The Orphan Witch

by Paige Crutcher

  The Way sisters did not often leave home if they could help it. Town, during the on season, found its way to them. Once, a decade before, they had gone regularly. They had, in fact, sat for tea in Our Delights with the Ever sisters, visited with the postmistress, and attended every in-season festival. Once upon a time, when Ellison thought of the Evers, she thought family. That was back when Ariel Way looked at Hyacinth Ever and saw a kindred spirit.

  “She’s a wild, and occasionally reckless, witch like myself,” Ariel had once told Ellison. “Hyacinth loves her family and who she is. She isn’t pretending about anything.”

  Ariel had seen a friend who understood her. Back then Ellison had agreed. After all, she had foreseen that Hyacinth would introduce Ariel to the woman who would hold the key to Ari’s heart.

  The problem was Ellison couldn’t see everything. Just as she never saw Persephone coming, she never saw Hyacinth stealing Ariel’s girlfriend for herself, or using Ari’s ex as a means to hurt Ariel. She didn’t see that the girl wasn’t who she said she was, or that she would solidify a divide between the Ways and the Evers. That time, Ellison saw everything far too late.

  Ellison’s feet moved softly over the cobblestone path as she walked into town. She rolled her shoulders back and lifted her nose to the sky. The world outside the beach smelled of blooming roses and a sweetly salted brine. It was a mix of Way and Ever, of curse and life. It was, Ellison knew, the smell of home.

  The oaks bordering the path were thick with moss and mist. The morning was rolling back, bringing the warmth of the sun out even as cool air chilled down into her marrow. Ellison could see the dark, the shadows that arrived the moment Persephone stepped off the boat and onto the beach. Part of Ellison wanted to blame her sister for tempting fate, for traveling with the boat master to the dock to test the boundaries and try and leave the island during the winter months. Ari had been itching to try for years, determined the curse was finally weakening as time ran out.

  Ellison knew she missed their mother, missed a woman she believed had abandoned them over the curse. Ariel also missed the combined passion she and Hyacinth had for trying to bring home their mothers. She missed her bosom friend. A part of Ari may have even wanted to find a way to break the damned curse on her own, to show Hyacinth, to show their mother, she didn’t need either of them.

  Ariel had mistaken the lack of activity on the island, the lack of wards being unbroken and time moving without incident, as a promise of safety. It had been a lure, and it had cost them. For when Ariel left the island for less than an hour, Persephone had arrived.

  Ever since the delivering of that particular woman to the shore, things had gone from annoying to worse for the Way sisters.

  Ellison stepped through the hanging foliage and past the WELCOME TO WILE ISLE sign. She waved a hand over the trailing roses, pulling a bit of moisture from the pricking leaves onto the tips of her fingers as she passed. The water called to Ellison, knew her as only like can know like. She tried to see into the bead on her fingertip, to find the vision clearly nestled there, but the Goddess was quiet.

  It was early enough that shopkeepers were just setting their kettles to boil, shaking the linens out, and readying their stores for the day. It was late enough for mischief to be born.

  She paused and watched a pretty man with hair the color of copper navigate the walkway. Her fingers itched to toss back the long bangs that fell across the bridge of his nose and hid his eyes. She wondered if they were as gray as the sky before a storm, or as blue as the horizon after. She imagined how they’d widen if she walked over and pushed him down into the nearby bench and climbed atop him. How quickly those eyes could fill with lust. How easy it might be to show him how to please her.

  Ellison longed for connection, she longed to share her bed and her heart, and she was rather desperate to do so anywhere but here.

  Forcing her gaze away from the man’s devastatingly sharp jawline and broad shoulders, and her thoughts away from the trouble a tumble could bring her longing heart, Ellison saw the maelstrom as it swirled in the center of town. One minute the air was empty, the next it was an upturn of a tempest, cutting through space and bringing a flash of green amid a contrast of bright aether light. She knew it for who it was, rather than what it meant.

