The Orphan Witch

by Paige Crutcher

  “Which as you keep pointing out, I am.”

  “Yes. Though it’s been … interesting, finding you.”

  “I think you mean I found you,” Persephone said, and ducked her chin as she moved to the front door.

  Dorian was proving to be the most confusing man. She didn’t like how drawn she was to him, how distracted she was becoming by the irrational, growing urge to taste the scar just under his chin. He was impossible to read, and she was struck by the thought that, for once, she wasn’t the most dangerous person in the equation.

  When she looked back, a look of indecision crossed his face. “Wait a moment, please,” he said, and went to the fireplace.

  Persephone clasped and unclasped her hands as she waited, watching Dorian’s backside and scolding herself for giving in to the distraction. Dorian reached into a compartment beside the fireplace, but when he stepped back there was nothing but stone in front of him.

  He walked back to her. In his hand he carried an hourglass locket. He passed it to Persephone. “Walkers can lose track of time.”

  Dorian’s cheeks were faintly flushed, and Persephone realized his own actions had embarrassed him.

  Persephone had never been given a present by a man, let alone a necklace. The gift touched her more than she dared admit. She accepted it, murmuring thanks, trying to ignore the furious knock of her heart in her chest.

  On the bottom of the hourglass was the inscription: Walker Mayfair. May you ever find your way.

  “Like the inscription on the photo,” Persephone said, looking up at him, her gaze sharp. “What does it mean?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “I do not know. I catalogued it some years ago. I think, perhaps, it was waiting on you.”

  “Because of the picture or because I … walk through worlds?”

  “Both, and because I think you are looking for a way.” He pushed the door open and stepped back. “Now you have your direction. The rest, I’m afraid, is up to you.”

  Persephone pulled her sweater from her waist and slipped her arms inside it. “What if I need to return here, invitation or not?”

  Dorian’s smile was quick and it punched a small hole in her heart. “I suppose you will find a different way to do that, too.”

  Persephone stepped through the door frame, feeling like when he said suppose he really meant hope, and when she turned to thank him and simply get one last look, the building was fading. Persephone stayed where she was, watching the light shimmer, and the hues of amber and jade weave together.

  Persephone did not see the shadow slinking from the windows.

  She never noticed it disappear into the cracks by her feet.

  Persephone did not sense it as it slipped across her own shadow and held on tight.

  * * *

  THE HOURGLASS SAT heavy in Persephone’s pocket. She stood on the cobblestone road, squinting in the distance like she could make the library reappear by sheer will. And maybe Persephone could. She did not yet know, magically, what all she could and could not do.

  Why not try to bring it back? Persephone stared ahead, seeing the building once more in her mind. The fabric of air, of earth, of worlds, rippled around her.

  A rush of euphoria spiked into Persephone’s bloodstream. She thought of the library. She thought of Dorian’s smile.

  Persephone lifted her hands … and … nothing.

  A cold wash of frustration followed as the vision faded. Persephone tried again, but she could not pull the world back.

  A little breathless, and severely agitated, Persephone tugged the hourglass from her pocket and studied it. It was exquisite, and one hell of a first gift to be given. Persephone closed her eyes for a moment, bringing Dorian’s face back into her mind. That he could meet her gaze, and how it felt when he did, flooded her with an ocean’s worth of emotions.

  Persephone loved staring into her cousins’ eyes, it was comforting and reassuring. Staring into Dorian’s however … she hadn’t realized how charged a room could become, how seeing someone and having them see you could lead to such need. It was its own kind of magic, perhaps. One that made her heart gallop in her chest, her mouth water, and her toes curl. It was foolish, but Persephone knew she wouldn’t stop replaying every millisecond of her run-in with the librarian anytime soon.

  The timepiece grew heavier in her hand on the island than it had been in the library. Persephone tucked it into her bra, the safest place to keep anything on her person, and checked the time on her phone. She blinked, read the numbers again, and blinked once more. Five minutes had passed since Persephone had left Hyacinth and Moira’s house that morning.

