Page 16 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland

Honestly, I love that you asked me to comment on this, but I have to take issue with your terminology.

Social-media terms like “witchling” and “baby witch” are at best, infantilizing, and at worst, gatekeeping.

Don’t other our new siblings. They’re simply witches who are learning, and aren’t we all?

Call them a novice, or a novitiate, if you’re feeling fancy.

And remember: a novice’s first spell is special.

It might be wonky and misaligned, and lights that weren’t meant to blink might flicker, but no matter what, it’s always a lovely moment. Celebrate it.

—Evie Oxby, “Advice for Baby Witches,” Slate

Clapping, Minna laughed. “You felt it!”

An icy finger of fear traced the edges of the warmth. “No. Wait. Felt what?”

“I wrote your name, only it didn’t look like that, I know. But each line and loop was a letter in your name, and then I added a word on top of that.”

“What word?” The answer felt unbearably important.

“Don’t laugh, okay? Love.”

“Huh.” The puffed syllable was inadequate—it couldn’t hold both the melted warmth and the chilled fear coursing through her veins. Love.

As if she was overwhelmed, too, Minna said quickly, “And that’s what a sigil does.

Some people draw images, others do letters, but the point is the intention you put into them, followed by the energy you charge them with.

For this one, I used the energy of fire to give it the boost it needed to work. ”

“How did you spell my name? Beatrice? Or with the X ?”

“Beatrice, of course. No X .” Minna looked at her carefully. “I would only ever call you what you want to be called.”

The leg of Astrid’s chair squeaked.

Minna continued, “A sigil is what you create it to be. There are sigils on the doorjambs, see? We put them in all the rooms.”

Beatrice had noticed them, actually, delicate decorative symbols painted over the doors and next to windows. What an artistic family , she’d thought.

Once she was out of here, she’d lie very still for a long time, preferably with a cold compress over her eyes.

A little spa music, perhaps. Some chocolate.

And this would feel like the night she had the flu, took too much Nyquil, watched too many episodes of Sabrina , and ended up convinced that if she tried hard enough, she could snap her fingers and travel back in time to meet the dead mother she didn’t remember.

The one who was in front of her now, quite alive.

True: everyone, at some point, wanted magic to be real.

Also true: everyone knew it wasn’t.

But if Beatrice didn’t say it now, she might not be able to say it later.

“I think I drew one of—those—at the beach today. The house, where I live—I drew it in flames in the sand. I wanted it to burn to the ground. Then I got that text from Grant, and…” She held her breath for one tight second. “Did I do that?”

“No!” Cordelia set her knitting down so hard, her wineglass sloshed red onto the tabletop. “You didn’t. That was just a coincidence.”

“Hmph! A pretty big one, if you ask me,” said Astrid.

“You were too far away. And you didn’t charge it with power.”

The candle’s flame had eaten Minna’s sigil. “A wave washed it away.”

Minna nodded. “That would work, right, Gran?”

Astrid narrowed her eyes at Beatrice. “The house didn’t burn down, though, right? So you started it but didn’t follow through because you don’t—”

“Magic doesn’t exist .”

Cordelia and Minna’s faces stayed open. Accepting.

Astrid, though, said, “Jesus, woman, what do you need? More proof?”

“Yes. Hell, yeah.” That was exactly what she needed. “Prove it to me.”

Her mother tossed her head. “You’re not activated. There’s no way to prove anything to you.”

Beatrice opened her arms wide to the side. “So activate me.”

Minna bounced up out of her chair and then back into it. “You want the Knock? Mom, she wants the Knock!”

Cordelia shoved her hair behind her right ear in the impatient way that Beatrice could feel she herself had just done. “Beatrice, you don’t have to do anything right now. There’s a lot to talk about.”

Astrid glared. “This is her heritage . Hollands choose to activate.”

Stubbornness warred with the recklessness running through Beatrice’s bones. “Don’t forget I’m not a Holland.”

“You are. Hollands never give up their names. They never change them.”

Minna said stubbornly, “Unless they want to, Gran.”

“They don’t want to,” said Astrid. “Ever.”

Beatrice said, “You sure have a lot of rules, don’t you?”

Leaning forward, Astrid jabbed at the tablecloth. “Other people live by rules. We make them.”

“I mean it. Give me that Knock, or whatever it is.”

Cordelia’s expression was tight. “You should understand what it is you’re getting into—”

“Did you know?”

“Of course not. I was a baby.”

“Think of this as my first instance of sibling rivalry, then. I want it, too.” It wouldn’t do anything, and she’d tell them that. It would be her own kind of proof. She’d show them she was immune to new age psychobabble.

“It’s magic, Beatrice. Are you sure?”

Wow, they really took this nonsense seriously, didn’t they? Astrid looked smug, Cordelia’s face was tense, and Minna was practically vibrating with excitement.

But that still didn’t make it real. “I don’t believe in magic. So whatever you do, it can’t hurt me.”

“Mom,” said Minna. “Can I give it to her?”

Cordelia’s grip on her knitting was so tight, her knuckles were white. “It has to come from love.”

Minna twisted in her seat to face Beatrice. “Obviously. That’s easy.”

Whatever they were talking about—it didn’t matter. Minna had just said again—or at least implied—she loved her, and now Beatrice’s insides had melted into hot chocolate, or something even sweeter.

“I’m ready,” Beatrice said.

“Oh, my god , yay. It won’t hurt, don’t worry.”

Cordelia said, “Remember, we talked about the speed of the flow…”

“I know, I know. Can I have your arm?”

