A dark and secret magic, p.1
A Dark and Secret Magic, page 1
A DARK AND SECRET MAGIC
a novel
WALLIS KINNEY
To my sister, Shirley. This book was always for you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A Dark and Secret Magic is a celebration of the autumnal season and an homage to all the traditions and media surrounding American Halloween. At its heart, it’s meant to be a cozy escape into a world that is a little more magical than our own. However, some darker elements are discussed within the story, so I have included content warnings for readers who would like to be aware of them. I will also keep an updated list of warnings on my website, should others be brought to my attention in the future.
Content warnings: death of a parent/grief, bloodletting, nonconsensual kissing by villain, body horror.
CHAPTER ONE
Somebody’s Coming
The liminal era begins a week before Halloween. It’s my favorite time of year, when half the trees are barren, and others burst with leaves the color of glowing fire coals. The garden and forest give their final offerings for harvest before the dormancy of winter creeps in. The air turns frigid, but beams of sunlight stay warm, and as the new year approaches, it brings all the traditions and celebrations that unlock the lovely longing of nostalgia. It’s during this week that my magic grows strongest.
I should have been in bed hours ago, but the crackling fire to my left and the dozing cat in my lap make it impossible to move from my antique reading chair. Minutes pass, the content silence broken only by hushed feline snores and the soft stretch of cotton thread pulling over my crochet hook. Tonight’s crafted creation is a little white ghost with a friendly smile and blushing cheeks. I’ve been in a bit of crochet frenzy since decorating my cottage for Halloween. The living room is adorned well enough for the holiday, with orange and black garlands draped on my mantle, cotton spiderwebs around my light fixtures, and a cast-iron cauldron hanging in my fireplace. But the kitchen still needs some festive touches.
I sew a second tiny black felt eye onto the ghost’s face and smooth the edges with the tips of my fingers.
“Too cute,” I say, admiring the pear-sized figurine in my hand.
A soft little mew escapes from Merlin. He looks up from my lap with droopy, displeased eyes.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
He shakes out his ears, his collar chiming. With a lazy stretch, he rises and jumps off my lap, resettling onto the dark green loveseat on the other side of the living room.
“You’ve got a lot of attitude for a cat that’s scared of mice,” I say to the black pile of fluffy fur.
He gives me another look of consternation before laying his head down and going back to sleep.
Rolling my eyes at his dramatics, I carry the newly crafted ghost to the kitchen window. It looks right at home on the sill, next to my other crocheted decorations: a pumpkin with curling green vines, an oversized candy corn, and a small black cat modeled after Merlin. With this figurine tableau and the homemade wreaths of dried maple leaves I’ve placed in the windows, the kitchen decor is finally coming together.
The clock on my mantle whirs and clangs, three soft tolls that chastise me for still being awake. As the echoes of the last chime fade away, the gnarled hickory broom propped against the wall of my kitchen tips forward, crashing against the wooden floorboards.
Merlin lets out a startled cry, bolting off the couch and out of the living room.
A knot forms in my stomach. My mother’s old adage about fallen brooms comes to mind.
“Somebody’s coming.”
Shaking off the nagging phrase, I place the broom back in its proper corner and survey the front of my cottage. Dark wood walls, pristine kitchen, messy desk, herbs that need organizing. All is as it should be. Outside the kitchen window, the night is silent. Up the hill from the cottage, Goodwin Manor looms against the night sky, glittering stars reflecting in its large windows. I moved out of my family’s ancestral home a decade ago, out from under my mother’s loving and ever watchful eye. These days, the emptiness of the manor casts a surreal shadow on my childhood. Every day that passes, those younger years slip further away, never to return. And yet, the building that witnessed all those moments still stands, my memories echoing within its walls.
Across from the hill, surrounding my cottage, is Ipswich Forest. The trees are frozen against the sky, not a single wisp of wind disturbing them. As if they are waiting for something.
