The Nature of Witches

by Rachel Griffin

  My magic pulses inside me, waiting to be used. With all my might, I roll and send Sang onto his back. I pin his arms with my chest and use everything I have left to pummel him with magic.

  I don’t pause at the top of the waterfall; I barrel over it with unrestrained fury, reaching for my magic to end this. To win.

  But something isn’t right when I take hold of it.

  It feels different. Familiar, but different. It isn’t aggressive or deliberate or cold. It’s patient, in a way, waiting for whatever I’ll ask of it.

  I shake my head and refocus.

  I reach for my magic once more and send all my energy into it, creating the biggest flood of power I can.

  Sang screams.

  Then, all around us, tiny green plants push through the snow.

  I scramble back.

  My hands are shaking, and my eyes are wide.

  Sang sits up, so close to me his shoulder touches mine. Our legs are tangled together, but we don’t move.

  The magic. It felt like spring.

  “What…” I start, but my voice fades. I don’t even know how to ask it. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” There’s wonder in his voice. “But I felt it.” I lift my gaze from the small green sprouts encircling us, and instead focus on the gold in his eyes. “I felt you pull it out of me.”

  “But that’s impossible.” I watch him closely, aware of every breath he takes. I don’t dare look away.

  “I know,” he says, shaking his head. “But look around us. Those sprouts could only come from spring magic, and I would never be strong enough to grow new plants this quickly in winter. They had to come from you.” He pauses. Then, “Try again.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. Whatever this is, it terrifies me. “No,” I say again. There is no way to pull magic from a witch without them handing it over, without them weaving it in with yours. And even then, it can only be done between witches of the same season.

  A winter witch pulling magic from a spring is unimaginable.

  Sang takes off his gloves and grabs my hands. “Try again.”

  Almost instantly, I feel Sang’s magic moving through his veins, pulsing beneath his skin. I’m desperate to touch it, as if it’s life itself, and before I know what I’m doing, I close my eyes and reach.

  It responds, and I pull it from him in one strong motion.

  Sang gasps.

  The earth shifts as a birch tree shoves through the ground and grows right next to us, tall and white and real.

  Spring magic heightened to its full strength in the dead of winter.

  Impossible.

  I want to reach out and touch the smooth, white bark, feel it against my skin, but I’m scared it will vanish.

  Sang opens his eyes, and we stare at each other. Our chests heave, our breaths heavy between us.

  The magic beneath his skin still reaches for mine, our hands vibrating with the force of it.

  It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, as if I’ve seen his soul, read his mind, touched every single part of him.

  He is as good, as genuine, as I thought he was, distilled into the most perfect stream of magic.

  I cannot tear my eyes from his.

  He swallows hard. “Clara,” he says, his voice rough with something that sets my insides on fire. “If you don’t want me to kiss you right now, you’re going to have to stop looking at me like that.”

  But that’s exactly what I want. I don’t care that his lip is bleeding and I’m out of breath. I want it so badly it doesn’t feel like a want. It feels like a need.

  I keep my eyes on his for several seconds, the idea of looking away as impossible as the birch tree standing next to us.

  I lean toward him, ever so slightly. He does the same.

  Then I pause.

  If I kiss Sang after what just happened, I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself. And if I can’t control myself, I can’t control my magic.

  I slowly look down and pull my hands from his. Sang leans back, the cut on his lip bright with blood.

  We’re silent, our legs still tangled, our breaths still coming shallow and fast.

  The birch tree beside us is tranquil and quiet, as if it has lived in the center of this field forever.

  I can see my breath in the cold winter air. I watch it mix with Sang’s in the space between us.

  His magic is still wrapped up in my own, winter and spring colliding as if it was always supposed to be this way. I could push my magic down, break the connection.

  But I don’t want to.

  So I don’t.

  Spring

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “And just when the world is certain it cannot handle another day of winter, the vernal equinox arrives in a rush of sweet rain and awakening color.”

  —A Season for Everything

  The vernal equinox has come and gone. The days are getting longer, and the Earth is beginning to warm. The quiet and stillness of winter is replaced with the bustle of spring as birds return home and animals wake from sleep.

  It’s been two weeks since Sang’s and my discovery, and I haven’t told a single soul. We tried it several more times before the equinox, just to be sure, and each time confirmed the impossibility that I can summon off-season magic.

  Not even Alice’s memoir alludes to this kind of power, and I’m unsure if it’s because she never discovered it or if she simply referred to it as “magic” because she was always able to do it. Or maybe it’s that the Earth was happier when Alice was alive and hadn’t yet been pushed too far. Maybe this kind of magic wasn’t needed.

  Sang uprooted the birch tree and replanted it somewhere else on campus, along with the sprouts that pushed through the soil around us. The control field is back to normal. No one else knows what we discovered that day.

