Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

VALERIA

T he morning after I read Gwen's poem in the quad, I opened my eyes and gazed at the ceiling, motionless. The curtains were drawn and only a hint of gray light crept between them. Images flooded my mind: the look of panic on Gwen's face as I read her private words, her eyes shimmering with the tears she'd tried to hide. I pushed the memories away, but older ones came—a hollow in a fallen tree, crow feathers, words carved in ancient wood by small hands. I hadn't thought about these things in years, but now, as the darkness pressed in around me, I found my mind propelled backward in time, back to when it all began with Gwen.

When I was little, I loved to wander in the redwoods behind Cascabel Road. My house was vast and quiet, its treasures all meant for collecting dust, never to be touched by a child's hands. The forest wasn't like that. The forest was wild, imperfect. I was at ease there, one more living thing moving in the shadow of the trees.

To get there, all I had to do was walk out my back door and past my manicured garden. There was no fence, nothing to delineate where my property ended and the forest began. Why would there be? These were the coven's woods. The clearing where we held our gatherings was hidden away among the trees. Patches of medicinal herbs planted by our ancestors still grew beneath the brambles.

In those days, I didn't take the broad, easy paths cleared away by generations of witches. I followed the deer trail, picking my way over gnarled roots and shimmying beneath thick branches. Along the path, somewhere between Luke's house and mine, was an enormous fallen tree. It must have met its end a hundred years ago. Now it lay like a sleeping giant, ancient and covered in moss. I loved to walk its great length, my arms out like a gymnast on a balance beam. Toward its base was a child-sized hollow. The bottom was mossy and soft, its walls cool. I'd sit inside my secret chamber, watching the rabbits graze or listening to the warblers in the branches above me.

One day, when I was about eight, I sat in my hiding place and heard something moving toward me from the river. I rose quietly, expecting a fawn, maybe a doe. Before me stood a girl. She was skinny, dressed in clothes she'd outgrown a year ago. Her dark hair hung wild past her shoulders. I recognized her. Gwen Foster, a Mundane from school.

Our eyes met, and she froze like a startled animal. I could tell she knew this forest wasn't hers, that she'd just been caught doing something she shouldn't. In another second, she was gone. By the time I'd scrambled to my feet, all I could make out was her dark shape disappearing between the trees in the direction of the river.

I didn't go back to the hollow for a few days. When I did, there was a magnificent crow feather waiting for me inside. It had been laid with care in the center of the hollow's mossy floor. I picked it up, examining it like it was a precious artifact. I stroked the dark plume, holding it up to the filtered sunlight to watch the rainbow colors hidden in its black sheen. In the feather's place, I left a fallen jay's nest.

We continued like this for a long time, leaving one another our forest bounty. A cicada shell. The discarded skin of a rattlesnake, its scales as delicate as fine lace.

Life went on as usual. My parents bound gold coins with herbs, burned marjoram on Wednesdays for luck. The coven would gather in the forest at night, the others completely unaware of the hollow and the strange little exchange happening there. I loved watching my mom, the crown of the high priestess on her head, her eyes flashing in the candlelight. The slit in her long red robe would open to reveal the coven's ceremonial dagger strapped to her thigh. She was beautiful and powerful in equal measure, and somehow, as I watched her, I decided power and beauty must be the same thing.

One morning before my visit to the forest, I snuck into my mom's room, pulled on the robe she wore to our coven gatherings, and took the crown from its place in her wardrobe. It was solid gold. A brilliant sun was emblazoned in its center, with peaks radiating upward like golden rays of light. Just holding it, I could tell it was old, important. I put it on and let it settle unevenly on my too-small skull. I took the ceremonial dagger too. My thigh was far too skinny, even for the sheath's smallest loop, so I fastened it around my waist instead. I examined myself and decided I was as beautiful as a queen from a fairy tale. I did what any kid in her mom's clothes would do: I danced around in front of the mirror.

That's what I was doing when she and my dad walked in. My mother's mouth tightened into that familiar, lineless frown.

"Take those things off. You look ridiculous," she said.

I glanced in the mirror again, seeing myself through her eyes. My hair was plastered awkwardly to my brow beneath the crooked crown. My small frame was drowning in red fabric, the robe's extra length gathering sloppily at my feet. She was right. Humiliation washed over me, burning my cheeks. I turned to my dad, but he gave me an apologetic little shrug.

"Better do what she says, honey. That dagger's pretty sharp."

I didn't cry as I changed back into my T-shirt and jeans. But by the time I escaped to the hollow, shameful tears were stinging my eyes.

