The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  She raises an eyebrow. “Helen said a group of girls haven’t given her this much trouble since Alice Roosevelt and her friends set a US senator on fire. What did you do?”

  “I ran away to see my former school friends,” I lie.

  “And they punched you?” She chuckles, eyeing my bruised face.

  “I tripped.”

  “Come on then. I’ll teach you how to make biscuits.”

  In addition to Florence, there’s Ann, a plump woman as pale as the biscuit dough I’m kneading. Ann makes me scrub the ovens with a spell that levitates a scouring brush, but I don’t mind it much. Cleaning has always given me a certain kind of satisfaction.

  The kitchen is quiet, all bricked floors and glowing hearths. It’s the heart of Haxahaven, if it has one at all.

  The repetitive work gives me time to sort through the tangle of thoughts in my head.

  Witches can manipulate other people.

  I shouldn’t be allowed to manipulate other people.

  Do I even want to be able to manipulate other people?

  I think I’m rather good at it.

  A person who is better than me would feel terrible about what they did in the basement of the Commodore Club, instead of being desperate to try again. Good girls don’t steal daggers and break whiskey bottles over people’s heads. Good girls don’t have a fire in their chest that begs for more things to burn.

  Working in the kitchen is a little like early-morning tutoring, but without teachers who make me want to rip my own hair out with boredom. The way Florence can scramble a whole pan of eggs from across the kitchen with her mind, while stirring a pot of oats with her hands—it’s the kind of practical magic work we’re taught in Mrs. Roberts’s class, efficient and quick, but Florence and Ann are more powerful than anyone I’ve ever seen.

  * * *

  “Can you move that broom over there, love?” Ann asks me on my second day.

  I am not afraid of my power as it awakens in my chest. The broom falls from where it is propped on the wall. Moving a broom proves tricker than a person. Magic is an unpredictable, finicky thing.

  “Good, but not quite what I was looking for,” she says kindly. “Try this. Soppa golvettia,” she murmurs under her breath.

  The broom sweeps an elegant arc at her instruction.

  With a clumsy tongue I repeat her words. “Soppa golvettia.”

  The broom floats off the floor, rotates in midair so that the bristles are facing downward, then makes a jerking sweeping motion across the floor.

  Florence smiles and wipes her hands on her apron. “Good girl. Keep practicing.”

  And I do. Every morning I arrive in the kitchen, and every morning my control grows. I hop out of bed with excitement, motivated by my time with Ann and Florence each day. Every inch of progress made feels like getting to know myself better. By Wednesday I am able to sweep the whole floor without so much as elevating my heart rate.

  Florence tells me I’m learning faster than any pupil she’s ever seen. I swell with pride. “Is this what you girls are doing in the park? Practicing your sweeping?” she asks with a smile.

  Florence is so kind, I almost want to tell her the truth. It might be a relief to tell an adult about everything. I can picture it now: she’d stroke my back and tell me everything is okay. She’d probably know what to do next. But she wouldn’t help me with the Resurrection, so I smile back and say, “No, you’re just a great teacher. Why don’t you teach your own class?”

  She purses her lips. At the stove, Ann goes still. “Mrs. Vykotsky believes Ann and I are of more use to the school here. We both disagree with Ana on a great deal. Call it different philosophies. But we share the same love for the girls here, don’t we darling?”

  Ann turns, a spatula gripped in her hand. “Yes, dear, we do.”

  During the day I sit quietly in my classes, and despite my efforts to pay attention, all I can focus on is the triviality of them.

  I’ve started to openly lie in Mrs. Li’s class. Talking about my absent father who I’ve never spared much thought for is easier than talking through the things that still ache inside me, so I spin tragic tales of missed birthdays and Christmases until Mrs. Li is satisfied with my pain.

  The Sons of Saint Druon are correct about one thing. Haxahaven has no interest in teaching us to be powerful. Every lesson, every conversation, every skill taught is focused on keeping our powers under careful lock and key. Burn the magic off like leaking kerosene lest we all explode.

