Ivy, Angelica, Bay by C. L. Polk

Author:C. L. Polk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

* * *

Jael has the witching in her blood. She doesn’t know the correspondences or the lore or the ways of shaping the witching to her will, but she’s quick. She’s instinctive. And she minds me better than I did Mama at her age.

Together we work for the sum of the morning. Everything I show her is a softly glowing treasure. It lights up her face. She touches all the herb jars, and repeats what I tell her about their contents, pressing them in the pages of her memory. She asks me about everything—so many questions, as if my answers are like the sugar she can’t resist eating.

“If we’re going to bless all the spellposts and charge every five-corner mark, what else can we do?”

She stirs the jar of blessed water I set out on the roof to charge under the sun and the moon, sinking a silver dipper into it and pouring the liquid into the mouth of a funnel. The blessed water trickles into a glass bottle. She doesn’t spill a drop.

“Whatever we can think of. Magic is imagination shaped into the form that will make the intention manifest.”

She pours blessed water back into the jar, screws a spray-nozzle cap onto the bottle, and sets it next to the others. “Can we make everyone in the neighborhood lucky?”

“Luck is best in small doses, mouse. A rescue, not a remedy. But you can choose three people to give a charm today.”

That satisfies her. “And I can spray the spellposts.”

“You may.”

“May,” she corrects herself, and then a new idea springs to her face. She’s bright with elation, with discovery. “Can we set a spell on the bees, and then when they fly around, they can spread it?”

I blink. “If the bees consent, yes. That’s an excellent idea, little mouse.”

She looks like she might burst. How must it feel to find your gift, the thing you love that loves you back, and so you give your life to it without thinking? Jael’s becoming a witch right before my eyes.

She reaches for another bottle and sets the funnel in it. “Can we set eyes on outsiders, so they always feel like someone’s watching them and knows exactly what they do?”

I’m tempted by that last one.

Being a witch isn’t all sunlight and good wishes. We all have shadows cast by that light. We can call on that darkness like any other tool. But it’s possible to go too far, and something about the ethics of it is just fuzzy enough that I’m not sure I should.

But if I did that …

I realize that my gaze is trained on the potted bay tree right by the window. I look away.

“It’s possible,” I say. “But that could really frighten someone who doesn’t deserve it, along with those who might.”

“Oh, not for long.” She stirs the blessed water again, suspending the herbs in a spiral. “We couldn’t leave it up forever. We can’t leave out the people who need this place. But … what if they need it right now? Like I needed it?”

She understands.

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