Season of the Witch

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Hunting is a Kinkle tradition. Gramps says their family legacy is the blood they were strong enough to spill, and the darkness of the mines. They have never forgiven Harvey for being born a gentle soul.

  “Oh, Harvey’s sensitive all right,” their dad sneered once when they were down in the mines. “All his friends are girls, and he loves drawing pretty pictures. He’d better not be too sensitive, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

  Tommy had barked out a genuinely startled laugh. “Are you kidding, Dad? All he thinks about is Sabrina.”

  His dad’s mouth is perpetually disappointed, moving from bitter shape to bitter shape. “The Spellman girl. Can’t stand the Spellmans. They’re real strange folks.”

  The Spellmans might be strange. People say they are: that Hilda is daft, Zelda is an old witch, and the cousin is a sinner.

  There are a lot of strange things in Greendale, and a lot of Greendale people who get scared by what they can’t understand. Tommy’s not one of them.

  He started going to Harvey’s parent-teacher meetings a couple of years back. His dad wouldn’t go to them, had no interest. It was weird to return to school, where Tommy had walked the halls a king not so long ago. Everybody had wanted to be his friend then, wanted a word or a nod from him, and it was the same building but now he was sitting lined up on the rickety chairs with a bunch of parents in their best clothes, waiting to talk to the principal. His head was hanging, his hands clasped awkwardly together, and the dust from the mines was still on his boots. It felt as if he was in trouble, and hopelessly out of place. He’d almost walked right out.

  But Hilda Spellman was there, Sabrina’s aunt with the butter-yellow hair and the kind face. She’d been reading a book, held open in her lap. Tommy’s high school girlfriend used to read a lot too. Tommy was no great reader himself, but it gave him kind of a nice feeling to see people with books: getting away from Greendale in their own minds. He hadn’t been surprised to see Hilda with a book. The Spellmans had that look about them: smart women. A cut above. They think they’re better than us mere mortals, his dad says.

  Hilda Spellman had shoved her book in her purse and waved him over, chatted to him until it was their turn to talk to the teachers.

  “It’s nice to have you here,” she whispered to him. “I always feel uneasy, being the only one who isn’t a parent, and Zelda won’t come with me.” She gave him a little friendly wink, her bright blue eye shadow flickering at him. “We’re all doing the best we can, eh?”

  Tommy had cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

  When he talked to the teachers, they told him Harvey was doing pretty good in class, though he was absentminded.

  “That’s my little brother,” said Tommy ruefully. “He’s a dreamer.”

  Harvey doesn’t think he’s smart, but Tommy knows he is. And whenever he went to parent-teacher meetings from then on, Tommy sat by Hilda Spellman. She always smiled when she saw him, took the time to talk. She was a real lady.

  One night, Tommy was worried about Harvey being out late. Harvey’d said he’d be at the Spellman house, and Tommy walked up through the woods under the cover of darkness. He saw the porch of the Spellman house lit up and the silhouettes of a boy and girl sitting there. He didn’t want to disturb Harvey’s courting, but he did need to fetch Harvey back, so he’d approached quietly.

  It hadn’t been Harvey sitting on the porch with Sabrina. It had been Sabrina’s cousin, Ambrose.

  People in town talked a lot about the cousin. Every woman who’d ever delivered the mail to the Spellman house was a little in love with him. So were a few of the mailmen. He flirted with them all, everybody said, like it just didn’t matter. But he never asked to take anyone out, so they knew he didn’t mean it.

  He was cold and cruel, Tommy’d heard. A playboy as well as a sinner.

  But Tommy didn’t know about that. Maybe Ambrose Spellman was just too big a personality for Greendale. Sometimes you saw him, pacing the boundaries of the Spellman lands like a caged panther in a fancy dressing gown, flinging his arms out wide as if to embrace the four winds. Sometimes you didn’t see him for months on end, and Tommy figured at those times Ambrose went away on glamorous, outlandish journeys. He didn’t look much older than Tommy was himself, but he must be older than he seemed: The stories about him went way back, and you could tell just by looking at him that he’d had a thousand wild adventures, and small-town life would never be enough for him. Tommy figured Ambrose Spellman was probably the coolest guy Greendale would ever see: No wonder they didn’t understand him.

