Witchlore

Prologue

The day she dies is beautiful. It’s May, the summer holidays have just started, and the air over the fields is hazy and still, smelling of wild garlic.

The light is so golden, it has that intense quality of a lazy afternoon first thing in the morning.

She laughs as she tugs my hand, pulling me through the shaded trees toward the cave.

“I’m not sure.” I lag behind, staring at the mine gully suspiciously.

The ground beneath our feet is hard and dry but the air coming off the ancient gray stone around us is chilled.

With the small hole of the cave a black mark in the green and gray stone, weathered smooth and moss covered, it feels as if all the lush, whispering green trees above us are egging us on toward a secret.

“Please, just try.” Elizabeth cups my face and kisses my lips. She tastes like coconut lip balm. “For me.”

I can never refuse her, tasting so sweet and smelling like sun cream and sweat. Her blond hair is like the shimmer off a puddle or the ocean, catching every particle of light as she moves her head.

“Okay.”

“Great!” She smiles that perfect smile, the one that shows off the slight asymmetric nature of her teeth. “Don’t worry. No one’s going to see at this time in the morning.”

There is nothing inside the cave but a thick black darkness that swallows us. It stinks of wet things, of the mulch under leaves, of the inside of a tree. Reluctantly, I press my right hand against the damp stone, its coldness seeping into my skin, making me shiver.

“Are you ready?”

I should say no, tell her that I can feel something wrong coming toward me, that there is danger lurking under the wet moss, but I don’t. She is too excited, too certain, so I only nod. She grins, the bright light outside of the cave only catching one half of her face, an absurd half smile.

“Let’s do it,” she says. I can’t help my admiration when she holds her hands up in the preparatory triangle, taking a deep breath as her beautiful opal ring begins to glow.

She flexes her hands. Watching her do witchcraft is always breathtaking; the way power radiates from her and the air around her smells like toasted almonds.

Other witches make me feel inferior with their magic, and watching them only increases my resentment toward them, but not with Elizabeth.

I never hate her for possessing the skill I lack.

Her hands are so fluid as they move through the spell shapes, polished nails catching the pearly glow of her ring.

Then she starts to chant and something is terribly wrong. The coldness from the stone wall is strengthening like ice in my blood, spreading from my fingertips down into my veins, creeping toward my heart.

“Elizabeth,” I gasp, and my breath is cold against my own lips. I try to pull my hand away from the stone but it’s like it’s glued there and the harder I pull, the more I feel it: the stretching, gnawing feeling that I associate with a shift. “Elizabeth, stop—”

She looks at me with such excitement and I realize she doesn’t know the danger yet, she thinks this is proof that her spell is working.

I’ve lost my voice, it’s been frozen out of me, so I can’t tell her that something awful is happening, something neither of us can control or stop, something worse than a shapeshift, more violent and more powerful.

I can’t do anything and I can’t save her from it.

The last thing I see before the rushing coldness hits my heart is her eyes; one blue in the light outside the cave, one blackened by shadows.

Then light explodes from my chest and I am gone.