  Five minutes and what felt like a day. Persephone shook her head at the wonder of it, and rolled out her neck. The intense wear of using magic no longer wore at her fringes. The bone-deep tired she’d carried dissipated as she stood under the cool noonday sun. It must be the island, Persephone thought, that replenished her so fast.

  Persephone needed to know the truth of that connection. It was time to return to Ever House and try and find a way to tell Hyacinth and Moira about the library and Dorian, show them the photograph, tell them about being a walker. They were closer now, surely, to breaking the curse.

  She turned to walk back, and her feet froze on the stones. Persephone tried to move, but the tug around the center of her spine jerked her in the opposite direction.

  Toward Way House.

  Oh no. No, no, no.

  She tried to yank her feet up, unspool herself from her stuck position. Nothing happened. Persephone growled in frustration, twisted her body left and right, she even tried to throw herself forward. It was all to no avail.

  Persephone stood there, eyes closed, irritated, and worked to clear her mind.

  Dorian’s face drifted in, and she heard him telling her: there was a way to her answers.

  Persephone let out a groan. What if he had meant a Way, as in a person?

  She wanted to break the curse, needed to help Hyacinth and Moira, wanted to save her family. What if this was what she needed to do next?

  Persephone took a breath, held it, and felt the tug grow stronger. Her bones hummed with the knowledge—the island wanted her to go see the two witches.

  She looked down at her feet and sighed. “Fine. If this is what’s needed, I’ll do it. But if you want me to go talk to them, then you can keep them from trying to kill me.”

  The island released Persephone, and she stumbled a step forward. She rolled her eyes. Wile Isle had a will almost as strong as hers—clearly she was on a magical island with control issues.

  The journey to the beach was picturesque even as heavy, low resting clouds swept the sun away in the sky. Seagulls perched at the edge of the wharf, standing on wooden posts and hopping along sand dunes. The cream-colored sand was pockmarked from the lapping of the ocean’s waves, and Persephone’s bare feet dipped into the ground as she heel-toed her way across the earth. The briny scent of the sea wrapped itself around her, and Persephone pulled it closer. She tucked the fresh air into her muscles, wove the calm into her bones, pulled in magic, and fortified her will.

  Persephone did not see the darkness reflected against the water as it inked its way along her shadow.

  * * *

  THE TWO WITCHES who claimed the beach, and therefore the ocean brushing against it, had built their house on stilts. It was a pale yellow vision with more windows than walls. A lengthy porch wrapped around the home’s west side, perfect for watching sunsets and admiring fishermen who attempted to come to shore.

  Ellison and Ariel Way loved to admire fishermen. Fishermen, fisherwomen, fisherpeople in general. Any body of beauty was a welcomed sight to their eyes.

  Unless the body was connected to Persephone May.

  Ellison walked outside and stood on the porch, watching Persephone approach. Ellison loved her porch that wrapped like a crescent moon halfway around the house. She loved the smell of the salt in the air that being by the beach afforded. Loved the way the sky w
ould shift from ripe carrot into rosy red as the sun set and reflected off the water like a hundred shimmering lights trapped beneath the surface. Mostly, she loved sitting on the porch and daydreaming about the places she had yet to go. Unlike her sister, Ellison dreamed of travel and seeing sunsets around the world.

  What she didn’t dream of was leaving her sister behind, still nursing a broken heart and untrusting of said world. Ellison decided she couldn’t begrudge Ariel entirely for untrusting people, as she watched the witch from the mainland approach her porch, because people—especially witches—could be tricky.

  And yet Ellison didn’t call for Ari as she watched Persephone approach. Unlike her sister, she wasn’t quite as certain Persephone posed real danger. There were too many threads to this particular web, and too many spiders hiding in plain sight. Ellison only needed to find the right thread and tug.

  The window in the attic opened and Ellison sighed.

  “Really, Elsie?” Ari called down. “You look like a welcome party. Want me to bring out a poisoned fruitcake or a nice basket of barbed wire to entice her closer to our door?”