Witches all have our ways of fortune telling. Miranda, my older sister, says the sea glass she collects from distant shores whispers to her. My younger sister, Celeste, divines from tarot cards and the movements of planets. As a hedge witch, premonitions come to me shrouded in the mists of dreams. But when I’m awake, I watch the forest. And tonight, with the trees in their silent vigil, the woods unnerve me. A few miles behind the tree line is a graveyard, the final resting place of every Goodwin mother for the past four hundred years. Including mine.
I have not been to it since she was buried in June.
Crash.
I jump, a hand flying to my heart. The broom has fallen over again, its wooden handle pointing directly at my front door.
“What are you trying to tell me, you pesky thing?” I ask, picking it up and placing it on the kitchen table. Perhaps the bristles have gone wonky? I should trim them tomorrow when I have a free moment. It’s much too late to start another task now. With a final cursory glance out my window, I look toward the forest, where a dense fog is rolling in. Something just behind the tree line disturbs the creeping cloud’s slow expansion.
My heart gives a shuddering beat against my chest. An old woman in a long white sleeping gown similar to my own walks through the swirling mist. Silently, I move forward, pressing my nose against the window. With every exhale my breath fogs the glass. With every inhale, it clears. And the woman draws closer.
Margaret Halliwell.
An elder of my coven and a sea witch like Miranda.
With a breathless curse, I grab a woolen coat off the stand and throw it over my nightgown before ripping open my front door and running barefoot into the cold.
“Mags? Are you okay?” I call out. She stops walking and stares at me, her gray hair floating in the windless fog.
“Hecate,” she says. Her voice flat and strange.
“I’m here,” I say breathlessly, reaching her. I shrug off my coat and hold it out for her, but she makes no move to take it. “What’s wrong, Mags? How did you get here? Are you unwell?”
As a hedge witch, it’s one of my duties to care for the sick members of the Atlantic Key, the coven I was born into. With just over one hundred and thirty witches, their needs keep me busy. At almost eighty, Margaret’s health has been failing for a while now. Every two months for the past year, I’ve made her a tin of hawthorn balm to help combat her chronic fatigue. I sent the newest dose just a few days ago.
“He calls for me, Hecate. I have to go,” she whispers.
My heart gives a pang.
“It’s okay, Mags. We’ll get you home,” I say gently. Her husband passed away a few years ago, and Margaret is at an age where past and present are starting to merge in her memory.
She holds one of her wrinkled hands out to me. I hesitate. I so rarely touch people, finding more discomfort than solace in that level of closeness. Even my patients are used to my light-handed work. But it would be cruel of me to deny her this small sympathy. I smile and place my hand in hers.
The pain is immediate. A tugging vacuum-like sensation twists my stomach. Every hair on my arms stands on end, my skin begins to prickle and sting, and my ears swell with pressure. I try to pull my hand away, but Margaret’s grip has turned viselike, her fingers clutching into the skin of my wrist. The intention of her magic coils around me, squeezing like a constrictor snake and burning cold.
“Mags!” I choke with the effort of speaking. “What are you doing?”
“You are not what you should be, little girl.” Her voice is not her own. It comes out in a deep, rasping hiss. “That is deeply disappointing.”
“Release me!” I shout, tugging violently to escape her grapple. Panic rises in my chest. Even at this time of year, even at my strongest, I don’t possess the kind of magic to fight an elder of my coven.
Margaret gasps and the pressure around me eases slightly as her eyes clear.
“I have no more time,” she whispers, her voice returning to normal. “The veil weakens as Samhain approaches. The King Below tests you. Find your mother’s book, and you’ll know why she named you a hedge witch.”
The fog closes in around us, and shadows ripple through the vapor. The pain is a roaring train in my ears now. The sting erupts into a blazing fire. I scream and wrench my wrist from her. A ripping sensation flashes across my belly, and I fling backward, tumbling to the ground.
CHAPTER TWO
Six Days Until Halloween
Drizzling rain patters on the window. The Massachusetts sky is still asleep, and the morning fog is a long while from burning off. Merlin purrs on the pillow next to my head, his little paws stretched out onto my arm. I stare up at the wooden planks of my bedroom ceiling, with no memory of having fallen asleep. Absentmindedly, I rub my wrist. No stinging, no fingernail marks on the skin.
