Tamsin’s gut clenched at the thought.
Dark magic, while appealing in its all-encompassing power, drained the earth rather than the witch who cast the spell. As the world tried to overcompensate for the loss of its natural resources, the magic that filled its empty wells became twisted and impure. The side effects of a spell borne from dark magic were endless and horrifying.
Magic was, after all, about balance. That was the first lesson Tamsin had ever learned. The Coven’s High Councillor had warned the young witch that no matter how strong she believed herself to be, magic itself was always much more powerful. And when magic was pulled directly from the earth, the earth had a tendency to rebel.
Tamsin’s empty heart twisted in her chest. When she thought about balance, she thought of her twin sister, of their palms pressed together, of staring into each other’s eyes like a mirror without the glass. Together, they had been their own kind of magic.
Tamsin wished that when she thought of Marlena, she could remember what it had felt like to love her. She wished she could remember more than her sister’s cold, clammy skin and the eerie blue of her lips against the crisp white sheets of the infirmary.
Tamsin could only remember clawing at the cold, wet earth, the dirt caked so thick beneath her fingernails that it took a whole week’s scrubbing to get clean. She could only recall how the ancient words, faded and smudged on the aged scrap of parchment, had stuck in her throat as she spoke them aloud, summoning the magic from the earth below to bind her power to her twin sister’s life.
But though the spell had been successful in saving Marlena, the dark magic hadn’t stopped there. It had slipped through Tamsin’s grasp, taking on a life of its own.
Taking lives.
Tamsin spent most of her mornings wondering why her classmate Amma had still been asleep in the dormitory when the rest of the students had evacuated to higher ground. She agonized over the way Amma must have struggled to breathe as the water poured in—flooding the room in a matter of seconds. Every night, Tamsin replayed the moment when the High Councillor had broken the bond between the sisters and the life had drained from Marlena, too.
She had done that. Tamsin had caused that. Two people were dead thanks to her misguided, desperate attempt to keep her sister alive.
Under the Coven’s rule, the punishment for using dark magic was death. Tamsin had been desperate enough to reach for it anyway. She knew what she had been willing to sacrifice, twelve years old and reckless. But her dark magic hadn’t been strong enough to make it past the Wood, the border of trees that separated the world Within from the world Beyond. Her spell had stayed contained, and only those Within knew the enormity of what she had done. This new plague, however, was affecting ordinary folk at a dizzying rate, which meant the spell had to have been cast by a witch older and more powerful than Tamsin had been.
The High Councillor was surely fuming. She was the one who had taken down the dark witch thirty years prior, when Evangeline had used dark magic to cause her own plague. The High Councillor was the one who had founded the Coven, had made it her life’s work to create and enforce a system that would educate the young witches in her care and prevent the use of dark magic. Before the Coven’s takeover, the world of magic had been rogue and chaotic. Now there was an order. There were laws and due process and consequences.
Five years ago, Tamsin had betrayed the High Councillor’s trust. Now another witch had done the same.
Tamsin’s cupboard doors flew open with a sharp bang. The diary shot toward her, slamming into her gut with a shocking amount of force. Tamsin stumbled backward, gasping for air, her eyes never leaving the black book.
The first time, she had been able to write off the diary’s appearance as odd. The second time, she could find no reasonable explanation. She took a swift, shaking breath. Had she summoned it as she recalled her own use of dark magic? Or maybe it was the dark magic itself, messing with her balance. Trying to rekindle her grief. Poking at the yellow bruise of loss she tried so desperately to ignore.
Whatever was happening, Tamsin could not bear to face it. She flung the book back into the crowded cupboard, burying it beneath a moth-eaten quilt. Then she turned to the hearth, where the embers of her earlier fire had all but faded to nothing. Shivering, she took one of the few remaining pieces of firewood from her meager pile and nestled it into the ashes.
She fiddled with the flint, her shaking hands missing a strike once, twice, three times before she saw a spark. Tamsin spoke to the fire, her voice cracking with fear as she coaxed it to life. Once the hearth was filled with a flickering flame, Tamsin turned toward the table.
