The Nature of Witches

by Rachel Griffin

  I zip my bag and sling it over my shoulder, then open the door. A small package sits on the mat outside, and I bend to pick it up. It’s wrapped in brown paper and twine with an envelope taped to the front that has my name on it.

  “Who’s this from?” I say to Nox as I walk over to my bed, tearing the envelope open. I scan the bottom of the letter and find Lila Hart’s name—Mr. Hart’s wife. I inhale slowly.

  Dear Clara,

  We’ve only ever met in passing, but I feel like I know you. Richard spoke of you often, and with such high regard. He loved teaching you and counted the years you spent together among the best of his career. I’ve heard bits and pieces of what you’ve accomplished this past year, and I know Richard would be so proud of you. I wish more than anything that he were here to see it.

  I recently started packing up his office and came across this. He kept a logbook of all your sessions together, but it’s more than that. It turns out that he spent many late nights, coming to bed hours after I had fallen asleep, researching Everwitches. He made a few discoveries that I think will interest you.

  Please read it.

  And if there is ever anything you need, I hope you will consider reaching out. Richard cared for you very much, and after years of hearing him talk about you, I suppose I started to as well.

  With love,

  Lila Hart

  I read the letter twice. I wish Mr. Hart were here and swallow the guilt I feel that he isn’t. I look at Alice’s memoir, the book that was wrapped in the same brown paper. He keeps finding his way back to me, and the thought makes me smile.

  I start to unwrap the package, but a loud bell rings in the distance. It’s time to go. The buses have already started loading.

  I set the gift down and give Nox a final kiss on the head. I put my hair in a ponytail and grab my water bottle, then pick up my duffel and leave. I’m halfway out the door when I turn back. Something tells me not to go without Mr. Hart’s logbook; at the very least, it will be good to have a distraction while I’m stuck in a hotel with nothing but my own thoughts.

  I grab the package off my bed and gently tuck it inside my bag.

  Another bell rings, and I rush to the parking lot. I don’t want to be left behind.

  As soon as I think it, though, I know Mr. Burrows would never let that happen. He would drag me out of the eclipse’s path with his bare hands if he had to.

  When I get to the parking lot, rows of buses are lined up along the curb. I get on the summer bus, relieved I don’t have to be on the same one as Sang. I haven’t seen him since we started growing flowers for each other to find. I hope he’s been busy with his research, spending hours in his immersion house, making up for all the time he lost when he had to start training with me.

  I hope Mr. Burrows is making up for the deceit he used to bring him out here in the first place.

  The buses pull away from the school one by one, and I lean against the window and watch as Eastern recedes into the distance. Even as we get farther away from campus, I know I haven’t fully made up my mind. I could decide at the last minute to head back into the path of totality, to greet the eclipse I’ve counted on for so long.

  I close my eyes and try to sleep, but the bus is filled with conversation and laughter. I grab my headphones from my bag, and Mr. Hart’s logbook peeks out at me.

  The drive is over two hours, so I put on some music and grab the logbook. I take it out of the brown paper and let my fingers brush over the soft cover. It’s old and worn, and I gently open it and flip through the pages. He started keeping records after the very first session we had together and continued through to our last, the one where Ms. Suntile showed up and I collapsed under the pressure of her magic.

  I start from the beginning. Some entries are short, logging only what we worked on and what he felt needed improvement. But there are also longer entries, pages full of research and questions and theories.

  From our very first session, Mr. Hart dedicated himself to researching Evers. He dedicated himself to me.

  The more I read, the more it sounds as if he was forming a plan, the pages practically moving with his churning thoughts and ideas. But I’m unclear on what he wanted to accomplish. The entries are hard to follow, broken up by tangents and thoughts that seem unrelated to everything else. And the more excited he was when he wrote the entries, the more chaotic they get.

  He details how much it hurts him to hear me say I hate the sun and hate my magic. How devastating it is to hear me say that my love kills people. He never believed that, was never once worried that I might cause him harm. He writes that magic is the deepest part of a person, that he understands why it would search out those I care for most. He doesn’t think it means to hurt them; he makes it sound as if it simply longs to touch the people I adore.

  But he also acknowledges that it does kill people.

  I’m struck by how deeply Mr. Hart believed there’s a solution, whether it’s me learning total control over my magic or something else entirely. He didn’t believe I’d have to live like this forever.

  But Alice did, and I will, too, if I don’t stand beneath the total eclipse.

  Mr. Hart is clearly building toward something, but the bus goes over a speed bump, and the small hotel comes into view. I close the book and put it back into my bag, knowing I’ll read the rest after dinner tonight.

  I grab my duffel and file into the lobby with everyone else. Sang is in the corner, talking with Mr. Burrows, and I look away as soon as I see him. The way my insides stir, knowing we’ll both be in this hotel tonight and can’t be together, sends heat directly to my face, and I turn around so he won’t see.

  It’s more than that though. More than desire. It’s also that I want to tell him about Mr. Hart’s logbook and hear about his research and tangle our magic together again. It’s that I want to hear him breathe and listen to the sound of his voice and be in comfortable silence with him. It’s all of those things.

