Stranger Than Witches (The Witches of Secret Hallow Book 3)

by Nora Lee

  That was why he was shrieking. He was mimicking Thorn’s cry. Nothing was wrong.

  Nothing is wrong, Kimberly.

  She forced her eyes shut again. In, out. In…

  No, Kimberly couldn’t wait around forever. Keene was awake and needed watching. It would just have to be okay.

  She opened her eyes and looked down.

  The feathers were still there.

  The feathers.

  Were still there.

  Maybe the feathers weren’t the problem. Maybe she should have been embracing them, taking off and finding a safe place until she got her head on straight. Maybe—

  Kimberly clapped a hand over her mouth to keep a pained cry from escaping. Those thoughts had been her inner animal, and she could still feel a beast stirring inside her.

  Flying away was the kind of thing that…that had happened on that day so long ago, the day Kimberly had worked so hard to forget in the past.

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  I will not fly away.

  Keene did his best eagle cry not far from Kimberly’s bedroom door. It was followed by a quiet “oops” and not-as-quiet footsteps running away and probably back into the living room. Again, knowing Keene as well as she did meant she could reasonably guess that she was probably ten minutes away from something heavy crashing to the floor and very loud tears.

  She needed to get up and take care of her son.

  For the love of all the ghouls in Castle Hallow, Keene needed his mommy.

  She had to pull it together. For Keene, if not herself.

  Kimberly closed her eyes again.

  The wind whipping across her face—

  No. She breathed in.

  —and the swoop in her stomach as she dived—

  Kimberly breathed out again.

  The images from her dream kept intruding, not helped by the occasional flash of sensation from Thorn. He had sensed her distress and was probing their connection. A shadow flitted over her window, suggesting the shape of a large, feathered body between her bedroom and the rising sun. He wanted to know if she was okay. She didn’t know what to tell him.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about that dream.

  But she knew that she must.

  She pushed the images from the dream away with all the willpower she could muster.

  Kimberly didn’t let them in. She couldn’t let them in. She kept breathing, and they grew further and further away until they were only faded fragments of memory.

  Keene was playing, thumping around the house.

  This was her life: not a life of wings, feathers, talons, and the hunt.

  A life of maintaining her home, caring for her beautiful human child, helping Maddock around their farm.

  A human life.

  Kimberly let herself feel a quick pang of regret before stamping out the last of the emotions she felt from her dream. There was no room in her life for…whatever this was. There never had been.

  Kimberly opened her eyes.

  The feathers were gone, replaced by bare skin that looked like it had never been covered by anything other than faint, downy blonde hair, so much paler than the dark russet that tumbled from her scalp. She flipped her hands up and down a few times to make sure, but there was no doubt she looked fully human again.

  She took a shuddering breath and hugged herself for a moment.

  Not a single feather.

  Keene yelled from the living room—no crash and tears, thankfully—and Kimberly ran out of bed to get dressed.

  * * *

  Kimberly emerged from her bedroom to joyful shouts.

  “Mommy!” Keene cried. He ran to meet her, and Kimberly bent down so she could hug him properly. It was one of the best things about her growing boy; he really knew how to give good hugs at his age.

  As pleasant as it was, being assaulted by her child was a shock after what she’d sustained in the bedroom.

  It was a much-needed cold splash of reality.

  What Kimberly would have most liked was to speak with Maddock. Calm, rational, steadfast Maddock, who would have known what she should do.

  But he was busy. Working.

  Kimberly needed to push the feelings away for now.

  She clutched Keene a little tighter and longer than usual, appreciating that her arms were arms rather than wings, and that the flesh that brushed against her son’s baby-soft skin had no feathers. She clung to him not to comfort him, but to comfort herself.

  The touch of her son filled her ribcage with swells of warmth. He made her feel secure and real, mammalian rather than avian.

  This was her young. Her baby.

  Her reason for being a human rooted to the earth.

  Of course, he didn’t tolerate the snuggling for long. The moment he started to struggle, Kimberly let him go, and he ran in circles around her as she got to her feet again.

  “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Poke and I were flying!”

  Her heart plummeted. She twined her fingers in his hair, letting the strands run across her palm.

  Hair, not feathers.

  That was how the world was meant to be.

  “Flying?” she asked, forcing warmth into her voice that she didn’t feel.

  “Flying really fast over the trees! Zoom!” He flapped his arms and jumped as he continued to circle, stomping his bare feet on the carpet. He was already dirty. He had gotten outside at some point when Kimberly had been struggling with herself.

  She couldn’t parent like that. She needed to be there for him.

  “Good morning, son,” she said, patting him on the head again during one of his circles. “Hungry?”

  “Daddy made me eggs!” Keene made his eagle cry again, lofting Poke above his head.

  “You know birds come from eggs, don’t you?”

  Keene nodded as Kimberly went into the kitchen. “We eat chicken eggs! That’s what Daddy said. Some birds eat eggs, too. Like crows!”

  He made a cawing sound that she imagined was meant to sound crow-like.

  Kimberly hummed in agreement as she opened the pantry and reached up for her usual box of cereal.