I discovered Gwen there, leaving a woodpecker's eggshell. She startled when she saw me, that same guilty look on her face. I thought she was going to bolt as she had before, but when she saw my tearful expression, she hesitated.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"My mom doesn't think I'm pretty," I replied, voicing my fear with a child's blunt honesty.

She gave me a funny look, but before I could say anything else, she'd disappeared back into the trees.

The next time I visited the hollow, I didn't find a feather or sprig of berries. On the hollow's back wall, in small, childlike letters, she'd carved the birds don't care if you're pretty .

I stared at the inscription for a long time, a slow smile dawning on my face, a strange feeling washing over me. Like I'd just discovered the world was bigger than I thought it was.

A few weeks later, I saw her again at the hollow. This time, as she moved to run, I cried out, "Wait!"

We played in the forest every day after that, chasing each other over the pine-covered floor, following the birds that darted overhead. I loved the bright yellow finches that sang in the morning; Gwen loved the ravens and owls. This made sense to me. There was something nocturnal about her, her eyes as dark as theirs with the same quiet intelligence.

We went on like this for a year, our fragile bond only existing within the forest. Both of us seemed to understand our friendship was a secret without ever saying it aloud. At school, we breezed past each other like strangers. Our coven had always been carefully polite toward the Mundanes in town—nice enough to blend in, never close enough to arouse suspicion. Not only had I befriended a Mundane, I'd welcomed her into our forest. My mother would be furious if she found out.

Gwen kept her own mysteries. She never showed me the way to her bridge, never brought me to the water's edge, where her house would be visible on the other side of the river. I got the sense she was ashamed of it—or at least, she thought she ought to be.

One day, it was over as abruptly as it had begun. My mom went into the woods in search of Mayapple and discovered me in the clearing where our coven gathered. With a Mundane. Playing with worms.

It was as bad as I'd imagined. Gwen ran off into the woods, and my mom dragged me back home by the sleeve of my dirt-stained dress. She didn't yell or lecture, though I wished she would. I was used to that. Instead, a cold silence hung between us that was a hundred times worse, as if she were holding all the horrible things she wanted to say to me behind a wall of ice.

That night, as I lay in bed unable to sleep, I heard my mom slip down the stairs and out the back door. She came back after midnight, smelling of woodsmoke, her footsteps soft in the hall. The next morning at school, Gwen was silent, her shoulders slumped as if in defeat. At recess, I heard the teachers talking about the fire. It was the strangest thing, they said. The old wooden bridge near the apple orchards had burned down overnight like it'd been struck by lightning.

I thought of my mom slipping in the back door, the scent of smoke heavy on her clothes. So she hadn't just forbidden me from seeing Gwen. She'd found a permanent solution.

I could tell by the look of devastation on Gwen's face that she knew the bridge wasn't an accident. She probably thought my mom had doused it in gasoline, or that I had. I was sorry for what had happened, but for reasons I couldn't name, I was angry too. Angry that she'd come to the forest in the first place. Angry that I'd gotten in trouble. Angry that she stood there now, tears glistening in her raven eyes.

She tried to talk to me only once after that. She'd walked up to me as I sat with a few other girls on the playground. Her jeans were too short, revealing several inches of pale ankle. Her hair fell around her face in frizzy waves. She didn't look any different than she had in the forest. But out here, these little flaws were somehow irritating.

"Hey," she said. She stood there hopefully.

I looked at her, the cruel reality sinking in at last. We would never be friends. It would be better for her to go on with her Mundane life without me.

"Can I help you?" I said, doing my best impression of my mother's impatience.

The other girls giggled, and it felt good. Those girls were Mundanes, too, but they weren't like Gwen. It was easy to keep them at a distance. Gwen lingered awkwardly for a moment, then she turned and walked away.

"Did you see how skinny her ankles are?" I said to them as I watched her leave. "It looks like she's walking on stilts."

They giggled again, and I laughed loud enough for Gwen to hear as she disappeared across the playground.

I stopped taking the deer path after that, and I didn't visit the hollow anymore. I couldn't bear any of those secret places that had belonged to Gwen and me. I was too old to go running through the forest searching for snakeskins and eggshells, I decided. Whispers spread among the coven parents about the Mundane child who'd been discovered playing with me in the forest. But soon they faded, replaced by talk of next quarter's earnings. The kids never got the details, and the colder I was toward Gwen, the more they doubted what they'd heard. In time, the whole thing was forgotten.

