Ever Cursed

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “You think you have it worst of all,” he says. “And the royals think they have it worst of all, because of their missing princess. Their curses. But you and those princesses look the way you look and live where you live and have all this power, and all you do with it is—”

  “I tried to fix things,” I say, the words straining, because even I don’t believe me right now.

  “That’s not how to fix anything,” Abbott says. “If you can’t hear how things really are, you might as well just stay in AndNot.”

  “You’d miss me,” I say. It slides out, all slippery and warm and accidental, and I blame his eyes and my own thumping heart. Witches don’t fall in love, I remind myself. I thought all these years that it was a truth, a spell we were under maybe, a part of our makeup. But I’m starting to wonder if witches not falling in love is just a rule.

  A rule is easier to break than a spell.

  “I did miss you,” Abbott says. He doesn’t look at me, though. Those eyes of his are hitched to the ceiling.

  “And now?” I ask. It feels like something is going to happen, but nothing does. Abbott doesn’t so much as shrug. Abbott isn’t lost in the same moment I am. I’ve been alone for five years, thinking about him, and he’s been right here, thinking entirely different thoughts about me, I guess.

  “The breaking of the spell,” he says. “It’s your choice, right?” He’s all business, so I try to be the same.

  “It’s my choice,” I say.

  “I want them to leave the castle. I want them to see us. Can you make them see us?”

  I think about the queen in her box. I did that, I think. A strange blend of power and regret mixes me up. My insides rock and shudder and pulse with it. I put the queen in a box. I froze her in time. Me and my magic. It’s exactly the kind of thing Grandmother doesn’t want me thinking. There’s no glory in magic, she used to say. There’s no thrill in it. It’s for protecting. Your magic is something to hang on to and stay quiet about and have control over. It’s for maintaining the peace. For keeping us safe by keeping the royals safe. That’s it, Reagan.

  She had to say this to me over and over, because my magic was never quite in my control, and I always smiled too big at the way it ricocheted off me, turning pansies into palm trees, turning golden hair green, making rivers from puddles, princesses into Spellbound beings, queens into frozen trophies.

  I’m thinking about what my mother said, that Ever needs to be healed, and what Abbott said, that he wants to be seen. There’s the voice inside me too, that wants the king to suffer. Wants him to be small and useless. To be wrong.

  “I can make them leave their castle,” I say. “I can bring them into Ever.”

  “They say it’s their kingdom. But they’ve never walked among us. Maybe if they left the castle—” Abbott doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t want to hope. I can see his grown-up face fighting against it. But right below that, right underneath the ridges and stubble and sweat of an almost man, I can see the still-boy of him. Hoping. Believing.

  What I can’t tell Abbott, what I can’t tell my mother, is that all their talk of fixing Ever is fine, but my anger isn’t subsiding. The idea of fixing Ever doesn’t feel as good as the idea of making the king suffer.

  Anger in a witch is a dangerous thing, Grandmother has told me again and again. What we are protecting is so much bigger than your anger.

  She said it to me a hundred times, like she knew my anger would one day overpower me, like she knew what was coming.

  And maybe she did.

  But isn’t anger better than fear, when you get right down to it?

  “Think about it,” Abbott says. He has it all. Anger, fear, and other things too, things I don’t understand.

  “I will,” I say. “I am.” And I do; I try.

  “Okay,” he says, turning to go.

  “That’s it?” I ask.

  “I don’t have anything else to say.” There’s a space between us making my body awkward again. I lean into the space, then out of it, like I can’t decide what size and shape it’s meant to be.

  He leaves before my body makes up its mind. Before I can say goodbye.

  * * *

  An hour after Abbott leaves, there’s another knock at the door. A young woman in gray is on the other side. She’s holding a silver invitation, engraved with the royal crest. A century ago, it used to be a fruit tree with a crown wrapped around its center. But since the princess was taken, it is now a candle with a flame sitting atop the king’s throne. A kingdom waiting.

