Most of the time, I fell asleep fast enough that I never saw Esther, but sometimes we would sit and talk in the nighttime. She wouldn’t teach me magic, and she never told me why she seemed so sad. Sometimes she would say something, and I would remember to look it up on Google the next day. Sympathetic magic. A planting moon, or a solstice.
Anna didn’t talk about “her” witch as much, and I thought she had forgotten until Mom announced that I would be moving into my own room upstairs. Anna freaked.
“I can’t stay in the room by myself! The witch will get me!”
Mom bit her lip, like she was trying not to laugh. “Anna, there isn’t any witch. You’re a big girl now. You know better.”
Anna shook her head, her fists clenched. “She’s in my closet after I go to sleep, and she’s scary. Why doesn’t Maggie take our room, and I’ll go upstairs?”
Mom opened her mouth, then closed it. Our bedroom was right next to Mom and Dad’s. I bet she thought Anna was too young to be that far away from them, but she’d just called her a big girl.
“Anna, maybe we can get the witch to move,” I said.
Anna and Mom both frowned, but neither of them argued. Which was a good thing, since Mom didn’t believe in Esther, and I didn’t have any idea how to move a witch from one closet to another.
That night I sang Anna to sleep again. I told her that I would never, ever let a witch get her. Then I sighed and went into her closet.
Esther was churning butter tonight, thumping the long handle into the wooden barrel that held the milk. Light came from candles at the window where the back of the closet should be. I pulled Anna’s closet door closed behind me, and the room got even bigger. I sat on a braided rug on the floor and looked up at Esther.
“Can you go to other rooms in the house?”
She frowned slightly. “I go to other rooms in my house, but there are only three. The front room, the bedroom, and the root cellar. When I see your house, it’s always through your sister’s closet door.”
It was hard to know what to ask. “Have you always been in this house? My house?”
Esther snorted. “Your house is new, maybe forty years old. Before, there was a different house near this spot, and before that, another. My house burned down a long, long time ago.”
I swallowed. “Is that how you …”
“How I died? No, I died of old age, cowering in the shadows.”
She sounded angry, as though there was something bad about dying of old age.
I took a deep breath. “I need to help you move to another part of this house. I’m moving to a bedroom upstairs, and Anna is scared to have you in her room.”
Esther stopped churning butter to stare at me. “How are you going to do that?”
“Well … I thought … you’re a witch?”
“My magic still works in my house. It doesn’t work in yours.” She looked at me, then shook her head. “And no, I’m not going to teach you. That isn’t allowed.”
I blew out my breath in frustration. “Well, then it may take a little longer.”
* * *
I convinced Mom that I needed new paint on the walls and new carpet on the floor, knowing that that would buy me some time. Then I sat down at the family computer to research spells.
The Internet is pretty great for researching concepts, but not so good on specifics. Nine billion people on the planet, and none of them had recorded a spell for moving a witch who died centuries ago from one place in your house to another. I looked up every concept I could remember Esther mentioning and started to make my plans.
There would be a full moon on the vernal equinox, which was a fancy term for the first day of spring. Every site I found agreed that it was a really special date, and it was two weeks away. Two weeks seemed like plenty of time, but I had school. Worse, I could only talk to Esther after Anna was asleep. And then I had to find something that would be both mine and Esther’s, part of both my current room and the new room.
I deleted my search history and went back to my room. It had been my first room as a baby. I had insisted on staying in it when Anna was born. I was getting sick of sharing the room with her, but I also liked it. My handprint was still on the wall under the window, and my handmade blanket from Gramma was still on my bed. It would be weird to have a new room, even if Esther did move with me.
I rolled the blanket edge between my fingers. There was a small hole in the blanket that Mom kept saying she needed to fix. I wasn’t sure how you fixed a knitted blanket, but Mom had a ball of the same yarn in her craft cupboard, down in the basement.
I left my room and ran downstairs.
* * *
Esther was willing to teach me how to knit. She repaired the hole in my blanket, then helped me start a scarf with the same yarn. She didn’t ask what it was for.
