The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  “What do you want?” I whisper.

  She swishes her tail and walks away.

  I creep down the stairs, ignoring at every step the logical part of my brain that begs me to turn around and return to bed.

  Haxahaven feels like a living thing at night, full of warm breath and secrets, and deeply, deeply asleep.

  I pause at the double doors for a fraction of a second. My brother’s voice rings in my ears. Not your smartest idea, sis. The doors groan as they swing wide. The night welcomes me with open arms, like it does to all who make terrible decisions after dark.

  The late September air bites with the promise of winter. The cold pricks at my skin. Dew from the lawn soaks into the leather of my boots and leaves me shivering despite the weight of my socks.

  It doesn’t take me long to reach the wall that borders the school like a sharp-toothed mouth.

  Staring up at it, I am well aware that I am about to do the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. The wall looks taller at night, and it’s been a long time since I scaled a fence. Not since I was eleven and playing hide-and-seek with Oliver and William. I felt less nauseous then.

  Thankfully, it’s not difficult to find a foothold. I wedge the toe of my boot in between two stones and haul myself up. The tips of my fingers find purchase on the ragged edge of a weatherworn piece of rock. I reach one arm up, but it falls short of the top of the wall by nearly twelve inches. It’s harder to haul myself up the second time. My foot slips, and for one sickening second I think I’m about to fall, but my fingertips hold on despite the screaming pain. Finally, I find another foothold and wrench myself to the top of the wall. I sit there for one moment, wondering if perhaps there are spells or alarms to keep me inside.

  But then I think of my brother, the bravery with which he would have run into any forest to save me, and I jump.

  The fall takes longer than I thought it would. It isn’t until I’m in the air that I give any serious thought to how terribly landing is going to hurt. I collapse to the ground with a thud. Pain shoots up my ankles and through my knees. Cautiously I rotate both ankles—they’ve felt better, but nothing is broken, blessedly, so I push myself up and continue on.

  Queens is only a few miles from Manhattan, but there is nothing familiar about this place. The stillness feels less like peace and more like a threat. I don’t know what waits for me in the dark.

  Twigs snap under the soles of my feet as I work my way farther into the darkness of the park. The blackness is so heavy, it feels like a physical object, so complete, it seems to be chewing at the edges of reality, eating everything around it. My eyes can’t adjust. The path turns deeper into the trees. I stumble and end up on my knees. I reach down to wipe off the dirt, and my hands come away wet. I wipe the blood away on my nightgown. The jackrabbit beat of my heart makes me feel like a prey animal about to walk into a trap.

  A canopy of stubborn leaves blocks out the light of the moon, and it doesn’t take me long to be very cold, and very sure I’ve made a mistake in coming here tonight. My body is shaking all over. I clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.

  I curse under my breath and turn back, but the path snakes again, and I’m suddenly not sure where I am. I’ve strayed too far from the walled safety of the school. Surrounded by trees, I feel very small. It’s been a long time since I wished for the warmth of my mother’s embrace, but I crave it now.

  I take three steps down the path and whip my head from side to side. Nothing. Nothing but the solid darkness of silent woods on all sides of me. The flickering candles in the windows of Haxahaven are nowhere to be found.

  My heart quickens as panic rises in my chest. You deserve this, a cruel part of my brain whispers. This is what you get for being a fool.

  With the power I’ve felt in me before, I try to summon something, anything, but nothing happens.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and count backward from fifteen. It’s a habit I picked up from Mrs. Carrey. Whenever we made a mistake on a garment, or struggled with an order, she would tell us to close our eyes and count backward. We had fifteen seconds to pull ourselves together. It was usually all we needed.

  Fifteen, fourteen—the deafening silence is splintered.

  Thirteen, twelve—a voice cuts through the darkness—eleven—no, voices, plural.

  Ten—someone hisses, “Shhh”—nine—a sharp laugh—eight, seven—a low voice whispers—six, five, four—dry leaves rustle.