  “Fool of a witch,” Ellison said, picking up her stride and crossing to stand before it as it slowed to a stop.

  Looking disheveled and very nearly heartbroken, Persephone May came to solidity and looked up at Ellison.

  Persephone’s mouth opened and closed as she stared in surprise. Ellison quirked a brow, and worked through the words she’d mentally recited thirteen times on the way into town in an effort to get them just right. Before Ellison could mutter so much as a vowel, the sky split apart.

  Lightning shot up from Ellison’s feet and Ellison raised her hands, blocking the surge. It bounced off her protection spell and sparks skittered across the sky.

  Green light sparked down from clouds, and Persephone stumbled back.

  Ellison tried to call out, but her voice was frozen in her throat. She looked down at the glow coming from her fingers. Space. Time. The fibers of her being were being pulled from her like a thread tugged at just the right angle to unravel a sweater.

  Persephone was siphoning her power.

  Ellison growled out in anger. She looked across the way and saw that the man with the copper hair was frozen in form. Space was being manipulated, and freezing the world outside their grain of sand. Ellison held up her hands higher. The lightning crashed across the sky once more. She gazed over at Persephone, and past her to the shadows hovering at the edge of the stone path. Ellison pulled her power back into her and tried to bind it to her being.

  Thunder rumbled, and another shot of green light sparked down from the sky. Ellison looked at Persephone’s face. Time seemed to speed up as she took in the quivering lower lip, how Persephone held up her trembling right hand.

  Then Persephone May flung out her arm, and shot pure white light straight into Ellison’s heart.

  HYACINTH EVER’S JOURNAL

  Autumn solstice, ten years ago

  Change is coming.

  I know it because the wind is unable to find its course. It comes in from all directions at all hours.

  I’ve been having strange dreams about a woman and a sea of people. In the dream, I’m underwater, too—just beneath the surface, but I’m still breathing. When I wake up, I feel so sad.

  The truth is I feel sad all the time.

  I’m going to see if Moira will come with me to Wile’s Great Mountain tonight. Try and find where the wind is getting caught. There’s something off with the wards Gran set there, the ones that only sound when something crosses from another world into this one—it’s the only explanation I have for it.

  Ariel isn’t speaking to me, or I’d ask her.

  I miss my friend.

  Change is coming. I fear it’s already here, and I wish I could say I didn’t feel so lost.

  Seven

  PERSEPHONE WATCHED IN HORROR as Ellison Way staggered back and crumpled to the ground. One second Ellison was standing in front of Persephone, with an imposing set of her shoulders and a glint in her eye. The next, like rocks tumbling down a steep cliff, Ellison collapsed to the earth.

  Persephone hadn’t meant to do it. She didn’t know why the witch had charged her and attacked her like she had. She didn’t understand why the Ways hated her so. But Persephone had simply wanted her to stop. She acted in defense. Her hand had gone up and all she could think in that moment was: No more.

  Now Persephone’s hands flew up to cover her mouth in horror. As the storm around them receded, Persephone stumbled forward, and quickly bent over the fallen witch, searching for a pulse. A door opened behind Persephone and Laurel rushed out.

  “Elsie?” Laurel called, seeing Ellison lying on the ground as limp as any unpuppeted marionette. Laurel’s face lost its color as she stared down, and she, too, dropped to her k
nees to search for signs of life.

  “She just collapsed,” Persephone said, which was a kind of truth. Her voice shook and her hands trembled as she clasped them to her chest.

  “We need her sister,” Laurel said, not bothering to look up. “Ariel Way. The number’s in the office on the inside wall behind the desk.” A wind blew in from the east and Laurel looked up. “Never mind, she knows.” She turned now to Persephone, who wore nothing but flannel pajamas and a worried frown. “Go,” Laurel said. “You’re staying with the Evers, so it’s best if you’re not here when Ari arrives. Theirs is a line you won’t want to cross.”

