Then

  The ocean spread itself out underneath Kate’s feet, deeper than comprehension and wider than sight. The rocks where the witch girls led her were the peak of a rock outcropping, made of dark bck stone, which towered above the sea.

  It was slick with rain, and Kate had to walk carefully to keep upright. The edge was right there, a hundred foot drop just a few paces away. Slipping here could be fatal. The witches had no trouble with the wet rocks. They ran and skipped ahead of her with ease. Marta and Marsil looked out over the edge, seeing who could lean the farthest before they had to pull back. Ida and Phillipa stayed right behind Kate, Ida’s arms out, ready to catch her. They too walked with ease.

  “Good boots,” was all she said when Kate asked, but then she gnced back at Rhea for assurance, and Kate saw the old woman nod. There was some magic helping them that Kate wasn’t privy to.

  “What should I do to demonstrate?” she asked, stopping and looking at Rhea. None of the other adults had followed them when they left the camp. The other girls gathered around in a loose circle.

  “Mm.” Rhea spit and stood in silence.

  “I could do something first?” said Joanna, her hand raised.

  “Can you see magic, fire-girl?” Rhea asked.

  “Yes. Can you do magic without that?”

  “Normal people do it that way all the time,” answered Eva, sneering.

  “Witches are the ones who do it the hard way,” added Marta.

  They were talking from all around her, and Kate had to keep turning to see who was talking. The whole effect was disorienting.

  “Joanna. You go ahead. This is a good pce for your tricks.” Rhea waved her hand at the girl, who smiled and ran over to the very edge of the cliff. “Rest of you keep your mouths shut. I want to see what she can understand.”

  From her pce at the edge, Joanna crossed her arms, pcing one hand on each shoulder. Her hair whipped around her. She adjusted her footing, keeping her feet square under her shoulders, and stepped back into the air. Magic chased after her, drawn from the pockets of her dress, towards the soles of her shoes, with little sparks of it coming from the air around them and the ocean below. Joanna didn’t fall. She hung in the air, as if the exact moment that she should have fallen was suspended, time unable to move forward.

  She took another step, then another. Five feet past the edge, then ten, twenty, thirty. The air hung below her. Every footstep left behind a tangle of magic that slowly ate away at the mass of it that wound zily around Joanna’s body.

  “Have you found a way to go up or down yet?” asked Rhea, shouting to be heard over the wind.

  Joanna scowled at her and shook her head. With her concentration ever so slightly broken, the knots of magic began to come undone, losing shape. Joanna sunk a good foot lower before she was able to regain her footing. Rhea muttered, “That’s one way.”

  Regaining her focus, the ttice returned to its solid form. She was maintaining the shape. It seemed so simple in retrospect. Complex magic was a series of connections, a woven mess that had a grander effect than the sum of the magic alone. In the same way that Kate was able to pick apart the knots of magic in the bats, she might be able to weave them like Joanna did.

  There was just one other piece that didn’t make sense. Joanna hadn’t pulled the magic out of her own body, and it wasn’t there before she stepped out into the air. It had just appeared as soon as she needed it, like she’d literally kept it in her pockets.

  Joanna returned to solid ground by retracing her steps, nding on the rocks with a small bow. The magic she’d been keeping around her began to diffuse into the environment. Some blew away in the wind, others soaked into the rocks, and a small amount circled the witches and buzzed while they spoke. When Joanna rejoined their group, Rhea nodded at her— probably the most praise she ever gave out.

  The other girls all started talking at once. Ida and Phillipa cheered for her, Ida hugging her when she came back to the group. Eva leaned close to Marsil, saying something about Joanna being wasteful. Marsil shook her head and Marta said, “She wanted to be safe. It’s a long drop. Better to not need it.”

  “Okay.” Rhea had moved closer while Kate watched the girls, and she put a hand on her shoulder. “What did you see?”

  Kate cleared her throat, made sure to speak softly, and said, “she wasn’t really flying.”

  “Did it seem as if she was?”

  “No, it didn’t.” How to phrase this? “She was standing on pads of magic, like a stilt-walker moving to a new pole with every step.” Joanna hummed a stifled response.

  “And?”

  “She was the one weaving the magic together… but I don’t understand why she had to leave it behind with every step and make a new pad.”

  “A reasonable question. Why do you think that was so?”

  Kate thought back to the pads, trying to conjure the shape of the magic again in her mind. She didn’t understand what the different knots meant, or how they worked together, but the effect was clear. Each pad was anchored to the spot it was created. With that and what Marta had said earlier, she answered, “Safety, maybe. If she fell, the pad would be something to grab onto.”

  “I suppose. Or?” Rhea looked her in the eyes, holding her gaze steady on Kate.

  “Skill. The other reason would be skill. She can’t make the pads move because doing so exceeds her ability.”