  Three, two—a female voice says something that might be my name—one.

  My eyes snap open.

  I am not alone in this park.

  “Hello?” I whisper to the solid darkness. There is shuffling in the underbrush.

  A bobbing lantern comes into view first. It flickers orange and white against the obsidian dark.

  With sheer force of will, I gather my confidence and take a few careful steps in the direction of the light. “Who’s there?” I rasp.

  The whispering voices are louder, but I still can’t make out what they’re saying.

  Closer and closer I creep to the lantern, which has stilled. Whoever is carrying it has reached their destination, or they’re lying in wait.

  “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny,” I hiss into the night. The voices have gone quiet.

  Too close, a shadow moves. It’s human shaped, but hunched and moving in a jerky, repetitive pattern.

  I don’t expect the clod of dirt that flies up and hits me in the mouth.

  “What the hell!” I exclaim.

  “Who’s there?” a female voice asks from outside the range of the lantern’s light.

  “Who are you?” I hiss back.

  “Frances?” a different voice asks.

  At the sound of my name, recognition hits me like a punch to the gut.

  “Lena? Is that Maxine? Are you two the ones leaving me notes?”

  “What notes? And what are you doing out here?”

  “What are you doing out here?” I demand in return.

  Maxine rises from the ground, brushing dirt off her night clothes, an oversized linen shirt paired with loose trousers, holding a large object in her hand. “Looking for this.” That’s what the movement was—she was digging.

  “And I was looking for you,” Lena says, rising from the ground herself. “I heard you get out of bed. I followed you down the stairs to see where you were going, and I ran into Maxine on the landing.

  “And I felt a strange flare-up of magic so strong, it woke me up!” Maxine says, “so I got out of bed to investigate. I found Lena looking for you and invited her to come with me.”

  “Invited?” Lena snorts.

  “I wanted the company!”

  “You wanted to use me as monster bait.”

  “Not true!”

  “Wait, wait—” I interrupt the bickering. “So neither of you have been leaving me notes on my bed?”

  At their confused expressions, I unfold the note clenched in my sweaty palm. They pass it back and forth, examining it under the light of the lantern.

  “I didn’t leave this for you,” Maxine says. “I’m not even sure what this means.”

  “I think it has something to do with my brother,” I say.

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” Maxine replies.

  “I don’t anymore.” It’s easier to be glib than sad. “I think this might have something to do with his murder.” The twin pity in their eyes makes me feel small.

  Maxine inhales sharply. “And you thought creeping out into the dark woods to meet a murderer was wise?”

  “It’s probably just another girl playing a mean joke,” Lena says.

  Maxine nods in agreement. “A nasty prank. I’ll help you get them back. We’ll put paste in everyone’s oatmeal.”

  Lena looks horrified. “Everyone?”

  Maxine shrugs, undeterred. “I’m committed to any and all revenge plots.”

  I sigh, and they return their focus to me. “I barely speak to the other girls. What use would they have
to do something like this?” I don’t tell them about studying their handwriting. Not to mention how it would be near impossible for any of my classmates to know the exact date of my brother’s death.

  Their silence makes me uncomfortable, so I ask another pressing question. “Maxine, what did you say about a magical flare-up?”

  “All magic is connected. I don’t understand it, but I can feel it. It’s how I found you. It’s how I find everyone. But tonight I felt something different.”

  “Different how?” I ask.

  “Different as in different. Almost like someone using power for the first time… but more urgent somehow. It wanted me to find it.”

  “It?” I ask.

  “This.” Maxine holds up an oversized leather-bound book flaking with age and grime.

  “A book?” I ask.

  “A magic book,” Maxine corrects me.

  “A magic book buried in the park, revealing itself to us the same night Frances was supposed to meet a murderer in the woods,” Lena adds. She looks skeptical, and it doesn’t escape me she’s taken two steps back from where Maxine holds the book.

  “I thought you said it was probably one of the other girls.” I feign offense.

