by Skylar Finn
New Waves had mysteriously closed, practically overnight. I’d gone by it a few days after the battle with Father Death and seen the FOR LEASE sign in the window. I’d also sighted Lindy--the real Lindy--at the co-op with Bridget. I ducked behind a Health and Wellness display advertising new digestive teas. I knew it wasn’t the same Lindy I’d encountered at the fake apartment above the deli, and that I’d only met her once. It didn’t make the sight of the actual Lindy any less unnerving. I probably would have felt the same awkwardness around Amelia if she hadn’t left the coffee shop for her new job. Fortunately she had, or I would have never been able to get coffee downstairs again, which would have been my worst nightmare.
“Are you ready for this weekend?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how Tamsin felt about going home again. She’d been strongly against it last time, but a lot had happened since then.
She gave a little shrug as she polished off the last bite of her croissant. “I’m actually kind of looking forward to it, to be honest.”
“Really?” I said, surprised. “Did you finally get homesick?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “It’s more like, we got through an unprecedented evil without having to appeal to the coven for help. Which basically proves that my mother no longer has to worry about me every second of the day, or think that I would be better off at home. And truth be told, after everything that happened, I kind of wouldn’t mind a pot of homemade stew.”
32
The Historian
The shade of the trees surrounding our house in Mount Hazel did a great deal to block the sun and its unbearable heat. Surrounded by the cool mountain air near the water and the river, it felt like a vacation from the insufferable and stifling humidity of the city. It was also free of light, noise, and air pollution. It felt like a breath of fresh air. It felt like coming home.
“Well! It sounds like you girls had quite an adventure,” said my mother, dropping a fresh pot of tea on the table in front of us. She had put on a cheery façade after we told her about our adventures in the city, but I could tell it was a bit of a strain. She was clearly freaking out underneath it.
Minerva didn’t bother with the façade. She sat at the kitchen table with her eyes closed, doing some sort of chant to calm her down while she sipped her tea. She had quickly murmured a brief spell under her breath somewhere in the midst of our story--if memory serves, I believe it was around the part where we’d followed Magdalena underground into the tunnels, potentially to our untimely deaths. Her eyes had taken on a slightly glazed look and she looked more relaxed. I wasn’t sure what the spell was, but I had a feeling it was the magical equivalent of Xanax.
Only Aurora seemed delighted by our antics, gasping and cheering at all the right moments.
“I knew you could do it,” she said, both proud and smug. “These two wanted to show up in the city and follow you around to keep you safe, but I told them that the two of you know how to take care of yourselves.”
“So you’re done trying to get me to come home?” Tamsin asked Minerva around a mouthful of blueberry lemon scone.
“I would never ask you to come home,” protested Minerva. “Although I would prefer it if you’d exercise some discretion, from now on, in choosing suitable people to date.”
“I never actually dated the guy, Mother,” she protested. They quibbled good-naturedly and I quietly got up from the table and put my mug in the sink, then slipped through the back door. My mother’s back was to me, but I felt Aurora’s eyes on the back of my head as I went outside and disappeared into the garden.
My mother grew sunflowers so tall they towered over me. It was like vanishing into high cornstalks. There was a wooden chair under a white arch in the center of the garden, and I went to sit there in the late morning sun before it got too hot.
I was happy we were all safe from Father Death, sad about Janice, and excited to have made a new friend in Suki. I was looking forward to going back to the city and spending time with Peter. I was worried we would wind up hating each other if we lived together, but if anything, it had only made us closer.
The only problem was I still hadn’t found a new job. I still didn’t have a purpose, and I still felt out of sorts and like I didn’t know who I was in the world. It didn’t seem like something I could fix with magic. I’d done everything I was supposed to do in life to get where I was trying to be, but I didn’t even know where that was anymore. And I didn’t know how to figure it out.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
I nearly jumped right out of the chair. I whirled around. It was my grandmother, of course. She surveyed me wisely as she stood next to one of the taller sunflowers. It towered above her.
“I was just thinking…” I wasn’t sure how to articulate the teeming mess of emotions and confusion swirling around in my head. Amazing that even with the ability to read minds, I was still this terrible at explaining my own. “I don’t know, I guess it’s like...I did something really important, something that helped a lot of people. And I feel good about that, I do. But as far as the world is concerned, I’m an unemployed, thirty-year-old loser with no direction. And I don’t know how to fix that.”
“The world?” My grandmother arched an eyebrow. “Who is this world of which you speak?”
“Well, I don’t know...I guess just like, when I meet new people and they ask what I do, what do I tell them? I don’t know what I do. I don’t know what I want to do, either.”
My grandmother gave a wave of her hand, and a second chair skittered out of the sunflowers and stopped next to mine. “How can you possibly be concerned what some figurative world thinks of you, or an imaginary stranger you’ve never met? The only thing that matters is the love of your family and friends. Peter doesn’t think you do nothing. We don’t think you do nothing. We know better. You are capable of everything. And you are everything to us. Surely you know this.”
