Authors: Molly Cochran
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Paranormal, #Love & Romance, #Fantasy & Magic, #Fiction, #General
On a cold night in November, long past the rites of Samhain, the killing fire was lit in a clearing made deep into the dense wood. We did not wish for our act to be known to the populace
of Salem; as it was, we knew we could not ourselves remain under any conditions after this dread event.
Under cloak of night, Dorothea Lyttel was led to the stake. The course in this matter is clear: The one who harbors the Darkness must die by fire, as fire is at the heart of the Darkness. This is known to us from the earliest teachings.
Alas, it was pitiable indeed to see Mr. Lyttel lead his children away to some place unknown, to live amongst cowen. Not one in that family accused us in anger, though the small children wept, for even Dorothea knew what must be done. As to the rest, we repaired each of us as far from that horror as we could, so as to be distant from the Darkness when it passed out of the expiring body. It was thus that brave Dorothea Lyttel herself lit the fire that would take her life, and uttered not a cry. But around her, hidden in the wood, the families wept one and all, small child or aged crone, for we all knew how most dreadful our lot had become, to give up one of our own to the Darknesss in order to save our community.
This was indeed a day of woe. Soon afterward, the cowen of Salem found the burned remains of Dorothea Lyttel and took sport in tormenting all manner of women, threatening them also with the stake and the fire, for the Darkness had found its way deep into their hearts long before we had ever come.
As for our community, we all walked the distance to a far meadow, which years later we would name White Field, and there we would one day hide from the Darkness and the evil it had brought.
“Katy.” Peter was wiping my face with something soft. “Katy, it’s time to come back.”
I came to slowly. He was cradling me in his arms like a baby. “Where . . . what . . .” I was beginning to remember what
I was doing there. “The Darkness.” Tears began to course down my face. Peter sopped them up with what I realized was a wet handkerchief. “Do you always carry those?” I asked, so tired I was barely able to move my lips.
He looked at the white square. “Yes,” he said with a gentle smile.
“Did I scream?”
“No, but you were speaking in a strange way. Were you Serenity Ainsworth?”
“I think I was,” I said. “Where’s the brooch?”
He picked it up off the table behind him. “I’ll give it back to your family, if you’d like,” he said.
“No. I want to keep it. This was easier than the last time. Not so shocking. Although . . .” My eyes were streaming again.
“I know what you saw, Katy,” he said. “You were talking the whole time.”
“
They burned their own kind
,” I said, wanting to disbelieve it. But I couldn’t. I’d seen it with my own—well, with Serenity’s—eyes.
“They thought it was the only way to destroy the Darkness.”
“But once the cowen got the idea, they just used it to propagate the Darkness, not to dispel it. Do you see? The Darkness
used
it. So it couldn’t be the solution. The burning was just another part of the problem.”
He shook his head. “But what else could they have done? Let the Darkness infect everyone in Salem?”
“Didn’t it anyway?” I said. That was why Serenity and the others left for Whitfield. Even though the American colonists didn’t burn their witches, Serenity knew that Salem was
already a lost cause. “I wonder what happened to the Lyttels,” I mused.
“Their descendents are probably still around, either living as solitary witches or thinking they’re crazy. There are a lot of people like that out there among the cowen,” he said.
“But who replaced them? To maintain the twenty-seven families?”
Peter smiled. “The Shaws,” he said. “Zenobia Ainsworth married Henry Shaw. . .”
“. . . who didn’t change his name,” I said.
“You got it.”
I stood up slowly, groaning with the effort. I felt as if I’d just been through ten rounds of mud wrestling. “I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for helping me . . . with everything.” I was too tired to be articulate.
I picked up the brooch, gasped, dropped it, then picked it up again. Images of Dorothea Lyttel with her hair on fire came to mind. I forced the image out of my thoughts.
“Leave it,” Peter said. “I’ll wrap it up for you so you won’t have to touch it.”
“No, I need to get used to it.” I fingered the brooch. Random images. I shut them out one at a time. “This is a new skill for me. If I’m going to use it, I’ve got to learn to control it.” I held it to my forehead.
No images
, I commanded silently, and whatever was inside me obeyed. It was just a brooch again.
