The Orphan Witch

by Paige Crutcher

  “The menagerie is frozen but magic has been breaking down inside the hinterland. Cracks forming. Whatever happened with you and my sister True, who was trying to bend you to her will, your battle unspooled the strongest threads locking the hinterland completely away. I played my part in the spell, and my bargain allowed me this freedom to travel here.” She turned her head up to the sky again. “For a price of course.”

  “A price?” Persephone said.

  “Not one worth worrying over.” Amara waved the question away. “Nothing like what your cousin might owe.”

  “Because of Hyacinth’s bargain for a hill of beans?”

  Amara nodded. “She’s being, what is the modern phrase? Worked over by True.”

  Persephone sat down on a cushy patch of grass, pulling her knees to her and slipping her chin onto the back of her hand. She wanted to ask more about Hyacinth, but there was a more pressing question. “Deandra asked me what kind of monster I was. Before I came here. It’s … it’s part of what drove me to leave Greenville. Why would she want me to bend to her, why have me here at all if I’m meant to break the curse?”

  “True’s more powerful on her own land. She has a stronghold here, has for the last decade. It’s also here that you can cross to the hinterland. True needs you, she needs your magic, which is so like mine, so she can be free.”

  “What about the magic stored in the menagerie?”

  “She can’t hold it all. It’s imbued in the objects of wonder she planned to send home with those who attended. That was how she planned to empower them, to share our magic. She needs you to be her conduit.”

  “It’s just never-ending, is it?”

  The responsibility, the power, the loss of control—all of it was too much. Persephone thought of Dorian bound at the library after Hyacinth’s attack, and forced herself to take a centering breath. “Hyacinth brought me here knowing this?”

  “True wears many faces, and they’re all equally convincing,” Amara said. “Hyacinth isn’t the first to be fooled by her, but she kept her ability to mind travel hidden well. You couldn’t have known.”

  Persephone thought of Deandra and ran a hand over her face. “There isn’t any solace in that.”

  “It’s a sorry thing to inherit a legacy such as this,” Amara said.

  “Today I killed my former co-worker,” Persephone said. “True may have possessed her body, but I crushed it to drive her out. Sorry isn’t even close to what this is.”

  “A curse is a promise of pain. You should have inherited a legacy of magic, and were given, instead, a legacy of loss. Your mother. Your grandmother.” Amara stood and paced the perimeter of the cliff. “My sister has always desired power, and she will do nothing to stop at regaining it. You must stop her. If she succeeds, if you or the others do not, we are doomed.”

  Persephone held up a hand, watched the spark of aether try and flicker. “Why does it have to be me?” As angry as she was, Persephone very much wanted it not to be her.

  “Because it must. You are my blood. Directly descended.”

  “What about Hyacinth and Moira, Ariel and Ellison? They’re yours, too.”

  “The Ever sisters come from True, and your other cousins from our baby sister who was off fishing when the spells laid waste to Wile and sent the rest of us to the hinterland.”

  Persephone blinked at her. “What?”

  “My sister and I weren’t the only Mayfair of our generation,” Amara said. “We had a younger sister Louisa, and she is the great-grandmother of your Ariel and Moira.”

  “Why don’t they know this? Why do they think otherwise?”

  “Because I took the knowledge with me, to keep Louisa safe, to protect her from True. You alone are mine.”

  Persephone shook her head in wonder. “You cursed your sister as surely as you cursed yourself.”

  “Under the blood moon, I gave up everything. The price we all paid,” Amara said, her voice growing weak, “was to be lost. Louisa was safe. What’s unforgivable was the loss of the mortal lives within the menagerie. They died as the curse was cast. One hundred innocent souls gone.”

  Persephone swallowed her horror. “I thought they were stranded with you in the hinterland.”

  “No. The magic True used turned greedy as it was being pulled back again. The witches were one thing, but mortal women had little to offer it, so it stole their souls as its price.”

  Persephone gave a slow shake of her head, her stomach rolling over at the thought. “My god.”

