Page 10 of Spelling Disaster

“We have to stop. We shouldn’t go through with this,” I say.

Except for some reason, I keep walking, my body betraying me. I need a moment to think, to figure this out. Reality still feels thin, as though there’s something lurking at the edges of my consciousness, insistent for me to turn away.

The feeling makes focusing on the ceremony impossible.

The tree trunks press thick against each other, their limbs filled with leaves on the brink of turning for autumn, a soft breeze rustling them together. A few more steps and the trees open up into a clearing.

There is a sense of the familiarity in this place, of agelessness. Until this point, I always saw it as a quiet place to come when things got a little stressful at the library. Or when Mom is being particularly hardheaded about anything and everything.

Only me, the breeze, the forest. Time to clear space in my head.

The trees make a perfect circle to let the light of the sun shine down on the grass and moss at the center. I’ve danced there.

I sang and chanted and joined the other witches for holidays and celebrations.

Today it’s for me and there’s nothing magical about it now.

Birds continue to sing and chirp as they do on any other day and there I stand in a cold sweat with clammy hands and ants crawling underneath my skin. Thoughts and memories of my vision tangle together with the coven waiting to welcome me with open arms.

I recognize most of their faces but there are a few others who I’ve never seen before, those who must have come from the coven in the next town. Just to celebrate my birthday and the ascension ceremony.

I gulp, my stomach empty and rolling.

What would I give to turn back the clock? To be seventeen again? Twelve?

I glance over to Remi and for an instant I feel nothing but jealousy for her—a wave of dark, ugly feeling. What would I give to have her mortal blood instead of the witch powers I’d inherited?

But I need her here with me. I need her strength and determination more than I’m willing to admit.

I reach for her hand.

Time speeds up at last and the thrumming of the invisible heart—definitely not my own—grows unbearably loud.

Applause and voices lifted in congratulation are not enough to rival the ticking beat.

Someone drapes a long cloak over my shoulders and as the witches gather behind me, a set of hands push me toward the center of the clearing. I glance over my shoulder in time to see Remi shake her head, her eyes deep and a little scared, before she darts back toward the library.

Only the dark end of her ponytail is visible before she disappears entirely.

“Remi!” My voice is lost in the din.

She abandoned me.

She left me here with the rest of these people, all smiling and cheerful, who don’t seem to see that there is something seriously freaky happening. The unnatural fog wraps around the trunks of the trees along the clearing and halts as though it’s unwilling to go any further.

My chest tightens.

“Mom?” I turn in a circle and find myself unable to move with the press of so many people. “Mom, where are you?”

Lost in the crowd, lost to me, having led me to the chopping block only to drop me and leave.

“We’re gathered here today for Yasmine! We celebrate she who takes the first step into adulthood and willingly chooses to embrace her path as the newest Cleric!” Our high priestess Lark lifts her voice to the heavens above, clear as a bell, which does nothing to stem my anxiety, as it has in the past. “Today Yasmine will relinquish her childhood to welcome her future.”

I shake my head.No.

The other witches are dressed in their ceremonial robes with the hoods over their head, obscuring their features. Like the one I’m now wearing—moons and stars stitched in silver thread stand out against black velvet.

I’m drowning.

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