The Nature of Witches

by Rachel Griffin

  “That seems to be a weakness of mine when it comes to you.”

  Sang leans into me. “I’m glad,” he whispers. Then he opens his door and gets out of the truck.

  “Welcome to your second off-site test,” Mr. Burrows says when I walk over to him, as if it’s something I’ve looked forward to. As if the first one wasn’t completely outrageous.

  “We’ve got a pretty simple test for you today,” he continues. “If you do well, this will be your last until summer.”

  That alone is enough to make me stand up straighter and focus. “That sounds good to me,” I say, hoping he doesn’t miss the meaning in my words.

  “You’re not going to like it though,” he says, going on as if I haven’t spoken. My heart beats faster, and I look to Ms. Suntile for some kind of reassurance, but her expression gives nothing away.

  “Why is that?” I ask, keeping my tone even. Calm.

  “Because it requires the use of winter magic.”

  “Seriously? Don’t you think it’s a little pathetic that you’re using a test to get your way? I told you I won’t use your magic, and I meant it.”

  “It’s your choice,” he says casually. “You don’t have to participate.”

  I look from him to Ms. Suntile and back again. “I don’t?”

  “No,” he says. “We’ll come up with another test if you choose not to do this one.” He pauses. “But you will not always like the witches you have to work with. If you’re going to move to the next level of your training, I have to know we can trust you to work with everyone. If not, it doesn’t make sense for Sang and me to be here anymore.”

  I ball my fists at my sides.

  “The work you’ve been doing with Sang has led up to this. You know how to control your magic in a calm, comfortable environment. Now it’s time to control it when you’re angry and upset,” Mr. Burrows says.

  He gestures to the mountain. “That snow is right on the edge, hovering just below the freezing point. It will take hardly any magic at all to heat it up a degree. It drains into a river as it gradually melts, but if it all melts at once, the river will flood. And if the river floods, so will this field, drowning the crops. When it does, you’ll be the only one of us strong enough to stop it.”

  “When it does? You said I don’t have to participate.”

  “You don’t,” he says simply.

  But I hear the words he doesn’t say: This field will flood regardless.

  “These crops are someone’s livelihood.” My eyes burn, and my throat aches from the effort it takes not to cry. I hate how upset I sound.

  I can’t let him win.

  “Let’s go,” I say to Sang.

  I walk back to the truck and open my door, but something stops me from slamming it shut. I still and listen. Then the air fills with the sound of rushing water. It barrels down the mountain, taking out plants and trees as it goes, and it will destroy the farmers’ crops if I don’t do something.

  I jump out of the truck and rush to Mr. Burrows’s side. I close my eyes and find his magic darting to the surface. It’s weak, but there’s enough for me to follow his instructions.

  I latch on to it and pull it away from him as hard as I can, freezing power slicing through the warm spring air. Mr. Burrows inhales, rapid and shallow, and he stumbles back.

  With the full force of winter, I throw his magic to the clouds and gather as much cold air as I can. I shiver, and my hands shake. When my thread of magic is full of ice crystals, I send it barreling toward the mountainside and toss it into the rushing water, freezing it on impact.

  I hold my hands out, keeping the magic right where it is, ensuring every last drop of water has been turned to ice.

  The water comes to a halt, and everything falls silent.

  I stay where I am for several seconds, breathing heavily, making sure no more water melts and no more trees fall.

  I stare at the mountain, at the trail of water frozen to the side, clear of the trees and brush that stood there moments ago. I slowly release Mr. Burrows’s magic and send it shooting back at him in a rush that makes him lose his balance.

  The barley looks golden in the sunlight, and it sways in the light breeze, unaware of how close it came to death.

  Spring surrounds me again, and I’m no longer cold.

  “That was truly impressive,” Mr. Burrows says when he’s regained his composure.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” I say.

  “Clara, you can make me out to be the bad guy all you want, but these tests are meant to stretch your magic, to challenge your control. And they work. Look how far you’ve come.”

