The Orphan Witch

by Paige Crutcher

  “Did you … have a vision?” Hyacinth asked.

  “I’ve never had one before,” Persephone said, which was true. But it wasn’t the whole truth. What she’d seen was lodged in her throat. The words refused to be spoken.

  Hyacinth took a sip of tea, and gave Persephone her own shrug.

  Moira removed the cup and set the saucer aside. She pulled her reading glasses down from her head and slipped them onto her nose.

  Persephone, suddenly nervous, looked at Hyacinth. Her friend gave her one of those comforting grins, and Persephone smiled back.

  Moira looked up at Persephone, studied her. “There are three symbols here,” she said. “A plus sign, an X, and what could be a figure eight.”

  Hyacinth shifted beside her on the sofa.

  “What do they mean?”

  Moira looked back at her findings in the cup. “Interpretations vary, but I would say changes are coming. Obstacles, loss, success, too.”

  “That’s a little vague,” Persephone said, not wanting to insult Moira, but feeling a bit let down by the ambiguity of the reading.

  “The figure eight is intriguing,” Moira added. “To some it might look like a ring. Like a proposal. Is there someone in your life? A man or woman?”

  Persephone blushed, unable to hold back the snort. “Not even a hint of a someone.”

  “Then perhaps he or she is coming.”

  Hyacinth peered down into her cup. “Is there a new she coming for me?”

  “You’ve had enough ladies. One can only hope the next one is the right one.”

  “What is enough?” Hyacinth asked, blowing Moira a kiss and earning a laugh from Persephone.

  Moira paused, looking into her own cup. She took a final sip, slipped her own saucer over the cup, and flipped it. For a moment Persephone wasn’t sure Moira was going to look—the strangest expression slipped over her face. In the end Moira peered into the cup, and then re-covered it once more.

  “The last man I was interested in,” Persephone said, wondering what Moira had seen in her own cup, hating the touch of sadness she saw on the other woman’s face, “walked into rush-hour traffic after we held eye contact for too long.”

  “Ouch,” Hyacinth said, sympathy tugging one corner of her mouth up.

  “Yes, it would have been quite painful for him, had his student not pulled him from the road.”

  “Men can be the greatest of fools,” Moira said, staring at her upturned cup, a frown line creasing her furrowed brow.

  “They can also be quite charming,” Persephone said. “Especially the ones who carry themselves like they’re ten feet tall. Who smile with their shoulders and have fingers that look as clever as their words sound.”

  Hyacinth quirked a brow. “Calling Mr. Darcy.”

  Persephone laughed. “Oh gods, am I that transparent?”

  “I’ve always been more for Captain Wentworth over Mr. Darcy,” Moira said, running her thumb and forefinger around the base of her ring finger. “A lover scorned who returns is a hopeful thing.”

  Hyacinth frowned at her sister, who glanced over and caught the look. Moira shook off her reverie and stood, collecting the tea saucers and cups. “I better check the bread before it bakes itself burnt.”

  They watched her go, before Persephone asked Hyacinth, “Who broke your sister’s heart?”

  Hyacinth merely shook her head. “No one that I know of.” She ran a finger over her left eyebrow. “Moira’s always had a string of suitors. Off islanders who find themselves drawn to her like a fish on a well-wormed line. But while Moira’s never turned down a good romp, she always tosses the fish back in the water when she’s done.”

  Persephone wrinkled her nose at the notion of men being fish and women being bait and fisherpeople. She also thought, perhaps, Hyacinth did not know everything about her sister’s love life. At least, not if the pain in Moira’s eyes were any indication.

  “What about you?” Persephone asked Hyacinth. “No special lady? Truly?”

  Hyacinth bit her lip for the briefest moment. “The truth?”

  Persephone nodded.

  “I’ve always thought she was waiting for me somewhere else. On a different island, in a different part of the world.”

  “Then let’s hope you get to her soon,” Persephone said.

  Hyacinth raised an imaginary shot glass and then tossed it back, ending it with a bite at the air. Persephone laughed and Hyacinth grinned her cheeriest smile.

