Season of the Witch

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  It is a corner near the window, angled toward the bed. When the mirror isn’t there, Susie’s walked through it, and the chill there is profound. As if a ghost is leaning close to whisper a secret in Susie’s ear, but Susie can’t bear the cold long enough to stay and hear.

  Susie tries to remember where the place is. Susie can’t figure out why it keeps slipping Susie’s mind, or where the draft is coming from, whether it is a door or a window or a crack somewhere in the very foundations of Susie’s home. Susie’s father says he can’t even feel the cold. But Susie’s sure the chill is not only Susie’s imagination. Susie has proof. The corner of Susie’s bedroom is the obvious location to position a mirror, so Susie puts it there, but after a few months, days, or even weeks standing in that corner, a hairline fracture will appear in the glass. Like a crack in ice, barely perceptible at first, then chasing across the mirror’s silvery surface and opening to become a dark wound.

  For a while, Susie manages to be careful. Susie avoids the corner and keeps the mirror anywhere else.

  But sooner or later, something goes wrong.

  Sometimes Susie talks with her sad-eyed uncle Jesse, who people say is sensitive and not right and sometimes even not a real man. Or Susie loses her temper and tries to headbutt a sniggering member of the football team, or Susie sleeps and dreams of impossible things. In Susie’s dreams, Susie is somewhere different from Greendale. Susie’s somewhere glamorous as Susie’s misty imaginings of a long-ago past, or Susie’s glittering image of a future in which everything has more clarity. In Susie’s dreams there are people who understand and sympathize, and when Susie passes Susie hears whispering. They aren’t sniggering at Susie the way everybody but Susie’s friends do at school. They’re calling Susie handsome.

  “I know you’ll be a good girl,” Susie’s dad says to Susie when he leaves the house. It isn’t even a question to him, being good or being a girl, and Susie has to be both. In Susie’s father’s mind, Susie has no other options. Susie knows he’s right.

  For whatever reason, Susie can’t seem to remember to avoid the cold. Sooner or later, Susie forgets and shoves the mirror into the coldest corner of the bedroom. Sooner or later, Susie wakes from dreams that are too tempting and too horrifying, and has to meet the eyes of the reflection in the bed. Sooner or later, the mirror breaks.

  Sometimes, Susie thinks about not avoiding the corner, or throwing away the mirror. Sometimes, Susie thinks about confidently approaching the cracked mirror and looking at it without fearing being swallowed up by the fault into the glass. Seeing what there is to see.

  Susie hasn’t done it so far.

  Sabrina’s mortal friends know a lesson Sabrina doesn’t, not yet. They have learned to fear themselves. They understand enough to dread the power of a mirror.

  The sky curved above me, pearly gray and shimmering and opaque as a clouded mirror. I’d sent Harvey to school ahead of me and walked through the woods on my own, to the lonely riverbank where the spirit of the wishing well waited.

  Once I was there, I spilled out every detail of what had happened in the time since I’d last seen her: Ms. Wardwell’s bright little cottage, Harvey’s hands torn by the thorns, Ambrose being done with me. Then I stopped, almost breathless. I thought she might offer comfort the same way Ms. Wardwell had tried to.

  The spirit’s silvery eyes were fixed on me, silent and intent. The only thing I could see in them was the reflection of my own desperate face.

  “So you want to do the spell now?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yes. I want to do the spell now.”

  The spirit of the wishing well murmured: “That is all you had to say.”

  It was slightly disconcerting, but I realized she was right. Words didn’t mean much. If I intended to be a great witch, I should take action. I found myself nodding.

  “I remember the beginning of the spell,” I told her. I plunged my hand into that opaque water, up to the wrist, and felt the chill enter my blood. “Mirror, mirror, make me fairer. Face and heart.”

  “Hold your hands out to me,” the spirit urged. Embrace the river. Say the words with me.

  “Mirror, mirror, make me fairer

  Face and heart, all things alter.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t want all things to alter, though.”

  “Only what you wish,” the spirit promised me. “It’s your chance.”

