The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

by Sangu Mandanna

“Magic is attracted to the people who can use it. It can also be mischievous. When there’s so much of it in one place, it takes a very, very strong will to keep it in line. Accidents are much more likely.”

“We’ve talked about this,” said Jamie mildly. “Murder can’t be your first choice every time you don’t like something.”

Her eyes very round, seven-year-old Altamira said, with perfect gravity, “That was some excellent Mary Poppins shit right there.”

I love a book that makes me laugh!

“Well, shit,” said Altamira. Mika bit her lip to squash a smile. Why were rude words always so unfailingly funny when they came out of a child’s mouth? It was so terribly hard to look disapproving!

Mika carefully measured each of the ingredients and dropped them into the cauldron. As the witchfire warmed the cauldron up, she watched the mixture combine and simmer down to a sparkling, bluish syrup. Potion-making was more of an art than a science, and it relied on a witch’s instincts, but Mika had been experimenting and practicing for so long now that her instincts were good.

She transferred the syrup to a vial and examined it in delight. The syrup had a scent, faint but unmistakable, and the only word Mika could think of to describe it was harmony. She knew, in that bone-deep way of witches, that if this syrup was added to tea, it would cool tempers and smooth the jagged edges of raw feelings.

In moments like this, she really and truly loved being a witch. She loved losing herself for hours in the hum of magic, the sparkle of gold dust in the air, the soft warmth of witchfire, the ideas and the creativity and the fun. Why would anyone ever want to do anything else?

this was not a man who had the slightest interest in social niceties. She liked it. She had spent all her life colossally afraid of fucking up those very same social niceties and giving away just how not normal she was, so it was both novel and nice to not have to worry about it for a few minutes.

Terracotta blinked, taken aback. She’d never considered that before, Mika realised, watching the little girl dart a surreptitious and worried look at Jamie. Maybe Terracotta’s hostility wasn’t coming from a place of unkindness. Maybe it was, in fact, just the opposite. Maybe it was coming from a place of love.

She didn’t mention the one thing that made this almost impossible: the Rules. How was a witch to find a community of witches and non-witches who would embrace her when she was supposed to stay away from other witches, keep her life completely disconnected from theirs, and only see those other witches a few times a year?

She couldn’t help admiring the marshmallow heart hiding beneath Terracotta’s porcupine prickles. She knew she would probably fight a lot of battles with the little girl in the next few weeks, but now she was pretty sure that Terracotta wouldn’t be fighting them just because she wanted to be difficult.

She’d be fighting them because she was ferociously protective of her sisters, the grown-ups who looked after them, and this safe haven they’d built together.

Instead of growing up having fun with your power and befriending magic, you’ve been taught to be afraid of it, to be afraid of mistakes and accidents, so right now, your power is in control of you rather than the other way round.”

“The thing is, being a witch is extraordinary,” she said. “It might seem sometimes that all we are is odd and different, but the truth is, we’re amazing.

“It’s always a good idea to be cautious and respectful when you use a powerful force like magic, but you don’t have to be afraid of it. That’s why you practice. With practice, you’ll lose your fear and gain the confidence you need.”

Nowhere House was shifting in Mika’s mind. The new Nowhere House was messier than the first, a place made up of fractured pieces that, somehow, had come together to make something whole and wonderful.

“I don’t pretend to know much about people,” she offered, fixing her eyes on the road ahead, “but one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that some people are nice and some people are kind.

Niceness is all about what we do when other people are looking. Kindness, on the other hand, runs deep. Kindness is what happens when no one’s looking.”

She hadn’t understood how exhausting and heartbreaking it had been to hide such a big part of herself all these years, to reshape and contort herself into something more acceptable. She hadn’t realised just how heavy her mask had been until she’d discovered what it was to live without it.

To be at Nowhere House was to put herself in very real peril, so why, then, did she feel safer than she ever had before?

“I’ve been thinking about what might happen if I combined star shavings, lavender, pollen, and moonlight,” Mika said to her. Circe blew out a sleepy breath. Mika nodded. “I know, I know. You think it’s a bad idea to put stars and moonlight in the same potion. You think they’ll be too powerful together, or that they’ll react unpredictably because neither comes from the earth.” She clicked her tongue thoughtfully, catching a luminous shard drifting past her. “But what if I combined them and something spectacular happened?”

“Does it make it more or less magical if I tell you that, scientifically speaking, we’re all made up of stardust?”

“Mika.” His voice was stern. Grey eyes pinned her in place. “Is this the life you would have chosen for yourself?” “It didn’t used to be,” she said, and then blinked, flustered by how much truth that revealed. “I mean, I don’t know. There’s stuff I would want to be different, if I had my way, but there are also a lot of things about my life that I like. It’s complicated.” “What would you want to be different?”

“You know my views,” said Primrose primly. “As a child, I instructed your nannies and tutors very specifically not to tell you what to drink, what to eat, and what to wear. That is because I believe what you put in your body is your business, and that,” she added, raising her teacup to her lips, “includes penises.” Mika almost dropped her own teacup, betrayed into a fit of schoolgirlish giggles. Primrose eyed her askance. “You’re thirty-one, Mika. Do try to act like it. And if you would care for my opinion, perhaps you might choose a worthier penis next time.”

