The Near Witch

by Victoria Schwab

everything has a language, that if you knew the language, you could make the world talk.

“Fear is a strange thing,” he used to say. “It has the power to make people close their eyes, turn away. Nothing good grows out of fear.”

Stories are always born from something.”

Nothing good grows out of fear,

It is a strange thing, the way the world goes quiet when we hear our own name, as though the walls grow thin to make way.

Magda looks at me as if I’ve gone mad. Or I’ve grown up. It’s kind of the same thing.

I start to say I’m sorry again—such a useless phrase, but I have to say something—

Funny how when we start to tell a secret, we can’t stop. Something falls open in us, and the sheer momentum of letting go pushes us on.