  I reached out to embrace the spirit, and as she receded, my hands found only water. My hands seemed to disappear below the surface, and I thought of Ambrose talking about the story of the girl who would not touch evil and ended up with no hands.

  Aunt Hilda had told me that story as well. In the end the girl had new hands made, silver hands. They were better than before. I wanted to be greater, better, the best possible version of myself.

  I’d show Ambrose. I’d show them all. When the spirit began to chant, I chanted with her, but I wouldn’t say “all things alter.” I hummed vague agreement instead, and it seemed to work. Our voices flowed together like two streams joining to form a river.

  “Mirror, mirror, make me fairer

  Face and heart, all things alter

  Make me all that I could be

  Glory awaits, never falter

  Never think to count the cost

  Only look into my mirror

  Believe there is nothing lost.”

  The rustling leaves seemed to repeat the words after us in a hushed refrain. Lost. Lost. Lost.

  A single ripple, like a shudder, moved across the smooth face of the river. Its silver surface reflected the clouds hanging low over the woods, and the shivering line broke apart the veil. In the mirror of the river, a crack was struck across the sky.

  The ripple reached my wrists. The river water suddenly burned, colder than ice.

  As water might transform to ice or steam, I felt myself change. This was not the illusion I’d been shown before. My bones felt as if they were being melted down like metal, being reforged into something new. I heard a crackle by my ear, like the sound of fire, and then saw the silvery waterfall on my shoulders. The crackle had been the sound of my own hair, growing years of length in the space of moments. Searing pain shot down the bones of my arms and legs, and I rolled on the dying grass of the riverbank and thrust my feet into the river, feeling the waters cool and soothe the ache. Pain washed down my temples, flaring across the bridge of my nose and shuddering down to my jaw, and I pulled my hands from the river and dropped my face into my wet fingers.

  When I lifted my face from my cupped hands, I saw that my fingers had changed, long and slender and finely molded. Even the nails were gleaming, perfect ovals, like cut and polished gemstones.

  I leaned over and gazed into the mirror of the waters. My hair was hanging in a sheet of silvery gold around my shoulders. My eyes were wider and clearer, pools of silvery blue. My whole face was formed differently, as though carved afresh in ice, and shining with beauty, as though it might sparkle when the sunlight fell upon it. I looked like a river goddess, a princess born from shimmering sea foam.

  I didn’t look like myself at all.

  “Wait. No,” I gasped. “I don’t want this. I want to stop.”

  “Oh, my dear,” the spirit murmured, silvery lips laid close to my ear. Her breath was cold as a wind from the sea. “It’s much too late to stop now. Look at yourself.”

  “It’s beautiful, but—”

  I tried to pull my feet out of the river. But my legs wouldn’t come. There were ties around my ankles, as if my legs had become tangled with waterweeds.

  “Would your family know you now?” asked the spirit. “Would that mortal boy you desire see you in a stranger’s face? When those that you care for saw you, they saw a collection of features and flaws. Humans always long to be lovely past belief, and never consider that loveliness will be past recognition as well. There is no path back. You can only go forward. With me. Put your hands back in the water.”

  I hadn’t wanted beauty, though. I�
�d wanted a transformation into greatness, and never even considered that if I transformed, nobody would know me.

  I kept staring at the shining girl in the waters. I wouldn’t have known myself.

  Realization came, sudden and bitter cold. I’d spent so long doubting, but now I was certain again. The spirit’s voice was soft but implacable. She hadn’t tried to be kind like Ms. Wardwell because she wasn’t kind.

  I had never seen her come out of the well. She was always lying on the riverbank, waiting for me. She was lying in wait for me. She was lying.

  “You’re not the spirit of the wishing well at all. Are you?”

  “No. Can you guess who I am?”

  She laughed like silver bells. When she shook her head, her hair flew out into the air like silvery tentacles caught in a current. Aunt Hilda had told me about spirits of wishing wells, but Aunt Zelda had made sure I read books about darker magic. Aunt Zelda had warned me about demons. I remembered those stories now. I remembered illustrations of dangerous creatures, of what darkness might lie beneath the waters, now that I was bound in the river.

