Spells for Forgetting

by Adrienne Young

Nearly six weeks late, and with no warning at all, every tree on Saoirse had turned in a single night.

It was the time of year when the veil between worlds was thin, and in that moment, I could feel the tingle of the Otherworld tiptoeing lightly up my spine.

When August left, he hadn’t just left Saoirse. He’d left me. And I’d been dragging his sins behind me ever since.

“You think I don’t know why you won’t marry Dutch?” she said, matching my tone. “You never wanted to get married because you couldn’t marry August. You didn’t want to have children because you couldn’t have his children.”

I just knew that she felt like air to me.

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 know you feel like I left you here, but you followed me everywhere I went.”

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.

But there was one thing that Lily had forgotten—that the magic belonged to me.