The Near Witch

by Victoria Schwab

The morning is a stealthy hunter, my father used to say. It sneaks up quiet and quick on the night and overtakes it.

Nothing good grows out of fear, my father said. It’s a poisonous thing.

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.

“Cole, you’re not a rock,” I say. “You’re not a tree, or a bunch of grass, or a cloud. And you’re not just something to cast aside, or burn down, or walk over. Please tell me you understand that.”

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.

“You really are like him, your father.” “I can’t tell whether you think that’s good or bad.” “What does it matter? It’s simply true.”

know my father’s story. I know it as well as the ones he told me, but I cannot tell it in the same practiced way. It’s written in my blood and bones and memory instead of on pieces of paper.

With every step I take, I feel as though the darkness will swallow me, will creep up over my boots and my cloak.

The words have scraped my throat raw. Maybe one day the words will pour out like so many others, easy and smooth and on their own. Right now they take pieces of me with them.

He presses his mouth to mine, as if he can force normalcy and humanity and flesh and blood back into himself, and erase the image of the Near Witch’s eyes, which were the mirror image of his own.

My father used to say that change is like a garden. It doesn’t come up overnight, unless you are a witch. Things have to be planted and tended, and most of all, the ground has to be right.