The second Hagar walked away, Holly grabbed Fern’s arm.
“Do it,” she said. “You have to do it for me!”
But Fern felt the storm receding, pulling away, dissolving into mist. She wanted to lie to herself but the emptiness couldn’t be denied.
“It’s over, Holly,” she said. “You had to do it yourself.”
“No!” Holly demanded, but she felt it, too.
Hope drained from Holly. It only took a few seconds for her to go back to the way she’d looked before, slouched and silent. Holly was familiar with not having any hope.
The whole walk back Fern tried to figure out how Hagar had found them. Then they straggled out of the tree line into the backyard, and through the kitchen window she saw Zinnia standing by the fridge in her nightgown. Hagar stood at the sink, watching them come in out of the dark.
Fern propped the shovel by the back door and pulled the screen door open and went inside. She couldn’t be mad at Zinnia. Even if Hagar hadn’t come, Holly hadn’t been able to do it. They had failed. She and Holly stood by Zinnia.
“I’m sorry,” Zinnia mumbled.
Fern shrugged.
She put her pillowcase on the kitchen table with a clank and waited for Hagar to turn around. Hagar ran the tap and filled a jelly jar with water but she didn’t drink.
“Zinnia had nothing to do with this,” Fern said to Hagar’s back. “She didn’t even want us to go out there tonight.”
Her voice sounded small in the silence. Hagar drained her jelly jar, then put it in the sink and braced her hands against its edge.
“Little girl,” she said. “I have seen things tonight that would make your hair fall out and your liver turn white. Do not test me.”
She turned, and her face was an exhausted knot.
“What stupid notion got into your empty heads?” she asked.
As usual, Fern lied.
“It was just a game,” she said. “We were bored and we saw it in a magazine so we decided to do it. I know we weren’t supposed to sneak out, but we really wanted to go swimming and please don’t tell Miss Wellwood. We won’t do it again.”
Hagar pushed herself off the sink and stalked toward them, coming around the kitchen table. Instinctively, they backed away.
“Don’t,” Hagar said. “Move.”
She stood so close Fern could smell her laundry soap and something else, something like river mud beneath it. Hagar sniffed once over Fern’s head, then she loomed over Holly and did it again. She stood practically on Zinnia’s toes to smell her.
“You’ve all got the stink of witch work on you,” she said. “Don’t think you can play me for a fool. Now tell me what it is you’ve done so I know how bad a mess I’m going to have to clean up.”
Zinnia looked at Fern. This had been Fern’s idea, so Fern knew she had to face it.
“It was the bookmobile,” she said, but she knew not to trust an adult, so she polished it slightly. “There was a book on witches we checked out and it had spells in it. We decided to try them because Zinnia was throwing up all the time, and it worked.”
She looked at Hagar to make sure she was following. Hagar stared at her, not blinking. Fern stumbled on.
“And then we thought that the weather was so hot and there was a spell in the book about making it rain and I thought that would be perfect, so Holly and I went out tonight to do it, but Zinnia didn’t want to come.” And as Fern said it out loud, none of it sounded powerful or mysterious; it all sounded ridiculous and childish. “And we started to do that, and that’s when you came and, uh, that’s it.”
Hagar wasn’t having it.
“I want everything,” she said. “What did you do to Dr. Vincent? That man didn’t get ill over nothing. Not with the three of you smelling like screech owls.”
Fern didn’t know what to do, so finally she told the truth, about the bookmobile, and Miss Parcae, and the witch’s book, and Dr. Vincent.
“We gave him Zinnia’s morning sickness,” she said. “Zinnia was sick all the time and no one was doing anything to help her and he said it was all inside her head and so we made him feel like she did.”
“And Miss Wellwood,” Hagar said, disgusted and tired. “I know that was you all.”
This was the first time they’d heard anything about Miss Wellwood.
“What happened to her?” Fern asked. And when Hagar didn’t answer, she asked, “Is she okay?”
“If you cared about that woman you wouldn’t have put the bite on her the way you did,” Hagar said. “No human being would do what you did to a dog, let alone a grown woman who let you into her home.”
