Season of the Witch

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Harvey hung his head. “Okay.”

  Harvey was not the only one subdued for the rest of the day. Susie and Roz weren’t questioning me about Harvey’s behavior. It had gone too far for that, I thought. They were truly unsettled, and instead of confronting what they could not altogether understand, they wanted to shove it behind us and pretend it hadn’t happened.

  I wished I could put it behind me, but the mortals had no idea who was responsible. I did.

  I wouldn’t let Harvey walk me home through the woods. I went home knowing that I had to have a serious talk with Ambrose.

  Aunt Zelda was sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the far end of the porch, smoking. The sinking sun caught the gold of her cigarette holder, and the gold winked at me in time with the orange eye of her lit cigarette. “Sit with me a moment, Sabrina.”

  I hesitated, but I didn’t particularly want to have a confrontation with Ambrose in the morgue, yelling over a corpse. Maybe I too welcomed the excuse to delay the moment for just a little while longer. I sank onto the rocking chair beside Aunt Zelda’s and waited to hear what she had to say.

  “I apologize if I have been short-tempered lately.”

  I almost fell out of my rocking chair. Aunt Zelda seldom apologized for anything.

  “I know that I have been snapping at you, and making more frequent visits to the Church of Night, and occasionally—”

  “Killing Aunt Hilda—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Aunt Zelda, rolling her eyes. “Small things, but I’ve noticed that you have been withdrawn these last couple of days. I know the months before you sign your soul over to the Dark Lord are a very special and sensitive time for a young girl. I fear I’ve been slightly inconsiderate, especially considering your special circumstances.”

  “Being half mortal, you mean,” I said slowly. “You’re worried that will make me weak.”

  Aunt Zelda said: “Of course that’s a concern.”

  My heart kept rolling between resentment and guilt. Aunt Hilda being hurt, Aunt Zelda being worried: both were my fault, simply for being what I was. How was that fair?

  “Other members of the Church of Night may doubt you,” Aunt Zelda continued. “The thought of your heritage does make me nervous, but I want to assure you that I have complete faith in you. I am certain you will overcome the challenges posed by your background. I knew Edward better than anyone. He was a fantastically powerful warlock who inspired and amazed all those around him, and you are his daughter.”

  “I am. I want to be.”

  I did. But did that mean I couldn’t be my mother’s daughter at all?

  If I didn’t inspire and amaze all with my fantastical power, would I be a disappointment and a failure?

  The sun was going down, the last light bleeding out of the sky. The landscape was already in shadow. The treetops were already black masses against gray clouds.

  Aunt Zelda leaned away from me, causing her chair to rock back slightly. “I hope this little talk eases your mind, Sabrina. I don’t want you to focus on anything but your dark baptism. I truly couldn’t bear if any more shame was brought on our family.”

  “And that’s your biggest concern?” I stood up. “Good to know.”

  The Church of Night doubted that I had the potential to be a witch. Maybe they were all like the Weird Sisters.

  I could become a great witch and show them they were wrong. I could refuse to be a witch, and show them I didn’t need them.

  I wanted to do both. I felt like I was being pulled in two different directions, and nobody cared that I would be torn in half.

  What I hadn’t wanted to do before suddenly seemed the only choice.

  I stormed into the house and made my descent into the morgue, down the spiral stairs and through the cracked stone passageway. My flat shoes hit the black and white tiles hard.

  Ambrose was almost finished with the work of the day. The steel table was empty, the cabinets in which bodies were kept on their cold shelves closed. Ambrose stood by the table under the stark fluorescent spotlight, taking off gloves and goggles. The air smelled of herbs and chemicals, and everything was gray and sharp-edged except for the single beam of light above his head.

  “Tell me what the last words of the spell were,” I ordered. I was panting as if I’d run a long way, through the woods in fear rather than down the stairs in my own house. “Tell me what you did to Harvey.”

  Ambrose shrugged, an irritable roll of his shoulders, as if he was actively trying to shrug a burden off.

