The Once and Future Witches

by Harrow, Alix E.

  One way or another it was only ever Juniper and her sisters and the green, green mountainside, and after the fire it was just Juniper and the mountain. Juniper figured she wasn’t missing much anyhow; her daddy said women were like hens, flocking together and pecking at one another, and Juniper didn’t want to be a hen.

  But a whole month after signing up with the suffragists to end the tyranny of man, she’s started to suspect her daddy was dead wrong.

  She doesn’t like all of the Association ladies—lots of them are fancy, fur-lined-cloak types who look at Juniper like a yellow dog that wandered into the wrong neighborhood—but even the snotty ones are there for the same reason, have come to lend their white-gloved hands to the same work. It makes Juniper think of the quilting circles Mama Mags used to talk about, where a whole valley’s worth of women would huddle in somebody’s kitchen and all their tiny stitches would add up to something bigger than themselves.

  And not all of them are snotty. There’s Miss Stone, who’s always busy and never smiles but inspires a fervent, infectious loyalty among her troops; the secretary, Jennie Lind, who keeps to herself but proves to have a surprising weakness for Juniper’s witch-tales; a fat, fashionable widow named Inez Gillmore who has more money than the pope and keeps offering Juniper various hats and bonnets to cover her sawn-off hair; an older woman, Electa Gage, who keeps muttering about chaining themselves to public buildings like the English ladies did. Juniper doesn’t understand what this is supposed to achieve, but she admires the spirit of it and likes Electa very much.

  Sometimes when they’re all together, laughing and arguing, it feels like having sisters again. Juniper can almost forget that Agnes is a seething silence on the other side of the city, that Bella is so stiff and buttoned up it’s like living with a department store mannequin. Bella’s been leaving early and staying late every day, working on some mysterious research that leaves her sleeves stained with ink and her eyes bloodshot. She comes home with a distracted, distant air, her little black notebook clutched in her hand. When Juniper questions her—What’s she looking for? Does she know what that sign means? What called the tower to them, and what sent it away?—she evades and delays and never quite says.

  Maybe Juniper wouldn’t take it so personal-like, except last week she visited Bella’s office unannounced and found a colored girl in a men’s coat sitting on top of her desk. Bella blushed and said she was “an interested party” but didn’t say what she was interested in or why.

  After that she figured she’d wait until Bella was sound asleep some night and sneak that little black notebook out from under her pillow and find out for herself what that tower is and who called it. She has certain suspicions.

  In the meantime she has Jennie and Inez and Electa and an endless stream of committees and subcommittees to keep her busy. She didn’t think throwing down the tyranny of man would take so many meetings, but apparently it does.

  After the third or fourth meeting that leaves Juniper facedown on her agenda, praying for the sweet release of her untimely death, Miss Stone takes pity on her and assigns her instead to the practical work of preparing for the march at the Centennial Fair. It’s unglamorous to hang flyers and iron sashes and paint slogans, but it beats endless rounds of yeas and nays.

  She’s crouched in the back rooms of the Association headquarters, painting the final N on a VOTES FOR WOMEN sign and swearing every time the brush bristles break, when the doorbell jangles.

  An unctuous voice calls, “Hello? Excuse me?” and Juniper hears Jennie say, “How may I help you, sir?” Timid boot-steps entering the office, then a voice too low for Juniper to catch. She figures she can ignore it—probably just another monk come to complain about their heathen ways or a reporter come to provoke scintillating quotes—until Jennie herself appears in the doorway looking pale. “Miss Stone, come quick!”

  Miss Stone marches to the front office with the polite, cold-iron expression Juniper has come to think of as her battle armor. Juniper and the others trail after her like squires or foot soldiers.

  In the front office they find a cringing, watery-eyed gentleman accompanied by his cringing, watery-eyed dog. Juniper thinks he looks like an aging, human-sized pill-bug, ready to roll up in a ball if anything startles him.

  He and his dog blink up at the ladies now filling the room. “Apologies for calling unannounced, ladies, but I’m afraid I come bearing bad news.” He addresses his remarks to no one in particular, eyes skittering from frowning face to frowning face. “I come as a representative of the New Salem City Council. We regret to inform you that the Council has, ah, withdrawn its approval for your march at the Centennial Fair on the first of May. In light of the current climate.”

