2. The Ritual
CHAPTER TWO
The Ritual
The greenhouse settled around me, and as the sun sank low over Pumpkin Hollow, casting everything in a deep autumnal orange, it came alive.
By day it might have looked like an ordinary greenhouse—maybe even a mildly neglected one—but by night it bloomed.
The belladonna unfurled its purple flowers, hiding the dark berries beneath.
The night phlox breathed out honey and almonds.
My black hellebores were littered with small flower buds, although they wouldn’t bloom until later in the season.
The datura hung its great pale bells in rows, gorgeous and hallucinogenic, my best girls.
I specialized in night-blooming flora, which the town found ominous.
Sure, most of them were highly toxic, but that wasn’t their fault.
They’d been made that way, and most people refused to look past that to what good they could offer.
Most importantly, they let me work in the dark. The dark didn’t ask questions or expect answers.
And tonight, on the new moon before All Hallows’ Eve, the rarest thing in my collection was going to open for the first and only time in its life.
I made my way to the heart of the greenhouse, to the glass bell cloche on the center table that held the very last ember of my hope.
The Selenicereus arcanaflora—commonly known as the Moon Queen flower—sat in its pot of grave-dark soil, spindly limbs spread out around a bone-white flower furled tight as a fist. Its narrow petals overlapped in an intricate knot, faintly luminous along the seams, like moonlight had been caught inside.
Five years I’d nursed it from a seed I’d acquired from a very shady wizard.
The world’s rarest flower, and the most difficult to keep in captivity.
I’d actually started with one hundred seeds, but only one had survived to maturity.
Five years of perfectly balanced soil and whispered encouragement and exactly the right amount of neglect. Not one night had gone by when I hadn’t doted on it. It would only bloom once. And the witch who harvested its pollen could work a spell like the kind not seen since the age of the fae.
I could see the Atropa Pharmaceutical Catalog now: When life leaves you empty, feel a real connection again. That would be the copy when they patented it and sold it. But I didn’t want to sell it. I wanted to use it.
Deep in the family archives, I’d read about it—before they’d cast me out, of course.
A childhood spent reading instead of making friends had paid off in some ways.
The archive had contained an etching of an ancient temple, acquired by my family during an expedition to Central America, where the Moon Queen grew in the heart of the deepest rainforest. The etching was of an ancient song of the Yucatec people sang about the flower.
I’d spent a whole summer in high school translating just the first verse:
When sun descends to the well below,
The Moon Queen wakes in silver glow.
For one night only will she gleam
She calls two hearts to a single dream.
It promised connection with another, a bond pure and sacred. An unbreakable soul connection.
But it was the second verse I’d translated as a way to fill the silence after I’d been cursed that had been the key:
One breath of pollen from petals torn
And from two souls one thread is born.
What one heart feels, the other shall share,
Each sorrow, each joy, it is all laid bare.
That had started everything. Five years of research.
Then I’d done what I did best and modified it, breaking the magic down into its bare components.
All magic was like that, an amalgamation of alchemic principles based on the root essence of plants and other mystical ingredients.
Once you understood that, it became more like a science than anything occult.
My green magic was just an exchange of energy between me and my plants.
What some still thought of as “natural magical talent” was really alchemic enchantments woven into my DNA. Simple, really.
I’d learned what the Moon Queen flower’s essence was—and then I’d harnessed it for my own purposes, splitting the bond—not one perfect connection, but something applicable to everyone.
I’d reverse-engineered the magic into a counter-curse, because the flower’s magic was based in connection, and all connection was founded on communication.
Tonight, I would finally cast it and be rid of this goddess-forsaken curse for good.
I’d be able to speak again. People would really hear me. I’d be able to go into town and order my favorite milkshake at Frank’s Diner and laugh while bobbing for apples at the Pumpkin Festival and…
I shook my head and didn’t let myself imagine further. I’d gotten very good at not imagining.
“No pressure,” I told the Moon Queen through the protective glass that kept the humidity just right. Mugen hopped up on the table beside me. “We’ve got this, right?”
He chirped approvingly, which was something.
I’d been preparing for this moment for five years, but there were some things that couldn’t be prepared in advance. Magic was particular like that, despite my efforts otherwise. I got to work.
Ordinary flame wouldn’t do for a ritual of this magnitude—I needed candles steeped in henbane oil and sung over at midnight, thirteen of them.
They had to cure in the open air of the circle where they’d be burned.
I’d planned each step down to the minute to create the perfect ritual.
I took the pitch-black candles I’d made under the full moon down from the rafters of the greenhouse and started dipping them in the oil I’d prepared during a thunderstorm.
The golden, viscous liquid consumed each one, and it emerged as something new.
I’d actually made fifteen, the need for redundancy hard-wired into me by my mother in middle school. Which was really quite ridiculous, considering this whole ritual depended on a single bloom that had tried to die on me about a dozen times, but…control what you can, I guess.
I lit one—my first test. I may have been a green witch, but I’d always been good with fire. An even simpler exchange of energy.
I snapped my fingers, and the wick caught.
The flame bloomed, then changed, shifting from a deep orange to a pale, silvery shimmer.
It threw twinkling shadows through the night-blooming jasmine, catching on each of the small white blooms until they looked like a constellation of stars captured during the universe’s creation.
I sat back on my stool and allowed myself, for one breath, to be pleased.
This was going to work. I’d spent months—years—preparing, and if there was something I could do, it was execute my plan.
I grabbed every ingredient I needed, bringing them inside my sacred circle before setting it with a line of gypsum.
I laid out each of my thirteen candles in counterclockwise order, chanting the ancient song I’d learned backward and forward, translated and retranslated a dozen times.
Because just saying the words wasn’t enough.
That was just sounds. For the magic to work, I had to know them in my soul, even if they were in a language that wasn’t mine.
I sang the first verse in its native language then snapped my fingers again, and all thirteen candles lit at once.
The air in the greenhouse changed. It grew heavier at the back of my throat, thick with the bitterness of burned herbs and magic whose roots reached deep into the earth.
My ears popped. Outside the glass, a shadow with glowing red eyes passed before I could get a good look.
But my mind was focused on a single purpose, no time for distractions.
More shadows crawled up the walls of the greenhouse.
My shadow, and the plants’ shadows, and shadows that had no source.
They stretched too tall and thin, wavering against the panes like the hands of the damned.
The datura swung on their stems though nothing had disturbed them.
Jasmine flowers opened and closed as if gasping for breath.
My breath came out white as frost crackled across the inside of the glass in ominous fractals. The night outside was mild. There was no reason for frost.
I continued the chant.
Under its cloche, the Moon Queen shivered. A hairline of white light split along the top petal, and I wasn’t breathing.
But I forced air into and out of my lungs.
I needed one more ingredient, and it would be here soon.
I’d sacrificed what was left of my dignity with old Gertrude to get her to order exactly what I’d needed.
The old woman was the town’s biggest gossip, but she got things done and was one of the few people I trusted.
And probably the only one who still trusted me, for some reason.
It would arrive, and I would complete this spell, and I would be free.
Nothing would go wrong. Nothing would go wrong.
Tears streamed down my face, and I repeated it one more time, my own magic mantra.
Nothing would go wrong.