The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

by Sangu Mandanna

“There’s so much magic around her, it’s like she’s on fire. Like the girls.”

An absent archaeologist, a housekeeper, a librarian, a gardener, a retired actor, and three unlikely witches. As backstories went, it was one of the weirdest Mika had ever heard.

“There are three children living in this house,” Ian said firmly, looking Mika straight in the eye. “All three of those children are witches. Jamie, Ken, Lucie, and I know they’re witches. We know about witches. Lillian told us. Because she’s a witch.” “Ian,” Lucie protested.

The natural world was where magic thrived, after all.

It sounded like Ian knew a lot more about witches than he should.

He just didn’t want them going anywhere with her.

discovered I love talking to people who are just as excited about the thing I’m excited about.” “You’d never had that before?” Jamie’s voice sounded odd. “No, but it got me thinking that maybe I could find a way to re-create it with witchy stuff. So I created an alter ego, a witch who brews potions in an enchanted tea shop.”

There were game nights and lazy TV afternoons and haphazard football matches in the garden and elaborate adventures involving the tree house and two planks of Ian’s beehive wood

A gentle rhythm, indeed. But it was more than that. It was peace, the kind Mika was beginning to see she had never known.

“Not everyone is like that, my darling. There is someone out there who will accept you as you are, who will allow you to just be Mika.”

“I could have another hundred years with Ken and still want more,” Ian said simply.

“Mika has been so deeply hurt that she has taught herself to run before she can lay down roots, but the thing you have to remember, Jamie, is that when someone leaves, all you can do is leave a window open for them so that one day, if they choose, they can come back.”

“That’s kind of how I feel about books. When Lillian said she needed someone to run the library, I jumped at it.” “I bet. I’m glad you get to work with the thing you love.”

he smiled at her, a slow, crooked smile that did obnoxious things to her heart.

“Holy Grail?” Mika shrugged, sheepish. “Well, it is. To be loved and accepted exactly as we are? Isn’t that the thing we’re all searching for?”

“I’m afraid.” “Of what?” “Of the heartbreak when I fail,” she said simply. “Of rejection. Of wanting too much. Of discovering again and again that I’m unlovable.

People are usually like the sea, a constant, unerasable part of something bigger, but I’m more like a single wave that washes over the shore, ebbs away, and doesn’t leave a trace behind.”

“I’m afraid I’ll never leave a mark on anybody.”

“You don’t do serious.” He looked out at the sea, impossibly dark and endless. “And I don’t think I can do anything but serious. Not with you.”

“Trust doesn’t come easily to either of us, so we’re not even going to try?”

She had never been loved. No one had ever chosen her.

“We lied to you,” he said. And then he told her everything.

“You did get to know me.” She cut him off. “You got to know me so well that I told you I’ve been used and manipulated and lied to before, and I told you what that did to me, and at no point, not once, did you stop me and admit that you were doing exactly the same thing. Jesus, Jamie. We kissed in the woods, for fuck’s sake. Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? Why did you keep lying to me?”

The sight of him on her doorstep, this doorstep, did something funny to her. Her breath caught, and for the space of a heartbeat, she forgot that she was angry, she forgot that she’d been lied to, she forgot that she was in pain. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and sob. She wanted to lose herself entirely in his lean, solid warmth and rough, sandpapery voice and his stupid, irresistible pine-needle-ness. She wanted to look into his anguished, stormy grey eyes and see something true.

It’s a leap of faith to love people and let yourself be loved. It’s closing your eyes, stepping off a ledge into nothing, and trusting that you’ll fly rather than fall.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.

She had once believed she would never have a family, but here they were, too. She, who had once believed she would never leave a mark on anybody, knew now that the marks she had left were unerasable, as much a part of forever as the sea. And, really, who could ask for more than that?