The Nature of Witches

by Rachel Griffin

  The three of them disperse, walking off the field. Sang smiles and waves, and I nod in his direction. Mr. Burrows catches up with me, and we walk toward the center of campus.

  “I’d like to give you a test before I hand you back over to Sang,” he says. “It’s not ideal, given the heat this week, but it’ll have to do.”

  My stomach feels like it drops right out of my body. A test with Mr. Burrows, with his constant judging and pacing and note-taking, sounds unbearable. I’m not going to be of much use with all this heat.

  “What kind of test?”

  “It wouldn’t be a true test if you could prepare for it in advance, now would it?”

  I readjust my bag. “I don’t understand what good any of this is doing when it won’t make a difference in what’s happening out there,” I say, motioning to the places beyond this campus.

  “But it will make a difference,” he says. “We need all the witches we can get, and you’re our most powerful one. Or you will be, when I’m done with you.”

  I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “I just get the sense that nobody really knows what I’m supposed to be capable of, other than ‘greatness.’ What does that mean in terms of my magic?”

  Mr. Burrows hesitates. “You’re right, to a certain extent. We don’t really know. But everything we do know points to an incredible power we’ve barely scratched the surface of. And we’ll never discover the full extent of your abilities unless you stay committed to your training and keep putting in the work.”

  The vagueness of the answer frustrates me, but at least he’s being honest. I nod and turn to leave, but then he says my name. I look back at him.

  “I know this is a grueling process and it feels like you’re going in circles. But that accident with Paige? Had that happened a year ago, it would have killed her. You’re getting stronger every day, more controlled. And it’s going to be worth it.” He nods as he says worth it, and even though the mention of Paige rouses the fear inside me, it’s the first time Mr. Burrows has said something even remotely encouraging.

  Maybe I judged him too harshly.

  “Okay. I’ll keep putting in the work,” I finally say.

  “I know you will. Meet me at the sundial Wednesday morning at eleven, and we’ll do our test. Then I’ll be out of your hair again.”

  I nod and head to the dining hall, leaving Mr. Burrows behind. It’s packed by the time I get there, and once I have my food, I walk to the winter table and find a spot at the end.

  Dinner tonight is a hearty potato soup, a food I always associate with winter. But without a cold draft leaking through the tall windows and a lack of condensation on the glass, the meal feels out of place.

  The dining hall is unusually quiet. Even the summers are more subdued than usual, and I’m surprised to find that I miss the constant stream of laughter that always comes from their table.

  Mr. Burrows’s test weighs heavily on me. My fingers itch to grab my phone and ask Sang what I’ll be facing, but I don’t. The last thing I need is for Sang to tell Mr. Burrows I asked and get an even harder test as a result.

  And I don’t want Sang knowing how nervous I am.

  I’ve tried not to dwell on the fact that I made a vow to get stripped if I couldn’t gain control of my magic. It was easier then, when I was planning on getting stripped anyway, when I hadn’t felt any joy from my magic. When all I felt was out of control and scared.

  But now, the thought of losing my magic is harder to accept. Even if it weren’t painful to be stripped, even if I just woke up and it had vanished, I would be devastated. I don’t love it the way Sang does or Nikki did, but I’m starting to appreciate it.

  It’s in these small cracks and erosions of my plan that hope forms. Maybe I will have total control over my magic one day. Maybe I will never hurt another person. Maybe I won’t have to get stripped.

  Maybe I can have both magic and love.

  Maybe.

  ***

  At 10:55 on Wednesday morning, I sit down at the dial and wait for Mr. Burrows. At the center of campus, a large sundial rises out of a fountain, casting its shadow across the stone encircling it. The granite benches surrounding the fountain are carved with roman numerals that mark the hours.

  I love it here, but today is not the day to be outside.

  The temperature has already reached triple digits, and I’m wearing shorts and a tank top. There are a few summers at the dial, but even they’re having a hard time enjoying the weather.

  The shaders have helped us create a world in which we have the freedom to practice magic however we want. They give us resources and support our work, and we protect them. It’s a relationship centuries in the making, built on mutual respect and trust.

  But it’s tenuous. When we wanted to slow down, to stop pouring magic into the farthest reaches of the globe and let the Earth breathe, the shaders wanted to keep moving forward, acting as if our power could undo any amount of damage they caused. We knew we needed their trust in order to maintain our independence, so we kept our mouths shut for too long and asked for more from a world that was already drowning.

  Now we’re living with the consequences.

  But Mr. Donovan said the shaders are working with us now. Maybe they’re finally listening; maybe this doesn’t have to be our new normal.

  Mr. Burrows arrives at the dial at exactly eleven o’clock. Sweat is beaded on his forehead, and he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “Ready?”

  I nod and head for the control field, but Mr. Burrows stops me. “This way,” he says, and I follow him to the north parking lot.

  “Will I be back in time to watch the others train in the heat?”

  “You’ll get plenty of training in the heat. But our test is going to take place off-site. Practicing on campus is great; it’s how we all learn. But I want to see you use your magic in an unfamiliar environment.”

