Ripples warbled across the walls of Holly’s room. It was as if the sea on the wall bearing the pirate ship of cats had spread itself beyond the confines of its painted surface. Concentric lines extended and then contracted across every visible surface, again and again, hypnotic yet strangely anchoring.
She leaned back on her bed, nuzzling down in the covers as she tried to get more comfortable, when the rippling walls stilled for a fragile moment before they shattered.
She was back in the Grove, lying in a patch of grass outside the cottage.
“Holly!” came her mother’s voice from inside the house.
Holly’s breath caught in her chest. She sat up, and the world rippled again. In the corner of her vision, a little girl ran by. No, not running. She was blurred, as if constantly in motion even though her pace to the cottage was measured and even.
Holly followed her inside, and her throat constricted when she saw her mother alive and well and as beautiful as Holly remembered her.
Willow folded her hands as she looked down at the little girl. “We will be going to the Circle soon. Have you decided on your discipline?”
“Hearth,” whispered Holly. She remembered this moment, when she had picked her first magic discipline upon her first visit to the witches’ Circle.
But the little girl said, “Weaving.”
Holly frowned. She had been so excited in the weeks prior to her first visit to the Circle that she hadn’t been able to decide on her first discipline. Hazel had become a Weaving witch, and for a while Holly had thought she’d do the same. But when her mother had asked her, she had blurted out, “Hearth,” surprising herself though perhaps not her mother.
Willow’s eyebrows arched upwards at the little girl’s response, but she simply nodded and said, “Very well. Be ready to leave within the hour.”
The walls rippled like a rock thrown in a pond, then they gave way and Holly stood in a grove of trees. Another version of herself stood nearby, blurry like the little girl had been but clear enough to see that she was a few years younger than Holly was now. This other Holly held hands with a freckle-faced young man, and Holly gasped.
She walked up to him for a closer look. He didn’t react to her in any way; his attention remained fixed on the other Holly, who shifted between solidity and impermanence like crystalizing clouds.
She recognized the boy—a warlock named Oak who practiced Weaving and Wild magic. He wasn’t conventionally handsome—not like Hawthorn—but he had a strong nose and kind eyes, and when he smiled, his face would flush, which made his freckles stand out in a curiously endearing way. Holly had never noticed that about him before. She only knew him as a quiet and somewhat awkward young man. She’d never spoken to him—had never seen a reason to.
“What am I going to do?” Other Holly said as tears streamed down her cheeks. “What am I going to do without Mother?”
Oak put his arms around her, and Other Holly rested her head against his shoulder.
“You’re going to let me take care of you. We’ll marry. Everything will be fine.”
Other Holly nodded and held on to him. Then her blurriness intensified, and she split into three different people. Each form wavered as if about to dissolve, only to coalesce together again like flesh-bound smoke. Each form walked in a different direction. Oak faded into nothingness, and Holly felt a stab of panic on which form she should follow. Each figure looked the same, and none seemed to be headed anywhere specific. So Holly picked the closest one and followed.
The sky clouded over, the air in front of her rippled, and Willow’s decrepit cottage came into view. Holly cried out and stumbled back. She didn’t want to be there, not now. But her blurry reflection kept on walking until she rounded a corner and came upon Hazel, who sat on a pile of collapsed stones that had been overtaken by vines.
The other Holly solidified again, so much so that she looked just as real as Holly herself. “Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “You did everything you could.”
“It wasn’t enough,” Hazel said. “It’s never enough.”
“You’ve done more than anyone would dare ask.” Holly’s counterpart smiled. “I heard you were invited to the warlock brothers’ Mid-Ascension party. Hemlock and Hawthorn. Did you go?”
Hazel scoffed. “Why on earth would I ever go? I’m only thankful you weren’t around to drag me to the nonsensical affair. I heard everyone had to wear masks. Can you imagine?”
“I bet it was magical.”