  “The invitation!” Willa says, so excited she seems to startle the young woman.

  “It’s for a witch named Reagan,” the woman says. “I’m Princess Jane’s attendant, Olive.”

  “That’s me,” I say, stepping forward.

  Maybe I thought the royal invitation would come with something spectacular—a three-piece band, a parade of horsemen, a shower of rose petals. This woman in gray seems sad, nervous, not very royal at all.

  “It’s tonight,” she says. She turns to go, then changes her mind and looks back at me. “You should have asked us,” she says. She sounds like Abbott. Not just in what she’s saying, but the cadence of it.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “We would have known what would hurt him. We would have told you what we needed.” Olive’s voice breaks. Her shoulders hunch. The hunch and shudder and pain I wanted to see on the king—it’s right here, on this attendant.

  “I thought—” I’m so tired of trying to explain what it is to hear your mother has been hurt and to know you would do anything to fix it. I’m tired of trying to find words for the kind of anger that is built from love. For the fury that means you will either tear off your own skin or someone else’s to survive the feeling.

  “No,” Olive says. “You didn’t.” She bows her head. There’s the sound of a pot hitting the floor in the kitchen, and Olive jumps, holds on to herself, as if pieces of her might fall off in a moment of fear.

  She scurries away before I can tell her that my mother hates the sound of a clanging pot too.

  * * *

  I eat dinner and sit with Mom in the kitchen, waiting for time to move, waiting for the moment when I can go to the Birthday. The invitation sits between us. We are both looking at the Enchanted Candle. It is gold. The kingdom is at rest, though we are not.

  “Why is the flame gold if Ever is broken, like you say it is?” I ask.

  Mom sighs. “That candle only tells us if things are the same as they’ve always been. Calm. The royals are happiest with us when things are calm.”

  I should have asked these questions five years ago, when I had all the time in the world to understand Ever.

  “So Ever at rest means Ever remaining broken?” I ask.

  Mom closes her eyes. She’s thinking. “The War was a terrible time for us and for Ever. And how things are now—it’s not perfect. But it’s how we are surviving.”

  I think of Abbott and his gaunt face. The worry etched on it. I’m not sure that he is surviving. I’m not sure any of us are.

  “Have you come up with their tasks?” Mom asks.

  “I’m working on it,” I say, even though the truth is more complicated. I try to make my anger small and unnecessary. It won’t be shrunk.

  “Your heart will tell you,” Mom says, and it’s not entirely a platitude. We’ve learned since we were babies that magic isn’t just academic. It’s also in our hearts. That’s why Willa’s spells are a little messy and very sweet and a little unexpected. It’s why my spells are too strong and stubborn and Mom’s went from powerful to fearful. It’s why Grandmother’s spells are far-reaching and deep, and Aunt Idle’s are orderly and neat. The tasks the princesses will complete will reflect my magic. It’s probably why they’re all so scared. Willa could break a spell with cotton candy and a kiss, but my magic isn’t like that.

  Magic is powerful and should be used sparingly—that’s why we get a new skirt attached to us every time we cast a sp
ell, so that we carry the weight around with us forever. It’s a delicate, balanced thing—and we need to work together with the Spellbound to break spells.

  The skirt, however, never leaves. I told my mother this was unfair once. “I’m sure they think it’s unfair we have magic at all,” she said. “A heavy spell changes things, whether or not the spell is someday broken. At least a spell is a choice you make, Reagan. At least your burden is one you choose.”

  I should have listened more carefully to the lessons in between her words.

  “What if together we can’t break the spell?” I ask.

  “You have to perform the Undoing.” Mom pulls at her clothing. She hates talking about my spell. Her neck strains; her hands twist themselves together into a knot. “You have to, Reagan.”

  “They say it hurts,” I say, “the Undoing.”

  “It’s meant to hurt,” Mom says with a nod. “You caused hurt, so you will hurt.”

  “The king caused hurt,” I say. “And he seems just fine.” Mom sighs, like it’s ridiculous that I’m so focused on that one fact, but it feels like the truest, clearest, most important thing in the world to me.