  “But—”

  “Go,” Laurel repeated, more sharply this time. Then softening her tone, added, “Please.”

  Persephone nodded and stood. She turned and increased her speed as she walked out of the center of town down the side walkway behind the shops, and onto the cobblestone path. Persephone didn’t feel her feet, could barely register the racing of her heart. She heard nothing and saw no one as she gave in to the fear and horror of her own thoughts.

  Persephone had attacked, possibly killed, Ellison Way. She’d never killed anything bigger than a spider, and even then had profusely apologized for her actions. True, Ellison was likely about to attack her first—and not for the first time—but Persephone had crossed a line.

  Persephone’s magic had not failed her this time, but she’d used it for harm. What did Moira start every morning meditation with? And harm none. Persephone had broken the first rule.

  As she staggered up the road, she didn’t feel the blood rushing to her head, or the sweat pooling down her spine. She didn’t blink away the tears or register them as they fell.

  Persephone never realized she was following the wind, until it blew her over.

  One minute she was upright, the next she was on her face. Persephone tried to stand but the darkness wrapped itself around her.

  Persephone fought. She rolled to her side, and through the shadows, saw the town beyond them. She realized she was no longer in the present world.

  The island was as it had been before, picture-perfect, newly built and adorned. This time, however, Persephone saw the spire of what could only be a carnival or circus tent. A white awning rippled in the wind, and the sounds of laughter and music flowed out and around Persephone like a snow globe encasing a lonely snowwoman.

  A voice whispered in her head. A soft sigh that grew louder and louder until it nearly split her apart.

  The way. The way.

  The world spun faster and faster. Cracks splintered down Persephone’s spine, inside her arms, along her sides.

  Persephone screamed.

  The very seams where the universe had sewn her together were coming apart. Persephone tried to quiet her mind, to call on the training Moira had instructed her in day after day to help prevent any mental attack, but the voice was nestled too deep.

  The way, Persephone.

  Persephone was losing her battle against the darkness pressing in on her. Her strength was fading faster than a tide turning a current. Persephone knew she didn’t have long, and as she drifted to oblivion, she closed her eyes and saw Dorian’s concerned face shining in the darkness. Her heart lurched at the loss of a chance to finally, maybe, discover someone else in a way that made her heart race.

  A keening deep within Persephone sparked at the thought. At the realization of all she did not know, and never would if she gave in to the dark.

  Persephone dug her nails into her palms and saw the white light she’d sent into Ellison Way. It was aether, space, in its truest essence.

  It was a door to open all the blocks barricading Persephone into herself. The choice was hers. She could break down the walls within herself and see what she was truly made of, or she could crawl into herself and die.

  Persephone reached deep into the depths of her soul, of her heartbreak, of her long-standing and impossible dream of wanting to be more, to be known, to be found.

  And Persephone May opened her eyes.

  She saw, clearly, who she was and who she might become. Two selves reflected in one mirror, splintered in half, waiting to be reknit. Persephone knew who she wanted to be.

  She reached deep and screamed for all she was worth. Pushing, fighting, forcing it back, the darkness pooled around her. It sloughed off in ripples and waves, rolling back into the cracks in the earth.

  For a long time, Persephone did not move.

  When she could, she rolled over and pressed her face and fingers into the grass at the edge of the path. Slowly, with the last of her focus, she dragged her strength from the land.

  When she could open her eyes without crying out in pain, Persephone reached out with her mind and called one name.

  * * *

  DORIAN WAS IN the middle of scouring the stacks for a very specific book when he felt the earth shake beneath his feet. He stumbled away from the shelves and watched as they warped and curved. The Library for the Lost changed its shape, reworking the geometrically angled room into a large cylinder. Magic ripped through the air, cracked down the hall and burst toward the stacks. The book Dorian had been seeking flew off the shelf. The book wrote and rewrote itself, pages tumbling out and shredding into nothing as new words and fresh ink and parchment fluttered in.