  “Better than one of your maniacal beasties,” Ellison said, quiet enough to be a whisper, loud enough her sister could hear.

  The truth was there were very few secrets between the two sisters, and irritation was never one of them. Part of the curse of being one of only two sets of witches on island was the gift of having a sister as a best friend. While Ellison missed her mother, and even at times Moira and Hyacinth, she never found herself lonely with Ari around.

  “They’re mechanical, not maniacal. You want maniacal, look to the girl with auburn hair mucking about in our freshly swept sand.”

  Ari was certain the ocean was hers. Everything that hugged the water along Wile Isle belonged to the Ways. That was what Ariel believed and what she expected her sister to believe.

  Ellison believed they were cursed, and she was tired of it.

  As a child, she never cared that they spent their winter months watching the waves and studying the stars, but when she turned twenty, an itch started between Ellison’s shoulder blades. Like all itches, this one was desire. Specifically, the desire to come and go from Wile Isle as Ellison pleased, for months or even years at a time. Over the past decade the itch grew, and it now covered most of her body.

  “She’s coming regardless,” Ellison said, scratching behind her ear. Ari harrumphed as the window slid shut.

  Her sister clomped down the stairs inside, navigating all four floors like a deranged fairy waking from a delightful nightmare. Ari was the size of a sprite, with the temper of an avenging angel. Her copper skin shined as she stepped out onto the porch, the striking sprinkle of freckles danced across the bridge of her nose. Ellison’s own skin was the color of cream, her eyes as stormy as the seas, and her hair as golden as the hiding sun. They were more than sisters, they were Irish twins, but that didn’t prevent them from looking like they belonged to separate families. Ellison looked like a Norwegian priestess and Ariel a Native American warrior princess. It was a reminder that some small part of who they were was because of who their fathers had been, even if they could not recall the men their mother had spent a season or two enchanting.

  “Two sides of one coin reflected in two souls,” Ellison’s mother had said of the near twins when they were children, and this much, at least, was true.

  True twins ran in their family. It was their lineage, and it was said that since power couldn’t be evenly shared, having twins was a harbinger of darkness. For these two, though, sisterhood meant being as close as twins without having shared the same zygote. They were in no greater danger of twinning than the next pair of magical siblings, and their close nature rarely reared its ugly side except when they were arguing over how involved in town they should be during the on season.

  Ariel did not like tourists. Ellison knew they were crucial to supporting their livelihood, and the connections they made—especially during the dark months, when the island closed to outsiders and magically disappeared from maps and navigation tools—made the rest of the year run smoother.

  Some people called Wile Isle the Salem of the South, but Ellison liked to joke it was closer to the True Bermuda Triangle. From the autumn equinox to spring equinox, the way in was shut. Like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, during those months nobody ever came in, and nobody ever went out. They couldn’t. Thanks to Amara and True Mayfair.

  Like Hades and his Persephone, their spell had splintered the island’s welcome in two. Half the year it pulled in people and half the year it refused them. They weren’t frozen like their lost ancestors, but they might as well be during the winter months. Ellison knew the islands had once been a thriving land, where all year-round festivals ran, people celebrated, and neighbors were family. Now, well, now life was split in two seasons: on and off. And they were knee-deep in the off season.

  During the off season there was little to do. Little money to be made on island, and less entertainment to be found. Ellison ran an anonymous (but well-paid through sponsorship) blog called Witch, Please to help make ends meet. She wrote tongue-in-cheek articles on witchcraft and wizardry for money, and sold “blessed” necklaces of dried flowers pressed in glass pendants attached to silver chains for entertainment.

  For her part, Ariel made mechanical automatons and sold them online through her popular Etsy store during winter, and at a booth in town during the summer months when she could be bothered to show up. While Ellison didn’t use her magic to infuse her work—she did rather the opposite, certain no one in their right mind should invest in her posts on “Ten Supremely Adorable Things Every Witch Needs in her Life” and “Crystal-infused Salves to Rev Up Your Lover’s Sex Drive”—Ari delighted in bespelling her creatures. If a person didn’t believe in possessed dolls before they ordered one, that would soon change when they got them home.

