The Once and Future Witches

by Harrow, Alix E.

  Quinn makes a little yes-and-no bob of her head. “Four of them are still in the workhouse, as far as I know; I still haven’t found Jennie. A few others have had unpleasant encounters with the police. The Hull sisters were among the nineteen arrests.”

  Juniper can’t think of anything to say, can hardly think around the queasy guilt crawling up her throat. Quinn isn’t finished. “There are calls for the mayor’s resignation. The City Council has formed a committee to investigate the rise of witchcraft, headed by Mr. Gideon Hill. Who has climbed rather dramatically in the polls.”

  At the sound of Hill’s name Juniper stops feeling guilty or queasy or guilty; the only thing she feels is afraid. “He came to visit me in the Deeps,” she rasps.

  “Who did?”

  “Gideon Hill. And he’s not—he isn’t—” She swallows against the memory of those shadowy fingers pressing between her lips. “He’s a witch.”

  Bella and Quinn are quiet as Juniper stutters through the story, but she can tell she isn’t getting it right. She tells them what happened—how he melted through the bars, how he pulled confessions from her, how he laughed—but she can’t seem to tell them how it was. How his eyes flicked, furtive and fearful, how a stranger stood behind his face. How the shadows slid like oil between her teeth.

  “Well,” Bella said, adjusting her spectacles. “I suppose if men’s magic has proved somewhat efficacious for us, it stands to reason a man might master a little witchcraft.”

  “It wasn’t a little witchcraft. He said every shadow was his, he said—”

  “A bluff, surely. It would require an unthinkable degree of power to control a city full of shadows. And the ways would be ghastly, I imagine. We’d have heard about it if there were dozens of white lambs going missing, or piles of bones found in the City Council chambers, don’t you think?”

  Juniper sets her jaw. “I know what I saw. We ought to figure out what the hell he is, at least. And send a message to Agnes and the other Sisters, warn them that he knows their names, probably where they live, where they work.”

  Bella taps the folded-up poster again. “I suspect Agnes knows. She was already planning to leave South Sybil, I believe, and work under a different name. I recommended the ladies at Salem’s Sin, should she need to disguise herself.” There’s a gentleness to her tone, as if Juniper is a fretful horse that needs settling. “She could not be more cautious than she already is.”

  Juniper looks away, around the wood-paneled room that shouldn’t exist. There’s a narrow, mullioned window on the east wall, and the light that shines through this one is wintry and pale, as if it looks out at the month of January rather than June.

  “So. This is it.” Juniper makes a ta-da gesture with her hands. “The Lost Way of Avalon. Is it—did we—” The question she wants to ask is a childish one, but she can’t help herself. “Are we witches now?”

  Neither of them laugh at her, although Quinn’s mouth quirks again. Bella sweeps her hand grandly at the piled books and notes on the table. “We certainly have sufficient ways and words to become so, don’t we? An entire library of spells and hexes, curses and charms, poisons, potions, conjurings, recipes . . . Quinn and I are developing a system to catalog and translate them all.” Bella gives a small, contented sigh.

  “Translate them?”

  “Well, relatively few of them are in English, and none in what you might recognize as modern English. There are a few texts in Latin and Greek, but significantly more in Arabic, classical forms of Persian, a Turkic language or two, even something I think must be a written form of Malinke, from Old Mali. And then once we translate them there are the witch-ways to contend with. Herbs that are native to the Old World, for example, but which do not thrive in the new one, or ingredients which no longer exist—dragon’s tooth, siren’s scale, that sort of thing. It will take considerable time and effort, but already we’ve found a stronger spell for warding and another for rust—” Bella pauses in this rhapsody to squint worriedly at Juniper. “What’s wrong?”

  Juniper gives a shrug that tugs at the fresh scar around her neck. “Guess I just didn’t figure the Lost Way of Avalon would be a bunch of schoolwork.”

  Bella clucks her tongue at her. “The Last Three Witches of the West spent their final days assembling the world’s greatest library of witchcraft, which Agnes and Quinn and I went through considerable difficulty to retrieve. I’m so sorry it disappoints you.”

