Through the green trees that surround their small green house comes a rippling wind. It almost sounds like a voice, almost sounds like Sabrina’s aunt Hilda, that kind woman. It’s ridiculous that anybody calls her a witch.
In a house with no mother, where a cold man rules, a child pays.
“Let it be me,” said Tommy Kinkle, letting go of the porch rail with a small sigh.
He’ll pay: every day of his future, every drop of sweat and blood, every dream.
But not Harvey. Not his little brother. He’s the best of their family, and Tommy is going to save him.
I woke to a flat, gray morning and dragged myself out of bed with my limbs aching almost as much as my eyes. I’d cried myself to sleep last night. The time on my porcelain clock was too early for this nonsense. When I looked into my mirror, I flinched, and I wasn’t sure if that was because my mirror frame was decorated with painted white roses or because of the deep shadows under my eyes.
I told myself not to be silly, then put on a red dress and fixed a black hairband in place. Then I stared at myself in the mirror, tore the hairband out of my hair, and threw it down on my dressing table with a clatter. It spun in a dark circle and fell off the dressing table. I stood up, then bit my lip, dived for the hairband, and jammed it onto my head without checking the mirror to see how it looked.
I went downstairs in an extremely bad mood. Aunt Hilda jumped when I came in, and dropped her spoon. She’d made porridge, but by the smell and the thin, sad stream of smoke issuing from the pot, she’d burned it.
Aunt Zelda was having her breakfast cigarette at the table, but Ambrose wasn’t there. He usually made sure to be downstairs to eat breakfast with me before I went to school, even if he’d stayed up on his laptop all night. I’d never thought about that much before.
I grabbed a bowl, sank down across the table from Aunt Zelda, and crunched resentfully on the burned bits in my porridge.
“You’ve burned the newt’s eyeballs, Hilda,” Aunt Zelda remarked critically. “Newt eyeballs should be al dente.”
I choked on one of the … no, don’t think it … pieces of burned porridge, then pushed my bowl away. I got up to get cereal, but Ambrose must have finished the box. I slammed the door of the cupboard shut.
“You should have something for breakfast,” Aunt Hilda encouraged me.
“Okay,” I said. “Aunt Z., can I have a cigarette?”
“Certainly not,” Aunt Zelda snapped. “Cigarettes are extremely harmful for mortals. While I am doing homage to my lord Satan by accustoming myself to the smoke that will doubtless accompany the flames of hell.”
She didn’t have the subdued air that Aunt Hilda did, but she’d smoked about five cigarettes before breakfast. I wondered if she was thinking about me bringing shame on the family.
“I’m not a mortal,” I snapped. “But I guess I’m close enough, right?”
Apparently my lungs were going to change after my dark baptism, as well as my soft mortal’s heart.
“Don’t say such things, or I’ll wash your mouth out with holy water,” threatened Aunt Zelda.
“Go ahead!”
“Don’t test me!” Aunt Zelda put down her cigarette holder with a determined click. “This is absurd. I’m fetching Ambrose downstairs.”
“I don’t want to see him!” I called after her as she swept out. Aunt Zelda ignored me.
We listened to her climb both sets of stairs, toward the attic. Aunt Zelda’s raised tones of command, and the angry rumble of Ambrose’s responses. He wasn’t coming downstairs. I saw Aunt Hilda let out her breath in a small, disappointed sigh at the same time I did.
I was furious with myself the next moment. He was done with me, and I was done with him. That meant no more getting up for breakfast before I went to school. It would mean no more holding the door wide for me when I came home from school, before I had a chance to open it myself, or waiting for me on the porch.
I shoved my chair back from the table and stood. “I’m sick of this.”
“What if you go up and have a chat with Ambrose, eh, my love?” Aunt Hilda suggested.
I grabbed my book bag and my red coat. “I don’t want to talk to him, and he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
I couldn’t stay in the house another minute.
