Page 31

CLARICE

“B eware the witch’s fate, for her death shall mark the beginning of the end. ”

My sister sang the chilling phrase as if it were a nursery rhyme, repeating the words over and over again. There was no emotion behind it, as if she was nothing more than an empty shell speaking a warning from beyond.

I’d arrived home that night to find Nicole sitting in my living room, looking anything but herself. She sat on the couch, her hair a tangled mess atop her head. It looked like she hadn’t showered in days, though she’d been fine when I left for work this morning. Our cat Odin sat beside her, meowing mournfully. Sometime in the last few hours, Nicole’s eyes had taken on a wide, crazed appearance. She wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked back and forth.

Nicole was a Seer, though her visions rarely made any sense. I’d learned to put little stake in her predictions, but this one was different. I’d never seen her like this before; she didn’t even make eye contact.

I knelt in front of her and spoke gently. “Nicole, I understand that you’ve had a vision. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Over the last year, Nicole had said a lot of things like this, but she usually brushed them off. Oftentimes, Seer visions were cryptic and difficult to decipher, and sometimes didn’t mean anything at all. Nicole had always been a free spirit, never bothered by any sort of inconvenience. She could always see the bright side to any situation, even in the worst moments that would surely crush anyone else. She wasn’t the kind of person to be affected by her visions, no matter how dark. I never thought I’d live to see my sister’s descent into madness.

And that’s exactly what this was. Madness.

“Beware the witch’s fate, for her death shall mark the beginning of the end,” Nicole repeated.

“Who’s the witch you’re talking about?” I asked softly.

“The witch , Clarice!” she insisted, without looking at me. “She’s going to die!”

Nicole gave a mad laugh, and I quickly drew away from her. My sister was sitting in front of me, but she didn’t feel like my sister at all. I’d known her all my life, and we’d been best friends for nearly forty years. I knew every line on her face and every fleck of color in her eyes. Nicole and I were identical twins, and in the Miriamic Coven, that meant that we shared a soul. We were each one piece of a whole, a singular soul meant to live two separate lives alongside each other in this incarnation. We shared a connection unlike any other, but this was the first time I felt I couldn’t get through to her. Usually when I looked at her, it was like looking into a mirror. Tonight, I hardly recognized her.

I wasn’t the kind of person to fall apart ever . I’d always been the serious one, the one to hold us both together when our parents had been fighting. I always knew the best corners of the house to hide in to drown out their screaming. I’d become a lawyer to right the injustices of the world, and then turned to teaching to give back to the coven—to help raise the next generation of great witches and warlocks.

Something had changed. I could feel it. Deep down, a piece of our soul had fractured, and I didn’t understand why or what had happened.

It was this vision. It had to be. Whatever she saw—whatever she knew —appeared to break her beyond repair. But she still had me, and I was going to fix this if it was the last thing I did.

“Nicole, tell me what you saw,” I ordered.

“Fire!” she cried. “I see fire. I see a noose. There shall be a murder!”

I shuddered. I knew what she had to be talking about. The thought of the coven burning or hanging their own people never sat right with me, but it wasn’t my place to judge the priestesses, as they knew Mother Miriam’s will best. Our Imperium Council did what was necessary to protect the coven and please our goddess, and like any member of the Miriamic Coven, I would honor my goddess no matter what she desired.

Executions weren’t particularly common these days, but they still happened from time to time. Nicole’s prediction made it clear there was an execution just around the corner.

“I’m sure whatever happens is Mother Miriam’s will,” I assured her, though I hesitated. I couldn’t help but wonder why Nicole would receive this vision unless she was meant to do something about it. “Did you see the witch who is to be executed?”

She continued rocking back and forth, like she never heard my question. Her wide-eyed gaze appeared unfocused as she continued rattling off the phrase. “Beware the witch’s fate, for her death shall mark the beginning of the end.”

“The beginning of what end?” I wondered aloud, but Nicole didn’t respond.