  “When can we go? Are we going soon?” Keene asked, walking Poke around on the counter near Kimberly. The bird was dirty, too. Both of them would need a bath later. Poke was well worn from his many baths with Keene, along with all the rough playtimes. Kimberly had stitched him back together more times than she’d had to apply bandages to Keene’s filthy knees.

  “I don’t know. Did Daddy say we’re going soon?” Kimberly asked.

  “No. But I thought I had to go to school.”

  Kimberly froze, halfway to the fridge to get her milk out.

  School. Of course Keene would want to go back. She hadn’t said anything about keeping him out where he could hear. It was bad enough when Kimberly had thought that he would get hurt, and a night’s sleep hadn’t eased her worries on that front by any means.

  She made herself move, motions robotic as she took the milk from the refrigerator. “Do you…do you want to go to school?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice steady.

  “Yes.” Keene nodded firmly. “It was fun, Mommy. Didn’t you think it was fun?”

  Fun was knowing her son was safe.

  There was nothing better than that.

  Even though the fridge was cold enough that it kept the carton of milk cold, Kimberly couldn’t feel it in her hand as she brought it to the counter. Was that some kind of residual problem from earlier? Had turning partially into a bird kept her from feeling like an actual human again?

  Or maybe she was in shock.

  She poured the cereal. Her hands shook a little.

  I think we can trust the coven about this.

  If Kimberly had woken up, maybe, just maybe, Maddock’s reasoning might have had her swayed. But Keene was the only thing that had brought her back to herself, and if that wasn’t likely to last…no. Kimberly had to stay human. There was no alternative.

  “We’re staying home today, K
eene,” she finally managed. Keene hadn’t even been looking at her; she’d been quiet for so long that he’d gone into the living room again to run around.

  “Oh.” He paused in place and let his head droop. “I wanna go to school.”

  That would take him far someday, that ambition. Dreams were the fuel for hearts filled with fire. Kimberly needed to give him room to foster that fire in safety.

  “Not today,” she said.

  Someday. Someday.

  His bottom lip stuck out. He rocked back on his heels. When he did that, he almost looked like a sweet little toddler again, rather than the leggy child he was rapidly becoming. “I’m so sad.”

  “You are?”

  Keene nodded, slow and mopey. He walked to the couch and knelt in front of it, setting Poke on the cushions. Well, he tried to set Poke down. Poke didn’t have very good balance, so he kept tumbling off. Before long, it turned into a game for Keene, and he giggled every time Poke bounced on the floor. It probably wouldn’t be too long before Keene got too excited and started throwing Poke around.

  But Keene was okay for the moment, and Kimberly was human. That had to be enough.

  4

  The problem was, if Keene couldn’t go to school at Ash Academy, he had to get school somewhere else. A boy needed to be educated. And if he was so eager to learn, then Kimberly would have been doing him an incredible disservice to withhold that.

  There was only one formal school in Secret Hallow, though.

  A school filled with witches.

  That meant that Kimberly would have to teach him instead.

  She had never been interested in homeschooling. It was done frequently around Secret Hallow; the families were filled with brilliant witches excellent at organizing themselves for lessons, teaching wonderful, enriching things to their budding witchlings. The home curriculum of the likes of the Winterblossoms rivaled any private school in the nation.

  However, Kimberly was not of that type.

  She adored Keene, yes. She would have fought bears in the forest bare-handed for him. But homeschooling was simply not one of her strengths.

  Helping to run the farm, of course—she could do that. She could run much of the equipment with as much skill as Maddock. She didn’t fear getting dirty.

  But teaching?

  Alphabet, numbers, shapes, and colors? Rudimentary spellcasting, if possible?

  Well, if she would confront bears for him, surely she could confront a preschool curriculum for him as well.

  It was no great difficulty for her to set aside her chores around the house and farm so she would have time to teach Keene. Kimberly’s time with chores was well-organized; she was usually ahead of herself in getting things done. She needed only feed herself breakfast, tidy up a bit, and then turn to educating her darling boy.

  It took Kimberly more time than she’d be willing to admit to in order to find somewhere adequate for education.

  It wasn’t that they couldn’t work pretty much anywhere—she landed on using the couch after a good half-hour going over the house for spots—but, if Keene couldn’t go to the actual school he liked, she wanted him to have a space he would enjoy. She wanted him to be more than “comfortable” with their homeschooling situation. She wanted him happy. Ebullient, if possible.

  But the couch was the best place for the two of them to sit. Or, in Keene’s case, to stretch out as far as he could. He was very good at taking up space, and not just for a three year old. His adult father didn’t take up as much space.

  Keene rolled in place a few times as Kimberly found some pencils and paper. “Mommy?” he asked, sticking his feet in her face.

  “Yes, son?”

  Keene made an airplane noise. Kimberly nodded in acknowledgment.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m hungry.” He sighed like this was the worst affliction in the world. His body bent over double, feet dangling above his head.

  Kimberly glanced at the clock. Maddock had only just fed him breakfast, but Keene was a growing boy. “We can have lunch after we spell a little bit.”

  “Spell?”

  Kimberly ducked into the office and pulled out pens and paper from there. Pencils would have been better, but she didn’t think they had any in the house.