I stumbled on my way to the door. Peter caught me. “I’ll walk you back to your room,” he offered.
With my arm slung around his shoulders like a drunk, we meandered around the maze of hallways until we reached my dorm.
“I guess this is me,” I said. He was staring at me. “Is something the matter, Peter?” I asked.
He blinked and looked around, flustered. “No, no,” he said, “of course not. Please.” He gestured toward my door.
“What is it?” I persisted. I’d known him long enough to recognize the familiar look of anguish in those gray eyes.
He blinked again. Swallowed. “Well. It’s nothing, really. Just . . . well, nothing . . .”
“Peter!”
“Oh, it’s only . . .” He took a deep breath. “I . . . I was just wondering if . . .”
I was struggling to stifle a yawn.
“Well, I was wondering if you thought it was true,” he managed finally. “About the Darkness, that is. That the only way to destroy it is to burn the person alive.”
I thought about it as much as my feeble and exhausted brain would allow. “No, of course not,” I said. “That would be horrible.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it, though,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “No one in Whitfield’s infected with the Darkness, as far as I know.”
“Yes, right.” He nodded mechanically.
“Even if it did happen, which it won’t, remember that we’re living in a town full of very smart witches. One of them would figure something out.”
He nodded again and tried to smile, although it didn’t look very convincing.
“Anyway, there have only been two harbingers. Birds and sinkholes. Pah. They might not count for anything.”
“Of course.” He opened my door for me. “Good night,” he said.
He turned away before I could say anything else. Not that I had much else to offer. I knew Peter was worried. I was too. Everyone in Old Town knew something was coming, and I doubted if anyone among those very smart witches had the slightest idea what to do about it.
I suppose it was Mim’s idea.
Because of the sudden appearance of the sinkhole in the Meadow, groundbreaking for the new Wonderland store had to be delayed while a team of geologists studied the hole, tested the ground with sonar and X-rays, analyzed the groundwater, and determined how much weight the underlying limestone would support.
But instead of leaving the site covered with tarps and
HIGH
VOLTAGE
signs, someone—and it had to have been Mim, because that was her job—had the area transformed overnight into a kid’s Easter fantasy. I hated to admit it, but it was a brilliant save.
There were trees in pots with plastic oranges hanging from them, enormous tubs of fresh flowers that were replaced every morning, and live rabbits in an elaborate pen constructed to look like a Beatrix Potter-inspired English cottage. Directly over the sinkhole was a six-foot-tall Easter Bunny in a heated
pavilion, seated on a throne of resinous carrots and cabbages with
WONDERLAND
stamped in parti-colored pastels across the top, ready to pose for pictures that came with coupons good for 10 percent off any child’s portrait taken in Wonderland’s in-store photo studio.
The geologists came at night, after all the rabbits had been stashed in cages and returned to the pet store, and the Easter Bunny’s throne hauled aside to reveal the gaping maw of the sinkhole beneath.
This was only in one corner of the Meadow, the corner farthest away from Hattie’s Kitchen, and was set off by a charming white picket fence and a huge silk banner announcing the First (and last, since the Meadow would be covered by concrete as soon as construction started) Annual Wonderland Easter Egg Hunt, featuring a petting zoo, craft fair, pony rides, and a drawing for five hundred dollars in Wonderland merchandise, redeemable at the store’s grand opening.
This whole spectacle occurred during the Vernal Equinox, which is a witch holiday, but fortunately a minor one. Most of the Old Town residents just stayed away, but some diehards brought flowers to Hattie’s Kitchen, which had been out of business since the meadow was sold to Wonderland, and placed them by the restaurant’s closed doors. It was a funereal sight.
Dad had been pestering me to come to New York, and since it was spring break, I didn’t have much reason to refuse.
Mim wasn’t at the Sutton Place apartment when I arrived, so Dad and I had some time alone.
“How’s school going, Katy?”
“Good.”
“Are you keeping your grades up?”
“Yes.”
“Making new friends?”
“Uh huh.” It was awkward. There was so much I couldn’t bring up. Agnes and Gram, witchcraft, Peter . . . none of those seemed like good topics for conversation with Dad. It was going to be a
very
long weekend. But finally I touched on something I thought he might be interested in.