  I try to concentrate on what Mr. Mendez is saying at the front of the classroom, but all I can think about is the way it felt to be tangled up in Sang’s magic, as if I’d been wandering alone for seventeen years and finally came home.

  Sunlight reaches through the windows and reflects off Mr. Mendez’s glasses. His black hair stays perfectly in place when he looks down at his book to close it. He leans back on his desk and twirls his wedding ring around his finger.

  “We have one bit of housekeeping to discuss before you’re dismissed,” he says. “We’ve finalized the arrangements for the total solar eclipse this summer.”

  I look down at my desk and shift in my seat. I’ve ached for this eclipse ever since I learned it was coming, years and years of counting down to my way out.

  But now the eclipse fills me with fear instead of relief.

  I don’t want to be stripped.

  I let the thought sink in, roll it around in my mind, decide if it has a place here. I feel it take root and settle into my skin.

  I’m amazed and happy and terrified to realize it’s true. I don’t want to be stripped.

  But the impossibility of it is heavy. It isn’t only that I don’t want to be stripped; I don’t want to be stripped, and I don’t want to be isolated.

  I don’t want to be stripped, and I don’t want my magic to target the people I care about.

  I don’t know if those things can coexist. The eclipse is coming, and if they can’t, I will be forced to make a choice.

  And that scares me.

  “We will be evacuating the night before and staying in upstate New York. We’ll be out of the path of totality and can see the partial eclipse from there.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that you’ll never get to see a total eclipse?” Ari asks thoughtfully. “I think it would be amazing to see.”

  “It would be incredible,” Mr. Mendez agrees. “Some shaders say it’s life-changing.” His voice is far off and wistful, like he’s forgotten he’s
teaching a class. He clears his throat. “But being unable to see a solar eclipse is a small price to pay for being a witch.”

  All witches in the path of totality are required to evacuate. It’s illegal to be stripped on purpose—the atmosphere would fall into disarray if witches were stripped of their magic every time a total eclipse occurred.

  Still, it would be remarkable to see.

  “Are there any other questions?” Mr. Mendez asks. He looks around the room, and when no one raises their hand, he dismisses us.

  I stand up and shove my books in my bag. When I leave the room, Paige pulls me aside. She’s holding a stack of books to her chest, and her hair is in a ponytail.

  “I remember what you told me,” she says simply. She doesn’t have to elaborate for me to know what she’s talking about.

  I look down, my heart racing.

  It was before. Before we broke up, and before Nikki died. She’d asked me what my parents were like during a long, sleepless night where we shared secrets and kisses and laughter. I told her all about them, about how Dad thought it was the coolest thing in his life that I’d been born a witch. About the way my mom would ask me to make it rain in summer just so she could dance in it. She loved the rain.

  I told her about how they died, how my magic roared out of me in a burst of lightning and sunlight and heat, incinerating them on the spot.

  I told her how sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and hear their screams.

  That was before I knew my magic sought out the people I loved, rushing toward them until it swallowed them whole. I didn’t make the connection until Nikki died and Ms. Suntile dove into research. That’s when I ended things with Paige and moved into the cabin in the trees.

  But still, I knew my magic was dangerous. I knew it was a power I might never learn to control.

  So that night in my bed, with my fingers laced through Paige’s and her hand in my hair, I looked her in the eye and whispered, “I might stay for the eclipse.”

  She didn’t gasp in horror or lecture me or pull her hand from mine. Instead, she brushed my hair behind my ear and said, “I might try to stop you.”

  That was all. We never spoke of it again.

  I look at her now, the image receding to the corner of my mind where I hold all our broken promises and memories too vivid to forget. “I know you do.”

  “Do you still feel that way?” she asks.

  I think about what I discovered with Sang and how it could stop witches from dying. I think about all the good it could do.

  And I think about how, if I can’t learn to control my magic fully, I will have to isolate myself for the rest of my life because of it. That’s a life I’m not sure I can commit to.

  “I don’t want to be stripped,” I say. It isn’t a lie.

  She studies me, and it’s clear she knows there’s more I’m not saying. “Good,” she finally says, “because I don’t want to have to stop you.”

  Then she walks off without another word.

  I’m still trying to shake the memory off when I get outside. Sang is leaning against a brick wall and stands up when he sees me. He gives me a crooked smile that pushes all the tension from my body, all the tight knots and clenched muscles.

  And he’s not even using his magic.

  “Hey,” he says, walking over.

  Spring has washed over him. Everything about him is brighter, as if I’d only ever seen him in shadow and he has finally stepped into the light. The rings of gold in his eyes are richer and deeper, an ocean of sunlight I can’t look away from.

  He looks perfect.

  If I were the Sun, I’d choose to live in his eyes too.

  Neither of us has mentioned his comment about kissing me, but I think about it all the time. I’m convinced it was a product of the moment, a comment brought forth by the intimacy and shock and absolute wonder of what we’d just experienced. It would have been odd if we hadn’t felt a need for each other.