  “I live with them every day,” Amara said, tears thick in her voice. “I wake with their death and I retire beside it. There is no escaping what we have done.”

  Persephone blew out a shaking breath. “What does she want? True?”

  “Freedom. The same thing she has always desired. To be known, to see the world. To remake it for the better, as she believes it should be.”

  “How do we stop her?”

  Amara came and sat beside Persephone. Persephone studied the witch’s profile and something clicked in her mind. Amara didn’t hold eye contact with her for more than a few seconds.

  “Amara.”

  The witch turned her face and Persephone tried to catch her eye. “You won’t like what you see, daughter of my daughters,” Amara said.

  “I saw True in Deandra, didn’t I? Who don’t you want me to see in you?”

  Amara stilled. When she turned it was with slow precision. Inch by painful inch. As Amara’s eyes found Persephone’s, silver swirled behind the irises. Persephone stared, transfixed. Persephone saw not one soul staring back, but two, three, four, five, on and on and on.

  “As I said,” Amara told her. “I carry the dead with me.”

  Amara looked away, and Persephone tasted fear so potent it coated her tongue. “How do I stop her?”

  “The way to the hinterland is no longer blocked as it was,” Amara said, pushing to her feet. “True is regaining strength and will use the way to fully return. She wanted you here, it’s why she possessed Deandra. Wanted to drive you to Wile, wanted you to set her free. We give her what she thinks she wants.”

  * * *

  ARIEL RETURNED TO Way House, releasing her rage as she navigated the roads. Time had taught her much, and Ariel knew her anger at Hyacinth wouldn’t gain her anything.

  The hard truth was simple. Hyacinth hadn’t been entirely wrong. Stevie had chosen Hyacinth. She had seen it with her own eyes.

  The other truth was time’s reveal: Ariel didn’t miss Stevie. She stopped missing her almost as soon as the girl was off island.

  Who did she miss?

  She missed Hyacinth. She missed her friend.

  But Hyacinth was no longer that person. The witch she’d become was operating with a broken compass and quite a few loose screws.

  Ariel parked the cart and walked into the house, her feet clipping softly on the side stairs. The screen door jangled its welcome as she creaked it open and let it clang close. The sounds of home were the best tonic she knew.

  Ariel found her sister in the kitchen, at the little breakfast nook, her lost appendage (more commonly referred to as her laptop) open in front of her. A small scrying mirror sat at her elbow.

  Ellison didn’t look up. “What was Moira’s emergency? Did the body of Persephone’s co-worker go missing?”

  Ariel pulled out a chair and thunked down into it. The day was catching up with her, and there were still so many miles to go before she could sleep.

  “No, she has prepared it and will be ready for the send-off when the witching hour comes.” Ariel removed her sweater. “Poor girl. She never had a chance.”

  “The possessed rarely do. If she had lived, she would likely have spent the rest of her life battling her mind. It’s a near impossible thing to recover from having your body and mind violated. There’s a reason possession is the darkest of arts.”

  “Speaking of dark magic, Hyacinth is playing at things she doesn’t understand.” Ariel said, as the cups in the cup
board jostled before her favorite mug in the shape of a whimsical owl floated down to the counter. The stove clicked on and the kettle began to heat. Her favorite lavender tea dropped into her mug, and when the kettle whistled Ariel got up to go pour the water. The house could do many things, but navigating the element of water was not one of them.

  “No kidding. What was she thinking, channeling the spirit of a dead witch for more power?”

  “Oh, it gets better. When I arrived, Hyacinth was dead on the bed.”

  Ellison, whose fingers had been clacking intermittently on her keyboard, stilled. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Ariel added a dollop of honey into the tea, and stirred it three times, counterclockwise. “She used her power over life and death to take herself under.”

  “Her power has never been able to manifest that level of spell.” Ellison said, looking over.

  Ariel sighed. “It seems her powers are finally progressing.”

  “Or she’s bartering for more.” Ellison cocked her head. “Amara?”