  Rhea nodded. “Stability and mobility are counterparts, and difficult to work together. Joanna has sacrificed one for the other.” She looked around to the others. “What is the hardest part of Joanna’s trick?”

  The weaving was the obvious answer, so it must be something else. “Concentration? When you yelled at her she almost fell,” answered Ida.

  “I did not yell at her. I asked an important question. No, concentration is important but was not the most difficult component of what you just saw.” No one else spoke up, so Rhea gestured at Joanna to tell them.

  “The hardest part is the bance.” She smiled, showing her teeth. “Standing on something smaller than your shoe takes years of practice before you’re strong enough to be that high up in the air. My father trained me and my sister on obstacle courses starting at age five.”

  “Jo’s family are big time assassins or something,” Ida whispered to Kate. Not quiet enough, since Joanna scoffed and said,

  “The Octonenses family are NOT assassins, Ida. I’ve told you a thousand times. We offer private security. We stop assassins, not become them. Besides, these days we mostly facilitate other people doing the job, and the family focuses on the management bits.”

  “They’re loaded,” said Marta, and at the same time Marsil said, “They’re super rich.”

  “The physical training is symbolic, a sign to the world that we’re still the family that ended the Orchid War.” finished Joanna, ignoring the commentary.

  “The hardest part of any magic work is the mundane physical toll it takes on the body. That is what you should take away from Joanna’s demonstration.” Rhea shooed the girls away from Kate again, reforming the circle. “With that in mind, Kate, please show us your ability to conjure fire.”

  Again, Kate was on dispy, with everyone’s attentions on her. Like when she’d asked about their boots, the girls were throwing unreadable looks at Rhea. Kate closed her eyes and felt around her for magic. There wasn’t much in the barren rocks and the ocean down below was too far away for Kate to feel anything from it, but Joanna had some swirling around her, leftovers from her demonstration, and that might do for what Kate had in mind.

  She stretched out her awareness and dragged the power to herself, concentrating it in her hands. Before, she’d used the magic as fuel for the fire, burning it without any thought to structure, but after everything she’d seen in the st few days, new ideas flooded her mind. If she’d been burning kindling, hot and fast, then maybe something bigger, like the knots that Joanna created— the ones that kept the ghosts of the giant bats together— would burn like logs, long and bright.

  First, begin with a spark. The smallest, candle-like fme started in her left hand. Kate fed it slowly, kept it small. She could sustain this for hours, but it wasn’t going to be enough to impress the witches. In her other hand, she concentrated on the magic, condensed and twisted it. Nothing happened. Moving and using the magic was nothing like tying it into knots. She was being asked to turn sand into string.

  The bats had come undone with a single pull, when she’d found the trick to it. Work backwards from there, and the structure had to start somewhere, didn’t it? If something like that could be unraveled so easily, with linearity, then it had to have been wound the same way. Start small. One connection. Take two of the points of light and bind one to the other.

  But what was that connection? A threat? A melding? A retionship?

  A promise? One to support the others beyond you, that you can keep holding on so that together you can be something greater than the sum of your parts. It was what she built in the grove; an endless chain of women helping each other to find the pce, stronger because they kept their secrets together. She still felt that. A connection to the Goddess, despite being so far from her graces. Maybe that wasn’t different from the link between the particles of magic. Kate was simply adding another link to the chain.

  They sprung together, like holding hands. Two, then four— eight, sixteen, thirty two. Faster than counting, the magic clicked together in a great spiral growing up and out from Kate and the witches. It towered above them, waiting to be put to use. It took more magic then she’d expected, but with some of the remnants of her heart, the shape held its form.

  Like a prayer, giving thanks to the Goddess who hadn’t so totally abandoned her, even if Kate couldn’t be in her warmth any longer, she brought her hands together, the candle-fme in her left hand meeting the spiral in the right.

  Instead of fire, the structure lit the sky with pure light— like molten gss. Heat rolled off of it, warming even Kate’s chest. The st of the rain evaporated before ever touching the ground. It was beautiful.

  The witches had been thrown back, all but Rhea knocked off their feet by the sudden burst of hot air. The old woman took careful steps towards Kate, her eyes shining. She wrapped her arms around Kate’s shoulders and whispered into her ear with her crone’s voice. “Enough, child.”

  The spiral broke. Shattering from the base, where Rhea had cut it away from Kate. It shriveled and curled in the old woman’s grasp, a gss rose, before falling into nothing.

  The other old women had appeared as if from nowhere, two holding one of Kate’s arms, the other three standing around her, arms reaching out to one another. Rhea moved around to Kate’s front, watching her for something Kate didn’t understand.

  “Rhi was right. As usual,” said the woman holding Kate’s right arm.

