Small Town Witch

by Kristen S. Walker

  I took more pictures of everything before we touched anything, and then I reached up to the records on the shelf first while Glen started on the spells. There was a whole row of thick, white binders with no labels on the outside. How did my mom know where to look for anything? The first one that I pulled down just held sales records from last year. The one next to it had sales records from this year. The theme repeated: they were all full of records of what my mom bought for the store and what she sold each year, going back the past ten years that the store had been open. I lifted the last heavy binder back onto the shelf. “You’d think it would be easier to keep all of this information on a computer or something.”

  “I guess she just likes to do it the old-fashioned way,” Glen said. Then he stepped away from the shelf behind the worktable and held something up. “I think it’s pretty obvious what this is.”

  I came over to see what he was holding. It was a small cloth doll with my own black hair on its head, a piece of blue cloth wrapped around it, and chalk symbols marked all over its body. The whole thing had a thin metal chain, like a necklace, wound around it. I shuddered when I took it from him.

  “What should we do with it?” I asked.

  Glen took the flashlight out of my other hand. “I think it’s better if you do it yourself. Destroy it. Start by taking off the chain.”

  I turned it over in my hands looking for a clasp or something that was holding the chain together, but it looked like it was unbroken all the way around. I bent the doll in half so one of the loops came loose and pulled that free, then used the slack to continue unwinding it. I put the chain down on the table and looked back at the doll. I took off the strip of blue cloth, which was made from one of my old shirts. I ripped off the hair and smudged the chalk symbols away as best as I could.

  I was left with a crudely shaped figure. The cloth was lumpy, like it was stuffed unevenly. I looked at the table and saw a small cast iron cauldron. I put the doll, the hair, and the cloth inside, saving the chain, and then glared inside at the mass.

  At first, I was afraid that nothing was going to happen, but then I felt the power coming back to me. The pile inside the cauldron burst into flames. The room began to smell like burning hair and herbs.

  When the fire had completely consumed everything that it could and went out, Glen handed me back my flashlight. “That’s done. One spell down, one to go.”

  “I’m going to start digging through the file cabinet,” I said, so he turned back to the spell shelf.

  When I started thumbing through the files in the first drawer, I couldn’t figure out what kind of organization system my mother was using. There were definitely notes about spells—many, many different spells. Were they all just spells for her clients? Some of them were labeled by moon phase, some were labeled by what the goal of the spell had been, and some were labeled with the client’s name. None of them were from the same year, and none of them seemed to be spells for our family.

  The second drawer down was just as disorganized and I still couldn’t find anything personal. Then, in the third and final drawer, I found a black leather-bound book tucked in the back. I pulled that out and opened it to get a closer look.

  “All of these spells are too small-scale to be what we’re looking for,” Glen said, coming over to join me. “What’s that you found?”

  “This looks like a gardening journal,” I said, thumbing through the pages. “When she put new plants in, when the harvest happened and how much she got, when she pruned—and there’s all these sketches of where she put the plants in, which other plants they’re next to, how much shade they get—”

  “I can tell your mom is very stuck on details,” Glen said. “Are you sure there was nothing else?”

  I stepped back from the cabinet. “Go ahead and see if you can find something that I missed, but it all just seems to be records of the spells she did for her clients.” I handed him the garden journal and went back into the front room.

  I found Ashleigh and Heather on the floor looking into the open safe. “Did you guys find anything?”

  Ashleigh sat back and looked up at me. “Cash, mushrooms, bottles of dust and dirt and who knows what else, and other esoteric ingredients. I think some of these might be illegal. No complete spells, though. What did you guys find?”

  I leaned against the counter and sighed. “She keeps notes on her clients’ spells, but nothing for hers that I can find. There are some spells, too—we destroyed the one that was binding my powers—but all of them are small, according to Glen. I can’t find any other clues. I don’t know where else we can look.” I let out an involuntarily yawn. “Besides, it’s getting late and Kai is waiting outside in the cold. Should we call it a night?”

  Heather closed the safe and looked at me. “That’s up to you. We didn’t find what you wanted, and I don’t know if we’ll get the chance to come back here again. Are you satisfied that we checked everything we could?”

  I thought that over for a few minutes. We’d looked pretty thoroughly between the four of us, and something was telling me that what we were looking for wasn’t here. If we missed anything, odds were that it was at the house, which was much bigger. I still believed that the spell was stronger at home, so that had to be the source.

  “We did find one thing that we were looking for—the binding spell,” I said finally. “I think we’ve done everything we can. Let’s get out of here.”

  I knew that I was running out of time. It wouldn’t be very long before my mother discovered that I’d broken her binding spell and gotten my powers back, and I didn’t know what her next move would be. I wasn’t ready to confront her directly because she was more powerful, more prepared, and knew more than I did about witchcraft. Glen promised that he’d look for a sorcery solution, but he didn’t seem hopeful.

  At best, I probably had until Monday when my mom was bound to go into the shop again, and she’d discover that the spell was missing.