  It’s all of him.

  I shake my head and turn my attention to Mr. Donovan, who’s handing out room assignments. There’s an odd number of summers and winters, and I end up in a room with Paige.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she says, and I have to agree.

  Mr. Donovan looks embarrassed, which only makes it worse. “Will this be okay? I’m not sure how you two ended up together. I can see if someone’s willing to switch,” he says.

  “It’s fine,” I say. It’s only one night.

  “No lightning strikes, then, agreed?” His tone is easy and light, but it still makes my stomach drop to the floor.

  “Agreed,” we both say.

  I take the key and haul my duffel up a flight of stairs to the second floor. Paige comes in a few minutes later and throws her bag on the unclaimed bed.

  We’re quiet for a few minutes. “How’s Sang?” she asks, her voice filling the silence. The words are stiff coming from her mouth, but she was there when he was hurt. She wants to know that he’s okay.

  “I’m not sure,” I admit. I pause, then say, “We’re not together anymore.”

  She gives me a disbelieving look. “You’re not together anymore,” she repeats in a mean tone.

  “What?”

  “Let me guess—you broke up with him after the ring of fire.” She’s shaking her head, and it automatically makes me defensive.

  “I had to,” I say. “You saw the way my magic went after him. It was the only way to keep him safe.”

  “And how did he react to that?”

  “Not very well,” I say. “He thought he should have a say in it.”

  “Which he should have,” she says, her voice sharp. That’s when I realize she’s speaking not just for Sang, but for herself.

  When I don’t say anything, she continues, “It takes a lot to trust someone in that way, and to have your control taken from yo
u like that—it’s a really shitty thing to do to someone. It’s supposed to be a partnership.”

  I stare at her, incredulous. “It’s hard to have a partnership when one person is dead,” I say.

  “Did it ever occur to you to try to solve the problem together? Maybe you don’t use your magic when you’re with him. Maybe you never work on the same storm cell. There are ways around it.” Her voice rises as she speaks, fighting with me, making up for her silence when I ended things with her.

  “You know as well as I do that magic is unpredictable and can arise when you least expect it.”

  “I’m not saying it can’t. I just don’t believe that walking away makes you brave or selfless or some kind martyr the way you think it does.” Her gaze locks on mine. “I think it makes you selfish, defeatist, and weak.”

  I’m stunned by her words, so heavy and full they take up space between us. Her jaw tenses, and she keeps her eyes on mine, daring me to say something.

  I look away and swallow hard, fight the sting that burns my eyes.

  “See?” she practically shouts, throwing her hands in the air. “You won’t even fight for the things you care about.”

  I hear what she’s really saying, as cold and clear as a winter morning.

  You won’t even fight for me.

  You won’t even fight for Sang.

  She walks out of the room, and the door slams shut behind her.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Not all love is meant to last, but that does not mean it’s not remarkable.”

  —A Season for Everything

  Paige doesn’t come back to our room after dinner. I take a long shower, put on sweats, and crawl into bed with Mr. Hart’s logbook.

  Her words have stayed with me, swirling in my mind like a cyclone, threatening to damage everything they touch. You won’t even fight for the things you care about.

  I thought that’s what I was doing by training with Sang and throwing myself into my magic and telling Ms. Suntile about our discovery. I thought that’s what I was doing when the tornado hit our school and when Mr. Burrows stranded me in the middle of nowhere and when a blizzard landed on our campus.

  Even kissing Sang, dancing with him under the stars, laughing with him so hard I cried—that was fighting too. Fighting for myself, choosing to believe I deserve more than a life of isolation and fear.

  Choosing to hope.

  I put my trust in myself and my magic, hoped so badly that I’d finally learned to control it, and I ended up devastated. That’s what happens when you let yourself hope. It crushes you like an avalanche, cold and heavy and suffocating.

  Walking away from people I care about is fighting for them. It’s fighting to keep them safe.

  I open Mr. Hart’s logbook. My argument with Paige recedes into the background as I get further in, following along as best I can as Mr. Hart explores different theories and explanations as to why my magic hurts people.

  He doesn’t know why, only that he believes my magic flows on a current of feeling, almost as if the people I care about enable it to exist in the first place. As if my parents and Nikki and Paige and Sang and Mr. Hart have all made it stronger. Better. He thinks it recognizes the connection I have with them as the same sort of connection it has with me, and that’s why it gravitates toward them.

  I think about how Sang’s magic is carried on an undercurrent of calm. Maybe mine is carried on an undercurrent of feeling.

  My eyes burn, and my throat aches. I’ve been told countless times that I feel too much, that I’m too sensitive, too in my head. Having my feelings framed this way, as if they’re the source of all my power, all my magic, is one of the loveliest things I’ve ever encountered.

  Even if it’s wrong, I’m thankful to have read it.

  I keep reading, not caring that the world is getting darker and time is passing. I read page after page, reliving training sessions and taking in Mr. Hart’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts about controlling my magic.