  “No. Maxine said that. I think you were willing to traipse out in the dark to meet a total and complete murderer.”

  Maxine huffs. “Can we stop the bickering and address the magic book.” She holds it over her head with one hand and gives it a shake for emphasis. Clods of dirt rain down on her shoulder. She’s in her nightgown too, cocooned in a dark coat.

  “I don’t trust it.” Lena shakes her head.

  “I don’t care if we trust it; I care if it’s useful,” Maxine says.

  A raven taking off from the trees above startles all three of us. Maxine curses under her breath.

  “The park at night has no effect on you, but a bird does you in?” Lena scoffs at Maxine.

  “I hate birds. It’s the damned flapping,” Maxine says, voice thick with disgust.

  “Of all things to scare the indomitable Maxine,” I whisper.

  “Can we continue this discussion back at school? Have the two of you fulfilled your death wishes for the night?” Lena places her hands on her hips, waiting for us to realize she’s right.

  Maxine tucks the book under her arm and takes me by the hand. “My death wish can wait another day. Frances?”

  I scan the dark park once more for the note leaver, but it’s futile. The person isn’t here, and I am no closer to getting the answers I desperately seek than the day William died. It must have all been a joke. Hope playing with my imagination and grief. I let out a deep sigh. “Yes, let’s go.”

  Maxine has no trouble skipping down the path back to the wall that encircles the school. She finds it so easily, just like everything seems to come easily to her. I am grateful to have her warm hand in my right and Lena’s in my left. The dark is less frightening with them by my side.

  I’m getting ready to hike up my nightgown to climb the wall when Maxine laughs and pulls a skeleton key from the pocket of her overcoat.

  “Perks of the job,” she deadpans as she unlocks the front gate.

  We creep across the lawn, pry open the front doors, and step through the echoing entryway. It still strikes me as odd that the door isn’t locked. Anything this easy usually comes with a price.

  On the second-floor landing, Maxine jerks her head in a follow me motion. Lena and I obey, trailing her down the hall to her room. Maxine attends classes like the rest of us, but her special status as a Finder makes her some cross between student and faculty, which must be why she has no roommates, just a powder-blue canopy bed strewn with clothing and blankets. Her vanity is littered with sparkling baubles and velvet ribbons. She catches me eyeing them.

  “Mother won’t stop sending them in the mail no matter how I beg her to stop. Take whatever you wish.”

  I don’t take anything, but I do think about sticking a brooch in an envelope to send to my own mother.

  The heavy book lands with a thud and a cloud of down feathers as Maxine dumps it onto her bed.

  “Do you feel that… that buzzing?” Maxine asks.

  Lena and I glance at each other and shake our heads no. A shiver spider-walks up my spine.

  “Buzzing?” Lena’s face is etched with concern, her dark eyebrows knit together.

  “It feels alive,” Maxine whispers.

  Nausea rolls through me. “That doesn’t feel right.”

  Lena’s voice is scarcely above a whisper. “It can’t be.”

  “Could the person who has been leaving me notes have wanted me to find this?” I ask. I don’t know why the question terrifies me so deeply.

  “It looks like it’s been buried for ages. It wouldn’t make much sense.”

  “You know I don’t believe in coincidences like that,” Lena states. Her eyes haven’t left the book. She’s staring at it like it might pounce at us.

  “Might as well see what’s inside.” Maxine’s usually confident voice is thin.

  She reaches out and traces her fingers gingerly over the words stamped in faded gold on the black leather cover; The Elemental it reads. She flips it open. Her nimble fingers fly through page after handwritten page of diagrams, words, and symbols.

  This book doesn’t look anything like the onionskin textbooks we use in Mrs. Roberts’s class. It looks ancient and awful. Like it wasn’t written by a person but simply willed into being by the ground itself.

  Maxine’s hands move quickly, but she’s careful not to tear the delicate papers as our eyes devour the pages. She lingers on shapes and markings that make my head throb. Scrambled words and loud, angry handwriting pierce my chest before Maxine flips by a drawing that makes my heart stop.