“I bet it was headache inducing.” She eyed Other Holly. “Don’t tell me you’re bored with married life already?”
Other Holly beamed. “Of course not. But that doesn’t mean I’m still not fond of a good party.”
“Well, I’m fond of a quiet evening alone. And on that thought…” Hazel rose. “I should get home.”
“You should come by for dinner sometime. You’re little Willow’s only aunt.”
Hazel gave a tight smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I will. Soon.” Then she left.
Other Holly’s form wavered again. The sky continued to cloud over until there was only darkness. Holly’s own breath rattled in her ears, thunderous like a roiling storm. Wisps of breath plumed from her lips, the only thing visible in the blackness that surrounded her. The breath clung to her, then spread out into the shadows, turning the darkness into light and the light into a snow-wrought world.
Holly stood at the cottage she shared with Hazel in the waking world. But the windows stood dark, the chimney cold despite the freezing air. Holly walked up the steps and through the door, and the air inside was just as frigid as the air without.
Sheets were draped over the furniture; a layer of dust coated the floor. Holly walked into the kitchen, but the table stood empty, the oven cold and unused for some time, judging by the dust that coated it along with everything else.
She headed upstairs to Hazel’s room, but Hazel wasn’t there. Instead, a woman sat on the edge of Hazel’s sheet-covered bed. At first Holly thought it was her mother, but this woman was a little too old. Then familiarity crashed into understanding: this was the other Holly—some future version of herself that she had yet to live through.
Someone came through the door downstairs.
“Mama?” called another woman’s voice.
Footsteps came up the stairs, and a young woman walked through the door. She looked to be around the same age as Holly was now—the real Holly watching these events unfold—new to womanhood and all its complications. She also looked strikingly similar to Holly. She had the same golden hair and round, rosy cheeks, though this girl had freckles dotting her fair complexion that Holly lacked.
And Holly knew, without hearing her name, that this girl was Willow—her daughter in another life she had never lived. A daughter she had named after her mother. And as she looked upon this girl that looked so much like herself and yet so different, Holly’s chest tightened in a way she couldn’t explain.
“Mama,” Willow said. She knelt down next to Other Holly as she sat on the bed. “You need to stop coming here.”
“I dreamed about her last night,” Other Holly said. “I dreamed that we were young again and that we still lived here. Everything was like it used to be, when we would stay up all night to watch the summer sun rise or drink spiced tea by the winter-side hearth. I thought… I thought maybe she had returned.”
“She left, Mama. She’s not coming back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know she turned to necromancy,” Willow said, her voice tinged with harshness. “I know you think she had her reasons, and maybe she did. But whatever those were, she can’t come back. She just can’t, Mama.”
Hazel turned to necromancy? Even here in this otherworld where everything was different? It was as if a heavy burden settled over her. It all felt so pointless—no matter what they did, Hazel would become a necromancer and then nothing would ever be the same.
Why had Holly come here? What was the point? To witness a could-be life that ended in ruins for Hazel and, in some ways, for Holly as well? She wanted to leave, to go back to where things were real instead of wallowing in fruitless possibilities.
As soon as the thought entered her mind, the world around her began to dissolve. The walls gave way to snowy forest, and the snow, in turn, gave way to nebulous mist. It was all about to shiver away into eternal nothingness when a thought entered Holly’s mind: What was she supposed to change?
Odd had said she’d see the decisions she did not make and maybe even be able to change the ones she did make. Well, that’s what she needed. She needed to change something, but what?
The mist solidified once again and took on the form of a great wood-paneled hallway. Portrait frames hung on the walls in between candlelit sconces. But instead of paintings, within the frames were fragments of her life.
In one, she and Hazel sat on a log next to a pond while eating honey with their fingers as the sun set. In another, Holly was making the dress she had worn to Hawthorn and Hemlock’s party. She walked on, cringing as she watched herself act like a complete fool in front of Hawthorn and everyone that day Rose came to tea. And there, further on, she did it again as she kissed Hawthorn in the graveyard. Part of her wanted to stop and change those events. They made her cringe just to think about them; how nice it would be if they had never happened.
