It was full dark in the woods, leaves veiling the stars. I was almost blind, but as I walked into the clearing where the well stood and the stream ran, subtle illumination turned the grass to threads of silver and the water to a ribbon of silk. The moon must have found a chink in the branches, and now it was lending me light. My aunts say the moon looks down on witches with love.
Even the wind seemed calmer in this clearing. Encouraged, I crossed the shining grass to the riverbank where I’d seen the tiny, pale blue flowers growing in Harvey’s drawing. The moon gave me just enough light to make out the flowers growing on the far bank. Harvey’s drawing showed flowers on both sides of the river, but it seemed I’d run out of luck.
I crouched down on the bank and tried to reach over the stream, but I couldn’t reach far enough. I stood on the edge of the stream and considered jumping for it.
The stream seemed far wider than it had a moment ago, when I hadn’t been thinking of crossing it. I hesitated on the edge, wondering if I should try a leap, or walk down until I found a narrower place in the stream and cross there.
I hesitated for too long. Maybe the ground of the riverbank was muddier than I thought, or maybe the earth crumbled away beneath my feet. Whatever happened, there was one moment of lurching dismay when my outstretched hands flailed and failed to find handholds in the air. I toppled headfirst into the stream with a scream that nobody heard.
Silvery water and shadows rushed into my open eyes. Water flooded my open mouth, cold and bitter. I would never have imagined the water would have this wintry chill in summer, bleak as a river that ran beneath a stone mountain and never saw light.
I tried to swim and felt my limbs already numb, my arms and legs leaden weights. I struggled desperately upward, but I was sinking fast. I would never have imagined the stream was so deep.
Then, as I fought for the surface, I felt icy fingers twining with mine.
Every night after Sabrina goes to sleep, it happens.
There is a tree outside her window with a branch that is bare even in summer, stripped of bark, with long, thin twigs that almost seem like fingers. That frail bough sways in the night wind, and the twigs scrape against the diamond-paned glass of Sabrina’s window.
Sometimes Sabrina’s golden head stirs on her soft pillow. Sometimes her small hands close into fists as if she wants to hold on to something, and she murmurs in her sleep like a child drowsily asking for a kiss good-night.
The birds and the bats, the mice and the foxes, all the beasts that fly or creep near Sabrina’s bedroom by night, find themselves straying off course, heading toward her window as if on a mission. Then they check themselves, shaking off the sudden, wild compulsion.
Sometimes Sabrina wakes in the night with a start, pressing her hand against her breast as if she has been suddenly frightened. Her skin has cold dew on it, as if she was abandoned on the grass in the chill of early morning. To comfort herself, she will take up the picture of her father and mother in their wedding clothes that she keeps beside her bed. She will caress their love-bright faces with a fingertip. Sometimes she kisses the picture.
At times like these, the scratching of the branch against the windowpane grows so frantic it is almost a whine. It is almost like a scream.
Danger, my darling.
Sometimes the young half witch comes down to the breakfast table, crowded with her magical, merciless family, and her eyes are heavy. She says that she did not sleep well, but she cannot tell why.
The hand closed tight around mine, cold as a drowned man’s, tenacious as the weeds on a riverbed. For a terrified moment, I thought that deathlike grip would drag me down.
It pulled me up instead. As soon as I broke the surface of the water, I reached out to grasp the long grass on the riverbank. With the aid of that chill helping hand, I pulled myself out of the stream.
I crawled out of the stream and onto the bank, and found someone watching me.
She was in the shape of a girl, with long hair that flowed in the air around her as if it was water, but her skin was rippling silver. The girl seemed made of mercury, and when she turned to me I saw the blurry image of my own eyes reflected on her cheek and widening in shock.
This spirit was a living mirror, and she had pulled me from the water.
“Thank you,” I gasped.
“Not at all. I couldn’t let you drown, not when I’ve been wanting to meet you for so long. You’re Sabrina, aren’t you?” she asked in a sibilant voice. “The fledgling half mortal, half witch. All the woods whisper about you. And I saw you, with a gathering of young mortals. You walked through this place and discovered the well.”
“Oh,” I said, light dawning as I realized what she must be. “You’re from the well?”
I was shaking with the chill of night air and my soaked clothes, but I curled up on the bank and studied her with the same curiosity that shone in her bright oval of a face. I’d never seen a wishing-well spirit before. Aunt Hilda told me they were shy but friendly spirits who lingered invisibly about wells, hoping to meet a worthy human whose wishes they could grant. My aunt must be right that they were benign spirits, because this one had saved me without my even having to ask.
The spirit of the wishing well smiled, and there were little ripples in her silvery cheeks, like the ripples when small fish swim too close to the surface. I thought they might be dimples. I smiled hesitantly back at her.
“That’s right, Sabrina. Do you want a wish?”
“No, that’s okay. You’ve done enough, and I’m just looking for myosotis anyway.”
The wishing-well spirit pointed a gleaming fingertip, and I saw the plant growing in the dark grass near my foot, its petals shimmering blue. A trick of shadow must have hidden them before.
“I owe you,” I said, and gathered the tiny blue flowers, careful not to crush them.
The spirit’s eyes flashed, bright as sunlight on a stream, as she saw the flowers in my hand.
“I believe I know the spell,” she remarked. “You wish to open a man’s eyes to love?”
“Um. Yes,” I said, embarrassed.
It seemed suddenly like the magic equivalent of when Simon Chen got a crush on Roz and spent all his time loudly mentioning that his uncle had a yacht.
The wishing-well spirit regarded me with tranquil, friendly eyes. The wishing-well spirit, I felt, did not judge.
“I’m a little surprised,” she confessed. “I would have thought a witch like you wouldn’t bother with small spells. I imagined you might be coming here to do a different spell entirely.”
A witch like me. The spirit said the words admiringly, when most witches didn’t think I counted as a witch at all.
“Do you know many witches?” I asked.
“No,” said the spirit of the wishing well. “There are three witch girls who often ramble through my woods, but I never show myself to them. They don’t mean well, and I don’t wish them well. They’re not like you. As soon as I saw you, I wanted to talk to you. I could tell you were special.”
I had never thought before about the term wishing well, and how that did not only mean a well in which you could toss a coin and a wish. It could mean truly wishing well: wishing only the best for me, as a friend might.
She didn’t see something special in Prudence, Dorcas, or Agatha, who thought they were so far above me they might as well have flown their brooms to the moon. She saw something special in me. I couldn’t help but be flattered.