The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  “I was reading.” If I weren’t so scared, I might laugh. She is technically telling the truth.

  “I thought I heard voices,” Helen continues. Her voice is low, authoritative. “I was on my rounds.”

  Maxine sighs. “Well they weren’t from here. Would you like to come in and check?”

  From under the bed, I will my breathing to slow, terrified that Helen will hear me.

  “No, no. That won’t be necessary,” Helen answers after a pause. “You should sleep, though. It’s late.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Maxine answers, then shuts the door with a click. Simultaneously the three of us let out a sigh.

  At the sound of Helen’s footsteps down the hall, I feel safe enough to wriggle out from under the bed. Lena takes a careful step out of the wardrobe.

  I’ve had enough blind terror for one night.

  “You two should go back to your room. It should be safe now. She’ll circle the east end of the second floor before looping back around to the stairs. Go quickly. We’ll continue this another day soon, I promise.”

  I feel a pull toward the book hidden under Maxine’s pillow. This strange, magical, terrifying book, buried in the woods like someone wanted us to find it. Maybe fate exists. Maybe the universe wants this for us. We attend an academy for witches; we have evidence enough to believe the impossible.

  “Let me take the book.” I want to spend more time examining every word inked in its pages.

  Maxine swats away my extended hand. “Your room isn’t private. What if someone finds it?”

  I’m annoyed with the truth of Maxine’s statement.

  “I’ll arrange something. Soon. I promise,” she says.

  Lena looks at me through narrowed eyes. I’m no mind reader, but I’d guess she’s thinking Why should Maxine have the power to decide what we do and do not try? She makes her way to the door.

  We say our good-nights, and I follow Lena up the additional flight of stairs to our room.

  I pause outside our door. The hall is blessedly silent, free of Helen. “You followed me tonight?”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “I thought you might be in trouble.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing to me.”

  * * *

  I toss and turn through the night, unable to rid my brain of the image of my brother trapped inside a mirror.

  One line from the spell book haunts me: Only effective if done soon after departure from this plane. My brother has been dead for 126 days. What constitutes soon in magic spells? How long until soon becomes not soon enough?

  If I wish to perform the Resurrection, I have no time to waste.

  It must be close to sunrise when I roll over in a huff.

  At the sight of a new note on the pillow next to me, I am wide awake.

  It’s been placed gently right next to my head, folded in half in a straight crease.

  With shaking hands, I unfold it.

  The purple light of near-dawn presses through the curtains.

  I missed you tonight. He deserves justice.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to scream.

  Once again I shove this note under my mattress and try not to think of whoever left it standing like a dark shadow over my vulnerable sleeping roommates and me.

  Soon, the spun-sugar pink of morning fills our room, and my roommates rise for the day. The world feels different, as if my own heart is beating in a minor key.

  I’m wiping the sleep from my eyes when Lena asks if I want her to wait for me so we can walk down to breakfast together.

  “No thank you, I’ll only be a moment.”

  When the room is empty, I leave a note of my own, scrawled on the back of last night’s.

  This is not a game I am interested in playing. Tell me something real. I have nowhere to send my message but can only hope that the writer will return to leave me another one and will see what I’ve written. If I thought I was foolish for my actions last night, I realize what I am doing now might be worse.

  My sleepless night has cost me. I’m so exhausted, it’s making me nauseous. Reluctantly I pull on my uniform. It takes me three tries to properly button my cape in an X across my chest. I secure my hair with a black velvet ribbon into a loose braid slung over my shoulder. With the hollow purple circles under my eyes, I look rather like a witch this morning.

  If I hurry, I can still snag a biscuit from the dining room before Practical Applications.

  I’m almost to the stairs, brushing an errant lock of mouse-brown hair out of my eyes, when a picture hung on the wall, hidden among all the others, catches my eye.

  It’s small and sepia-toned but well preserved thanks to the darkness of the hallway.

  I stop short.

