Season of the Witch

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  But another time never came. She never saw those glamorous strangers again. She never went to any parties.

  She did not even last a year in the city.

  Her parents got sick, and she went home to care for them. By the time her parents died, she found she didn’t have the courage to go back. Mary was terrified of exchanging trees for towers.

  So she became a teacher in Greendale, and she chose to live in the littlest, loneliest house. Love for her did come, but it came late. Since faraway love and a little house were not altogether enough for a story-hungry soul, she began to collect the stories of the town. Memories were tucked away in books like pressed flowers, so their color and scent would last, waiting for her to discover them. Greendale was where she had been born and where she had chosen to belong. Those stories were her stories too, and if she did not learn them, the stories might be forgotten.

  Mary read somewhere once that memories were the bones of the soul. So, in a way, she believes that piecing together the history of the town means keeping the foundations of Greendale firm. Some of the stories are too incredible to believe, but Mary Wardwell tries to believe them. Someone has to.

  The oldest stories of the town are only shreds, no longer adding up to entire tales, but Mary finds them fascinating. There are lovely superstitions about secrets lurking in the mines, witches dancing in the woods. There are two brief accounts of a brave girl called Freya who fed her family when they were bound in the ice. There are descriptions of fierce hunters who saved the town. Times must have been hard back then.

  Mary Wardwell laughed when she read an ancient scribble in an old book that read Never go into the woods after dark. She wept over the stories of witches, astonishingly hanged in her town as well as Salem. She told Susie Putnam once that she should be very proud of a heroic ancestor, and Susie was clearly puzzled, but just as clearly pleased.

  Mary Wardwell likes to think of herself as the one who tells the town the story of itself. The past passes on candles to the future if you put out your hands to take the light.

  She’s the record keeper, the keeper of faith. She has the fanciful notion that as long as she keeps the books and lives in this little house in the midst of the wild woods, nothing truly bad can ever happen in her town.

  I stared in disbelief as my teacher appeared from between the clusters of trees. This was a clearing of silvery shadows, of moonlit magic. Someone wearing a tweed suit and spectacles seemed utterly out of place.

  “My dear Sabrina! If you don’t watch out, you could fall into the river. Then you would have a long walk home soaked to the skin. You might catch a chill.”

  I shuffled guiltily away from the river’s edge.

  “Uh, Ms. Wardwell. Hi. What are you doing here?”

  Ms. Wardwell blinked at me behind her giant spectacles. “I live close by, and I was gathering flowers in the woods. I have an extensive dried flower collection.”

  “Oh,” I said, and let the irony of my fib to Harvey sink in. “I didn’t know people actually did that anymore.”

  I’d forgotten that Ms. Wardwell lived in that lonely house far from town, the only house in the woods. How strange it must be for a mortal to live there. I wondered if Ms. Wardwell ever heard the screams of witches celebrating. She probably imagined they were foxes.

  “You’re far from home, Sabrina,” Ms. Wardwell remarked. “Are you hiking by yourself? It’s almost dark. Remember, it’s not summer anymore.”

  “Just … on a nature walk,” I answered.

  Ms. Wardwell hesitated. “Would you like to come to my house for a cup of tea, since you are so close by? You can warm up by the fire before you go home.”

  Ms. Wardwell looked so timid, and so hopeful. It would have been cruel to refuse her. Even though all I wanted was to return to the spirit, and my spell.

  “Oh, sure,” I told her. “Thanks very much.”

  I followed Ms. Wardwell, but before I left I whispered a promise to the wind and the spirit I knew was listening beneath the water:

  “I’ll come back.”

  Ms. Wardwell lived in a tiny cottage near the very edge of the deep woods. Her home made me think of the gingerbread cottage in fairy tales where a witch might live. Except instead of a witch luring guests into her cottage, a strange witch was being invited into this one.

  There was a horseshoe hammered over the door: a piece of cold iron, meant to keep away fairies. When I stepped inside, I saw things like that everywhere.

