Someone visited her. Tended to her final resting place, maybe even said prayers for her. I’m about to ask Dr. Sutherland whether the girl has family left around here, but then I remember…
It’s me. I’m her family. My sisters are her family.
And so is—was—our mother.
I pick up one of the rose blooms, gently folding my fingers around it. The petals are still fragrant. I close my eyes, press it to my nose…
A vision swarms behind my eyelids. It’s my mother again—I’m sure of it—laying the bouquet on the grave. Lighting the candles and pressing her palms into the dirt. Her face is serene, untroubled. Peaceful.
And I know, just as sure as I know Dr. Sutherland wasn’t born a demon, that I’m seeing a real moment in time. Thishappened. My mother was here. My mother cared about someone other than herself.
Maybe it should upset me—the flowers, the kindness. After all, how could a woman so dutifully tend to the grave of a dead girl when she couldn’t be bothered to care for her three living ones? But it doesn’t. If anything, the sight of her—bent and reverent, her touch light against the stone—humanizes her.
More than anything else,that’swhat angers me.
I can’t think of her as human. I need her to remain a fucking monster in my mind, because rage is easier to live with than rejection, than grief for the loss of someone who never wanted you in the first place.
The anger recedes, but sadness tries to rise up in its place. I shove it straight back down, crushing it into a hard little lump. A piece of coal that smolders with old, familiar pain, but doesn’t ignite.
Better.
Dropping the bloom, I rise to my feet and dust off my hands. The fog thickens around us, drifting across our feet.
“How did they know Calista was a witch?” I ask, keeping my voice low, as if the hunters are hiding out in the mist, waiting for a chance to pounce.
“They didn’t. Because she wasn’t.”
I turn to look at him. “But you said she was the first of the line.”
“Not in the way you’re thinking. Calista Bonnivarde was just a girl. Full of dreams and hopes, like anyone her age.” He holdsmy gaze for a beat, then sighs, his eyes dimming. “As the story goes, she turned down some aggressive advances from a boy in town. He didn’t take it well. She fought back—viciously enough to draw blood and scare him off before he could cause any serious injury.”
“Good.”
“At first, she thought the same. Days passed, and he left her in peace. She assumed it was over, when in reality...” Dr. Sutherland brushes an errant leaf from the headstone. “He and his father, a wealthy merchant and town council chair, corrupt as you’d imagine, were prominent members of an international society known as The Wielders of the Righteous Flame.”
“The hunters,” I whisper, disgust robbing my voice.
“Fear-mongering around witchcraft was already sweeping the world, the trials well underway in Europe and the colonies, hundreds of thousands of innocents being accused, tortured, and executed. The Wielders leveraged this fear to create panic—a panic they could then allay by hunting down the so-called witches who’d infected their communities, and basking in their self-appointed heroism. But what they were really after was the magic itself.”
I feel like I’m going to puke. “The magic they were trying to rid the world of because it was so dangerous and evil? Sure, that makes sense.”
“They believed that by sacrificing innocents, they could unlock the key to the demonic realms and the power within. The accusations of witchcraft were just a convenient cover; no one would question their actions—not even the victim’s family members, lest they be similarly accused—so long as the victim was painted as a threat.”
“So these guys just came out of nowhere and accused Calista of witchcraft? Just because she wouldn’t sleep with the dude?”
“Yes. He concocted a story, with his father’s encouragement, about an unprovoked attack by a girl who was clearly possessed by demons. How else, they reasoned, could she have overtaken him? They weren’t even loud about it, either. All it took was a single accusation, a few whispers that caught like wildfire, and she was branded. The hunters cornered her later that evening as she fetched water for the family meal. They chased her deeper into the woods. Captured her.”
Dr. Sutherland closes his eyes, his voice lowering to a defeated whisper I can barely hear over the pounding of my heart. “In their haste to claim the magic, they didn’t waste time torturing or tormenting her, which I suppose was a saving grace. In the end, death came quickly. A blade across the throat, blood spilled upon the earth. The burning of the body. Historians assume some sort of ritual was performed, though the details are lost to time.”
A soft breeze stirs the fog, and I look out over Calista’s grave, feeling like I’m trudging through a thick white sea, wishing I could swim backward in time and save her. It wasn’t enough that they slit her throat. Theyburnedher too. That’s why her dress was charred.
“Forests are hallowed ground,” Dr. Sutherland continues. “Sacred energetic centers that connect this realm to the demonic. When those monsters spilled the blood of an innocent girl, a great power was indeed summoned forth, just as they’d hoped. But most demonic entities are unaligned. Drawn forth by the sacrifice and whatever nonsensical ritual the Wielders performed, in the absence of a proper spell and witches to bind them, these entities granted power not to the murderers, but to the victim.”
“I mean, I love that for her? But also… too little, too late. Calista was already dead.”
“Too late for her, yes. But as her blood was the key to summoning that power, her blood became the vessel for it. The magic flowed through it, to all who would ever be connected to it. Her heirs.”
My own blood warms in response, buzzing through me on some new electric current, like the best double-espresso caffeine jolt ever. “But how? If Calista was murdered before the demons granted her magic, presumably she didn’t have any witch-babies after that. How did the rest of her line come to be?”
