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I pick a memory at random, one that always makes me smile. It’s me and my dad in his workshop, painting the sides of a soap box racer he made me for the annual Grimdale Soap Box Derby. He’s got his old CD player (CDs! So cute) playing a Who album, and we’ve both singing along with ‘My Generation’ and ‘Boris the Spider’ while we paint.
Nothing much happens. It’s just nice to hang out. I like the satisfying slap of the paintbrush against the wood, and my dad’s warbling voice, completely off-key.
I open my eyes.
The world has changed.
The woods are overlaid by a lattice of silver cords. They wrap around trees and thread along the walking trails. A sparrow takes off from a nearby branch, her silver cord trailing behind her. There are even faint traces of silver running through the dirt, where each earthworm makes its path.
“I see them,” I whisper. “The silver cords.”
“That’s a relief,” Agnes mutters. “We almost didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Speak for yourself,” Mary says. “I always knew Bree was one of us.”
“What do I do now?” I ask, watching a mouse dragging his silver cord in circles around the base of a tree.
“Start small.” Lottie points to a tiny plant that I’d stood on when I walked into the clearing. “Let the magic flow through you. Remember, it lives in everything – you’re not creating something new, you’re just moving things around. Your power wants to be used. It calls to you. You only have to listen.”
I’m not sure any of that actually makes sense, but the silver cords stretching out of my chest hum with agreement.Okay, we’re doing this.
I kneel down in front of the plant. It’s completely dead, the stalk broken, the leaves hanging limply. A faint silver cord falls from the severed stalk, the end curling through the air as the cord fades…and fades…
I reach down and pinch the end of the cord before it can disappear completely. I grasp it between my thumb and forefinger. It leaps and jerks in my hand, desperate to do…whatever it’s supposed to do.
I connect the cord to the end of the stem, in a similar way to when I shoved Pax’s cord back into his mouth. I look to the witches, silently asking if I have to kiss the plant, too. The cord wavers as I lose my grip on my magic, and I retreat back into my head, back to that lovely day with my dad painting the soap box racer.
And I know what to do.
I don’t know how, and I can’t exactly explain it, but as I dip my brush into the red paint, I kind of dip my fingers into the cord and the stem, and Ipaintthem together with my mind. It’s as if I’m making it so that cord and stem are no longer two separate things – one a dead plant, the other a random piece of magic I don’t understand – but have become one again.
In the memory, Dad says, “That looks perfect, Bree-bug.”
“Well, will you look at that,” Agnes whistles through her crooked ghost teeth.
I stare down at the plant. The stem is no longer snapped but whole. The leaves unfurl, green and bright and tilting toward the dappled sunlight. The entire plant shimmers with silver light as the silver cord wraps tight around it and sinks back into its flesh.
“I did it!” I stand back, staring at the plant in awe. “I can’t believe I did it.”
“We never doubted you,” Lottie says with a grin. “That was amazing.”
Mary throws her arm around my shoulders, sending a warm tingle down my spine. “We’ll make a witch of you yet, Bree Mortimer.”
“Hmmmph. There’s more to being a witch than bringing some poxy shrubbery back to life,” Agnes grumbles. “I hope you’re prepared for hours of chanting, memorising the properties of different herbs, and learning the precise recipe for mixing a potion without blowing your own eyebrows off. And, of course, you’re not aproperwitch until we’ve initiated you into our coven with a full moon, skyclad ritual.”
“A what—”
“Oooh, that’s my favourite ceremony,” Lottie claps her hands in excitement. “We haven’t had a proper skyclad dance in at least two hundred years. You’ll love it, Bree. We all get stark naked and rub ourselves with—”
“Hang on, you never said anything about naked dancing!”
What have I got myself into?
16
Pax
Bree didn’t want Edward and I along for her first magic lesson with the witches, and Ambrose had already left to take over her shift at the cemetery by the time Bree rose from her slumber.
