Season of the Witch

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  I wasn’t surprised that practically every kid at the fair was lining up.

  It did take a while, though, so when one kid needed to be returned to her dad, I went with her. She’d apparently come to the face-painting stall without permission, but her dad didn’t really seem mad. I stayed chatting with them until the kid’s mom came over with cotton candy for everybody. I thought wistfully that the little girl was lucky to have such nice parents.

  I strolled out on my own beneath the shadow of the Ferris wheel, studying the red tie around my wrist that let me enter all the rides and attractions for free. Harvey had touched the tie proudly and suggested I go to the Hall of Mirrors on my own.

  The Hall of Mirrors was a barn painted black, with silver threads of tinsel hanging through the open doors. I showed my wristband to a bored-looking boy about my own age, who was wearing a hat and texting furiously.

  Inside were hay bales draped with black cloth and twisting passageways lined with mirrors. I could hear other people in the distance, giggling and shrieking and lost. I wandered through the maze, whistling. When you have twisting tree branches in your walls and dead people in your basement, I guess you grow up harder to impress.

  Then I came to a dead end. A large, murky mirror was hanging in my path, blocking the way. The surface of the mirror seemed almost wavy as well as dark, like lake water ruffled by a night wind. There was only one light to be found reflected in the mirror, a flash of intense brightness like something burning far away. I moved nearer.

  When I realized the pale, burning light was my face, I stopped dead, unsettled by the face I hadn’t recognized, that was and yet was not mine.

  The Hall of Mirrors was dark, but there must be sunshine creeping in through chinks. Rays of light pierced through the loose waves of my hair. My face in the mirror was indistinct; I could not make it out no matter how close I came, but I could see how it shone.

  It made me recall, with sudden violent clarity, the words of the spirit by the stream.

  The moon shone behind you like a crown of bone, and the night streamed behind you like a cloak of shadows. I could see you were born to be a witch of legend.

  I should go talk to the wishing-well spirit again, I thought. She’d wanted me to. I wanted to go. I felt the urge with the same irresistible force as I’d remembered the words. It was pulling me to leave the fairground, abandon Harvey, and walk deep into the woods this moment.

  But that was ridiculous. I wouldn’t leave Harvey to go anywhere. And besides, I realized, I wasn’t entirely certain how to get out of the maze of mirrors. Somehow I’d gotten as turned around and lost as any mortal.

  But witches don’t stay lost.

  I took a little spool of thread out of my pocket (the one I always carry because Aunt Hilda insists), dropped it on the ground, and watched it roll by itself across the earth floor.

  “Consequitur quodcunque petit,” I murmured: a little spell I’ve always liked. It means She attains whatever she seeks.

  Take that, Ambrose. My Latin was perfect. He’d been speaking too fast; that was why I hadn’t understood him.

  Almost as if he hadn’t wanted me to hear the spell.

  I shook off the moment of doubt and followed the thread, walking confidently through the maze of mirrors.

  I came out through the shivering silver doorway and saw one of my teachers standing in the shadow of the Ferris wheel. She was dressed in her usual blouse and tweed skirt, as if she was still in school rather than on a day off.

  “Hi, Ms. Wardwell!”

  She gave me a timid smile, blinking behind her large glasses as if startled to be recognized. “Hello, Sabrina.”

  “Here with anyone?”

  “Oh—no,” said Ms. Wardwell. “I just came to see the fair. This is the hundredth Last Day of Summer fair; that’s rather momentous, isn’t it?” She patted her brown bun, and more wisps came loose around her hairpins. “Nobody but me seems to realize. I’m by way of being Greendale’s unofficial historian.”

  “That’s cool,” I told her encouragingly.

  It was slightly weird to feel protective of one of your teachers, but Ms. Wardwell always seemed to be shrinking away from the world, sweet and easily frightened as a small brown field mouse.

  “Why, thank you, Sabrina,” said Ms. Wardwell, and added after a moment of hesitation: “It’s nice to see all the families here, having such a good time.”

