I don’t tell her that. I don’t tell her that when I can’t sleep, I still play the games that used to keep her, Nikki, and me up until the morning. I don’t tell her that the rush of magic that took Nikki would have taken her, too, had she not been sick that day. I don’t tell her how I’ve never been more thankful for someone being sick in my entire life.
I think about the upcoming eclipse, about how I’ll never have to worry about this ever again. I can train now, gain control of my magic enough to tide me over, and then leave all of this behind. The hope of never hurting another person swells in my chest, beats in time with my heart.
Paige opens her mouth to speak again, but Sang comes out, erasing the moment.
“Want to get in one last session before the solstice?” he asks.
I don’t hesitate. I don’t remind him I’m in a dress and he’s in a suit. I don’t tell him I’m tired.
Instead, I glance at Paige, think about our tie that’s still too strong. Too dangerous.
I stand up, grab my purse, and say, “Yes.”
Chapter Eleven
“Autumn is its own kind of magic; it reminds us of the beauty in letting go.”
—A Season for Everything
The control field is still, silent. Stars shine overhead, and the full moon provides just enough light for us to see what we’re doing. My heels punch through the dirt, so I take them off and toss them aside.
“One of the best things about training at night,” Sang says, his voice soft and low, “is that no one can see you.”
He’s right. The darkness wraps me up like my very own security blanket, protecting me from the curiosity and judgment that follows me in daylight.
It’s freeing.
“And you can’t see the trees,” he adds. “Let’s keep working on the same drill, but tonight, focus on how it feels. Forget about the results; forget about how far you throw the wind and how much progress you’re making. Forget about being perfectly in control. Just focus on what it feels like to have that kind of power inside you.”
Something about the way he says it creates an ache deep inside my core. I push it down, ignore it.
“We’re witches,” he says. “Let’s enjoy it.”
I know he doesn’t mean anything by it, but the comment feels so flippant, given why we’re here in the first place. I swallow. “Easy for you to say. How can I enjoy something that causes so much pain?”
“For starters, you can stop feeling sorry for yourself.” He says it so simply, as if stating that the stars shine brightest after a good rain or that winter follows autumn.
“Excuse me?”
He lets out a breath and shakes his head, frustrated. “You’re so caught up in the bad that you refuse to acknowledge the good.”
“People die because of me.”
“No, they die because of magic you never asked for. Your friend who died—she was a summer, right?”
“Nikki,” I say.
“Nikki. Did she love being a summer?”
“There wasn’t anything she loved more.” The words catch in my throat, but I force them out.
“And she loved it even though she spent nine months out of every year longing for summer to come. Even though the moment the equinox arrived, she could feel herself getting weaker. Even though for seventy-five percent of her life, she didn’t feel truly herself.”
“That’s different.”
“Of course it is. But my point is that she still loved her magic—we all do, even though it comes with real pain. Pain that you will never have to experience because you’re an Ever. Your magic comes with its own kind of pain, and you can acknowledge it, hate it, wish it didn’t have to be that way, and still live your life. Still be happy.”
His eyes reflect the moonlight. There’s something about the way he talks about hard things that makes them easier to approach, and I feel the tension rush out of me. I don’t want to fight anymore. But the best manipulators are disarming. I think about Sang and his calming magic, Sang sitting on the other side of that desk with Ms. Suntile and Mr. Burrows, Sang respecting a person who seems so horrible, and it suddenly makes so much sense that they chose him. He is disarming.
And I refuse to fall for it.
I clear my throat. “You make a better botanist than armchair psychologist. Let’s train.”
Sang tips his head down as if he’s embarrassed. But he recovers fast, nods, and says, “Let’s train.”
I get to work. The wind comes easily, responding to me as if it’s been waiting all night for us to stand on this field.
I know Sang is working beside me, his calming magic always close, but tonight it’s an undercurrent. An afterthought. What I feel the most is raw power rising inside me, tumbling around, excited to spill into the night.
As Sang and I work side by side, me summoning the wind and him letting magic flow from his fingers solely to make me feel safe, the tension between us eases, floats away into the night.
We don’t have to be best friends. I don’t have to like him, and he doesn’t have to like me, but I think we’re starting to understand each other. And that’s something.
I keep building the current in front of me, and soon I’m lost in it. My mind stops worrying, and my shoulders relax. For the briefest moment, I’m not scared. I’m not fighting against it. Slowly, I ask for more magic, release my hold on it and let it rush into the wind, making it stronger. Faster. I keep at it until I’m certain it’s the strongest current I’ve created since Sang and I started working together.
I send one more surge of magic into the wind, then push it out into the woods.
I keep my eyes closed and tilt my head back, reveling in the sound of the current moving through the oaks and pines, listening as they bend and sway.
Then it stops, and the world is quiet again.
I open my eyes and look toward Sang, thinking we’re done for the night. Without a word, he turns to the forest beyond the field, raises his hands, and closes his eyes. The branches begin moving, a soft rustling at first, then a loud whooshing sound as the treetops sway from side to side.
