Page 32 of Night of the Witch
It became a dare from the oldest cousinYou’re not scared to see what it says, are you?—until a group of us needed to prove our bravery.
We snuck into my mother’s room in the cottage, a group of insolent cousins and friends, giggling the whole while, not knowing what we were truly set on finding. We’d heard the worst stories about our goddesses already, tales whispered around dying flames late at night to make us behave:Perchta will come in your sleep! The Mother knows all you’ve done. If you’ve been naughty, she’ll slice open your belly and stuff you full of straw!
But this was no story. No fable meant to scare and instill obedience.
It was a spell.
I remember the words, flowing in thin, curling script across the parchment, on a page labeledWild Magic.
Below the spell, it spoke of the balance Mama drilled into my head. How witches must put good into the world, because our Well of magic builds with good deeds; the more we do, the more magic our coven has to draw on.
That was why Perchta, the Mother, was so absolute in her rules and traditions. Why Abnoba protected the forests and life so fiercely. Why Holda guarded the barrier to death with such devotion.
The Well protects us. It’s a tap to allow a trickle of uncorrupting magic through.
But wild magic is a flood, and it ruins or drives a witch mad, drowning them in the wake.
To cement the connection to wild magic, a witch must sever theirconnection to the Origin Tree and its Well,the page said.This is the spell that must be recited to do so.
Only a few of us saw the page. The rest crouched around, wide-eyed and giggling still. Liesel had been there; she was about four years old, tiny and plump and observant.
“Are you all right, cousin?” she’d asked in her soft little voice.
I’d slammed the book shut.
Say the spell, the voice demands now.I can help you in ways you can only imagine. You need not suffer, you need not be a prisoner. Say the spell!
Had I heard the voice before I read the passage in Mama’s forbidden book? I can’t remember. I can’t remember a time when Ididn’thear it, and right now, being dragged for senseless darkness beneath a hexenjäger city, I am closer than I ever have been to giving in.
I drop my heels again, but Bertram is ready for my protest; he hauls me toward the tunnel, and I go, helpless, as I have been all this time. Even when I turn, I see the kapitän behind me, and Johann behind him.
Reality crashes down on me, sharp and jarring.
There will be no leaving these tunnels.
I will be entirely at Kommandant Kirch’s mercy.
My lips part. A word is on the edge of my tongue, the first in the spell.
Say it,the voice pleads.Use me!
I could kill these hexenjägers.
I could use wild magic to wreak unrestrained havoc on these foul men—and be precisely the sort of monster they believe me to be.
My body shakes with self-hatred. I’d say the spellnow, to save my own body, but I wouldn’t say it to save Mama and my coven?
That silences me.
Tears prick my eyes as the hexenjäger drags me the first few paces into the tunnel. There’s rustling behind, a shift, and then the smell of acidic smoke.
The kapitän has lit a torch.
It does little to chase away the dark, and with each step we take farther inside, the light from outside fades until we are in a world all our own. The tunnel is only an arm’s length over my head. The kapitän must crouch to fit, his broad shoulders caving forward to not brush the laid stones. The sound of water dripping echoes tinnily, a distant, steady tick, and my boots push through the occasional puddle, shallow and smelling of molded water.
I focus on those things. The way the air stinks of cold stone, iron and earthy; the feel of the chill on my skin, icy below ground. My boots slip on a grimy rock, and I falter, catching myself by the tight grip Bertram holds on me.
I feel the kapitän at my back, one firm hand going to my shoulder.