  My morning lesson with Florence and Ann helps, but it doesn’t scratch the same itch as the Commodore Club.

  Maxine and Lena notice my mind wandering. We’re all lying in Maxine’s bed one night after dinner. My head on Maxine’s stomach, her legs draped over Lena. Maxine is reading, Lena is stitching, and I’m just staring at the ceiling.

  “A penny for your thoughts?” Maxine asks.

  “They’re not worth that much.”

  “Everything is always so dramatic with you.” She sighs and returns to her book.

  “What is it they say about the pot and the kettle?” I roll my eyes but hate that she’s right. I hate the part of me that wants more than this. I am warm, with friends, in a school of goddamn magic. But it’s not enough.

  It’s like my very soul is growing inside me. It yawns during lessons. By the time the world has gone dark, it’s itching under my skin, begging for something to latch on to.

  Horrible thoughts come like hail knocking on a window, slow at first, then constantly. What if I made Maxine give me that last piece of pie? What if I made Lena stand up? What if I made Aurelia slap Ruby? What if, what if, what if…

  I try to brush them away, but the thoughts come back with more force the longer I ignore them, until they’re screaming in my head, demanding to be heard. Most nights I retire to my room early, not staying up to talk and laugh in the sunroom like most of the girls my age. Kitchen duty makes a good excuse.

  I stop sleeping.

  I am terrified and terrifying.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Finn wants more too.

  He comes to me in a dream, as handsome and exhausted as ever. We’re in the Blockula again. It’s dusk here, painted in brilliant orange and purples.

  “It’s been difficult to find you,” he greets me. His hands are in his pockets, his curls wild.

  I’m wearing my nightdress, hair undone around my shoulders. “Sleep hasn’t come easy.”

  “I know the feeling. Your eye looks better.” He gestures toward me. It’s turned from a mottled purple to a sickly green. He has a matching shadow on his cheekbone.

  I flip my hair as a joke. “Thank you, I think the green suits me.” But he looks so serious tonight, the gesture doesn’t get even the smallest smile out of him. His stony face makes me nervous.

  “I don’t have long, but I do have a question.”

  I try to keep my tone light, despite my anxiety. “Go on.”

  “Instead of our usual lesson this week, could you meet me just past the oak trees that line the path to Haxahaven. Six p.m.?” He pauses before tacking on the last part. “Alone.”

  The word sends a shower of nerves through me.

  “That’s right during dinner. I’m not sure. Why? Have you found something else? Is it the scrying mirror?”

  “I have to go. I’ll be waiting for you. I do hope you come.”

  And with that he’s gone. I wake, angry with myself because I already know I’m going to do whatever it takes to meet him. Leaving in the daylight, during a meal is more dangerous than anything I’ve attempted at Haxahaven yet.

  I tell Maxine that lessons with Finn are canceled this week, that he wants me to sneak out, believing that he’s found something important for the spell.

  Her face is disappointed, her answer noncommittal, but three days later she braids my hair while Lena shoves pillows under the covers of my bed.

  “No amount of punching and fluffing is going to
make that look like Frances,” Maxine says in between tugging so hard my head is pulled backward.

  “This was your plan!” Lena exclaims. She throws the quilt up over the pillows, and it kind of looks like a human body if I squint my eyes a little.

  “I didn’t say it was a good plan,” Maxine retorts.

  “Neither of you are filling me with much confidence.” I sigh.

  “As your friends, I feel it’s our moral duty to tell you when you’re being stupid about a boy,” Maxine says.

  “That’s not fair. He—”

  “And as your friends,” she interrupts me, “it’s our moral duty not to stop you.”

  She finishes my braid with a coil of black satin ribbon.

  For a moment I wonder if this is what it feels like to have sisters, but Maxine interrupts the thought with a hard flick to the soft spot of my neck just below my ear. “What was that for?”

  “For luck. You ready?” she presses her gate key into my palm.