She did tell me a little about her life. She lived alone on a tiny farm, and it sounded like she had always been afraid of being noticed. She had chickens and a few crops of root vegetables and one cow.
“Is it different, now that you’re …” I dropped a stitch, trying to think of a polite way to say it.
Esther took the knitting from me and showed me how to recapture the dropped loop of yarn. “Now that I’m dead? Not really. I’m not afraid anymore. But there’s a lot more to regret.”
I wanted to ask why she was young when she had died of old age. I wanted to ask why she was stuck in this place and time, all alone. Her dark eyes looked sad, though, so I just kept knitting.
Later, when I mentioned the upcoming equinox, she jumped a little and frowned.
“You’re not really planning on trying to do magic, are you? And on the equinox?”
“Why?” I asked. “Are you afraid I can’t do it?”
She shook her head. “No, Margaret. I’m afraid you might succeed.” She sighed. “Haven’t you any sense? Magic is dangerous, and once you use it, there is always a price. A price to use it, and a price even if you don’t.”
That didn’t make any sense. There are costs to things you buy. How could there be a cost to something you didn’t?
* * *
The full moon, and the first day of spring, was on a Wednesday. Different sites argued about what Wednesday meant as a day, but it didn’t matter. The next time there was a full moon on either a solstice or an equinox, I would be over thirty. Anna would be grown up and out of the house long before then.
It took almost the full two weeks, but I finished the scarf and then gave it to Esther Tuesday night. It wasn’t perfect, but she accepted it as though it was beautiful. My blanket, fixed with the same yarn, and the little remaining of that ball, I put into my new closet, neatly folded.
On Wednesday, I couldn’t focus at all. As soon as I got home, I told my mom that I had homework and wanted to use my new desk, even though my new bed wasn’t set up in the upstairs room yet. I moved the blanket and extra yarn to the right side of the closet, and set up a circle around it. I couldn’t find a lot of the things listed online, but I had early dandelions, some poplar buds, and a bag of marshmallows to stand in for marshmallow root.
Moonrise wasn’t until 6:48 pm. I pulled out my books and tried to do homework while I waited. I plugged my way through math and science, and even finished the vocabulary work due Friday, before Mom called me down to supper.
Dad had just gotten home, and we shared the usual stories about our day. For the first time, I wondered if Mom and Dad left things out, too. Were there things in their day as hard to explain as doing a summoning spell on a witch?
It was almost six-thirty when I went back upstairs. Eighteen minutes was forever, but too short a time to do anything. I sat cross-legged on the carpet in my closet, practicing the words I’d made up.
* * *
“By the light of the moon and the light of the sun,
My circle is set, my spell is begun.
Like calls to like, and same calls to same.
I summon my friend by the power of her name.”
> * * *
Then I called her name, three times. Three was always good, for spells.
I practiced it over and over, rearranged the circle to make it neater, and tried to remember to breathe. Finally, it was time. I closed my eyes and imagined Esther in her rocking chair, the wood boards of her house, the braided rug on the floor. I said my words and called her name three times.
I felt dizzy for a minute, and when I opened my eyes, I thought it had worked. Esther was there in her rocking chair, her house around her, and—
There was no closet door for me to get home.
“Oh, Margaret,” Esther whispered, staring at me. “What have you done?”
* * *
I had thought that it might not work. I hadn’t thought that I might be the one pulled into another place.
I put my chin up, which I usually do when I’m scared. “I promised Anna.”
Esther huffed out her breath. “I doubt that Anna would think losing a sister a good trade for getting rid of a witch.”
I took a shaky breath. “It’s still the equinox and the full moon for hours yet. Maybe I can do another spell to get back home. And if I can’t … well, then you won’t be alone anymore.”
“I deserve to be alone.” Esther put her hands up over her face. “You don’t. You’re an excellent sister. You’re a good friend. I need to get you back home.”
That word, deserve, caught at me. “How can you deserve to be alone? Did you do something … bad?”