He calls for more wind, and it answers, leaving the trees and rolling onto the field.
Let’s enjoy it. Sang’s words echo in my head.
“Wait,” I say.
Sang pauses.
Magic rolls from my fingertips and into the woods. I imagine the fallen leaves on the ground and raise my hands. The air gets heavy as all the leaves rise from the forest floor and pause, waiting for my command. I pull them toward the field and open my eyes.
A wall of countless leaves rushes through the air and then comes to a stop. Sang looks at them and raises his hands.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod, and he sends his tower of wind barreling into the leaves. I take control of the wind and circle my hands, around and around and around, faster and faster. Then I pull it toward me.
Orange, yellow, green, and red dance in the air, swirling together as the massive tower of wind glides toward me. The cyclone gets faster and sends the leaves chasing after one another in dizzying circles. I pull my hands apart to create a large eye in the center of it.
The wind parts, allowing me inside.
With one large motion, I send the wind spiraling around me. The leaves swirl in a tower, and I stay in the center of the storm. My orange dress slaps against my legs, and the wind howls in my ears and rips through my hair, sending strands of red in every direction. The sound is so loud it drowns out everything else. I spread my arms wide, feel the wind tearing through my fingers, watch the leaves as they whip around me.
And I laugh. I actually laugh.
I sense Sang working on something new, and my magic pauses, forgetting the leafnado and waiting.
A heavy layer of fog descends on the field. In one even motion, I push the cyclone away and pull
the fog from Sang, revealing him and hiding me.
I move between the two, going back and forth between the fog and the cyclone, pushing them away and pulling them back.
“Amazing,” Sang says under his breath.
The other seasons can’t move their magic around like that; it takes a ton of energy to pull their power from one thing and focus it on another. But autumn magic is transitional. It flows from one thing to the next, sensing the environment and changing to meet its needs. In some ways, it can feel unsteady, changing so rapidly.
But it’s also an incredible advantage the other seasons don’t have. It’s one of the reasons I was able to get as close to dissipating the tornado as I did—I wasted no time moving my magic from one thunderstorm to the next.
“Come here,” I say, and Sang walks toward me. I step in front of him so we’re facing each other, just inches apart. I push the layer of fog up into the darkness until it vanishes. Then I grab hold of the leafnado and send it spiraling around us.
All my energy flows into the cyclone, leaves everywhere, the sound drowning out everything else. It rotates around us with incredible speed, Sang’s tie flapping wildly along with my hair. He reaches out his hand, touching the tunnel of wind around us.
It’s too dark to see him clearly, but I feel how near he is to me. How quiet and still he is. His warm breath reaches my skin, unhurried and even. I’m thankful there isn’t enough light for him to see the way he’s transforming before me, the way my eyes soften and my jaw relaxes as he changes from someone I resented to someone I want to share this moment with.
I let my fingers stretch to the wind and feel the air rush through them.
My heartbeat is slow. Steady. Oddly content in the eye of the storm.
Then I clap my hands together, and the wind vanishes.
For one breath, the leaves hang in the air, frozen in the memory of the wind, before they finally float to the ground.
Silence.
Sang looks at me, his hair windswept, his tie hanging loosely around his neck. His top button is undone, and he has abandoned his suit jacket on the grass. He looks so perfectly unkempt it makes me blush.
“You were made for this,” he says.
And for a single second, I think maybe he’s right.
Winter
Chapter Twelve
“Women are discouraged from being direct and saying what we think. That’s why I love winter: it taught me to stand up for myself when the rest of the world was happy to walk over me.”
—A Season for Everything
There is a distinct bite in the air when I wake up. The steady flow of autumn magic has been replaced with the deliberate, aggressive pulse of winter. Even the magic itself is colder, a constant shiver running under my skin. I’ll be used to it by tomorrow, but today I’ll be unable to warm up.
I get out of bed and open the window. I stick my arm into the air and close my eyes, reading the temperature.
I dress appropriately, then head to class with Nox following after me. A thick, low layer of clouds hovers over the school. My breath appears in front of me with each exhale.
Winter is the most hated season by the nonwinter witches. The autumns, springs, and summers tend to stay inside and huddle around fires. They wear too many layers and drink copious amounts of cider and spiced tea.
But I like winter. Winter is the truest of the seasons. It’s what remains after everything else is stripped away. The leaves fall. The colors fade. The branches get brittle. And if you can love the earth, understand it when all the beauty is gone and see it for what it is, that’s magic.
Winters are more straightforward than anyone else. We don’t soften ourselves with indirectness or white lies or fake niceties. What you see is what you get.
And winter is good to those who respect it.
When I get to the control field, several people look my way. It’s my first group class since Mr. Hart died. Ms. Suntile thought it would be good for me to start working with other witches again, but I won’t be trying to hold their magic. My primary training will still be with Sang, learning to control my own magic. Ms. Suntile doesn’t want me to forget what it feels like to work in proximity to other witches, though, so here I am.