I wasn’t getting through to her, and though I had an extensive educational background, none of it could give me the understanding of a Seer when I myself was an Alchemist. I needed help from an expert.

“How about I put on a pot of tea?” I asked calmly. “Chamomile peppermint—your favorite. It should help calm the nerves.”

Nicole didn’t acknowledge my offer. Slowly, I retreated from the living room and into the kitchen. I filled the teapot with water and placed it on the stove. Then I drew my phone from my pocket and found a number in my contacts.

He answered on the first ring. “Clarice, how are you?”

“Not well, Emmett,” I admitted as I paced around the room. I kept my voice low so that my sister wouldn’t hear from the other room. “Something’s wrong with Nicole, and I’m certain it has to do with her visions. I need your help.”

If anyone could help her, it was Emmett Carlisle. He was a professor at Miriam College of Witchcraft, decades older and wiser than me. He was one of my closest colleagues and sat as head of the Seer department, while I was head of Alchemy. He was a mentor to me as much as a friend, and though we were both being considered for the headmaster position in the fall, he’d told me he was secretly rooting for me to get it, even though he had seniority. He was approaching retirement soon and thought the school was better off with a long-term headmistress. Truth be told, I didn’t think he wanted to leave the classroom. He loved it too much.

“Of course, Clarice,” Emmett said. “I’ll help in any way I can. What seems to be the problem?”

I described what was going on as I placed the herbs into a tea ball.

“Is she responsive?” Emmett asked.

“Barely,” I told him. “She responds in simple phrases, then goes right back to repeating the same words. It’s like a prediction, but I’ve never seen her lose it like this before. She’s unrecognizable.”

“It sounds like a condition we call disunion ,” Emmett explained. “It’s rare, but happens when a Seer becomes overwhelmed by their visions and resists them. This causes a divide inside their mind from what they know to be true, and what they want to be true. It happens most often with visions that could cause cataclysmic change.”

“So there’s really something to this prediction?” I wondered.

“We can’t know for sure what it means or how impactful it may be, because this condition occurs due to her interpretation of her visions, whether they truly point to cataclysm or not.”

“She’s foretelling a woman’s death,” I said. “That’s tragic, but is it truly enough to cause her to become unstable like this?”

“Disunion is never the result of only one vision,” Emmett told me. “Likely, she’s been resisting her visions for some time now, and this vision was merely the last straw.”

I’d noticed she’d been pulling away over the last year, but she’d never been so disconnected as she was now. To be honest, I thought she might be seeing someone and didn’t want to tell me. We were both unmarried and had joked our whole lives that we would become old maids surrounded by cats, because we didn’t need anyone but each other. We had friends, and Faith was nearly as close to me as my own sister, but it wasn’t the same.

Nicole and I were in our late thirties. We’d tried living apart for a while, but after Nicole lost her job a few months ago, she came to stay with me in the house our father had left me after his death. She’d been acting strange ever since. I figured she worried about leaving me behind for a man, though that could never happen. We would always be sisters, whether we lived together or not. Regardless, the promises we made in childhood still stood. We would be together forever, and that didn’t change no matter the distance between us. I would be there to support whatever made her happy, no matter where that left me. And so, I’d resolved to let her come to me at my own pace.

I was starting to think that was a very grave mistake.

I should’ve seen the signs, but it happened so gradually that I never would’ve thought it’d culminate into something like this. She’d always told me about her visions before, and it never occurred to me that she might be hiding them, especially if it was something this serious. It appeared she wasn’t the only one hiding from the truth, as I had refused to see reality as well.

“How do we help her?” I asked Emmett. “Do we need to figure out the meaning behind her vision and prevent this woman’s death?”

“Without understanding her interpretation, it’s nearly impossible to decipher the meaning until we’re able to remerge the parts of her mind back together,” Emmett said.

“So there’s a cure?” I asked desperately.

