Witch Myth
Alexandria Clarke
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
1
In the sleepy New England town of Yew Hollow, passersby might think the residents were blinded by boredom. Yew Hollow was not a bustling metropolis. It contained no modern art museums, hip bars with hanging Edison bulbs, or chef-owned restaurants. Its popularity and renown did not mirror its sister town of Salem, though enough tourists caught wind of the doings in Yew Hollow to support the town’s limited industry. Despite all this, the locals would not allow such a travesty as boredom to pervade their home. Thus came the festivals.
In the nearly ten years since I had first arrived in Yew Hollow at the ripe age of sixteen, I had witnessed at least one festival per month. If thirty days passed without a celebration of some sort, the people got restless. You could feel their energy in the air. It made my skin rough and tingly, like I’d spent a little too much time outside at twilight on a summer night and the mosquitoes had made a buffet out of me. Though humans didn’t emit a visible aura, anyone like me could sense the mortals’ jitters when things began to lag in Yew Hollow.
As the end of March approached, so did the spring equinox. Our many celebrations revolved around the natural changes in the world. Equinoxes and solstices warranted the largest parties in Yew Hollow, and though the mortals didn’t quite understand the true nature of the town’s festivities, it didn’t hinder them from participating. On the other hand, we, the witches of Yew Hollow, were fully aware of our celebrations’ importance. Each one was devised and strategized in such a way to bring our family the powers of the earth and of the sisters who came before us.
“Slow down!” I shouted to the gaggle of magical children ahead of me. They rushed from the top of the hill toward the town square, taking advantage of the steep incline and letting gravity pull them down as quickly as possible. The toes of their sneakers dug into the asphalt and left rubber scuff marks. No wonder their mothers spent so much time on reparation and reinforcement spells.
I snapped my fingers, and a bright flash of glittery, forest-green light stopped the children in their tracks. All but one—Arianna, the eldest, at twelve—bounced off the invisible boundary I had created. Arianna smirked and cuffed one of her younger siblings. The boy, Aaron, rubbed the back of his head where her blow had landed. He wore the disgruntled look of an old man, ahead of his years by several decades.
“Keep your hands to yourselves,” I reprimanded the group as I caught up to them. Five of them had decided to accompany me to the town meeting that morning. Tradition stated that the witches of Yew Hollow—or the Summers family as the mortals knew us to be—planned and operated the festivals. As such, someone from the coven was required to attend the weekly meeting to take notes from the locals on what they’d like to see at the festival that year. I used to consider the job to be a burden, but when the coven selected me to head the festival committee that year, a rush of euphoria had come over me.
“You’re doing it again,” Aaron told me. He tugged on my hand with enough force to make my shoulder on that side hang low.
“Doing what?” I asked him.
“Smiling weird.”
I bared my teeth at him. “I don’t smile weird.”
He lifted his upper lip and growled at me like a dog with a bone. When he snapped his teeth, I stuck my finger into his mouth. He chomped on it then backed away, surprised by the sudden obstruction.
“I don’t smile weird,” I reiterated.
“Fine.” He rubbed his tongue on the roof of his mouth as if to get rid of the salt from my skin. “But you’ve been smiling a lot lately. Randomly. For no reason.”
“I have a reason.”
“What is it?”
As the road before us widened and leveled out, the town of Yew Hollow came into view. The clustered houses and various shops were fun to behold on any given day. The town had a level of unparalleled quirkiness that culminated in things like the watch repair shop that no longer offered watch repairs—the owner now dabbled in smartphone rehabilitation—but had never changed the sign out front, and the bakery with the apartment overhead that had frost on the glass windows no matter the temperature outside. The entire town was shaded by beautiful and ancient trees. The plentiful yews lent their name to our corner of the world, but oaks, hemlocks, and maple trees protected us as well.
“Well,” I said to Aaron, “You might not know this, but my last name isn’t Summers.”
“I do know that!” Aaron stuck out his tongue. “Everyone knows who you are, Gwenlyn Bennett.”
“Oh, really? Tell me who I am then.”
Aaron squared his shoulders, puffed out his chest, and took a deep breath like he was about to deliver a book report for a grade. “Your name is Gwenlyn. You came to Yew Hollow when you were sixteen because your parents are dead—”
“Tactful, aren’t you?”
“—and you didn’t know you were a witch,” Aaron went on, unfazed. “Your special power is seeing dead people, which I never really got, because if you can see dead people, how come you can’t see your parents?”
“Not everyone’s soul lingers on this side of the line,” I explained. “I guess neither one of my parents had any hang-ups with crossing over to the otherworld.”
“I’m not finished,” Aaron said. “After you escaped from juvie, you came to Yew Hollow looking for Morgan to teach you everything about seeing dead people. Then Morgan died and you went to the otherworld to bring her back to life, and that’s how you got that crazy blue scar on your arm.”