  “That wasn’t Amara we saw.” Ariel sipped her tea, raised a single brow. “That was True Mayfair.”

  Ellison leaned back. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Hyacinth told me. She called her by the nickname Gran gave her when she’d tell us the story of Amara and True.”

  “The truest witch?”

  Ariel nodded. “Because Gran thought she was the light and Amara was the dark. I forgot about that theory.”

  “Not the first time Gran would be wrong.”

  The corner of Ariel’s mouth turned up for a moment.

  “Which begs the question,” Ariel said, leaning back. “Why would she tell me? Just to needle me? It’s not adding up. Only stupid villains show their hand early.”

  “Hyacinth is many things, but stupid is not among them.” Ellison pulled the looking glass closer, peered into it. “Why did Hyacinth cross over?”

  Ariel shrugged, sniffed the air. She smelled change. “Where is Persephone?”

  Ellison looked down at her computer, turned it so Ariel could see. “Hyacinth’s not the only one playing in the realm of the dead.”

  Ariel studied the image as Ellison ran her hands through her hair. “The lost Mayfair locket?”

  Ellison nodded. “After I made her a very fine cup of tea, which was a complete waste of my favorite cinnamon spice, Persephone walked through space.” Ellison dropped her hands to massage the muscles on her neck. “She didn’t leave all at once either.”

  Ariel looked up, her expression sharp.

  “Her spirit went first, but her body followed a few minutes later,” Ellison said.

  “She did not astral project.”

  “No. Those haunting her, they slowed down her passage.”

  “Gran’s Mayfair locket story?”

  Ellison smiled. “The locket of power can provide safe passage to lost Mayfair witches and their souls.” She tapped the mirror. “I thought the locket Persephone wore was familiar, and then there’s the mirror. It was Gran’s. It arrived on my pillow the night Persephone arrived. I thought it might show me where Persephone went, but instead all I see is a room full of books.”

  Ariel tilted her head. “You don’t think?”

  “The Library for the Lost really does exist? Yes, yes I do. I think the locket was waiting for her like the mirror was waiting for me.”

  “We spent years as kids trying to contact the library and never got anywhere. Hyacinth always said…”

  Ellison lifted an elegant brow. “That you would have to be lost to find it.”

  “Lost,” Ariel said, thinking of Hyacinth’s form on the bed, of Persephone’s spirit leaving her body. “Or dead.”

  HYACINTH EVER’S JOURNAL

  September 2010

  Stevie isn’t who she says she is.

  She’s been to the Great Mountain. The red dirt on the bottom of her feet tracked into the garden, suffocating my roses. I woke up unable to breathe. When I went to my window, I saw her dancing in the moonlight. She looked up and her eyes were not her own.

  I don’t know who she is.

  Or how to tell Ariel.

  I don’t know what to do at all.

  Fifteen

  AMARA AND PERSEPHONE WALKED from beyond the veil into present day on Wile Isle. It was nine o’clock. The air was crisp, the sky a kaleidoscope of stars. Night had wrapped its arms around the moon. Persephone walked carrying the burden of wanting to be in multiple places at once—in the library, helping Dorian, at Ever House, with her hands around Hyacinth’s neck as she shook answers from her, and then where she was, which was where she knew she needed to be.

  Persephone and Amara went quietly up the beach and climbed the steps to the front entrance of Way House. Persephone wanted this to be a formal introduction. After all, Amara was not the side-door kind of welcome. Amara was an announcement, the gong you chimed before a royal supper, the trumpet you blared.

  Persephone needn’t have worried as the Way witches, being who they were, expected their arrival. Ariel and Ellison sat on the porch in their rocking chairs, drinking wine from oversized mugs as they studied the aggressive inrushing of the tide.

  “You must be why the sea is so unruly,” Ellison said to Amara, tucking one leg underneath. “But you didn’t set off the alarms, so unless our gran failed at teaching us her wards, you’re of the light.”