  In all his years, so very many years, as the guardian of the library, Dorian had never seen such a sight. The library was thrown to its regular fits, particularly when he challenged its wishes, but this was something else.

  The rest of the books shifted and straightened. New rows appeared, others deleted, and a chandelier made of prisms and balls of white flowing light encased in water descended from the ceiling in the center of the room. Dorian knew what those glowing orbs were before the word solidified in his mind.

  Aether.

  How?

  The walls of the building shook as rooms were rewritten. Shadows moved against the walls, slinking in as far as the edge of the stacks. They reached out, trying to grasp a way in but were propelled back by the light.

  “It’s not your time, friends,” Dorian said, his voice solemn as he watched them wait and retreat. “But time is certainly trying to speed up.”

  Dorian waited out the last of the aftershocks, and when the room was as silent as a prayer, he took a calm step forward. The book he’d been seeking fluttered its cover once, like a lady shaking out her skirt. Dorian reached for his stepladder, and counted the new steps in its wake. Seven more had appeared. He climbed up until he was eye to spine with the book in question.

  “Ah,” he said, giving a small bow to the book with the ash tree and crescent moon on the cover. The Mayfair grimoire. “It’s as I thought.”

  He stepped back down the ladder and crossed to the door. Dorian’s hand was on the knob when he heard his name cried out, heard the wound in her voice, as she tried to rip him through time and space.

  Dorian leaned in. He tried like hell to hold on. He didn’t stand a chance.

  Dorian crumpled to his knees as pain overtook him.

  It was as though a knife slashed into his side and yanked down and up, down and up. Each time it completed its journey, the seams of his soul were reknit. Dorian was being torn apart, knitted back together, and torn apart. The layers of his soul shredded as Persephone tried and failed to yank him from the library.

  He didn’t know how long it lasted, how long magic fought an impossible war to move an immovable object through time. In the space of seconds or hours or days or years, Dorian bled apart and was reknit again.

  That was the problem with curses. They cannot unmake themselves, no matter how hard a walker might try.

  When it finally stopped, and Dorian was whole once more, he wiped the sweat from his brow, and let a single tear slide down his cheek.

  He said her name once, and only once.

  Oh, Persephone.

  * * *

  THE BOAT PULLED up to the dock. A girl opened a red umbrella before she stepped off the skiff. The captain
of the vessel had never been to Wile Isle before, and he liked the look of the island as much as he’d trusted the smile on that wicked girl’s face the moment she’d placed her money in his hand.

  The girl, for she was just young enough to still be in girlhood, looked like an impressionist painting come to life. Delicate lines, soft colors, lovely features—all except the eyes. There was something banked in them, embers of an alien nature that had the boat captain looking over his shoulder every hundred yards or so after he left her on the island to make sure she hadn’t somehow materialized out of the water and back into the boat.

  As she stood on the dock, Deandra Bishop studied the island and turned her gaze to the little yellow house some ways down along the beach. Seagulls and crabs skittered along the dunes and sand. She turned to step closer, and found a magical barrier had been erected making the way impassable.

  Clever witches.

  She lifted a single thick brow, cocked her head, and turned back to the cobblestones. Then, umbrella held high enough to keep the mist and rain from doing more than dusting across her shoes, she swiveled her hips and sashayed up the path toward the large house built into the hill.

  Deandra was alone, which was disappointing, for there was no one to hear her song.

  “Swish swish

  A siren’s wish

  Come come

  She beckons me on.”

  Deandra smiled her sharpest smile, the one that bore the uncanny resemblance to a pair of pinking shears. She had known magic was building, knew it was only time before someone did something foolish—like try to break apart the worlds locked within Wile Isle before they understood what they even were. Deandra had bided her time and hidden herself well after what happened last time, and as the water gave way to carrying all things along its channels, she heard the spell when it struck.

  Then she hitched her ride on the closest boat and crossed the barrier.