The crazy blue scar twinged in recognition of someone mentioning it. It rarely let me forget it was there, though I didn’t consider it bothersome. It was the opposite, in fact. Before Morgan Summers had brought me into this coven, I didn’t have a family. Now, the ancient magic of the Summers coven flowed through my veins every single day. It made me one of them. Even if we weren’t connected by blood, we were connected through power.
“Now you’re Morgan’s favorite,” Aaron went on, “and some people don’t like that.”
I smirked. “You’re right about that.”
Aaron picked up a stick and began walking backward, using the stick to check his route for obstacles. “How come the aunties don’t like you?”
“Some of the aunties like me.”
“Some of them,” Aaron said. “But why don’t the others?”
“They think I don’t belong here.”
Aaron tripped over a small rock he hadn’t felt with his stick. He flung out both of his arms to catch himself. If he were one of the girls, his magic would have kicked in instinctively and he would have saved himself from scabbing his palms. But boys were incapable of inheriting magic, so I performed a spell of my own to keep Aaron from falling too hard. A cushiony cloud popped into existence. Once Aaron landed safely, it disappeared just as suddenly.
“Thanks.” Aaron dusted his hands. “I don’t think I belong here either. Mom says I’ll have to leave the coven one day because I’m a boy.”
I kept my frown out of Aaron’s sight and ruffled his hair reassuringly. “You don’t ever have to leave your family if you don’t want to. It’s not your fault you can’t use magic. The Summers coven was always too traditional for its own g
ood. As long as Morgan is the coven leader, she won’t kick you out. You can live in Yew Hollow for as long as you like.”
“Like the other mortals?”
“Sure, but you’ll know the truth.”
Aaron dragged his stick along behind him. “It’s different. I want to have magic. I want to be like Arianna and the others.”
Arianna turned around at the sound of her name and clutched Aaron around the shoulders. “Don’t worry, little dude. You’re totally like us! All you need is a little imagination.”
Aaron, satisfied with that, skipped ahead to join the other children. I mouthed a “thank you” to Arianna. She gave me the thumbs-up and a toothy grin.
Sundays were anything but slow. Unlike other towns who took the day of rest to heart, Yew Hollow used the first day of the week to get ready for the forthcoming business days. People bustled from shop to shop, waving to nearly everyone they passed or downright stopping in the streets to catch up and say hello. Store owners put sale signs up for their weekend wares, trying to get rid of last week’s leftover merchandise. Most noticeably, as the noon hour neared, the usual crowd made its way toward the town hall for the weekly meeting. A year ago, the mayor had to add an extension to the hall to accommodate the sheer number of locals that wished to attend the meetings.
Aaron sighed dramatically as he watched the aluminum folding chairs fill up. “Do we have to stand up against the wall again?”
I ushered him and the others toward the front of the room. “You don’t have to stand. You can sit on the floor.”
“Yippee,” he replied dryly. Where he’d gotten his sass, I had no idea.
Once the kids were settled, I grabbed a chair close to them near the speaker’s podium before they all filled up. This wasn’t the type of event where no one wanted to sit up front. Generally, every person who attended the town meetings had something to say, and they were all determined to say it.
The new mayor was a woman by the name of Pilar Mendez. Her age was an eternal mystery. She claimed to be forty-eight but looked no older than thirty except for the streak of white on the left side of her otherwise dark hair. She had no lines on her face or other obvious signs of having lived her reported decades. Though Pilar had moved to Yew Hollow over three years ago, the locals still called her an out-of-towner. Like the coven, the town wasn’t keen on moving forward. Tradition worked, so when Pilar wormed her way into the mayor’s position, the residents who hadn’t voted for her became even more vocal than usual.
When Pilar took the podium, half of the hall quieted and the other half pretended to not notice she was standing there and waiting for everyone’s attention. Instead of clearing her throat or performing some other meek dance, she balled her hand into a fist and pounded it on the podium like a gavel. The thump echoed loud and clear. Silence fell, and all eyes turned to Pilar.
“Thank you all for attending the town meeting today.” Pilar had the gift of speaking firmly without aggression, a trait I admired in her. “We have quite a few things to discuss. First, there is the matter of the new parking meters on the main street—”
“We’ve been parking on the street for years!” someone interrupted from the back of the room. “You can’t make us pay for it!”
Pilar folded her hands and leaned on the podium. “Sir, where do you live?”
“On Apple Ave.”
Pilar nodded thoughtfully. “At a meeting last month, you complained that Apple Ave needs to be repaved. I believe your exact words were, ‘I can’t walk three feet without tripping over broken asphalt, woman.’”
The man paled and swallowed. “Well, I—”
“Mr. Dowling—it’s Mr. Dowling, correct?”
He nodded.
“The money collected from the parking meters is being distributed to a fund for repaving the streets of Yew Hollow,” Pilar informed him. “It is also to my knowledge that many of the residents in this fine town do not bother to park on the main street unless they intend on purchasing something that they cannot carry back to their homes on foot. Therefore, most of the people spending twenty-five cents per hour are tourists passing through and won’t bat an eye at the cost of street parking.”