  “If I’d known you were going to make this much of a fuss about the silly spell, I’d never have suggested casting it with you. Read my lips, cousin. I’m not going to tell you. I don’t feel like it, and I don’t know why you’re being such a killjoy lately. The whole purpose of magic is to make our lives more fun. Harvey’s just—”

  “Just what?” I bit out. “Just a mortal?”

  A smile began to play along Ambrose’s lips. Ambrose was always playing. “Well. Yes.”

  When I saw Harvey’s blood on the ground, I’d thought for a moment I was seeing flowers. The light chime of my cousin’s voice rang in my ears like bells. Even now, he thought this was a joke.

  “Then what am I?”

  The gloves Ambrose had taken off were lying crumpled on the steel table, still stained with blood. His hands were clean, and his brow was clear, entirely untroubled.

  “Do you mean what are you in an existential sense? I find having philosophical conversations when sober very tiresome. I don’t know what you are, cousin. What am I?”

  “You’re a criminal,” I told him.

  I’d never said anything like that to him before.

  Ambrose’s smile turned glittering and dangerous as his scalpel. “I’m the wicked witch of any direction you like. Sure.”

  The mortal world, the world I’d grown up in, was meaningless to him. Magic could hurt people, but Ambrose didn’t care. Mortals were nothing to him, and perhaps I was nothing to him too.

  “It wouldn’t matter to you if your magic killed someone, would it?”

  “Is there someone you want killed, cousin?” Ambrose inquired.

  I hadn’t thought I could get more angry.

  “No, there isn’t anyone I want killed!” I shouted. “And my name is Sabrina. Call me by my name. Mortals aren’t playthings or possessions. Harvey’s not one, and neither am I.”

  “I know Harvey isn’t a possession,” Ambrose said. “If he was, you’d get to keep him. You’re not going to keep him, and I thought we both wanted to make your last few weeks with him more fun. You take things too seriously.”

  “You take things too lightly. These aren’t my last few weeks with him. Am I really supposed to play with Harvey like he’s a toy, and then throw him out like he’s trash?”

  Ambrose made a tiny gesture of dismissal. The steel lid of the trash flipped open. His crumpled, bloodstained gloves and gleaming scalpel flew through the air and disappeared inside. The lid clanged shut.

  “Why not?” Ambrose drawled.

  “Because witches have such cold, fickle hearts?” I whispered the words.

  I hadn’t wanted to believe them, but it seemed Ambrose had been telling the truth.

  Ambrose shrugged. “There are a lot of reasons. I’m looking out for you here, cousin. I tried to tell you before. Witches and mortals, it never ends well. Know your witch history. Anne Boleyn married a mortal, and he cut her head off.”

  Ambrose drew a fingernail across his own throat with a dramatic sound effect.

  “After your dark baptism, you’ll understand. Do you know what they call flying, when witches do it? Kissing the moon. To be a witch is to kiss the moon,” said Ambrose. “Ask yourself, would you rather kiss the moon, or him?”

  His tone as he asked the question was cruel. The question itself was cruel.

  “Why should I have to make the choice?” I demanded. “You really do think I should just abandon him, as if he isn’t a person who matters to me.
Is that why you always call me cousin? Because it doesn’t matter who I am? Just the amusing half-mortal cousin, a baby who shouldn’t have annoyed you by growing up.”

  Ambrose’s lips skinned back from his teeth. “I have no idea why you believe you’re so amusing. You were the one who insisted on playing with me when you were little, as if I was some kind of pet you kept indoors.”

  “That’s right. Aunt Hilda and Aunt Zelda raised me, but you only played with me. I’m nothing but a toy to you.”

  Ambrose was encouraging me to discard Harvey and my mortal friends so easily. Was that what he would do to me if he could? When would I get thrown out like trash?

  Ambrose cut his gaze from mine, eyes on the wall. The green tiles and dim lights of the mortuary made me feel as if we were not underground but underwater, with everything around me gone murky and unclear. Ambrose shrugged out of his bloodstained apron. Underneath he was wearing a worn T-shirt bearing the words GREEN MEANS GO. RED MEANS GO FASTER. The T-shirt was red as blood and roses.

  Ambrose actually laughed, though the sound was strained. “Why are you taking this so personally?”