  Swallow.

  Blink.

  Try to process what I’m seeing. Because among the group of smiling girls, immortalized in the photograph, is me.

  Except it can’t possibly be, because this photograph is easily thirty years old.

  Eight girls, wearing long black dresses cinched in tightly at the waist, hair in styled coifs, wearing capes identical to my own, and in the middle of them is me. Dark hair; straight, serious eyebrows; a just-too-big nose; full lips hitched up in a half smile. Except that’s an expression I’ve never had on my face; it’s not even one I’m sure I’m capable of making. It is the kind of look that speaks of a terrible, wonderful secret. The kind of look that only girls truly sure of themselves are capable of making.

  Below the photograph is a tiny brass plate reading HAXAHAVEN ACADEMY, 1882.

  I stumble back a step, my heart beating like a snare drum. My mother. The woman with my face is my mother. She would have been eighteen in 1882, just a year older than I am now. My mother had mentioned once, rather sadly, that I was the spitting image of her younger self, but I’d never seen a photograph.

  I run down the stairs as quickly as my feet can carry me, my cape flying behind me like bat wings, my braid unraveling with every step.

  I burst into Mrs. Vykotsky’s office with a frantic breath. She’s thumbing through a leather-bound book, posture as straight as a board in her wingback chair. Without lifting her eyes, she says, “So you found your mother, then, did you?”

  I place my hands on my knees and suck in a breath. I’m winded from running down so many flights of stairs. It’s clear Mrs. Vykotsky has been waiting for this moment, and it fills me with something akin to betrayal.

  “She was a student here?” I choke out.

  “Indeed she was,” Mrs. Vykotsky replies, finally deigning to look up at me. “Perhaps it’s best if you take a seat.” She gestures to the low chair, the same one I sat in weeks ago when I first arrived.

  As I sink into the worn velvet, I tug my cape around me like a safety blanket. Mrs. Vykotsky is about to tell me things about my mother I might rather not know. It makes my throat tight and my eyes sting to think my mother is likely an entirely different person than I thought she was. I’m not sure I want the burden of knowing her secrets.

  Mrs. Vykotsky snaps her book closed and begins a story it seems she’s been waiting a long time to tell. “Your mother came to us in 1878 after the death of her little sister.”

  I didn’t know my mother had a little sister. My heart breaks. Two generations of Hallowell girls with dead siblings. The ghosts in my mother’s eyes suddenly make more sense. As does the way she folded in on herself after William was gone. So much loss for one life.

  “It was cholera, if I recall correctly, though my memory is less than perfect these days. Your mother’s family became concerned after they found every single glass in their house shattered. It was an expensive outburst. We found her soon after.”

  “My mother was a witch,” I say slowly, the pieces clicking together.

  “Is still, I would assume,” Mrs. Vykotsky says. “Witches do not lose their powers with age. They can, however, lose control of
them without proper management”—she waves her hand dismissively—“but I would not know your mother’s state, as we at Haxahaven have not seen her in many years.”

  “What do you mean, you haven’t seen her in many years?” I sort of want to cry. Perhaps it’s because the rug that is the foundation of all I believe to be true is being pulled out from under me again. Or perhaps it’s the deep sense of shame that permeates every thought I have of my mother. The shame I carry for being so angry at her for being unwell, for being unable to take care of me in the way I craved.

  “Oh, it was quite a scandal,” Mrs. Vykotsky replies conspiratorially. It makes my stomach turn; I don’t wish to be her partner in gossiping about my mother’s life. “Your mother was a star pupil. One of the most gifted witches we’d seen in years. She was on track to become a faculty member, just as she’d wished. Until she met a young man, ran off into the night, and was never seen again.” She says all of this rather matter-of-factly, though I suspect my mother’s defection affected her. By the set of her mouth, I can tell she wants me to ask about my mother running away, but this is the one part of the story I already know.