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t wait too long either,” Hyacinth said.

  “Who?” Persephone asked.

  “Whoever was waiting in the base of your cup.” Hyacinth suppressed a yawn and stretched out onto the couch. “That’s the thing about Moira, cousin. She always sees them coming.”

  * * *

  PERSEPHONE SLEPT DEEPLY that night, after a meal of the most delicious cheese plate, homemade bread, and fresh vegetables. Most of which were out of season and yet grown in Hyacinth’s garden. Persephone didn’t know if she could really help the sisters break their curse. She wasn’t entirely sure she believed in curses, no matter what they said, but she did believe in their and her power. What Persephone knew, without a doubt, was that she had never been so relaxed in her life. After the morning’s hard revelations, she had somehow spent an afternoon laughing, drinking tea, talking about love and, later, which celebrities had the best backsides (basically, none of the women would kick any of the Avengers out of bed, though Hyacinth and Persephone had to Google Marvel to show Moira what an Avenger was). It was the first time Persephone had felt so protected, and she knew it wasn’t a feeling she would ever forget.

  The following afternoon, Hyacinth asked Persephone if she was ready to show them what she could really do. Trepidatious, but eager to please, Persephone jumped at the opportunity.

  To practice their magic, the three witches went back through the Arch. They stood in a clearing in a forest as thick as any jungle and as bright as any polished emerald. The air smelled of moss and ferns, of sage and thyme. Persephone walked barefoot, instinctively removing her shoes as she stepped through the door onto the lush green grass.

  “Think of this first practice as an experiment,” Hyacinth said.

  “One that will prove if you are our third,” Moira added, though not unkindly.

  Persephone rolled out her shoulders, determined not to fail even though she had no idea how to control any of her power. “What do I have to do?”

  Moira moved to stand before her. “Your element is personal to you. Elements are the fundamental building blocks of nature, but we are more than elemental magicians or spell casters or even witches. We are goddesses in training, keepers of the island. Protectors of her power and secrets. You will need to claim and call forth your element.”

  Persephone held Moira’s gaze, and took a breath down deep into her belly.

  “Are you ready?”

  Persephone nodded.

  “Then let us begin.”

  Hyacinth had given Persephone slips of paper an hour before they made their way back through the Arch into the new land. Each had an element written across it: fire, water, air, earth.

  Moira held out her hands and called forth the first of the elements, fire. It sparked in Moira’s palm. She waved her other hand over it, and the spark grew into an orange flame half a foot high before she blew it out.

  Hyacinth did not call forth earth, from which she could make things grow, but air. Hyacinth blew up a tiny tornado that twisted the ends of her hair into a perfectly knotted updo.

  When it was Persephone’s turn, she thought of the two remaining elements: water and earth. Persephone reached for a connection, for the tug she’d discovered on Wile Isle, and found it lacking. There was no familiarity to water, no connection to earth.

  Persephone once had a dream of a man with nimble hands and sharp eyes. In the dream, Persephone was the most powerful person in the world. In it, she no longer felt lost, but known. Cherished. As Persephone focused on her
magic a second time, she pulled the feeling of the dream back to her: a secret desire, her heart’s truest wish. To be known. To be loved.

  Persephone thought she heard a whisper of her name, felt the brush of lips across the edge of her jaw and the lightest caress of a fingertip trailing down her arm before it brushed against the inside of her wrist. Persephone thought, Please, and cupped her hands.

  A brilliant white light leapt to life in the center of Persephone’s palms.

  There was a quick inhale of breath to her left. A gasp to her right. Persephone kept her gaze focused on the warmth she cupped. She drew it to her, closer, going on instinct alone.

  Persephone pressed her palms to her chest and the light grew twice its size before it cooled to a single ember.

  She bent down, her feet grounded like any strong oak whose branches take root. Persephone waved a hand over the grass, sent the ember into it, and reached deep into the earth. Down went her thoughts, down alongside her steady heartbeat, down with her intentions.