  I took an enraged step forward. “Because it’s personal! Because my parents were a witch and a mortal.”

  “Well, Sabrina,” said Ambrose coolly. “They didn’t live happily ever after, did they? You have to live to do that.”

  I crossed the floor of the morgue in two strides. My hand flew out to slap him, but Ambrose caught my wrist. I fought to get free and hit him, but Ambrose held on, fingers biting into my skin.

  “You’re pathetic,” I spat at him. “You’re jealous of me because I have a life and you don’t. Are you going to deny it?”

  “I’m not. I am jealous,” Ambrose snarled back. “If I had a chance at a life, I’d live it a hundred times better than you!”

  “So you did a spell that would hurt Harvey because you want to ruin my life, and you don’t care how many mortals you hurt to do it?”

  The ring of white around Ambrose’s eyes was broader than it was for other people. Now his wide, strange eyes were almost rolling inside his head, black and white and furious. It had never occurred to me before that my cousin could be sinister, or threatening.

  Not to me.

  “Why not?” he asked softly. “Your precious mortals can rot for all I care. I don’t know why you’re obsessed with them, but you never think about the fact that I live in a cage!”

  I broke his hold on my wrist with a violent wrench. “This isn’t a cage. This is our home. You never think about what it means to me to be half mortal.”

  “It doesn’t matter that you’re half mortal. Your dark baptism is in a month,” said Ambrose. “You will write your name in the Dark Lord’s book, and then you’ll be as bad a witch as any of them. Or is that the problem, Sabrina? You’re not really desperately concerned about the mortals. You’re as selfish as I am. You’re worried about yourself, and the fact you’re going to fail.”

  My voice couldn’t shake, so I made it steely. “And why would you think that?”

  Ambrose seemed only too happy to fill me in. He swung away from me, prowling toward the steel table, but I shoved myself between him and the table. I made him look at me, and he bent down and said the malicious, vicious words to my face.

  “You wear hairbands to bed, Sabrina. Some of them match your pajamas. You’re like the girl in one of our stories who swore to a witch she would touch no evil and ended up with no hands. You march around wearing your hairbands like a crown, peering out from underneath at a world you don’t understand but can’t stop judging. The only thing I can imagine you doing with the Dark Lord is telling him sternly that you’re disappointed in his naughty behavior. What kind of witch will you be?”

  You’re such a good girl. Sometimes I wonder how you’re ever going to make a wicked witch. He’d said that to me before we ever did the spell on Harvey. I’d grown up believing that one day I would be a witch, with a grimoire of my own like my cousin’s, that I would do spells and be as splendid as my cousin, but this was what witches really were. Witches had cold, fickle hearts. Ambrose didn’t believe in me, and he didn’t care about me.

  “I’ll be a better witch than you,” I swore to Ambrose. “It’s not my fault you’re trapped in here with me. You committed a crime decades before I was born! You’re weak, you did wrong, and you ruined your own life. You deserve to be in a cage.”

  “You don’t deserve to be a witch!” shouted Ambrose. “That’s what you keep thinking, isn’t it? You can’t bear that little whisper of doubt in your head, so you try to crush it out. I wasn’t the one who wanted to cast spells to make certain of a boyfriend. You’re angry because you’re afraid that you’re even more weak and pathetic than me.”

  His eyes were furious in the dim green light. His words sounded like a curse, as if by saying the words he could make them true.

  My hands were curled in fists so tight my hands ached. “This is stupid. I’m done listening to you.”

  “Yeah?” Ambrose’s laugh curled in the air, wicked and mocking, the cackle of a true witch. “Well, I’m done with you.”

  My chest felt as if it was a nest of snakes, coiling and writhing and striking at my insides with sharp fangs. I lifted my fists and saw that Ambrose’s hands, hanging by his sides, were clenched. I could hear the steel trays moving in the cabinets, the empty ones rattling, the ones with corpses inside rocking as if they were boughs holding babies that must break. Even the sea-green tiles and the bricks in the walls were shifting. In a few moments this ringing room would be full of scalpels and the dead.