  I was young when my father left us for good. He’d been flitting in and out of my mother’s life for years. He left soon after William was born, then returned a year later, and my mother fell pregnant with me. I was still an infant when he allegedly went to find work on a lobster boat and never came back. Neither William nor I had any memories of him, but my mother spoke of him as if she was still in love with him, despite all he’d done. She said he was tall and handsome and that they’d met at a ball—when she was at a boarding school far away, a place her mother would never let her leave to marry. It was because of him that we were destitute, and yet she’d still speak, starry-eyed, of that time he took her to the beach in Queens, or of the letters he used to write her while she was in school, full of sonnets and declarations of love, and it was through these letters they arranged to elope. It turns out running off was the only thing my father ever knew how to do. And the next time he ran off, he did it without her.

  I think of my mother’s inability to hold down a job, the way she never slept, her tenuous grasp on reality. Everything I know about my mother shifts like puzzle pieces around this new information. My mother is a witch.

  Mrs. Vykotsky shifts in her chair. “Your mother ran away from us before her training was completed. It happens occasionally, though we do our very best to avoid it. Usually the outcome is… unpleasant.”

  I shift in my chair. “Unpleasant?”

  “Oh well, we don’t need to get into all the poor witches who died; the lucky ones just lose their minds a bit.” She waves her hand around wildly, as if she’s describing something funny. “Your mother has turned in on herself, hasn’t she?”

  Tears sting my eyes. I find I can’t speak, so I nod.

  “It happens. The magic needs something to latch on to. Without a healthy excision of her powers, it’s devouring her instead. A pity,” she says dismissively. “You’d be wise to remember that witches who choose to go it alone don’t last long in this harsh world. If evil doesn’t get them, their own brains will.”

  “Why don’t you help them, the ones who get lost?” Anger fuels my tears, my grip on the chair tightens.

  “It is a lesson we all must learn at some point in our lives: you cannot help someone who doesn’t want it. You can only try to minimize the damage they do.”

  “Did my mother not want your help?” I push the words through gritted teeth. “Did you even ask her?” All this time, I thought she’d had to leave me because she was sick and unable to care for herself, but if it was magic that broke something within her, could this school have not helped?

  No, the voice inside my head answers. This school should have helped. And it didn’t. Mrs. Vykotsky didn’t.

  “I know your mother. She is stubborn.”

  “You knew her at eighteen. You know nothing about the person she became,” I bite back.

  Mrs. Vykotsky doesn’t react to my tone. “People don’t change.” She purses her lips.

  “So you did nothing.” My chest heaves; my breathing grows shallow. I feel Mr. Hues’s hands on my neck; the fury inside of me rises and rises. “You never tried? Was she not worth helping?” The anger feels too big to hold in my body. Every muscle burns with it. Suddenly the delicate vials on her shelves shatter with a bang, leaching scents like bleach and mint into the dark room.

  My stomach lurches as I try to dam my pain inside me instead of letting it flow out into the room. My hands curl into fists so tight, my fingernails bite into the flesh of my palms. I clench my jaw and squeeze my eyes shut. I focus on my breathing like we’ve been taught in Mrs. Li’s class. Inhale, exhale, try not to think about slapping the smug look off your headmistress’s face, exhale.

  When I open my eyes, I see Mrs. Vykotsky sitting, an impassive look on her face, hands still folded in her lap, just watching me.

  My anger starts to subside as fear takes its place. It scares me, this magic that ruined my mother’s life, that has already left me with a body count. As I slow my heartbeat, the power shrivels back into my chest. I try to find the calm. Easy, sis. William’s words swirl around me, and I straighten my back. I unclench the sore muscles in my jaw. “Can we help her now?” My voice is small. I sound very much like a child.

  Mrs. Vykotsky studies me, notices that I’ve put whatever power I have back into its box. “I’m afraid not,” she finally says. “Asylums are difficult to infiltrate, and if we spent our time trying to rescue every wayward witch, we’d never have any time to educate the ones here.”

