The Witch Collector (Witch Walker #1)

by Charissa Weaks

Most young witches in the village are probably huddled with their families, worried about being taken, while I’m plotting a one-woman uprising.

“That there are two things you need to learn. Or perhaps, not learn but come to accept. One,” she comes closer, smiles, and taps me on the nose, “is that you are more capable than you believe, dear one. Your strength is in your heart. And two…” She kneels beside me and pushes my hair over my shoulder, letting her hand rest there. “Victory only comes through sacrifice, Raina. I don’t know what’s weighing on you, but I know you’re in turmoil. I can see the burden. Most battles are hard-fought. Something must always be lost if you’re ever to gain. Don’t fear this. You will never move forward if you never leave things behind.”

At least the last thing I will ever lay my eyes upon in this long life is a powerful woman of both beauty and fury. A soul delicate yet wild and so deeply moving—even if she does wish me dead. In the last few years when I’ve visited Silver Hollow on Collecting Day, I’ve been incapable of preventing my gaze from lingering on her face, though she has never so much as lifted her chin to look me in the eye. I can’t blame her. In another life, I would’ve tried to know her. I would’ve admired her and read her poems written by my own hand. I would’ve walked with her through fields of stardrops, danced with her in the stream. This is not another life.

But it’s what I’ll leave behind that Tiressia must fear. I am salvation and damnation. There cannot be one without the other.

Mother used to say that grief always strikes when we least expect it, and that we rarely realize how those we love inhabit even the most seemingly inconsequential parts of our lives. It’s in those moments that the pain of their absence strikes so much deeper, because the time we took for granted suddenly shines in sharp relief.

Silver swirls etched with hints of crimson, violet, and gold vine along the backs of my hands, from wrist to fingertips.

Gold for life magick, red for healing magick, silver for common magick—like the protective magick we build at the wood’s boundary. The violet must be for Sight.

“It was your mother,” the Witch Collector says. “She was far more powerful than anyone knew. She hid your marks, as well as her own, but…” He pauses, and compassion fills his eyes as he takes my cold hand, folding it inside his warmer one. “When she passed, the magick fell apart, and your marks became visible. I watched them appear on the green, Raina.”

“Be sure, I am many things.” The veins in his temples and forearms stand out in relief with every sharp word. “But I am no liar.”

“You’re thinking too hard.” He taps his chest. “Magick can be created from a song, but it isn’t required. In truth, the most powerful magick is conjured from the deepest parts of our souls, not with voices or hands or anything else. But, no matter how a conjurer builds their magickal constructs, it must come from the heart. You know this, yes? Born of emotion, love, hope, sadness, desperation, all tied to ancient commandments of the old gods. The words are easy. Reaching for the emotion is what’s hard.”

“How do you feel, Raina? Listen to your misery. Listen to your rage. If you’re angry, let it boil. If you’re heartbroken, let your heart shatter.” His lips graze my ear, sending a rogue chill down my spine. “And if you hate, hate with the fire of a thousand suns.”

Mena always said the lines of the hands define who we are. She labeled me well enough, calling me an idealist with volatile tendencies and someone who struggles with a mundane existence. She called me impulsive, impatient, and imaginative, a restless being who needs freedom to flourish and love to thrive.

Her eyes close, but her heart still pounds beneath my touch. In another life, I would’ve tried to know her. I would’ve admired her and read her poems written by my own hand. I would’ve walked with her through fields of stardrops, danced with her in the stream. But this is not another life. And I’m beginning to wonder if it has to be.

I am clay beneath his skilled hands, changing, as though he’s molding me. Not back to the woman I was, but to someone new, someone damaged but unbroken, wounded and yet healed.

There is no love without fear, but no one told me that fear feasts on those with something to lose.