  The whole place was terribly quaint. There was a clock shaped like a teapot on the wall. There was a crucifix over the hearth fire with a painting behind it. Aunt Zelda always pointedly averted her eyes when presented with what she called images of the false god.

  I stirred the tea in my teacup with my tiny silver spoon and said awkwardly: “Love what you’ve done with the place. Thanks for having me.”

  “Thank you for coming,” said Ms. Wardwell. “I don’t have many visitors. Though I have found several young people rambling by that river near dark, and I do ask them in for a cup of tea. I can’t think why that spot draws them so.”

  “I suppose they’re wishing in the wishing well.”

  “Is that well a wishing well?” Ms. Wardwell asked with interest. “I’ve never heard that before. I must make a note of that. I collect town legends, you know. I consider myself the unofficial town historian.”

  “Oh, right.” I scratched my head, dislodging my hairband slightly, and smiled. Ms. Wardwell and her cottage both seemed a little silly to me, but sweet.

  “Oh, yes,” said Ms. Wardwell. “Not many people realize that we have a long history of witches in Greendale, to rival the stories of Salem.”

  I took a careful sip of hot tea. “That is absolutely news to me. How interesting. And new. To me. Something I have never heard before in all my life. Ever.”

  Ms. Wardwell glowed at the expression of interest. She jumped up from her wingback chair, spilling some tea as she did so, to take a large, leather-bound book down from a high shelf.

  “Would you like to hear this contemporary account of a witch?” she asked. “It’s said to have been written by an ancestor of the Putnams.”

  “The Putnams, as in my friend Susie Putnam?” I asked, lost. “Yes, of course.”

  “The young witch came to me again yesterday,” Ms. Wardwell read aloud. “She speaks in riddles, but sweetly. She says she will be kind for my kindness to her kind. The crops this year looked to fail, but now we think the crops are flourishing late. Perhaps it is only chance, but everywhere the crops are growing now are places the young witch walked yesterday. I can see her now, Freya of the long hair and the summer song, with the edge of her gown lost in the green grass. Surely God made her. The devil could not make anything so lovely.”

  Ms. Wardwell replaced the book on the shelf and began to talk about the fact that some believed the account was written by an eccentric, or somebody writing a short story, and nobody was sure which one of the Putnams it was, whether it was a man or a woman, and others said it was not one of the Putnams who wrote the account at all.

  Ms. Wardwell didn’t know the account was real, but I did.

  Imagine one of the mortals knowing someone was a witch, suspecting they were doing magic before their very eyes, and still writing about them with such affection. Imagine mortals and witches, able to live in peace.

  I’m sure that was how my mother thought about my father. I’m sure she loved his magic and understood him. If I told Harvey the truth, was that how he would feel about me? I wished I knew.

  Witch-hunters had come for the witches of Greendale. My aunts always said I could never tell a mortal the truth, and I never had. But I wanted to.

  “Forgive me, Sabrina,” said Ms. Wardwell, taking her seat again. “I get carried away when I talk about my hobbies. What is it you were wishing for, when you went to the wishing well? You always seem so happy at school. I would have imagined you have nothing to wish for.”

  I thought of the visions
the spirit of the wishing well had showed me. I imagined being a great witch, so powerful I could make the moon shine at noonday, having all the love and magic I desired.

  I said slowly: “I have a lot to wish for. There’s a boy …”

  “Harvey Kinkle,” Ms. Wardwell supplied. “Sweet boy. Shouldn’t draw so many pictures in class, of course.”

  “Harvey,” I said. “And my friends. And my family. I wish I knew how they would feel, if they knew everything there was to know about me. I have a big decision to make soon, and my family are expecting me to make them proud, but they don’t know how many doubts I have about it. I haven’t told them. And I keep so many secrets from Harvey and my friends, and that can’t be right, but it would be wrong to tell them. I keep thinking about what I should do, because I’m really not sure what to do. I’m not sure of anything. And I’m always sure.”

  It wasn’t like talking to the spirit of the wishing well. I had been able to tell her everything. She’d been able to understand everything, and still see me as someone great. That had been everything I wanted.

