by Kayti McGee
My life wasn’t bad. Mother and Father were kind, if overly focused on my grades. They were supportive, if pressuring towards law school. They were very open to the idea of me trying to contact my birth mother, and never quite seemed to understand why I wasn’t. I just never felt there was a missing piece in my life. If Mother and Father, who had wanted me so badly that they undertook the rigorous, nasty process of adoption, who’d spent as much on getting me as they’d later spend on the bachelor’s degree in English Lit I earned this spring—if even they could only summon conditional love for me, what could I possibly gain from the people who gave me away?
But now, looking at the paper in front of me, I wondered.
Mother’s cancer diagnosis was the only reason I’d even mailed off for the kit. Medical history seemed a safe and prudent adventure, even if it wouldn’t be as fun as I typically prefer adventures be. Spitting in the plastic tube was even less fun than I’d imagined. I’d dry-heaved twice doing it.
Who knew I could be so repulsed by my own bodily fluids?
It wasn’t the saliva itself, I decided later. It was the potential. The power it contained. Such an innocuous, colorless substance, holding that kind of power inside each tiny helix. My spit had, I felt, risen far above its station. That was the disgusting part. Power should be earned, meted out, not present in the everyday detritus of humanity. But there I was with what it had brought me, regardless. Power doesn’t care about your opinion.
Scotland Ireland Wales I chanted to myself, sitting in the kitchen, clutching the paper. I rested my head on the cool wood of the table.
Scotland Ireland Wales.
Scots Irish Welsh.
The visions came, of green hills and other redheads. Sheep and ancient masonry. It’s a trick I’d used since childhood, a mind-map of things I know, shows I’ve watched, books I’ve read. I chant, and I remember. I tried each accent on like a costume as I pronounced the words.
Scotland Ireland Wales.
Scots Irish Welsh.
Scotland Ireland Wales.
Pubs and villages. Improbable food and unpronounceable names. A hill that became a mountain, legends of beasties and ghosts. Rumors of The Sight, lullabies half-recalled.
Scots Irish Welsh.
Colorado.
Colorado.
That was how I knew I was drifting off, but I didn’t care. The peculiar things that drift through a person’s mind as they fall asleep have little bearing on the dreams they’ll have. They’re just the decor of the boats that cross Acheron. And I was exhausted from working, from fighting with my boyfriend, and most of all from waiting for the answers that now lay on that ripped sheet of paper in front of me.
I dreamed a dream I was an angel. Pine boughs sprouted forth from my shoulder blades and beat off the birds that continued to land upon me, an endless rush of oh-so-many wings.
I woke to a dark room and a hand shaking the exact spot my right bough had sprouted from, asking why the electricity was off. I’d crumpled the paper in my sleep, and could no longer remember why it seemed so desperately important to me. My DNA now needed to be outsourced to a site that would map my own genetic predisposition to various cancers and diseases. The fact that I was a ginger from the part of the world that produced gingers wasn’t much to think back on.
And Joe’s glare wasn’t much to think on, either.
I slept a dreamless sleep next to him in the bed that once held promise but now held only resentment. Or maybe that was just the absence of light. Negative feelings multiply in the dark.
Everything on earth and above is simply vibration on one wavelength or another. The green eyes I half-remembered from dreams before the night I got my envelope fell solidly in the middle of the spectrum. A combination of blue and yellow. A hue that meant nothing at all so long as I woke up next to a man that resented me and a bill, oppositely colored, left unpaid.
That wasn’t the day my life changed. It was simply the opening. The prologue, as my college lit professors would have said. The day everything changed was a perfectly ordinary Wednesday, a few weeks later.
My email pinged with the same level of importance as the electricity bill Joe and I were locked in a battle over, a notification that my Farmers Market was going to be open later in the season than normal due to climate change, a notification from my local senator that the idea of climate change was satanic, and the weather report indicating a satanic storm would be whirling through any time. The latest ping, though, was from FamilyTreeGenetics.
