The Secret of the Sacred Four

by E J Elwin

  “What other gifts do I have?” I asked.

  “The Burned Witch,” she said, “aside from being immune to death by fire, can also conjure and control fire with his bare hands. Pyrokinesis is the technical term.”

  “That’s it?” I asked, crestfallen.

  “What do you mean, that’s it?” she asked, puzzled. “That’s an incredible gift to have, and you’re the only witch in the world who has it.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, confused. I turned to Harriet. I’d seen her start many fires with just two fingers. At the cemetery the night of the resurrection spell, she lit two candles just by holding them. “I’ve seen you light a bunch of fires with your bare hands,” I said.

  “You’ve seen me light fires in my own home,” she said, “in places where they’d already burned many times. I had pre-set spells cast on those fireplaces. I didn’t explicitly conjure fire at the moments you saw it appear.”

  When I still looked confused, she went on.

  “Think of it this way, did you ever see fire shoot directly out of my fingers? Or from my palms? Did you ever see me hold a ball of flames in my hand?” I shook my head. “That’s because, even though there are ways for witches to magically start fires, we need tools to do it. Spells need to be cast, and you still need things like kindling and candles to keep the fire going.”

  “You, on the other hand,” said Jessica, and it was clear that she could barely contain her excitement, “can conjure fire directly from your bare hands, no spells needed. You can control it. You could hold a ball of fire in your palm without feeling any pain. You can shoot fire from your hands. It’ll make a fabulous weapon against the Brotherhood.”

  I looked down at my hands, expecting them to be glowing or steaming like a kettle after what Jessica had just said, but they looked like they always had. I raised a hand and flicked it.

  “Careful,” said Harriet. But nothing happened.

  “Here, try this,” said Jessica. She pulled some tissues from the box on the table and held them out to me. “Now concentrate. Focus really hard on what you want…”

  What I wanted was to see Connor, and I wasn’t going to get him back by lighting some tissues on fire. Still, I held them up and pointed two fingers at them the way Harriet always lit her fires. Nothing happened. “Well, maybe I’m not one of the Sacred Four, after all.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Jessica. “Maybe you need to meet with your sister witches first. There’s a line in the prophecy about the moment the four of you meet: With joy, the stars themselves will weep.”

  I couldn’t imagine what that meant. I wondered vaguely who these three girls were, if their lives were as damaged as mine was.

  “We should find them as soon as possible,” said Jessica. “They have their own gifts too, of course. Some really amazing things. You can figure them out together and the four of you can read the prophecy. It’s a good read. Ursula was quite the wordsmith on top of everything else.”

  “Do you think that the four of us together could bring Connor back?”

  Jessica’s smile faded and there was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Arthur…” Harriet looked extremely sad and I knew what she was going to say.

  “What good are these gifts,” I said, tears stinging my eyes, “if they can’t bring Connor back?”

  They both looked at me, their eyes filled with pity, and I couldn’t handle it. I knocked back my whiskey, then rose from my chair and left the room. I heard Harriet say something but didn’t look back. I hurried through the sunroom, past the armchair where I had seen the meditating Jasper but which was now empty. I strode through the living room with its colorful carpets and armchairs draped in lace, past the spot where I had appeared out of a cloud of ash…

  I reached the tall double front doors, pulled them open, and was bombarded by unexpected greenery. The front of the house was shrouded in leaves from overhanging trees. It was like opening a door onto a rainforest. I guessed that, like with Harriet’s overgrown front yard back in Wineville, it was to maintain as much privacy as possible. The smell of the ocean still permeated through the trees, and I inhaled lungfuls of the salty air that wafted toward the house on a cool, tickling breeze.

  I bounded down the front steps and made a sharp right through the trees toward where I knew the ocean was. The smell was intoxicating and the sound of the waves thrummed in my ears. The land took a sudden steep slant and I stumbled forward, almost losing my footing, before it leveled out again and I broke through the trees onto the sandy shore.