  Juniper doesn’t see what the weather has to do with anything—wet and gray but warming fast, the promise of summer steaming up from the cobblestones—but she knows horseshit when she hears it.

  Miss Stone crosses her arms. “On what grounds, sir? Our petition was approved weeks ago by the mayor’s office.”

  The man smiles at her. It’s a repellent expression: wormy and crawling. His dog licks its teeth in a cringing grin. “I’m afraid the Council overrode Mayor Worthington on this issue. We wouldn’t want to alarm the citizenry any further with such . . . antics.” He makes a hand gesture that might refer to the march or the Association or the entire concept of women’s rights.

  Miss Stone starts to say something measured and polite. Juniper cuts across her. “And just who the hell are you to tell us what to do?”

  He and his dog swivel toward her, their eyes finding hers in the crowded room. The dog lifts its head cautiously, sniffing the air, and its owner smiles again. She likes his smile even less. “I beg your pardon. This is Lady”—he tugs the leash and the dog flinches—“and I’m a member of the City Council, running as an independent candidate this fall. Mr. Gideon Hill, at your service.”

  This is Gideon Hill? Juniper has seen his posters plastered all over town, read his nasty quotes in the paper. She thought he’d be somebody substantial—a handsome, square-jawed man like Daddy, capable of charming paint off a fencepost if he put his mind to it. But he’s just a stooped, middle-aged man in a creased linen suit, with thinning hair and furtive eyes.

  A ripple has gone around the room as the other Association members rustle to one another.

  Miss Stone makes another attempt at civility. “We’re pleased to meet you, Mr. Hill. We would like to appeal the Council’s decision in this matter. We don’t want to make any trouble.” She ignores Electa’s mutter of “speak for yourself” and Juniper’s snort.

  “I’m afraid it was a unanimous decision.” Hill doesn’t sound very sorry, though his shoulders are curved inward and his tone is contrite. “It is the Council’s duty to protect this city from sin and vice. New Salem must not follow the path of its namesake.”

  Juniper figures he means Old Salem, the city taken by witches and devils in the seventeen-whatevers. It’s a scorched ruin, now, good for nothing but ghost stories.

  Hill continues, “Thus the Council is obliged to forbid—”

  “And what if we don’t give a damn what the Council forbids?” Juniper hears Miss Stone give a soft sigh, but she doesn’t care.

  Hill looks at her again. She’s expecting him to splutter with outrage, to gasp at her daring, but he doesn’t. Instead he offers her another smile, even more sickly than the others. “What did you say your name was again, miss?”

  And just like that, all the fight goes out of her. Most of the wanted posters are sun-faded and tattered by now, but not all of them, and she knows Hill and his kind would love nothing better than a real live witch to string up.

  She swallows. “June W-West.”

  “And where are you from, Miss West?”

  Miss Stone rescues her, sailing between Juniper and Hill like a white-wigged ship. “Thank you for informing us of the Council’s decision, Mr. Hill. The Association will take it under advisement.”

  “Good
day, girls.” Mr. Hill bows his head and turns away, but his dog doesn’t follow. She remains crouched, inky eyes fixed on Juniper, iron collar biting into her throat. Hill gives the leash a vicious tug and she follows her master out the door. The bell tinkles cheerily as they leave.

  Juniper limps to the window to watch them go. Mr. Gideon Hill scurries down the street with his hands clasped behind his back and his dog trotting obediently at his heels. In the late afternoon light their shadows are black and long, larger than their owners. As Juniper watches she sees Mr. Hill’s shadow ripple strangely, as if it isn’t quite under its master’s command.

  Fear slicks down her spine. She recalls that, by the evidence of the black tower, there is at least one unknown witch in the city working toward ends of her own. But why would she bewitch a sniveling city councilor? Rather than, say, quietly poisoning him in his sleep?

  She hears raised voices behind her, catches stray words. Unfair! Unjust! And then: Nothing we can do.