A few months later, a wounded crow wandered onto the playground during recess. Thomas and some other boys began throwing rocks at it, laughing about targets and kill shots. I sat with my little throng of friends, watching the way the light danced off the bird's black feathers. I longed to cup its small body in my hands, to hold it to my chest and whisper soft, healing words. But I didn't move.

It was Gwen who stepped in front of the crow. She crouched before it, her body a shield, rocks flying at her as the boys jeered. She looked at me, and I was transported back to the forest with her, to a time when I was kinder. I turned my gaze away. That was the last time Gwen Foster looked me in the eye, until yesterday.

I rolled over in bed, one hand reaching for my phone. The video I'd taken of Gwen's spill on the quad was saved in my camera roll. I had planned to post it today with a humorous yet derisive caption. I deleted the video and set the phone back down.

You think you're embarrassing her, but you're only embarrassing yourself. Luke's words echoed in my head. He was right, I was embarrassed. There was a sick feeling in my stomach that promised to linger all day. Luke had come to know me better than anyone. Maybe that's why he left, I thought bitterly. Perhaps he'd peeled back that shiny outer layer and decided he didn't like what he saw underneath.

Today I'd ditch the coven and ask Gwen to sit with me at lunch, I decided. I'd apologize to her in some cute, self-deprecating way. Soon we'd be laughing about the whole thing; maybe we'd even talk about our old adventures in the forest. Thinking about it felt like the start of something new. Maybe I was about to change in some momentous way. And maybe one night not too long from now, I'd awaken to the gentle sound of pebbles at my window again.

I got out of bed, energized by my new plan and intent on coffee. The first floor was silent, my parents still asleep. I stepped lightly down the grand staircase and into the tiled foyer. The dining room loomed to my right, its curtains drawn, its corners dark with shadows, yet even from here, I felt the painted eyes of Delfina Garcia on me. The portrait hung at the head of the dining room table. Our founder's gold-framed face stared at me, as it did during every meal my parents and I ate in that room.

I was Delfina's direct descendant on my mom's side. My family had always liked to flaunt our relation to our coven's founder. Going back generations, it was tradition for us Garcia women to keep our matrilineal name, which was why valeria garcia was proudly penned on my birth certificate. My father never even dreamed of objecting.

I eyed the portrait with a mixture of awe and anxiety. In it, Delfina stood before a rising sun, its rays surrounding her in fiery light. Her skin, like mine, was the rich color of terracotta, and her dark hair flowed to her waist in loose waves. On her face was a look of proud defiance. Her beauty and the power in her gaze were undeniable.

At seventeen, Delfina had barely escaped Mexico with a bunch of witch-hunting clerics on her trail. Ten years later, she'd gathered the most powerful witches on the West Coast and staked her claim. When she posed for that painting, her newly formed coven had just struck it rich in the California Gold Rush.

The gold mines had dried up long ago, but the money never did. In the years after, our coven turned to modern financial endeavors: stocks, real estate. One way or another, our parents were all in the business of money. I supposed I would be, too, someday. Still, I couldn't shake the sense our coven was clinging to some long-gone glory. Our homes were like museums, proudly adorned with the gilded decor our ancestors had chosen. Delfina had been dead for more than a hundred years, but sometimes this house still felt like hers.

In the echoey dining room of her newly constructed mansion, she had hung her own portrait like some sort of analog selfie, and it had stayed there ever since. I used to love to look at it as a little girl, imagining myself in the same pose. But lately, I detected a hint of disdain in those serious brown eyes, and I sensed the weight of her legacy on my shoulders.

From a corner of the dining room, the grandfather clock struck six. I jumped at the abrupt sound. There was something unsettling about this morning, I realized suddenly—something missing in the silence.

It hit me. I usually woke to the familiar tune of warblers and jays. But today, the birds were strangely absent. An uneasy feeling crept up my spine. Without knowing why, I strode to a window and drew the curtains wide.

A small, pained sound escaped my lips. The dense, green forest behind my house had been replaced by something jagged and colorless. Every tree was dead.

Last night, when I'd gone to sleep, they'd been the same lush redwoods I'd known all my life. Now their remains stood as tall as ever, but their branches were bare. Their skeletal arms reached this way and that, casting menacing shadows across the dirt.

I didn't think. I didn't call out to my parents. I pulled on the running shoes I kept by the back door and walked outside in my pajamas. My garden remained green and undisturbed, but even before I reached the tree line, an unshakable feeling of despair struck me. The air felt heavy against my skin, and it got worse the closer I drew to the forest.