You have -one- new relative
I stared at the screen as though the climate apocalypse was happening there.
A relative. A fucking actual blood relative.
An uncle.
In Colorado, of all places.
But surely that was just coincidence.
Regardless, the next day, when I quit my job and quit my boyfriend and quit pretending I was ever going to pay that stupid bill Joe had racked up by trying to mine crypto with his under-prepared computer setup, I felt like maybe this was what people meant when they used words like fate. If anyone had told me last month that I was going to break up with my college sweetheart and become basically homeless on a whim, I’d have told them to fuck right off a cliff. But what do you know? Some cliffs are worth diving off.
It didn’t all go quite as cavalierly as I prefer to remember it. Leaving Joe was filled with tears, but more about what we had two years ago than what we fought over last week. Taking my name off the lease was a gigantic hassle I never hope to repeat. Telling my boss I needed an indefinite leave of absence went over like a lead balloon.
But the thing no one else seemed to understand was that I didn’t have a choice. The second I got that notification, it became completely inevitable that I would go there. I didn’t expect my life to change or anything. I’d never wanted to know anything about the people who gave me away, but now I found I had to know.
Just like every other time I got a bruise, I had to worry the sore spot.
Juniper Hollow was a thirteen-hour drive from Kansas City. Nine of those hours were among the most boring I’d spent on this planet. The endless horizon and waft of desperation in the miniscule settlements I passed made me queasy. How did people live out their entire lives in a place too small to support a Dairy Queen? On the other hand, if Juniper Hollow was another little village of fifty people, my job would become a lot easier, given that I had no information on my uncle besides his name and general location.
Rune Underwood, Juniper Hollow.
It had a general ring of unrealness to it, a storybook quality that let me know I was for sure not in Kansas anymore. And thank god for that. Though I’d left at the crack of dawn, the sun was already down by the time I was on the far side of Denver. The boredom I’d felt through the prairie had made me sleepy, so I stopped at a roadside gas station to fill up and grab a coffee from the cold case.
Then there was nothing left but me and the mountains. My white-knuckled fear I’d hit a deer or a bear or something and plunge to my death battled for dominance with the awe I felt at the view in my headlights. I kept slowing for both reasons. There was a surprising amount of traffic headed into the Rockies for a weeknight, all driving too fast for my comfort.
I finally stopped bothering to roll the window up after I waved yet another Subaru past me and just enjoyed the chill of the night air. It felt different than the cold in Missouri, less biting. For as long as the first portion of my drive was, the last leg was over too soon. A hand-painted sign welcomed me to town. Juniper Hollow, Pop. 1042. Find Yourself Here. The little inn I’d chosen online was on Main Street, an oddly dark strip, all false fronts and cuteness in my headlights. If I drove all the way here only to have the power out in my destination too, I was going to be seriously annoyed. I pulled up to the inn and shouldered my bag.
Luckily, the office was well-lit. Or unluckily, as the front desk was a real creepshow. It was covered in taxidermied mice recreating typical mountain town activities. Litt
le stuffed mice fished, square-danced, and hunted other mice in a fascinating tableau. It made me the kind of horrified that also demanded to be shared.
“You won’t get any internet,” a female voice interrupted as I tried to post the photo I’d quickly snapped. “It really comes and goes out here. Solar winds, celestial flares. You know,” she said. I did not. The woman wore her hennaed hair frizzed, up, and overdue for a root job. She wore her glasses oversized and colorful. She wore more taxidermied mice glued to the smock she had on.
A live one popped its head out of her pocket. It likely knew all about celestial flares.
She prattled on as I stared in shock and delight. It was a good thing Joe wasn’t here for this. He’d probably have called both PETA and the health department. Me, I just had one question.
“How come there aren’t any lights out there?”
“We’re trying to get dark-sky certified.” My blank face must have given me away. “We limit our artificial lights so you can see the stars. There are blackout curtains on every window in town, and the only neon you’ll find is inside the saloon. Go out on your balcony and look up. It’s a treat.”
