Page 57 of Charmed, I'm Sure

Their food is down to a small bag of grain and the last of the potatoes from her cellar. The snow is too deep to forage, and Elias can’t risk hunting without drawing attention to their cabin. Every line drips with the same unspoken truth—she knows what’s coming.

Not even her wards can keep the cold from seeping into their bones, and no amount of magic can hold backstarvation forever.

January 14, 1665

The snow has not stopped in five days. It muffles the forest, makes the world outside our door feel empty, save for the distant baying of dogs. Milo hardly leaves my side now. He watches me as though he can see the storm in my mind.

The wards weaken with every passing night. I feel the threads fray when I sleep—cold fingers testing the edges. Elias says we must wait for a break in the weather before he can risk a hunt, but I see the truth in his eyes. He fears what hunts him.

I have begun leafing through the older books… the ones my mother forbade me to open. There are ways to turn the loom of fate, if one has the will. But such threads require a weaver’s price.

I can already sense what’s going to happen, her fear a tangible beast sitting in the room as I read her words. The handwriting isn’t as elegant as it has been. Some words I can’t even decipher, except one,death. She keeps speaking of the price she’ll have to pay, it’s even scratched into the margins around her entries. PRICE. Over and over and over again.

My heart rate picks up as I flip the page and read the words I was hoping not to, they are down to one loaf of bread. The time is here, Elias is going to have to go out and I’m worried it won’t be good when he does.

January 15, 1665

The loaf sits on the table like a countdown. I cut it into four thin slices this morning, as if stretching it could change what’s coming. Elias says the ward will hold another week, but the look in his eyes said he didn’t believe it. I heard the dogs closer now — always at night, always circling.

He told me today that tomorrow he will go. “Just to the stream,” he said, “to see if the fish are running.” But I knew he meant farther. He thinks if he could reach the old trade road, he might barter for grain or salt. I begged him not to go, but his hands on my face were warm and certain, and he kissed me like it was both hello and goodbye.

Milo watched from the hearth, his eyes never leaving mine. Sometimes I wonder if he knows more than I do — if he can already see the thread The Weaver has set before me.

My eyes sting as the tears build. I almost feel as though she has pulled me through the pages and into the room with her. The pangs of hunger, the fear, and the impending decision that lingers in the air. Don’t go, Elias. Stay with her.

I don’t want to read more, I want to grab him by the shoulders, and shake him. Beg him to reconsider.

The first tear drops to my cheek as I flip the page.

January 16, 1665

I had dreamt of fire the previous night. It had licked the sky, roaring until the stars disappeared. Somewhere in the blaze, a woman screamed — a sound so sharp it split the world in two. Men’s voices rose above it, rough with laughter and something worse. When I woke, my hands smelled of smoke. Elias left at first light. He kissed my temple, said it would be quick, and pressed a scrap of bread into my hand as if that could keep me from following. Milo sat by the door, hackles raised, but did not move to stop him. The snow had not melted from his footprints yet.

Did she have a premonition of what was to come? I know Elora has visions, so it’s part of the ancestry somewhere right? Not that I know anything when it comes to this. I look up from the journal, my cheeks damp from the tears, to find Elora solemn and nodding her head. As if she heard my question without me speaking a word. And maybe she did, but in some wisp of a vision she was gifted.

My hands shake as I flip the page, fear racking up my heart rate. There’s nothing good that will come from the next entry. I can feel it in my soul, as if I was once Elias and I’m reading my wife’s words. Words I never knew.

January 17, 1665

Three days. The snow has swallowed his trail, but I knew which way he went.

I had walked until my bones felt hollow, until the cold bite so deep I could no longer tell where my skin ended. The pines whispered his name — Elias, Elias — and Milo walked by myside, his paws were silent in the snow.

I crested the ridge and heard it before I saw it — the scream. My scream. The one I dreamed of.

It shreded the air, followed by the guttural sound of men jeering.

I broke into a run. The snow burned my lungs, my skirts tore on low branches, but I did not stop until the clearing opened before me.

They had hung him from a crude wooden cross, his body swayed in the wind like a warning. Pinned to the post beside him is his wolfskin, tattered and stained.

My breath caught. The world narrowed to ash and ice.

Islam the book shut, unable to read a word more. My heart is squeezing so tightly, I almost can’t breathe. I can’t imagine losing Bellamy and not being able to protect her. Let alone fearing for my own life. What they did to her mate, her love. It’s unthinkable. I can’t believe someone would hunt us as if we are monsters, as if we are the evil living in the world.

Feeling split between the past and the present, I whisper the words, the ones that have been plaguing me. Not sure if it’s my voice or Elias’s.

Elora studies me, then rises from behind her desk and crosses to a tall cabinet along the wall beside her. She unlatches a brass hook and pulls out a slim leather folio tied with a faded ribbon. “Before I ever had the diary, I found this behind a false paneling in our Coven House. It felt as though someone didn’t want to see it anymore, but couldn’t bear to get rid of it either. It didn’t take long to figure out why.”