  There came the sound of high heels on the spiral stairs, striking so violently I thought sparks might fly.

  “Children!” Aunt Zelda thundered. “What in Satan’s name do you think you’re playing at?”

  Ambrose’s voice was flat. “We’re not playing.”

  “Sibling rivalry,” Aunt Hilda murmured, hovering uneasily behind Zelda on the stairs. “It … it’s natural, it happens, I’ve read about it in child psychology books—”

  “What nonsense you talk,” snapped Aunt Zelda. “Cease reading mortal drivel. There’s obviously a perfectly rational explanation. They have probably been possessed by demons.”

  My shout sliced through the noise of my aunts bickering.

  “How would it be sibling rivalry? He’s not my brother. We’re nothing to each other. This isn’t a real family.”

  I recoiled from Ambrose, stalked past my hurt and offended aunts, whirled up both sets of stairs to my bedroom, hurled myself on the bed full of stupid stuffed toys and tasseled pillows, and burst into a bitter storm of tears.

  Aunt Zelda only cared about me not shaming the Spellmans. Even Aunt Hilda wouldn’t take my side over Ambrose. And Ambrose was done with me, a toy who had ceased to be amusing, so I was done with him.

  If witches didn’t even love each other, there was no reason to be a witch.

  A witch’s words can travel far on the right wind. They race from leaf to leaf in the woods like a game of whispers. It is an old legend that the rustling of fallen leaves around a house means witches are gossiping about the family who lives within.

  Tommy Kinkle is out on his porch, leaning against the rail and looking out into the deep woods. He wonders what Harvey would see if his baby brother the artist were standing beside him. Fairies, maybe? Tommy himself just sees trees. He’s a straightforward kind of guy.

  Harvey came home still babbling about Sabrina, as if he didn’t see her every day all day. Kid’s a trip. But Dad didn’t go to the bar or pass out early tonight. Dad’s glowering in front of the TV with a beer, so Harvey went to his room, saying he was going to draw something. Maybe Dad will drop off to sleep soon, and Harvey will venture outside. Tommy hopes so. Talking with Harvey is the best part of his day.

  Harvey’s right to stay out of Dad’s path. Dad has a heavy hand and a bad temper when he’s been drinking. He’s hit Tommy a few times, but Tommy is strong enough to take it. Dad
has never hit Harvey, and he’s not going to. If Dad beat Tommy to death and then raised a hand to Harvey, Tommy would rise from his grave to catch it.

  He’s good at catching, good at goals; he’s the determined type. Everyone at school back in the day knew that: quarterback Tommy, he’ll make the touchdown. You can count on Tommy Kinkle. Coach used to say, This game is the fight of your lives! It’s the same in the mines now. When the other guys are shrinking back or murmuring about getting the creeps, when it’s close and dark and hot as hell, when he remembers little Harvey telling him a wild, terror-stricken story about seeing a demon in the mines, Tommy leads the way.

  Once when they were both small, they went to a fun fair. Harvey got stuck in the Hall of Mirrors, scared of his own reflection transforming into a monster he couldn’t recognize. Tommy busted right into that place. He didn’t even notice the reflections: He saw only his scared kid brother. He only knew that he was getting Harvey out.

  Tommy doesn’t have much imagination. He believes what he sees, and he knows what’s real. It’s Harvey who got the imagination and the nerves, Harvey who got their mama’s dark eyes and her tragic mouth. Tommy was born a good old boy. His dad and his gramps both call him my boy Tommy, they both understand him—there’s not much to understand, Tommy thinks—but they don’t understand Harvey, and it makes them edgy.

  It’s up to Tommy to understand Harvey, or try to, now their mama is gone. Harvey tells Tommy all his secrets. He whispered to Tommy, on his first day of school, that he’d met a girl who looked like a princess, and every day since then he’d come home with another tale of Princess Sabrina. When Harvey was little, he cried on the frequent days when their dad and grandpa went hunting, and asked didn’t Tommy feel awful for the poor deer? Tommy hadn’t thought about it before, but once Harvey said it, Tommy could see it. The deer have his baby brother’s eyes, big and brown and too easily hurt.