The Brief and Fraught Melancholic Adolescence of a Warlock
Fifty-some years ago, a young woman arrived in Foxe Holler.
The townsfolk distrusted her, simply because she came from afar and looked different from their kin.
They treated her like they did a local poor farmer, whose father had been a Warlock.
Against their better judgment, as mortals do, the woman and farmer fell in love.
A decade passed in peace. Then they had a child.
It’s not easy to make a living in a small holler, especially when neighbors distrust you.
The parents knew bigotry would fall upon their boy if he ever displayed his own magic.
So they asked a powerful Witch for help.
For a wish. A profitable farm, a comfortable life for their boy.
Desperate parents will do anything, damn the consequences.
The Witch granted them everything. Security, wealth, friends. And they prospered.
But magic has a cost. Unpaid debts upset balance.
The Witch asked for a humble payment: If the boy ever manifested magic, he was hers to mentor.
The na?ve fools agreed, thinking their child would turn out just like them, as all parents hope.
No magic. Just another ordinary boy. Years went by.
The boy grew up in the easy comfort his parents didn’t pay for, and became a spoiled young man.
But on the cusp of sixteen, his magic came forward.
When the Witch came to settle the debt, his parents refused to honor their deal. They were afraid embracing their son’s oddity, what made him too unique, was a death wish in a small town. So to cheat their way out of the bargain, they toyed with spellwork they didn’t understand.
But with no magic themselves, their desperation was their own curse, and it killed them.
For the first time, the young man was on his own.
The Witch offered her guidance, one more time. But he refused any gesture of help. All he wanted was to brood and lock himself away where his magic could grow wild and arrogant, unrefined and irresponsible. Just like him, and the Warlocks before him.
Which is exactly what he did.
As the Witch spoke, Warlock Knight moved to stare out a set of bay windows that overlook the back of the cottage. Where no one could see his face. How much of this did he already know?
“Debts or not, your intention was never selfless,” the Warlock says. “You only wanted a mentee to mold, young power to manipulate.”
The Witch looks over at me from the hearth, where she’s now tending her sonker. “Don’t let him fool you, girl. This one has loved growing enemies before he ever loved growing plants.”
“I was sixteen, Okolona,” the Warlock snaps, turning to face her.
“I wasn’t thinking about enemies, I was grieving.
” Anger burns in his words, as deep and simmering as the sonker.
“My parents made poor choices, yes, but you dropped them into a damn maze with no way out. They didn’t even have any magic to defend themselves. ”
The fire in the hearth flares up, roaring with the Witch’s rising voice. “But you did, boy. You could have been the best Warlock of your generation, but that opportunity passed.”
His head hangs as her words settle on him.
He seems to have come to the same conclusion.
“I followed them that night,” he says, his words carrying half the fight they had before.
“But the magic they were exploiting… I only remember there was so much light. Heat. My power was brand new, volatile, and if I’d had more control, I could’ve saved—”
“You didn’t kill them,” I interrupt. Raw power in his veins, but missing the experience to do anything with it? That thought will take him nowhere good, fast. Not many Witches can thwart a Hedgewitch, and someone without any magic at all, misusing powerful spells?
A shudder racks his taut shoulders. “I might as well have.”
The Widow Witch snorts. “Good Lord, you only children. You always think everything is about you.”
I round on her. “You had to know the Knights would never actually be able to pay such a steep price. He was their son.”
The fire twitches behind her so she’s more silhouette than woman.
“The price was steep because their request was steep. I cannot expend magic without paying a price, and if a price is not paid, the imbalance grows. The weaker I become. If I spend magic for souls who do not restore the balance with their own payment, I lose the privilege of my own power.”
“But no one’s forcing you to bargain with desperate people. It’s predatory.”
“Is it? Because of my magic, the Knight family prospered. It’s why this one grew up in a grand farmhouse.”
“You made it a prison,” the Warlock croaks.
“Your sense of fairness has gone cattywampus, boy. Your parents came to me. I don’t horde my magic only for myself. Nor do I expend it for free. They learned both lessons.”
“But it’s not only about balancing the debt with you, is it? You wanted to punish me for your feud with them, even after the fire.”