The diary was lying open to a page filled with loopy black handwriting.
Tamsin swore, her vision swimming as panic crawled its way up her throat. She scooped the book up, ready to fling it into the fire, when her eyes caught on the loop of a letter T.
Her name scribbled in her sister’s handwriting.
Marlena had always been writing. During lessons, meals, free spell periods, she was always scribbling, sometimes so quickly that the ink smeared on her page and splattered her left hand. She was messy, imprecise, and seemingly never out of secrets. Secrets she refused to share.
Tamsin had often tried to read over her sister’s shoulder, sometimes catching the hint of a word before Marlena slammed the cover closed or swatted her roughly away. It had been a part of her sister, that book, the words on the page an extension of Marlena’s soul.
It was one of the reasons Tamsin had never allowed herself to open it. She couldn’t bear to look at her sister’s handwriting and feel nothing but idle curiosity about someone she had once been willing to die for.
Tamsin’s curse had been placed by the Coven as a way to make sure Tamsin’s love for another would never again cloud her judgment. Now the sight of her dead sister’s handwriting brought her nothing but a creeping sense of disquiet.
Even as she settled into a kitchen chair, Tamsin tried to talk herself out of it. But her eyes had already begun to catch on full sentences. The last time a witch had used dark magic, two girls had died. Marlena had been one of them. And now that another spell had been cast, her diary was haunting Tamsin. Hounding her.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. Things either were, or they were not, Councillor Mari used to say. Clearly, the diary wanted something from her. So, Tamsin began to read.
Tamsin is testing me again. I know I shouldn’t blame her—I know it’s just my own jealousy rearing its ugly head—but you’d think she was a princess (one of those relentlessly privileged people that the ordinary folk are forced to worship), walking the halls, laughing with Leya like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
I suppose she doesn’t. It must be so easy to be her. But to be honest (and if you can’t be honest to a book with paper that can’t talk back, where can you be?), I wonder if she isn’t just the slightest bit tired. It must be exhausting, trying to maintain that level of perfection.
I’ve seen the way the councillors look at her when it’s her turn to cast. There’s so much weight there. Such expectation. Me, I can try until my face turns red and my blood runs blue and my vision goes black, and they’ll just sigh that little sigh (you know that sigh, the one I’ve gotten my entire life since my magic “appeared”) and pat me on the back and tell me “nice try,” and then I want to run away and die (but of course I only end up bedridden for days, my brain foggy and my limbs so heavy they might as well be rocks).
I don’t know what I’d do without Amma. I really don’t. Yes, her sight is becoming more advanced, but so are the headaches. What’s a gift if you don’t also have a curse? I’m sure I don’t know. But my sister might.
Sometimes I wish (and yes, I know wishing is futile—my mother is my mother, after all) that I knew what it was like to be her. Really and truly knew. I understand that’s a strange thing to feel about a girl who has the same face as I do (although I do maintain that I’m the prettier one; I’ve got to have something
), but that’s where the similarities stop.
Do you know that we used to switch places all the time, laughing behind our little fists as we tricked some of the savviest witches in the world into calling us by the wrong names? (Of course you didn’t know that; you’re a diary.) We played that game for ages, and it always worked, until the day sparks first shot from her fingers and mine stayed perfectly normal. Until there was no fooling anyone because her magic was a river and mine was a raindrop. I still remember the day I couldn’t be Tamsin anymore and realized that all there was left to be was me.
It was the worst day of my life.
FOUR WREN
The baker had no bread.
It was just after daybreak. The market in Wells had been open no more than a matter of minutes, but already the loaves had been picked over, nothing left but a handful of crumbs and a light dusting of white powder. Wren tried not to let her face twist into a grimace as she surveyed the scraps.
“The ones I sold were near two days old,” the baker said, wringing her hands nervously. “Last night I found my flour turned to ash, right in the barrel.” Her voice was hushed, almost as though she didn’t believe it herself.
