The High Witch

It’s night. Typically. These things always start at night, don’t they?

Adrienne crouches beside me, her red hair slicked back into its usual tight, uncomfortable looking bun underneath a heavy hood. I’d taken it upon myself, on a few occasions, to inquire if the tightness of her bun was her reason for being in such a foul mood most days. 

The first time I asked, early in my days at the Academy, Adrienne had choked me out against a wall with such intent that her now husband, Arcane, was forced to pull her from me. 

That was how they met. One look into each other's eyes, and the magic of Celeste, the Love Witch of Old, was thrust between the two and they saw in each other the word of which every Witch or Warlock hopes to hear whispered in their mind at some point in their lives. 

Soulmate.

I was the reason Adrienne, two years above me and Head Girl at the time, found her soulmate. And so, the most terrifying girl in all of the Academy became my friend. Arcane, a year above me, was forever grateful that I brought Adrienne into his life that much sooner.

They married once Arcane had graduated, as most Soulmates did. What was the point in waiting, when you had found the One?  

That was two years ago, and the both of them remained at the Academy as Mentors after graduating. Only a few final-year student got to have Mentors, and only those that Dean Holmes saw fit to receive one, did so.

The strongest of us, the ones that could very well be the next High Witch or Warlock.

Adrienne had been my mentor for six months, and she pushed harder than I was sure any new mentor had the right to do so. Just yesterday, she had arrived at my room with a pale face and sweaty palms, her hands grasping mine in an uncharacteristic show of emotion. Just yesterday, she told me of what the Oracles had seen. 

The next High Witch, who would have the name Ruth Godswood the Kind, who would slay Ethan Holmes the Clever. 

It was the way it was; the way it has always been. For the next High Witch or Warlock to rise, they must first taste the blood of the one they must replace, blood that they must have spilt themselves. 

And so, it was told to me that I must kill Dean Ethan Holmes, the High Warlock for the past 10 years. We all knew the tales of him, of the tall and sour faced Warlock, who to rose his status of High Warlock at just sixteen, and then Dean of the Academy at just twenty.

And I would replace him.

Murder him.

Taste his still warm blood. 

Those are the ways of the Witches and Warlocks.

It was far above me to even consider saying no to the request laid out before me from Adrienne, past down from the Oracles and the Fates themselves. I had only a father who grieved his dead wife, who spent the last of his money on some cheap spell to bring her back that never worked. He went to Dean Holmes, I remember, when the Dean was just nineteen; had begged the Dean to allow him into the Twilight, where the dead of our kind roamed, to fetch our mother.

The Dean refused.

I remember this, I think of this, as I clench the silver knife in my fist and breathe out slowly through my nose. But the anger does not come.

I had never blamed the Dean for his decision to not allow my father the risky task of fetching my mother from the Twilight. I had been thankful for it. As a child, I had all but convinced myself that my father would bring home my mother's rotting corpse. I had nightmares of worms poking from her eye sockets and her bones breaking if I were to hug her too tightly.

No, I never blamed him. I wish I did. Perhaps killing him would be made easier because of it. 

We watch him, as he roams the graveyard beyond the Academy, where all the Deans were buried. He wears a long, dark coat and leather gloves. His is like an ink spill, blending into the darkness that sits so comfortably around him. I had never spoken to him – never had a need to. He was above me, with a pointed chin, icy blue eyes, dark hair, and an importance that frightened me more than impressed me. Dean Holmes was a good High Warlock, the best we’d had in near two hundred years, since Declan the Decider, or so the Elders said. 

It was why I had fought so hard when Adrienne had informed me of the Oracles findings, her cheeks flushed and her fingers shaking. Her mentee was the next High Witch!

…But I couldn’t be. I hadn’t wanted to believe it. I was a good Witch, that much I was aware of. I took well to spells and incantations, but I was…I was awkward and bumbling, with a near addictive knack for saying the wrong thing to entirely the wrong people. I wasn’t suited to be the next High Witch.

I didn’t want to be.

I certainly didn’t want to kill Dean Holmes, no matter how much he was expected to accept it. No matter if it was considered an abomination if I refused.  

Adrienne’s pale fingers touch my hand, and I start back into reality. I turn to her, spying strands of red hair falling from beyond the dark hood of her cloak. Her brown eyes shine. ‘Ruth,’ she says, and my name brings me back to this reality; this awful reality in which my destiny is murder. How could they not see what they were asking me? ‘He’ll understand. He had to do it, too’.

He did, didn’t he? Except Dean Holmes’s rise to High Warlock was so respected, so revered, because it was his father who was High Warlock before him. 

Surely, I could do this? The Dean was nothing to me. A man who I had never spoken to, who marched down the halls of the Academy with his nose in the air and his fists clenched at his side. He always had a pale, pinched look about him. Once, I had wondered if he thought killing his father had been worth the rise to power. He had inherited a title that mean unlimited magic, to be more powerful than any other magical being could comprehend. A say in life and death, in who was allowed back into the plain of the living, in who you might want to save. 

My mother. If I could not bring her back, then perhaps I could…see her. Perhaps the power I would inherit, upon murdering my Dean, would be worth it, if it meant saying the goodbye to my mother I was never granted. 

Maybe it would be worth the murder.