  He begins to say something else, but I storm off toward Sang’s truck and slam the door behind me. Sang gets in a moment later and starts the engine, leaving Mr. Burrows and Ms. Suntile behind.

  After miles of neither of us saying a word, he takes my hand and looks over at me. “Okay, but that was truly impressive,” he says.

  I shove him in the side, but then I pause. “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” Sang says.

  He catches my eye for the span of a breath.

  And before I know what’s happening, he pulls over to the side of the road, and I’m closing the distance between us, crawling onto his lap and wrapping my arms around his neck. I kiss him with the urgency of the water roaring down the mountainside and my magic rushing out to meet it.

  His arms are tight around my waist, and we breathe each other in, desire edging out all my anger from before. His hands find my hips and his lips drift down my neck. My head falls back and I arch into him before returning my mouth to his.

  I kiss him until the sun sets and the moon rises, until my entire body hums with want. Until it’s so dark that I feel him more than see him, fingers trailing over skin, lips following in their wake.

  And when we’re both out of breath, our bodies aching from the cramped space, we crawl into the bed of his truck and watch the stars.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Plants have a way of discerning between good and bad. They will not grow and bloom for just anyone.”

  —A Season for Everything

  The days get progressively warmer. Campus is so vibrant with color and fragrance, it’s hard to believe winter ever touched us. Flowers are blooming and grass is growing and the air smells of petrichor, sweet and fresh and earthy, the unmistakable scent of rain.

  During periods of little rainfall, plants secrete oils that build up in the dirt and rocks, and when the rain finally comes, those oils mix and release into the air, filling it with a scent reminiscent of the forest floor. That’s why spring smells so crisp, so fragrant and new. It clings to my skin and my clothes.

  When I walk into the greenhouse for class, the room is already full. I look around and find a place next to Paige. I drop my bag to the floor and slip off my sweatshirt. Mr. Mendez heads to the front of the room and dives into a discussion of weeding and extraction.

  The greenhouse door opens, and Sang walks over to Mr. Mendez, smiles, and shakes his hand. I knew he was coming, and yet my heart still races. My face heats with the memory of his body under mine, his face tilting up to me, his mouth on my neck and his hands in my hair. I feel Paige’s eyes on me and pretend not to notice.

  “Great, our special guest is here,” Mr. Mendez says. “This is Sang, our advanced studies student. You’ve probably seen him around campus or in the field, training with Clara.” Sang looks at me and smiles, and it feels so intimate even with all my classmates around. “What you probably don’t know is that while he’s unquestionably talented on the field, his passion lies in botany.”

  Botany is usually looked down upon by the witches who focus on weather, but Sang’s unbridled joy in what he does makes that impossible. Even Paige keeps her mouth shut, sitting still next to me. She respects greatness in people, regardle
ss of where it’s focused. I hope she can’t hear the way my heart began pounding when he walked through the door. I hope she can’t feel the electricity radiating from my skin, the way it used to do for her.

  I take a deep breath and try to relax.

  “My Sun, Clara, get your shit together,” Paige says out of the side of her mouth. “Are you this much of a mess when he trains with you?”

  “Ms. Lexington, is there something you’d like to share with the class?” Mr. Mendez asks as I die from embarrassment.

  “No, sir,” Paige says.

  Sang quirks a brow at me, and I shake my head. I’m mortified. I want to tell Paige that, for the record, I haven’t always been such a mess. It’s only started happening recently, when echoes of his mouth on mine and his fingers on my skin and the way he breathes out when I kiss the notch in his neck flood my mind when I see him.

  And it’s only spring. I can’t image what summer will be like.

  Mr. Mendez continues. “Sang has been working on a project that is going to revolutionize the way we uproot weeds and aggressive plants. You are the first group of witches ever to see his method, so pay attention. One day it’s going to be huge, and you’ll all get to say you remember the time you saw his first demonstration at Eastern. Take it away, Sang.”