  “As I’ll ever be.” I toss my cape on, wishing I could wear something prettier than my uniform to meet Finn, but rule number one of sneaking out is don’t draw attention to oneself, so this will have to do.

  Maxine stops me with a hand on my shoulder as I reach the door to the kitchen, where I’ll sneak out the side door. In the bustle of dinner hour, no one will stop me.

  “You owe us a favor now—you do realize that?”

  “You’re keeping score?” I ask.

  She tilts her head and raises her eyebrows.

  “Ah, there’s already something you want, isn’t there?” I say.

  It’s fun, this push and pull. Maxine once told me not to be boring and I’ve tried not to be, but she must know in her heart I’ll give her whatever it is she wants.

  * * *

  Finn is waiting for me down the road just as he promised he’d be. Leaning on the driver’s-side door of a Model T in his black coat, he looks every inch the villain in a gothic novel, and although I am still upset about what happened in the Commodore Club, my heart hiccups at the sight of him.

  “Right on time.” His smile lights up his whole face like a sunbeam cutting through clouds.

  “They don’t call me Frances Hallowell: Haxahaven’s Most Rebellious Pupil for nothing.”

  He laughs. “Who calls you that?”

  “I thought you and I could start a trend.” I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from returning his smile.

  “All right, little rebel, hop in the machine—I want to get there before it gets dark.”

  “Did you steal this?”

  “Borrowed.” He says. I’m not sure if I believe him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “Did you find something? Do the Sons have scrying mirrors? I looked in the library and didn’t find much—”

  Finn cuts me off with another laugh. “Not everything has to be about solving a murder, Frances.”

  I knit my brows together. “So you didn’t find anything?”

  “Just get in.”

  I do as I’m told, ignoring the ripple of frustration coursing through me. Finding out what happened to William is more than a murder mystery game to me.

  We can’t talk over the noise of the engine, so for twenty-five minutes I’m left with nothing but my anxiety for company.

  The sky is a brilliant pink, a perfect fall sunset, when the automobile finally begins to slow.

  Finn maneuvers the vehicle deftly down brownstone-lined streets, and then wider boulevards, until suddenly a beach comes into view. The water stretches out to the horizon, painted with the colors of the sunset. It’s breathtaking.

  He pulls the automobile over, hops out, and crosses to my side.

  I’ve been to this area only once before, a special dress delivery for a client the winter I turned sixteen.

  “What’s at Coney Island?” I ask when he opens my door.

  “Rides. Food. Merriment,” he lists on his fingers.

  I take the hand he offers and step out of the car. The air is thick with brine and fried food. “They didn’t find another body?” I’m confused.

  “No dead bodies. No mysterious documents. Just a little fun.” He looks at me, his face open and hopeful.

  I’m annoyed that I’ve been essentially tricked into sneaking out for nothing, but I’m also touched he put so much thought into doing something to make me happy. “I don’t remember if I know how to have fun.”

  He smirks. “Well then let me remind you.”

  Luna Park on Coney Island is something out of a fairy tale. A quarter million electric lights have the dying day lit up like the middle of the afternoon. Around us floats a chorus of tinny carnival music punctuated by swooping roller-coaster screams.

  We walk down the weathered gray pier, and the smell of seawater makes me feel lighter. I close my eyes and inhale deeply. For one night, let this be enough.

  The ticket booth sits beneath a bright yellow crescent moon, bigger than the Haxahaven dining table, painted with the word LUNA. Behind the main marquee stretch the spires and turrets of the buildings of the park, laid out like a miniature European city.

  Finn pulls a handful of coins out of his pocket and drops them on the ticket counter. “Two, please.”

  The man at the desk grins under his moustache, rips two red tickets off a roll as big as my head, and pushes them through the slot under the window. “Have fun, kids.”

  Finn’s fingers brush my palm as he passes me mine. “Seventeen years in New York City and I’ve never been to the rides at Coney Island,” I marvel.