‘He’s stopped,’ Adrienne whispers, clutching my shoulder now. Despite the heavy cloak I wear, I shiver in the dark mist of the graveyard. I look. Dean Holmes had stopped, right in the middle of the graveyard, his back to us. ‘Go,’ Adrienne whispers. 

I look at her, and my jaw shakes. ‘I’m scared,’ I tell her. Would they write that in the history books, when they wrote of my ascension? And so; Ruth Godswood, who would soon be the 101^st High Leader of Witches and Warlock’s, turned to her mentor, the one named Adrienne Boulder, and said, ‘I’m scared’.

Adrienne clutches at my shoulder and bestows me with one of her rare shows of affection. Slowly, she presses her forehead to mine, and I get a whiff of burning magic. Arcane liked to practice his potion making in their quarters, and the reminder grounds me. I hold onto that moment, to Adrienne touching her forehead to mine, and let out a shaky breath.

When we part, Adrienne’s fingers dig hard into my shoulder, before she releases me. Her throat bobs as she swallows. ‘You’ve got this,’ she tells me, nodding as if to convince the both of us of her words. 

I breath. I nod. I stand.  

I am silent as a walk, aided by the quick silencing spell I cast at my feet. It would unlikely help. Dean Holmes was the most powerful Warlock alive. A simple silencing spell would not get past him. 

I walk over weeds and dried leaves, the mist swirling at my feet as if sentient. The hood of my cloak slips over my forehead, and I cast my eyes onto the form of Dean Holmes. He still stands with his back to me, shoulders squared, and hands now buried into the pockets of his coat. His head is bowed, the dark tendrils of his hair in stark contrast to the pale skin of his neck. I never thought much about Dean Holmes, other than slight annoyance and fear, but now he is all I can think about. What was his favourite food? What did he do during his free time? What was his favourite song? Did he think of killing his father often? Had his father allowed his son to do so, if it meant his son becoming High Warlock, as the Oracles thought was destiny?

What would he sound like when I slid the knife into him?

When I am four feet away from him, I stop, and he speaks. 

‘It’s an odd feeling, isn’t it?’ 

I start so violently that I nearly drop the knife. I imagine Adrienne, hiding behind a tombstone some way behind me, urging me to stab him.

No, if I was to be High Witch, I would not start it with a silver knife in my predecessors back. 

I grip the handle of the knife tighter. ‘I don’t want to do this,’ I whisper, a secret from me to him. 

His shoulder’s sag. ‘I am quite familiar with the feeling. It’s Ruth, isn’t it?’ 

I swallow the dryness in my throat. I nod, despite him being unable to see me. ‘Yes,’ I rasp.

He nods. ‘This is my father’s gravestone,’ he says, voice low and head dipping forward. I don’t say anything, and he continues. ‘He told me that he felt the moment the Fates decided I would be his successor. His power wilted, and my name appeared in his mind’. His laughs, low and humourlessly. ‘It was almost a disappointment when he told me. How simple, for such a monumental moment. Don’t you think?’ 

I nod. Again, he does not see me.

‘He asked only one thing, when he placed the knife in my hand.’ Broad shoulders roll. ‘That I look him in his eye as I kill him. He said that such a task took only the strongest of us. To be able to look the person in the eye you will kill, to then absorb what powers truly belongs to you’. A pause. ‘They are yours now, Ruth. And what a weight they hold’. 

I don’t want them. Not really. Not like others do. 

‘I’ll look at you,’ I tell him softly, squashing my own worries and terrors. Before me stood a man that would soon die. That was all that mattered. ‘And I’ll…I’ll try to make it not hurt’.

His shoulders move as he laughs, a soft sound. It’s jarring, to hear such a sound come from the strict Dean. ‘A kind one, aren’t you?’

I think of Adrienne’s words as she told me of my fate. They saw it, Ruth. Ruth the Kind, that’s what you’ll be.  

‘Perhaps,’ Dean Holmes continues. ‘That’s what we need. Perhaps that is why my time has been cut short. It is a silly thing, really, to make us do something so horrid, and then expect us to want to do the job we killed for’. 

The knife slackens in my grip as I think about this. ‘What if I didn’t do it?’ I whisper, as if the dead themselves might hear. 

Silence. ‘You must,’ Dean Holmes murmurs back, turning just slightly. I catch sight of dark lashes and the slope of a high cheekbone. ‘Chaos will reign. The Fates will be furious. No one disobeys the Oracles, kind Ruth. Now,’ he begins to turn. ‘It’s time. I think I’m quite ready’.

And he turns, hand coming from his pockets to hang at his sides, and my grip tightens on the knife, and the graveyard seems to hush, and-

For the first time, I look into the eyes of Dean Holmes, and I see what he is. 

Adrienne had described it as being yanked into space and then pulled back to Earth in a matter of moments. Arcane described it as feeling warm and safe in the sight of Adrienne’s eyes, as if he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. My father said it was a whole feeling, a soft one, a knowing one.

For me, it feels like being drenched in cold water on an unbearably hot summers day. It is shocking, freezing, and then, relief. Sweet relief that blooms in my chest life a spring flower. 

And then it is there, the word, as I gaze into cerulean eyes that widen, the breath knocked out of him at the sight of me. 

My knife falls to the ground. 

Somewhere behind me, Adrienne gasps. 

Soulmate.