  There the ocean was, peaceful and indifferent, its waves foaming onto the sand in comforting perpetuity. I looked back at the house, which was a pale violet color with white and gray accents, and perched on a large outcropping of rock. It was even bigger than it had seemed from the inside. I spotted the sliding glass door to the kitchen and counted three floors above it. The top one ended in a pointy, pyramid-shaped roof. There were no other houses nearby and no one on the beach. It was an ideal location for people who wanted to live privately.

  I turned toward the ocean, toward the blue horizon that was so much like Connor’s eyes. I felt drawn to it, as if it held answers for me, as if I could dive right into the blue of his eyes.

  I splashed into the surf, soaking the red bathrobe, feeling the soft muddy sand between my toes. The water was stone cold but it was comforting, a soothing numbness. I waded into the water until it reached my waist, the red robe weighed down beneath me.

  More than anything, I wanted Connor back. I needed him. I ran through all the things I would need for a new resurrection spell. I would have to write a spell, like Harriet had; I would need a Cloaking Crystal to keep the spell from being traced (maybe a few of them since one wasn’t enough the first time); I would need Harriet’s Blood Crystal, which she said the spell couldn’t be done without; I would need some candles and a silver knife… And then there was the small matter of the exchange. I was fresh out of Father Gabriels. There was no shortage of people like him, though…

  Then I remembered that I would need a half moon, and one had just passed. I would also need Connor’s ashes, and they were in Portland, all mixed up in the debris of the blown-up supply room above the pub. Maybe the whole building went down.

  Then what if I gave it my best shot, cast the best resurrection spell I could, and it didn’t work? Or it went badly? Harriet said that resurrection spells rarely turned out well. I was new to witchcraft, whereas she had been practicing it since she was a little girl, had decades of experience that I didn’t. I could hear her voice in my head: If you have a skilled enough witch and good enough candidates for resurrection, then yes, sometimes it does turn out well…

  It struck me then, as suddenly as a bolt of lightning, that the resurrection spell hadn’t turned out well. We’d all assumed it had because Connor had come back as happy and healthy as he’d always been… but then it all fell apart. He’d barely been back two days before he was killed, the only one of us to die in the Brotherhood’s attack. The spell had worked, but it didn’t turn out well. That had been a brief illusion.

  Despite the incredible discoveries of the past few hours, I felt more powerless than I ever had. According to Harriet and Jessica, the Sacred Four had the power to fight the Brotherhood and whatever other threat existed out there, but it all felt futile. Even if I killed every single man in the Brotherhood, even if I got to look the Patriarch in the eyes and slit his throat the way I had done Father Gabriel, what difference would it make? Connor would still be gone.

  I was overwhelmed with despair, just as I had been when I wept beside Connor’s casket at his funeral. The cracks inside me chipped and snapped, and I shuddered. I gasped for air, choking on my grief, and the hot salty tears fell into the water, joining an eternity of tears that had fallen before mine. I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, looking out at the endlessness of the ocean, only that the sun grew hotter and higher in the sky. Then I heard Harriet’s voice.

  “Arthur?
” I didn’t turn around but I knew she was close behind me. She had walked into the ocean too. “Arthur, you have to come inside. It’s not safe out here.”

  I blinked in the sun. It was strange to be in this beautiful place while being in such danger and misery at the same time. A wave came and the water rose to my chest, soaking the part of the red robe that had been dry up until then, but I didn’t move. I felt Harriet’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Arthur, please,” she said. “I can’t lose you too.”

  I turned and saw tears in her eyes, and instinctively reached out to hug her. She held me tightly as another wave came and the water rose nearly to our necks.

  CHAPTER 10

  Broken

  I was only dimly aware of walking out of the ocean and back into the house. I must have been drunk from the whiskey I’d had at the kitchen table. It hadn’t been much but it had been on a completely empty stomach. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. Harriet offered to make me some breakfast but I told her I just wanted to go back upstairs and go to sleep.

