Persephone tugged on the threads of space once more, and wrapped them around Ellison, Ariel, Moira, and Hyacinth. Persephone saw Ever House in her mind, saw the garden as it was before the scorch marks marred the earth. Saw the little gnome that guarded the land for the fairies and the fates with its single eye.
“Blessed be my sisters,” Persephone whispered to the frozen forms of the Way witches, and to the Evers.
With love in her heart, Persephone recalled the words in her mother’s letter.
“Love is giving up the whole world for the people you love. I gave up mine for you, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. The only way to keep you safe was to give you a fresh start. I may not have been beside you, but I have always been with you.”
She understood the sacrifices love could demand now, and she was willing to make them for the women before her.
Persephone gave Hyacinth one last smile, and sent them forward across the realm, home to Wile Isle.
* * *
WIND FLUTTERED THROUGH the menagerie, a cold chill cutting across Persephone’s cheeks as loss ripped through her.
Persephone’s strength wavered as she turned and crossed to True Mayfair’s huddled form.
True was a witch no more; her power siphoned away, her magic leaving behind a husk of a woman with sad eyes and fear in her heart.
“Your sister gave me a gift,” Persephone said, crouching beside True. “Now it’s my turn to give you one, and restore a balance in the process.”
Persephone placed her thumb on True’s third eye, and saw beyond this land to the Library for the Lost. Knew what the library sought.
Persephone smiled her most secret of smiles, and made a wish for change.
She snapped her fingers, and the threads Persephone released wrapped around True’s wrists and ankles.
Persephone reached out a hand, and pushed.
True toppled from this world into the next, and dropped down into the Library for the Lost.
Persephone wrote on the air with the pen.
The library needs a guardian. This one has no magic, but has a debt to pay. Perhaps now the library will consider your debt served.
The ground beneath Persephone’s feet rumbled and stilled. There was a pause in the decay. The land beyond the veil waited.
Persephone’s heart had made its greatest wish, and this time Persephone held out her own hand.
She counted slowly down from ten, and when Persephone opened her eyes, she laughed as warm fingers intertwined with hers.
* * *
“HOW ARE YOU here?”
Dorian’s eyes were smiling. “Isn’t that my line?”
He looked around the room, at the once powerful objects that were now regular items housed in the fractured menagerie. “What did you do, Persephone May?”
She squeezed his hand and waved her other palm at the wall. The cracks formed into man-sized holes. “I’m restoring the balance, all the balances,” Persephone said. “Come and see?”
Breaking a curse follows the same rules as breaking anything. A break needs to heal. The seductive nature of magic itself can cause a break. More begets more and as True Mayfair learned, once you have a little of a good thing, it’s a short jump into why not have a lot? Persephone didn’t have the same desire as True. Or even Hyacinth or any of her cousins. Persephone had only ever wanted one thing: to belong. To have family who loved and supported her, and to find her place in the world.
So it was, perhaps, in the end, almost easy for Persephone to do what needed to be done for the worlds to heal. To sacrifice herself.
Sacrifice meant the people she’d come to love could return home. Knowing they would be safe, that Moira would understand why she’d done what she had to do, Persephone could be at peace.
Persephone knew her place in the world. She was the balance. The key.
She understood it all now.
Her grandmother and mother had given her one of the greatest gifts. From them, Persephone had learned a powerful lesson. You sacrifice whatever it takes for the ones you love, especially when it’s the right thing.
Amara had echoed this sentiment, as had her cousins. And so, this was always her path. To be sacrificed for, and to sacrifice for in return.
That, Persephone decided, was the heart of love, and she knew the heart of it was good.
The world beyond the veil was no longer crumbling. Its ties to the realm beyond were holding, connected to Persephone and the spell she wove even now as she walked Dorian to the center of town. It was the Spell of Dreams, as it should have always been.
“What are we doing here?” Dorian asked, his hand warm in hers, his faced tipped up to drink in the sun. It was the first time he’d been out of the library in two hundred years, and he appeared half afraid to blink and miss a single tree or brook or branch or cloud.
The air smelled of a thousand things, unmanufactured and pure. It was a delightful assault on the senses. Dorian’s shoes clipped against the cobblestones. Everything was real here. Everything was out from behind doors and covers and the cloak of oppressing magic.
“I wanted to say goodbye,” Persephone said, careful to keep her voice light even as her heart tripped over itself in her chest.
Dorian stopped walking. “Goodbye? Why do you have to say goodbye?” He stepped closer to Persephone, staring deep into her eyes and the Many who dwelled there. “You did it, Persephone. You saved everyone. You saved me. I wouldn’t be here, freed from the library, if that weren’t true. How did you do it?”
“It was the final step in the spell. The balance had to be reset in the library and back on Wile Isle. True Mayfair is now drained of her power. She’ll wander for an eternity if the library deems it, guarding the stacks and living just a whisper away from the power she so craves. She won’t be able to harm anyone again.”