  “He’s not a witch,” Mom says. “You have to let it go. You have to just— We are here to keep Ever at rest. For their protection and for ours. It’s what’s safest for everyone. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.”

  “I want to do more than that,” I say. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know Mom will hate them. Grandmother, too. “I want to be more than safe.”

  Mom warned me about being a Seen Witch. A Seen Witch isn’t a humble witch. A Seen Witch wants to be glorified and appreciated. They want their magic to be celebrated. “This isn’t the time for Seen Witches—” Mom says now.

  They speak of Seen Witches like they’re a common occurrence, but I’ve never heard of one. Unless, of course, I am one.

  Grandmother interrupts my mother. “It’s barely time for magic at all,” she says. “The less magic the better. Magic is to be saved and stoked. We don’t need glory. We need simply to stay here, every one of us.” She speaks loudly, so that the whole Home can hear her. And I did; I heard.

  “This is our home,” Grandmother says. “We want to stay at our home. We’ve been safe for a good long time here.” I turn the words around in my head and try to understand them, but they’re wrong. And they make me feel like I’m trapped in my own glass box.

  We look at the candle. It’s gone from gold to rose gold to silver gold. It’s a smoky gold now.

  Gold means things are fine. Gold is how Ever is meant to be.

  I wonder what it would look like without a flicker of gold in it. I’ve never seen the flame go to blue and black and deep, deep purple. I’m not supposed to be curious about it. The kingdom at rest is all we are supposed to want.

  The kingdom unchanged. The kingdom unchallenged.

  I shiver. A not-small part of me wants to return to AndNot, where I can do nothing but bathe in ocean water and think about the sun’s place in the sky. This isn’t how I thought it would feel to be back. I thought I would be a different, braver, better version of myself. Not just the same old Reagan, more confused than ever.

  “Sometimes I don’t understand what it is that I’m protecting,” I say.

  “Us,” Mom says. She shows me her hands. They are almost all gone, just palms and pinkies right now. If the kingdom isn’t at rest, we could all vanish, the way witches sometimes do. If the kingdom isn’t at rest, our magic is threatened.

  But if the kingdom is at rest, the king stays in that tower, grinning.

  “She’s so much like you, Bethly. Too much. It’s dangerous,” Grandmother says. I’ve never thought of myself as much like my mother at all. She’s quiet and nervous and cautious. I’ve never been any of those things for even a moment. I almost correct my grandmother, but contradicting her would be unheard of. “You need to protect us,” she goes on, turning to me. I wonder, for a strange, unsettled moment, if that’s what the king would say too. “Don’t be rash again,” she says. “How will they ever have time to break the spell? They’ll have, what, five days?”

  “Four,” I say. “I turn eighteen in four days.”

  Grandmother rubs her face. She’s right. I didn’t think it through. It is nearly impossible to break a spell in four days. I didn’t know how few days were between Eden’s thirteenth birthday and my eighteenth. I bow my head. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll do what I can.” It doesn’t really mean anything at all, when you get right down to it.

  Mom nods, because she knows I can only do magic my way. That’s all any of us can do.

  She knows that if I fail, tea will keep steeping, wrists will keep flicking at the end of a spell, arms will raise, capes will get hemmed, chants will be practiced under the breath of the youngest cousins, a few words always missing so that they don’t accidentally start an earthquake, end a battle, freeze the sun in the sky.

  Princesses will die, but the witches will go on.

  Unless they vanish from unrest. A thought I pretend we aren’t all thinking but that is written on Grandmother’s wrinkled face.

  Still, I will do it. My way. From my broken, brave, too-stubborn witch heart. It’s the only way I know.

  5. JANE

  As the party begins, we stand in order of our age. It wasn’t always this way. Mom told me once that the princesses used to stand in order of their beauty, from most to least beautiful. “Your father put a stop to that,” she said, smiling the way she always did when she talked about him. “He insisted that practice was wrong. He refused, and the kingdom was outraged. But you know your father.”