  The corners of her thin lips draw up into a smile. “I understand this is difficult.”

  Because I don’t know what else to say, I say, “Yes, it is.”

  She rises like a specter, smoothing the black velvet of her dress, and glides to the shelf on the back wall. The broken glass crunches under her heels.

  She gives me another small smile. The expression looks unnatural on her face. “Why don’t we clean it up together?”

  Using magic to clean the broken glass would probably be quickest, but my power has shrunk back into a place inside me that feels awfully small, and dark and full of fear.

  On my knees, I banish all thoughts of magic mothers and runaway fathers and get to work.

  Mrs. Vykotsky crouches down next to me.

  “You’re not going to make me use magic?” I ask.

  “It seems in this situation, magic might make things more difficult. We’ll clean this up the old-fashioned way.”

  She doesn’t say any more. But patiently she works next to me. We fill our hands with dried herbs and brush the broken glass into a pile.

  The silence is heavy, thick with acrid herbs, but I can’t think of anything else to say. I know I’ll only be met with more frustrating dismissals.

  When we’re finally done, she smiles at me once more. “I know it’s been a challenging adjustment. But I do hope you know you can come see me about anything.”

  There’s a flicker of something human in her eyes.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” I don’t mean it.

  * * *

  I’ve missed Practical Applications, so I make my way directly to Mrs. Li’s waxy cave of a classroom. I can’t bear to spend the morning talking about my deepest fears, or whatever new torture she has orchestrated today, but class is preferrable to being alone with my thoughts.

  Cora does most of the talking while I pick splinters of glass from the palm of my hand.

  During dinner, I rip a piece of paper from my notebook and scrawl a message. I know the truth. I’m at the school. Please let me help you. I’ll come visit as soon as I am able. All my love, Frances.

  I address it to my mother and slip it under Mrs. Vykotsky’s door with a prayer she sends it on my behalf.

  I return to my room soon after dinner, turning down Maxine’s offer of a game of twenty-one.

  “Are you all right?” she asks me.
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  “Just a long day.” I feign a smile.

  I collapse on my bed, nerves spent, exhausted to the bone from the incident in Mrs. Vykotsky’s office. I tumble into sleep like a rock thrown into a pond.

  I gasp awake in the watery light of dawn. Waiting on my pillow, scrawled on a new slip of paper, is a response to yesterday morning’s message.

  I am your ally. When you are ready, I will be waiting for you.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I tell myself I won’t sneak out again.

  I will be a good pupil. I will bide my time and bite my tongue and swallow my anger. Because I plan to learn magic and then leave and do something with it.

  I won’t make the same mistakes as my mother. I refuse to live her life.

  I find myself thinking of her often, picturing what she looked like as she roamed these same halls. I stop at the photograph frequently, searching for clues in her defiant face. Did she have friends? What were they like? How did my father find her behind the tall walls of the school? Was he worth it?

  If thoughts of my mother consume me during the day, I think of my brother most at night. I dwell on the spell book. I wonder if speaking to him would bring me peace, or if seeing him trapped somewhere I can’t reach would break me forever. Lena and Maxine notice me falling quiet at meal times but don’t pry. They’re trying to be kind, I think. But it only makes me feel more alone.

  Mrs. Li’s class becomes more unbearable. Every day I sit, staring at the black walls of her classroom as she tries to pry the pain from my broken heart.

  I’ve never been comfortable living with grief like an open wound. The sepsis of it seeps through my veins, a pain deeply my own. I’ve never known how to let go of something this big, so I’ve clung to it instead. At least the pain reminds me William was real. I have no interest in releasing it to Mrs. Li. I refuse to tell her my secrets, and I’m fairly certain she hates me for it.

  Every night after dinner I go to my room and I practice my magic, because I can’t bear not to. Threading needles under the watchful gaze of Mrs. Roberts doesn’t scratch the itch.