  “Being burned alive takes a lot out of you,” I said humorlessly.

  She didn’t laugh, as she would have with one of Connor’s many jokes about death, and instead looked deeply troubled. I was about to apologize for the remark but the moment passed.

  “Arthur, are you sure?” she asked anxiously. “You haven’t eaten since…” She trailed off and I remembered the last time I’d eaten, the tortilla chips hovering over her kitchen table, Connor laughing and snatching them out of the air…

  “I’m sure,” I said, feeling a pain in my chest. “I just need to sleep more.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Do you remember where it is?”

  I nodded, and headed for the stairs. I walked up the winding staircase, past the silver chandelier, and onto the hallway where every door was closed except for the one I had walked out of earlier. I closed the door behind me, pulled off the red robe that was sodden with salt water and sand, and crawled into the bed naked as I had been when I woke up there. I pulled the silky white sheets over my head and instantly fell asleep.

  **

  I’m tied to a tall wooden stake at the center of a clearing in a dense, dark forest. It’s unnaturally dark, with nothing but blackness visible through the surrounding trees and in the sky above. There is no moon and not even the slightest glimmer of a star. There is only firelight, burning on ten torches hovering in the darkness. I can just make out the leering masked faces.

  One of the men ignites the mound of firewood beneath my feet. I’m scared but I know the fire can’t kill me and the burning won’t hurt. Then it does. It’s agonizing, blinding pain. I try not to scream because I don’t want to give them the satisfaction, but I can’t help it. I cry out in the night, howling in anguish, and the men around the stake cheer. A few of them throw some more wood onto the fire.

  “Burn, sinner!” someone in the crowd shouts.

  “Witch!”

  “Faggot!”

  “Hey guys!” shouts a voice that I recognize.

  It’s the Patriarch. He comes out of the shadows and pulls off his mask, his face illuminated by the firelight. His skin is still pink and blotchy from the burns he sustained from the Molotov cocktail, but he looks beside himself with glee.

  “He’s a flaming faggot!” he shouts to the crowd. “Get it?! Flaming?!”

  The men roar with laughter as the fire rises around me and my skin sears and sizzles and bubbles and melts. The sound of my own screams fills my head and then I finally wake up.

  I lay there, breathing hard like I’d just finished sprinting, my body coated in sweat. Through the translucent white curtains, I could see a dimly lit sky out the window. I couldn’t tell if it was just after sunset or just before sunrise. I pulled the sweaty white sheets off myself.

  I had a whole two seconds of amnesia before I remembered that Connor was gone. Not even a week ago, I had lain in my bed at my parents’ house, certain that I would never heal from the pain of losing him. That had been before the dream Harriet had sent me, before I knew there was a chance I could get him back. Now I was back in that same position, only this time, Connor was gone for good, and there was nothing I could do about it. It was impossible to resurrect ashes, and that’s what he now was. A pile of ashes in a larger pile of rubble in Portland.

  I took a breath and it was like razor blades in my chest. I wanted to go back to sleep but couldn’t. I didn’t want to feel. I wanted all of this to be over. A lifetime of mourning Connor stretched out before me like a steep, endless mountain, and I didn’t have the strength to climb it.

  When I was eight years old, my parents took me to a place called The Hoodoo Ski Area, a snowy winter resort a few hours south of Wineville in Oregon’s Santiam mountain pass. We had been hiking up the main ski slope, an area referred to by the resort simply as The Mountain, and my legs had started to cramp up. I told my mom that I wanted to go back to our cabin, but my dad wasn’t having it. He yelled at me for being a whiner and told me to ‘man up’ and keep going. In an effort to keep the peace, my mom had gently encouraged me to keep walking, telling me we were almost at the summit, but I couldn’t handle it. Aside from the pain in my legs, my fingers and toes were going numb, despite the thick layers of winter clothing I was wearing. I finally collapsed in the snow, unable to go any further, and my mom led me back down the slope to our cabin, with my dad snarling in the background.