  Ms. Wardwell couldn’t even see me for what I was. She was a sweet, silly woman who thought witches were stories and owned a teapot clock. I didn’t understand why I was even trying.

  But Ms. Wardwell surprised me by slipping off her chair, taking my hands in hers, and kneeling at my feet. Her face was not smooth and perfect as that of the wishing-well spirit, and it was not opaque either. I was startled by the depths of sympathy and sweetness in her green eyes. I realized Ms. Wardwell was actually very beautiful. Perhaps Ms. Wardwell didn’t know that herself.

  “I’m sorry, Sabrina,” she murmured. “Of course it must feel terrible to find yourself floundering in uncertainty. Especially if this is the first time you have been truly unsure.”

  I nodded, fighting back tears.

  “But my dear, what a wonderful gift you have,” said Ms. Wardwell. “To be almost always certain. Most people aren’t sure about anything. Though, if I had that power, if I could be that sure of myself, I would feel as though I had a key to enchantment.”

  The fire in the hearth was warm and comforting, and so was the clasp of my teacher’s hands. With darkness gathering behind the windows, the little cottage didn’t seem absurd to me any longer. It was cozy and inviting, a small, glowing refuge from the darkest depths of the woods. Even a witch could feel welcome here.

  “I’m not a very wise woman,” Ms. Wardwell confessed. “There’s no particular reason you should listen to me. But if I were to give one piece of advice, it would be: Don’t fear that you are not enough. That’s the only fear that can stop you.” She hesitated. “Does that sound silly?”

  “No,” I murmured. “No, it doesn’t sound silly at all, Ms. Wardwell. Thank you very much.”

  I walked home through the full dark of the woods by night. Ms. Wardwell tried to insist on accompanying me, but I said I knew the way.

  I didn’t tell her I’d been born in these woods. No mortal knew these woods as I did.

  But I carried Ms. Wardwell’s kind words with me as I went. On my way, I paused at the place I would have to turn, to go back to the stream and the clearing and the well.

  I decided not to go. Not tonight.

  Instead I chose a different path, and cut through the deepest part of the woods to a valley glowing with moonlight, as if the valley were a green cup full of silver liquid. I dimly remembered my aunt Hilda telling me tales of goblins living there.

  I sighed and said: “I swear I would do the right thing. If only I knew what it was.”

  If the goblins heard me, they didn’t answer.

  I went home, the slanted rooftops of my house barely visible against the sky, but every window burning yellow. I hurried inside and heard my aunt Zelda’s voice ringing from above, and ran up the split-level stairs to find my aunts and Ambrose in the hallway outside my bedroom. Aunt Hilda was hanging back. Ambrose was stretched out on the floor. Aunt Zelda was holding a bucket, for some reason, and applying the pointed toe of her high-heeled shoe to Ambrose’s ribs.

  “Would you stop it, Ambrose! You play the fool so much sometimes I worry that you are not playing.”

  “Don’t worry, Auntie Z.,” Ambrose answered. “I’m always playing.”

  I said, breathless from my race up the stairs: “Hey, guys, what’s going on?”

  “Ah, Sabrina,” said Aunt Zelda. “Thank hell you are home. Your little mortal boyfriend has been causing trouble.”

  I was instantly struck with alarm.

  “Harvey was here?” I demanded. “When I wasn’t here? What happened to him? What did you do?”

  “It isn’t what we did,” Aunt Zelda snapped. “It’s what that ridiculous mortal did. He stood under your bedroom window and attempted to serenade you.”

  My mouth fell open. “He didn’t.”

  My shy Harvey would never do that.

  “I am sorry to say that he did,” declared Aunt Zelda. “Your mortal suitor does not have a melodious voice. At first I believed the sound was cats fighting to the death, but that happy dream was dashed when I made out the words. Tell her, Ambrose.”

  Ambrose was lying full-length on the floor. He appeared to be actually crying with laughter.