  “How lucky I am to be the one who takes you, then.” The breeze off the ocean pushes Finn’s curls into his face; he brushes them away with a smile that flashes white under the electric lights.

  We pass through a metal turnstile and onto a boardwalk bustling with people wrapped in fall coats, scarves, and wool hats. I tug my cape around me, aware of how odd I must look among them.

  Pinwheels taller than I am are illuminated with spinning red and green bulbs. A tower dotted with over a thousand white lights is posted in the middle as the centerpiece. The strange newness reminds me a little of my first magic class, the exhilarating knowledge that this world holds so many things I haven’t yet seen.

  Finn casts a glance at me, and the corners of his mouth hitch up. “You’re pleased?” I hope I never get used to the charm of his accent; the way it makes everything he says sound like a song.

  My nerves buzz like the electric lights. “I’m not sure.” I’m foolish for letting myself have this moment.

  It’s like Finn can read my mind, because he reaches over and brushes my hand with his pinky. “You’re allowed to be happy. It’s what he’d want.”

  I sigh. “It just seems like such a waste that all this exists and he’s not here to see it.”

  “I know what you mean, but nothing mattered to William more than your happiness.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “No, I could just tell. It was the way he talked about you.”

  “Thank you.” My words are clipped. It’s hard to experience happiness without guilt, one of the more unexpected side effects of grief.

  “I’ve upset you.” He sounds distressed.

  “No, no. I’m just… tired. Can we go ride something now?”

  Finn looks down at me, an intense fondness in his eyes. “I think I know one you’ll like.”

  Together we push through crowds and make our way across the park to a bright blue tent emblazoned with the words WITCHING WAVES.

  A man perched on a barstool takes our tickets and waves us into a buggylike contraption, one of maybe a dozen haphazardly scattered around a ring about as big as an ice rink. The floor is made of sheets of corrugated steel, the walls around it of painted plywood.

  The buggy is low to the ground; Finn grabs my hand to help me in as I navigate my skirts. It’s a simple gesture, more politeness than anything, but it sends my heart kicking like a drum. He c
atches my eye, and for a fraction of a second I’m sure he feels it too, this electricity between us. He slides in next to me, pressed dangerously close. I’m wearing a wool skirt, and a chemise under that, but still I can feel the heat from his thigh against mine.

  Maybe I can have this much. Maybe I can let myself appreciate the way the electric lights shine in Finn’s hair like a halo. Maybe I can turn off the overthinking switch in my brain for one night and stop asking myself why I’m so afraid to feel something good.

  More people file in behind us, a few other couples—some young, some old—two sisters with matching ribbons in their hair, a pair of rowdy boys close to my age.

  The striped-shirt ticket taker looks bored as he shouts, “Keep your hands to yourself and inside the buggy at all times!” Then, without ceremony, he cranks a lever the length of my forearm.

  There’s a moment of anticipation as gears begin to click and whir underneath us; then the sheet of metal our buggy sits on top of pitches up, and our buggy is sent careening across the rink. Before we can hit the wall, another section of the floor lurches up, sending us flying in the other direction.

  The whole floor comes alive like the ocean in a storm, there are buggies flying, and the rink fills with screams, whoops, and hollers. Organ music swells, a jerky rendition of “The Entertainer.”

  We crash into the buggy holding the sisters, and I don’t know if I scream because I’m having fun or because I’m terrified. All I know is that my heart is in my throat, and Finn’s hand is clutching my knee.

  Finn is smiling, a grin of pure joy, laughing wildly every time our buggy crashes into another.

  I love his smile. His bottom canines are just a little too sharp, like a vampire. Either I’d never noticed before this moment, or he’s never smiled this wide for me to see in the oppressive gloom of the park.

  I prefer this version of us. A Finn and Frances illuminated with a rainbow of electric lights, with freedom to laugh as loudly as they please. And for the first time since William died, my grief and mourning and all the fury that consumed me flies away and out of my reach. Like a hundred-pound weight has been lifted off my rib cage, and I’m finally able to take a full breath. I feel… happy.