Chapter 68
HARPER
We step away from Starcross and close a circle as Mom and Dad embrace, with me caught tightly between.
‘Shall I?’ Dad asks. ‘I’ve more experience of this – we do it all the time here. As a rule, if the Moot says don’t do it, we do. Sorry, Madam President.’
‘I’ve shared magic once before,’ I warn him. I can still remember the dripping, oily black power I cast into the Greenmagic matrix at Stoneacre, and the fear and revulsion on the face of those I’d considered my friends. ‘It didn’t go brilliantly.’
‘Overwhelmed them, did you? That’s my girl. What you’re after here is not sharing magic, but opening yours to us. There’s a difference. Close your eyes, wait, and we’ll come and get you.’
I wait, warm and cocooned and safe. Oh! I hear Mom gasp, as Dad’s magic touches hers, and I tell myself that’s nothing like a sex noise, because no one wants to picture their parents doing that, especially not while in the same room.
Slowly, a faint seam of light etches into my darkness.
Then another. Two more. And out of the darkness resolves a door – the inside of our old front door at home in Sanctuary.
Even though I know what’s coming, I jump when there’s a loud knock. My dad’s hand, his rings striking the wood.
‘Harper?’ Mom calls.
And I open up and they’re standing there.
They’re both themselves, and not quite themselves.
A little younger, perhaps. Glowier. Not the age they were when they first met, but somewhere in between, as if this is a memory from the childhood I never had, and my mom and dad have come back from Parents’ Night at my school after hearing grade-A reports all night long.
My heart beats painfully. My blood is warm all the way down to my toes as I let them in.
‘Okay Harper,’ my father says. ‘I see Starcross is right there. Reach down and press your hands against the palimpsest page.’
Startled, I look down, but he’s right. Our grimoire is resting on our kitchen table – or this magical-alternate-dimension version of it. The tablecloth evidently senses my thoughts, for it glitters and sparkles as if to say, So much better than that plain old lace!
I remember how the original tablecloth, embroidered by Great-Gramma Serafina’s Giftless mother, burned when our house did.
Not even Pierre could replace that. And at the thought of him my joy drains away.
Here I am, playing happy families with Mom and Lachlan, when the man who I’d lain awake wishing could be my dad, is dead because of me.
I don’t see how I’ll ever stop missing him.
Perhaps my parents sense that sharp sting of grief, because Lachlan rests a comforting hand on my shoulder and Mom brushes back my hair.
The tablecloth beneath Starcross settles back into plain, handstitched lace, as if to agree that non-magical things and people are every bit as precious as us Gifted.
Drawing a deep, steadying breath, imagining one of Pierre’s large hands on my other shoulder, I press both palms to Starcross and close my eyes.
When I open them, I see I’m back at the old farmhouse. Haven. Elora stands before me. Small, frightened hands pluck the back of my skirts.
My skirts. I look down, to see gingham belled from my waist. I want to reach a reassuring hand to the child at my back. My son. I’m not an observer, now, I realise. I’ve stepped into the place of Susanna Fenn.
My hands are my own. I reach for my face.
Can you even tell, without a mirror, if your face is still your own?
I laugh at the absurdity, but laughter stops in my throat as I look to Elora Fenn and see – Mom.
She wears our ancestor’s plain calico dress.
Her cape. Mom’s unmistakable auburn hair is hidden beneath a cap, as I’ve been used to seeing the old woman’s, and the few tendrils that peek out are grey.
She is both herself, and not herself. I recognise my mother in the figure I’m seeing, but I know I’m looking at Elora Fenn’s lined and careworn face.
Mom? I mouth, both fascinated and horrified.
Elora makes a slight, abortive nod.
I look around for Lachlan. Panic when I can’t see him.
Then realise the shadow cast by the porch gable to my right is …
not exactly empty. It’s thicker. Darker.
If I squint, the darkness takes on the outline of a man.
Of course, Dad has no body to come to, in this time.
Redhaven’s modern master can only haunt Haven-that-was. But he’s here.
His attention isn’t on me, though. It’s directed beyond the porch on which we all stand.
And when my gaze follows, I reel. At least two-dozen townsfolk lie dead.
They’re without visible injury except a thin line of blood trailing from a nostril, from the soft shell of an ear, or drooling from slack lips.
Among them lie the throat-cut witches – their slaughter the act that provoked me.
Or which gave me an excuse. For I wanted to do this, I realise – I’ve wanted to do it for a long time. Mostly because the townsfolk had it coming, with their insolence and violence and utter lack of respect. Partly, to see if I could.
I? Me?
Cold creeps down my spine and I shake my head, as if to clear water from my ears after a swim. But I can’t shake out Susanna Fenn. My brain insists I take ownership of this atrocity. My heart inwardly glows with pride at it.
On Mom’s face is only agony, as Sarah-in-Elora looks out at the carnage. I see where her gaze rests, on two of the uninjured bodies. Scarlet runs from the corners of their eyes down milk-white cheeks, as if my magic cracked the girls open. They’re about the same age as me, I notice.
‘What have you done, Susanna?’ whispers a harsh, appalled voice behind me, and I turn to see Greggory Swinson, the twins’ father, staring like I’m a dog gone rabid, only now betraying itself in foam and fury. ‘My Joanie? Our girls?’
Joan must have been one of those taken hostage. There was no saving her. And the girls gave me their permission.
Susanna. Gave Susanna their permission.
I stare at Greggory’s face and will myself to realise what’s happened here.
This place is meant to be a refuge for witches, a haven, and I – she – has soaked it in blood.
I wait for guilt to well up in me, or shame.
But all that comes is a prickling anger that the townsfolk gave me no choice that could have saved the twins.
My pulse throbs beneath my fingernails, and I curl up my palms, lest I’m tempted to do more.
To cast a sigil at anyone who questions what I’ve done here today.
‘We have to go,’ Mom says, though her voice isn’t her own, coming out of Elora Fenn’s aged throat.
The words aren’t her own either. I’m sharing Susanna Fenn’s memories, her life, her emotions and urges, because the palimpsest opened itself for me.
Mom and Dad are only here because our magics joined and I brought them with me.
Do I have any control over Susanna’s body?
To test it, I raise my hands and flex my fingers, scoffing at the fearful murmurs of my community as they edge away.
‘We go,’ Elora repeats. ‘Everything we leave behind must be confused and destroyed, because if word gets out of what happened here, no witch in America will be safe. Pack your things and depart, one by one or two by two. I’ll go last and make sure everything’s seen to.
Don’t travel together on the road. Don’t associate with one another in the future.
Our Haven dies here. Best to forget it ever existed. ’
‘But they attacked us!’ I cry. ‘They outnumbered us. They killed children!’
‘And all the mundanes will see is that we killed two dozen of them in return – and did so without a single weapon,’ Elora says, grimly.
‘What do you think happens next? You think there’ll be justice for witches?
There’s never justice for witches, Susanna.
If there was, we’d have had no need of Haven in the first place. ’
I writhe at those bleak words and turn to stare into the shadow where Lachlan is watching us. The light shifts a little. He feels their sting, too.