  That was how I felt now. Every inch of me was giving out. This was as far up the mountain as I could get. I wasn’t built for it. I felt the cold spreading through me like it had then, from the tips of my fingers and toes, up my arms and legs, into my chest and stomach. Cold and broken, that’s what I was.

  There was a knock at the bedroom door. I yanked the damp, sweaty sheets back over myself and shut my eyes, pretending to be asleep. The door opened and a shaft of light split the darkness, shining through the thin white curtains and across my closed eyelids.

  “Arthur?” came Harriet’s voice. I didn’t respond. The shaft of light grew wider. I heard the sound of creaking floorboards and the clink of a glass. “Arthur?” She was right on the other side of the curtain. “Arthur, I know you’re awake.”

  I opened my eyes and saw her outline behind the curtains. I pulled them back. She stood there holding a tray, illuminated from behind by the soft golden light coming in from the hall.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “I, uh…” she sounded a little abashed, “I enchanted a candle downstairs so that it would light when you woke up.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve just been really worried about you. You’ve been sleeping all day.” So it was just past sunset then. “I brought you some food.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Arthur, you need to eat. You may be able to survive fire but you won’t have as much luck with malnourishment.” I was silent. “Arthur, please.” I could hear pain in her voice. “Please, for me.”

  I sat up, keeping the sheets around my midsection, mindful that I was naked underneath. She sat at the edge of the bed, setting the wooden tray between us. I smelled the food and knew what it was before I even got a clear look at it. It was spaghetti, the same thing I had been eating at my parents’ house when Sheriff Murphy arrived to question me about Father Gabriel.

  It was still steaming, freshly cooked, and topped with red sauce. There was also a bowl of mashed potatoes, some chopped vegetables, and a side of fresh fruit. To drink, there was a glass of water and some red liquid that I couldn’t place.

  “That’s pomegranate juice,” said Harriet, pointing at it. “Jessica grows them herself.”

  I took a sip of it and caught hints of tangy and sweet, but mostly it tasted like water. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had a pomegranate, but I didn’t remember them tasting so bland.

  “I made the spaghetti,” said Harriet. I picked up the fork and twisted some spaghetti around it. It, too, must have bee
n delicious, but I only tasted vague notes of tomato, as if they were coming to me from very far away. I didn’t want to hurt Harriet’s feelings or make her more worried than she already was, so I followed it with another forkful and then another. I looked up as I ate and saw that she looked relieved.

  “It’s very good, thank you,” I said.

  “You’re so welcome, honey,” she said, and she reached out and stroked my hair.

  It was a tender gesture that I remembered my mom doing when I was little, usually when I was in bed with the flu. She would bring me a bowl of chicken soup and show the same relieved expression that Harriet did as she saw me eat. She’d then give me a spoonful of children’s flu medicine, and stroke my hair in that way that very clearly said: I love you so much, you fragile little human.

  I lapped up the spaghetti, mostly to put off the conversation I knew was coming. When I was done, I quickly moved on to the mashed potatoes, which tasted like starchy air. Apparently having decided that I was no longer at risk of starvation, Harriet cleared her throat.

  “I didn’t know Connor for very long, but I feel very lucky that I did get to know him. He was one of a kind, just like you are. There is no one else in the world quite like you.”

  There it was. I knew she wanted to talk about the Sacred Four, but I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t handle Connor being gone, much less my new role in this strange foursome of witches that rose out of centuries of brutality and murder.

  “Trust me, it was a shock to us too,” said Harriet. “Most witches are raised hearing Ursula’s prophecy of the Sacred Four as a bedtime story, a little fairy tale to spark a child’s imagination. That was the case with me. My mother, having the gift of Sight herself, read everything she could find on Ursula, every detail of her life and every prophecy, and she told me the Sacred Four story many times. She believed in it. She believed it was one of the few prophecies from Ursula’s later years that was legitimate. I was always skeptical, especially after I lost her. But here you are, right in front of me.”