Ever Cursed

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “There is more than one way to be a witch.” A whisper before my legs take over, and even my heaviest skirt can’t hold me back.

  23. JANE

  We run past hundreds of people in boxes. Everyone’s mothers and daughters and wives. I don’t know why I cast the spell that way, so that only women would be hurt. Everyone who is not a mother or daughter or wife stands by the boxes. Some of them cry. Some of them pound the glass. Some of them are running toward the castle, like the king might fix it for them.

  But when has the king fixed anything, really?

  And maybe the people who aren’t women aren’t in glass boxes, but they sort of are, too. The boxes my magic made are glass and misshapen. But there have been boxes always, at least while my family has ruled, while my father has ruled. The king and the people who think like him love boxes.

  We have all been in boxes this whole time. Witch. Royal. Farmhand. Attendant. Spellbound. Good. Bad. And it’s done nothing for us. It’s been wrong. Even when it worked for me, it was wrong.

  By the time we get to the Home on the Hill, I’m worn out from trying to rebuild everything I’ve thought I’ve known. And my mouth tastes a little like dill. Like dill on top of cucumber, but that cannot be, because my mouth isn’t allowed to taste and the spell is almost True and we don’t have the crown with which to break it.

  Still. Dill. Unmistakable.

  “My hands are hot,” I say when we get there. “Is this the spell turning True?” Every small shift in my body feels like it could be the end. Time is hard to track in Always Day; if it isn’t too late, it is getting close.

  “Mine too,” Olive says.

  Willa tucks her hands into ours and grins. “Witches’ hands get warm when they’re close to home,” she says. Her heart is beating in her hands. Mine beats right back at her.

  “This isn’t my home,” Olive and I say at the same time.

  “If you’re a witch, then it is,” Reagan says.

  A dozen witches are gathered in the living room of the Home on the Hill, sitting around a woman with a voice I recognize. She must be Reagan’s grandmother. The voice I heard when I was on the roof. The voice that came from nowhere, came from here.

  Her face looks nothing like Reagan’s. It looks, actually, a little like mine. Not the way I look now, wasting away, but the way I look underneath the spell. She has my straight back and upturned nose and long hair and tired eyes. Being near her feels good, the way being near Reagan feels good. Better than good. Right.

  My hands are warm. She feels like home.

  Her legs are covered in skirts. It’s beautiful at first glance. Every kind of fabric, a hundred patterns, a thousand shades. But a closer look shows she is stuck beneath them: they are heavy; they are a punishment for a lifetime of magic.

  “Princess Jane,” she says when she sees me. “Your Spellbound.”

  “And the Spellbinding,” I say. I hold out my skirt, wishing again and again that it were more like Olive’s, something light and romantic and pretty. But it is mine. It is my magic.

  “Ah,” Reagan’s grandmother says. “Well. Yes.” She looks to her left, and I see Lady Lill is there. She fits right in, nestled between Reagan’s grandmother and a tall woman Reagan introduces as her aunt Idle. It looks like Lill was always one of them and never lived among us.

  Some of the younger witches react as I’d expected, oohing and aahing at a princess with a witch’s skirt. And Reagan’s mother shuts her eyes like she’s not ready to see it. But Reagan’s grandmother only nods and nods. “Willa,” she says. “The candle.”

  Willa runs out of the room, then comes right back with a large candle that they all make space for, stepping away from it like its light needs room to breathe. It’s the candle she showed us on the roof, except it’s changed.

  A tutor once told me I’d know magic when I saw it, and I see it now, coming from that candle. It glows a glittering rosy gold. Shinier than anything in our castle. It’s hard to look at it, and the flame only seems to grow and grow. If I weren’t in a room full of witches, I’d be afraid it would lose control of itself and start a fire, but the witches don’t wince away from it or worry at it.

  “The kingdom at rest again?” Reagan asks. She looks confused at the color.

  “At rest is lighter,” Willa says.

  “But unrest is red,” Reagan says. “That’s not unrest.”