  And yet it lingers. The way his eyes were locked on mine, our tangled limbs and tangled breath and tangled magic. The way his voice felt like sandpaper lightly trailing across my skin, awakening a yearning I’ve only ever felt in summer.

  “I was hoping we could chat about something before our session today.” His words bring me back to the present, and I hope he doesn’t notice the heat that has settled in my skin.

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  Sang waits to speak until we’re out of earshot of anyone else. “I think we should tell Ms. Suntile and Mr. Burrows about what you can do.”

  I knew this was coming. Of course it was. We need to figure out the extent of this power, learn if it’s something I can do in all seasons, with all witches.

  But the thought of telling them causes my stomach to twist with worry. I’d be handing over an incredible amount of control to people I’m not sure I trust. Eastern has done so much for me, but between the way Ms. Suntile acted at our training session with Mr. Hart and the fact that Mr. Burrows is still around even after his test, I wonder if they really care about me or if all they care about is my power.

  “I know we need to,” I start.

  “But?”

  “But it feels like handing something over that I can never get back.”

  Sang nods. “Believe it or not, I know exactly how you feel.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  I want to ask him what he means, but the words are stuck in my throat. We don’t need something else binding us together, another shared secret that makes him feel essential to my life.

  When we get to the control field, I put my bag down and wait for him to pull out a lesson plan. But he pauses and looks around as if he’s thinking.

  “What would you think about bailing on our session today? There’s something I want to show you.”

  My brain yells at me to say no. To stick to the lesson plan. To ensure that our relationship doesn’t build into something my magic can sense.

  But a small voice tells me to go. Tells me it’s okay. Reminds me I’m going to be strong enough to control my magic.

  Sang fills me with contradictions. I’m torn between wanting to experience his openness and wanting to run from it as fast as I can. Part of me thinks he’s weak and foolish for giving so much of himself away.

  But the more I get to know him, the more I wonder if maybe it’s a gift too few of us have. Maybe it isn’t a weakness at all.

  Say no.

  Go with him.

  I pause. I’m not sure how many moments it takes to form a closeness that’s too close, but I’m sure we’re nowhere near it.

  Which is why I say, “Let’s do it.”

  I pick up my bag from the grass and follow him off the field.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “When magic courses through my body and bursts into the world, I know this was always the only option for me. I was fated for this.”

  —A Season for Everything

  I follow Sang through the gardens. A group of springs are kneeling on the ground, pushing their fingers into the dirt. They can plant their emotions in the earth, where they’ll grow as flowers. It’s my favorite part of spring magic because it has nothing to do with control; its sole purpose is bringing beauty into the world.

  Sang keeps walking past the gardens and deep into the surrounding woods, so far from campus I can no longer see the buildings of Eastern. Evergreens and oaks stretch for acres in every direction, and I step over tree roots and duck under branches.

  Birds chirp high above us, and a light breeze rustles through leaves as if they’re whispering secrets as we pass. Sunlight reaches through gaps in the trees and bathes the forest floor in streaks of gold.

  Sang and I walk in a comfortable silence that strikes me as strange. Even Paige and I were always filling the silence with something, b
ut Sang makes me feel as if my presence is all he wants.

  He stops when we come to an old brick building covered in ivy and overgrowth. It’s square and small. The stone walls are crumbling, and the right side is half caved in. Moss coats the roof, and ferns rest against the base.

  “Here we are,” Sang says. He opens the weathered door, and it creaks with the movement.

  The first thing I notice is the smell. It isn’t musty like I thought it’d be. It’s sweet and strong, like someone took all the flowers in the entire world and put them in this old, abandoned building.

  I walk inside. Rays of sunlight stretch through the holes in the roof and walls, giving the room a soft glow. Every color of the rainbow comes into view, hundreds of flowers and plants lining tables and crawling up the walls and hanging from the ceiling. There are more species than I could ever identify, and for a moment, I’m speechless.

  There’s a narrow walkway through the center of the room, the only space that isn’t covered in something living. It feels like I’ve stepped through a portal to another world, a rain forest and greenhouse and enchanted garden all in one.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s an abandoned immersion house, and Ms. Suntile agreed to let me use it for my research.” Sang reaches out and touches the leaves of a nearby plant. “But I also come here to think. To be alone. I wanted to keep its history intact, which is why there are so many plants here that have nothing to do with my research. I want it to feel like one of the old immersion houses.”

  “You don’t really believe in immersion, do you?”

  “Why not? The shaders have wishing wells and four-leaf clovers. I kind of like believing this place can make all my dreams come true.”

  I look around the room. The earliest witches believed it was good luck to immerse themselves in a space with so many plants and flowers, so they created immersion houses. Over time, these houses became their own kind of churches, witches flocking to them with their fears and desires and hopes and dreams.