The Once and Future Witches

by Alix E. Harrow

A wise woman keeps her burning on the inside.

Every woman draws a circle around herself. Sometimes she has to be the only thing inside it.

Agnes learned young that you have a family right up until you don’t. You take care of people right up until you can’t, until you have to choose between staying and surviving.

“I’m not asking for your outrage or your concern or your advice. I’m asking for your help. Do I have it?” She is distantly surprised by how easily the word help slips between her lips. Is this what it is to draw your circle wide, to need and be needed in turn?

started this fight out of rage—spite and fury and sour hate—and that she’ll finish it for something else entirely.

Distantly it occurs to her that men like Gideon ought to stop breaking people, because sometimes they mend twice as strong.

Maybe he can’t quite believe she’ll do it, even now, because he can’t quite imagine loving anything more than he loves himself.

“History is a circle, and you people are always looking for the beginnings and ends of it.”