“I’m writing a paper on medieval magic boxes,” I said. “They’re—”
“Bottes,” he said, taking off his glasses.
“You know about them?” I asked.
“I’m a medievalist, Katherine,” he reminded me. “But I’m surprised you do.”
“I . . . er, found a reference to them online and got interested,” I fudged. I wasn’t about to out my Medieval Alchemy teacher, Mrs. Thwacket, over a conversational nugget. “Do you think they ever existed?”
“Oh, yes, certainly. Of course bottes weren’t really magic. They were mechanical devices, masterpieces of engineering, with drawers within drawers and false backs and bottoms and secret shelves and panels that opened only in a certain order to reveal still more compartments. To your average medieval denizen, it would have seemed miraculous.”
“But they were supposed to be repositories for magical tools. Precious artifacts. Dangerous spells. Things like that.”
“Spells?” He sat upright, his face alight. “Where on earth did you read that? Some New Age woo woo website?” He laughed aloud. “Really, Katherine.”
I had decided to go up to my room—as far as I was concerned, the conversation was over—when Mim crashed
in, loaded as usual with parcels and shopping bags.
“Darling,” she breathed, planting a big wet one square on Dad’s lips. It was, I must say, repulsive in the extreme. Harrison and Madison: Their names even rhymed.
She opened her eyes in mid–tongue kiss to stare at me. Then she must have remembered who I was, because she instantly turned on a flood of manufactured enthusiasm.
“Kathy!” she gushed, running over to me stiff-legged, as if she were a doll with non-bendable arms extended. I think it was supposed to be an imitation of what she had imagined to be spontaneous joy.
“Madison,” I responded, holding out my arms to stop her before she engulfed me in her robotic embrace.
“Well!” she exclaimed with her usual breathless cheer as I fended her off. “How’s school? Oh, help me with these things, Harrison. They’re color swatches for the Whitfield house.”
Boing.
The Whitfield house. As in
living
there. I’d known the time was coming; I’d just hoped that something like an alternate reality would intervene and make it not be so.
“When are you coming?” I asked woodenly.
“Soon. The place is a shambles. Wallpaper, with
borders.
Country everything. A horror. Darling, what do you think of mustard for the living room?”
“Aromatic,” he said, although she wasn’t listening.
“So how did you like my talk?” Mim went on, pulling out huge collections of fabric samples. She was referring to an all-school assembly she’d arranged to lecture about Wonderland’s good works. “At the school,” she elucidated in a tone that demanded an answer.
“Oh. Great. I think a lot of people are considering careers
in retail.” Although this may have been true, I had no idea of the impact of her presentation, because I’d spent the hour in the nurse’s office. I just didn’t want to have to listen to Mad Madam Mim converting my clueless peers to the gospel according to Wonderland. Actually, most of my peers were in the infirmary with me, trying to convince Nurse Thompson (cowen) that a stomach flu was raging through the school. Only the Muffies were subjected to Mim’s exhortations to join the Wonderland family. Since they were already a lost cause, I didn’t care if they followed in her venal footsteps.
“Yes, that talk usually goes over well,” she said, rummaging in her pocketbook and emerging with a cigarette and a shiny gold lighter.
“I thought you quit smoking,” Dad said. That was one—maybe the only one—good thing about my father. He thought smoking was disgusting.
“Bear with me, darling,” she said, exhaling a putrid plume of blue. “A new store brings tremendous pressure. I’ll quit once Whitfield opens.”
“Until the next time,” he muttered. She ignored him.
“Get dressed, Kathy,” she said. “We’re having dinner at Cibo. You have no idea what I went through to get a reservation.”
“Would you mind calling me Katy?” I asked.
She looked blank. “But why should I call you that? It’s not your name.”
“Neither is Kathy.”
She blew smoke into my face. “Just be glad I’m not calling you Serenity,” she said, then laughed so uproariously that she began to cough.
My outfit didn’t please Mim.
“You look like a waiter.”
I glanced down at my black pants and shirt, thinking that maybe they would be enough to get me out of this forced celebration, but no dice.