the Game ended in our favor. I thought of the Dust Soldiers, of the sacrifice.
“Is there any way I can help?” I asked. “Any at all? After all, I am a… a…”
“A witch?” Mother Morevna said.
Witch. The word sent a thread of lightning up my spine. Images of blood sacrifices, of cauldrons at midnight, of flying broomsticks sprang unbidden into my mind. Images of women with power.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
She looked at me for a moment, considering me. Then she sighed and gestured for me to sit down. Clumsily, I plopped down on the stool. Mother Morevna flicked her wrist, and with a gust of wind, curtains fell over all the stained-glass windows, leaving only the thin light of a few oil lamps to brighten the room.
“All right,” she said. “The first thing you must understand is the power.”
I nodded vigorously as though to say, Yes, yes, tell me everything.
“The power of the earth flows through everything, everyone. We are all connected to these powers in some way or another, and these powers eventually lead us to our specialties. I, myself, have a skill for laying trapdoor spells that can be quite complicated, indeed. All the spells outside my specialty, my coven sisters tattooed on my hands so I would never lose them, as was their way.”
“Will I have to have tattoos?” I asked, looking at the many intricate lines and symbols that stretched across her wrinkled claws.
“No,” she said. “It is still far too early for that. Any education, even witchcraft, must have a strong foundation in order to stand the test of time. You can worry about specialties later.” She folded her hands. “For now, I suppose you can begin with runes. I have a workbook on Elder Futhark that you can begin tonight.”
“Elder… what?” I asked, my excitement deflating a little bit.
“Futhark. Viking runes. One of English’s roots is in Futhark, so when you get down to writing your own basic spells, that’s likely what you’ll use.”
She went to the bookcase and pulled two books off the middle shelf, one a thin paperback and the other a book about the size of a King James Bible and probably older than Mother Morevna herself.
“Here,” she said. “A runic workbook and A History of Witches. That should be enough. Now, that’s it for today, I’m afraid. I must be about my duties.”
What? Already? My heart sank. I hesitated, feeling the weight of my expectations drag my shoulders down.
“Have they been caught?” I asked. “The thieves, I mean.”
“Not yet,” Mother Morevna said, putting a pair of bifocal spectacles on the end of her nose. “Though we are looking into the matter, and we should be able to find them soon.” She looked down at her stack of papers. “Now, please, my dear. I have quite a lot of work to do if anything is going to get done in that regard. I’ll see you in a few days.”
I wanted to ask if there was anything I could learn that might help catch the thieves, might help me feel useful. But Mother Morevna was already back into her stack of paperwork and didn’t even look up.
“… Yes, ma’am.” I had barely said the words before the door closed itself behind me.
Four hours later, I was halfway through chapter two of A History of Witches. I’d read about water witches who divined with forked sticks in the Appalachian Mountains. I read about witches in Egypt and the Caribbean and Africa. I read about witches reading cards and smoke and tea leaves. I read about witches getting burned at the stake in Germany and England and hanged in Massachusetts, and somehow the author of A History of Witches had managed to write about all of these things in the driest, most boring way I could think of.
“Uggghhh,” I said, rubbing my temples. “That’s all I can do for today.”
I put a scrap of paper into the book to mark my place and closed it. I felt bleary-eyed and lazy, and even after all that reading, I still didn’t know how witchcraft had anything to do with me in particular.
I went to the bookcase to find a place wide enough for A History of Witches. There were seventy-three copies of the Cokesbury Baptist Hymnal, from back in the days when we had actually used them. I shoved the Cokesburys to the side and wedged A History of Witches in where I could.
But it wouldn’t fit! Something was back there, a loose board or something.