  Someone objects, almost certainly Electa. “Nothing legal we can do, you mean!”

  Someone else gives a little gasp. Juniper thinks it must be that Susan Bee woman, a mummified Victorian type who wears an honest-to-Eve monocle and treats Juniper like a cleaning girl. “We aren’t criminals, Miss Gage!”

  Electa starts to reply but Miss Stone cuts across her. “Nor can we afford to become so, Electa.” There’s no heat to it; she merely sounds old, and very tired. “Ladies, do we have a quorum present? Let us discuss our response.” She shepherds her flock into the back offices again.

  Only Jennie lingers. “June?”

  “Mm?” Juniper is watching Hill’s shadow disappear around a corner, trying to decide if it seems darker than other shadows, denser.

  “They’re calling a meeting. Don’t you think we ought to join?”

  “No.” Juniper turns away from the window. “I don’t. I think we ought to march at the Centennial Fair.”

  To her considerable credit, Jennie doesn’t gasp or squeal. She looks straight back at Juniper, level and hard, and Juniper sees a fierce spark in her eyes. She wonders for the first time how Jennie’s nose got broken, and if she was ever anything other than a part-time secretary with cornsilk hair.

  “Miss Stone won’t like it,” she observes.

  “No.” Juniper likes Miss Stone, but she’s gotten too used to hearing the word no. “It’ll do her good to see a woman take that no and shove it back down somebody’s throat.”

  “The police’ll never let us in.”

  “So we disguise ourselves until the very last second, and disappear before they show up. I know the words and ways.” Juniper can tell by Jennie’s flinch that she knows what kinds of words and ways Juniper means. And she can tell by the sly shine of her eyes that she doesn’t mind it, that she’s tired of no too.

  Juniper smiles, all teeth. “I think you’ve already got the will.”

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

  Yours to mine and mine to yours.

  A spell to bind, requiring a tight stitch & a steady hand

  On the last night of April, Beatrice Belladonna is curled in the round window of her attic room, reading Charlotte Perrault’s Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals by witch-light. She ought to use a candle or an oil lamp like a respectable woman should, but she’s grown used to the honeyed glow of Juniper’s pitch pine wand in the evenings. Last week she came home to find a thin strip of holly and a note in Juniper’s uncertain hand: YOU OTTA KNOW THE WORDS BY NOW.

  Beatrice does. When she works the spell the wand-light is silvery and cool, nothing like Juniper’s midsummer blaze. She finds it restful.

  It’s late. The moon is a pearl over the neat rows of north-side rooftops, and Bethlehem Heights looks like a cuckoo clock running along hidden rails, each piece in its place. Beatrice is thinking of abandoning Perrault, who seems to have no secret rhymes or riddles to offer, when she hears the thump-thump-clack of her sister’s steps on the stairs.

  Beatrice remains curled in the window. “Evening.”

  Juniper grunts in response, leaving her staff at the door and tossing her half-cloak over the back of a chair, apparently not noticing the bread and broth Beatrice set out hours ago. It’s gone cold, the surface skinned with fat.

  Juniper shuffles over to the window, scowls out at the pearl moon. She holds a ladies’ hat in her hands, fashionable and frothy, purest white. Beatrice can’t imagine an article of clothing less likely to be worn by her youngest sister.

  “Fair opens tomorrow,” Juniper says.

  “Yes.”

  “We’re marching at five. After Worthington’s speech.”

  “I thought you said your permit was revoked?”

  Juniper gives her a careless shrug, a crow ruffling its feathers.

  “I thought that Stone woman was opposed to . . . illegal activities.”

  Another shrug. “She is.”

  “. . . I see.”

  Juniper waits, spinning the white hat in her hands. “So. Will you be joining us?”

  “Joining what?” It takes Beatrice a second to understand that Juniper is referring to the highly visible and apparently unsanctioned march for women’s suffrage. “Oh, n-no, I don’t think so. What would the library think?”

  She can see Juniper’s lip curl, her teeth sharp in the moonlight. “Right. Of course.”