“She doesn’t care how we feel!” Holly said. They all turned, even Hagar. Holly’s voice had a brittle edge. The skin around her birthmark had flushed darker. “She puts us on restriction, she tells us we’re sinners, she took Rose’s baby, and she’s going to send me home! She doesn’t care how we feel!”
They all waited for Hagar’s reaction, but she simply appraised Holly.
“I guess you’re not the halfwit they say you are,” she said after a moment.
Hager pulled out a kitchen chair and Fern thought she might throw it at them, but instead she lowered herself down. Fern wished she could sit. Her body felt like it was all broken bones held together by string. But she knew they were in trouble, and you always took your trouble standing up.
“That’s what y’all are here for in the first place,” Hagar said, sad and quiet. “To give up your babies. And maybe Miss Wellwood’s high-handed but she carries this place on her back. Y’all shouldn’t have done what you did to that woman.”
Holly was vibrating like a scared dog. Zinnia stepped closer and put an arm around her. No one said anything for a minute.
“What did we do to Miss Wellwood?” Fern asked.
Hagar shook her head.
“You don’t want to know,” she said.
“Will she be okay?” Fern asked.
“You didn’t kill her, if that’s what you tried,” Hagar said. “Sister’s with her now. We’ll know more come sunup. But this nonsense stops. Y’all don’t even know what you’re doing, running around, playing witches, calling up a storm and leaving it half undone. Making people sick? Doing that to Miss Wellwood? How long did you think no one would notice? You looking for attention? Your parents didn’t give enough of it to you back home? What do you think people do to witches when they notice them? They get burned.”
She let her words hang in the kitchen. Fern felt some small satisfaction that at least Hagar was taking them seriously.
“I’m going to clean up this mess,” Hagar said, “because that’s my job. But from now on, your conjure days are through. Let me hear it.”
She stared at Fern, who realized this was yet another time when she needed to obey.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.
Hagar turned to Zinnia.
“Yes’m,” Zinnia said.
Then Holly. Her shoulders snapped up and she balled her fists.
“They were going to help!” Holly said. “They were going to help me get away!”
“No, ma’am!” Hagar barked, then softened her voice. “Anything they promised was a trick. Nothing good comes of witchery. And you’re not doing it again.”
They stared at each other for a moment, then the fight went out of Holly.
“Okay,” she said.
Hagar relaxed a little, and Fern saw the slump in her shoulders and the puffy pouches under her eyes.
“You still got that book?” Hagar asked.
Fern reached into her pillowcase and brought out How to Be a Groovy Witch. She held it out to Hagar, who didn’t take it, so Fern laid it on the kitchen table. Hagar looked at the cover, eyes moving left to right. Fern was conscious of how cheap the paperback looked.
Hagar stood up and pinched the book between her fingertips, letting it dangle. She walked to the back door, stopping at the drawer by the sink to take out a big box of kitchen matches. She held the screen door open with one shoulder and struck a match against its frame. The sulfur flared to life and she thumbed open the book and held the match to its pages.
“No!” Fern said, instinctively, but Hagar gave her a look that rooted her to the ground.
She’d never seen someone kill a book before, and it was awful. They smelled the char blowing through the room. Zinnia looked pleased. Fern felt sick.
Hagar fanned the book until it was a fireball at the end of her arm, then she brought the burning wad of pulp back inside, held it under the tap, and turned on the sink. The fire went out with a single angry hiss. A few pieces of char danced near the ceiling.
“Now for the rest of it,” Hagar said.
“What else is there?” Zinnia asked.
Fern expected Hagar to bite off Zinnia’s head, but instead she nodded at an empty Nehi bottle sitting beside the sink. Fern hadn’t noticed it before. Brown string was wrapped around its neck and knotted in a complicated pattern, then dribbled over with red wax.
“I had to bottle up that baby storm so it wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Hagar said. “Never leave anything half-done.”
Fern remembered the book.
Do not start anything you cannot finish.
“Are you a witch?” she asked on impulse.
Hagar looked so angry she immediately wished she hadn’t.
“I’ve lived around these woods all my life,” Hagar said. “I know what witchery smells like. I know what fools who play with it look like. I know how to take care of myself. Now, get three teaspoons and come with me. I’m not getting my hands any dirtier than they already are.”