“Through therapy or the proper ceremonies, yes, she can overcome this disunion, if she is willing to work with us,” Emmett said. “In the meantime, disunion can be a very dangerous condition, as Seers who are afflicted by this ailment may act out in treacherous ways to try to prevent their vision from coming true.”

The last thing I wanted was to see my sister get hurt. Something like that would surely break us both.

I pulled the steaming kettle from the burner as I whispered, “What do we do, Emmett?”

“All will be well, Clarice,” he said gently. “I’m on my way to your house now. Keep a close eye on her until I get there.”

“I will,” I promised. I hung up and quickly poured the hot water into the teacup I’d prepared. I funneled my Alchemy magic into it to enhance its relaxing properties.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Nicole—” I started, but I cut off when I entered the living room to find it empty. It hit me then that several minutes had passed since I last heard her utter those terrifying words.

I felt the blood drain from my face. Emmett said her condition was dangerous, and I could only imagine what dangers he spoke of. I slammed the teacup to the coffee table, but I barely afforded it a glance as it teetered on the edge and splashed across the carpet. I was already racing out of the room.

“Nicole!” I called up the stairs. The old house remained eerily silent. Even Odin’s cries had vanished completely.

I wasn’t sure where she had gone, but one thing was for absolute certainty. Nicole wasn’t herself right now, and I didn’t think she was aware of whatever she planned to do.

A cold breeze spread across my arms, and I whirled toward the front door to see it had been left open a crack. I raced outside into the dark of night. It was the end of May, and the spring days had grown warm, but the air tonight seemed to chill me to the bone. The trees surrounding our house swayed, their leaves rustling overhead. I could’ve sworn I heard the howl of a coyote far in the distance, but as I listened for my sister’s footsteps, I heard nothing over the sound of my own pounding heart.

“Nicole!” I called out again.

A mew came from behind the house, and I hurried around to the back, where I found Odin staring into the forest. He meowed helplessly, like he too was looking for Nicole.

There was only one place I could think of where she would’ve gone. It was our hideout as kids, a place I hadn’t been to in ages, but it had always been our greatest safe haven. I tossed a witch light into the air and trudged through the forest, until I came upon an outcropping of rock far from the house. Within the rock was a narrow opening that led into a small cavern no larger than our living room.

My witch light floated ahead of me, lighting my way as I squeezed through the opening. It seemed much smaller than when we were kids.

“Nicole, are you in here?” I called out.

I entered the cavern, but it was completely empty. There were a few odd items scattered around, like a blanket covered in dirt that we’d dragged out here as kids to use as a rug, and a few sticks we’d carved to look like wands when we played magic. An old leather-bound book we used to pretend was a grimoire lay on the ground. There was even a cot we’d set up ages ago, in case we ever needed to sneak out of the house at night when our parents’ screaming got too loud.

Several baby dolls still lay in a wooden cradle, completely undisturbed for the past twenty-five years. It made me sad to look at, because we’d always talked about becoming mothers, but here we were at nearly forty years old, our biological clocks nearly at their end. Everyone else our age already had children, and it seemed a little too late for the two of us. Nicole and I rarely spoke about it, but I knew deep down in our soul that we were both afraid of becoming parents… becoming our parents.

We only needed each other. And Nicole needed me now more than ever.

I looked toward Odin. “We need to track her down before she gets herself hurt.”

Nicole had a good five-minute head-start, and she could’ve gone in any direction. I couldn’t waste any time guessing where she’d gone. I hurried back into the house and frantically searched cupboards for Alchemy supplies. My cauldron sat ready on the stove, and I began pouring herbs and magic together to brew a tracking potion. I went into her bathroom and pulled a strand of hair from her brush. The cauldron bubbled fiercely when I dropped it in, alongside a Seer crystal.

I spoke an incantation. “ By Santos’s love and Miriam’s light, show me my sister’s path tonight. ”

I finished the potion and quickly dipped a ladle into the liquid. I took several gulps, though the potion burned my tongue. My vision instantly began to blur, and I sank to my knees in the middle of the kitchen.