  I’m so moved by how much effort he put into this, by how much he wanted to help me and see me at peace. By how fully he believed I’m not meant to be isolated, how many times he went to bat for me with Ms. Suntile without me ever knowing.

  How much he cared about me.

  I decide here and now that I won’t let the Ever who comes after me feel so alone, won’t rely upon them finding their own Mr. Hart. Maybe I’ll write to them—a book or a collection of letters that can be passed down, something meant for them, not something they’ll have to work so hard to find. Anything to prevent them from feeling the loneliness and disconnect I’ve felt for the past seventeen years.

  Even if I have to be alone for the rest of my life, I can hold on to the fact that what I write will someday find its way to the next Ever, an invisible tie I can take comfort in.

  I’m getting toward the end of the logbook, the pages so full there’s hardly any blank space, writing crammed into the margins and along the edges. My eyes widen as I understand what Mr. Hart has been building to: that if my magic could be “reset” in some way, it would be able to seek out the people I care about without hurting them.

  And he thinks the eclipse is the way to do it.

  My heart races, reading his words. He believes I’m strong enough to survive the direct exposure, that an Everwitch’s magic is too powerful to be lost. He believes that when totality is over and my connection to the sun is restored, my magic will reset and find its balance.

  I stare at his words, unable to comprehend the incredible risk he’s suggesting. If he’s wrong—if I go back for the eclipse and get stripped—I’d lose a magic we could never hope to get back. Not until another Everwitch is born.

  The risk is immense, and yet I don’t fully dismiss it. It swirls in my mind like a hurricane above the ocean.

  I shut the logbook and put it on my nightstand. I’ve been so lost in Mr. Hart’s writing that I haven’t noticed the sunlight reaching into the room or the birds chirping outside. I’ve missed breakfast. Paige’s bed is still made. It’s almost nine, and in two hours, the eclipse will be over. Mr. Hart’s theory will never be put to the test.

  I want to try. I want to go to the eclipse. I want it to feel like enough, knowing that even if I were to get stripped, I could have companionship. I could be happy. But the risk is so great. Mr. Hart dedicated so much of himself to this, and in the end, it doesn’t matter, because I can’t bring myself to get out of bed and do what he has suggested.

  You won’t even fight for the things you care about.

  I jump when the door to my room flies open and Paige comes rushing in.

  “Have you seen this?” she asks, turning on the television to a local news channel.

  I sit up and rub my eyes, try to focus on the screen. It shows an enormous dark cloud hovering over a riverbank.

  “Cloudburst?” I ask.

  “It’s dumped twenty-one inches in the past hour,” she says.

  The image switches to the riverbank, where hundreds of people huddle under tarps or stand in the middle of it all, laughing.

  “It’s the second day of the Eclipse the Heat Music Festival,” she says. “The witches have already evacuated, and that river is rising at a dangerous pace. We’re about to see a massive flash flood.”

  “Have they started evacuating the festival?”

  “No,” Paige says. “There are thousands of people; the evacuation logistics are complicated. But when the river overflows, we’re looking at feet of water, not inches. In a crowd that size, if anyone trips or gets knocked over, they’ll likely drown. The force of it will be extreme. There’s no way they’ll all get out safely.”

  I’m standing now, staring at the screen.

  “We have to do something,” I say.

  “Like what? The path of totality cuts across the riverbank at an angle—the entire festival is
in its path. We can safely stand on the other side of the river a few hundred feet north, but we’ll be too far away to be effective. The storm cell is on the other side.”

  I watch the screen. The band keeps playing, and hundreds of people dance in the rain to the beat of the music, drenched in water. It’s close to ninety degrees out; nobody minds the rain.

  “Look at the current,” I say, pointing to the river. “It’s going to wipe out anyone who’s on the shore when it floods.”

  “Exactly,” Paige says.

  “They have to evacuate.”

  “Ms. Suntile is on the phone with officials, but it would take hours to get that many people out. And we don’t have hours.”

  “So we’re just going to sit here, glued to our screens, and watch them die?”

  “What else can we do?”

  “Can we get as close as possible, then rush in once the eclipse is over? Totality only lasts a couple of minutes.”

  “The flood will happen before then. And if we tried to go in before totality, there’s no guarantee we could get out in time. We’d all be stripped.”

  I pace around the room, adrenaline and fear coursing through me. My heart races as my eyes land on Mr. Hart’s logbook.

  “Mr. Hart thought I’d be able to survive an eclipse,” I say, so quietly I’m not sure Paige even hears me.

  She pauses. “What?”

  I repeat my words, louder this time.

  “No witch has ever survived an eclipse. Every single one of them comes out a shader.”

  “I know,” I say, handing Paige the logbook and pointing to where she should start reading. “I’d try and get out in time, but if I couldn’t…” My sentence trails off, hanging in the space between us.

  Her eyes fly over Mr. Hart’s words, and she shakes her head as she goes.

  “There’s definitely something to it,” she says, still reading. “But it’s a huge risk.”

  “Is it too big?”

  She sets the book down and looks at me. I can see her warring with herself, going back and forth about what to say.