She made Holly rub wet ashes from the book all over the Nehi bottle, then led them out the back door and around to the front porch. She ordered Zinnia and Fern to dig a hole with their teaspoons in front of the steps, making sure it was exactly one foot deep. When they were done she placed the Nehi bottle in the bottom and said, “Cover that up.”
They buried the bottle and stomped on the dirt eighteen times.
“You bottle up a storm in ash,” Hagar said. “Tie it in knots, then bury it where feet press it down every day. You’ll never have trouble from it again. After a while someone’ll find that bottle, open it up, and get a puff of breeze, and that’s the end of the trouble you’ve caused. Now go clean up. That’s the end of your witching.”
The girls started around the side of the Home, but Fern stopped and looked back. Hagar stood at the base of the steps, smoothing the dirt with one foot, tidying up their work. For some reason, that made Fern feel like a child.
Fern made it through breakfast and, without Miss Wellwood there to enforce attendance, she skipped a lecture from Diane about Ivy and dragged herself upstairs. She didn’t want to speak, and she couldn’t face Holly, so she went to the last place anyone would look for her: Rose’s attic room. She sat on Rose’s camp bed and stared out the window at the leaves in the trees.
That was where Zinnia and Holly found her, silent and sweaty, a few hours later. They watched her for a little while, until Zinnia couldn’t take it anymore.
“Are you going to say anything?” she asked.
“I can’t handle this,” Fern said, still staring out the window. “Hagar’s mad at us. Miss Parcae’s going to be mad at us. Miss Wellwood’s probably mad at us…”
“Unless she’s dead,” Zinnia pointed out.
Fern put her head in her hands. It was nine days until her baby came, she had failed to save Holly, Hagar had burned the book, and who knew what they’d done to Miss Wellwood.
“I’m sorry, Holly,” Fern said, and she couldn’t bear to look at her. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save you.”
Fern felt empty and far from home. She had ruined everything. Whatever she touched turned to failure.
“Don’t listen to her, Holly,” Zinnia said. “No one was going to take you anywhere. All they wanted was to trick you into hurting yourself.” Then she turned on Fern. “And you better stop griping. Hagar’s the best thing that happened, and I only wish she’d gotten to us earlier. Because she got y’all to stop fooling around with that spell book and pay attention to what matters, which is keeping Holly from going home.”
“But,” Fern said, “the witches were going to take Holly. That was the only way.”
“That woman wasn’t going to do a thing for Holly,” Zinnia said. “She only wanted something for herself. She comes for the last time tomorrow to take back everyone’s books and we’re going to march right out there and tell her we lost it. That’s the last time the bookmobile comes and after that we’ll just read old magazines and play Yahtzee until we go home.”
“She’s going to be mad Hagar burned her book,” Fern said.
Zinnia gave her a self-assured look.
“That book was a gift,” she said. “She gave it to us. It didn’t have a library card in it, or a library stamp like the other books. It doesn’t belong to the library. It was some kind of magic book, and not a very good one if Hagar could burn it up. If she’s giving it out to people, she’s doing it at her own risk, so it’s not our fault. And if she kicks up a fuss we’ll just do what the other girls do and pay a fine.”
Zinnia spoke with total confidence.
“And after she leaves, we’re going to work on getting Holly out of here for real,” Zinnia said. “We’re going to figure it out for ourselves, because we’re smarter than they think we are. Then we’re going to have our babies, like women do every day, and go home, and forget any of this ever happened, just like they told us. You both understand?”
She turned to Holly, daring her to disagree. Holly didn’t. Then she looked at Fern, waiting for her to argue. For the first time, Zinnia didn’t look like a kid to Fern, she looked like someone who was in control. For the first time, Fern thought there was a chance everything might be okay.
“Do we have to go to the bookmobile?” she asked. “Maybe we could get someone else to do it?”
“We have to tell her ourselves,” Zinnia said. “We have to look her in the eye and tell her the book is gone and we don’t want anything more to do with her.”
It felt good for someone to be telling her what to do, Fern decided. Besides, Zinnia was right. What could Miss Parcae do about it? People had been mad at her before. She could handle that. She’d tried to be a witch and failed. Now she’d take her punishment and go home.
“Okay,” she said to Zinnia. “You’re the boss.”