  Olive and I look at each other while everyone looks at the candle. Olive’s been out in the world, at least. She knows more about Ever than I do, a fact I know now to be true that a few days ago I would have fought hard against.

  But Olive looks confused too. She leans close to me, whispering into my ear. “I don’t know much about witches,” she says. “But when we are small, we’re taught to stay far away from here.”

  “Why?” I ask. I know why we’ve stayed away, but I don’t know enough about Olive’s life, the lives of anyone in Ever, to guess at what they’re afraid of, what they worry about, who they avoid, who seems like a threat. I don’t know what she does on the few days off a year we give her, and I’ve never asked her what rules she and the rest of the subjects of Ever follow.

  “Well. Because they’re just as bad as the royals,” Olive says. For years, I considered Olive an almost friend, but also an almost accessory. She was there; she was kind; I liked her; she required nothing of me.

  Her words stop me. I look at her. Truly. The way I never have before. She’s angry. She has always been angry.

  “You hate us,” I say. I’ve apologized. I’ve tried to do the right thing. I’ve promised myself I would protect her from my father from now on. But it’s so small, compared to the rest of it. Of course her magic is good and helpful and mine is itchy and heavy and wrong. I shouldn’t be confused by it. It’s who we are.

  “It seems sort of like you hate us,” Olive says.

  “We were Spellbound—” I say, and Olive shakes her head at the excuse.

  “We’ve been hungry too,” she says slowly. Witches who were watching the flame turn to us and listen. “We’ve been tired. We’ve been loveless and desperate to forget it all. We’ve been hopeless. For years we’ve been hopeless.”

  It’s quiet, in the Home on the Hill. I’m quiet. There’s a rage in me that wants to get out. You’re not hungry like me—you can still eat; even if you are tired, you have slept; you could try harder to hope, to love. You don’t understand our pain. You don’t understand the way it hurts.

  It’s there, a tornado of defenses spinning and spinning and wanting to scream. Because my stomach is so empty, there could be a hole all the way through me and I wouldn’t know. Because my sisters are locked in a tower, being forced to smile.

  But Olive has been locked up. And others are locked up now. And all I’ve cared about is breaking my spell, eating a piece of chocolate or cheese or—god, I can almost taste it—plum.

  Because of me.

  Because of us.

  Because of us.

  I’ve been thinking about the crown. How I need it to break the spell. But my mind keeps stopping there. I’ll get the crown. I’ll eat a sandwich. I’ll eat twenty sandwiches, I won’t die, and this will all be over.

  But that’s not right, of course. There are other spells to be broken. Ones I can see, ones I did, like the girls in the boxes, but others, too, deeper down. All of Ever is under some kind of spell, and getting the crown from the king is more than a way to break the Spell of Without. It is more. It has to be more.

  “We’ll get the crown,” I say to Olive. I look her right in the eye. I say the words carefully and hope she knows what I mean by them.

  We don’t have time to talk about it. Reagan’s grandmother has cleared her throat, and the room has quieted immediately, like even that sound of hers is filled with magic. “Once upon a time,” she says, “there were many witches.”

  I take a deep breath. I feel the world starting to shift around me. I was living one life, and this is the last second of that life. I breathe
it in, enjoy it, even. For one more second I am Princess Jane of Ever, I am Spellbound, I am Without, but I will someday be queen. For one more second, all that matters is becoming queen, being quiet, staying in the castle, making sure my parents are proud of me for following all the rules.

  And by the time I exhale, it’s over. That life is gone.

  “All women were witches. People all across the gender spectrum were witches. But most men weren’t witches. And those men who weren’t witches didn’t like the witches having power. They thought men like them should have it all.”

  It sounds impossible, a world flooded with magic. “All over Ever?” I say. “All those people were witches?”

  “All of everywhere,” Reagan’s grandmother says. “In every kingdom.” Her voice shakes a little. Maybe she never planned on telling this story. Maybe there is another reality, where I am just a princess and I become a queen and the people of Ever eat potatoes and wait forever for a kidnapped princess to return.