The Weird Sisters were lingering just outside the borders of our property. That was all I needed. Their shadows fell on me, shoulders hunched as if already laughing at my expense. They looked like a little flock of ravens perched up on a branch and sneering down on everyone who passed by.
“Good morrow, not sister,” Prudence called out.
My voice was stony. “What do you want?”
“Just wanted to get the worst part of my day over with early,” answered Prudence. “My, don’t you look cheerful this morning. The mortals believe witches turn milk sour, but maybe that story started because of your face. How will I ever bear it when you’re casting a blight on our academy?”
The cold morning breeze was in my eyes, making them water. I wiped at them roughly with the red cuff of my coat. “Maybe you won’t have to find out,” I snapped, and shouldered roughly past Prudence, leaving them squawking behind me. “Maybe I don’t want to go.”
I couldn’t be bothered with them. Not today. They could get their kicks tormenting someone else.
Around the curve in the road, beneath the arch of trees beginning to die, I met Harvey walking up the road to my house.
His eyes went wide, as startled to see me as I was to see him. He was wearing his jacket with one of the sheepskin-lined flaps tucked inside rather than outside, his hair ruffled even more than usual. He looked still sleepy, and worried, and entirely dear, and I couldn’t face him right now.
“Hey, ’Brina. Where are you going?”
I cleared my throat. “To school. Early. I thought I’d go to school early.”
“You weren’t waiting for me?” Harvey swallowed this information. “I guess you’re mad at me after all.”
“No,” I whispered. “I’m not mad.”
I didn’t want him thinking that. But he dipped his chin, accepting the responsibility that didn’t belong to him.
“You have every right to be,” Harvey said. “Tommy told me that I should talk to you. Can I?”
“I’m really not mad,” I insisted. “You have no need to apologize. I should be the one—”
“Let me say this,” Harvey said. “Please, ’Brina. It’s important to me. I don’t talk to you about my home life a lot.”
That was my fault too. If I were a mortal, we’d both talk about our home lives more. Guilt and silence like ashes in my mouth, all I could do was nod, and let Harvey take my hand and draw me off the path, so we were standing under the low-hanging golden leaves and gray skies of early morning. All I could do was listen.
“The reason I don’t tell you …” Harvey was the one who’d wanted to talk, but he seemed to find it hard to speak. He swallowed and struggled on. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I don’t like thinking about it. When I’m at school, when I’m with you and Roz and Susie, I can pretend that everything is okay. I can feel normal.”
It took an effort to speak, with my mouth so dry. “I can understand that.”
Harvey gave me a tiny smile. “I hate it at home,” he confessed. “My dad doesn’t like me. My gramps is just like him, but more so. All they do is talk about being miners and hunters, being strong men. They think there’s only one way to be strong, and I’m not it, and I think it makes them want to—break me, so they can remake me in a different shape. One that will please them more.”
Fury rushed on me, red as blood. I was a witch, and if anyone threatened what was mine, I would bring ruin. “You don’t mean—”
Harvey shook his head quickly. “No, I don’t. My dad doesn’t hurt me or anything. He—yells, sometimes. He has a bad temper. But it’s not like that. It’s just whenever I’m at home, it’s like I’m a stranger who came by. Someone he has noth
ing in common with, and he doesn’t know why I’m there and he wants me to leave. I don’t talk to you about it, because I want you to think I’m—stronger than I am, and cooler than I am. My dad doesn’t want me. I guess I was afraid that if you knew that, then school wouldn’t be an escape anymore, and you might start to wonder why he feels that way.”
I squeezed his hands. “I don’t have to wonder. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate you is an idiot.”
On my first day of school, I’d been so excited and so nervous to be among the mortals. Every single one of the other kids was taller than me back then, and Harvey was one of the tallest. I picked him out right away. While I was standing on tiptoes and craning my neck to try to make myself bigger, he was hunching his shoulders and ducking his head, trying to make himself look smaller. I pushed through the crowd, walked right up to him and took his hand, and he gave me a shy, delighted smile.
