The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,159

like grave-dirt and vengeance, like death long overdue. Pan’s claws flex around her shoulder, pricking her flesh.

You are not invincible, Gideon Hill.

Bella pushes her spectacles up her nose. “What about the three of you? If you bound yourselves to Avalon, and Avalon was burned, why haven’t your souls been sundered?”

The Crone’s eyes don’t twinkle—twinkling eyes are for soft, grandmotherly women who bake gingerbread and crochet scarves—but they glint. “Did you think I bound my everlasting soul to books? To paper and ink?” The glint sharpens. “We bound ourselves to the words themselves, Belladonna. We won’t fade until children forget their rhymes and mothers lose their lullabies, until the last witch forgets the last word.”

“Oh.” Bella’s face lights with a fervent, librarianish glow. “So the words survived. They’re still out there somewhere. They could be collected again, preserved.”

“Or written anew. Every spell that exists was once spoken for the first time, by a witch who needed it.”

Bella actually claps her hands together. “Then the library could be . . . oh, but it would take so much work.”

The Crone huffs. “It always does.”

“Always?”

“Avalon wasn’t the first library. Alexandria, Antioch, Avicenna . . . They keep burning us. We keep rising again.”

Bella opens her mouth again, but Agnes stands, dusting the ashes of the library from her skirts. “Thank you all.” She bows her head to the Maiden, the Crone, especially the Mother. “But I have to go now.”

Agnes looks down at her sisters. It occurs to her that they might stay in this place, if they liked, hidden safe on the other side of somewhere. Eve isn’t their daughter, after all.

But Bella and Juniper are already standing, their shoulders warm on either side of hers. Juniper looks a little wistfully at the tower, at the deepening night of nowhere around them, free of the stink and noise of New Salem. Agnes wonders if she’s thinking of her nights back in Crow County, moon-bright and alive, of the time when she had a place to call home.

Juniper scuffs her shoe in the ash. “Maybe we’ll talk again someday. Once Hill gets what’s coming to him.”

The Maiden looks up at Juniper in a manner that causes Agnes to recall that she has lived and listened to the world for centuries. She is still the wild Maiden of the woods, but there’s a certain wisdom in her eyes, too. “He wasn’t always . . . what he is now,” she says softly.

“A monster,” Juniper supplies. “And a real bastard.”

The Maiden flinches but doesn’t disagree. “He didn’t use to be. I am not so foolish as to think he could be redeemed, but I wish . . .” She chews at her lip with those sharp teeth. “I wish he might die with his true name in his ears. Tell him, before the end?”

Her antlers brush the tangled black of Juniper’s hair as she whispers into her ear. Juniper frowns, then nods, solemn as a Saint.

They are nearly to the door, their palms reaching for the charred remains of the Sign of the Three, when Juniper turns back. “Could you really fly? On broomsticks, like the stories said?”

The Three smile at her in perfect unison, and in their eyes Agnes sees the silver shine of starlight, the damp silk of clouds, the memory of a thousand windswept nights spent soaring above the slow turning of the world.

The stars twist away above them, and then Bella and her sisters are crouched together on the floor of an unfamiliar room. Their palms are pressed to a ragged circle carved into the floorboards, and the ceilings vault high above them. There are rows of wooden benches alongside them, slicked smooth from years of use. It’s been a long time since Bella set foot in a church, but she remembers the quiet of the air, the warm smell of candles and wine.

A voice mutters a soft rhyme and a hot, golden light fills the room. Bella blinks against the sting of tears and follows the light back to its source: Miss Cleopatra Quinn, sitting cross-legged against the pulpit with her wand glowing like the orange eye of a cat.

“Took your time, didn’t you, ladies,” she says tartly. But Bella hears the warm relief behind the words.

Bella doesn’t bother to look anywhere else, or even to stand. She crawls down the aisle and wraps both arms around Cleo’s legs. She lays her cheek against her knees.

“Get a hold of yourself, woman.” Cleo’s voice is rough but her fingers on Bella’s