“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.”

“And what would you do if you could?” Jamie asked. “If being a witch were a job, what would it look like?” Mika gave him a doubtful look. “Do you actually want to know?” “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t, Mika. I’m not nice, remember?” That made her smile. As she considered her answer, her forehead creased in a way that was, frankly, adorable. “I’m not sure. I think about it all the time, but I suppose I’ve never really let myself get too attached to any one idea.” Her face softened. “Except for this one: I used to dream about having my very own enchanted tea and potion shop. A small, storybook kind of place, with potions and jars of tea leaves on the shelves, and a mortar and pestle on the counter, and a cauldron bubbling away.”

“Sometimes,” Mika said after a moment, “I wonder what it’s like to be a witch in other places in the world. Like in India, where I was born, or in America or Norway or Egypt. Wherever. I sometimes think about the ugly things, like I wonder if witches are still hunted in places with more deeply rooted superstitions, but mostly, I think about families and communities. Is there a place out there where witches live their lives in the open? Are there entire communities where the townspeople know about the friendly local witch, who maybe works with the friendly local doctor so that, together, they can fix pretty much anything?” She smiled a little sheepishly, like she expected him to laugh at her, but it was the furthest thing from his mind. “I suppose that place, if it exists, is where I might be able to have my tea and potion shop.”

“I can’t transform the world, Jamie. The world’s too big and too messy and too stubborn.” “Who said anything about transforming the world?” He shrugged. “What about just making it a little better? And then a little better? And then a little more, until, one day, maybe long after we’re gone, it has transformed? You deserve more than what you’re allowing yourself to have.”

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.”

There was a recklessness in him, one that was partly down to the adrenaline of putting his past to rest at last and partly down to the novelty of being out here alone with her in the middle of fuck-off nowhere. And he knew it was utterly, catastrophically, fucking foolish, but right then, in that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

It was a beautiful moment, but it was also proof of just how badly she’d failed at the one promise she’d made to herself for almost all her adult life: don’t get attached. She wanted that promise not to matter anymore because, after all, this place and these people were not like any of the others she’d known before. They knew who she was. They knew her secrets. Here, she was accepted, understood, and even liked. So would it really be so bad to get attached? Would it really be so bad to admit to herself that she really fucking loved it here, and she loved these people, and she wanted nothing more than to stay?

Over the years, Mika had embraced all the things that made her different and had discovered that she liked herself very much. But what was that worth without human connection? How was it possible to live, truly live, without the companionship of other people, without a family formed in any of the thousands of ways families could be formed?

It was a bit like that old philosophical question about a tree falling in the woods, wasn’t it? If no one remembered her, and she didn’t matter to anyone, did she really exist?

At no point did it even cross Mika’s mind to abandon the inhabitants of Nowhere House to the consequences of their own choices. She was still too raw to interrogate her complicated feelings for the adults of the house, Jamie in particular, but the way she felt about the girls was not complicated at all. Rosetta, Terracotta, and Altamira deserved the best, most joyful lives possible, and that would only be possible if they stayed together, in their home, with the people who loved them so much that they’d literally hidden a corpse in their back garden.

In the quiet moments, with Circe looking mournfully out of the window, Mika couldn’t get away from how much she missed the home she’d had for so brief a time. She missed the gables, the crash of the sea, the salt on the air, the people. How could she possibly miss them this much if none of it was real?

Mika, who did her best to be sunshiney every other day of the year, found herself feeling downright grinchy. She couldn’t help it; Christmas had a way of dialling everything up in intensity. Yes, there was the joy, goodwill, and kindness, but there was also loneliness.

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.

She’d never known sex like this, this absurd, bewildering mixture of lust, mind-boggling pleasure, laughter, and silliness, but it was perfect.

He was, therefore, determined to root out whatever sketchy goings-on were going on at Nowhere House. It was in this frame of mind that Edward knocked on the front door of the house on the morning of the twenty-sixth and started to question its inhabitants, only to encounter a stumbling, unsteady skeleton wearing a navy pantsuit and a flowery hat. Everything from there proceeded to go well and truly to shit.

him. Danger rarely wore a monstrous face and a wielded a pitchfork. No, danger came most often in the form of people like Edward, the nice people whose niceness only went so deep, who saved their niceness for people exactly like them, who believed they were more deserving of power and respect than anyone who was a little bit different.

Sometimes you had to do whatever was necessary to protect the people you loved.

She was obsessed with the possibility that somewhere out there, there might be a place where witches live openly, without fear, without prejudice.

How can we possibly exist alone in this world when you know how much we need each other?”

Maybe, somewhere out there, there was a witch who would uncover all their secrets, a witch who would build a lasting bridge between witches and non-witches. A witch who would, in short, transform the world. It was a lovely idea, a vision of a golden future, but Mika was content with the knowledge that the witch who conjured it would not be her.