  “Beatrice Mayfair,” Amara said, with a regal inclination of her head. “She was a marvelous witch. I am someone who remembers.”

  “Remembers what is the question,” Ariel said, before throwing Persephone a searching look. “You appear unharmed.” Her shoulders dropped a fraction in relief, and Ariel shifted her study to the stranger. “We doused our wine with a hearty dose of juniper leaf.”

  “Then you should know I am telling the truth. I bring you no harm.”

  The witch spoke with an unusual cadence, and Ariel studied her more closely.

  “Your grandfather,” the stranger said to Ariel, “was a Proctor. You have the look of him.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You know who she is,” Ellison said, after a sip of her drink.

  “I know she’s not the only one keeping secrets,” Ariel said, her face turning to Persephone.

  “Your cousins know where you’ve been traveling to when you cross worlds,” Amara said, offering a small smile.

  “You can’t penetrate my mind,” Ariel said, shooting Amara a glare. “So don’t act like you know what I’m thinking.”

  “Of course I can,” Amara said, bringing her palms together. “You are the daughter of my daughters, and I am not of this realm. If that weren’t enough, the looks you two exchange are so loud they’re practically screaming.”

  “Your name?” Ariel said, raising a brow. “For a name is a hard thing to steal, and one prefers to gather it freely.”

  “I am Amara Mayfair,” the witch said. “You are Ariel and Ellison Way, formerly Mayfair.”

  Ellison set her mug down with a crack, while Ariel smiled.

  “Can you prove it?” Ariel said.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “May the Goddess greet you,” Ellison whispered.

  “And may she heal you, love you, and treat you well,” Amara finished, with a deep bow.

  “Gran’s blessing,” Ellison said, leaning back and picking up her mug. “Only witches of our line know it, only those who mean us no harm can say it.”

  “It was my blessing, crafted under a harvest moon so many years ago.” Amara pointed to the mirror Ellison had brought out with her. “I was lucky to discover the mirrors on the island aren’t shut off to me behind the veil. What little power I have retained, I used to imbue the looking glass with aether. Basic mirror magic allowed me to keep watch over you, my children, my children’s children, and my children’s children’s children these many years. It has enabled me to keep my threads of humanity intact.”

  “You should have shared your mirrors with your witc
h of a sister,” said Ariel.

  Amara’s smile did not reach her eyes. “Her humanity was bargained off the moment she struck the curse.”

  “I think we might go inside,” Persephone said, rubbing the back of her neck. “There is much to ask, much to say, little time to plan, and I desperately need some of that wine.”

  * * *

  HYACINTH EVER CROUCHED in her garden, collecting herbs and talking to the trees. She did so to center herself, as her sister had taught her.

  Nothing was going as expected, but she couldn’t give up now.

  Ten years ago, in this very garden, Ariel Way told her about a girl she had dreamed about, a girl Ariel believed might break the curse.

  “The grans always said she was coming, that it was only a matter of time,” Ari had said, her hands busy tugging at the weeping willow’s limbs because she could never stay still.

  “Yes, but you think she’s some kind of Queen of the Underworld?”

  “Sure. Who better to break the curse locking our kin in a kind of underworld than a queen?” Ariel had said, dropping the bony branches to blow bubbles out of thin air—showing off her magic without meaning to show it off at all. Magic, energy, was second nature to Ariel.

  Hyacinth looked away, embarrassed that she could only enhance the soil, her magic a whisper to the shout of power coursing in Ari’s veins.

  It drove her to distraction some days.

  “I don’t know, Ari. Why would our moms try and break it if this mythological dream girl were coming?”

  “Maybe they got tired of waiting,” Ariel said, her palms stilling. She never spoke about what happened, even though she was desperate for Hyacinth to help her find a way to send a message to their mothers.

  “Maybe,” Hyacinth said, not sure she bought it. “But still. I think we have to be careful we don’t screw up and get sent away from the island, too.”

  “We have something they don’t.” Ariel flashed her a grin. “The desire to not harm, and each other.”