Beatrice wanted to make a joke, to ask if the Knock was actually a tattoo she’d just signed herself up for, but something told her to hold her tongue. She leaned toward Minna, who placed one hand on the skin of her upper arm and the other on her lower arm, her fingers soft and cool.

“Close your eyes. Don’t worry, I will, too.”

Beatrice closed her eyes. Her breath quickened.

Minna’s hands tightened and then squeezed suddenly, hard. It hurt but Beatrice didn’t pull away.

She waited for whatever this “magic” was.

But Minna just let go.

When she opened her eyes, Minna and Cordelia were smiling at each other.

“Was that right, Mama?”

“Did it feel right?”

Minna nodded. Then, conspiratorially, she said to Beatrice, “That was my first time giving the Knock. I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t tell you that first. I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Of course,” said Beatrice. She felt a strange, small twist of disappointment. Nothing had happened. Naturally. “Thank you?” No, not a question. She corrected herself. “Thank you.”

Astrid, who’d been almost too quiet, reached for the pad of paper and pen, thrusting them at her. “Draw something.”

Beatrice stared at her. “Excuse me?”

“Pick a word. Draw it, don’t write it. Draw it. Let your hand show you the shape it wants to be.”

It would have been so nice if she could say she didn’t understand. Nothing you say is making sense. But she did understand, which felt… complicated.

Cordelia put a hand on the page. “You can move at your own pace. Or not at all. There’s absolutely nothing you have to do.”

Astrid pursed her lips. “Well, she has to stop being a little idiot like her father.”

“I swear to god, Mother, I’ll make you sleep in the chicken coop if you don’t chill the fuck out.”

“Sorry! I’m sorry. Bea trice , will you please draw a word, any word? Indulge me.”

Beatrice picked up the pen. But—what word? For a moment, all words deserted her. Should she even do this?

A word. A word! Any goddamn word.

If magic was real (which it wasn’t), Astrid would certainly be riding a broomstick. Maybe Cordelia would be able to fly, too, but Beatrice pictured her gliding through the air smoothly, not hurtling clumsily through the sky like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Flight. Wasn’t that, after all, what Beatrice had wanted most as a child?

The ability to lift off the ground, rising upward into the sky?

She used to have such vivid dreams about it—she’d wake completely sure she knew the secret.

The trick was to want it enough. She’d go out to stand on the stump in the backyard, and she’d arrange herself into the magical shape that was the preparation for liftoff.

Then she’d wait for the magic to lift her to the clouds.

The hours she’d spent standing on that stump must have added up to days.

Once, hoping that the light of the full moon would provide what she’d been missing, she’d stayed out so late that her stepmother, Naya, had come out with a quilt to drape over her shoulders.

Fly.

She drew the F long and lean, lowercase with one loop up and one down. The loop of the L backed over the F, so it looked like a three-petaled flower, and then she hung the descender of the Y like a stem below it.

“Oh, that’s so pretty!” Minna leaned companionably against Beatrice’s arm. “Now you charge it.”

“How?”

“You can burn it, or you can trace it in salt, or there are about a thousand other things you can do.”

“What’s the fastest way?”

Something small—maybe disappointment?—flickered over Minna’s face, but she said, “Just put your hand on the word, close your eyes, and push energy and intention into it.”

So, feeling like the idiot Astrid said she was, Beatrice touched the paper and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, she was not flying.

She was not floating.

She felt nothing, which was exactly what she’d expected, after all.

All of this was ridiculous. What was she, some kind of child, to even hope for a moment that magic was real? Because she could admit—she had thought about it for the flutter of a half second. What if…

But no.

The others still looked expectant, though, and she was almost embarrassed for them. “Well, that was fun.”

She swatted at the bug that buzzed around her head. It landed on the piece of paper, right on the F .

A fly.

Minna squeaked, and Cordelia laughed.

“Oh, come on.” They didn’t really believe that was anything more than a coincidence, did they? “That’s hilarious. But it doesn’t mean anything. You know that, right?”

Minna gave an honest-to-god chortle. “You drew the fly. Get it? You drew it and drew it.”

With a flick of her wrist, Beatrice shooed away the fly before picking up the pen again. She wound the letters around the other ones: BUTTER . Then she sat back. “So. You think a butterfly will land on this now?”

Astrid poked the table with a stern finger. “Put the energy in and see what happens.”

Beatrice exhaled heavily but did it, holding her finger to the word and attempting to push energy (whatever that meant) into it.

Then she leaned back in her chair. She looked into the dark wooden beams overhead, to the heavy red velvet curtains that Cordelia had drawn when night fell. “I see no butterflies.”

Crash.

Wordlessly, all four rose.

Shattered blue-and-white crockery lay smashed on the tile of the kitchen floor, yellow butter smeared against the shards.

With a bark of laughter, Cordelia began picking up the pieces. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that , but I love it. Except for the broken dish part. I did like this one.” From her crouch, she met Beatrice’s gaze. “You have to admit it’s funny.”

Beatrice couldn’t admit anything—her brain was going into free fall, somersaulting through space.

She backed out of the room, retreating to the dining area. With one hand, she propped herself against the table.

“The fly.”

Minna propped open the door of the kitchen with her boot. “Yep.”

“The butter flew.”

Astrid didn’t even look like she wanted to gloat. “It did.”

“Was that—was that a miracle ?” If it was, if they really did exist, then would that mean she had only four miracles left before she died ? Holy shit—

“Oh,” sighed Cordelia from the floor. “No. That was just magic.”