Poppy spent the next few hours trying to magic those spots away. When they finally lifted and she felt calm and could breathe properly again, that’s when she saw it—the kiss. In her mind’s eye, she saw how Ember’s hands grasped Leo’s face and how her body reached up so her lips could press against his. She saw it all in momentary increments—beat by beat, tick by tock. A second of surprise in Leo’s eyes, the next second of consternation, a third of surrender, a fourth of receiving, a fifth of giving, a sixth of pleasure. Unable to watch any longer, Poppy picked up the book and hurled it across the room. It lay there wounded, just as she was, pages bent, spine cracked on the tiled ground.
Leo was doing everything he had promised himself he wouldn’t. He was outside Poppy’s house, trying, hoping to get a glimpse of her. He didn’t care about the balance between them anymore, that it was her turn, that she should thank him. None of that mattered now. He had to see her. Just for a moment. He didn’t have any words to offer. He hardly knew what to think. Why he’d ever stayed away seemed baffling to him now, like that decision belonged to another boy with some other girl, playing a stupid game to save his pride.
Ember had kissed him and it had been a gift, a surprise, soft and sweet, and he’d felt grateful for it. It had come without the pressure of occasion, without the worry of rejection. But after, Ember’s kiss made him think of another’s and how that might feel. If it had been Poppy’s lips on his, he would have kissed her harder, not so soft and sweet, but longer, deeper, never enough, never wanting it to end.
Leo kicked at the curb, then stared urgently at the house. He wanted to burst through the door and grab Poppy in his arms and do, right now, what he’d been imagining so vividly. But he didn’t move. He stood there, wired with longing, not daring to even ring the doorbell.
Poppy knew Leo was close from the moment he arrived. He waited and waited, and it took all Poppy’s strength to ignore him. She thought of trying another spell on him to make him go, to remind him of Ember. But Poppy found she couldn’t concentrate as she needed to for witchcraft. It was as if Leo was in her way, his emotions emanating from him, every particle of his being summoning her, deafening her with his want and need. His guilt and frustration came seeping under the door and into her house, making her skin tingle and eyes water. Or was it her own feelings that were thickening the air, making it so hard to breathe? Having spent the last few days feeling so certain and assured, Poppy now felt weak with confusion.
Finally, when it grew late, Leo banged on the door. Poppy wished her father was home to deal with him and tell him to get lost. But, as usual, she was all alone. He shouted her name through the mail slot.
“I know you’re in there. Poppy, please. Just answer the door. Just for a minute.”
Poppy said nothing, and Leo banged with his fist again so the whole door shook.
“Why won’t you speak to me?”
You know why, she felt like screaming, but she stayed silent.
Then Leo threw stones up to her bedroom window and she felt like thrusting open the window and slinging something back down at him. He stood in the front garden and yelled her name for all the world to hear. Poppy sat on the floor and scrunched her eyes closed, hugging her knees, making herself small and insignificant for she feared what was coming.
The rain arrived first. Hard and fast like tiny bullets, pelting down on Leo, stinging his face and soaking his clothes. He didn’t move. The wind swept around his legs, the force of it so fierce it made him sway and threatened to lift him off the ground. Still Leo did not turn to leave. Not even when the thunder rumbled and the sky cracked and lightning bolts hit the ground to either side of him.
“Poppy!!!” he hollered defiantly as the water streamed over him and the wind whipped him like a lash.
He won’t go, Poppy thought. He’ll never go.
Trash cans, tricycles, and potted plants were being tossed around, skittering down the street like they were paper bags. But Leo stood firm.
Headlights appeared at the top of the street and a car wove its way around the carnage, windshield wipers flicking furiously back and forth, trying to combat the rain. The lights swept through her bedroom and Poppy heard the car turning into the drive. It must be her father. Only then did Poppy come to the window and pull back the curtains, worried what might happen next. Only then did Leo back away, stepping into the shadows.