Pine needles covered the forest floor in mountains as if they'd all fallen in a single moment. They crunched under my shoes as I approached one of the tree skeletons. It stood naked and obscene in the morning light, the bark dry but unblemished. There were no burn marks, no visible damage of any kind. But beneath its flaking bark, its surface was sickly black, as if it had rotted from the inside out.

The dead forest reached as far as I could see in any direction, vines and brambles turned to brittle sticks overnight. Every blade of grass was as dry as hay. Shivering in the morning air, I walked on, searching for a sign of life.

As I reached the fallen tree where Gwen and I used to leave our little offerings, something caught my eye.

Beside the tree's broad stump, a single, bright red flower grew—a hyacinth, its petals vibrant against the muted landscape. As far as I could see, that flower was the only living thing left in the forest.

The snapping of pine needles announced someone's arrival. My heart thudded in my chest, the oppressively bad vibes of my surroundings plunging me into an uncharacteristic panic. I whirled around, looking for the approaching stranger, but they were obscured behind the deathly trees.

A figure appeared in my periphery, and I didn't hesitate. With one arm outstretched, I summoned the fire inside me. I kept it invisible, just as I had when I'd wrapped it around Gwen's ankle in the quad, but this time, I struck hard enough to send the newcomer flying backward. I heard a dull thud, followed by the crunch of dead leaves.

"Watch it, dumbass!" an irritated voice echoed through the trees.

I took a few steps and Petra Sarich came into view. She was slumped against a dry trunk, looking pissed and more than a little scared. I exhaled, relaxing my death grip on the elements. Her house was half a mile down Cascabel Road. She must have come here with the same morbid curiosity I had.

"Sorry!" I exclaimed as she swept dead leaves off her clothes. "I didn't mean to—I'm just?—"

Afraid. I wouldn't say it aloud, so I stood there, my sentence unfinished. She nodded, understanding on her face.

"I woke up and they were like this. All of them. I thought maybe if I walked this way, I'd find—I don't know. I wanted to find where it ends." Her voice shook in a rare betrayal of emotion. She rubbed the spot where my spell had struck her shoulder. "That superpower of yours is a bitch," she added.

That superpower of mine was called sunfire. All witches could summon fire to light a candle, start a campfire, that sort of thing. My power went beyond that. It was like there was a sacred flame always alight inside me, a piece of the sun itself. If I wanted to, I could push it out into the world. It was a rare ability passed down through blood, and it ran in the Garcia family.

My mother had trained me to control it with an energy similar to that of a particularly obsessive pageant mom. The power used to rush out of me like untamed wildfire. Once, as a child, I'd accidentally burned down the rickety garden shed in my backyard during a training session. To this day, I would catch my mom glancing at the place the shed used to be, her eyes narrowed with disapproval.

But in time, she taught me to hone my skills. I learned to control the hunger of the flames, to let them consume only when I wanted them to. I learned to make the fire so fine it couldn't be seen. My final test had been to loop a thin cord of invisible heat around the stem of just one flower and pick it. The day I passed, I think my mom almost smiled.

Sunfire was considered a defensive spell. The Garcias were considered warriors, capable of protecting our coven in the face of danger. That was why a member of the Garcia family had always been high priestess—only our coven had never needed defending, so my power went mostly unused, except for yesterday's moment of weakness on the quad. Still, that fire meant I would someday lead the coven. I wasn't ready for that. I didn't think I ever would be, but that was a secret I held as tightly as a closed fist.

"So, what the hell?" Petra said. "I did a little reconnaissance on my scooter before I ran into you. The trees in town are alive and well. Then you get to Cascabel Road, and boom, it's a graveyard."

"It's magic, obviously."

She nodded, tucking a faded blue lock behind her ear only for it to fall loose again. "Bad magic too. The aura of this place has me majorly depressed."

As opposed to your usual cheery disposition? I thought, but I held the words back. If I drew her into our usual catty banter, she might leave, and I didn't want to be alone out here.

"Pretty much," I replied grimly.

"Whoever did this didn't set out to just kill some trees," Petra said, closing her eyes as if trying to hear the magic around us. "The trees were…collateral damage or something."

I trusted Petra when it came to things like this. She'd always had a clairvoyance that went beyond mere intuition. All witches believed in a spirit world, an unseen realm where souls resided, where magic came from. Petra's connection to that world was stronger than the rest of ours.