I put my bag down and stand at the edge of the group. The field is larger than the one Sang and I train on, forty acres of flat earth on which to practice our magic. The grass is green and short, kept immaculate by our springs. The far edge of the field is lined with trees, eastern hemlocks and bare oaks and soaring pines stretching all the way to the Poconos. When I was younger, the field felt impossibly large, and it was only as I got older that it started to feel suffocating instead.
Mr. Donovan gives me a welcoming smile, then walks several yards away from the group and demonstrates a near-perfect thunderstorm. Looming clouds. Flashing lightning. Clapping air.
It’s perfectly confined, maybe three hundred feet above his head and only ten feet or so in diameter.
Thunderstorms aren’t common in winter, so we aren’t as good with them. We have to fight for the level of precision Mr. Donovan demonstrates. He’s a spring, and thunderstorms come much more easily to him. He looks calm and focused, hands out in front of him, no sign of strain or stress.
It’s amazing to think about how something that will come so naturally to me next season will be a struggle today. But winter has its own set of skills, and once the temperature drops more, we’ll get to put them to use.
Mr. Donovan crosses his palms in front of him, then lowers his hands.
The storm vanishes.
We erupt in applause.
“I forgot how much I like teaching winter sessions. You’re much more impressed with me than the springs are,” Mr. Donovan says, and we laugh.
“I know thunderstorms don’t come as naturally to you, but after the tornado last season, Ms. Suntile wants everyone refreshed on the basics. Thunderstorms are most common in spring and summer, but they can happen at any time, and we want you prepared. You probably know more than you think; remember that every time you deal with hail, you’re dealing with a thunderstorm. We’re aiming for acceptable, not perfect, so don’t stress out over it. We’ll have two thunderstorm classes before moving on to winter magic. Got it?”
We all nod.
“Good. Paige and Clara, you’re partners. Then Thomas and Lee, and Jessica and Jay. Remember, you’re working together. You are not trying to overpower each other. The weather doesn’t tolerate egos, and neither do I, so let’s keep it friendly, okay? Now, spread out and get to work.”
I walk to the southeast corner of the field. Paige follows. Her eyes bore into my back, burning holes in my jacket.
I stop when we get far enough out and turn to face her.
“Let’s see what all those hours with the botanist have done,” she says, joining me so we’re standing no more than a foot apart.
It’s obvious why I fell in love with her. She is poised, confident, and self-assured. She’s brilliant, and she knows it. And she’s beautiful, even more so now that we’re in her season. Her eyes are clear and sharp, and her long hair is pulled back in a ponytail.
The look on Paige’s face when I broke up with her left a permanent scar on my heart. I hurt her, a tragic kind of hurt because I did it even though we loved each other, and it still echoes between us. Paige walked out of my room that day before I could articulate everything I had to say. I should have run after her and tried to explain. But I didn’t, because it was better that way.
But the look on her face, her always-composed face, broke something inside me that I don’t think has healed. Maybe it never will.
“What?” Paige asks, impatience lacing her tone. I look away.
“Nothing. Let’s get started.”
I raise my hands between us, and Paige does the same. Magic rushes out of me, and I pull away, surprised by the forc
e of it.
Paige raises an eyebrow. “Welcome back, Winter.”
I roll my eyes and start again. This time I’m ready, and the burst isn’t so surprising. I send it into the air above me, and soon a cumulonimbus cloud hangs overhead.
“Let’s light her up,” Paige says. We hold our hands up in front of us, palms facing one another, and an electrical charge crackles and pops in the space between us.
But something doesn’t feel right.
This isn’t the normal aggression of winter magic. It’s building too fast, too much energy too soon. We haven’t produced a single lightning bolt yet, but there’s enough electricity between us to set the trees on fire.
It’s the tension. The anger. The hurt and the memories. The air between us is thick with secret moments and open wounds.
That’s when I realize what’s happening.
“Paige, stop,” I say, jumping back. My hands are almost down to my sides, expelling my half of the energy, when Paige grabs my wrists and pulls me back in.
“I’m not failing this assignment because of you.” Her grip on me is tight, and I try to move out of her grasp, but she’s too strong. The energy flowing from me is building, my skin buzzing with power, my fingertips aching to produce light. I close my eyes and focus, doing everything I can to lessen it.
“Let me go,” I say, yanking my hands away.
“No.”
There’s isn’t much time left. We’ll set the whole field on fire before Paige lets go.
“Why are you doing this?” Anger burns my eyes and sharpens my tone.
“You don’t get to call all the shots, Clara. This is my assignment, too, and we’re going to finish it.” Her grip tightens.
She’s being impulsive. Reckless. Maybe that’s what pain does.
I squeeze my eyes shut. There is so much magic building off of Paige’s energy, off all the emotions and things left unsaid.
“Stop holding back on me,” Paige says. “I know you can do better than this.” She’s trying to provoke me, but her voice is strained. She feels the tension too.
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