two
I always take the long way home. I like to breathe the salty air and feel the rocks under my feet, listen as the waves roll onto the shore over and over again. The eastern edge of the Witchery disappears into the Passage, giving way to the arm of the sea that separates us from the mainland.
The mainland rises in the distance, countless buildings and crowded streets stark against the horizon. A large clock tower anchors the city, and while we can’t hear the bells this far out, its presence is undeniable. It’s an impressive sight to behold, and from the shores of the Witchery, it looks almost fanciful, like something from a book.
It’s hard for me to picture what my life will be like when I marry Landon and live on the mainland. The Witchery is my home, with its rocky beaches and cobblestone roads, old stone buildings and plants that cover every inch of them. I love it here. And even though the mainland is only an hour-long ferry ride away, it feels too far.
I’ll still come here, of course. I’ll help my parents at the perfumery, and I’ll be here every full moon for the rush, but I want these moments of walking home, stopping on the beach, looking out at the mainland in the distance.
I don’t want to look at the Witchery in the distance instead.
I shake my head. It’s not that I don’t want it, I tell myself. It’s just that I’ll need to get used to it. I take comfort in knowing the earliest witches lived on the mainland, that they moved only to preserve their magic. If they could build lives there, so can I.
Sunset is in one hour, and the last ferry out will leave several hours after that. The island will rest, breathe in deep after a long day of busy streets and eager tourists and delicate magic. Magic that can’t meaningfully change a person’s life or even make much of a difference, in the grand scheme of things.
Magic that is only a shadow of what my ancestors practiced. But that’s the price of being accepted in society, of having our hands shaken instead of bound, our cheeks kissed instead of slapped, our island celebrated instead of burned.
I’ve never known more than the gentle magic of the Witchery, but I’ve heard rumors about what our ancestors were capable of. Controlling the elements. Cheating death. Compelling others. Sometimes it scares me, knowing the same magic that ran through their veins runs through my own, that there is something inside me far stronger than the perfumes in our shop or Ivy’s most potent tea.
I sit down on the shore, not caring that my blue dress will get damp and dirty, not caring that my mother will comment on my appearance when I arrive home, the way she always does. She wants me to be more put together, more polished, more presentable.
More like her.
But she doesn’t see what I see: the most beautiful things are wild.
I push my fingers into the rocks and sand, feel the jagged edges and rough grains. Our shore is smaller than it used to be, the angry currents carving away at it, carrying it off to other parts of the island or swallowing it altogether.
My mother says I spend too much time worrying, that she and the other coven leaders have things under control. But the currents are getting stronger, and it won’t be long before they snatch a boat from the surface and pull it to the bottom of the sea.
We’ll see how fully the mainlanders accept us when our currents drown one of their own.
But once I’m married to Landon, his father will extend the government’s protection to us, not only in promises spoken at fancy parties but in written law. There will be no going back after that, not even if a ship sinks in our waters or our currents grow more violent.
This is the kind of security my ancestors only dreamed about, the kind of security that not even moving off the mainland could afford them. Because as soon as the witches made the island their home, fear among the mainlanders ran rampant. The only thing more terrifying than seeing our magic on their streets was not seeing us at all; we could be doing anything on the island.
At first it was an idea born of pure desperation, that magic could be something to delight in instead of something to fear. That this island could be a place mainlanders wanted to visit instead of a hideaway for witches and evil. Out of sheer force of will, my ancestors created an entirely new order of magic, softening their power and tending to the island so they could survive. They only practiced magic in daylight, never hiding it in darkness. They gave up the terrifying parts of magic and magnified the wondrous parts. They were kind to the mainlanders who monitored the island, smiling when they really wanted to curse them to the depths of the sea.
And it paid off.
The waves are coming quicker now, rolling up the shore and licking at my legs. I close my eyes and listen, let the rest of the Witchery fade away as I imagine myself under the water. Most silence is unbearably fragile, stolen by a single voice, a shattered glass, a muffled cry. But the silence underwater is thick and sturdy and impenetrable.
The sky is turning orange and pink, as if Mrs. Rhodes has taken her brightest eye shadows and smeared them across the horizon. I’ll be scolded for more than just my appearance if I’m not home for dinner, so I push myself off the ground and stretch.
I take one long, deep breath and let the salty air fill my lungs, but I stop when something in the water catches my eye.
A flower, exactly like the one I thought I saw this morning.
The world is getting darker by the minute, but I’m sure of what I’m seeing. Without thinking, I rush into the waves and dive under, swimming toward the bloom that bobs and sways with the rolling of the sea.
It stays put as I get closer, as if it’s anchored to the bottom somehow. The waves still and the flower comes into sharper focus, my entire body tensing as it does. I gasp and thrash backward.
It can’t be real. I’ve never seen one in person. My heart slams into my ribs, fear seizing me.
The flower rocks side to side, only unfurling with the arrival of evening or in the presence of a witch. The trumpet-shaped bloom has stark white petals that almost shimmer, reminiscent of the moon at its fullest.
Moonflower, deceptively beautiful and fatal to witches.
It doesn’t look threatening, though, with its long, white petals tightly curled together. It looks beautiful.
But I suppose we’re meant to think the most dangerous things are lovely.
The flower slowly unfurls, opening up to me as I shake with terror. The sea is stirring, and my breath catches when the flower gets caught in a current and swirls around in the water, going faster and faster until it’s finally sucked below the surface. I kick my legs and shoot my arms out in front of me, pulling with everything I have, trying to create some distance between the current and me. I swim as fast as I can and beg the shore to meet me halfway.
Land is getting closer, and I reach for it, stretching my arms as far as they’ll go. I finally touch the bottom and pull myself the rest of the way up the beach, ignoring the jagged rocks that cut up my knees.
The moonflower is gone, but I’m certain it was there, so mesmerizing that I can’t quite bring myself to see it for what it is: a harbinger.
Before the witches moved here, the island was used solely for harvesting plants and herbs, and only rarely. Endless fields of the poisonous flowers made it a perilous task, but when the mainland outlawed the use of magic, the witches chose to move to the island, a refuge just beyond the reach of the mainland’s laws. It took years to get rid of the flowers, and I wish I could go back in time and tell the witches who came before me that one day the mainlanders would help us get rid of the deadly blooms, help us create a home here after all but banishing us so many years ago. And they would do such a good job of it that there would be a generation of new witches who would never see a single moonflower in person.