But Poppy’s father had already seen him. He jumped out of the car and shouted across the stormy, swirling air. Leo didn’t respond, but his eyes glanced up to Poppy’s bedroom window and he saw her there, watching. Within his imploring look, Poppy glimpsed layers of hurt, anger, desire, guilt. She didn’t know which to respond to first. She didn’t notice the lack of coat; she didn’t question the scarf.
Then her father shouted again and Leo turned and ran.
Poppy’s mood the next day was dark and angry. A bilious rage bubbled in her stomach. Electricity sparked in her fingers. In the hallways the crowds of kids parted to let her pass. No one said a word. It was as if they could sense the rabid fury running through Poppy’s veins and knew that she might bite.
By lunch break Poppy had ratcheted up a triple detention for Friday night. In the dining hall she sat at one of the tables on the edge of the room, the chairs around her empty, like an invisible moat, the rest of the seats filled by the school’s other loners. These kids sat together every lunchtime, connected solely by their strangeness. There was no love lost between them, only the neediness that alienation brings. Even with this bunch of anomalies, Poppy was the outcast.
They weren’t the ones who threw the food, though. They wouldn’t dare. The wet, lukewarm substance struck the side of Poppy’s head. Normally Poppy sensed such attacks and knew how to dodge or divert them. But today she was distracted and this made her vulnerable. Annoyed at herself, she lifted her hand to wipe the food away and saw from her fingers that it was mashed potato—cold, white, and lumpy.
Another dollop was launched, and this time, it hit the back of her head. Poppy glanced at the others at her table. Their eyes instantly flicked down to their plates, offering no allegiance. Poppy shut her eyes. She was used to sending her tears inward to extinguish the fire that burned inside of her. But this time there were no tears to hose down the conflagration and Poppy liked how the heat in her belly warmed her, readying her for the fight. She wanted to stand up and let the fire shoot from her lips like a dragon, then watch as the culprits blazed and smoldered.
“Fire!” cried one of the dining staff as, inside the kitchen, a frying pan flickered with flames that rose up high to lick the ceiling. Within seconds the staff were stamping their shoes and flicking wet dish towels at fires that were cropping up all over the room.
Then the rats appeared. They crawled out of shelves and from under cabinets and scurried into the dining hall. Brown, gray, pink, and hairless, all with long worm-like tails that slithered along the floor after their fat, wrinkled bodies. The fire alarm began to sound as the smoke lifted to form a thick layer of smog. Its blare accompanied the screams of the kids, the voices of the boys and girls both so high-pitched there was no telling which was which. The rats ran up table legs and chairs and started feasting on the lunches lying half-finished on the tables, their eyes red like the fire from which they’d fled.
Poppy felt none of the horror or shame that her previous calamities had evoked. She took a moment, then smiled. And then she laughed. She laughed and laughed until the tears streamed down her face and her insides hurt from fatigue. The other students ran from the room, jostling to reach the door, and the rats followed after them. All they were missing was the Pied Piper and his tune. Soon Poppy was all alone, and still she laughed, the mashed potato dripping from her hair, the smoke receding, and the flames flickering out just as swiftly as they’d begun.
Poppy had seen many school counselors in her time. They were usually underpaid and underqualified. Often, it had seemed to Poppy, they were in need of counseling themselves. Mrs. Silva was d
ifferent. She was full of life and vitality—big green eyes matching a glossy, emerald shirt; big hair and an even bigger bosom; rings on her fingers and a pair of red pumps covering her toes. Poppy wondered why, out of all the jobs in the world, Mrs. Silva was doing this one, especially in this forgotten backwater of a town. The woman looked as though she should exist in a faraway, sun-kissed place that was as exuberant and glamorous as she was.
Mrs. Silva stood up, offering first a warm smile and then a warm hand to Poppy. And when Poppy shook Mrs. Silva’s hand, she saw inside her and understood. Mrs. Silva was pregnant, only a few weeks, but definitely pregnant. That was the present, the here and now.
When Poppy released Mrs. Silva’s hand, she knew the past. She saw all the pregnancies that had gone before. She saw the blood from the miscarriages and the tiny corpses of the two babies that had lasted longest but still not long enough.