  “I don’t have to guess,” I whispered. “I know who you are now. You are a creature like Melusine, the demon serpent of the river who killed with her kiss. You are the mirror of a dead witch queen. You are a rusalka who waits on the riverbanks, combs your hair and sings, lures your victims into the river and then tangles their feet with the weeds that are your hair.”

  “I always sing the same song,” the rusalka mused. “Come to me, my darling, you are special, you are chosen, you are unique, just like everybody else. It worked on you, didn’t it? It works every time.”

  “And you plan to drown me,” I stated. “Just like everybody else.”

  The spirit, hovering at my shoulder, drew a finger cold as an icicle down my cheek. “Well. Perhaps you are a little more special than some of the others.”

  “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I get drowned. I’m not falling for that again.”

  “The last girl had golden hair and a green coat,” the spirit said dreamily. “I showed the illusion in the river, of her face made perfect, surrounded by city and marquee lights. She reached her hands out eagerly for death, and I drowned her. That’s how it is with most victims. A small, simple thing. Why waste any more magic on them than that? They do it to themselves, really. They throw themselves at me. All I have to do is catch them and drag them down. But you are different. I poured magic into you. I poured myself into you.”

  Golden hair and a green coat and marquee lights, I thought with a shudder. Tommy’s girlfriend Alison, who had gone away so suddenly to LA. She hadn’t made it out of Greendale after all.

  “Am I different in a way where I can persuade you to let me go?”

  “Oh no,” said the rusalka. “I don’t let victims go. I drown them all. But I drown some differently than others. Mortals say witches cannot drown because witches can make bargains with the elements. You’re a witch, and I’m going to give you a choice. What do you think that choice might be?”

  I didn’t have to think about it. I’d already seen my new glimmering reflection. She’d already told me what she wanted.

  “You pour yourself into me.”

  “Exactly,” the rusalka agreed in her silky, silvery whisper. “You the vessel, and I the shining water within. All of your dreams can come true after all, for the low price of working with me. You walk out of this clearing with my river rushing through your bloodstream. You cannot go home, but there is still a place for a magical girl, and you know where that place is. You and I will go to the Academy of Unseen Arts together, and everyone will be dazzled by this strange witch, irresistible in her beauty and power.

  “Say yes. The other choice is drowning now. My waterweeds are stronger than chains. You can’t escape them.”

  I’d be in chains either way. I was very certain about how little control I would have with this spirit piloting my body like a boat upon her waters. If I let this demonic spirit possess me, my family would never know what had happened to me. They would think I was dead. It might as well be true.

  I stopped struggling and kicking. I tested the hold of the water, as a mortal prisoner might test the strength of the knots they were tied with and find give in a rope. The waters were cold as chains, but I felt them shiver as I moved.

  I was stronger than she thought. I could still get out.

  I tensed all my muscles and my magic for the burst of effort needed to escape. Just before I moved, I remembered Tommy’s girlfriend Alison waiting by her car at the edge of the woods, and what Ms. Wardwell had said to me.

  I have found several young people rambling by that river near dark … I can’t think why that spot draws them so. I remembered my teacher’s worried face, behind her big spectacles, and the warm refuge of her little house. I wished I were there now.

  I wondered how many people Ms. Wardwell had saved from the river, without even knowing she was saving them.

  I wondered how many people she’d failed to save. Nobody knew the mortals were in danger, and when they disappeared, nobody ever knew what became of them.

  Until me. I knew.

  The rusalka was luring mortals to her river to drown them. She would lure more if nobody stopped her, and I could imagine who those mortals might be.

  The memories crowded down upon me, thick as the fall of leaves when summer died. Roz’s eyes going unfocused as she looked at herself in the mirror. Susie, studiously avoiding her own reflection as if it were a stranger she did not want to meet. My Harvey, who had been terrified in the Hall of Mirrors as a child, who thought he was disappointing his father simply by being who he was. Any one of them might leap for the chance to be transformed.

