The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

Chapter One

Honey’s Helpful Hint, from

Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:

The first thing you need to know about making cornbread is that food is magic.

A holler is best at just that: hollering.

If the folks of Foxe Holler—a crumb of a town way down on a forgotten, lonesome shelf in the pantry of the South—are good at anything, it’s making a fuss.

From behind the safety of the counter, I absorb the chaos of the hunger-fueled Friday-morning rush at the Frost Apothakery, the town’s only bakery and apothecary of culinary cures. Family run, of course. Epicures, Momaw Frost used to call them, despite our efforts to gag her stubborn wordplay.

Your Apothakery now, girl. Momaw’s voice chimes in my head from beyond the living world. Not literally. We Frosts don’t have that kind of magic. You’d have to trek miles over to a larger town for a Tombwitch.

Right. Mine. Honey Frost’s Apothakery. My insides squelch.

But I don’t have time to dwell on how my twenties didn’t go according to plan, because Ms. Buchanan is on one helluva tear this morning.

“And if I have to listen to that woman tell me about her canned pineapple one more time, so help me—Gertha, I said, you would think angels blessed you the way you carry on, but I know the good Lord does not care a lick about your church luncheons…”

I mumble a quick Is that the truth? and bite my tongue. Any polite nodding—ingrained in my DNA like a Yes, ma’am—is only encouragement for a hurricane like Ms. Buchanan. I pass a still-warm honey bourbon bread pudding over the head of the chatty old woman to the man behind her, for his insomnia.

“Thank you kindly,” he says, already sniffing the bag.

“Sure thing, Mr. Earl,” I answer, hoping my eyes say Please save me from this conversation. No luck. He’s already munching on his remedy as he walks out the door, and I’m grateful he’s got a short drive home ’cause my bread pudding works fast.

“—but between you and me, the only thing she yammers on about more is her grandbabies. I told her, Gertha, I said, the only reason you got a litter of grandbabies is because your children are trying to distract you so you quit bothering them—”

“Ms. Buchanan—” I try, but she’s been chugging along for five minutes, oblivious to the line that’s now ten deep.

And I’ve still got to rescue the cornbread from the oven.

The Apothakery is not meant to stop. It operates as quickly and efficiently as the Frost women who’ve been running it for decades.

And I’m pretty sure one of Gertha’s prolific children in question is just out of earshot by the door, perusing the apple butter I jar myself.

My mom calls it the curse of small towns; Momaw Frost would’ve gleefully declared karma.

I stretch around Ms. Buchanan to hand Eva Mae a fresh Louisville Benedictine sandwich, for her pregnancy fatigue. The young woman doesn’t wait to take a bite as she cedes her place in line to the next customer, her dark eyes already clawing back some sparkle as the cucumber hits her tongue.

Inheriting the Apothakery way earlier than I was supposed to—or wanted to—makes me a battlefield-promoted Farewitch. But seeing someone’s expression after the first bite of something I made never gets old. It’s as addictive as any sweet.

Ms. Buchanan, however, does get old.

“Ma’am, please…”

“Oh, you should have seen Gertha when we were younger, a real hellcat that one, and now all she’s got time for is grandbabies, canning, and spewing that nonsense about magic and the downfall of the Holler.

She won’t even buy from you and I know she needs something for her arthritis.

So I told her, Gertha, I said, you quit what you’re on about, bad apples stirring up trouble don’t make the magic itself bad, and no Witch’s magic is gonna hurt you worse than the cigarette I know you sneak when you think no one’s looking—”

“Ms. Buchanan!” I exclaim. The customers behind Foxe Holler’s self-proclaimed most-informed church lady (but don’t say that in front of Gertha Fudge) take a collective step back.

The old woman eyes me, her wrinkled cheeks swelling with a hmph. “No need to shout, sugar. I’m old, not underwater.”

With tired fingers that spent hours kneading this morning, I push a large yellow box across the counter. Enough for a week. “Yes, ma’am. It’s just your jam cake is ready.”

“My jam cake?” Her silver hair glimmers in the late-morning haze peeking through the windows. Gossip and sunshine, a typical Southern spring day.

“Yes, jam cake. Every week.” For six years.

“Well, whatever for? I ordered apple dumplings.”

“For your memory. Ma’am.”

A pause. Then a bark. “Oh, hush, Beauregard,” Ms. Buchanan snips.

I peer over the counter and see shiny dark eyes and a wet nose.

Beauregard Buchanan is a beauty of a standard poodle, his midnight fur like licorice cotton candy and as glossy as the glaze on my jam cake.