  “Stubborn,” I said.

  “Determined,” she corrected me. For all her talk of rituals and tradition, my mother loved the way my father turned things around, made the kingdom more vibrant, more fair, less strict.

  “How did they decide who was most beautiful?” I asked. Mom always skipped the parts I found especially interesting. She’d tell half the story, but miss the strangest details. She never told the in-between.

  In my experience, the in-between is the part that matters.

  “A spell,” Mom said. “They’d make the witches cast a spell that would simply move the princesses into a line, placing them where they were meant to be.”

  “The witches must have hated doing that,” I said.

  “I imagine they might have,” Mom said.

  “But we made them do it anyway.”

  “It was one of the spells they gifted us every year.”

  “In exchange for us gifting them their safety.”

  “We keep each other safe,” Mom said. Her voice was solemn. It’s serious business between witches and royals.

  “Couldn’t they cast a spell to tell us who took the princess?” I asked, knowing the answer was no. Though we have our suspicions, we don’t know which kingdom stole the princess all those years ago. I wish we did. Then we’d know for sure which one to be suspicious of, which to not marry into, which to ban from our Feasts.

  When the princess was first taken, Ever accused Soar and Soar accused AndNot and AndNot accused Farr, who said it was certainly Nethering, who said they had evidence it was Droomland.

  In the end, when it was clear that the princess wouldn’t be returned and that everyone was suffering from the War that ensued, all the kingdoms agreed that it must have been some mysterious person acting on their own.

  Except, when we were taught this, it was with an eyebrow raise and a tiny shake of the head, like no one actually believed this convenient lie.

  But, like Dad says, we do what we need to do to keep peace.

  So do the witches.

  “Peace is the most important thing,” I said then, repeating a dozen textbooks and my parents.

  “You certainly pay attention in your history lessons, don’t you?” Mom laughed.

  My favorite part of school isn’t learning about peace and princesses, though. It’s learning about the witches. Pieces of
them can vanish, and in bad circumstances, if the kingdom is in a state of unrest, the whole of them can disappear entirely, and I wonder sometimes if the witch that cast the spell on us was trying to punish me for that reality. If she and her family have to lose fingers and feet, we have to lose bits of ourselves, too.

  My father tells me not to look for logic when I float these ideas by him. He says witches don’t need reasons to cast spells, but my lessons tell me the exact opposite is true.

  I wish I could ask my mother.

  “Where were you, in the order?” I asked her when I couldn’t stop thinking about the beauty ranking between her and her sisters. I knew my mother was more beautiful than any other person. I didn’t need a witch to tell me that. She had strong hands with long fingers and kind eyes that were never the first to look away, and she always smelled like she had just finished baking, even though my mother rarely went into the kitchen.

  “Oh, who can remember?” Mom said, but there was a grimace sneaking onto her face that told me she did remember. Her body remembered being moved like a chess piece from one place to another. I didn’t push her to answer.

  But I knew from the way she looked out the window and commented on a flock of geese making their way from one side of the kingdom to the other that she had been last.

  Since that day, I’d wondered where the witches would place me, if given the chance.

  I do it now, by accident, as Dad moves through the crowd to take his place at a crystal podium. I put myself dead last, hating how fragile my body is, the way my face can’t hide anything without some fullness in the cheeks, my stringy hair that falls out in tiny clumps every so often, desperate for nutrients.

  A Slow Spell can’t cause permanent damage, so even though I can’t eat, I won’t starve to death. I’ll just slowly droop. But when our Slow Spell becomes True, there won’t be any slowness keeping me alive. I will die, the way anyone who doesn’t eat will die.

  It will be quick.

  When I look in mirrors now, I see that promise of death looming in my eyes and along my jawline. A sort of shadow that no one else sees. The royals from faraway kingdoms look at all of us with the same leer, the same interest, the same calculating stares. I hate them for ignoring what seems so obvious to me.