Soft footsteps sounded nearby, and the wind whistled through the woods. A cold chill surrounded me, and I saw only the outline of trees in the dark night. A woman’s voice muttered incomprehensible words, and something heavy sounded like it was being dragged through the dirt. As my vision adjusted to the darkness, I witnessed movement. Nicole stumbled through the forest in her bare feet, dragging a wooden handle behind her. Moonlight glistened off the metal end, and I realized what it was.

An ax. It was ours from the shed, though I hardly remembered we’d had it. Nobody had used it in years.

I glanced around, looking for any clues as to where she might be headed. Through the trees, I spotted the tall turrets of Miriam College of Witchcraft. My sister seemed oblivious to the mansion, though, and kept on walking past the school. It didn’t seem that she had any direction at all.

Then I heard the words she’d been muttering under her breath. “Protection, protection, protection,” she repeated.

I knew exactly where she was headed.

Hands landed on my shoulders, and someone shook me. I was pulled from the vision and found myself back on my knees in my kitchen. An old gray cat pawed at me.

Emmett Carlisle’s familiar gray hair and glasses came into focus. “Clarice, tell me everything.”

I shook off the chill from my vision. “Nicole left the house while I was on the phone with you. I’ve tracked her down. Emmett, she’s headed for the Protection Tree.”

“Did you see anything else?” he asked as he helped me to my feet.

A shiver traveled down my spine. This all seemed so unlike Nicole. “An ax,” I admitted.

Emmett’s features paled. “Surely she’s not in control of her own actions right now. We don’t have much time. We must get to her.”

Emmett and I raced out of the house, and our cats followed. We jumped into my car, and the tires spun as I hit the gas. I sped down several streets until we came to the nearest parking lot closest to the Protection Tree.

I didn’t bother turning off the engine as I hurried out of the car and into the trees. There was a path from the parking lot to the clearing that held the Protection Tree. Tonight, that path seemed a mile long.

“Nicole!” I called out, but no answer came. Behind me, Emmett huffed as he tried to keep up.

A heavy thwack sounded in the distance. She was already here.

I broke out into the clearing. The gnarly oak branches of the Protection Tree rose above my head. The tree pulsed with the magic that held the town’s protection spell in place.

Nicole stood beside the tree and lifted the ax above her head. The whole clearing seemed to shudder as she swung the blade toward the thick trunk. It connected with a heavy thwack . Bark separated, and splinters flew in multiple directions. There were already several cuts in the tree, and they were only growing bigger the more she swung.

I couldn’t wrap my head around what could possibly possess her to do such a thing. This tree was sacred to the Miriamic Coven. To defile it in any way was a serious offense. Even if she wasn’t herself, she had to understand that cutting down this tree would take hours. If she didn’t stop now, the priestesses would be here to stop her by any means necessary. I was certain the priestesses could already feel Nicole’s attack against their spell.

“Nicole!” I yelled. Odin wailed at my feet.

She paused for a moment as she lifted the ax above her head. Slowly, she turned to look at me standing near the tree line. Her eyes locked on mine, and I could’ve sworn I saw her features soften, as if she’d broken through the madness of her vision.

Then her face hardened, and she snarled, “You don’t understand, Clarice! This tree is going to kill! It is a murder tree! You have to let me stop it!”

She swung the ax another time. It made contact with the trunk, and several more splinters flew across the clearing.

“It’s only a tree,” I pleaded. “It can’t hurt anyone.”

She lifted the ax above her head again, and I raced across the clearing. I came up behind her and grabbed her hands before she could swing it another time.

“Please,” I begged. “Let me help you.”

“Let me help you,” she repeated, as if mocking me. Nicole yanked on the ax handle, but I held on as firmly as I could. In a wild attempt to wrestle the ax from my hands, she threw her shoulder backward. The heavy metal butt of the ax smashed into my eye, and I stumbled hard to the ground. My eye swelled shut within moments.

