Spells for Forgetting

by Adrienne Young

I’d lived enough years now to know that there were some ghosts that haunted you forever.

I’d been taught from a young age how to read the omens, the way children on the mainland were taught their letters and numbers. A butterfly entering the house through a window. Spotting an owl in the daylight. The thin glow of a halo that sometimes circled the moon in winter.

Sometimes the signs were subtle, like a fleeting shadow or an echo in the trees. Other times, the island wasn’t gentle with her words.

The people of Saoirse hated the seasonal tourists almost as much as they needed them, but we’d learned the hard way what happened when the ferries were empty.

It was deep magic that ran through the blood of every woman on the island. It seeped into the earth of the orchard, its leaves unfurling every spring, falling to rot every autumn before turning back into the ground.

It had never mattered what was said, because we always returned to each other. Like gravity.

“There are spells for breaking and spells for mending. But there are no spells for forgetting,” I warned her.

I’d been in love with August Salt since before I knew what the words meant. I don’t know when it happened—the narrow space between seconds, when a spark like the birth of a hundred stars found a home in my blood. Since then, every day had been colored with the glittering light of it dragging me in its wake, pulling me beneath its surface. And I didn’t care. If this was what it was like to drown, then for the rest of my life, I didn’t want to take another sip of air.

I’d known the moment I saw her standing in the road after I arrived on the island. I’d known it the first time I kissed her. The first time I’d told her that I loved her. I couldn’t be anyone else’s because I was hers. I’d always be hers. If she wasn’t going to say it, then I would.