  When I remembered how Ms. Wardwell talked about finding other kids wandering by the side of this river, when I imagined the rusalka’s future prey, I saw the mortal faces I loved.

  One mortal I loved had been hurt already, because of me. I’d promised him today: never again. I wasn’t going to run away to keep myself safe and leave my mortal friends in danger.

  The rusalka’s voice was sweet as a song. “What do you say? Do you agree?”

  “I agree,” I said. My own voice was starting to sound more like hers. The chime of silver bells was in it, faint but growing nearer. “On one condition. I want to go home first. I want to go stand outside my childhood home, so I can say goodbye to my childhood.”

  She seemed amused by the request.

  “Agreed. Now under the water with you, and breathe me in. You need water for a rebirth as well as a death.”

  She slipped from my side into the water without a splash.

  I felt the pull of the waterweeds, strangling tight around my legs, dragging me down. The earth beneath me was turning to mud as I slid inexorably into the water. I only had a moment.

  “No fire, no sun, no moon shall burn me

  No water, no loch, no sea shall drown me.”

  My fingers traced patterns on the air, and then I was pulled down under the water. I thought the icy cold might stop my heart.

  When my feet hit the riverbed, bones crunched beneath my shoes. My eyes flew open, and I saw the truth of the river in the murk beneath the gleaming waters.

  The riverbed was white with a thick blanket of bones. Bones had buried any river stones, but among the grinning skulls and shattered tibiae there were different fragments of mortality: the billow of a ragged green coat, the sorrowful shine of a tiny diamond ring, a shoe with its laces untied and waving forlornly in the dark currents.

  I drifted, drowning in horror. It was a shock when the leering face, transparent as sea foam, came at me with its mouth open and serrated teeth glittering in its maw. A scream escaped my lips, a silent silver bubble that would break on the surface and never reach human ears.

  Suddenly my body propelled itself through the water, sleek as a seal. I didn’t make the decision to scramble out, but I was climbing from the river. I was on the riverbank, but I wasn’t
the one pulling myself out.

  I have not forgotten our agreement. The rusalka’s voice echoed against the confines of my skull. A sad goodbye to your childhood home. Then I take full possession, and we go.

  No water shall drown me. I’d said the words. I had to trust in my spell, but it was hard to do as I felt an icy fist clenching around my heart, cold wrapping my bones, the river rushing through my veins. My red dress, soaked by river water, clung to me as if I were dipped in blood.

  “I can’t say you didn’t warn me. You drown them all,” I said. “You’ll drown me in the sea chambers of my own heart, under the sound of wind and water. Until I’m drowned out.”

  Her laugh was a chill in my blood.

  In the very deeps, I might hear you scream sometimes.

  My new, longer legs ate up the forest floor, taking me near the curve of the path so I could peer at what lay beyond the trees.

  The cemetery behind the ringed fence, the tall house with its towering chimneys, sharply peaked roof, and witches inside. I clung to a branch, and squinted through the trees, and stared. Home. I wanted so badly to be safe at home.

  Time to go, whispered the rusalka inside my mind.

  “Yeah,” I whispered back. “Time to go.”

  My eyes stung from peering. Tears fell, impossibly cold when they had always been warm before. Then I loosed my hold on the branch and hurled myself, not into the woods but away from them.

  I raced wildly down the path, running desperately for home. I knew it might be hopeless. Why would they take a stranger in?

  Ambrose used to sit on the roof and feed the birds. The treetops whispered the news to the clouds and the flocks as they went by: A witch who is grounded wants to be with creatures that fly. Witches don’t tend to attract doves or bluebirds. Instead there were buzzards, and even a vulture that circled around Ambrose as he walked over the sloping rooftops, hovering around his head as he stood on the edge.

  It wasn’t like having a familiar or freedom again, but it was what he had.

  “Get rid of that vulture,” Auntie Z. ordered when Sabrina came. “Think of the baby.”