I closed my eyes as she did and opened myself to the surrounding elements. The wind that brushed my face carried death and destruction with it. It terrified me, but I got a sense of the intention of the spell. She was right, of course. There was a malice behind it that wasn't directed at the trees.

"Did you see this?" I pointed at the single crimson flower near the old stump.

She reached out a hand and touched a satiny petal, her expression curious. As I stepped closer to it, I realized the flower didn't exude the same deathly energy as the rest of the forest. If anything, it felt like it was supposed to be there.

"This flower is here because of a spell too," she declared. "A different spell. This one wasn't about destruction—it was about restoration. Something put back into balance."

Silently, we walked on, scanning for anything other than death. In the distance, a newly fallen tree lay across our path, its great length stretched before us, dead branches crushed against the ground. Its stump was cleanly severed, and though it had turned the inky color of sickness, I thought I could make out a faint streak of red along its flat surface.

"This is where it happened," Petra said. "Some kind of ritual."

I pursed my lips. Even I could sense it; the air was heaviest here. The felling of this tree had been done with some dark magical intent.

The bare branches seemed to close in around me. Witches were scarce these days, especially witches strong enough to do magic like this. What if one of us?—

"Who did this?" I demanded.

She shook her head. "Sorry, I just get an aura. I'm not, like, psychic Sherlock Holmes."

Her phone buzzed. She took it out of her pocket.

"Fifteen missed calls," she said, scrolling. "Jayden, my parents, Jayden again. Guess they've all noticed the forest."

I watched her type a message to her mother. Trees dead. I know. She hit send .

A moment later, her phone buzzed again. She studied the reply. Concern marked her impassive features for just a moment, then she turned the screen to me.

There's more. Meet at the Garcias NOW.

As we picked our way back to my house, my mind raced. Meet at the Garcias meant this would be a coven gathering, with my mom presiding. There's more . The words repeated in my mind, but I was helpless to guess what more might be. We climbed the steps to the back door in silence and headed inside.

The whole coven, young and old, was gathered in the grand living room. The curtains were open now, the enormous picture window displaying a mess of skeletal branches. Jayden sat on the couch with his mom, his expression stoic. Max was beside them, his eyes red with tears. As I walked in, Celeste looked to me as if hoping she'd find some kind of answer on my face, but I didn't even know the question.

Luke was near the window with his dad, his dark brows drawn. My hands instinctively went to my hair to check for pine needles. There were several. I was still wearing my pajamas, muddy running shoes on my feet. It was stupid to want to look perfect at a time like this, I knew. But the scarier things were, the more I yearned for the comfort of perfection.

As I took in my parents' faces, I realized they looked worse off than anybody from my generation. My dad sat beside my mom, his brown eyes boring a hole into a spot on the carpet. Lili Garcia had dressed in the long red robes she always wore for official gatherings. She wore the crown of the high priestess, but it perched off-kilter as if about to topple from her head. Her makeup wasn't done. For the first time in recorded history, she looked unsure of herself. This must be bad.

"Okay, what the hell is going on?" I said.

"Valeria," she began. "Something's happened. Maybe you two should sit down."

I didn't move. Neither did Petra.

"Tell me," I insisted.

"Yes, dear, I was about to," she said. At least her capacity for mild condescension had remained intact. "It seems our powers are gone."

"No they're not," I protested. "I practically gave Petra a concussion just now in the forest?—"

"No, Valeria, our powers are gone." She gestured at the parents sitting dejectedly around her.

Our parents, unable to use magic? I couldn't fathom it. Defiantly, I took the cup of coffee Mr. Sarich had been drinking and thrust it into my mom's hands. I'd been very young the first time I could recall seeing my mom use magic; she'd poured cream in her morning coffee, then she'd idly twirled a long, delicate finger over the steaming cup. I'd watched as a mini whirlpool formed at the center of the cup, mixing the cream with the coffee until the liquid was a lovely caramel color. I'd stepped close to her, and we'd sat together, taking in the small beauty her power had created, both of us understanding that I had just become aware of something important.

"Try," I now said gently.

With a sigh, she extended a manicured finger and twirled it over the cup. The liquid within remained still and lifeless.

Tears stinging my eyes, I took the cup from her and passed my hand over it. The coffee stirred itself in a spiral as pretty as hers had been on that day, all those years ago.

"Why?" I demanded.

She shook her head, her eyes fixed on the lifeless trees outside.

"We don't know yet. All we know is, as of right now, you kids are the only witches left in Dorado."

With that, she took the golden crown from her head and handed it to me.