But that’s not why she was here; they weren’t what mattered. Holly kept on walking until the candles lighting the hallway dimmed and fell into shadow. She turned and looked at one of the smaller frames—one showing how she went to sleep that night when Hazel had left.
What if Holly had never slept that night? What if she had taken the tinctures they’d taken from Emmond’s home and fashioned a potion that would make Hazel sleep instead? More than that, what if Holly had gone to the Shrine? Hazel always took it upon herself to do everything. But what if Holly had gone there, convinced them she was destined for necromancy instead of Hazel?
The last of the candlelight guttered and died, and Holly was plunged back into darkness.
Whispers rasped within her mind, like bees in a hive hibernating for winter. She tried to listen but couldn’t make out any words. Then, further on, a light appeared—soft and blue like twilit water.
She came to a heavy black door that led into a darkened room where, on the far end, she could make out the silhouette of a man. As she walked towards him, he turned to look at her.
Holly froze. His eyes met hers, registering surprise. But he couldn’t possibly be as surprised as she was. How could he see her? None of the others had. More than that, though, there was something about him that looked distinctly familiar.
He looked a lot like Hazel.
“Holly,” he said.
Holly bolted upright on the bed and cradled her head in her hands. That man… could he have been her father? Holly had never known him; he had left just as she had been learning to walk—or so she’d been told. She’d never mourned his absence. Why would she? He was someone she’d never met and never loved. Why would she mourn someone she didn’t know?
But now, seeing a man that so clearly resembled Hazel, Holly, for the first time in her life, felt as if her heart had cracked with an emptiness she’d never known was there.
Hawthorn handed her a tall glass of water. She gulped it down, only then realizing just how thirsty she was.
“Easy,” Hawthorn said. “Slow down.”
She ignored him, drinking down the water like a man drowning. She was so thirsty. Then her stomach constricted, and she bent over and threw it all up onto the floor.
“I did the same thing,” Hemlock said. He sat in a chair in a corner of the room, his face waxy and pallid.
Holly blinked at him and then at Hawthorn, the events from the potion floating in her memory like a distant, disturbing dream.
“What happened?” she said. “Did it work?”
Hawthorn shrugged. “How should I know?”
“Did I change it? Did it work?”
“Did what work?”
“Hazel, is she here?”
“No.”
Holly’s arms went limp. Nothing had changed. It had all been an illusion.
But it hadn’t felt like an illusion. Even now, as the memories clung to her in a dreamlike haze, it still felt real. She looked at Hemlock. “What did you see?”
He frowned and shook his head. “Lots of things. It was all kind of jumbled. Mother was there, and Father, and Hawthorn of course. But a lot of the time I was alone. I switched to Hearth magic at one point.” He stared off into the distance. “I’m pretty sure a gnome had taken up residence in my cellar…”
“But what about Hazel?”
He shook his head again. “I never saw her. It was like she didn’t exist in that world.”
“She must have existed.”
“She may have, but our paths never crossed.” He ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t much care for that world, truth be told.”
“With a gnome in your cellar,” Hawthorn said, “who could blame you?” He wiped his hands together as if dusting them off. “Well, it sounds to me like this whole affair was a magnificent waste of time. But that’s Hearth magic for you—withered, anemic witches and warlocks tinkering with worthless potions. Ludicrous. I don’t know why the Conclave still sanctions it. Let me know when either one of you comes up with a plan that will actually produce results.” He left the room.
“I hate to say it,” Hemlock said, “but I think he’s right.”
“Hearth magic is perfectly respectable!” Holly said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Holly flopped backwards onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. She wanted to tell him he was wrong, it had worked somehow. Only Holly couldn’t see how it had, so she didn’t say anything at all.