  “Wait, wait!” I grab the book from Maxine’s lap and flip back to the page she just passed.

  The ancient spine cracks as I spread the book on the powder- blue duvet.

  The ink has faded, as if the words on this page are being whispered through time. Most of them are in a language I can’t make out. In the center of the page is a drawing of a coffin, a mirror, a headstone, a tooth, and a comb laid out in a circle around a Celtic cross.

  It’s the title at the top of the page that sent my heart skittering in my chest. In devastatingly careful penmanship, bolder than the rest of the faded letters are the words “The Resurrection.” The ink looks newer than what’s in the rest of the book.

  Four objects are drawn and carefully labeled. A scrying mirror, a vial of graveyard dust, a hairbrush marked item belonging to the deceased, and a dagger labeled Freagarthach.

  “What is this?” I whisper.

  “I think it’s a spell,” Maxine replies.

  “A spell to bring someone back to life?” I wonder aloud.

  “That’s impossible,” Lena whispers. She lays a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  In the left margin, in darker ink, someone has scrawled hasty notes. The writing is so frantic, I can only make out some of it.

  Only effective if done soon after departure from this plane

  Best under waning moon

  Graveyard dust no more than five days old

  RISKY.

  Best in the company of others

  There are other notes too, but they’re in a language I don’t recognize. I flip quickly through the other pages of the book. Most of the printed spells offer at least some instruction in English, but the margins of nearly every page are filled with notes in this unfamiliar language.

  My reality shifts, expands the same way it did my first day at Haxahaven. Like my brain has to make new room to understand a world where any of this could be possible.

  Maxine snorts. “Doesn’t seem like the spell being risky was going to stop whoever wrote this.”

  “I wonder if it worked,” I say more to myself than to them. The tiny spark of hope that lives in my rib cage burns brightly, ignited by the idea of a spell that could bring William back to me.

  “Of co
urse it didn’t work—the dead don’t come back to life.” Lena shakes her head. I can barely hear her over the roaring in my ears.

  “But I don’t think this is a spell to bring them back to life.” Maxine’s tone is questioning; she doesn’t understand this any more than we do. “Look here.” She points to an illustration in the lower left corner. A magician sitting in a robe in front of a mirror. In the mirror, another person is drawn. “I think it just allows you to speak to someone on the other side.”

  “Other side of what?” Lena’s eyes are wide in some combination of horror and amusement at the ridiculousness of the idea.

  “Perhaps the dead will tell you if you get the spell right.” Maxine raises her brows.

  There is a storm of emotions raging inside me. A hurricane of joy and fear and horror. A wildfire of hope. My breathing picks up, though I haven’t moved a muscle. My brother might not be so gone after all. He might exist somewhere that isn’t here, somewhere I could use magic to reach him. “We should try it.” The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them.

  “You can’t speak to the dead.” Lena whips her head between us. “I can’t believe the two of you are considering this.”

  “I’m not considering anything,” Maxine says.

  “Tell that to poor Frances,” Lena quips. She sinks down on the bed next to me. “Let this go now. Before you do whatever it is it looks like you’re planning on doing.”

  “I—” I begin. But I don’t have anything to follow it up with. Of course I want to try the spell.

  Suddenly there’s a knock on Maxine’s door.

  “Damn it,” Maxine says under her breath. The three of us share panicked glances.

  Lena darts into Maxine’s wardrobe, and I hurl myself under her bed. In the same moment Maxine snaps the book shut and shoves it under her pillow. Lena juts an arm out from the wardrobe, robe in hand. Maxine snatches it and wraps herself, covering the overcoat she’s still wearing.

  Bang. Bang. Whoever is outside is impatient. Maxine blows out a lantern, leaving just one lit. She carries it to the door and opens it a crack.

  “It’s late for you to still be up, Maxine.” I can’t see her, but I recognize Helen’s scolding voice immediately.