3

3

E very House was somber as preparations began for the Equinox celebration. The Affinity Battle that was supposed to be resurrected today for the festivities was cancelled.

The young witch’s body had been prepared by her House. As she was from the House of Fire, she would be laid on the altar of flame, and fire would guard her until Ethne instructed it otherwise. The witches of The Gallows would mourn her throughout the day, and then flames would consume her body at daybreak.

I attempted to pay my respects to her, but Ethne, true to her word, referred to me as the accursed and refused to accept me into her House. So, I watched from the steps of the House of Fate as witches from House after House lined up and filed into Ethne’s home to honor their fallen sister.

When the last witch had exited and the front door creaked closed, I made my way to the cabin that had been my home for as long as I could remember and began to pack my things. I only needed to bring my essentials and supplies. The House still contained all of my mother’s belongings.

The cabin sat alone in the woods far behind my mother’s House – my House , I tried to correct in my mind. The only sounds along the trodden path came from the scampering squirrels, singing cicadas, and pairs of birds foraging for worms in the rich, dark earth. They flittered about as I began to pack.

I filled my cauldrons with my tapers and their holders, along with small burlap bags of tea leaves, tight bundles of white sage, and my collection of crystals. I’d smudge the House before I took my belongings inside. There was enough negative energy surrounding the House to smother a witch if she wasn’t careful. And who knew what had been trapped inside?

Wrapping my wishbones in the casting cloth, I laid them on top of the pile and grabbed my broom. Once I’d gathered everything I wished to take, I closed my eyes and spirited myself to the warped back porch of the House of Fate. Taking a deep breath, I reminded myself again, This is my House now.

“Hey,” a deep voice called out from behind me.

I jumped and whirled around, clutching my chest and dropping the substantial cauldron precariously close to my toes. “You scared me. ”

Brecan chuckled, striding toward me in his easy gait. He took up the heavy cauldron and pulled the weathered, squealing back door open for me. “After you. This is your House, after all.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“And anyway, I hardly snuck up on you.” His lavender eyes twinkled with mischief. “You should pay better attention to your surroundings.”

He pushed his sky blue cape back as he stepped into the house, instantly at ease. “What else do you need from the cabin?” he called over his shoulder as he spun in a circle.

“Not too much. What do you think of it?” I asked.

“Needs to be dusted,” he answered dryly, dragging his finger over the nearest table’s surface. “But it looks like it always has, I suppose.” It was a rite of passage to peek in the windows of the former House of Fate for little witchlings – though none would dare linger long. It was said that a curse might pass to them if they absorbed too much of the dark energy it possessed.

In reality, the House felt empty to me. Bay suggested that a residual magic abided here, but I couldn’t sense it. The House was bones. A cage of ribs. And the heart it once held had long since decayed.

“Anyway,” Brecan said, clapping his hands, “I’m at your disposal. Do with me what you will.” There was more than the offer of help in his tone.

I decided not to answer. Instead, I turned my attention to my cauldron. I’d planned on smudging the House before I brought my belongings inside, but that was when I thought negativity dwelled in every corner. Now that I was inside, the House felt like a void. I wasn’t sure it was necessary to smudge the rooms, but tradition called for it. It would be unlucky to start a life in a House that hadn’t been purged, just in case.

“Tell you what, I’ll be right back,” Brecan finally said, marching out the back door.

The only other things I needed were my clothes, sheets and blankets, and pots and pans. I would have to harvest from my garden at the cabin until winter, and plant a new one here in the backyard next spring. I pinched my bottom lip, looking out over the overgrown lawn. Somewhere beneath the tall grass, in the rich earth, were the weedy roots of my mother’s plantings. I leaned my broom into the kitchen’s bare corner and sighed. There was much work to be done.

Brecan reappeared, tossing his long, icy blond hair over his shoulders. His locks were arrow straight and shone like silk. Tonight, all the girls who ventured into Thirteen from the lower sectors would cast lingering, longing glances in his direction. To them, Brecan was exotic; a feast for the eyes, in the middle of what must be a great famine.