I wish my own hair looked that groomed, but when I hit twenty-five and trudged home to Foxe Holler, I cut myself some feral bangs like any self-respecting quarter-life-crisis victim.

“Beauregard’s fussy because he hasn’t had his morning nap yet.

Gertha was up mowing her lawn at Satan’s hour this morning.

Wasn’t she?” Ms. Buchanan coos at the poodle, then waves a knobby hand at the cake box.

“Thank you, sugar. I know it won’t be as good as your mama’s, but it’ll do, such as it is. ”

Because I grew up with Southern politeness baked into my bones, I don’t point out that the old woman didn’t know what the hell her order was thirty seconds ago.

Instead, I ignore the insult and sneak a few dog treats into a to-go bag.

And I definitely don’t hope she thinks they’re cookies by accident.

“Believe me, ma’am, she’s still the Holler’s Farewitch in my mind, too. ”

“Mmm-hmm. How is mayoral life treating that mama of yours?”

“Just fine.” Not fine.

“Guess we all got jobs to do. You tell that Mayor Frost I say hey, you hear?”

A timer dings from the back.

I startle with relief. Lord, I love that sound, and not just because it rescues me from countless awkward conversations. My customers protest when I head for the kitchen.

“Two minutes!” I promise, slipping into the back before someone catches me. Old Blanche, the choir director, is looking particularly hangry.

The smell of butter hugs me the moment I slide into the peace of the kitchen.

I inhale, nostrils greedy. Our neighbors and customers are important, sure.

Our town has relied on the Frost family’s food and baking magic for decades, ever since the Holler was no more than a whisper.

And a Farewitch is nothing without a town, without the folks who depend on her culinary cures.

But the kitchen… I might not be the Farewitch my mom is, but the kitchen is home.

Tension seeps from my shoulders and stomach. The only sounds are my deep breaths and the massive churning oven. An only child of a single mom and one grandma, I made that oven my best friend growing up.

If I had kept up with friends more instead of work, someone would be here to laugh at that joke. Or would’ve at least warned me about the bangs.

But there’s no time for reminiscing or dawdling in a Farewitch’s kitchen.

I free two cast-iron skillets of cornbread from the oven just in time and leave them to cool. Frost women do not burn their cornbread. With a pastry brush, I Van Gogh some honeysuckle butter onto the perfectly golden full moons.

Then my stomach shrieks—when was the last time I ate? That banana before sunrise? Can’t remember. I’ll scarf down some reject scraps of something later. The cornbread sells better fresh out of the oven and I have a full shop waiting. A full town depending on me.

Every town has a Farewitch, sometimes several for big cities.

But as the official Farewitch for this Holler, I’m responsible for upholding the reputation of generations of Frost women, of protecting our legacy for curing all manner of ailments with the right recipe and ingredients, the right intention, and the right dash of my own unique magical flavor.

It’s a Michelin Star honor.

With Michelin Star pressure.

Self-taught chefs and bakers, my mom, her mom Momaw Frost, and all the Frost Farewitches before them were experts at managing oven temperatures just as well as neighbors with too much flavor.

It’s part of the job, and six years into it now, I follow my duties like I follow the family recipes: precisely.

Because if I don’t…

Momaw Frost appears in my mind. Not her seasoned scratchy voice this time, but her skeletal frame fighting a wasting disease that no recipe could cure.

As a girl, I watched my mom bend over kitchen grimoires all night long; as Farewitches, they’re our bibles.

Other Witches, from Hearthwitches to Greenwitches—even the elusive Tombwitches—traveled to help, asking for nothing in return.

Finally, Warlocks passed through the Holler at the idea of a good challenge.

They promised a whole spice drawer of magical solutions and exclusive potions, higher magic much stronger than the lower practical magic of Witches.

For a price, of course.

But after the Frost family bank account was dry as a sawdust biscuit, the Warlocks disappeared and the only ingredient Momaw Frost ever needed was time. More time for us to find the solution.

Her death hung on us like a lead apron. It still does. But if I do this Farewitch thing right, the Holler can depend on me. Which means Mom can depend on me.

I glance at the vaulted brick wall next to the oven, where hangs the Frost family’s vast collection of cast iron.

Skillets and grill pans and cornbread molds in the shape of whole ears of corn dangle from the chipped brick, seasoned under generations of strong butter, stronger magic, and the strongest women.

Despite the delightful floral aroma of the honeysuckle butter cooling over the nutty cornbread, my heart clenches.