The hearth flares. “Because you were ungrateful and spoiled. You were the town’s first Warlock in generations, born here, your magic tied to the Holler. Made stronger for it. But all that potential just left you with more power than humility.”
He runs an agitated hand through his hair. “Everyone has an ego as a teenager.”
“But you grew older, and still you hid away. What has your magic done for your town, helped anyone in your community, before or after the fire?”
Doubt tears through the anger on his face. His eyes flick to me. Haven’t I been telling him the same thing the last two months?
“Regardless, they’re dead,” he mutters. “None of this matters anymore.”
The anger on the Witch’s face shifts to disappointment. “What a shame.” From a bowl, she grabs a raw huckleberry and squeezes it between two crooked fingers. “That farmhouse gave you all the time and space to grow, yet your heart is still the size of a huckleberry.”
She bursts the berry with a squishy pop.
“That’s true,” I say.
The Warlock shoots me an affronted expression, which I ignore. I might be a guest in a conversation decades in the making, but I don’t like feeling akin to a pot on a back burner.
“But it’s not the only truth,” I continue. “He left the town, but he never left its people.”
Her sharp attention lands on me. “Pretty words, but you’re biased, girl.”
The Warlock scoffs. “I know I grew up with comfort my parents didn’t pay for. But they made that deal for me. Only once I came along, not before. Their intention was selfless. Even if I didn’t grow up to be.”
He stalks back to my side, confidence renewing his stern if ashen expression. A welcome sight, over the shame.
“Your garden, Okolona—I can see it’s dying. Which means you’re dying. That’s why you agreed to grant my wish a year ago. I’d owe you a favor, and you planned to ask for my help.”
She purses her lips, her sonker forgotten and bubbling over.
My jaw slackens. “That’s why you haven’t taken a husband this season.” She doesn’t have the magic. The smaller, concentrated attacks on the Manor make sense, but how in the world did she manage that tornado?
An idea goes off like a kitchen timer in my head. “How about a deal?”
The Warlock whirls to me. “What? Frost, what the hell are you doing?”
I’m not sure, but I’m doing it. I look at the Witch head-on. “I’ll make you a recipe. A cure. In exchange, you’ll tell me all you can about my family’s affliction. Whatever information you’ve possibly got. If I can reverse the effects for my mom, I want to know.”
Momaw Frost is rolling her eyes from the grave. That’s three people I’ve promised to save now, but it seems every godforsaken person in the Holler is dying, so what’s another?
Violent interest gleams in the Witch’s eyes. “Is that all?”
“And you lift your curse on Mr. Knight before the solstice. You let him live.”
She hums. “It has to be one of my recipes. From my books.”
“Fine.”
“And if the recipe you choose doesn’t work?”
“Then we lose. The Frosts don’t come to you for help ever again, and the Warlock succumbs to his own illness on the solstice with Lazlo.”
The Witch smiles, revealing charcoal-black teeth, canines sharp as nails, just like her hounds. “You have two days. I’ll return then to taste what you’ve made. Don’t try to leave—my grimoires and anything else you need are here.”
Standing, she snaps. The sonker disappears from the fireplace and materializes on the kitchen table. The flames behind her cackle.
I stick out my hand, hoping the nervous spasm in my fingers isn’t visible.
She stares at my hand like it’s odd magic she’s never seen. “No one’s ever brave enough to touch me, girl.”
“I was raised to be polite.” My voice might be trembling like my hand.
The Warlock looks ready to murder me. Manners, I mouth in his direction.
“Very well,” the Witch croons, toxic glee spilling into her features.
We shake on it. Her magic jolts through me and I hold on to her hand as long as I can. The energy there… it’s not violent. It’s weak, dying, like the Warlock said. But there’s also something else underneath the centuries of power and knowledge.
Melancholy.
She drops my hand as a cloak appears and drapes over her shoulders, like limp roadkill. “Oh, and the hounds need to be fed every four hours.”
“Or what?”
She vanishes.
Then it’s just me and the Warlock, all alone in the Widow Witch’s cottage.
“For the undeniable and permanent record, Ms. Frost, this is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
I swallow, flexing my hand where the Witch’s magic still tingles, a dull static buzz of worry pulling at my chest. “That’s what you said about the cookie bake.”