  “But even after you translate all these spells from Greek or hieroglyphs or what have you, are you sure we can work them? A woman would need a good helping of witch-blood, wouldn’t she?”

  “Well, as to that . . . Cleo and I are no longer convinced that magical prowess is a matter of inheritance.” Bella actually gives a little clap as she says this, as if she simply cannot contain herself.

  Juniper looks to Quinn, who translates, “We don’t know that blood counts for a damn thing, when it comes to witching.”

  Juniper makes a skeptical hunh that provokes her sister to rustle through a stack of scrolls. She unrolls one of them and points rather theatrically at an illustration painted in rusty red and brown. It shows a woman surrounded by spikes of flames, her mouth open in a silent scream, her skirts already alight. Beneath her feet, where Juniper might expect to find dry brush or logs, is a heaped, charred pile of books.

  Bella gives the illustration an aggressive tap. “Why were witches sentenced to burning, anyway? Why not hanging or beheading or stoning?” Back in Miss Hurston’s one-room schoolhouse Juniper was taught that witches were burned to remind folks of the hellfire that awaited them in the next life, but Juniper supposes Miss Hurston also believed that bad behavior could be cured by prayer and regular thwacks with her yardstick, so perhaps her information was flawed.

  Her sister leans closer, eyes bird-bright behind her spectacles. “What if they didn’t start as witch-burnings? What if they were book-burnings, in the beginning?”

  Juniper shrugs. “I guess.”

  Bella makes a noise like an irritable cat. “Think, June! What did Mags tell us every spell requires?”

  “The words, the will, the way.”

  “Where in that list does it mention a woman’s heritage? Her blood?” Bella gestures a little wildly to the carved door, to the tower behind it full of endless shelves of books. “I don’t think they were burning bloodlines out, at all—I think they were burning knowledge. Books, and the women who wrote them. I think . . . I think they stole the words and ways from us, and left us nothing but our wills.”

  Bella’s face is full of fierce intent, but Juniper feels as if something inside her has been punctured and is slowly deflating. Some part of her had been childishly hoping they were the long-lost great-granddaughters of the Mother, descendants of Morgan le Fay or Lilith or Eve herself. But perhaps they weren’t born for greatness, after all; perhaps no one was.

  Bella is still theorizing, speaking mostly to herself now. “I think the Maiden and Mother and Crone weren’t especially powerful for any reason other than the knowledge they kept. I wish . . .” Her voice goes a little sheepish, young-sounding. “I wish I could ask them. It would be infinitely more convenient than translating and transcribing all this.”

  Juniper thinks privately it would be infinitely more convenient if the lost power of witches had turned out to be an enchanted broomstick or a potion you drank at the half-moon, rather than a bunch of books in dead languages.

  She plucks moodily at Bella’s notes, admiring a diagram of a woman spitting flames from her mouth. “Is this a fire-starting spell?”

  “It seems so, yes.”

  “Can I try it?”

  “Can you start a magical fire in a tower full of paper and leather?”

  Juniper considers. “What if it were a very small fire?”

  Bella shoos her from the room with instructions to eat and return to bed.

  Juniper limps the rest of the way down the endless stairs, glaring a little resentfully at the spines of books she c
an’t read, watching the strange slant of the light through the windows. She finds the bread and cheese but takes it outdoors to eat, resting her spine against the sun-warmed stone of the tower.

  She thinks of Agnes, back at some loom, head bowed. Of Frankie and Victoria and Tennessee and all the others stuck in the workhouse, caged like crows. It doesn’t sit right, that Juniper should be here beneath the twisted boughs of Avalon, hurt but now healed, while the women of New Salem are left to cower and creep, undefended, with nothing but their wills to protect them . . .

  So give them the words and ways. It’s like someone whispers it in Juniper’s ear, in a voice like rose-leaves rustling. Juniper wonders if the Deeps shook something loose in her skull, or if the tower is haunted, and then decides she doesn’t care because the ghost has a damn good point.