Next to the baker stood her wife, weeping steadily into a yellowing handkerchief. Both women had dark circles beneath their eyes. Both glanced darkly around the meager market.
Most of the merchants hadn’t even bothered to come. The ones who had were armed with wares that lacked their usual liveliness. Potatoes were withered, their peels nearly black, their eyes blooming strange, gnarled roots larger than the starch itself. Milk, once white as fresh snow, now shone a sickly silver blue in bottles only half-full. The only vendor with a fully stocked stand was a tinker, selling bottles of bright purple potion—PLAGUE PREVENTERS, his sign said—for the criminal price of pure silver. Wren wasn’t certain if the reason his stand was empty of customers was the asking price or the potion’s impossible promise.
Even her own basket was lighter than usual. The henhouse had been filled with the stink of sulfur, and though she had searched high and low, she’d found nothing but nest after empty nest. The chickens had been eerily still, nothing like the usual squawking and ruffled feathers that came when dragon hatchlings snuck inside and swallowed the still-warm eggs whole. It wasn’t a creature that had stolen her eggs. It was the plague.
Wren waved away the baker’s string of apologies. She didn’t blame the woman for her misfortune. Everything was harder these days. Tensions between witches and ordinary folk were at an all-time high. The Coven’s High Councillor had issued a statement proclaiming the emergence of another dark witch, who had used dark magic to create the memory-stealing plague. The minds were the first to go, but—as everyone who had survived the Year of Darkness knew—it was only a matter of time before the bodies followed.
Crops were withering. Giant waves of water flowed through the streets, soaking everyone’s ankles and ruining their shoes. The wolves had left the forests and had begun feasting on farm animals. Farmer Haddon’s youngest son insisted they’d start eating little girls next.
Stepping out of the house had begun to feel like darting, unarmed, through a battle zone. Wren hadn’t wanted to go outside, not after the raindrops that had left behind the smell of sizzling skin, but her cupboard was down to its last onion, and if her father was going to get better, he needed something solid to eat.
His system couldn’t handle the disappointment of hunger.
Hers couldn’t handle the disappointment of disappointing him.
“It’s so quiet.” Wren’s voice was no more than a whisper. The baker’s eyes went as dark as the heavy gray clouds hanging low in the sky.
“Most took off west, toward the sea. As though sickness can’t reach the water.” She frowned, her eyes flashing with annoyance. “Some are caring for the fallen. The rest, well…”
She didn’t need to finish.
Around them, the air crackled with caustic energy, the scuffling of scattered footsteps, the swish of cloaks as the wearers drew them more tightly around their noses and mouths despite the heat of the summer sun. The first case had struck the town of Wells three days prior. For two days the plague limited itself to the ill and elderly, but then yesterday a ten-year-old had come running to the town square, shouting that his sister had dropped to the ground before springing up and running, screaming, into the fields.
The townspeople had sent out a search party, but no one had found her. Now neighbors looked upon neighbors suspiciously, scouring for symptoms. No one knew how to prevent the plague. They only knew it was spreading through their town faster than the wind, which had taken to blustering at speeds capable of toppling an ox. The world was falling apart, and not a single person knew how to save it. They hardly knew how to save themselves.
Wren bid the baker and her wife a somber farewell. Each step she took left her uneasy. The magic from the stones beneath her feet made her feel as though someone were churning butter inside her stomach.
She made her way quickly through the rest of the market, picking up a limp head of cabbage and a cut of meat so small it wouldn’t fill a child. Wren cringed as she parted with two copper coins. Her savings were already dwindling.
At the market’s edge, a foul taste overtook her, as though her tongue had been coated with ash. Her attention caught on something moving swiftly across the square. At first she thought it a snake, but upon closer inspection, she realized it was magic—thick, dark, and slimy—oozing across the cobblestones.