  “Is Sang or Ms. Suntile coming?”

  “It’s just us today. They know you’re with me, so you’ll be excused from your afternoon classes.”

  Uneasiness moves through me. My mind tells me over and over not to get in the car, but if I don’t, Mr. Burrows will have one more reason to get more involved with my training than he already is.

  I open the car door and sit down. Classical music plays on the radio, and I watch as Eastern fades into the background. Sang could have at least warned me I’d be going off-campus, but maybe Mr. Burrows told him not to say anything.

  After an hour in the car, I ask, “How much longer?”

  “About two more hours. We’ve got to get far enough out so that we can work without disturbing the other witches in the area. I’ve arranged things so they know where we’ll be.”

  I stare out the passenger window and try to focus on anything but the fear that’s taking over. The way the bare trees look so out of place in the sweltering heat. The way the paint lines on the road disappear when Mr. Burrows turns off the highway. The way the dirt road sends dust into the air, blocking my view of the path behind us.

  And finally, the way the classical music dies when Mr. Burrows cuts the engine, filling the car with a silence somehow louder than the violin concerto that was just playing.

  “Here we are,” Mr. Burrows says.

  I look around, but I have no idea where we are. We’ve been off main roads for so long, we might as well be in a different state. I know we’re on a mountainside, given the old winding road that brought us here, but there are no trees around. It’s all empty.

  The car is parked at the end of a road, and Mr. Burrows walks past the barrier in front of us and begins to climb a narrow dirt trail. I take a deep breath and follow him. Heat batters us as we walk over large rocks and through overgrown brush.

  “This is an old logging property,” he says. “That’s why there are no trees.”

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sp; I don’t say anything. We continue to hike up and up and up. I’m drenched in sweat, so tired I doubt I’ll be able to complete even the simplest of tests.

  Then we stop. We must be close to the top of the mountain. There’s a wide-open field that stretches to a rock face in the distance, with patches of grass and wildflowers that cover the dirt. It goes on for acres, stretching out in all directions, and is fully exposed to the sunlight.

  It’s much larger than the control field on campus, but it reminds me of Eastern. I relax a little.

  “The problem with Eastern is that there’s no sense of urgency driving you to get stronger,” says Mr. Burrows.

  “Other than the fact that you keep insisting my magic won’t hurt anyone else if I do,” I say flatly.

  “It’s not enough. You’ve spent your entire life resigned to the fact that people will die because of your magic. Somewhere deep down, you’ve gotten comfortable with it.”

  “To hell with what you think. It haunts me.” My anger mixes with the heat and sweat, my breaths coming as if I’ve just run a marathon.

  Mr. Burrows holds up his hands. “Save your energy, Clara.”

  The way he says it makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. “What kind of test is this?”

  “You don’t respect magic, and you’ve never had to—you’re too sheltered at Eastern. When the only thing left is your magic, when that’s all you have to rely on, you’ll learn to respect it. And that respect will propel you forward and make you far stronger than any kind of training you receive on campus.”

  “I don’t understand. No one else has to train like this.”

  “No one else is an Ever.” Mr. Burrows wipes his brow and shoves the handkerchief back in his pocket. He looks off into the distance and nods, a small movement I almost miss. I turn and follow his gaze. There’s a woman on the far side of the field coming toward us, pulling two children with her. Given how frantic she looks, I’m guessing they’re shaders who got caught in the heat. I can’t make out many details from here, and I turn back to Mr. Burrows.

  “Should we get them out of here before we start the test?”

  “No,” he says quickly, hardly considering my words. Then he curses and shakes his head. “I left my bag in the car; I have to go back for it. Wait here and get acquainted with the area; send out small pulses of energy and see how it responds. Once I get back, we’ll begin.”

  I gladly take the break. He pauses when he gets to the trail, looking back at me, then at the shaders. I hear one of them yell something, but Mr. Burrows is gone. I need to calm down and clear my head so I can get through this. But nothing feels right. My mind is racing, and the heat is making me light-headed. My shirt clings to my skin, and my legs are weak.

  I take several deep breaths.

  Mr. Burrows’s methods don’t have to be traditional; they just have to work. As long as I learn to control my magic without hurting anyone else, that’s all I care about.

  And I would never admit this out loud, but it isn’t just about making sure no one else dies. It’s about the possibility that comes with having complete control over who I am.

  I pace around the field, waiting for Mr. Burrows. The shaders get closer, and I can now make out the word the woman is saying: “Help.”

  I rush over to her, and I know what’s wrong before she begins speaking. They all have heat exhaustion, her kids worse than her. They’re sweating profusely, and their breaths are shallow. Their skin is red, and there’s vomit on her little boy’s T-shirt.

  “How long have you been out here?” I ask, wincing when my words come out sounding more accusatory than I mean.

  “We got stuck early this morning. I wasn’t expecting it to get so hot so early. They’re too weak to hike down,” she says, each word slamming into the next. “I can’t carry them both, and my phone doesn’t have any service.”

  “Okay, we’ll get you out of here,” I say. “Wait here.”

  A car engine starts in the distance.