I’d liked him and Roz and Susie instantly, so much, but I liked Harvey the best. And from the very beginning, I wanted him to like me best too. I’d cast this stupid spell because I wanted to have that certainty in my life, because I was still hoping he would like me the best of anyone.
I had always appreciated him. I could say that much for myself. But I shouldn’t have done it.
“Do you remember the girl in the green coat, who we saw on the path through the woods?” Harvey asked. “I was watching her.”
I nodded, because I knew that much. I’d cast the spell that got him hurt because I was insecure about not having all his attention.
“You made a joke about me looking at her because she was pretty,” said Harvey. “I knew you couldn’t really believe that I’d ever look at another girl, not in that way. I figured you might have an idea about what was actually happening, but I didn’t want to tell you, just like I didn’t want to tell you about what it’s like at home. I didn’t want to make it more real.”
Harvey took a deep breath. I stared at him in utter confusion.
“The girl’s name was Alison,” he told me. “She was a tourist, on her way somewhere more exciting than the town she’d come from, and more exciting than Greendale. Only she met Tommy in a bar and decided to stick around. I wasn’t eavesdropping on them, but I did overhear them talking the few times he brought her home. She wanted him to go with her, to Los Angeles. She talked about how amazing their new lives would be.”
There was a silence. I think I would have been able to hear a leaf fall on the grass between us. I’d thought Harvey’s family situation couldn’t be as complicated as mine, not when his family was mortal and at least one of his parents was alive. I’d been blaming everything on my family being witches. I’d been wrong.
“I know you and your family don’t care much about football. Honestly, neither do I, but—Tommy was captain of the Baxter High Ravens, a few years back. He was the quarterback, like Dad used to be, but Dad says that Tommy was better than he ever was. Tommy had a real gift.
“I was always sure that Tommy would get a football scholarship to a good college and be able to get out of Greendale. Go on to have a real future, something bigger and better than working in the family mines.” Harvey gave a slight shudder as he mentioned the mines. “I would have missed him like hell. Tommy’s the one person in my family who feels like my family. Mom died when I was too small to remember her properly. Tommy was always everything Dad and Gramps wanted him to be. He could’ve ignored me or despised me like they did. But he didn’t. He played ball with me when I was a kid, and never cared that I wasn’t good. He bought me my first sets of coloring pencils and paints, and still tells me every picture I draw is amazing. He was always bigger and stronger, and he used that to make me feel safe. Nobody ever had a better brother. I was so afraid of him leaving me alone.”
“I know you really love him,” I said quietly.
Harvey hesitated for a moment before he nodded, and plunged ahead with his tale.
“I don’t know why nobody offered Tommy a football scholarship, but they didn’t. He wasn’t able to go to college. He had a high school girlfriend who was sweet and smart, and I know he loved her a lot, but she wouldn’t stay in Greendale with him. She left and never came back. She never even called. He had to stay and live in our house and work in the mines. I know how unhappy and how trapped Tommy must have felt. I don’t know what I’d do, if I thought I’d have to live that way forever. He never complains. He always acts like he’s fine with everything. But suddenly he was dating this new girl, and she was really glamorous, and she was talking to Tommy about a way out. I thought he would take it. I knew there was no reason for him to stay.”
“That’s why you were so quiet and unhappy last week,” I murmured. “That’s why you looked at that girl. Because you knew her.”
I’d been such a fool.
Harvey’s face was like the sky, wide open with no way to hide either its darkness or its light. He was clearly miserable. “That girl, Alison, she’s gone. Tommy said he wouldn’t leave with her, so she left without him. He came home after the last time he met her, less than an hour after we saw her in the woods, and I just knew. He looked so unhappy, and I was mad at myself for being scared and dumb. He has a right to his own life. He should be happier than he is now. Instead he stayed in Greendale, and I know he stayed for me. He shouldn’t have done it.”