“I know. I do. It’s just that my dad taught me that the work that you do defines who you are, and I don’t have a job anymore. I don’t know what that work is. So I don’t know how to define myself.”
“You don’t think that defeating great evil is work?” asked Aurora. “You don’t think that protecting and saving your friends, family, and people you’ve never met and never will is tremendously important? You don’t consider that a job?”
I thought about this. It just seemed like a given that I should use my magic when the time came that I had to. I just didn’t consider it a full-time profession.
“Samantha, why on earth would you want to put on business casual, or whatever it is people call it, and show up five days a week, every week of the month and every month of the year, every year for the rest of your life, to a desk where you answer to someone else? You are one of the few people who has the option of doing something entirely different. Something literally magical. I understand that you found it odd when you first discovered the truth of your lineage. I understand that it was difficult to accept. I just can’t fathom you considering it anything other than a gift. Or looking a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Grandma, I’m terrible at magic,” I protested. “I mean, yes, when I use it, I know how to do stuff that Tamsin says is hard to do and it’s easy for me, but other times, Tamsin knows how to do everything. It’s second nature to her. She stays calm, and I lose my head trying to think of some utterly human solution to things.”
“But that’s why you’re so important,” she said seriously. “You will never use magic unless it’s absolutely necessary. You have untold powers, it’s true, but you will also never use them out of turn. You have not only great magic, but great control. The latter is necessary to the former. You can always master your magic, Sam. You can’t just make yourself into a person with control unless you already are one. You have the potential to be the greatest witch who ever lived.”
The greatest witch who ever lived. I couldn’t deny that I liked the sound of it. I liked being the greatest at things. I always was a bit of a perfecti
onist.
I bit my lip. I wasn’t sure how to say this next part without offending her, but it was something I secretly felt. “But being a witch...that’s not a job,” I said softly. “I can’t tell people I went to witch school and joined a coven, and now that’s my career. I’d get thrown in the looney bin.”
Aurora snorted. “That is precisely why you don’t tell them anything, you little fool. Do you think your mother and Minerva go around telling people that they’re witches who live in a house with their coven? No, of course they don’t. They own and run the apothecary downtown, and so they tell people that they are businesswomen, because they are. They are two women who own and run a business, whose beautiful and successful children are grown, and so they live together in a house at the edge of town with their aging but still remarkable mother. That is their story. And guess what? It’s true. You just need a front, one that closely resembles who you already are, anyway.”
“But who am I?” I said plaintively.
“You are a witch-in-training,” she said. “You are an apprentice. An apprentice to an ancient craft that is sacred to all who practice it. If you take the time to learn how to harness that magic--with guidance, with supervision--there will never again be a time when you feel that someone else knows more than you do.”
“How can I do that?” I asked.
“I’ll teach you, of course,” said Aurora. She raised an eyebrow at my dubious expression. “What?” she said. “It’s not like you have a job.”
I stopped by my old place one final time to finish cleaning and grab my last box of remaining items to bring to Peter’s. It was tucked away in the back of my closet. I planned to keep its contents in the gold dresser Peter got me. He didn’t seem like the type to go through my socks.
Mystery appeared at my open window and let himself in. He sat in the center of the empty floor and watched me solemnly with his golden eyes. I looked back at him. There was something about his eyes that seemed familiar, as if we’d met before. It was clear that Mystery was just a little bit more than an ordinary cat. I was glad he was here with me.
I pulled the box from the closet. In it were two books. The first was a gift I’d received almost half a year ago now. It was given to me by Cameron, when I’d first met him. He had no recollection of having been the one to give it to me. He’d been under the influence of something else, something more than wine. It was a power I didn’t yet understand, but I knew it would one day be important. I tucked the black leather book with the gold embossed title, Incarnate, into my bag. I had yet to open it, but I knew the day would come when that would change.
The second book was given to me by my grandmother. It was a massive old tome, hardbound in brown leather with yellowing parchment for pages. Half the book was filled with spidery black writing. The other half was blank.
Aurora had given it to me when I determined that I wanted to learn more about the magical world rather than trying to find my place in the ordinary one. She told me that her true role in the coven was as their historian. The most powerful witch in any coven, she explained, also kept track of the coven’s adventures, new spells, and how we overcame our adversaries. She told me she was entrusting the book to me, and that I would be their historian now.
She hadn’t made a big deal about it. She had called me into her study and reached into her rolltop desk, removing the book and explaining what it was before she gave it to me. But the air in the study was still, with a shaft of sunlight shining through its single window, and I recognized the moment for what it was. It was as sacred and important as Janice handing down her legacy to Suki.
I would document what happened to us, and I would leave a record for our heirs and future generations of witches as a guide. I was not a witch of time, but a witch of words. I was a historian.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story!
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About the Author
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