She laughed, but it sounded sad and angry. “No. I failed to do something. I was afraid.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked at me. “When I was the age you see me here, witchfinders came to my town. They mostly go for wealthy women with sharp tongues, because people will lie and call them witches. People want their land or to punish them. I was very careful not to have too much, not to make enemies. Some people weren’t as careful, and they were arrested. They were tortured until they confessed and then hanged.”
She looked down at her hands. “And I could have saved them. I could have walked right into the meeting house and done my magic, proved that I was a witch, proved that they couldn’t be, because they couldn’t do what I could. I would have had to run somewhere else, would have lost everything, but I probably would have been able to escape. I was afraid. I did nothing. And four people died because of that.”
I scooted forward on the rug until I could put a hand on Esther’s arm. “Not everyone is brave enough to stand up for others. It’s hard, and it’s scary.”
Esther looked at me again and tried to smile. “It doesn’t matter that it’s hard. It’s part of the bargain, when one takes up the magic. Do no harm. Not just cause no harm, but allow no harm to happen if you can stop it.”
“Oh.” I thought about that for a moment. “I think I can do that.”
Esther nodded briskly. “The magic will find you a teacher, when you’re ready. So first, to get you home.”
Esther’s house had lots more herbs than I had been able to find. Esther found tobacco flowers and mallow root, rowan berry and bark and leaf, and even a spoonful of rowan berry jelly that she saved out as she set up a spiral pattern around me. She wrapped the scarf I had made around my neck and then kissed me three times on the forehead.
“Strength for the journey,” Esther said quietly as she held the spoonful of jelly to my lips. It tasted sweet and sharp.
I blinked back tears. “I’m sorry,” I said. “What is going to happen to you now?”
Esther smiled. “I’m not sorry at all. The magic will decide my fate, but I’m choosing yours.” She took a step back, then bowed to each of the walls before chanting something like Latin. She moved around the spiral in flowing, turning steps, and when she was in front of me again, she brought out a knife and cut the air. “Goodbye, Margaret.”
I closed my eyes, dizzy. When I opened them, I was back in my closet. The scarf was gone, and so was the circle. The blanket my grandmother had made was still folded on the carpet.
I opened the door and stumbled out to my desk, sliding down into the chair. The clock said seven-thirty. How could so little time change … everything?
I packed up my books into my backpack, then headed down to my old room. Long after Anna was asleep that night, I stayed awake.
Anna’s closet stayed dark.
* * *
It was April, and another full moon, before I moved into my new room. It wasn’t a little girl’s room, like the one I’d shared with Anna. I had my own desk and bookcase. A digital clock that I had to set myself was on my bedside table. I had my own computer, a birthday present, and I’d already linked it to the family printer for school reports.
I still looked around a lot before turning off the light. It was new, but it was good. Change wasn’t always bad.
I clicked the light off and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Moonlight was coming in from my window, and under the closet door …
I jumped out of bed and ran across the room. The door opened easily, and inside was Esther, knitting in her chair.
I stepped inside slowly, closing the door behind myself. I was in Esther’s home again, but this time with the doorway back.
Esther looked up and smiled. “It looks like the magic sent you a teacher.”
I smiled back and sat down on the braided rug. “I’m ready when you are.”
* * *
Hope Erica Schultz writes science fiction and fantasy for kids, teens, and adults. Her young adult post-apocalyptic novel, The Last Road Home, came out November 2015, and her first co-edited book, the YA anthology One Thousand Words for War, came out May 2016. Her prior stories have appeared in publications including Fireside Press, Diabolical Plots, and Plasma Frequency. She is an associate member of SFWA. She is generally busy with family, work, and shenanigans and has trouble saying no to part time jobs and interesting projects.
About the Editor
Madeline Smoot enjoys editing all kinds of books for children and teen, but her favorite job is assembling anthologies. She has compiled a number of anthologies including The Fairy Tales Reimagined books and One Thousand Words for War for CBAY Books. Visit Madeline on her website for information on her writing guides, books, school visits and more, or join her newsletter for up to date information and exclusive content.
www.madelinesmoot.com
CBAY Books
CBAY Books is a small press out of Dallas, Texas, that specializes in fantasy and science fiction novels for kids and teens.
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The Monsters Hiding in Your Closet Page 10