  Beatrice refrains from pointing out that her position at the library is the reason Juniper has a roof over her head and cold broth to ignore, nor does she invite her sister to trot over to the west side and beg for work in the mills. She merely wants to.

  Juniper is still standing beside her, still turning that absurd hat in her hands. “You ought to come watch, at least. It’s going to be quite a show.” Beatrice hears the satisfaction in her sister’s voice and feels a certain uneasiness run down her spine.

  The floorboards creak as Juniper turns away. “Invite that colored friend of yours, if you like. Cleopatra.”

  “Miss Quinn?” (Cleopatra has asked her several times to call her Cleo, but Beatrice can’t imagine being bold enough to reduce the distance between them to four flimsy letters.)

  In the silence that follows, Beatrice pictures herself taking a long morning walk down to New Cairo—the trolleys don’t run to the colored end of town—and strolling into the offices of The Defender. Casually inviting Miss Quinn to accompany her to a suffrage march, proving herself to be something more than a timid librarian. Perhaps provoking Miss Quinn into one of those sharp, honest smiles, rather than her charming lies.

  Beatrice finds herself suddenly more interested in the Centennial Fair. “I suppose—”

  But she’s been quiet too long. She feels the hot snap of Juniper’s temper through the line between them. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

  The door slams shut, limping steps fade quickly, and Beatrice is alone.

  She sits in the window for another hour, watching the moon, wondering what it would feel like to fly with moonlight on her bare shoulders, then stands abruptly. She writes a note addressed to Mr. Blackwell, explaining that she will not be able to work her usual shift tomorrow as she has developed a sudden fever.

  She lies awake in bed for a long time after, buzzing and nervy. She falls asleep thinking of the place where the trolley lines end.

  Agnes is not sleeping. She is tossing and turning, discovering all the new and novel ways in which her body can be uncomfortable. The baby inside her is still small—“the size of a spring cabbage,” Madame Zina told her cheerily—but she seems to possess an uncanny ability to find every tender nerve and soft tissue in her body. At night Agnes feels her clawing and kicking, a cat in a too-small cage. She holds her palms flat to her belly and thinks, Stay mad, baby girl.

  Agnes threw the pennyroyal down the boarding-house privy weeks ago. She did it without drama or debate, as if it were any other brown paper sack of ingredients she no longer needed. When she returned to her room she sat on the floor and trailed her finger in a circ
le around herself. There were two of them inside it now.

  Sometime past midnight she hears uneven steps in the hall and feels an invisible thread winding tight.

  Paper rustles. The steps retreat.

  When Agnes rises she finds a white square of paper slid beneath her door: COME TO THE FAIR TOMORROW, 4 O’CLOCK. IF YOU GOT THE GUTS.

  Agnes knows from the shaky shape of the capitals and the attitude that the note is from Juniper. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow at the Centennial Fair, but, given the electric hum in the line between them, like charged air before a storm, Agnes feels confident it will be deeply stupid and possibly dangerous.

  She crumples the note in her fist and pictures tossing it down the privy, too. She wouldn’t even need to make an extra trip; she always needs to piss, these days.

  Instead she smooths the note flat on the table. She looks at it a long time before she climbs back into bed.

  The day before the march, Jennie Lind asked Juniper if she’d ever been to a fair. Sure, Juniper told her. Back home they had a cornbread festival every fall. Jennie laughed at her and Juniper thwacked her with a rolled-up poster and Jennie laughed harder.

  It’s only as Juniper walks under the arched iron entranceway of the New Salem Centennial Fair that she knows why.

  The Centennial Fair makes the cornbread festival look like a church picnic. It’s like a whole second city sprung up on the north end of New Salem, filled with smart white tents and gaudy stalls and salesmen hawking newfangled contraptions. Electric lights buzz and swing between the tents, singeing the top-hats and hair-dos of the crowd below, and a great metal Ferris wheel spins above them. The air smells rich and fatty, like sweat and fry oil and dollar bills.

  Inez buys seven tickets at the booth and passes them around. Juniper, Jennie, Electa; Mary, Minerva, Nell; each of them clutching a white hat in their hands, each of them wearing expressions suitable for the storming of castles.