Wild is the Witch (68)

“Are you sure?” I ask, even though we both know it has to be done.

For a single excruciating moment, I think he might cry. Then he swallows, straightens his back, and nods.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” I say, wiping my tears and sitting up. “I’ll do it.”





Twenty-Six


The world around us seems to still. The wind stops blowing and the distant birds stop singing. There are no coyotes howling or critters scurrying across the dirt. It’s as if the entire forest has taken a collective breath, waiting for what comes next.

My skin burns as I pull more magic to me, gearing up for the finale of this awful week. My breath shakes when I inhale.

“Pike, I need you to listen to me,” I say, pausing what I’m doing, making sure he looks at me. “Once this happens, you will want to pull magic to you as if you’re breathing air for the very first time. It will be overwhelming and awe-inspiring, and you will want more, pulling and pulling until you burn yourself to death. You have to fight against that instinct, okay? You have to stop when I tell you to stop and trust that there will be more for you later. The first few minutes are the worst—if you can get through those, you’ll be okay.”

Pike watches me, his eyes wide and his hands shaking. I reach out and touch him, and to my surprise, he doesn’t pull away.

“I will get you through this. I promise you I will. But I’ll need your help. Do you understand?”

He swallows hard, his eyes wet and red. “I understand,” he says, the words rough, barely audible. He clears his throat and tries again. “I understand.”

I squeeze his hand. “Good.” I want more than anything to help him relax, to calm him down in some way. “Tell me something real,” I say, echoing his words from earlier.

“What?” he asks, looking at me.

“While I unbind the curse, tell me something real.”

He nods, and I think he understands. He takes a shaky breath, then closes his eyes and leans his head back against the tree. I turn to the owl and get to work.

“I remember the first time I learned about witches,” Pike says, almost as if he’s talking to himself. “I was probably six or seven, and I was playing with one of the neighbor’s kids. He told me there were people called witches who could use real magic like what we saw on TV.”

I keep working as Pike speaks, letting his voice calm my racing heart as I reach for the curse one last time.

“I told him I didn’t believe him, and I ran home to ask my parents about it. They said that it was true, and from then on, I was fascinated by them. By magic.” His voice is losing strength, getting quieter. Shaking. He’s scared and he’s injured. He needs to get to a hospital.

I catch the movement of his arm in the corner of my eye, going back and forth as he rubs the top of his leg. I silently pause my work on the curse and send more magic to him, letting the particles absorb the pain. He exhales, and I know he feels it, know he’s seeing stars.

“I had books about magic and played witches with my friends, running around zapping things as if we could alter the world around us.”

I smile to myself, thinking about young Pike pretending to be a witch. It reminds me of the way Amy and I used to practice our magic, the way we’d run into the Nebraska plains and work on simple tasks long after the sun went down—me on animals and her on me.

I reach for the curse again and start pulling it from the owl.

“When Leo was old enough to understand, I told him about magic, and I remember the way his face lit up. He thought it was so cool. We both did,” he says, taking a breath. His whole body is starting to shake now, with either cold or fear or both.

I send more magic his way, just enough to surround him in heat.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, and the tone of his voice is enough to crack my chest wide open. I keep working.

“Maybe that’s why my dad wanted to treat him with magic so badly.” Pike’s voice cracks at the end, as if it’s the first time he’s made the connection. “Because Leo loved it so much. Because what better way to heal his son than with the thing he thought was cooler than anything else in the world.”

Pike takes a long, shaky breath, and I realize he’s crying. “When Leo died, all the love I had for magic turned into the strongest hate imaginable. Bone deep. I couldn’t see past my rage, and for a long time, I thought I’d never recover. I thought it would eat me alive.”

The last of the curse releases its hold on the owl and floods into the air in front of me. My skin is burning, and it takes all of my strength to ignore it and press on.

“It’s still there. I try to cover it with sarcasm and jokes, but it’s still there,” he says.

I create a stream of magic from the curse to Pike’s chest, a direct line for it to travel through. My hands shake, and I have to stop myself from crying out in pain as my burns spread. It’s almost done.

“I thought it was cool once,” he whispers, so quiet I barely hear it. “I thought it was maybe the greatest thing in the world.”

The wind starts up, blowing my hair across my face. Pike is watching me now, the weight of his eyes heavy on me, and I finally raise my head, looking in his direction. The curse pulses in the air, and I can no longer hold it. It feels as if my whole body could go up in flames at any moment.