  That night, Ambrose was talking to Sabrina in a deep, dream-laden voice. He had an English accent, as Hilda Spellman did. They’d spent enough time in England that they had actual English accents. Tommy’d never even gotten a passport, and doubted he ever would, but he looked sometimes at maps of strange lands, and thought Ambrose Spellman had probably been to them all. Ambrose was gesturing as he talked, and he wore a bracelet—Tommy could only picture his father’s reaction if Tommy ever lost his mind and decided to wear a bracelet, but it was clear Ambrose didn’t care what anybody thought.

  He was telling Sabrina a story, something about witches and magic and deep woods and a long past. Ambrose talked as if it was really true, and Sabrina answered as if it was true as well. Hilda came out on the porch with hot chocolates for them both, and she joined the conversation too, speaking easily as though from long habit. It was clear they were used to spinning magic stories for each other. Maybe, Tommy thought, Ambrose was a writer, maybe he wrote fantasy books like Tommy’s girl Martha used to read: that would make sense of the swaggering around in silk dressing gowns and the, uh, bohemian lifestyle. Writers were different from other folks. Everybody knew that.

  Tommy’s mother died when he and his brother were young enough that she still told them stories, and Tommy had no idea that people grew out of storytelling. Motherless children are easy prey for witches.

  Tommy wasn’t suspicious. He just liked listening to the boy’s voice, weaving a tale of magic for his cousin. It sounded like family.

  Tommy stayed for longer than he should have, so entirely charmed that he forgot it wasn’t neighborly to spy. He stayed until Sabrina fell asleep, her golden head on her cousin’s silk-clad shoulder, and Ambrose stopped talking.

  Insects flew toward Sabrina’s small, curled-up sleeping form. Ambrose gave a lordly wave, and the insects flew off: not just the ones he’d swept at, but every insect on the porch cleared out instantly. As if that protective little gesture, which Tommy found so sweet, had been real magic.

  Only a single firefly stayed. When Ambrose lifted his hand, the tiny lantern of the firefly landed on his finger, shining there.

  “Light my cousin’s dreams,” he whispered.

  What a strange, pretty thing to say, Tommy thought: What a sweetheart. He didn’t believe a word of what people said about the Spellmans, not a word.

  Ambrose fell asleep too, his dark head drooping against Sabrina’s, and their aunt came out and covered them with a blanket. Not the nice one, Hilda, but Zelda Spellman, who wielded a cigarette holder shaped like a pitchfork as if she might just stab somebody’s eyes out. She covered the cousins up carefully, tucking the quilt under their chins and around their feet, but she also surveyed the darkness with a suspicious glare, and Tommy finally remembered that he should leave.

  Tommy found out that Harvey had been fibbing about being at the Spellmans’ house because Susie and Roz had drama class, and Harvey was walking Sabrina home, then doubling back to walk with Susie and Roz. There were boys at school who were unkind to Susie, saying she was hardly a girl at all. Their father laughed at Susie for the same reason.

  “I didn’t want to tell Dad,” Harvey confessed. “And I didn’t want Sabrina finding out about the boys annoying Susie and Roz on their way back from drama. She’d go wild, Tommy! And she has to be back home, you know. Her aunt Zelda teaches her Latin after school. Sabrina speaks Latin, can you believe?”

  H
arvey shone whenever he talked about her. He thought Sabrina could do just about anything. Of course, that was the impression Sabrina usually gave. Greendale people, when they were doing their whispering, said Sabrina was a little know-it-all. Tommy could absolutely picture Sabrina giving schoolboys hell for annoying her friends.

  But Harvey didn’t want Sabrina worried, and Tommy doubted that Harvey on his own would be enough to stop the boys harassing his friends. Harvey thought fighting was ugly, and Tommy’s artistic brother couldn’t bear ugliness.

  Tommy didn’t like it himself, but he could bear it. He walked Harvey, Roz, and Susie home the next day, and when the other boys saw Tommy there, they didn’t dare approach. Tommy’s football legend, fading every day, was good for that, at least.

  “Don’t you worry about them, Susie,” Roz said energetically. “In a few years, you’ll be living in a big city, and those jerks will be rotting in Greendale as hometown has-beens!”

  Her dark eyes, behind their big spectacles, had darted to Tommy as soon as she’d spoken. Roz might wear those huge glasses, but she saw plenty.

  “I didn’t mean …” she began.

  “’Course you didn’t,” Harvey said stoutly. “Tommy’s not a jerk. And he was an all-star!”