She handed me a key attached to a plastic card with the room number and thankfully not a mouse. “And honey? Be careful going out at night. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of weirdos we get around here.” It took everything I had to nod solemnly as I wondered if she kept her magic school bus parked out back.
She was right about the stars. I had no idea the Milky Way could look like that. Without the glow of streetlights, storefronts, and home windows, the sky opened up before me in a way that made me understand at last why humans have always looked to the heavens.
But as I double-checked that the deadbolt was engaged, I had no idea that the weirdness she mentioned in Juniper Hollow doesn’t need keys to get in.
Three
Thorn
I woke in my home, in my bed, face down and fully dressed. My tongue felt like sandpaper, my head as if it had been stuffed with cotton. I groaned and scrubbed my eyes. “Marion,” I mumbled thickly.
I knew a magical hangover when I felt one. The Maven must have taken pity and sent me home under a sleeping spell. I fumbled for my phone.
Over twenty-four hours had passed, more like thirty. I was grateful for every one of them, but spell sleep is like drugged sleep: Unsatisfying at best.
I flicked on lights as I moved through the house. The rooms were silent and clean, the way I liked them. In the backyard, in the morning dark, my greenhouse glowed like a glass castle. (However much I hated the showy trappings of witchcraft, fresh herbs were a year-round essential.)
I stripped down to my boxer briefs, brewed a pot of coffee, and sat at the counter contemplating my day.
Today, at least, I had something to do. The watery memory of the red-haired girl drifted through my mind. Take care of this, the Maven had said. And I would.
Meting out death and punishment on behalf of the Blackmane Coven was the closest thing I had to a job. It was my station, my role. As head of the family, Marion could not risk such interference with mortals. She needed to remain blameless. Our ways, after all, occasionally chafed at the borders of legality, and in those instances we always had Marion for a spokesperson. No human could look into her innocent face and assign guilt.
Sometimes, though, I thought I needed a real job. The hours weighed on me. I had no lack of money, but the color and excitement seemed to be draining from my existence. Most of the other witches I knew turned their parlor trick powers toward a vocation: Reading tea leaves or tarot cards, selling crystals, speaking for the dead. I found such practices noisome, but maybe my family knew something I didn’t. Maybe my way led to madness while their crystals and cards would preserve them.
I smirked and blew a curl of steam off my coffee. Better my way, I thought. Better to lose my sanity and preserve my dignity.
I worked out perfunctorily—a few reps on the bench, twenty pull-ups—showered, and dressed for the cold. I tended to dress in funeral shades as I couldn’t be bothered matching colors, but that day, because I didn’t want to spook the mortal, I wore jeans and a charcoal gray Henley. I shrugged on my jacket—black leather—and laced up my boots.
I took stock of myself, frowning slightly. Despite my best efforts at seeming like a normal twenty-something-year-old, I still looked a little gothic. The tattoos on my fingers and the ink peeking from my neckline and wrists didn’t help. Neither did my talismans—thin cords of leather and charms, one on each wrist, another around my neck, a ring of bone and a ring of stone—or my dark, shoulder-length hair. I scooped back the latter and tied it in a low ponytail.
Good enough.
Besides, in this town of hippies and health nuts, I would always look normal. And the girl’s opinion didn’t really matter. If I spooked her a little, if she caught a whiff of the strange about me, that would only be a footnote to her death.
I descended into Juniper Hollow proper with the distinct sense that I was going to muck about in a pigpen. The town, in my view, was to be avoided at all costs. On my way down the mountainside, I steered well clear of the hot springs and sulfur pools. Why is it that nudists are always so exceptionally misshapen?
The sun came spilling into the bowl of the valley, warm on the back of my neck. My breath steamed in the air. Despite the cold, the townies were already up and about, hurrying to sunrise classes with yoga mats tucked under their arms, charging their crystals, reeking of patchouli.