“ ‘The King Below tests you …’ ” I mutter, the epithet unfamiliar to me.
I’m no stranger to vivid, peculiar dreams. But last night’s was particularly cryptic.
“Find your mother’s book and you’ll know why she named you a hedge witc
In the Atlantic Key, tradition dictates a girl wait until her thirteenth birthday to choose her magic. But my mother chose my path the day I was born. As the sun set that Halloween, she swaddled me in a forest-green blanket, named me Hecate Goodwin, and proudly announced to the women gathered around her that I would be a hedge witch. An ancient practice, I would be the first in any coven in almost two centuries. This sent rattled whispers scattering among the women of the Atlantic Key.
Why had Sybil Goodwin done it?
What could a simple kitchen witch want with a hedge witch for a daughter?
How could a girl with no choice ever truly belong to her craft?
That particular whisper haunted me throughout childhood, an ever-present specter of doubt hanging over me as I trained. And with no living hedge witch to mentor me, I had to rely on the scattered knowledge of my mother and other coven members. But now, at almost thirty-one years old, I have grown used to hedge craft, isolating as it may be. How disappointing for my subconscious to bring up old wounds. Hadn’t I gotten over my stolen choice long ago?
“Strange dreams as Samhain nears. Not the best omen for the New Year,” I whisper, letting my wrist fall back to the bed. Merlin nuzzles his face against my neck, his whiskers tickling my skin. The sound of rain against the window strengthens. Perfect weather.
I want to stay in my bed, take Merlin into my arms, and grab the book on the side table. It’s a collection of Arthurian romances thick enough to lose myself in. But today is a workday. I have to tell myself this three more times before finally rising from bed.
In the pantry at the back of the cottage there is a large glass cabinet that holds my latest concoctions for the Raven & Crone, the apothecary I co-own in Ipswich. Autumnal scented-potpourri sachets that smell of cinnamon and maple bourbon, several new salves, and thirty bottles of liniment oils that are particularly useful for soothing spider bites, disinfecting wounds, and relieving muscle pain. Each item is tagged with a price and a Raven & Crone sticker.
I load all the supplies into a basket, quickly change into work clothes, and feed a demanding Merlin. The sight of my broom on the kitchen table and a completed ghost figurine on the windowsill stops me in my tracks.
So those moments had been real? Then when had I gone to bed and dreamed of Margaret? Confusion gnaws at me as I leave the cottage.
The air is cool, but not biting. Still, to protect my ears from the chill, I tuck the hood of my olive-green rain jacket over my head as I ride my bike into town.
No cars drive past on this sleepy morning so I have the road to myself. The trees above me are a brilliant wash of autumn fire. A low-lying fog blankets the canopy tops, blotting out pockets of the chromatic foliage. My bike flies over asphalt, the tails of my rain jacket whipping around me, snapping in the wind. I can almost trick my mind into thinking I’m on a broomstick, flying hundreds of feet in the air through thick moonlit clouds. Tickled by the thought, I let out a delighted laugh.
By the time I reach Main Street in Ipswich, the fog has burned off, and traffic overtakes the road, forcing me to dismount and head the rest of the way on the sidewalk. Workers decorate streetlamps with orange and black streamers and place festive lanterns on thin wires that hang over the road. Hay bales are gathered in front of restaurants, and store owners organize pumpkins in their window displays. Ipswich never disappoints once Halloween is on the horizon.
I lock my bike on a tree near the road, unhook the basket, and head into the Raven & Crone. As the apothecary door swings open and the chiming bell announces my entrance, the air fills with the scent of a thousand herbs and candles. Rebecca Bennet, the store manager, is on a ladder next to the front door, hanging decorations in the window. I stop and watch with a frown as she pastes a jolly Santa to the glass. There is also a small Christmas tree with delicate ornaments hanging from its branches tucked into the corner, along with a little pile of wrapped presents.
