s a good thing we can’t smell through the mirror,” said Emma. “I bet it stinks.”

  In the mirror, Mouse was waving her hands as though conducting a church choir. And as she waved, visions rose in the air around her. Trees grew, taller and paler than we had ever seen. Melody later told us they were paper birches—she had found a picture in a library book. Mouse was sitting on what seemed to be moss, but there was a low mist covering her knees like a blanket, and we could only see the ground as the mist shifted and swirled. The birches around her glowed in the light of—was it the sun, as pale as the moon, that shone through the gray clouds? The forest seemed to go on in every direction, and it was wet—leaves dripped, and Mouse’s eyelashes were beaded with water drops. Then a pale woman stepped out from one of the birches—from behind it or within it, we could not tell, and all the pale women stepped out, and they moved in something that was not a dance, but a pattern, and the hems of their dresses, which were made of the thinnest, most translucent bark, made the mist swirl up in strange patterns. Up it went, like smoke, and suddenly the vision was gone. Mouse sat, curled in a corner, with the rope around her ankle.

  “I don’t think she learned that from Miss Gray,” said Emma.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Rose. “We have to do something.” And we knew that we had to do something, because we felt in the pit of our stomachs what Rose was feeling: a sick despair.

  “Rescue her,” said Melody. She looked around at the rest of us, and suddenly we realized that we were going to do exactly that, because Melody was the practical one, and if she had suggested it, then it could be done.

  “How?” asked Rose. “We don’t even know where she is.”

  “On our branches,” said Justina. “Mirror, show us—slowly, show us the roof. Now the street. Look, it’s one of the drying sheds by the old tobacco factory. All we need to do is follow the railroad tracks.”

  “How can we fly on our branches?” asked Emma. “We’ll be seen.”

  “No, we won’t,” said Justina. Sh
e looked at us, waiting for us to understand, and one by one, as though candles were being lit in a dark room, we knew. “Rose, how long has it been since your mother asked where you spend your afternoons? How long has it been since anyone asked any of us, even Melody? Why has Coralie started doing her afternoon chores? And when Emma burned one of her braids, when we were making butterscotch on the Bunsen burner and Miss Gray came in suddenly and startled us, did anyone notice?” No one had. “I don’t think anyone has seen what we’ve been doing, all summer. We’ve become like Miss Gray’s cats, invisible until you’re about to sit on them. I think we could fly through Brickleford on market day and no one would notice.”

  So we flew through the streets of Ashton, as high as the roofs of the houses, seeing them from the air for the first time. Ashton seemed smaller, from up there, and each of us thought the same thing—I will leave here one day. Only Emma was sorry to think so.

  We landed by the shed that the mirror had shown us. One by one, we dismounted from our branches. Justina—we had not known she could be such a good leader—opened the door. It did look like a dungeon of the Inquisition, and smelled just as Emma had expected—the smell of death and rotting meat. Mouse was sitting in her corner, with her arms around her knees and her head down, crying. She did not look up when we opened the door.

  “Mouse,” said Rose. “We’ve come to rescue you.” It sounded, we realized, both brave and silly.

  Mouse looked up. We had never seen her face so dirty. Each tear seemed to have left behind a streak of dirt. “Why?” she asked.