  Persephone suddenly knew the earth, knew and saw, and she began to work. She called forth reddish brown flakes of soil, breathed them up and into the air. They shimmered like snow caught in a fresh gust of wind, then flew up and spread out over the heads of the three women.

  The flakes hovered, trapped on pause. For the briefest moment even the forest did not dare to breathe. Then Hyacinth let loose a wild laugh and the flakes tumbled down, brushing across the witches’ hair and shoulders, noses and cheeks, before spilling back into the land.

  “Copper,” Moira said, her tone giving nothing away. “You mined copper.”

  “Aether,” Hyacinth said, with reverence. “Persephone, you carry within you aether.”

  “Aether?”

  “The strongest of all elements,” Moira said, tilting her chin, a rare smile finally gracing her lips. “The life force of the universe.”

  Persephone couldn’t have stopped from grinning if she tried. In a voice filled with a strength she had never heard herself possess, she said, “Then blessed be.”

  The three witches called forth their magic, spreading it across the land. Persephone pulling out earth while Hyacinth blew it into the air and Moira set the sediments to flame. Barefoot, brazen, the three women laughed and danced and tried to outdo one another. They brought the moon low and the tide high. They placed new stars in the sky and doused old ones out. They did not come inside from the Arch until they were so spent, they nearly had to crawl to bed.

  * * *

  FOR THE NEXT few days, when she wasn’t working on her magic with the sisters, Persephone was immersed in books. She read all she could on her element, aether, also known as spirit.

  From physics, Persephone learned aether was suggested as the channel for the spreading of electromagnetic and/or gravitational forces. And in Plato’s Timaeus, he said, “there is the most translucent kind (of air) which is called by the name of aether,” while Aristotle argued that it was fire that was often mistaken for aether.

  From this argument, aether became known as the fifth element.

  As Persephone understood it, aether was spirit or space. Or, as Moira further explained, “Aether is what exists in the space outside the celestial sphere. In the realm of the Goddess, think of aether as the substance through which light travels. It is also the air the Goddess breathes. It is the most powerful and elusive of elements.”

  Persephone also devoured books on herbs, on the history of magic and alchemy, on Scotland and Wile Isle, and even one book on the unmitigated benefits of channeling your cat. The last one Persephone was mostly certain Hyacinth had thrown in as a joke.

  Persephone’s days slipped into a comfortable rhythm. She woke early, before sunrise, and joined Moira on the long front porch. At first, Moira was quiet, used to savoring her alone time, but Persephone’s quiet perseverance paid off. At sunrise each day they shared a pot of lemon balm, Saint-John’s-wort, chamomile flowers, and green tea—all for setting Persephone’s intention and channeling balance.

  A week into her new routine on Wile Isle, Persephone sat down with one of her books, The Art of Herbs, and sipped from the cup Moira had set out for her.

  Moira moved across the porch, arms and legs slow to shift from pose to pose as she moved through the thirteen postures in Tai Chi. It was like watching poetry in motion. Moira’s eyes stayed closed, her face devoid of lines as she breathed and performed what Persephone had taken to calling her slow-motion dance.

  Where Hyacinth was almost always moving, Moira was one of the stillest people Persephone had ever met. It was when she practiced her Tai Chi that Persephone felt she saw the truth behind the regal woman.

  It was how Moira’s hands seemed to shift on an internal clock. How her feet followed her palms, and her spine did not yield. Moira held her head like she didn’t even need her neck, as though it was another accessory she simply made the best of. There was such performance to her movements, on and off the porch. You only had to be patient enough to watch to learn that Moira had perfected the art of restraint.

  When she finished, Moira came to sit in the rocking chair to the right of Persephone, her navy book with its gold bookmark slipped between the pages.

  “That was lovely,” Persephone told Moira, wishing she were confident enough to perform any type of exercise in a flowing skirt.

  Moira crossed her ankles, and picked up her cup of tea. She stirred it with a copper spoon, three times counterclockwise, and steam rose from its surface.