  “They’re automatons, Elsie,” Ari said when her sister complained about the risk of exposure from her little joke. “They are doing what they were named to do, and acting on their own will. It’s not my fault no one ever reads the fine print of etymology.”

  The Ways’ magic was a strong magic. Ellison knew that was part of what initially divided them from the Evers. While Moira and Hyacinth were direct descendants of True, Ariel and Ellison came from Amara’s line, as did their mother. The magic between the two lines wasn’t the same, even though they were all descendants. That’s why when their mother and aunt foolishly tried to splinter the curse the magic went unbearably wrong, and did what it did. Strong magic was its own curse, and Ellison believed it was also what caused Hyacinth and Ariel to fight over that girl and cement the divide between the families. Though after what happened with their mothers, perhaps the unbreakable divide was only a matter of time.

  Ellison worried about the magic Ariel used. Aether was tricky. Ari was pulling it from space, and it wasn’t the kind of magic where you could see where it started and ended.

  At least Ari had stopped making the cuckoo clocks; those had been too lifelike and honest. These, well, dolls she supposed you’d call them, Ariel advertised as “purchase at your own risk.” That warning seemed to be to the delight of her customers, but still. A warning was a warning.

  It was the Goddesses’ great sense of humor that had people taking Ellison’s ridiculous works as real and Ari’s as false.

  All in all, even with the curse, they had a good life. A settled and quiet enough life. And all of that, Ellison knew, was about to change as the redheaded witch from the mainland walked up to the base of their steps.

  Ellison, never one to run from a confrontation, started down the stairs to meet her. Her steps faltered when she registered the billowing black cloak, as thick as smoke, trailing after Persephone.

  “What in the Goddess?” Ellison murmured, studying the way the shadow bled and blended.

  Persephone waved, a half smile on her face. “Sorry to intrude,” she called, “and please don’t blast me again, b
ut I really need to speak with you.”

  “Stay where you are,” Ellison said, her eyes flicking from the shadow that was not a shadow to Persephone. The side door clanged open, and within seconds Ariel stood at her sister’s side, a small bag clutched in her hand.

  Magic rippled in the air. The tide rose in the ocean. Darkness drew near.

  * * *

  PERSEPHONE WAS PRETTY certain the two Way witches were unhinged. Maybe it was their natural state—the way the island soothed and revived her, maybe it soured them. Resting witch face, that’s what she called the look they exchanged. Persephone decided she was crazy to come here. Perhaps she’d always been crazy and she was finally claiming her birthright.

  Persephone ran a hand over her hair, finding small tangles knotting it. The hourglass was warm where it was tucked against her heart. Persephone sighed, doubting she’d get much help but hoping she could make sense of the fragments of information floating in her head. If the island sent her here, Persephone had to try.

  “I’m not about to come closer,” Persephone called. “I learned my lesson after the stunt you pulled this morning.”

  “Stunt?” Ariel’s voice rose an octave. “I can show you a stunt, you demonic little tart.”

  Ellison put a hand over her sister’s. “If you bade our warning true, you wouldn’t be here at all.”

  “If it could be helped, I wouldn’t be here, but here I am.” Persephone slipped her hands in her pockets, needing something to do with her restless fingers. Persephone tugged at the fabric inside her pants, growing more edgy the longer she had to hold still. “I’m looking for information. I think, perhaps, you may be the ones who can help me.” Persephone saw the bottom of the necklace in her mind’s eye, drew herself up in courage, and said, “Walker Mayfair?”

  There was a long beat before either of the sisters spoke.

  “I need a tonic,” Ariel said, before swiveling on her heels and going inside.

  Ellison stood as she was, watching the winds run through the freed strands of Persephone’s hair like underwater seaweed being tossed by the current. Ellison’s eyes were as calm as still waters, as dark as any oncoming storm.