“Clarice!” I heard Emmett call from behind me, though his presence barely registered.

Before Nicole could make contact with the tree again, I threw a shield around the Protection Tree. Her ax clanged against my shield, but didn’t splinter the wood.

“It is a murder tree, a murder tree !” she cried frantically, like it would help me understand something I never would.

Emmett reached me, and he dragged me several feet backward. “You can’t reason with her,” he protested.

“I can try!” I insisted. “Would you rather I hurt her, because that’s our only alternative, and it will help nothing!”

Screams tore through the dead of night. “Someone is trying to break our protection spell!” a woman yelled in the distance.

“They will suffer Mother Miriam’s wrath!” another shouted.

Emmett gasped. “It’s the priestesses!”

Nicole whirled toward us. “You have to go!”

She lifted her hand, and a shield blasted out of it so fast that Emmett and I were both sent flying backward. We landed flat on our backs in the trees, alongside our cats. My head spun as I struggled to sit upright.

Through the trees, I witnessed Nicole lift her ax one last time. Four priestesses swooped into the clearing on flying broomsticks, surrounding my sister at all angles. Their hooded cloaks billowed in the wind.

“This is a murder tree, and I must save—” Nicole started.

She was cut off as the priestesses blasted battle spells at her from all angles. Nicole’s eyes rolled back in her skull, and she slumped to the ground unconscious. The ax landed at her feet.

One of the priestesses stepped forward and lowered her hood. She was one of the older priestesses, at least twenty years older than me, with dark curls around her face. It was Priestess Lilian.

“Alert the coven,” Lilian ordered one of the other women. “Tell them of the horrific crime that has been committed here tonight. We must ensure they know such attacks upon the coven are unforgivable. We must ready the gallows immediately. She will hang tonight.”

My whole body quaked in horrified tremors as I scrambled to my feet.

Lilian lifted her hands, and her powers levitated Nicole into the air. The priestesses mounted their brooms and took off to the skies in the blink of an eye, carrying my sister’s limp body with them.

“No!” I wailed. My heartbreak seemed to echo through the forest, but the priestesses never turned around, nor responded.

I ran into the forest, following the direction the priestesses had gone. I knew where they would be taking her. There was a hill not far from here that housed the gallows. I couldn’t recall the last time they’d been used—a few years, at least—but the coven would certainly put them to use tonight.

I couldn’t let that happen. Not to my sister. Not to us .

Something within my chest seemed to stretch, as if there was a rope tethering me to my sister. Our connection strained against the distance that grew between us. Each passing second, the priestesses dragged her farther away from me. It felt that at any given moment, our soul might snap.

“Nicole!” I called out, even though I knew no answer would come. Whatever had broken inside of her was slowly bleeding into my own heart, because I felt like a madwoman racing through the woods.

I tripped. My hands sliced open against sharp sticks, and my knees smashed into rocks that left them bloody and bruised. Footsteps followed behind me, and I thought they were Emmett’s, but he couldn’t keep up with me. My heart raced as I pushed myself to my feet and continued running.

By the time I broke through the trees at the top of the hill, at least a hundred coven members had already gathered. I witnessed in horror as a man in a hooded cloak walked my sister across a wooden platform and placed a noose around her neck.

“NO!” I screamed so loud that it echoed across the hill.

The crowd turned to look at me. I stumbled forward, pushing past townspeople to get to the front of the group. The priestesses stood at the base of the gallows, staring up at my sister.

“What is the meaning of this?” Priestess Margaret sneered.

“Priestesses, please,” I begged. “She had a vision. Professor Carlisle believes what happened here tonight is a result of a condition called disunion ?—”

“The cause does not matter, only that she has angered the Goddess,” Lilian snapped. “Stand back, Clarice, or you will join your sister.”

“You don’t understand,” I pleaded. “None of this was her intention. You can’t do this without a trial!”

“A trial is not needed, for we caught her in the act. No one may defile the Protection Tree and live,” Lilian hissed.