  If it weren’t for Reagan and her spell, maybe there would be that life for us all.

  “We witches were rulers of every kingdom. Queens were witches. Princesses. Townspeople. Attendants. Some horsemen and dukes. The King of Nethering. All of us, witches.”

  I try to imagine it. A world where magic flowed from so many in the population, a world flooded with spells. A world where being a witch could mean anything, could mean being a king or a farmer or a princess, but always meant being a witch. A world where those without magic craved power. And got it. Men like my father, the king.

  “My mother was a witch?” I ask. I want it to be true. But a witch wouldn’t let herself be stuck in a glass box for five years while her daughters wasted away. She wouldn’t. Would she?

  “She has it in her blood,” Reagan’s grandmother says. “Like you. Like Olive. But she was born after.”

  “After what?” Olive asks. Her fingers play with the air.

  I look at Reagan to see if she knows what’s coming. She looks as confused as I feel. But her mother has a different look on her face. Something more knowing. She bows her head. Aunt Idle does too. Reagan’s other aunts put arms around their children, holding them close. It is a story that was never meant to be told. I want my mother to shield me from the story too. Olive has a lost-girl look on her face. And because our mothers can’t be here, we move closer to each other.

  It isn’t enough. It isn’t the same. I wish and wish and wish for my mother to be out of her glass box. I wish with every bit of me for the spell to be broken. I am coursing with magic. I am surrounded by witches. But still, I am Spellbound.

  24. REAGAN

  My mother puts her hand on the top of my head.

  “You knew,” I say. Her hand on my head is steady. It is here. It isn’t vanishing.

  She nods. There is more to her story. More to Grandmother’s story. She wants me to hear it.

  “You all know the story,” Grandmother goes on. “A girl was stolen. A princess. What you didn’t know was that she was a witch. The Princess of Ever. She was stolen from the castle and taken away by someone in some kingdom. And the queen—also a witch of course—fell to pieces. And you know what happens when a witch falls apart. She starts to vanish. Parts of her were vanishing and reappearing all day, every day. More than our Bethly has ever experienced. More than any of us has seen before. And that much vanishing and reappearing of hands and shins and lips and hips requires too much magic. All her magic. The magic started seeping from her. And soon, much sooner than any of us could have imagined, it was gone. She was just a woman. Just a sad queen. All the kingdoms got involved, searching for the young princess, accusing one another of taking her, then accusing one another of other wrongs, other ruinations. Wars broke out all over the kingdoms, magic bouncing around everywhere, making things worse, and the world was in a state of unrest. Ever was in a state of unrest. And in that unrest, more magic seeped out, more magic was used, and soon, almost all of the magic was gone.”

  I strain to picture any of it. We’ve learned the history of Ever, but it wasn’t this history. I was told about the War; Jane and Olive were taught history too, but it wasn’t quite like this. It didn’t involve a world of witches losing their magic, a queen who was a witch wasting away. It was an entirely different tale.

  Jane sits on the floor. Olive sinks to join her, then changes her mind. She doesn’t have to do what Jane does anymore. She doesn’t have to submit. She is a witch. We were all witches, once.

  There’s a shuffle in the room as we struggle to piece together what Grandmother is telling us. The air is tight and hot, and I’m certain we are all dizzy.

  “The princess was finally found—” Grandmother says.

  “No she wasn’t,” Jane interrupts. “We light candles for her to return. All of Ever is still waiting, hoping that someday—”

  “She was found,” Grandmother says again. “She was found even though you never ask why she was taken.”

  “Her beauty,” Jane says, like that’s the only possible reason anyone could want a young girl.

