3. Turn and Face the Strange
Turn and Face the Strange
Rumor Malefic
Birch sat on our old wooden porch steps, head in his hands, tapping his foot. My wet hair sopped against my night gown, chilling my shoulder blades, even so, annoyance warmed me.
“Don’t tell me you’re nervous. You don’t get to be nervous.”
My sister’s boyfriend met my gaze with a quick, jerky movement. “Just ready to get on with it,” he choked out. “You know, the possibility of-of—it makes me a little jumpy.”
My annoyance morphed into a simmering anger as I clenched my fists at my sides. “There is no possibility as long as you do your part… and if you don’t… Birch, I swear to every witch in my ancestral line I will make you regret the day you laid eyes on Prism.”
Birch’s eyes narrowed slightly as he loosened the collar of his dingy beige shirt. “Is that a threat, Rumor?”
“You better fucking believe it is.”
I never liked him. He tended the town’s horses—lazily.
Their hay never rolled, saddles always off kilter, stallions going months unbroken.
He was an idiot, and his eye for my sister Prism put her in the position to be chosen for the wedding rite.
Oh, how I’d begged her not to get involved with him.
Oh, how I’d considered crafting a poison and slipping it into his water carafe.
However, she seemed fond of him, and he’d never made her cry.
Every wedding rite had gone off fine for as long as I could remember.
There was the one incident when I was a young child, maybe twenty or so years ago, but that felt like a distant, faded nightmare.
The anxiety was there, I supposed, but after a while and dozens of successful weddings, the warnings began to feel like ghost stories.
Even still, everyone had a mother or grandmother that claimed they knew of a maiden taken on her wedding rite.
Whispers of what happened to Fable Woolworth decades ago still haunted the ceremonial field.
I’d never met her, yet even still, pale visions flashed in my mind.
Remnants of Fable’s horror echoed through the earth, pulling on my magical awareness.
When Fable tied up her curls in emerald ribbon before her rite, she had no clue she’d be taken in such a ghastly fashion.
No woman deserved her fate.
No woman survived her fate.
We all tried to forget, tried to pretend it hadn’t really happened, or couldn’t ever happen again—but the aura of the field never lied. This place where women came to marry—they also came to die.
The rapture was enough to keep us fearful and obedient; I hoped the darkness was simply disinterested in this morbid custom now.
Or maybe the coven kept the story going for some other end.
I couldn’t know because I couldn’t ask freely until the solstice, and my list of queries for the crone and high priestess was already a mile long.
The solstice was next week, and I supposed I should work on my potion work and spell crafting to present to the coven.
Though I’d likely put it off until the night before and wing it and still end up impressing them.
For so little training, I was good. More than good.
My magic was budding at the surface of my fingertips, just begging to be unleashed.
Like one of Birch’s horses, my ether was an untamed stallion, bucking the fence and begging to be set free.
Birch stood as I walked past, and even though he was taller than me by a good few inches, he took a step back.
Good. Somewhere in that lazy brained boy-head he knew I was waiting for a reason to come for him—and I wouldn’t hesitate.
“Stay out here,” I demanded on my way through the door.
Redundant, he couldn’t come inside anyway, but bossing him around felt nice.
I tapped my palm against the wooden protection rune at the top of the doorframe.
Prism twirled in front of a standing mirror by the fireplace and giggled. “That sigil works on boyfriends but not on mice.”
“One of those I don’t mind sneaking around after my crumbs. The other can rot on the porch for all I care, he’s not coming inside.”
Prism sighed. “Rumor, you’re too protective of me. I’m about to be a married lady, after all.”
“Sit,” I instructed, pulling my little sister’s long blonde hair into my palms. “Braided with flowers, or what, do you now prefer horse straw?”
She fought against her dimpled smile as she looked at me through the mirror. “Can you be nice for one day?”
“Not a whole day,” I grumbled, running a comb through the sunlight strands. “Maybe for an hour.”
My sister’s smile faded while she twiddled her thumbs.
“Hey, I’m just kidding. I’ll behave and cut Birch a break for like, a day or two. I’m glad he makes you happy.”
“It’s not that. You’ve always taken care of us… I just wish Matri and Mother were here today. You know, to see me get married. I’ve always dreamt of my wedding rite.”
Another thing the rapture, and the wretched Blackthorne Boys, had taken from us.