  His little brother was proud of him now, but Harvey might be embarrassed by him one day. Roz wasn’t wrong. Tommy’s dad had an album of his own pictures, as well as Tommy’s, showing him playing football, being a hometown hero who came to nothing. Nobody cared about those crumbling photos now, except for Tommy’s dad, and someday soon nobody would care about Tommy’s pictures either. It was strange, knowing that his best days were behind him, when he was barely in his twenties.

  It was what it was. Tommy did try not to be a jerk.

  Back in school, people had said he could have any girl he wanted. Tommy didn’t know about that, but a few cheerleaders had made it clear they were available. That hadn’t mattered. Tommy’d had a steady girl all through high school. He’d gotten to know Martha when they did a project for extra credit, and she’d seemed surprised when he did his share of the work, though he didn’t have the extra creative spark Martha did. Tommy liked the way her eyes went sweet and dreamy over a book. He guessed doing his share won him extra credit with Martha. She’d said yes when he asked her out, though she’d looked surprised as some other people in school had, and they went steady for three years. She would come back to Tommy’s place sometimes and help Harvey with his homework. Harvey liked her almost as much as Tommy did.

  Tommy had asked Martha to marry him when they graduated. He wasn’t surprised when she said no. They both knew she was meant for bigger, shinier things than the little diamond ring that was all he’d been able to afford even after taking on extra shifts at the mines. He’d asked her to keep the ring and think about him sometimes when she was in the big city. She had kept the ring, but she hadn’t kept in touch.

  Maybe Martha’s answer would’ve been different if he’d taken the football scholarship. Tommy had been offered a free ride to a great college. He’d thought about taking it. Martha had thought he was crazy not to. Harvey would never have blamed him. But Tommy would’ve blamed himself.

  Whenever he thought about his own future, Tommy saw it looping back to living and dying in Greendale. He could go off and pretend for a while, but he didn’t have what Martha and Harvey and Sabrina did, the extra spark that would power them out of this town. He was scared of proving what he already knew deep down was true: He didn’t have what it took. He might blow his knee out and it would all be for nothing, and even if he didn’t …

  Leaving meant leaving Harvey alone at home, with their dad. It meant Tommy miles away, not there to take their father’s blows and the brunt of his disappointment with life. Harvey’s sensitive spirit, being crushed.

  “Take this,” their mama had said when she was dying, pressing a bright cross into Tommy’s hands and bundling Harvey into his arms. “Take him. Promise me you’ll take care of your brother.”

  Tommy tried to speak with dignity, though he was young and frightened. He knew the promise was sacred. He said: “Yes, ma’am.”

  He turned down the free ride to college. He stayed in Greendale where he belonged.

  It’s not that Tommy doesn’t have his own dreams, but he knows it’s better this way. He didn’t really want Martha staying in town, her eyes growing as sad as his mother’s. He hopes that she looks at the ring now and again, and that the memory of him is sweet: the boy back home who treated her right and knew her worth when some fools did not. He’d rather that than if she’d stayed, and her thoughts of him turned bitter.

  It was the same with Alison, the girl with the golden hair and green coat who picked Tommy up in the bar and talked about going away to LA together. She hadn’t been kind like Martha, but gosh, she’d been pretty, eyes shining like faraway city lights. It was sweet, to sit with her in her tiny hotel room and talk and dream, but Tommy knew he wasn’t going anywhere. One day, when the photographs in his album had faded a little more, he wouldn’t be the boy a pretty girl picked on her way out of town. He’d just be one more of the good old boys at the bar, talking about the good old days and the good old dreams.

  Tommy hopes Alison reached LA and found it everything she dreamed. Tommy will never know that she is dead, lost beneath dark waters, never to leave this town.

  Tommy tried to talk to Harvey the way he’d heard Ambrose speak to Sabrina, once. He’d faltered out a few sentences about witches and dragons, but in Tommy’s mouth none of it sounded convincing. Harvey had looked badly worried. He’d asked Tommy not to start drinking like Dad, and Tommy swallowed and swore he wouldn’t.

  When his dad said the Spellmans were strange, Tommy remembered Hilda Spellman at the parent-teacher meetings, remembered that night with Ambrose Spellman telling stories and talking to a firefly, and he said: “I think the Spellmans are real nice folks. I’m glad Harvey knows them.”