  When I got home from Ashleigh’s house on Saturday morning, I wanted to get straight to work, but I waited until my mom left the house. I grabbed the scrying crystal and went over the house another time. This time there were no surprises.

  There were two possibilities left: either the spell was something that my mother carried around with her, which I might never be able to get my hands on, or it was hidden in the garden. I stepped outside.

  I took a deep breath, stood over the first bed of herbs, held out the crystal and concentrated. It immediately began to swing wildly back and forth in my hand. I tried to move it around to see if it would move faster or slower as I went in different directions, but it didn’t change. Was it just reacting to the power of the plants themselves? This wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

  Maybe a better view of the garden would help. I went to the shed and took out my broom. I stood there staring at it: what if my powers hadn’t fully returned? What if I couldn’t control them well enough to fly—or if I suddenly lost control in midair? I’d flown without thinking about it for years, but now after knowing what it felt like to be powerless, I’d lost confidence in my own abilities. The thought of falling made a chill run up my spine.

  I shook myself. Now wasn’t the time to be second-guessing. My power was back, and I had no reason to doubt that it was any different than it had been the week before. I tucked the crystal into my pocket for safekeeping and climbed astride the broom, then flew straight up to the treetops without glancing down.

  A fresh breeze touched my face as I rose, reassuring me, and I had no more trouble steering the broom than I did controlling my own hand: my power was an extension of me, and through that magic, the broom responded under my touch easily. There was nothing to worry about.

  I looked down and studied the garden. I’d never given much thought to the layout of the plants before, but now as I viewed it and remembered the sketches that I’d found in the filing cabinets at my mother’s shop, I realized that there was a pattern to the way that the different herbs, bus
hes, and flowers were planted, more than just the needs of sunlight and shade. From this high up, the individual plants merged into abstract shapes that radiated out from the house.

  I drifted over the roof so I could see the front yard as well. Yes: although the plants in the front yard were more ornamental than magical, they were also part of the pattern from the backyard, completing a design that spread out with the house as its center.

  As I traced the lines and shapes, it seemed to me that they kept drawing my eye inward to the house, pulling in tighter, holding it close, constraining it . . .

  Suddenly, although I’d never seen this design before in my life, I realized what it must mean. This was the spell. I, and all of my friends, had been unable to see it because it was so large, but as I looked at it with growing horror, I knew that the power required to cast and hold such an enchantment could not be contained on a small scale like a bottle in the walls. This whole garden, carefully planted and tended by my mother on a daily basis for years and years, was devoted to controlling the minds of my father, my sister, and me.

  I hovered on my broom, staring in shock. It had been right there all along—but now knowing what it was, I had no idea how I could possibly break it. The garden was that large: our family’s property was several acres, and the garden took up at least one full acre on its own. It was my mother’s life’s work, full of protection spells and wards against any kind of tampering or damage, and with the connection that she maintained to it, her power probably ran through every root and branch and leaf.

  What could I possibly do in the face of all that in just five days before Halloween—two days until my mother found the broken spell at her shop?

  This was bigger than any spell that I’d ever seen before, and I couldn’t do it alone. I pulled out my cell phone and called Ashleigh as I flew toward her house. I needed help, advice—anything.

  When I talked to Ashleigh and Glen, there was only one possible solution that we could think of: destroy the garden.

  How could I destroy the garden? I’d seen from most of my mother’s previous spells that simply destroying the physical materials of the spell was enough to destroy the power of the spell itself, but this one was full of protections, it was very old, and very powerful. If I just tried to destroy the garden alone, it could backfire and end up hurting me instead.

  The second question was, how could I get my family safely out of harm’s way while I destroyed the garden? If I did succeed in breaking the spell, my mom was bound to freak out. I needed my mom to be gone so she wouldn’t interfere with me, and I needed my dad and sister to be somewhere else—

  “The three of you will need a safe place to stay for a little while, at least until you can find a new home,” Ashleigh said.

  “Of course, you’re all more than welcome to stay at my grandfather’s house,” Glen jumped in quickly. “There’s plenty of space for guests, and we can offer you the protection of the court.”

  That pulled me up short. “Wait. Are you saying that we should leave—leave my mother? Like, permanently split up my family?”

  Ashleigh and Glen exchanged a glance. “Your mom has been using magic to manipulate your family for years,” Glen said gently. “Do you really think you can trust her after this?”

  I knew that I couldn’t just give up on my mom without giving her a chance first. “I can talk to her. If I remove the spell—”

  “Then she’ll do something else, maybe worse,” Ashleigh said. “It’s not a safe place for any of you to be. You need to get away from her.”

  “But if she realizes what’s at stake, she’ll change. We have to give her a chance to fix this, not just report her to your grandfather and get her in trouble.”

  Glen shook his head. “I don’t think that’s very likely. This isn’t a little spell, this is a full-scale, life-altering spell that she’s maintained for years. Think about what kind of person would use that on their own family. Do you think someone like that could change?”