  She wanted the Lost Way to be a miracle-cure, a waved wand that turned every woman into a witch. But if there isn’t any such thing as witch-blood—if none of them are born for greatness and all they have are moldering stacks of books and an overgrown tower just south of somewhere—perhaps they have to make the miracle themselves.

  When Juniper comes clattering back up the stairs and announces her intention to slip back into New Salem and spread the good word of witchcraft among its women, like Johnny Appleseed if he had a bag of spells instead of seeds, Bella is not especially surprised. Juniper has always been the wild one.

  Bella feels the spark of her spirit burning in the line between them, white-hot—the line which shouldn’t exist, which is the subject of several pages of Bella’s notes and queries and theoretical musings—and knows she will have to lock her sister in the top of the tower if she wants to stop her, and even that would merely delay her; Juniper isn’t the sort of maiden to wait around for rescue.

  “This is a very bad idea.” Bella says it mostly out of the dim sense that she would like to have the opportunity to say I told you so after the dust settles. “The witches of Old Salem called back the Lost Way and started slinging spells and cursing enemies left and right, and look how that turned out.”

  Juniper shrugs. “So I’ll be more careful than they were.”

  “You don’t have a reputation for careful, June.”

  “Why did we do all this, exactly? Why did we call back the Lost Way?” Juniper’s hands are on her hips, her head tilted, defiant. The skin around her neck has a raw shine to it and her voice is lower and smokier than it used to be, as if she keeps a hot coal in her mouth.

  (At St. Hale’s they taught Bella that pain was the greatest teacher; how is it that Juniper never seems to learn?)

  “To save you,” Bella answers. Beside her, Quinn adds something beneath her breath that sounds suspiciously like you ungrateful wretch.

  A guilty blush rises in her cheeks, but Juniper’s hands remain on her hips. “Sure, yes. But I meant—why was I in the Deeps in the first place?”

  “Murder?” Quinn suggests, and Bella lets out half a laugh before she catches it.

  Juniper waves a harassed hand at the pair of them. “They threw me in the Deeps because we were stirring things up. We were reminding this city that we were witches, once, and might be again.” Her voice husks lower. “And it was working. People were listening. More than listening—how many names are written in your notebook? Nineteen arrests, you said. Should we hide away while our Sisters suffer for our sins? Are we such cowards?”

  The word coward wraps tight around Bella’s throat, a blouse that no longer fits. She meets Quinn’s eyes. I beg you not to deceive yourself.

  “No,” she says steadily, “I am not.”

  Quinn exhales. “Well, that’s good. Seeing as I have already supplied the Daughters with at least half a dozen spells.”

  Juniper cackles while Bella gapes. “You already—but—” She feels old and stuffy and librarianish—and a little betrayed.

  Quinn sobers. “I didn’t tell anyone where I got them, or how to find us. I think my mother at least suspects the Lost Way is no longer lost, but you have no need to worry. We know all about secrets on the south side.”

  “I . . . see. Well.” Bella draws a deep breath. “It’s hardly fair to favor our Daughters over our Sisters. Shall we even the score?”

  Juniper smiles so widely her lip cracks and bleeds.

  That evening, just as dusk purples toward night and the first stars open like white eyes above them, Juniper opens the tower door. Her pockets bristle with witch-ways and her cloak drapes dark and long behind her. She hardly seems to feel the wounds and bruises still mottling her flesh.

  The problem with saving someone, Bella thinks, is that they so often refuse to remain saved. They careen back out into the perilous world, inviting every danger and calamity, quite careless of the labor it took to rescue them in the first place.

  “Where will you go first?” Bella asks.

  Juniper looks over her shoulder with a fey wink. “Oh, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. You can read about it in the papers tomorrow.”

  SUSPECTED WITCHES

  ESCAPE FROM SAINT JUDE’S

  WORKHOUSE FOR WOMEN; FIVE

  WOMEN NOW AT LARGE

  June 24th, 1893, The New Salem Post

  . . . the five women—four of whom were taken into custody on the last full moon, in the midst of a Satanic ritual conducted in the heart of the New Salem cemetery—were still in their cells at the workhouse on the evening of the twenty-third. In the morning the guards found their doors locked but the cells empty. One witness on the street reports seeing six bats flit from the workhouse that night; another claims it was an owl carrying a long golden rope. All of them agree that they saw a dark-haired woman with a pronounced limp in the vicinity.