“How did you know I would be here?” I asked.

He grinned, grabbing the top of the door frame and leaning toward me. “Word travels fast.”

“Did Wayra send you to try to convince me to defy Fate?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t even seen her today. Besides, I’m not worried about what she thinks; I’m worried about you.”

I glanced at him in my periphery. “She would exile you for saying that. ”

He crossed the room in two long strides. “Only if she heard me,” he leaned in to whisper in my ear, toying with a strand of my hair.

“Tonight, I’ll hang the one who took the Fire witch’s life.”

Brecan’s eyes sharpened. “Good. Not only will it exact justice for our fallen sister, it’ll ease some of the tension building among the Houses.”

The mounting tension... Perhaps I could help ease it, but would anything ever alter the other witches’ perception of me?

Brecan placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Take time to get settled. I’ll be back with the rest of your things, starting with your clothes.”

With his touch, my heart skipped the slightest beat. Brecan and I had a strange relationship, one that was slightly more than friendship, but a lot less than love. It was one that every witch in The Gallows neither understood, nor approved of. My face didn’t heat at the thought of him seeing my undergarments, but I knew him well enough to know there would be a spark in his eyes when he returned with them in hand.

He waltzed out the door with a smirk on his lips.

I lit the sage and its earthy aroma filled the room, rich and cleansing. I led the smoke, letting it waft into every corner of every room, on all five floors. Once I finished, I could finally breathe easier. Not because the sage expelled any danger, but because one task of the many I’d mentally listed was finished and I could begin another.

I made my way back downstairs, raising every window pane that wasn’t stuck to the sill, and pushed all the dingy curtains back. A thick layer of dust hid the intricacies of every solid surface. Gusts from outside didn’t dislodge a single particle as far as I could tell, but the musty smell that had settled into the walls began to drift away by the cleansing wind.

In the parlor, I lifted the sheets from the furniture, piling them in the room’s corner. A deep purple couch with plush pillows propped against the backrest was flanked by twin mahogany chairs that hadn’t been occupied since before I was born, but looked brand-new. Everything did. It was as if Mother had whispered a spell to preserve it all just as it was. Maybe she did. Or maybe Fate had taken care of my inheritance until I could claim it.

Maybe this was his gift to me. He warned me away from peeking in the windows like the other witches over the years, but today, he wanted me to have this. He wanted this House and everything in it to be mine.

This is your past and future, I told myself .

Brecan returned with my clothes, including boots and piles of gloves, with the wicked gleam I expected still twinkling in his eyes. “Which bedroom is yours?”

“I’m not sure yet. Just set everything in there on the bed,” I suggested, gesturing to the nearest bedroom, located down the hall past the living room.

He complied and strode back outside. “I’ll be back with more,” he promised over his shoulder. If Brecan was anything, he was honest. By mid-afternoon, the cabin was empty, save for the bare furniture I no longer needed.

My only friend thought that quite enough work had been done for one day. Or maybe he was trying to lift my mood, considering the dark promise of the evening’s events. “Come outside with me,” he pleaded.

“If we go into the Center, everyone will stare at you.”

He gave an ornery smile. “I’m okay with that.”

“Wayra won’t be.”

He blew out a breath. “With all that has happened, perhaps it’s not the time to push,” he conceded. “Find me after?” After you find and hang the young man Fate wants , he meant. His eyebrows rose expectantly as he waited for my reply.

I swallowed. “Afterwards, I’ll come back here. I need to perform a few readings.”

Brecan hid his wince. He and I both knew that the likelihood of a single soul seeking me out after I hung a lower sector male would be absolutely nil, but Brecan was too polite to voice it. In any event, I had to try. This was one of the few times a year people from the other twelve sectors, which we called the Lowers, were allowed into The Gallows, and I needed any and all payments I could garner.