  I started to breathe faster. “But—she’s my mother.”

  Ashleigh said, “Just because someone is a parent doesn’t mean they have to be a good person. I had to accept that my mother was never going to change. I think your mother could be seriously unhinged, since she’s doing things that are dangerous and illegal.”

  I stood up. “I just don’t think I can give up on her that easily.”

  They stood up too, and tried to stop me from leaving, but I was done talking with them. “I appreciate your help, but this is my decision to make—mine and my family’s. We don’t need to break up our whole family over this. We can get through it.”

  Glen spread his hands apart. “We still have to tell the court. We can’t let her keep doing this.”

  I glared at him. “Then you’re not my friend. I wouldn’t turn a member of your family over to the police for making a mistake.” I turned and started storming out of the house.

  “We’re just trying to help you!” Ashleigh called behind me, but I just slammed the door.

  My mind reeled. My friends wanted me to break up my own parents and turn Mom over to the Fae, and I couldn’t convince them that they were wrong. I also didn’t know how to fix things by myself. I needed help, and I didn’t know how to get it. Was there anyone still on my side?

  All weekend long, I avoided my family, locking myself in my room without talking to anyone. I spent my time thinking about what to do. Go after the garden with a weed whacker? Go straight to Mom and beg her to stop the spell herself? Let the Council deal with it and accept the destruction of my family? I turned myself in circles, going over every idea a dozen times but was unable to choose one.

  By Sunday night, I had to do something to take my mind off of everything, so I picked up my clarinet and practiced my solo from school. I kept repeating the same tricky fingering run over and over, but I couldn’t seem to get it right.

  Mom came and knocked on my door, then opened it without waiting for a response. I put down the clarinet and looked up at her, keeping my face neutral. “What?”

  “I was just coming to tell you that dinner is ready.” She kept her face turned away from me, looking at a spot on the floor. “If you could please come down and join us for a little while, at least?”

  I sighed. “Be there in a minute.” I started pulling apart my clarinet so that I could clean it and put it back in the case.

  She walked away without saying anything else, which surprised me. I’d expected a lecture for locking myself in my room all weekend. Maybe she was going to wait until I came downstairs, so she could do it in front of the whole family and get them to join in on telling me how much I was missed and how important it was to spend time with them.

  But when I came down for dinner, everyone was quiet. We got through the entire meal without anyone saying anything except occasionally asking someone else to pass a dish. When I finally looked up at the others, I saw that no one was making eye contact. Dad sat stiffly, like having dinner with a mannequin, and Mom kept dabbing at puffy red eyes. I glanced at Akasha, who made an unhappy face back at me.

  What was going on with my family?

  After dinner, Dad disappeared upstairs in his office, and Mom went into the kitchen to wash the dishes. Akasha started to go up to her room, too, but I stopped her on the stairs. “What happened?”

  She half-turned and shrugged at me. “Haven’t you heard them? They’ve been arguing.”

  I stared. “They never fight.”

  “I know.” Akasha glanced downstairs toward the kitchen, then ran the rest of the way upstairs and shut her bedroom door.

  I stood there for a long minute, wondering what to do. I could go into Dad’s office and talk to him, but what could I say? Maybe he’d tried to talk to Mom about the spells, because I brought them up. But if she still had her hold over him, then he would be convinced to her side, and now he was probably mad at me. I couldn’t afford to try confronting him.

  I went into my bedroom and locked the door.
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  I didn’t figure out what to do on Sunday night, and on Monday morning, I knew that I’d finally run out of time. Today Mom would go to work and find out that I’d broken her spell. I’d be in major trouble—I didn’t even know what she could do to me, or if my protection would hold. In two days, my so-called friends would tell the Count what she’d done, and if there was anything left of my peaceful life at that point, then it would really all fall to pieces.

  I went to school and tried to pretend that everything was normal, but I couldn’t concentrate. My mind kept drifting. I was a zombie, going through the motions.

  Lindsey pulled me aside the moment she saw me. “Where have you been? I was trying to call you all weekend.”

  I shrugged. “Sorry. I was busy with some family drama.” With everything else going on, I hadn’t been up to taking Lindsey’s calls.

  “I need your advice really badly.” Lindsey gripped my arm tight in both hands. “You wouldn’t believe what’s been happening. Robert broke up with Daniela and he came over to apologize to me for how bad he’s been acting, and then I was torn because things have been pretty good with Peter but I think I might still be in love with Robert, and—”

  I pried her hands off of me. “I can’t do this.” I took a step back. “I’m sorry, Lindsey, because we used to be really good friends, but I can’t do this anymore. You have to figure out your own issues. I have enough of my own problems to deal with right now.”

  She stared at me. “What are you saying, Rosa?”

  “I’m saying that we’re not friends anymore. When you have a boy to fawn over, you blow me off, and then you only come to me when you need help with a problem. You don’t even listen to my advice, so I’m not going to try helping you.”