Persephone pulled out the box her grandmother gave to Dorian, opened it, and showed him the mirror inside. “My cousins are back where they belong, guarding and keeping the island.” Reflected in the mirror were the four women. Moira sat in the garden with her arms around the blessing tree, Hyacinth behind her, with arms around her sister, and the Way sisters with their arms around Hyacinth. “They will finally be free to come and go from Beltane to Michaelmas to the spring equinox and every time in between.” Persephone breathed deeply as she closed the lid on the box. “This world needs its guardian, and the souls from the Library for the Lost deserve a way out of purgatory. I can give them that here.”
Persephone pulled him further down the cobblestone path to a clearing that had not existed hours before. Dorian could not know it, but it was a replica of the exact spot Amara had taken Persephone to when they met. A mirror image of the land of their family’s birth on the cliffs of Scotland.
The rest of the land on this world Persephone continued to make. She shifted each surface to feature places that reminded her of Ariel and Ellison, Moira, and even Hyacinth. Persephone only had to see it with her heart and head for it to rise. Pieces of other worlds woven into one fabric to make a tapestry.
Here on the cliffside, Persephone paused at a stone cottage with a chuffing chimney and a small creek running beside it. There was a hammock in the yard and a swing attached to a large oak tree. Two jade Adirondack chairs sat on the small porch, a little bookshelf in between them. In the yard, beside the small garden, sat a gnarly little gnome with a bemused expression tugging on his elfin face. He was missing an eye.
Persephone smiled at the scene before them. “You know, I’ve never had a proper home before.”
* * *
IN ALL HIS time in and out of port, Dorian lived only for and on the sea. A boat was no home, not really. The library had been a cage, an occasionally gilded one, but a cage nevertheless.
He looked at Persephone’s profile. At the strength in how she studied the land, the way her shoulders rolled back and down, like a soldier preparing herself. Was it any wonder, he thought, that the one treasure he’d never expected turned out t
o be a witch who could snow him under with the lift of her finger?
“That’s all well,” Dorian said. “I won’t try to stop you, but I’ll be damned if I’m going anywhere.”
Persephone swiveled to face him, her stalwart gaze and warrior’s posture dropping in a flash. “What?”
“You brought me here to say goodbye?” He shook his head. “You saved me, and thought what? You would push me away?”
“I’m giving you a chance to have the life you never had,” she said, her voice tinged with exasperation, her eyes going dark.
“Not if it’s not with you.”
“This isn’t a vacation, Dorian. You just got out of purgatory, are you so willing to trade it for another one?”
“It’s not purgatory,” he said. “It was a temporary stopover, maybe, but you said you’re restoring the balance, and I can’t imagine the balance means you sacrificing everything to never get what you desire.”
“You know that’s not how magic works.”
“I know there’s always a way, a loophole, if you’re clever enough to search. For too long I wasn’t. I accepted my fate, pitied myself. I didn’t fight hard enough, but you, you have done nothing but fight and you’ve done more than move mountains, you’ve unmade and remade worlds.” He reached out, took her face in his hands. “I shouldn’t be here at all, and I won’t leave you now.”
Persephone’s breath froze. This wasn’t going how she planned, and the offer was too big.
“This is what I want,” Dorian said. “All I want.”
He brought his lips to hers, and poured everything he couldn’t say into the action. Persephone’s arms went up and around him, and some of the magic she carried couldn’t help but slip into him. The light that bound her bound itself to him, and Persephone finally gave in to her heart’s greatest hope.
They kissed the stars down into the sky and the lightning bugs into the air. They kissed the waters warm and the air into mist.
When they finally unwove themselves from each other, Dorian reached into his pocket and pulled out a book with the final page unwritten.
“I think it’s time,” he said.
Persephone smoothed a hand down her hair, and let out a laugh. She passed him the pen he’d given her and called into the wind, pulling the stars up from inside her and sending them out.
Dorian wrote the words Persephone spoke.
The Many were finally free …
Two by two, the Many ghosted from Persephone. They shifted and formed as they walked from shadow to shade to solid being.
A strong wave of gratitude and love crested over Persephone as the lost souls from the library and from Three Daughters islands were lost no more.
Persephone and Dorian watched them walk into town, into their new life, safe in the knowledge that they were guarded and they were loved.
Dorian stared at Persephone, his heart in his eyes. “For the first time in two hundred years, I know what it is to feel free.”
Persephone looked up at Dorian. Safe in the knowledge that she was neither alone nor lonely. Those she loved were safe and the curse was broken.
She was guarded and she was loved.
Persephone May was finally free.
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK OF MAGIC would not exist were it not for the truly amazing people who assisted me in the journey of this novel.
Ashley Blake, you are more than a fearless champion of my work, and agent extraordinaire. You’re one hell of a friend. Your guidance and support have meant more than I can say. Rebecca Podos, thank you for going above and beyond, and for your help in making it all happen.
My spectacular editor, Monique Patterson, who believed in the magic of the women of Wile Isle. I am so grateful for you and your vision for this book, and damn lucky to work with you. A huge thanks to Mara Delgado Sánchez, as well as DJ DeSmyter, Rivka Holler, Sara LaCotti, Jessica Zimmerman, and all the wonderful people at St. Martin’s Press.