Wren had never seen magic so gruesome. The longer she watched it, the more it became clear that the slithering shadow was dark magic. Panicked, Wren tried to stop it, tried to will it back with her mind, but of course her effort made no difference. The magic continued on undisrupted, creeping determinedly behind a couple walking arm in arm in the middle of the square.
Wren wanted to call out to them, to stop the magic coursing swiftly toward its prey, but of course there was nothing she could do. Even if she did reveal herself as a source and tell the couple what she saw, it would be useless trying to convince them of a danger they could not see for themselves. They might think her a witch.
And so she stayed still and looked on in horror as the dark magic wrapped itself around the man’s ankle and pulled him roughly to the ground. He hit the cobblestones with a dull thud, his head bouncing limply once before coming to rest. The woman fell to her knees beside him, shaking his shoulder insistently.
“Henry,” the woman cried. “Someone help my husband.”
A ring of wary onlookers gathered but kept their distance. Wren shivered, her arms covered with goose bumps as she watched the dark magic creep across the length of the man’s body like a horde of spiders. When the magic reached his mouth, it hesitated. Then the darkness disappeared up his nose. The man’s entire being shuddered, and then he gasped, his eyes shooting open. Even from where Wren stood, she could see the wildness within.
“Henry.” The man’s wife flung herself on him, tears still falling from her face. But instead of returning her embrace, the man pawed at his wife, pushing her off and away until he could scramble backward.
“What are you doing?” The man’s teeth chattered wildly. “What do you want?”
The woman stopped mid-sob. “Henry, please, it’s me.” She flung herself forward, grabbing her husband by the arm. He shook her off roughly, his fear palpable.
“Don’t touch me,” the man said. “Please, leave me alone.”
The crowd of onlookers began to disperse. Signs of the plague were evident in the man’s actions. No one wanted to risk contamination. Wren, however, could not seem to pull her eyes away as the man got shakily to his feet. The woman flung herself at his ankle. “Your name is Henry. I am your wife. We have three sons.”
The man’s expression was haunting. The woman’s words meant nothing to him, were so impossible he could not even fathom their meaning. He bent down, trying to extract the woman from his limb.
“Please, Henry.�
�� The woman had returned to sobbing. “You know me. You love me.” Her voice broke, her desperation tangible. It sent a shiver up Wren’s spine.
All the while, the man remained unchanged, methodically trying to remove the woman from his person. The wife held on tight, but in the end the man triumphed.
“I know not who you are or what you want,” the man said, his voice booming in the empty square, “but, woman, leave me be.” With that he turned and fled, leaving his wife crying and crumpled on the cobblestones.
As he ran, a black curtain of magic trailed behind him like a shroud.
Wren’s heart ached for the woman. Her instinct was to offer comfort, but in the end, fear won, as it often did. She hoisted her nearly empty basket over her shoulder and made her way quickly down the path toward her cottage. Now that she knew what to look for, she began to notice dark magic clinging to the homes of the afflicted like a shadow. Now, with just a glance at the smoke emanating from the chimneys of her neighbors, she could identify who the plague’s next victim would be.
It was too much. Her stomach churned with unease as she inhaled the sulfurous stink of the dark magic. The sickness was spreading. It was only a matter of time before it came for her father. She was surprised it hadn’t already struck.
Wren shivered as she maneuvered her way around a patch of weeds with razor-sharp thorns. She stumbled, sinking into a puddle of bubbling mud and walking straight into a tree branch stuck sideways from its fallen trunk. It tore into her shoulder, catching her sleeve and slicing open her skin.
Wren swore, struggling to extract herself from the clutches of the sharp stick. She was so used to branches bending away from her that she had forgotten to pay attention to her surroundings. Three tiny drops of blood soaked through the thin, flax-colored linen of her shirt. Wren rolled her eyes to the sky, cursing her clumsiness, when her attention caught on a newly unfurled ribbon of black. Her jaw clenched with dread before her eyes had even finished tracing the streak of magic to the worn, thatched roof of her own cottage.
Sweet & Bitter Magic Page 4