Then, when Mrs. Silva put a soft, encouraging arm around Poppy as she led her to the sofa, Poppy felt it. The future. The tiny speck of an embryo sliding, falling, dying before it even had a chance to round its mother’s belly or be announced to the world.
Knowing all this made Poppy more receptive to Mrs. Silva’s advice, advice that actually made a lot of sense if Poppy were a normal girl with regular teenage issues and not a witch with supernatural abilities to cause fires and plagues of rats. In fact, Mrs. Silva’s words were so sensitively and candidly chosen that Poppy wanted to listen to her. Her lilting, musical accent made everything sound refreshingly humorous rather than dour and depressing, so much so that Poppy suddenly felt the urge to tell Mrs. Silva everything. She didn’t, of course. She couldn’t. But she did go home determined to do anything she could to save Mrs. Silva’s baby.
“Buena suerte,” Mrs. Silva had told her. “Good luck, Poppy.”
“You too,” Poppy had replied meaningfully.
“Remember you are a very special girl. Believe in yourself and better days will come, yes?”
Poppy nodded, wishing she could offer some words of caution but holding them in. Muffling the magic and stifling the sympathy inside of her caused a pain in Poppy’s side that ached right until the final bell of the day and all the way home until at last Poppy was able to open up her book of spells.
She realized at once this magic was beyond anything else she had tried. This was life and death, and only the darkest arts could hold such power. It would require courage as well as craft, for to save another, she had to give herself. Blood for blood. Bone for bone. Poppy chose the knife carefully. The sharpest she could find. Satisfied, she held out her left hand but it began to tremble. Quickly, giving herself no time to think, she placed her little finger on the chopping board. With her other hand she lightly placed the knife on her skin, picking a spot, just the tip, the tiniest part she could. It seemed the most unnatural thing in the world to cause herself hurt, but she had the best reason, the only reason. Muttering the words to the spell, she raised the knife. Then, like a guillotine, she let it fall.
For a moment Poppy felt nothing. Then the pain came, so sudden and savage that she had to scream. As she reached for the ointment and the bandage beside her, she tried to picture Mrs. Silva joyfully holding her newborn baby. Wrapping up her finger and pressing on it tightly, she recalled Mrs. Silva’s kind words.
“Poppy, can it be? No boys, no alcohol, no drugs. What is it you told me . . . that you’re different from the other girls here? Maybe you’re right? God willing I have a daughter one day like you.”
Poppy had felt like weeping as she realized how very unused she was to being liked by anyone at all. And Mrs. Silva’s innocence had been so heartbreaking—the ignorance of what was to come and the eternal optimism despite what had already happened.
“Maybe you should talk to my mother,” was all Poppy had been able to muster in return.
Mrs. Silva had let the words fade, right until they disappeared. Then she’d said, “Would you like us to speak about this? Your mother?”
Poppy remembered shaking her head.
“Are you sure? . . . Sometimes it helps to talk about it. No, always, I think it helps. Not to keep it . . . what’s the expression . . . bottled up inside.”
“Always? What if holding it in is the only thing that keeps you together?”
Mrs. Silva had sighed then, long and heavy. “Oh, Poppy,” she’d said so very tenderly. “It feels like that. I know. You worry you will fall apart. I understand. But you’re much stronger than this. Believe me.”
The magic in the ointment was beginning to work and the pain was subsiding. Hardly bearing to look, Poppy grabbed the fingertip that lay like a scrap on the board and threw it into the pot. Then she cut a piece of hair and added that to the mix, giving different parts of herself to the spell—spit, mucus, wax—parts of her life to give life.
Poppy needed tears to add to the mixture. She thought of her mother, when she was young and fair and on her feet, and how she was now, unkempt and lying in her hospital bed. But no tears came. They never had for her. Poppy thought of her own life, broken into chapters, each one more fruitless than the last. Her heart was long since hardened to that, though. She thought of sweet Uncle Bob, dead in his grave, then of Minx all alone in hers. Still she couldn’t cry. Her tears had run dry, her mind an arid, sandy desert. Then she thought of Ember, her only real friend. A misfit like her. So different from each other, but somehow the same.