  I hesitated, glancing back to the stall where Harvey seemed to be wrapping up, and sent him a tiny smile. By the time I turned back to Ms. Wardwell, she was giving me an embarrassed nod.

  “Well, nice to see you, my dear.”

  “Wait—”

  She wandered off, the kitten heels on her sensible brown shoes sinking into the earth. I was alone once more under the Ferris wheel, feeling a little sorry for both Ms. Wardwell and myself. I hadn’t realized our teacher was actually lonely.

  Then, as the evening closed in, the lights of the Ferris wheel came on. I’d been expecting the little yellow bulbs around the swinging carriages to flicker on, but I hadn’t expected the shimmering projections in the air: bluebirds and butterflies and stars and hearts and flowers, as if someone had collected illustrations from a hundred love stories and was tossing them up in the air like confetti.

  If there was any witch but me around, I’d have thought it was magic.

  A few moments later, I realized what must be going on. I remembered what Ms. Wardwell had said. People were pulling out all the stops for the hundredth anniversary of the Last Day of Summer.

  My guess was proved correct when the fireworks started.

  I tipped my head back admiringly, and smiled, and realized I wasn’t on my own anymore. Harvey was beside me. His face was slightly dazed, and he was adjusting his flannel shirt, but when he saw my smile, he smiled too.

  “Long day painting faces?” I asked. “My artistic hero. What do you say we go on the Ferris wheel?”

  “I would follow you to hell,” declared Harvey.

  “Not necessary,” I assured him. “The Ferris wheel seems like it would be fun.”

  Harvey took my hand in a courtly gesture and helped me into the carriage of the Ferris wheel with a bow, like a knight out of a fairy tale. “My lady.”

  “Get in here, fool,” I said, and pulled him down onto the red velvet seat with me.

  The Ferris wheel swung forward with a jolt, the carriage swinging slightly in the air. As we rose, I kicked out my feet over the fairground turning small beneath me. The miles of green woods turned black as night fell, and I imagined how it might feel to fly.

  Then I turned to look into Harvey’s eyes. He was watching me, not the skies, with his most attentive and serious gaze, the way he only looks at what he wants to draw and finds beautiful. I wanted him to keep looking at me exactly that way just as much as I wanted to fly.

  “Sabrina,” Harvey murmured, “I lo—”

  I kissed him to cut him off, my fingers twining tight in his hair. I desperately wanted to hear it, and I desperately didn’t. I wanted it to be real.

  That was as ridiculous as a witch getting lost in a barn. A little tiny spell didn’t mean this wasn’t real.

  When the desperate kiss was over, Harvey said, “Wow,” soft and pleased, eyes lowered, the shadow of his lashes dark on his cheeks.

  I smoothed his hair, gone wildly ruffled where I had grabbed at him, putting everything to rights. I hadn’t done Harvey any harm. I would never hurt him, and even if I’d done this without his permission or knowledge, like Aunt Hilda said: True love means forgiving each other anything. I’d always had to keep secrets from him. This was just one more.

  There were still fireworks going off in the sky. Though the fairground and the woods were slipping into shadow, Catherine wheels and Roman candles illuminated the night. There were green fireworks whose light traced sinuous paths over the night sky like snakes. There were fireworks that gleamed the electric blue of kingfishers. There were fireworks like the lights of fal
ling stars, glittering so fiercely they left the remnants of their light scattered like gold dust in Harvey’s lowered lashes.

  Our carriage swayed, high above the night and wrapped in light. Then he leaned in, so slowly, to kiss me again.

  It was easy to believe that there was no magic tonight, except for this.

  A witch’s day out is not like a mortal day out. A witch is more likely to be out at night, sky-clad or kissing the moon.

  Harvey didn’t know this, or that his girlfriend was a witch, or that witches were real. He’d been planning to take Sabrina to the fair for months. They had gone last year, and Harvey had painted some kids’ faces just for fun, and the kids had gone wild for it. Mrs. Grabeel had kindly offered that if he came back and did it again officially this year, he and his girlfriend could ride all the rides and play all the games for free.