  His father grunted. “Better than if Harvey was seeing that Walker girl, or that other girl who acts like a boy, I suppose. That would be as bad as if he was that way!”

  Tommy cleared his throat and said: “If Harvey was that way … there ain’t nothing wrong with it.”

  Dad’s face went grim. He’d swung his pick down and broken a stone in half, and said: “I’d rather see my boy dead.”

  A guy asked Tommy out, once. Not Sabrina’s cousin—Ambrose doesn’t know Tommy is alive—it was a blond guy Tommy didn’t know. Tommy was in Cerberus Books, trying to hunt up a book on art that Harvey wanted, when the guy approached him. Tommy said no, obviously. He was as nice as he knew how to be about it, even while he was looking around in panic to see if anyone his dad knew could hear. Tommy didn’t like the look of the guy or anything, not at all, but he was impressed the blond guy had the nerve to ask him. Even in Greendale, some people were brave. They lived their lives in a small town as if they knew they were going to get out.

  Maybe Sabrina’s wild writer cousin talks to Harvey sometimes, tells him wonderful stories he makes sound true. Tommy hopes so.

  If Ambrose has, Harvey hasn’t mentioned it, but then, whenever the conversation turns to the Spellmans, he only talks about Sabrina. She’s about all he sees, and it’s not hard to see why. Sabrina shines, not like city lights but like a sun. Tommy worries about Harvey and his other friends, but he never worries about Sabrina walking through the woods.

  Light my cousin’s dreams.

  That girl carries her family’s love with her like a steady flame, a warm light encircling her golden head and making a bright path for her feet to follow without faltering. She’s a little bit of a thing, but she strides tall and fearless as her cousin, speaks with the authority of Zelda Spellman, and is kind to her friends as Hilda Spellman was to Tommy. Sabrina would walk confidently into the deepest dark or the wildest adventure. Tommy wishes he had that certainty. He’d give it to Harvey, who doesn’t walk like Sabrina does, who shies away like a scared animal sometimes when
people get close. But Harvey always walks by Sabrina’s side. Perhaps Sabrina will be sure of Harvey as she is of most things, sure as nobody has ever been about Tommy. Perhaps she can see in Harvey the greatness that Tommy can. Perhaps she will take Harvey with her, wherever she’s going.

  That’s all Tommy wants. That’s what Tommy intends to do with his life.

  A tap comes, his little brother knocking on the open door of the Kinkle house, trying to get Tommy’s attention.

  “What are you doing, Tommy?”

  Tommy shrugged. “Daydreaming, I guess.”

  Harvey’s shy face brightened. “What are you dreaming about?”

  “What do you think?” Tommy ruffled his hair. “I’m dreaming that all your dreams come true, nerd.”

  Harvey grinned as if Tommy was making a joke. “Do you want to see my drawing?”

  “I sure do,” said Tommy. “Let’s have a preview before your pictures get put in the art galleries. I’ll be right in. And hey, tomorrow? You need to talk to your girl.”

  Harvey bit his lip, nodded, then ran inside to set up the picture. He was glowing with pride. Harvey doesn’t shine with Sabrina’s certainty, but there’s light there, even if it pales or flickers. He’s the brightest thing in Tommy’s life.

  Reverend Walker says, in his sermons of blood and thunder and hellfire: What would you do if you fell into the Pit? The answer came to Tommy quick as winking. If Harvey was in the Pit with him, he’d have Harvey up on his shoulders fast as he could. Tommy has strong shoulders, and sure hands. He’d make sure Harvey got out.

  Out of the room where their mother lay dying, out of the Hall of Mirrors, out of the enclosing shadows of Greendale.

  This is the fight of your lives! Coach used to say about every game, but Tommy knew better then and he knows better now. Football is a game. This, Harvey, getting his baby brother out, is the fight of his life. Tommy made all his touchdowns, Tommy took every hit. Gramps says insistently that they have to be hunters, so Tommy taught Harvey to shoot better than Tommy himself can, but he won’t let them make Harvey kill. When they’re out hunting Tommy picks up the gun and fires at the deer so Harvey won’t have to, and Tommy hits them between the eyes every time. Tommy works the longest shifts, down in the darkest parts of the mines, trying to get his dad to shut up about Harvey taking a shift. Harvey’s not going down there. Harvey’s only going up. Tommy will make it happen. He promised his mother. He’s never failed yet. You can count on Tommy Kinkle. Everybody knows that.