“Are we going to have this debate again, Rebecca?” I ask, amused.
Rebecca, in her crisp black T-shirt and dark wash jeans, looks down at me from the top of the ladder.
“It’s to appease the churchgoing folk, Kate,” she says with a grin. “We get to be the spooky shop all year because we go so hard for Christmas.”
Rebecca is in her late forties, about fifteen years younger than my mom. But our families have always been close. Her mother, Winifred Bennet, and mine are … were best friends. Rebecca, a garden witch, mentored me in herbalism once my mother tapped her own knowledge dry. And when I turned twenty-eight, Rebecca and I opened the Raven & Crone together. With her ability to grow the healthiest plants and my recipes that put those plants to medicinal use, our little apothecary has thrived these past three years.
“I have new potpourri today and liniment, thirty bottles,” I say, holding up my bike basket, letting go of the decoration debate. No need to hash it out again this year.
“Excellent,” Rebecca says, emphasizing the first syllable. She climbs down the ladder and takes the box of supplies from me. “These will be gone by the end of the week.”
“I hope so,” I say, laughing. “That would pay for my groceries through Christmas. Merlin has recently become accustomed to an expensive wet food that’s threatening to put me out of house and home.”
Rebecca snorts. “Or instead of buying something for your cat, you could get yourself a nice birthday gift. This Saturday is the big one, after all.” She eyes me expectantly and I have to actively work to suppress my grimace.
The women of the Atlantic Key get our magic from ancestral bloodlines. But magic, if unharnessed, will eventually dissipate. That’s why members of our coven focus on one area of magic, committing to it at thirteen years of age. The more we practice, the stronger we become. For the past few generations, however, our collective powers have weakened. When my grandmother was a girl, to prevent this loss the elders began enforcing a Containment. Upon a witch’s thirty-first birthday, she undergoes a ritual that removes her ability to perform any magic beyond that which she has practiced extensively. It allows her to devote all her intention to her chosen craft and prevents the Atlantic Key’s power from dwindling over time.
“You are ready for your birthday, aren’t you?” Rebecca asks after I’m silent for too long.
“Of course,” I say. “I just … it’s my first birthday after losing Mom. It will be weird.”
She gives me a sympathetic nod and a sad smile.
That excuse is certainly partially true. But I can’t admit to Rebecca that my bigger reason for hesitancy is that it will be Rebecca’s own mother, Winifred Bennet, performing my Containment. Winifred, the leader of the Atlantic Key, is a meta-magic witch, able to manipulate the very fabric of magic itself. Of all the sanctioned crafts allowed by our coven, meta-magic is by far the most dangerous, especially for the witch who practices it. In recent years, the strain has started to show in Winifred. She’s become erratic and unpredictable, and I would rather have a peaceful, quiet Halloween.
Rebecca’s attention moves off me as an elderly couple walk into the Raven & Crone. She greets them brightly, and I slip away toward the back of the store. I pass soaps, candles, salves, and rock-sugar treats as well as more spiritual items. Incense burners, crystals, and fertility aids all line the back wall.
“Ginny,” Rebecca calls over to her teenaged daughter, who is sitting at one of the tables in the back. “Scoot your stuff over and give Aunt Kate room.”
Ginny, who has the same abundant, curly black hair that all Bennet witches share, glances up from the book she’s reading.
“Hi, Kate,” she says, gathering her schoolbag, various books, and dozens of writing supplies off the tabletop. “What did you think of Malory’s prose?” she asks as I sit down.
“I haven’t jumped into it yet,” I answer honestly as I set my empty bike basket and leather satchel down on the table. Her teenage disapproval is cutting. She’d loaned Le Morte d’Arthur to me four days ago. Ginny, who has been a practicing book witch for two years and merely needs to hold a book in her hands to know its contents, can never understand why it takes anyone more than an afternoon to finish a novel. It seems even I will receive no leniency from her, even though the volume of Arthurian legends she gave me is over eight hundred pages long.
