Wild is the Witch (13)

I drop to the ground and scramble toward the wormwood and safflower, searching them for any sign of magic, any sign of the curse I created.

But there is none.

I slowly stand and turn toward the expanse of trees. The fog has lifted enough for me to see the owl with perfect clarity. I close my eyes and concentrate, finding a connection to the bird right away. And there, sitting heavy in his chest, is the curse.

I have to undo this. Magic is a living, breathing thing, which means it will stay with the owl as long as he’s alive. But if he dies, the curse will be released into the wild, where it will seek out and find Pike Alder.

My heart slams into my ribs, too fast, and an awful chill rolls down my spine. I break out in a cold sweat and tell myself to breathe.

All I have to do is get the owl and remove the curse from him. Then I can bind it to the herbs like I originally intended, burning it all together until it vanishes into smoke and scatters on the wind.

The owl continues to watch me from his perch in an old evergreen, and I slowly walk toward him, keeping my eyes on his the whole time.

He cocks his head to one side and spreads his wings.

Please, I beg. Don’t.

Then he flies away.





Five


I search everywhere. I run to the refuge and look in all the areas the owl likes, the old-growth trees surrounding the property and the hollows in the massive firs, but I don’t see him. I walk to the aviary, a foolish hope that maybe he’s finally flown back to the cage he escaped from over a week ago. The woodrat we left out for him is still there, untouched, and his cage remains empty.

He prefers to be in the trees and the hollows, and I don’t blame him. We were treating him for a wing fracture when he escaped, and it’s the first time he has been able to fly in weeks. But he’s still healing, and it’s too soon for him to be out on his own.

Mom hasn’t been worried about his escape because he’s been keeping to the property, and she says he’ll return to the aviary when he’s ready. But I can’t risk him leaving the refuge.

When my initial search doesn’t yield anything, I run back to the cottage where all our books of magic are kept. I push through the door and breathe in the musky air, the jars of dried herbs rattling on the old wooden table.

The books are on shelves in the very back of the room, covered in a layer of dust. We rarely use them—magic is all about intuition and reacting to what’s already present. Even the spells I craft, they aren’t prescriptive; they’re written from feeling and instinct.

I pull the large leather Lunars book from the top shelf, a rain of dust floating down with it. I sit on the cement floor and carefully open the front cover. The pages are yellowed and worn, and I run my fingers over the long-dried ink. We may not use the books as much as our ancestors did, but seeing their writing, reading about how they used their own magic, grounds me.

I flip through the book until I find the section on birds of prey, and my heart races when the northern spotted owl is the first bird written about. Goose bumps rise along my skin as a horrible realization slides down my spine and claws at my chest. I force myself to take steady, even breaths, but the weight of it is too much.

My eyes scour the words on the page, searching for anything to contradict what I know in my gut to be true. But instead, the word stands out like the full moon on a cloudless night.

Amplifier.

The northern spotted owl is sacred to witches. And it’s sacred because it’s a powerful amplifier of magic.

I can’t believe it took me this long to put the pieces together, but now that I have, I’d give anything to undo it. As soon as I see the word, a memory of a childhood story flashes in my mind, and nausea roils my stomach.

My mother’s voice was calm as she told me the story of a witch who lived hundreds of years ago, who used one of the sacred owls to bring death upon the home of the man who killed her husband. But she didn’t understand how powerful the owl was, and the curse destroyed not only her village but all the villages surrounding hers. It stretched on for miles and miles, destroying everything in its path, and it took over one hundred years for any signs of life to return to the desolate land.

The story says that the ghost of the owl still haunts the location of the old house, circling high above, bound to the land it was originally cursed to.

I keep reading, and, sure enough, the book recounts the same tale.

I press my back against the wall and pull my knees to my chest, forcing my head between my legs. The book slips off my lap as I try to outrun the panic that’s threatening my body, try to remember the breathing techniques I learned, but I can’t think.

If the owl is an amplifier and the curse is unleashed, Pike isn’t the only one who will be affected by it. The story goes that the curse far outreached the intended target—if this curse is unleashed, anyone in the general area could be impacted. Would they all be at risk of turning to mages? Visions of Alex by the lake run rampant in my mind, the memory of putrid smoke so strong I can smell it now. I have no idea what would happen, no idea how the curse I wrote would echo throughout the region, but it would be bad.

Unthinkably bad.

Tears burn my eyes and slip down my cheeks, and it aches each time I swallow, as if I’m forcing a rock down my throat. We don’t have the kind of resources we’d need to aid an entire region impacted by an amplified curse; that kind of disaster hasn’t happened in years, maybe not since the witch my mom told me about. And that was a curse on the land, not on people.