I didn’t need to avoid those people; they avoided me. My family had been entrenched in the mountains around Juniper Hollow for over a century. Inconspicuous as we tried to be, rumors of our darkness and difference nevertheless pervaded the town’s history. We were known to be outsiders—locals, not visitors or tourists, rich as Croesus, and different in an appreciable but imprecise way. The townspeople regarded us with a mixture of fear and excitement.
“He’s a Blackmane,” I heard a woman whisper to her companion as they power-walked to the opposite side of the road.
“Oh,” the friend enthused, “Elise told me about them!”
I felt their eyes lingering on my back as I headed into The Rule of Three, a bookshop owned by a fellow Blackmane. The shop wasn’t open for another three hours, but the door opened for me. I stationed myself in an armchair in front of the display case and gazed at the café across the street.
Ella’s was one of just two cafés in town. Also, quite distinctly, it was the café I had seen in Marion’s window. At some point today, the red-haired girl would be there. So I waited. What a dreary task.
I resented the mortals to-ing and fro-ing as the day wore on. How unfair, that they should look so purposeful and happy, while I, one of the most powerful witches west of the Mississippi, languished in boredom. How pathetic I was becoming.
The Rule of Three opened at nine and Gavin Blackmane, the owner, overturned the CLOSED plaque and gave me a wide berth as he headed to the checkout desk. He pretended not to see me hunched like a vulture at the front of his shop.
Two more hours passed. I had scarcely moved and never taken my eyes off Ella’s. More than one would-be customer approached Gavin’s bookstore, noticed me glaring out of the display, and continued along the sidewalk.
Gavin finally gathered the nerve to approach me.
He shuffled up behind me and slid a coffee onto the table. He cleared his throat, but his voice was still creased with unease.
“What have I done now?” He attempted a laugh. It came off all wrong.
Last year, Gavin had become infatuated with a mortal girl and he’d told her a little too much about the family. I couldn’t blame him, though. She was a pretty thing—gothic, leggy—and she was forever loitering around the bookshop and staring at Gavin in the way all men want to be stared at.
I had taken no pleasure in killing the girl, nor in stripping a degree of Gavin’s power. Still, as one might imagine, the altercation had not endeared me to him.
“Go aw
ay,” I said.
“Not me, then?”
Clearly not, I thought, but I said nothing. Why wouldn’t he leave? Almost everyone in the family had a reason to hate me, directly or indirectly, and Gavin was an unwelcome reminder of that fact. Only the crazy ones tolerated me, like Imogen, and a few of the elders who recognized my unfortunate necessity.
“I send a catalogue of all my titles to Marion. There’s nothing—”
“Go... away,” I repeated softly.
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
Gavin hurried back to the desk and I continued scaring off customers with my glowing powers of advertisement until, around three in the afternoon, I saw her.
I sat up straight and narrowed my eyes.
Oh yes, there was no mistaking her: The flame-kissed tail of hair protruding from her parka hood, a flash of pale skin. She had the air of an outsider, too. People in Juniper Hollow wore rumpled linen and didn’t comb their hair, which they washed with overpriced, all-natural shampoos (if they washed it all). Often, I could barely discern between the vagrants and the wealthy townies with their Clarks slippers and Fjallraven backpacks.
The girl, on the other hand, looked refreshingly unpretentious. She wore thick black leggings and black suede boots. Black on black. I approved. Beneath her parka was a chunky evergreen sweater that looked comfortable rather than fashionable. Now, comfortable may typically be a polite synonym for frumpy and oversized, but the girl pulled it off. She looked damn good, in fact; she belonged in a catalog.
I chuckled at my thoughts. I really was losing it.
I breezed out of the bookshop and crossed the road toward Ella’s. My mood had lightened considerably, maybe because I finally had something to do. Whatever the case, I found myself thinking that I should have been more civil toward Gavin. I should have purchased a book. I could use a good read. Maybe I would do that later.