  I try to ignore the blush that’s settled in Sang’s cheeks, the shy smile that forms on his lips at Mr. Mendez’s praise. Sang is the perfect embodiment of spring, gentle and warm with a quiet confidence that radiates from him.

  He begins his demonstration, first talking about the emotional toll of pulling plants from the earth. Springs are devastated when plants die because so much of our magic is focused on life. Death is to us what heat is to winters and ice is to summers: something we’re ill equipped to handle.

  Sang turns to the table at the front of the room, where one healthy sunflower sits in a clay pot.

  “When we tear plants from the ground, it’s very jarring for them. They leave behind a kind of stress that permeates the soil and creates suboptimal growing conditions. It’s hard on the plants, hard on the earth, and hard on us. But imagine if we could simply put them to sleep and let their energy and nutrients seep into the soil, creating a richer environment than before, without causing them the trauma of being ripped from the ground or sprayed with poison.” His voice makes the whole world slow, as if it’s the sound of the ocean or rain falling on palm leaves.

  His hands are caked in dirt, but even from here, I can see the faint stain of watercolor on his skin. The room falls perfectly silent as Sang brushes the yellow petals with his fingers and closes his eyes. At first it doesn’t look like anything is happening, but then a trail of golden light bursts from the sunflower and stretches toward Sang’s hands. The class inhales in unison as he gently pulls the sunlight from the flower. The light pulses, dims, and finally vanishes.

  Sang turns to the room. “Now that the sunlight is extracted from the plant, it has no more energy left. We can remove sunlight faster than a plant can absorb it, weakening it so much that it’s no longer able to grow.” Sure enough, the sunflower has already begun to wilt.

  “That’s amazing,” Paige says beside me.

  “How do you differentiate between the sunlight in the plant and the sunlight everywhere else?” Ari asks.

  “With a ton of practice,” Sang says with a laugh. “I’ve been working on this for eight months now, and there’s been a lot of trial and error. That’s why I’m demonstrating on a sunflower—the stem is really large, making the sunlight within it easier to target. I’m still working on smaller plants and flowers.”

  Several more students ask questions, and Sang answers them with enthusiasm and grace. I want to jump up and shout that I saw this before anyone else, that it was our secret first. I wonder if he feels that way when I train with other witches, using their magic instead of his.

  Paige leans toward me, breaking my train of thought. “I can see why you like him,” she says.

  I want to tell her she’s wrong, that I don’t like him in that way, but lying to Paige has never made sense. She can always see right through me.

  “Yeah,” I say with a sigh.

  The greenhouse door opens, and Mr. Burrows rushes in.

  “Pardon the interruption, Vincent,” he says to Mr. Mendez. “Clara, please come with me.”

  There’s something in his voice that worries me, and it makes me want to stay right here, safe in this greenhouse with Sang and his sunflower. I’ve completely ignored Mr. Burrows since the test last week, but he speaks with an urgency that forces me to move. I shoot Sang a quick glance before walking toward the door.

  “Grab your things,” Mr. Burrows says. I walk back to my seat and get my sweatshirt and bag.

  I catch Sang’s eye again on my way out. “Okay?” he mouths, and I nod.

  It’s been a long time since someone has looked out for me like this, and it fills me with warmth. It’s these little moments I’m terrified of losing, terrified my magic will destroy in the span of a single heartbeat.

  I don’t want to lose him, and in my weakest moments, I feel overwhelmed by the reality that I very well might.

  I pull my eyes from his and leave the greenhouse.

  “This better not be another test of yours,” I say to Mr. Burrows.

  “It’s not.”

  When we get outside, I understand what’s happening. The sunny sky has been replaced with layers of dark clouds, and the temperature has dropped by thirty degrees, something I would have thought impossible prior to our winter heat wave.

  “As I’m sure you can see, we’re about to be hit by a substantial blizzard we didn’t create. We’re working on getting everyone inside for the afternoon and evening.” Mr. Burrows leads me to the dial, where Ms. Suntile is waiting for us. I wrap my arms around my chest.