  “Don’t compare her with this,” added the one on her left, whose grip was tight enough to hurt. “Those bitches in the south are falling apart, letting things get so bad.”

  Rhea was building something out of magic. Slow and careful.

  “You know how they are. Love to let things fester and see what crawls out.”

  “Listen to me, child. Ignore them,” said Rhea. The thing in her hands had become more solid, and sharp. It curved around in a neat half circle. A scythe. “We will help you, but this cannot be allowed to continue. Whatever has so twisted you will not have you. I’ll cut it out of you.”

  “You’ll take responsibility?” asked one of the women, out of Kate’s view.

  “Aye. Kate, look at me. Open your eyes. Stop crying. Understand. The first and only w that witches hold to is this: witches work with magic. We are those who take on this burden.” Her words were jumbled over each other, like she was saying the next before she’d finished with the st.

  “I was too, as a child, touched by wild magic. As you are. I dealt with spirits, and they bode me step through a faerie ring. I was a child and a fool, so I obeyed, believing their promises of riches, but when I returned home from my walk in the woods, sixty years had passed.

  “All my loved ones were old or dead. Only my baby brother knew me, and he had become an old man with grandchildren of his own. I no longer belonged. Those who could have missed me had spent decades mourning me. They had moved on. I was lost, so when I found the magic that had taken me into the future was still buried under my skin, I learned to use it. Left my time behind, and saw centuries. I skipped across history and thought myself immune from its ravages.

  “Until I came here, not too long ago. Witches found me as I found you. They offered me the choice I will now offer to you.” She lifted her arm up, the scythe drawing all sound to it, nearly deafening.

  “Witches work with magic. We alone. Witches are the only ones equipped to do so. You are not a witch, have not been taught to see as a witch sees. Your magic is still wild. But you need not remain so burdened. You have the talent for this work, and a quick mind. Become a witch and I will teach you. But first, you must release the past. You need to start again, learn from scratch how to use magic that will not harm your body. You burn yourself for your fire. I’ll cut the habit out of you, and we together will remake your skill with a witch’s foundations. I still hold to what I told you before. I will help you carry your burdens, if they remain after the influence has been removed from you. This is the first step to that, even if you’ll hate me for it. Do you understand? Open your eyes, Kate. Look at me. Will you be a witch?” What other option did she have?

  Rhea swung her arm down.

  The sky was dark. The only light glimmered off the bde that swung towards Kate’s neck. It sparkled and showed her the faces of the women around her, cold and clinical. The girls in their care had barely gotten up from the ground, and they looked as afraid as Kate felt. Steam rose from Rhea’s nose and mouth as she moved, like the air was suddenly so cold.

  The bde passed through Kate’s neck and caught on her heart. It severed the muscle without blood or pain, because it passed right through her; folding over her and coating the inside of her throat with bile. It smothered the fme. Cut the knowledge of magic out of her. Dimmed the ties to the Goddess, frayed at their edges, but did not sever them. Rhea seemed to think she had, like she didn’t know that her bde hadn’t been able to make the cut deep enough. Still, the fme inside her was out, faded away. As did the magic hanging in the air around them. The Goddess was so distant. All magic was. A memory, the warmth of the hand holding her own already fading.

  She could not see it, or feel its presence around them. Deaf and dumb. Like she’d been before that first winter away from the grove.

  The other old women were already halfway back to the forest before Kate knew what was going on. Rhea was standing over her, and Ida was holding her up. “I saw the joy you had when you worked out that puzzle. I’m sorry to take it from you.” She turned to walk away. “One day you’ll understand. Can’t have you burning yourself up. No good for you, and no good for us. You’ll die if you keep trying, or worse, get the attention of the thing that did this to you.” She sighed. “You will learn to see magic again, and then I can teach you to use it. The right way. The girls can help, I suppose. Eva!” The unfriendly witch looked to Rhea from where she stood next to the other girls. “Teach her the basic things. You see that she’s not finding a way back to what she just did.”

  Eva agreed, more quiet than Kate had heard her be.

  The older women left them there, the young witches standing in a tight huddle, with only Ida holding Kate. For a second, Kate was sure that they’d all leave too. Walk away and follow the example set for them. Let Kate put herself back together alone. They didn’t. Joanna and Phillipa joined Ida, and they all sat down on the rocks, which were still warm from Kate’s dispy. At Marta’s coaxing, Marsil and Eva joined them, and silently, they all watched the ocean while Kate cried.

  When she’d dehydrated herself, and her body felt as empty of water as her senses did without magic, the girls started talking to her. Just like during their meal, they brought Kate into their group and talked to her like she was really one of them, even though she’d never been farther away. Not a girl, not without the Goddess, and nowhere near a witch, without any sense remaining for magic. But, if they were willing to pretend, to ignore those facts, then Kate could too. If Rhea was right, then none of it was forever.