  It was the best deal Harvey had ever heard. He didn’t have a lot of money to take Sabrina out.

  He used to worry about that. Right now, he couldn’t imagine why. Right now, he couldn’t imagine worrying about anything at all. The world was such a beautiful place.

  It was such a beautiful day. Harvey tried to train himself to have an artist’s eye, appreciating every detail, and there was a lot to appreciate. The white Ferris wheel spun against the background of trees, like a lace doily turning on a table. There were clouds blanketing the sky, but even the clouds were drenched in sunshine, so that everywhere Harvey looked was a picture framed in hazy gold.

  Masses of people had turned up for the festival. There were even strangers here in Greendale, Harvey marveled: A woman with a cool lavender mohawk enthusiastically buying funnel cake. A boy in black who looked like a preppy Goth with a hair-gel addiction, eyeing his toffee apple with mingled hostility and suspicion. A man in an expensive business suit, who brought both his little girls to the stall to get their faces painted.

  And the most marvelous person at the fair was there in the stall with Harvey. Sabrina was handing him his paints.

  “You can go ahead and get on the rides,” Harvey said proudly. “It’s my treat.”

  “I’ll wait to go on them with you,” Sabrina told him, tucking her hand briefly into the curve of his elbow.

  Her touch went through him like light through water, making anything that had been dark suddenly clear.

  “I’ll try not to be too long,” Harvey promised. “If you get bored, you can always try the Hall of Mirrors. I got lost in there when I was a kid, and I’m not going back.”

  There had been so many mirrors, showing so many Harveys. In the silvery dark of the mirrors, he’d felt as if he was seeing a thousand different weak, pathetic versions of his soul, felt as if he was looking through his father’s eyes at himself. In every mirror, his eyes were scared.

  Harvey had collapsed with a whimper. Tommy had charged in and led him out. That was like Tommy, Harvey thought. He wasn’t sure why he’d been scared at all. He should have known Tommy would always come for him.

  He couldn’t imagine being worried or scared today, but he still didn’t want to go into that hall of mirrors and shadows. He didn’t want to look at any version of himself. He only wanted to look at Sabrina.

  She was a bright constant at the edge of his vision as Harvey chewed on the gumballs big as marbles that Mrs. Grabeel had left in the stall and busily painted all the kids’ faces. There was an enormous line at the face-painting stall, and Harvey was pretty pleased with himself. He’d always gotten along with kids: He’d heard somebody say that he was nonthreatening. They hadn’t meant it as a compliment, but Harvey had taken it as one. Who wanted to be threatening?

  Harvey knew how it felt to be afraid of someone big and angry. He’d never want to make kids feel that way. It was far better to make them smile.

  When the line was almost at an end, Harvey painted, on request, green and blue butterflies all over the face of one very little girl in a pink tulle skirt. The pièce de résistance was a big purple butterfly, its wings spread over the bridge of her nose.

  “I can’t see my dad,” the little girl said, her brow slightly furrowed.

  “Don’t you fret,” Harvey told her. “My beautiful assistant and I will find him.”

  Harvey showed the little girl her butterflies in the round looking glass, and she giggled and lifted her hands out to him. He picked her up off the stool and twirled her around, her ballerina skirt a frilly blur, and gave her a kiss on the tip of the nose before he put her in Sabrina’s arms. Sabrina folded the little girl against her, the child’s chubby hands clutching on to Sabrina’s pretty green sweater.

  Sabrina wrinkled her own adorable nose at the kid, and as the little girl laughed Harvey could almost imagine the iridescent wings of the butterflies were quivering, about to take flight. He laughed with her, and Sabrina joined them, and for a moment they were all laughing with their arms around each other in a circle of spinning color.

  Even the surly boy in black paused as he went by the stall, sharp, dark eyes narrowing slightly as he studied the painted butterflies.

  Harvey scanned the fairground and located the man in the expensive business suit, hand in hand with his older daughter. Harvey thought, with his new sense of expansive goodwill, that the man must be a great dad. His kids didn’t seem scared of him at all.