Mr. Dowling sank into his chair so low that his bald, blushing head disappeared beneath the eye level of the crowd.
“What do you prefer, Mr. Dowling?” Pilar asked, holding intense eye contact with her prey. “Would you like to pay twenty-five cents for parking every once in a while or would you like to continue walking and driving on a street that is a hazard to your health and finances? Well, Mr. Dowling?”
“I would prefer to pay the twenty-five cents,” Mr. Dowling replied, his mustache bristling furiously.”
“As I suspected,” Pilar said. “As I was saying, the new parking rules will take effect tonight at midnight. Weeknight parking from six to nine is free, so please take advantage of this…”
The meeting went on in this manner for a while. With every matter discussed, my boredom deepened. Town issues in Yew Hollow all seemed to follow along the lines of parking meters. Mrs. Ewing complained about her neighbors’ overgrown weeds. Mr. Stanton wanted to know if the trash company would arrange a large item pick-up day so that he didn’t have to take his spring cleaning to the dump. The guy who owned the local bar—known only as Pops—appealed to have the “no alcohol sales before eleven on Sunday” rule revoked. Pilar informed him that there was no state or local law regarding liquor sales on Sundays in this region, which Pops considered a win.
As Pilar wrapped up another argument, I glanced at the kids, thinking this was more torturous for them. However, Ariana listened to Pilar with rapt attention. The three younger girls painted each other’s nails with different-colored magic. And Aaron was dead asleep, his jaw slack and his head tipped back against the wall.
I snapped my fingers at the girls and subtly shook my head. They stopped playing with their spells, leaving Ivy’s nails an unfortunate shade of puce and Lily’s a shocking pink. Spruce had gotten lucky. Her nails were a lovely hue of dark green. Then again, I didn’t have a subjective opinion when it came to green.
After what felt like hours, Pilar finally turned her attention to me. “Finally, the last thing on our agenda to address is the Spring Fling Festival, which will be next Sunday starting right after the town meeting. We have Gwenlyn Bennett here, head of the festival committee, to take us through some of the details.”
I swore I heard my bones creak as I pried myself out of the aluminum folding chair. The assembly had gone on for so long than my body had taken it upon itself to freeze in a sitting position. I shook out my limbs and stepped up to the podium.
“Thank you, Mayor Mendez,” I said, giving Pilar a polite nod. “I’ll keep this short and to the point, everyone. I know you probably want to get out of here as much as I do.” I chuckled, but the audience gave me crickets. “Anyway, you all know the drill. My family and I will be doing a lot of work this week to set up the town square in order to get ready for the festival. That means some of the streets will be blocked off and foot traffic around the center yew tree will be prohibited until the day of the festival. Now, I know a number of you have put in requests to set up booths at the festival, but we have limited space this year due to the new sod on the west side of the square.” A mutter of disapproval and annoyance went around the room. I raised my voice. “However, I have arranged to place the remaining booths on the bordering curbs. All I need is for the business owners to agree to it. That being said, Pops? Is it cool if Bette sets up her caramel corn booth in front of the bar?”
Pops lifted his hand in the peace sign. “Cool with me, dude.”
After we settled the issue of the missing booths, I folded up the piece of paper I’d written all my notes on and thanked the crowd. “That’s it, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.”
I rounded up the kids as Pilar officially dismissed the town meeting. Arianna never took her eyes off the mayor.
Aaron yawned, his legs like jelly a
s I peeled him off the floor. “Why do we have to come to these stupid meetings? We never do anything.”
“You’re a part of the family,” I told him. “It’s like going to church. You have to do it until you’re old enough to decide you don’t want to.”
Arianna tugged on my shirt and hissed, “She’s coming!”
“Who—?”
“Hello, Gwenlyn.”
I spun around, but Aaron had his arms all tangled up in mine, and I accidentally tossed him to the floor. Pilar stood a mere few feet from me, displaying her agelessness in all its glory.
“Hi, Mayor Mendez,” I said, helping Aaron up again. “Was there something else you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Please, call me Pilar,” she replied. “And yes, there is one thing.” She stepped closer to me, her eyes darting between the children. “I’ve heard rumors about your family, Gwen. I don’t tend to buy into rumors until I know if they’re true or not, but I’m afraid the things I’ve heard have been quite alarming.”
I turned a nervous giggle into a half-hearted clearing of the throat, but it didn’t do anything to disrupt Pilar’s train of thought. As she stared long and hard at me, my face burned bright red. “Uh, I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but the Summerses are the very foundation of Yew Hollow. My family broke ground here.”
“Yes, I’m aware of Yew Hollow’s history,” Pilar said lightly. “But I have yet to notice the funny business that the locals whisper about. I suppose this is a good thing, is it not?”
“Funny business, ma’am?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Funny business. I’m told intriguing things tend to happen in Yew Hollow roughly four times a year, at each equinox and solstice.”
Aaron stepped on my foot, a not-so-subtle sign that he was bored with this conversation and wanted to leave. I hid my grimace as best as possible.
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