As Poppy thought of Ember, her thoughts strayed to Leo, and Poppy realized with a pang that the two of them were connected in her head forever now. Poppy didn’t want to think of Leo. It was too big, too much to cope with. He would spoil the spell, weaken her. It was too confusing. The throb of her finger. That was simple and straightforward. A pain you could expect and manage. Leo—that pain was unpredictable and had her reeling. She saw his hand in Ember’s as they crossed the forest floor. She saw them as a couple, a beautiful pair of woodland creatures that looked too good together to ever be apart. She saw the scarf around his neck as he looked up at her window, and she saw exactly why and how he’d received it. And she saw the kiss. His lips on Ember’s. Ember’s lips on his. His lips on her own.
Poppy’s hands went to her mouth as she felt it tingle with the touch and the warmth of it. She felt her fingers moisten and thought it was his mouth. And then she realized. It was her tears.
After the spell was done, Poppy felt drained like there was no more blood to give, like there was no more marrow in her bones. Dark circles had formed under her eyes, her skin had turned sallow, then deathly gray. Her hair lay limp on her head and her muscles ached like they had worked for days. Most oddly, there were blisters on her hands and feet as though she’d been toiling in the fields. She hadn’t the strength to even wonder at them. She collapsed on top of her bed, fully dressed, and when she awoke her finger was almost healed, but a white streak had appeared in her hair.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Raven was sleeping peacefully for the first time in days. Her body had healed and she no longer cried out in her dreams from the constant spasms and throbbing in her joints. She had stopped swathing herself in cream of arnica and wild lettuce and concocting sleeping remedies from hops and valerian, and painkillers from chili and devil’s claw, skullcap and cannabis, turmeric and willow bark. She was able to eat again and she could feel her strength returning. But to sleep deeply and dreamlessly—this was bliss. So when she awoke, sharply and suddenly in the dead of night, she was angry first, worried second.
She sprang upright in bed and then her eyelids followed suit, opening wide. It took her a second or two to register she was awake and it was not yet near morning. Then she felt it, thick and tangible and acrid to taste. A deep, dark magic, the likes of which Raven had seldom come across other than during her own rare forays into the occult.
A few of the other elders felt it too. There was a tapping at her door just before dawn, and Raven knew it would be them, anxious and eager for discussion. She crept out, careful not to wake Sorrel, and
saw the sisters gathered at her steps. She joined the huddle of old hags, and heads bent, voices lowered, they swapped theories on what had passed that night.
“Twas a powerful spell,” said Sister Ada. “Not many about who can cast such magic as that.”
The others nodded, noses long, dipping up and down into the early morning mist.
“The Eastern clan,” murmured Sister Bethany fearfully.
There followed more nodding, accompanied by whispers of assent.
“Always the Eastern clan?” disputed Sister Morgan. “Can we for once look beyond the obvious?” Her eyes turned to Raven for support.
“It’s obvious because it is most likely true,” spat Sister Ada. “We are not fools.”
“Hush now, I did not say that,” Sister Morgan huffed. “But we jump to such conclusions like a toad jumping from hedgehog to cat.”
“It is the year of the prophecy.” Raven had kept her silence, but when she spoke it was a pronouncement and the others had to listen. “The spell this night . . . the great yew . . . the rumors of the Eastern clan—each and together, they must pertain to this. Sorrel is in danger from all sides, and we must keep her safe until the throne is hers.”
The sisters clasped hands.
“So the Eastern clan it is.” Sister Ada couldn’t help gloating. Sister Morgan looked away.
“It is likely,” Raven demurred, but for Sister Morgan’s benefit, she added, “though we must be watchful from all quarters.”
Sister Morgan turned her gaze to the center of the circle just like the others and they muttered spells of protection, for Sorrel, for the clan, and for themselves.
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