Goddess, how I laid awake at night fantasizing about breaking into their gilded iron castle and dismantling their every crooked, decrepit limb…
Kneeling in front of my sister, I took her palms in mine, her soft skin quieting the burn in my throat.
“Hold on, one second.” I closed my eyes.
“What are you doing? Please tell me it’s not something witchy. We are forbidden from?—“
I raised a finger. “Shh, I’m getting a very psychic download.”
My sister huffed a laugh at my antics.
“It’s Matri, she agrees with me that no ranch hand should have zero calluses on their body.”
Prism scolded me with a smile in her tone. “You promised to be nice, Rumor. Though, Matri probably would say that.”
“And Mother…” I continued, opening my eyes with a sigh, “says that Birch has lovely brown eyes.”
My heart softened as Prism wrapped her arms around my neck. “I’m going to worry about you being all alone in this house, Rumor. You won’t feed yourself if I don’t put soup on the fire every night.”
“Sure I will.” I wouldn’t. “I’ll be fine.
” I wouldn’t be . Prism was my life. Caring for her, keeping her safe, making sure we had food and water and firewood…
damn near everything I’d done since our mothers died had revolved around her survival.
What was I supposed to do now? The most I could strive for was to find a job that allowed me to exercise my magical skill.
I could bake muffins with Emp or tend to the town washing with Briar.
Spell work to leaven bread and suds water—thrilling.
What a joke that our birthright had been reduced to menial tasks.
Anything beyond that could send the rapture right to our doors.
“Have they lit the bonfire yet?” Prism asked, bouncing in her seat as I finished her hair. “Oh, it’s finally my turn. The whole thing is so romantic, don’t you think? Climbing onto the tree stump and awaiting my true love.”
“I think I’d prefer the other way that story could go,” I muttered, fishing a tiny stick sigil from the top of the hearth and returning to Prism’s braid.
My sister fidgeted with her fingers as I tucked the protective rune into the top of her braid.
Yes, magic wasn’t allowed, but sigils weren’t magic, per se.
They were only activated if they needed to be—and if they needed to be activated, then fuck the no magic rule.
It was selfish of me, but I had to protect her.
“Do you think… that could happen?”
Guilt clawed at me as my little sister stood and assessed herself in the mirror.
She was the beautiful one. Pure golden sunlight, while I was the dark haired, pale storm cloud over her shoulder.
“Those are just spooky stories, and you have Birch, anyway. There’s nothing to worry about except maybe Moss and Graphite getting drunk and setting the pigs loose again. ”
Our laughter crackled alongside the pops of the logs on the fire. “Amity’s face when the pigs trampled her flowers… I’ll never forget how cross she was over that. I suppose I would be too. It was her wedding rite. Though, she’s never been very nice to me.”
“That’s because she’s jealous. You’re the prettiest girl in town, Prism. We are all plain little field mice next to you.”
Peeking out the window, my sister bounced on her heels. “The bonfire is lit. But where’s Birch? You scared him off on your way in, didn’t you?”
“I was nothing but kind to him as always. He’s gone to wait for you in the crowd of men, I’m sure.”
It was only then that my starry-eyed sister did a double take at my disheveled appearance. “That’s not what you’re wearing… right?”
The thin fabric of my slate linen dress, reserved for wedding rites and death rites, how appropriate , hung on my body, doing no favors to my shape.
I laced my leather boots and combed my long, wavy black hair.
It was hard to believe that Prism and I came from the same parents.
It was as if my sister had been born with our mother’s light and left me with only the shadows of our matri.
Our mothers were so different, light and dark, the perfect complement to one another.
I wasn’t sure if Prism and I were as complementary as we were just stark contrasts of the other in both form and spirit.
Tiny holes formed at the hem of my dress. There was no need to spend our meager wages on new fabric for better clothes, though, a selfish part of me wanted them anyway. With Birch joining the family, maybe there’d be enough spare coin to fund a new frock or two.
With a belabored sigh, I met my sister in front of our dilapidated cottage, the maple trees swaying in greeting. I wasn’t an earth witch, as far as I could tell, though some flora and fauna seemed fond of me occasionally.
“I saw what you did,” Prism noted, interlocking her arm with mine. “With my hair. Magic isn’t allowed, you know.”