  Our readers are asked to report any sightings of this young woman or the escaped suspects—Victoria V. Hull and Tennessee T. Hull; Frankie U. Black; Gertrude R. Bonnin; and Alexandra V. Domontovich—to the New Salem Police Department.

  BREAK-IN AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE

  June 26th, 1893, The Times of Salem

  The New Salem Hall of Justice ought to be the safest place in the city to store one’s belongings, but officers confirmed this morning that the personal effects of Miss James Juniper Eastwood—including a number of ungodly herbs and potions as well as an antique locket containing human hair—have been stolen . . .

  Several other alterations were made to the Hall during the night, including the disappearance of several warrants and bonds, and the vulgar alteration of several officers’ badges.

  DOCTOR MARVEL’S ANTHRO-POLOGICAL EXHIBITION SHUTS ITS DOORS

  June 29th, 1893, The New Salem Post

  Following the disappearance of most of its occupants, Doctor Marvel’s Magnificent Anthropological Exhibition will be closed to the public.

  This beloved attraction, designed to educate the public about the many fascinating peoples of the world, is no stranger to difficulties and irregularities. Doctor Marvel himself recounted to The Post the many occasions on which his subjects have resisted his efforts to educate the public. “Had a pair of Indian witches last summer that ran off three or four times before I found their little satchel of shells and bones. And a little Hungarian girl last Christmas cursed her handler so that the smallest ray of sunlight burned his flesh. But I’ve never had anything like this.”

  At approximately ten-thirty last Sunday evening, the Last Witch Doctor of the Congo began to laugh. She continued laughing until several staff members left their beds to investigate, and found all the members of the exhibition missing. Where the Witch Doctor ought to have lain, they found only rusted chains and a white, grinning skull; each staff member who saw the skull that night has since been plagued by bad dreams and poor sleep.

  A DECLARATION FOR

  NEW CAIRO

  July 4th, 1893, a letter from the editors of The New Salem Defender

  The recent raids conducted by the Police Department have left seven buildings burnt in New Cairo and ruined the livelihoods of several hardworking families. The e
ditors of this paper soundly reject the Council’s argument that such raids are necessary for public safety and note that none of them produced any evidence of witchcraft at all.

  . . . If the authorities of New Salem insist on maintaining this adversarial position toward our neighborhood, perhaps it is time for New Cairo to follow that hallowed American tradition: secession.

  Maiden, Mother, and Crone,

  Guard the bed that I lie on,

  One to watch,

  One to pray,

  One to keep the shadows at bay.

  A warding spell, requiring salt & thistleseed

  Agnes Amaranth is nothing, these days.

  She used to be something—the city is wallpapered with her face, beautiful and terrible, her name written large above her crimes—but neither the face nor the name now belongs to her. Thanks to the ladies of Salem’s Sin, Agnes’s hair is the dull, forgettable color of sewer-water, and her face is pocked and rough as the surface of the moon. Mr. Malton barely glanced at her when she turned up back at the Baldwin Brothers mill, asking for work. He shoved the record book across the desk and she wrote the first name she thought of: Calliope Cole.

  Each time someone says the name she startles, because she hasn’t heard her mother’s name since she was a girl. She gains a reputation in the mill as being flighty, perhaps a little simple.

  She doesn’t mind. She keeps to herself, the way she used to before this summer of sisters and witching. The mill-girls are content to ignore her.

  Or at least most of them are. Yulia offered her a friendly, knuckle-grinding handshake on her first day, then squinted hard at the familiar gray of her eyes. “Ha,” she grunted. “It’s clever, using a different name. We should find a new meeting house, too, yes?”

  Agnes shrugged. “I suppose you should. I wish you luck.”

  Agnes watched Yulia’s face curl from confusion to disdain. “I see. They locked my girl up for a week, fed her stale bread and rancid butter, and she is not afraid.”