The Near Witch

by Victoria Schwab

Ghosts ask fewer questions.

I asked him once if he wished he had a son, and he said, “Why? I’ve got a daughter just as strong.”

Grown men can certainly act like little boys, but can they think like them?

“Careful what you ask the wind,” he cautions.

I wish Cole would give me an apple. And then he looks at me, and there’s that same sad, almost-smile, like he’s decided to pass me one, but he knows I can’t juggle either. Like there’s no reason for both of us to bruise things any more than needed.

“All Near knows.” “All Near forgets.” “Or tries.” All Near tries to forget? Before I can make sense of it, the sisters’ voices begin to overlap, and the sound is haunting. “But we remember.”

Again the sisters speak in their intertwining way. “She climbed up and out onto the moor,” says Dreska. “Now her skin really is made of moor grass,” adds Magda. “Now her blood is made of moor rain.” “Now her voice is made of moor wind.” “Now the Near Witch is made of moor.” “And she is furious.”

Magda is still nodding, as steady as a water drip.

“Dead things are bound to their beds until dark,” says Magda.

Tyler might be by the door, but the wind uses the window, and so do I.

and with a deep breath and a quick touch of my father’s knife, I force my feet to carry me through, over the threshold and into the witch’s woods.

A light-footed girl with small dancing steps, almost all ball and toes, no heel, curls to the left. Another pair wanders back and forth in even waves, as if walking an invisible winding line. And a fourth walks deliberately, proud, the way a small boy does when he is trying to pretend he is a man.

And then, a skull. He passes it to me, and I gasp as I take it, the half-crushed face blossoming with moss and weedy flowers. It’s like a horrible flowerpot, roots escaping out the eye.

The blade soars through the air, pinning the crow to the tree beyond its perch. It gives an agonizing caw, and then, to my shock, crumbles into a pile of black feathers and sticks and stones.

I cannot entrust my sister to the ground so soon. I cannot give her back to the moor the way we did my father. I cannot let Cole’s world burn a second time.

dirt and weeds climb up over the skull, two stray stones clambering into the gaping holes where the roots wait like sinews.

My mother told her she wandered off to join her friends and fell asleep in the forest. I told her the Near Witch stole her away in the dead of night, and her brave sister came to save her.

“Lexi,” he says. He kisses my jaw. “I want to be here.” He kisses my throat. “Because you are here.” I can feel him smile against my skin.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says, with a soft laugh. “Like what?” “Like I’m not real, or not really here. Like I’m going to blow away.” “Are you?” I ask. He frowns, sitting up and turning so that he can look at me. “I hope not. This is the only place I want to be.”

My own voice slips in as the world falls away. Sometimes the wind whispers names, perfectly clear, the way you might, on the verge of sleep, imagine you hear your own. And you never know if that sound beneath your door is only the howling of the wind, or the Near Witch, in her small stone house or in her garden, singing the hills to sleep.