  I whip around to face the trailhead. Mr. Burrows is nowhere in sight.

  “Stop!” I yell, rushing to the trail, but I stumble back when a small glimmer catches my eye. I look closely, and the glimmer gets bigger and bigger, distorting the area it covers, almost like a wall of water reflecting sunlight.

  That’s when I realize what Mr. Burrows is doing. He’s creating a sunbar, a tool we only ever use in summer as a warm-up before we train. It’s a concentrated wall of sunlight a shader could never get through. It would burn them instantly.

  I survey the field. Walls of rocks rise up around the far end, so steep we’d need climbing equipment to scale them.

  He trapped us here.

  But I question myself as soon as I think it. There’s no way he’d leave me here, and certainly not with innocent people.

  The sunbar gets wider and higher, rays of sunlight sparkling on its surface. Soon, it’s blocking not only the trail but the entire south side of the field. I look at it in wonder. Mr. Burrows is a winter; there’s no way he’d be able to command this much sunlight. Even a summer would have a hard time creating a sunbar that large.

  There have to be other witches involved, but I can’t imagine anyone going along with this awful plan. There’s no way Ms. Suntile would sign off on it, no way Sang would help.

  I’m sure of it.

  Almost.

  The sound of Mr. Burrows’s engine fades into the distance.

  There’s just silence.

  I pull my cell phone from my pocket, but I know even before looking that I have no service. I lost reception an hour into the drive.

  My breathing gets faster, and the world spins around me. I sink to the ground.

  The midday sun is unrelenting, stagnant, heavy air that suffocates. Every part of me feels the rising temperature—105, 110, 115 degrees.

  Mr. Burrows trapped a family and left me here to deal with it alone in the worst heat wave Pennsylvania has ever seen. A heat wave our winter witches cannot manage.

  I have no supplies.

  No food.

  No shelter.

  There may or may not be water in the ground, depending on when the last rain was. My magic may or may not be strong enough to find it.

  And a family will die if I don’t do something.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You are stronger than you think.”

  —A Season for Everything

  My clothes are damp with sweat. My jean shorts are soaked through, and my tank top clings to my skin. It is so hot.

  For a while, I don’t move from my spot in the field. The winter sun makes me feel as if I’m hallucinating, it’s so eerily low in the sky. It should be high above me to produce this kind of heat, but it stays close to the horizon. It’s so bright.

  Too bright for winter.

  I push myself up. My legs shake when I stand, and everything spins. I take several deep breaths and walk over to the woman. Each step is work, as if my ankles are bound in weights. I curse myself for not eating breakfast this morning and try not to think about how the last time I ate or drank anything was last night.

  “What’s your name?” I ask when I reach the shader. Neither of her kids is standing anymore; they’re both lying on the ground, chests rising and falling rapidly. They can’t be more than eight years old.

  “I want to go home,” one of them cries. They either don’t notice me or are too weak to care that I’m here.

  “I’m Angela,” the woman says. “I need help getting them down, please.” Her words are fast and strained. “It kept getting hotter and hotter, and they just got too weak to move.” She’s crying now, large tears running down her cheeks.

  There’s an empty water bottle on the grass between her kids. “Do you have any more water?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Okay, Angela, I’m Clara. I�
�m going to help you.” There’s a sweatshirt hanging out of her day pack. “You have to get your kids out of the sun. Take them to the rocks, and find a stick to use as a pole—you can shove the hem of your sweatshirt into the crevices between the rocks and put your hood over the stick to create some shade. You don’t want them to burn any more than they have already.”

  “No, no, we need to get them down the mountain, to the main road. They can’t stay in this heat.”

  I glance over at the sunbar and lower my voice. “Unless you want to climb the rock face, we can’t. The only other way out is blocked. Do you see that glimmer in the distance? The way the air looks somewhat distorted?” She nods. “It’s called a sunbar. Witches use it to train; it’s basically a thin wall of intensely focused sunlight. You can’t walk through it.”

  “But I saw someone with you—I know I did. Can’t he help us?”

  I take a deep breath, and rage roils inside me as I think of Mr. Burrows and his reckless test. “He’s gone,” I say.

  Angela’s eyes get wide. She angles away from her children. “Are you saying we’re stuck here?” She gets the words out through clenched teeth.

  “Yes.”

  Her breaths come quickly, and she chokes. “We have to get them out of here. You have to help me.”

  Their skin is red, and they look lethargic, fully exposed to all 115 degrees of heat.

  “There isn’t anywhere for us to go,” I say as gently as I can. “Get them in the shade, and I’m going to look for water.”

  “Where?”

  “In the soil. In the grass. Over the rocks. Wherever I can.”

  Angela stares at me for a few seconds before realization hits. “You’re a witch.”

  I nod. “Get them into some shade.”

  One of her kids starts crying as she coaxes them up and moves them to the rocks. I grab their empty water bottle and turn away. I’m getting dehydrated, and with how much I’ve been sweating, everything’s accelerated.

  There is nothing I can do in this heat. I can barely think. But the sun will set soon, and the long winter night will cover us.