  “No,” Grandmother says with a laugh. “It wasn’t her beauty. It was her magic. It was all of their magic. Young witches were getting kidnapped from all over Ever. The ones with the strongest magic. But no one cared until it was a princess. Or, rather, people cared, but not the right people.” Grandmother sighs, trying to rid herself of that reality, trying to remember what she was going to tell us. “That princess of Ever was one of those with special magic, and the kingdom of Soar was jealous of it. They wanted some of it for themselves. So they took her, setting off the War. They didn’t know it would drain all the kingdoms, all the witches, of magic.”

  I squint, trying to see it. It’s hard, to unsee the world the way it was, and to try to reimagine it through my grandmother’s story. It’s hard for me, but it looks nearly impossible for Jane, who keeps shaking her head and looking out toward the castle.

  “They didn’t plan for it, but they liked it.” It’s my mother’s voice, not my grandmother’s, that says the thing my heart knew. “They liked that we lost power; they liked that all of us witches, those who they found weaker and lesser in every way but our magic, didn’t have something strange and special over them anymore. Those men, those men who never had to tell anyone who they were, wanted what they thought was rightfully theirs: all the power. And they got it. They liked the world without witches.”

  “But everyone loves magic,” Jane says, but she doesn’t even sound like she believes herself.

  “Everyone loves magic under their control,” Grandmother says. Mom quiets again, but it’s no secret now, what part of the story keeps her up at night, what truth she wishes she didn’t know. “And Ever got that. The witches were scared, all those kingdoms against us, magic draining from all the unrest—we needed help. And Ever helped. We would protect them. They would protect us. We were supposed to be grateful.”

  I’ve always thought Grandmother was grateful. For our Home on the Hill, for the safety of her family, for our small lives, our magic, our way of life. But the way she says the word now, it sounds like a joke.

  “It was the kidnapped witch’s idea, the whole thing. It took one year of mayhem, the loss of gallons and gallons and gallons of magic. The unmagicking of nearly all the witches in the world. The War continued, and the young witch knew the remaining magic wouldn’t last. If something wasn’t done, they would all turn mortal, there would be no magic left, it would be gone forever.”

  “And that’s why Ever stepped in?” Jane asked. “To help the kidnapped witch? To save the magic?”

  I put a hand on Jane’s arm. Her sisters aren’t here to do it, and she needs someone to ground her. I’ve only known her a few days, but I see as clear as anything that she needs her history to have something good in it. She needs the royals to have done something worthy and kind. She is the daughter of an evil king; she doesn’t want to also be the heir to an evil history.

  Grandmother sees it too. Jane’s wanting. J
ane’s letting go. Jane’s fight for something good in all that is terrible.

  I don’t know how to tell her it’s not there. There is no good trapped inside all this bad. I don’t know how to tell her that this is her history, no matter how she feels about it. The terrible things that have happened belong to the king, of course. And those things have hurt us all. Jane’s hurt is right on the surface of her skin, just like my mother’s, like Olive’s. But she and her sisters protected their father. Benefitted from these horrors, and that piece belongs to them.

  Still, none of us have escaped the king. We are all harmed by the world he’s made. It’s all terrible. And it’s all ours.

  “Most of the men in all the kingdoms preferred this new world,” Grandmother says. “A world embroiled in battles, one without magical women, magical people. They were prepared to fight until every last inch of magic was gone. But that young princess, the young witch with the special magic, she used that magic to get herself back to her castle. And she threatened a spell. A big one. One that would stop the War and probably ruin all the kingdoms. The magic was draining either way, and she had nothing left to lose. She told the men that the only way to stop her from casting a terrifying spell was to stop the War. They were mad. They wanted all magic gone, and some still remained. They were at an impasse when the young witch said she would take the leftover witches to a home on a hill in Ever.”

  “She promised we’d stay away,” I say.

  Grandmother nods. “We promised to stay away if they promised to keep the other kingdoms from coming for us. We got to keep the last bit of magic, and Ever got to use it when they saw fit.”

  I look at Jane again. My hand is still on her arm, and her gaze is still on the castle. I can feel her heartbeat even though my hand is nowhere near her heart. It is that strong, that scared, that big. For a half second she looks away from her boxed-up mother and sisters.