  “Letters,” she said, returning to the couch and moving Keene’s feet so she’d have a place to sit. “You remember the alphabet?”

  Keene knew at least some of it. Maddock had a song with all the letters that he’d apparently learned as a young warlock at his witch mother’s knee, and he sang it sometimes.

  Mostly, Keene would sing the first part, an “A is for” segment, and he’d forget the rest and mutter nonsense words until he got to the next letter. He often sang in random order, too. A was always the first letter, but the second letter was often K—Maddock bellowing “K is for Keene,” drawing out the middle sound of his name, was always Keene’s favorite part, so he usually liked to skip to it—and M (“M is for me!” with an exaggerated point at himself) or Z (“Z is the end!”) was third.

  Anything was fair game after that point.

  “A is for…” Keene frowned. “Yeah, I know.”

  Well, it was enough to start. Kimberly uncapped her pen and wrote out a big and very straight A and then pointed at it. “A,” she said.

  Keene stared at it.

  “Can you say ‘A’?” Kimberly asked.

  Keene nodded without speaking.

  “Please say it.”

  Keene looked between Kimberly and the letter. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

  Kimberly pointed at the A again. “A,” she said.

  “A?” Keene asked.

  Kimberly nodded. “A.”

  “A!”

  She held out the pen. “Can you try writing it?”

  Keene looked at the pen thoughtfully for a minute. “No,” he said finally, with plenty of cheer in his voice. He smiled up at Kimberly, rolled off the couch, and ran out of the room with his best eagle cry.

  “Keene?” Kimberly called, getting to her feet and raising her voice slightly. “Please come back here.”

  Keene replied in his eagle voice again.

  Kimberly, suddenly, was tired.

  Very tired.

  She had spoken more today than she could remember speaking in a long time, and it probably wasn’t much of a surprise that her sleep last night hadn’t been restful. Not to mention the sheer panic of her waking.

  How was she supposed to function like this?

  More than that, how was she supposed to educate her son like this?

  It probably didn’t say very good things about her that chores were sounding nicer and nicer, but there were many reasons her involvement with the coven involved the farm and not helping at the Ash Academy.

  She sighed. She had to try again. For Keene.

  “Son, please come out here.”

  Keene didn’t listen.

  It took another ten minutes for Kimberly to get Keene to listen to her instead of playing with his toys in his room. It took five minutes after that to get him back in the living room and on the couch. (She closed his bedroom door behind them, so hopefully that temptation would be removed, at least.)

  “A,” Kimberly said, writing another letter on the paper next to her first.

  Keene was sitting up next to her, rocking in place. He was looking nowhere near the paper.

  “Keene,” she said. She pointed at the paper. “A.”

  “A,” Keene said, not looking at the paper.

  It was a start. “Look at the paper, please.”

  He did, and she wrote the letter yet again. “Now you try.”

  Keene took the pen from her. He wrote one diagonal line, and Kimberly smiled, pleased. He raised the pen carefully and set it down at the top of the first line, like Kimberly had shown him.

  And then he scribbled up, making a dirty-looking cloud over the diagonal line.

  “Mommy?” he asked, grinning at h
er. “It’s Poke!”

  He gave an eagle shriek that was beginning to sound shockingly like the real thing.

  “That’s…that’s good, son,” she said. “A good first try. Now…”

  Keene burst off the couch again and ran for the back door.

  Kimberly sighed. Well. She couldn’t say she didn’t try. “Aren’t you hungry, Keene?”

  “No!” he called cheerfully. He wriggled, trying to get the door open, but the door was locked.

  Kimberly could sense Thorn outside. He was above the house.

  She unlocked and opened the door for Keene. Stepping outside into the warmth, she shielded her eyes against the light and searched for her familiar. He was spiraling high above, just near enough that she could see him with her comparatively terrible human vision.

  Kimberly waved at Thorn, who opened his wings a bit so she could see, the fall-like breeze ruffling his feathers.

  Keene was shrieking already, thanks to the leaves twisting up around him on the gentle wind. He raced across the field with his arms spread wide, like he were flying on wings.

  Thorn would keep an eye on Keene outside. He usually did when Kimberly had to do something inside. Even if she was around, Thorn had such careful, intense focus, that she would learn about what Keene was doing through him anyway. Thorn was better than eyes in the back of her head.

  Keene was as much a wild animal as any of the creatures in the forest, if Kimberly were being honest with herself.

  Much happier—and probably safer—outside on the farm, supervised by Thorn, than trying to learn the alphabet from his mother.

  Everyone seemed happy as Kimberly closed the door again, leaving it unlocked so Keene could come back inside whenever he wanted. She would make a snack for Keene when he inevitably changed his mind about being hungry in five seconds, she would clean up the attempts of her lesson, and she would get to work.

  Her to-do list shouldn’t have been such a relief. But it was.

  Anything to distract her from the feathers that she desperately hoped had been nothing more than a hallucination.

  Anything.

  * * *

  Kimberly was putting Keene’s toys away and cleaning out the trash in Keene’s room when she sensed, through Thorn, that Keene was shrieking.