I belong to an extraordinary sisterhood of writers. The Porch— JT Ellison, Ariel Lawhon, Laura Benedict, Helen Ellis, Patti Callahan Henry, Lisa Patton, and Anne Bogel. You each inspire me in a thousand and one ways. JT and Ari, thank you for holding me up (sometimes literally) and cheering me on during even the hardest of days.
My Goonies, who are truly the only people I would willingly follow underground for a quest anywhere at any time: Lauren Thoman, Sarah Brown, Myra McEntire, Court Stevens, Carla Lafontaine, Kristin Tubb, Erica Rodgers, Alisha Klapheke, and Ashley Blake. You make everything better.
Alisha, this book would not exist if not for you. You told me to write it, you read it as it was written, and you never doubted me or it for a single millisecond.
Myra, thank you for getting down on the floor with me, and always having my six.
Special thanks to Lauren Roedy, Rae Ann Parker, Victoria Schwab, Dana Carpenter, River Jordan, Joy Jordan Lake, Bren McClain, Kerry Madden, Alissa Moreno, Jolina Petersheim, Blake Leyers, and Brent Taylor, whose encouragement and thoughtful words I carry in my heart. You have made a difference.
Rachel Sullivan, thank you for always cheering me on, you are a true goddess like your queen of a mother before you. Lynne Street and Jenn Fitzgerald, thank you for being the best early readers ever and constant supporters. Amelia McNeese, thank you for never doubting I would get here.
Dallas Starke, Katy Melcher, Sara Cornwell, and Julia Sullivan, huge love and thanks to each of you for keeping me sane over our twenty- and thirty-year friendships, being excited with me for each step of this publishing journey, and accepting and celebrating me for being exactly who I am.
A bushel of hugs to my brother Josh McNeese, for putting up with all the books and teaching me the poetry of really good music.
A huge hat tip of gratitude to Marilyn Weaver and Ken McNeese, and Mel and Mack Weaver, my parents and grandparents, who encouraged me to celebrate my overactive imagination, championed my ability to read and, well, do pretty much everything else at the same time so long as I didn’t have to put the books down, and allowed me to be as weird as I wanted to be.
Marcus, your love and support have changed my life and shown me what true magic is. You, Rivers, and Isla are my everything.
Reader, this book is for you. May it be a light if you need one, or simply a reminder that there is blindingly brilliant light in you.
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
For me, there is truth in magic and magic in truth. When I sat down to write The Orphan Witch, I was six months’ pregnant with my daughter and unable to visualize what the future would be. In my mind, I was holding a scrapbook of the past, flipping through losses and miracles and promising mistakes that are the story of my own life. As I looked back in order to dream forward, I knew a few things to be certain: women are badasses, magic is real (though the varying forms of what magic is are debatable), and books are the best portal to another world.
The Orphan Witch is a story I always wanted to write but spent years too scared to put pen to page. It is a story of sisterhood and sacrifice, of the high cost of living a life of courage, and the beauty and curse of great power. It is a story of powerful women whose stories (like the stories of all the magnificent women I know) don’t have linear plot lines. We carry worlds inside of us, and those worlds are layered and nuanced. I wanted to illuminate this strength, and how it amplifies in the face of true sisterhood.
I also couldn’t stop thinking about how shadows don’t run from the light—they’re an echo of it. We don’t have to be afraid of the darkness when we know how to use it. I thought a lot about the incredible women I know, how strong these women are. How flawed they are. How they don’t let the wounds they carry stop them from being the people they want and are meant to be. How no matter where they come from, who they’ve been, or what they’ve had to overcome, when they are accepted and encouraged to be who they are, well, anything is possible. Much like our shadows, magic is there, even if we can’t always see it.
&nb
sp; Sincerely,
Paige Crutcher
Discussion Questions
What was your favorite part of The Orphan Witch?
What was your least favorite?
Did you race to the end, or was it more of a slow burn?
Which scene has stuck with you the most? Why?
Did reading The Orphan Witch make you want to learn more about the history of magic?
Of all the information presented in the book, what has stayed with you the most?
What feelings did this book evoke for you?
If you got the chance to ask the author of this book one question, what would it be?
Which character in the book would you most like to meet?
Which places in the book would you most like to visit?
What do you think of the book’s title and cover? How does each relate to the book’s content?
How well do you think the author built the world in the book?
What would you have done differently if you were Persephone?
What would you be willing to sacrifice for those you love?
Do you think the author made it clear why Hyacinth made the choices she made? Would you have made the same choices?
What do you think the author’s purpose was in writing this book? What ideas was she trying to get across?
If you could hear this same story from another person’s point of view, who would you choose?
If you could read a continuation of the story, whose point of view would you choose to read?
What do you think happens to each of these characters after the end of the book?
About the Author
PAIGE CRUTCHER is a former southern correspondent for Publishers Weekly, an artist and yogi, and co-owner of the online marketing company Hatchery. You can sign up for email updates here.
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