  Moira’s magic, Persephone was learning, was no small power.

  “It takes a hundred days to grow a foundation,” Moira said, looking at Persephone. “I plant a seed daily, and in the end, I harvest what I’ve grown.”

  “What are you growing?”

  “I hope the ability to bend the curse.”

  Persephone leaned forward. “How does Tai Chi help?”

  “It’s about habit,” Moira said. “You can create a good habit, and bring yourself success, or you can cultivate bad ones, and bring about failure.” She looked out over the hill, to where the path led back down toward town and the ocean. “The problem is that it is much easier to create a bad habit than a good one.”

  “Do you worry you’re doing it wrong? The movements?”

  Moira turned back to Persephone. “It’s not about right or wrong. It’s the doing that is important. All I need is to breathe in and out, and let my arms follow the air like a tide follows the water.”

  “Was that what you were doing?” Persephone reached her own palm out to press against the breeze passing through the open porch. “It did look a bit like you were pulling a wave to you and sending it away.”

  Moira smiled at Persephone, and the quiet grin was almost as good as a hug. “That’s exactly what I was doing.”

  Persephone tucked her arm back into her side, and restarted the sway of her rocking chair. “How did you learn? Is it something your mother taught you?”

  Moira’s cup rattled as she set it in the saucer. A tiny drop spilled over the edge onto the side. “No. My mother was not one for slow movements, she was interested in going fast. Always.”

  Like Hyacinth. Persephone wanted to ask a hundred questions. Where was their mother? What happened when she tried to break the curse? Why did she have to leave the island? Why did Hyacinth not speak of her at all? Why did talking about her cause the pretty flush in Moira’s cheeks to drop away?

  But Moira was holding herself so rigid, Persephone was afraid the wrong question would send her out of her seat and back into the house. She feared the relative ease and comfort they’d grown over the past days would scatter with the wrong words spoken.

  Instead she asked, “So how did you learn the practice?”

  The flush returned in the blink of an eye, spreading from Moira’s cheeks to her chest. “A man I once knew taught me.”

  Ah. Persephone bit back a smile. “Was he a Tai Chi master?”

  Moira’s laugh filled the porch. “Most assuredly not. H
e liked to make up his own poses and rename them ridiculous things, like Stroking the Tree and Mooning the Moon.”

  Persephone snorted out a laugh. “What?”

  “We were practically kids,” Moira said, grinning. “He was a young chef. Came on for a season, and stayed for one more.”

  Persephone caught the wistful tone in Moira’s voice. “He was special?”

  Moira dropped her gaze. Studied her bare feet. “It was a long time ago.” After a moment, Moira looked back at Persephone, and gave her a sad smile.

  “Still,” Persephone said, sighing a bit. “I envy you.”

  Moira laughed. “Don’t waste your time with envy. Fill it with facts.” She nodded to the book sitting on Persephone’s lap, before picking up her own and returning to reading.

  After tea, they had a light lunch before Hyacinth wandered in from the garden. Hyacinth ate a cucumber sandwich over the sink, quizzing Persephone on her morning Art of Herbs studies, while Moira swept up the dirt Hyacinth trekked in and threw it out through the side door.

  As the afternoon wore on, they shifted to training, and entered through the Arch to one of the three “green” dimensions. These dimensions were a variation of cliffs and forests, the best places to meditate, according to Moira. Persephone learned these locations weren’t real, but a magical memory that existed only through the Arch.

  Some of the spells she learned during training came easier than others. Stirring the air and reading what Moira was feeling when the witch was open to it (which she was surprisingly more willing to do than Hyacinth, who kept her emotions more closed off than a forgotten forest) were spells Persephone took to casting naturally. Trying to perform the more demanding variations or consistently calling aether on demand wasn’t as easy.

  When it came to summoning her element, Persephone would stand in the spot where the earth warmed to her touch, thinking of the white light of aether. She would call and call, her brow perspiring and her hands shaking.

  “That’s enough,” Moira finally said one day, after Persephone swayed from the effort. “You’re draining yourself.”