Page 115 of Big Little Spells

I don’t dare look back at Coronis on his high branch. There is a reason Nicholas hasn’t shown his face yet. I know this. I only wish I knew what it was.

Or maybe I fear what it is, and why he’s waiting so long.

Either way, the procession begins. Young witch after young witch comes to the stage in groups of eight. One by one, they each prove they can balance light and dark to some or other extent—though some barely manage to stand upright, much less do any magic. They answer a few questions for the skills test, and then Carol awards them their designation, immediately engraved on their amulet. I watch them stagger off the stage, flipping over their amulets to see who they are.

When that’s backward, isn’t it? Surely you should get to decide who you are. Emerson did. I had to. We fought to earn our designations, and all the power that goes with them...

But this really isn’t the time to question the whole system. Even I can see that. Especially because no one seems to be failing the test today, and isn’t that just perfect? It’s beginning to look like maybe this is all Wilde family sour grapes.

As the ceremony goes on without a hitch, I begin to feel something claw around in me. Words and thoughts that aren’t my own begin pounding inside my head.

I poisoned them out of jealousy.

It was me and I’m not sorry.

I put a hand to my temple. What the hell are these... intrusive thoughts? I’m no stranger to those, but mine follow the same old themes of guilt and shame for things I already did. And all the things I felt when I was a lonely teenager here.

I’m suddenly grateful for all the experimenting I did out there, because it feels like I’ve been dosed. Like someone has planted these thoughts in me. Painfully shoved them into my brain and let them start unspooling.

“Em,” I say, or try to, but my mouth doesn’t move. My hand falls to my lap, and I can’t pull it back up to press against the pain in my head.

Up on the stage, another set of eight teenagers march into place.

It’s like that first night when Carol hexed me mute, but this isn’t just a muting spell, or even a paralyzing spell. It’s something more. Something much worse.

Because I can’t move or speak, and these thoughts in my head are not mine.

They are not true, but they’re twisting in me like they’re mine.

Up on the stage, I see Felicia’s mouth moving. Her mean little gaze meets mine, and a bolt goes through me. It feels like her power, but it’s not. It’s realization.

It’s that knowing thing I do, though it’s only just dawning on me that it’s one of my gifts.

I don’t have “gut feelings.” I know.

And what I know right now is that the Joywood are framing me.

I remember that vision at Beltane, in Nicholas’s house. I saw Litha, storms and destruction. The promise of hope, or perhaps the possibility...but looming over it, the far more likely possibility of ruin and despair.

I’m jealous of them, comes that voice inside me that sounds like me, but isn’t. I can feel it, alien and thick, oozing into me. It was me and I’m not sorry.

Shock slams through me, though my body doesn’t react because it’s frozen into place. But I know. Something is going to happen to these children.

And I’m going to take the blame.

The line of students is trickling toward the end. It feels like one of those dreams, though I know it’s not. The last set of eight climbs onto the stage. And as each one starts the ritual, something changes. One stumbles. One has a coughing fit. Another cries out and brings a hand to his head as if the pain there is unbearable.

In moments, all eight of them are writhing on the stage floor.

The Joywood jump into action. They are suddenly all that is comforting and helpful. They chant spells over the students who are now moaning, complaining of immense pain, crying out into the night as their parents cry out from the audience.

It looks like poison, someone says into every head here, and it’s impossible to pinpoint who said it. But I can hear the word begin to be whispered all around me.

“Looks a lot like poison to me,” declares Gus Howe. Because he would.

Meanwhile, I sit there, frozen into place. I wait, knowing I’m going to take the fall for this. Knowing it will only be a matter of time before they start whispering my name.

And I have a terrible feeling—I don’t want to admit I know it—that they’re going to kill off these children to make sure there’s no doubt in a single mind here what my punishment should be.

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