  “Could you take Miss Butterflies to her dad, Sabrina?”

  “No problem,” agreed Sabrina, the sweetest girl in the world.

  “Another kiss,” chirped the little kid.

  Harvey grinned and dropped another kiss on her tiny nose. Since he was down there, he kissed Sabrina’s nose too, and got to see the kindling spark of her smile up close.

  When he surfaced Harvey saw that the guy in black was still watching, and he was smiling a little smile too. Sabrina walked away, carrying the kid toward the Ferris wheel.

  Normally Harvey would have been shy with a stranger, and definitely with someone like this, a guy his own age with that indefinable but unmistakable air of cool that everyone at school could recognize you had or you didn’t. The guy had on a long black coat that looked tailored. Harvey was wearing his brother’s battered sheepskin-lined jacket.

  At any other time, that would have mattered. Today the world was golden, and it seemed easy to smile casually at the other guy and say: “So cute, right?”

  If Harvey meant Sabrina’s shining head bent tenderly over the child more than anything else, nobody had to know that.

  The guy in black seemed vaguely startled to be addressed, but before unease could lance Harvey’s glowing bubble of courage, the brief moment of hesitation was over and the boy’s smile spread.

  “Yeah, actually,” he answered. “Very cute.”

  After another pause, which seemed contemplative, the boy seemed to come to a decision and swung himself over the side into the stall. Harvey stared, then glanced nervously over at Mrs. Grabeel, who was passing out pinwheels to kids waiting for their faces to be painted.

  “You’re not really allowed—” Harvey began.

  The boy made a dismissive gesture. “Mortal rules don’t apply to me.”

  Harvey said blankly: “What?”

  Mrs. Grabeel glanced over her shoulder, and the boy directed his smile at her. Mrs. Grabeel actually simpered and patted her hair.

  “Oh, it’s fine for any friend of yours to keep you company, Harvey. You’re doing a great job!”

  Harvey beamed reflexively, thrilled she thought so, and Mrs. Grabeel had already turned back to her task before Harvey thought to protest: “But I don’t, um, know him at all …?”

  “Nick,” said the boy. “Carry on.”

  Nick, Harvey thought, did not understand boundaries. He’d grabbed a stool and was leafing through the sketches Harvey had made to give the kids ideas for how they’d like their faces painted, scattering the pages carelessly around.

  “You gave that girl butterflies.”

  “That was what she asked for,” said Harvey.

  Nick glanced up from the
pages, firing another smile. Harvey wasn’t sure if this was an entirely nice smile. Nick seemed amused, and Harvey knew what mean jokes felt like, jokes he wasn’t meant to be part of.

  “Not much for double entendres, are we? Or single entendres.”

  Harvey shrugged uncomfortably. He kind of wished Nick would leave. This day was so bright, and the boy was the only dark blot on the golden landscape.

  The next little kid tugged on Harvey’s sleeve. “Want to be a dinosaur.”

  “Oh, like a fierce dinosaur? Like a Tyrannosaurus rex?” Harvey made a Tyrannosaurus rex sound.

  “Except I don’t want to go ’xtinct!”

  “No way,” said Harvey. “Anyway, maybe the dinosaurs didn’t go extinct. They say maybe the dinosaurs turned into birds.”

  “No!” The kid laughed. “Birds don’t look like dinosaurs.”

  Harvey carefully painted the chomping teeth of a Tyrannosaurus rex around the kid’s mouth. “Some do. In Australia, there’s a bird called a cassowary. I’ve read about them. Some of them grow to be six feet tall, and they have really sharp claws.”

  Harvey made a pretend swipe with his claws at the kid, and the kid squirmed, thrilled, and pranced off to display his dinosaur face to his mom. Nick was giving Harvey an odd look, probably thinking about how much of a loser Harvey was. That was certainly what people thought in school.

  Nobody had invited Nick to the face-painting stall.

  “It’s true about cassowaries,” Harvey said defensively. “There’s a lot more cool stuff in the world than people realize.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. There are more things in hell and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Nick murmured.