Wild is the Witch (73)
“I couldn’t save the owl,” I say, choking on the words.
“It’s okay,” she says, smoothing down my hair and kissing me on my forehead. “It’s okay. Rest now. You can tell me all about it later.”
The ambulance pulls away from the trail, its red-and-orange lights streaking through the dark night. I think of MacGuffin, buried in the woods, resting peacefully beneath the trees, and say a silent goodbye that I hope he can feel.
Maybe it’s the pain or lack of sleep, but I swear a single stream of magic flows down the mountain and into the ambulance as we drive away, one final connection between the owl and me.
Never truly lost.
Twenty-Eight
Cassandra comes to visit on my third day in the hospital. I’ve tried to prepare myself for whatever comes next, for whatever punishment the council sees fit, but I can’t help the way my body trembles when she enters the room. I hope she doesn’t notice.
Mom sits on the couch by the window, chewing on the inside of her mouth. I’ve spent the past three days filling her in on everything that happened, from the curse to the injured bear to turning Pike into a mage. She knows the consequences, understands that the council would be well justified in putting me on trial and removing my sense, and her legs bounce up and down from where she sits. She smooths her palms down the tops of her thighs, trying to steady herself, and it’s the way she looks right now, all anguish and fear, that I’ve been trying to avoid.
I meet her eyes and mouth that I love her.
“It’s good to see you, Isobel,” Cassandra says. They used to be close, and even though the gentleness I heard in the woods is gone from Cassandra’s tone, she looks at my mom with an affection that only comes from years of friendship.
“You too, Cass,” Mom says. I’m surprised she’d use a nickname in this situation, but that’s Mom. I know that, and Cassandra does, too.
The back of my hospital bed is tilted up, so I’m able to be eye level with Cassandra when she pulls a chair over and sits down next to me. She looks so much like Amy, long dark hair and big brown eyes, and were it not for her wire-rimmed glasses and strands of gray, I might think it was Amy sitting beside me.
Cassandra opens her folio and rests her hand on the paper, reminding me that she is not Amy and this is not a social call.
“How are you feeling?” she asks me.
“Better,” I say. “Thank you for everything you did on the mountain.”
“I wish I would have gotten there sooner.”
I wonder if it would have made a difference, if she would have been able to help. The questions, the what-ifs and if-onlys pile up in my mind, higher and higher, and I wonder if she can see them all.
Cassandra tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and watches me with careful eyes, as if she’s trying to navigate how to question me as a council member and not an old family friend. I will never understand how she did it with her sister, the strength and selflessness it took to not let her case go to another member, even knowing with almost certainty what the outcome would be.
“I just have a few questions for you,” she says, picking up her pen. “The work we do with amplifiers isn’t only monitoring their behaviors while they’re alive—we also keep records of how they die. It’s procedural, and I’ll be filing the owl’s death report this week. But since you were there, I’d like to hear from you how it happened.”
My palms are sweating, and I wipe them on my blanket, looking at Mom. I expected Cassandra to open with Pike, with the knowledge of what I did, and I can’t figure out if it’s because she doesn’t know or because she’s waiting to see if I’ll confess the information freely.
Mom nods at me, and I take a deep breath. I don’t want to live my life terrified of a secret getting out anymore. I’ve done that for the past two years, and it’s exhausting. But more than that, I don’t want to lie in order to protect myself from what I did to Pike. He didn’t have any protection from me; I shouldn’t get any, either.
“The owl died in my lap,” I say. “I was holding him, and it was peaceful. He had a nicked artery from a bear attack, with lots of internal bleeding. I couldn’t stop it all, and that’s what killed him. After he died, I buried him in the woods.” I’m embarrassed when my voice breaks, and I clear my throat, trying to compose myself.
Cassandra takes notes as I speak.
“That’s the simple version,” I say. “There is a much more complicated one.”
Her pen stills and she looks up at me. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“The owl was cursed,” I say, “with a curse that I wrote, that would turn Pike into a mage. Pike had said some things at work that bothered me, and I never meant for it to get out. It was a tradition my grandmother taught me—”
“Giving it to the earth. I remember,” she says, and I nod. Of course she does. She knew my grandmother, too. Her tone gives nothing away, and I keep going.
“The owl dove down from the trees right when I tried to bind the curse to the herbs. I never meant for it to get out, and I’ve spent this whole week trying to undo it. But after the owl was attacked, I ran out of time. I told Pike what I had done, and he told me to bind the curse to him before the owl died, so that it wouldn’t be amplified throughout the region. And that’s what I did.”