“He’s your brother,” I told Harvey. “If he stayed, he wants to. It means he loves you a lot.”
I was almost jealous of that love, the way I had been before, considering the difference between Tommy and Ambrose.
We stood under the trees of dying summer with our hands clasped palm to palm. Thorns had sliced open Harvey’s hands yesterday, the artist’s hands I loved, and it was my fault. Today he was confessing, as if it was a sin that he’d been scared of losing his brother, and it broke my heart. I refused to be jealous of Harvey. I wanted him to have everything, love and kindness and constant protection. He deserved it all.
Harvey shook his head, obviously still doubtful. The wind pushed his untidy hair back with invisible fingers as if it loved him and wanted to see his face more clearly. He never cut his hair often enough, and it had never occurred to me before now that he didn’t have a mother, or aunts, to remind him to do it. I wanted to touch his hair myself, to smooth the troubled uncertainty from his brow, but I didn’t know how to do it for myself, let alone for him.
“Tommy staying makes sense to me,” I insisted. “I can’t understand your father not valuing you. I’m so angry that you were hurting and I didn’t know, and I still don’t know how anyone could be disappointed in you. What you’re telling me about your father, I believe you, but it doesn’t make sense to me. But how Tommy feels about you makes perfect sense.
“Listen to me, Harvey. You were worried that if I learned more about what was going on with you at home, I might change my mind about you, but I won’t. Nothing about your family, and nothing about mine, could make me think less of you. Nothing about your family or mine could make me want to leave you.”
I grabbed hold of the sheepskin-lined flaps of his jacket, drawing his ruffled head and his sweet, startled mouth down to mine. I sealed the promise with a kiss.
When I drew back, Harvey’s eyes were soft, catching gold light like river water. “Maybe this is why I can’t understand Tommy not going. If you asked me to leave Greendale with you,” he murmured, “I would go. I’d follow you anywhere.”
Warmth bloomed in my chest at his words, then died as the chill of memory went through me. He’d sung a song under my window, garlanded our school with flowers, not for me but because of me. Because I’d cast a spell and made Harvey act like this.
It was your cousin’s spell, not yours, the wishing-well spirit’s voice whispered in my mind. His fault, not yours.
I shouldn’t have cast the spell with Ambrose. If I was a witch already, I would have my own grimoire and know the spells in it. If I’d had more power, I could have made sure not to hurt Harvey. If I was stronger than my cousin
or the Weird Sisters, I would have cast the right spells.
Power shouldn’t only be in the hands of those with cold, fickle hearts. If I wanted better magic, I had to make magic for myself.
I didn’t want to give up on being a witch just because some witches were bad. I could be better. I didn’t want to give up on power, or making my aunts proud, but I didn’t want to give up on Harvey either, and I wasn’t going to. I could use magic to protect us both.
Harvey’d been looking at the girl in green, not because she was pretty but because she might take away his adored big brother. He’d been looking at the Weird Sisters and their warlock boyfriend because he thought they were tourists like the girl in green, people able to easily escape Greendale.
“I’m sorry you were hurt,” I told Harvey. “I won’t let it happen again. From now on, I’ll protect you.”
Harvey gave a little laugh, gazing down at me fondly. “I love that you’re so fierce. But you can’t protect me from everything, ’Brina.”
“I can.” He didn’t have to take the promise seriously. I would. “I will.”
I would never let him be hurt again. Harvey might really have cared about me and only me, the way I’d wanted him to, all along. If I’d waited, if I hadn’t done the spell with Ambrose, Harvey might have told me that he loved me one day, and I could have believed him.
I would never know now.
It was my own fault. I’d made a terrible mistake.
But I knew how to fix it.
There is a cold spot in Susie Putnam’s bedroom where mirrors break.
Season of the Witch Page 14