  “I’ll get in touch with the witches in the area and make sure they defer to us while the blizzard is on campus. We may not have planned this, but it’s an opportunity for you to try out your magic in a real situation and see how you do. We won’t force you, but I think it’s worth using this chance to see what you’re capable of,” Mr. Burrows says.

  I’m instantly reminded of the tornado I couldn’t stop, the tornado that killed Mr. Hart, and even though my pulse is racing and I’m filled with dread, I want to try. It won’t erase my failure in autumn, but maybe it will bring me some peace, knowing I’ve done what I set out to do: get stronger.

  “He’s right,” Ms. Suntile says, but I cut her off.

  “I’ll try,” I say. “But not with him.”

  Ms. Suntile nods. “Understood. Mr. Burrows will coordinate with the witches in the area. Is there a particular winter you would like to work with?”

  “Paige,” I say without hesitation. Images of her being struck by lightning fill my head, but I force them away.

  I have to start trusting myself and trusting my magic.

  I have to stop living in fear that I’ll hurt the people I care about.

  “You’re sure?” Ms. Suntile asks.

  “Yes. And I’d like Sang there, too, if possible.”

  “Of course. Go get a jacket and whatever else you’ll need, and meet Mr. Burrows at the control field in fifteen minutes. I’ll engage the emergency system and make sure everyone is indoors before meeting you there.”

  I rush back to my cabin and find Nox pulling at the hem of my sheets. I breathe out in relief and pet his head before locking his cat door. I put on my winter coat and a hat, and just as I leave the cabin, five loud bells ring in the distance.

  Here we go again.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Trusting people is hard. Trusting no one is harder.”

  —A Season for Everything

  Mr. Burrows is waiting for me on the control field when I get there. I feel the temperature as it drops with each passing secon
d. I watch the nimbostratus clouds as they move over campus and cover the entire sky, a thick gray blanket that blocks out the sun. I shiver when the first snowflake touches my skin.

  The wind is picking up. The spring flowers and green fields that brought our campus back to life are disappearing under the snow, their stems shaking with cold. Soon, I won’t be able to see much in front of me, the visibility decreasing as the snow gets heavier and the winds blow faster.

  I hope Ms. Suntile is able to get everyone inside.

  Mr. Burrows doesn’t look worried. He watches the sky and paces the field as if in anticipation.

  Paige and Sang jog onto the field, and seeing them together does something weird to my heart. A huge scarf is wrapped around Paige’s neck, blowing out behind her in the wind. “Ms. Suntile sent us here. What’s going on?” She looks up at the falling snow, her jaw tense.

  Sang goes to stand with Mr. Burrows and squeezes my hand as he passes. I don’t understand how even in the worst conditions, he can make everything pause—my worries, my fears, the whole world.

  I look at Paige. “We’re going to try and stop the blizzard.”

  “And how do you propose we do that? You can deal with frost, but nothing like this,” she says, motioning around us. “And I’m too weak and would prefer not to die of depletion.”

  The wind is getting faster, and snow is blowing every which way. I can no longer see the end of the control field, and my face is getting colder by the second. I tug my hood over my ears to keep warm.

  “I’m going to pull magic from you and use it myself.”

  Paige laughs. “Oh, yeah? Are you going to ripen all our crops and bring on a heat wave while you’re at it?”

  I’m about to answer when Ms. Suntile rushes onto the field. She’s out of breath and saying something, but I can’t make out the words.

  “What’s going on?” I ask her when she’s finally within earshot. Mr. Burrows and Sang come over and stand by my side.

  “Our first graders,” Ms. Suntile says. “The whole class is studying trees in the hills. They can’t make it down in time. I was able to reach Stephanie by phone; they’re all together, but visibility is low. If they try to get down, she won’t be able to keep track of everyone. They aren’t dressed appropriately and have no provisions with them.”