I gave it one last try. “Nicole, tell them you didn’t mean it!”

I stared up at my sister, hoping she would say something to plead her innocence. Instead, she merely stared down at me with the most intense gaze.

“Beware the witch’s fate, for her death shall mark the beginning of the end,” she repeated one more time. Her voice came out surprisingly steady, like she had no idea what was about to happen to her.

My heart dropped. I felt like a helpless little kid again, not a full-grown woman with decades of life experience. For the first time, I didn’t know how to hold us together.

That’s when I realized I couldn’t… not anymore.

I waited around for someone else to speak up, for my fellow coven members to protest that this wasn’t right, that Nicole was ill and needed help. I expected the crowd to rise up, for someone to come to our aid and demand that Nicole be given some sort of mercy. I wanted—no, needed —my community to come through for us and do the right thing, because I knew in my heart I would for them. The coven had to take a stand against this. If not a group of people, at least one person… anyone.

These selfish bastards… they did nothing.

“I won’t go alone.” Nicole uttered her final words.

Then the executioner pulled the lever, and the platform beneath Nicole’s feet fell open. The sickening snap of her neck echoed across the hilltop. Her bare feet just hung there inches from the ground.

Time stopped, and I couldn’t make sense of what happened next, because nothing seemed to matter. The fissure that had opened up in our soul completely shattered, until I lost all sense of self entirely. I could’ve been standing there for hours watching my sister’s body sway in the wind. Nothing felt real, and I wasn’t sure there were any pieces of our soul left to pick up. The two of us had never been apart, and now, we’d been separated across entire realms. I might as well have crossed realms with her, because here in body, I felt wholly empty.

And they just… left her there—her body swinging on a noose in the wind, like some sort of symbol to the coven of what would come of them should they commit a similar crime.

But I didn’t see my sister as a criminal, no matter what she’d done. She’d been trying to tell us something—something important—and instead of listening, the priestesses had chosen to silence her.

Footsteps sounded beside me. I couldn’t fathom where they were coming from, because this world felt so empty now I was certain I was the last person living in it. I was on my knees at the base of the gallows, and the rest of the coven had left.

Left my sister to rot.

I looked up to see Emmett slowly approaching me. Odin mewed softly at his feet.

“Clarice, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Take as much time as you need. I’ve brought the car around whenever you’re ready.”

I felt a flare of anger rise against him. He was useless, too. He had remained silent when I needed him to raise his voice. He could go to hell with the rest of them. Yet, still, I needed his help now, worthless as it was.

I wiped my eyes and got to my feet. “We need to get her down from there. It’s going to get cold tonight. She always sleeps with her socks on, or she gets too cold.”

Emmett gave a gentle nod. Together, we loosened the noose from around her neck and pulled her body from the gallows. We laid her gently in the grass. I knelt at her side and pushed her hair out of her face. It was easy to believe she was merely sleeping, because I didn’t think I’d survive in a world where she wasn’t in it. Odin nudged her hand, though she didn’t respond.

She always was a deep sleeper.

I didn’t cry because I just… couldn’t. I didn’t feel anything at all. I wished I could’ve said that emptiness saved me from the grief, but in truth, there was no feeling in the world worse than that numbness. At least if I was angry or sad, I’d have something to fight for. Instead, life felt wholly meaningless. I couldn’t even tell if my heart was still beating.

My sister was gone… and I’d lost myself with her.

Emmett laid a hand on my shoulder, though his voice seemed distant. “There is nothing more you could’ve done. We didn’t get to her in time.”

“There’s got to be more,” I said hollowly. “It can’t end like this.”

“All we can do is lay her in a grave and?—”

“ No !” I cut him off. He was about to suggest a funeral, but to do so would be ludicrous. I could never say goodbye to my sister. “I won’t bury her.”

“Clarice, she must be laid to rest,” Emmett insisted.

“Then we shall place her in a tomb,” I said. “There’s only one place she was ever safe.”