A Lesson in Vengeance

by Victoria Lee

Ex scientia ultio. From knowledge comes vengeance.

“It’s late for coffee, isn’t it?” “It’s never too late for coffee.” This whole night already feels bizarre, like the world viewed through a kaleidoscope.

“As Astell said herself: ‘It were well if we could look into the very Soul of the beloved Person, to discover what resemblance it bears to our own.’

How could I explain the way my past feels as if it’s intertwined with theirs? The dark magic that bites at my heels no matter how fast I run?

“Death isn’t as fatal as you might think,” I tell her, trailing my fingertips over the card’s linen face. “It can mean change or upheaval of any kind. Something vital will come to an end. But”—I touch the five-petaled rose—“something new grows in its place.”

The question isn’t whether magic is real. It’s whether I can touch it without being consumed by it.

I don’t want to say Alex wasn’t a bitch. That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. But bitch felt like a harsh word to apply to a girl who was fighting so hard to make space for herself in a world that didn’t want her. Alex was many things. She contained multitudes. And to say she was a bitch sometimes was to erase everything else she was: brave, stubborn, passionate, affectionate, a girl who would destroy empires to save someone she loved.

I know I’m not a murderer, but the difference between murderer and killer seems insubstantial sometimes. I was responsible for her death.

I need to be able to touch the dark without being consumed by it.

A name. It feels irreverent somehow to name what we’re doing. Then again, to Clara this is a game. She doesn’t understand how magic can pull you in, pull you under. Every spell is a pomegranate seed on your tongue, binding you to the underworld.

the red berries of the mountain ash and in the dark sky the birds’ night migrations

The poems circle the same question: how one’s soul could possibly endure when life’s beauty vanishes from reach.”

For once, the forest is empty of ghosts, the sky clear and glittering. Nothing evil can touch us like this. We’re dryads cavorting in autumn, wood spirits breathing out starlight.

The confession falls out of me like a stone. And once the words are spoken, I can’t take them back.

The room is empty, but it’s not empty. I feel her. She’s here. She’s in every corner, every shadow. She’s above me, inside me. She’s black ice in my veins.

“Knowing isn’t the same thing as knowing. You know up here.” Ellis taps her temple with one finger. “But you don’t know in here.” She presses that same hand over her chest.

Ellis quivers too—a very slight tremor to her hands, detectable only because I notice everything about her. It’s so easy for Ellis to pretend disaffection, as if our childhood traumas don’t trickle like rainwater through the bricks of our lives.

I also know what it is to have a secret you’ve held close to your chest for so long it starts to poison you—to fear that if you show it to anyone else, it might poison them, too.

I wonder how limited my own understanding of the Dalloway Five is, if by studying only what I found in the library, I’ve trapped myself in a certain view. I only ever wanted the Five to have been witches. I only ever saw what I wanted to see.

That magic doesn’t have to be magic for it to mean something. That sometimes magic is a salve over a burn, and it’s the only way you can heal.