  “He sang a song,” he confirmed. “I can sing it for you, if you like. I wouldn’t want you to feel you’d missed out on anything, cousin. I can remember every glorious word. I will never forget. They are written on my heart in letters of fire. Shall I begin? Oh, Sabrina, oh, Sabrina, as soon as I seen ya—”

  My hand flew to cover my open mouth.

  “Be quiet, Ambrose,” commanded Aunt Zelda.

  “But I haven’t even got to the bit where his love is like a yellow, yellow daffodil!”

  “Hush, love,” murmured Aunt Hilda. “That’s not kind.”

  “Please just let me tell her about the part where he sang that she was the powdered sugar to his donut and if she was a trash can he’d be a fox!”

  Aunt Zelda’s tone was menacing. “I can fill this bucket again and dump it over you, and if I am forced to listen to that song again, I will.”

  “I thought it was very romantic, really,” Aunt Hilda muttered. “His little face was so sad and surprised when you dumped the bucket out the window.”

  I realized what my aunts were saying.

  “You dumped a bucket of water onto Harvey?” I snarled.

  Aunt Zelda pursed her lips. “Was it water or pig’s blood? Can you remember, Ambrose? Anyway, he went quiet after that.”

  I breathed: “Oh no. I have to call him.”

  “That’s an excellent idea, Sabrina,” said Aunt Zelda. “Tell him that if he ever sings on my property again, I will have owls consume his tongue.”

  Hilda made a face. “Maybe put it a bit more tactfully than that, love.”

  Aunt Zelda flounced off to her bedroom, her heels making angry clicking sounds on the parquet floor. Aunt Hilda hurried after her, making soothing noises. I stepped over Ambrose on my way to my room, but before I could slam my bedroom door, Ambrose rolled across the rug in a flurry of silk robe and continued laughter. He tossed a conspiratorial grin up to me, as if this was a joke, as if Harvey was a joke to him.

  “Looks like our spell worked a little too well, cousin.”

  I remembered what the spirit of the wishing well had told me.

  “It wasn’t our spell,” I said coldly. “It was your spell.”

  She knows the dark was created so that terrible things might happen to beautiful creatures.

  She is not particularly disturbed by Sabrina’s failure to return.

  Humans have bursts of wild hope. At certain turns of the moon, they gain confidence in themselves, they believe in love or mercy, set their hearts on the beauty of the world they can see or the grace of another world they cannot, and tell themselves that is enough.

  But hope, like humans themselves, does not last. Sooner or later, faith fades, and doubts creep in. She doesn’t do anything to make it ha
ppen. She doesn’t have to. They do it to themselves. They always come crawling back, begging for greatness, dying to be saved from the worst they fear themselves to be.

  She knows how to be patient, and now she is playing a game for a bigger prize than any before. She has her orders. She knows what to do. She knows what humans are. Not a soul who walks the earth, witch or mortal, is truly sure of themselves. They just wish they were.

  All she must do is lie by the river and wait.

  I was eating breakfast with Ambrose and Aunt Hilda when the knock on the door came Tuesday. That meant, horrifyingly, that Aunt Zelda answered.

  “I am fond of music,” was her opening greeting. “But I cannot describe what I experienced last night as music.”

  I swallowed my mouthful of cereal and gave a pointed cough over the startled murmur of a boy’s voice.

  Even before last night’s serenade, there were times when Aunt Zelda had been extremely rude to Harvey, but I’d spoken to her strongly about being a gracious hostess.

  “I mean, ah yes, hello, Harvey,” Aunt Zelda said with dignity. “Fine moon we had last night, wasn’t it? I do get a thrill from a crescent moon. They look rather like daggers.”

  Unfortunately, this was Aunt Zelda’s idea of being a gracious hostess.

  I pushed back bowl and chair. “Gotta go.”

  “When shall we three meet again?” asked Ambrose, who seemed blissfully unaware that I was angry with him. “Oh, right, when you come home from school. Because I never leave the house, and Auntie H.’s most frequent trip is out to the graveyard. Auntie H. and I are ready for another exciting day crafting exquisite paper helicopters. Paper planes ceased to be a challenge fifty years ago.”