I looked around the House and blew out a breath. This place would take a fortune and another three hundred years to restore.

He nodded. “I’ll find you after things wind down, then.”

When he kissed my cheek, his lips lingered a beat too long. I pressed my eyes closed and wondered what it would feel like to really love him. To feel fire within my bones whenever he was near. There were spells for that.

I watched him quickly walk away from my House toward his own, where the House of Wind was being decorated with swaths of iridescent blue fabric, as delicate and sheer as the air itself. The female witches wore their best gowns and capes to match, held together at the neck by sculpted silver fasteners meant to mimic the swirling motion of the breeze.

From the window, I watched as my grandmother Ela oversaw the decorations for the House of Earth. The young witches called forth vines of ivy, guiding them as the new growth spiraled around the columns and railings. Great vines of cascading flowers bowed overhead, slowly showering petals that would never run out.

Ethne led the witches at the House of Fire as they formed pits that would later burn with colorful flames in every hue of the rainbow. At dark, they would light the entire Center with strategically positioned bonfires stacked vertically, so tall they’d overshadow the tallest of the forest trees.

Witches from the House of Water manipulated the fountains in front of their home. From the depths of their pools roared horses pulling chariots with angry, determined riders behind them. Bay greeted the first of the visitors from the lower sectors who gathered to watch a watery battle unfold. Their oohs and aahs echoed through The Gallows.

More people emerged from the wood and entered the Center.

I quickly dressed in my finest gown, a soft black velvet devoid of frills. Smoothing my hair, I hurried to gather my supplies.

I carried a small table outside and set it up in front of my House, covering it with a swath of black fabric. I arranged my casting cloth on top, placing a heavy crystal on each corner to hold it in place against the Wind witches’ gusts. Citrine. Amethyst. Obsidian. Tourmaline.

The amethyst crystal that held down the far-right corner was from the tree-clinging boy. His strange familiarity pricked at me again, but I still couldn’t place him. I stubbornly shoved thoughts of him away.

From my House, I brought out a deck of fortune cards, a crystal ball, and my silver bowl of wishbones. The cards and crystal were what citizens from the lower sectors expected, but the wishbones might call to someone.

I plucked a pair of chairs from the kitchen, situating them across the table from each other. I had no watery show, no petal-showering flora, no extraordinary twister or column of flame. Just the promise of a simple reading of fortune and a hope that someone – anyone – would want what I offered. And that the person would come to me soon.

Perhaps I could squeeze a few readings in before the condemned crossed into The Gallows.

Over the years, witches had paid me for readings in the form of scraps. Plants, when they had too many to fit in their perfectly measured garden rows. A ream of fabric when the dye clung too heavily to appropriately represent their Houses. Measures of rope they no longer needed.

Now that I lived in the House, I wondered if anyone would risk stepping foot inside, or even on the lawn in front of it, and defying their Priestesses or Priest. The cabin was located a discrete distance from the Houses, but here, I was among them, and privacy could not be ensured .

It doesn’t matter , I told myself. Fate will not let me starve. He will provide all I need . My cabin’s garden had flourished. I could make one flourish here, too.

Men, women, and children milled about the Center, racing from House to House and spectacle to spectacle. Soon, they would fill it until they spilt over its pointed edges.

On previous Equinoxes and Solstices when we welcomed any and all who wanted to join us in our Sector, I would make a mint. No one knew I was the “Daughter of Fate,” or that I was different from every other witch in Thirteen. And if they did know the names by which the other witches called me, they assumed it was all for show. Merely another part of the thrilling, magical atmosphere we provided. It made them all the more willing to pay for a reading. They would smile at my crystal ball and sit down to hear what I might reveal, all the while wondering if it was real. In the end, they never truly cared. They just wanted to be enchanted for an evening.

Tonight, no smiles flashed in my direction. As the pit of my stomach began to roil and burn, I knew there would be no time. No readings beforehand.

It was time.

I stood from my table.