“I’m sorry,” Ian said. “I wasn’t thinking. I just realized why this wasn’t working, and I came out to fix it. I’m done now.” He gestured to a large, complicated looking structure. It was a table, but a table with drawers and slots here and there. The center of the table was lower than the sides.
Cleo tilted her head, curious despite herself. Her anger deflated at his easy apology. Its absence left her feeling awkward. She suddenly wasn’t sure what to do with her hands, and shoved them in the back pocket of her jeans.
“Good. Right. So - thanks,” Cleo said. Smooth and forgiving, that was Cleo. She grimaced inwardly.
“How’s it going?” Ian asked. The question had the feel of sincerity, like it wasn’t just the route politeness of a neighbor making casual conversation. He asked like he genuinely wanted to know how her life was going. Ian had the ability, Cleo realized, to give a person his full and utter attention. It felt like a spotlight, and Cleo would’ve wanted to bask in it, if she wasn’t, you know, cursed. Better to avoid it.
“Okay,” she said shortly, and left the shed. Her cheeks were ablaze, and her skin felt prickly and too tight.
Back at the bonfire, she found everyone sitting quietly on the logs she’d dragged from the forest to use as rough benches. Good. Sophie was chatting quietly with Mari, and had somehow gotten Mari to laugh under her breath. Also good.
Over the fire was a spit, with a small pot hanging from the center. Cleo always wanted to laugh when she saw it, it couldn’t have possibly looked more witchy. The fire was small underneath it, its warmth negligible.
“All good?” Grant asked. His face was hard to read. Cleo couldn’t tell if he was annoyed by the interruption or just impatient to get on with things. She wanted to ask, but she lifted her hands to the moon instead.
“Tonight, we’re going to call the elements,” Cleo said, “and break the curse on this.”
The mirror was first wrapped in silk, then in an old wool sweater that Cleo had found in a thrift shop. The sweater was handmade, clearly, and with so much love built-in it practically vibrated on the hanger. It had shrunk in the wash at some point, and it would never fit Cleo. But the affection woven within it was unmistakable.
Cleo unwrapped it from the sweater. In the moonlight, the back of the mirror with its little painted shepherdess looked innocuous. She flipped it over, though, and when the moonlight caught the mirror, Cleo sucked in a breath. She thought she had been prepared for what she’d see, but she was wrong.
Snakes of ill-intent crisscrossed over the face of the mirror, twining and coiling and releasing. They moved steadily, relentlessly, sliding off the edge of the mirror to loop back around. The curse left a blackened smear in its path before crossing back over itself.
“Gross,” Sophie whispered.
It was disgustingly slimy. It looked like rot and filth and nothing that Cleo would ever, ever willingly touch.
Cleo slid it gladly into the small pot, the face of the mirror towards the moon.
They had tried to lift curses off two objects before this one. They managed to lift the curse off the cup that caused the drinker to dribble every three sips. They had gotten most of the curse off the necklace that caused nightmares. They’d mutually agreed to try again when they were hopefully more powerful. The mirror lay somewhere in between the two in terms of difficulty.
Curses were easier to break with a coven. Together, they could funnel their respective… Cleo wasn’t quite sure what they were funneling. Magics? Energies? For Cleo, it felt like the group was cutting out root rot, and their collective will was the sharpest, cleanest of shears. It left only the healthy bits, the innocuous parts. Just the part that belonged.
“Together now,” Cleo said softly.
They gathered in a tight circle around held hands. Cleo always had a little jolt of awkwardness when Grant and Mira each gripped her hand. It felt too intimate, in the quiet light of the moon, to be touching people.
Cleo shifted her thoughts away from that, and towards the mirror. Inside the circle of the pot, and the circle of the group, it felt unnatural. It was conspicuously dark, its ill-intent sludgy and sticky. Sophie was right. It was gross.
“We call upon the water, to light our path,” said Agnes.
“We call upon the wind, to guide our path,” said Sophie.
“We call upon the fire, to purify our path,” said Mariana.
“We call upon the earth, to ease our path,” said Grant.
Cleo took a deep breath.
“We call upon the moon, to guide our path,” Cleo said. “We call upon the Goddess, to honor and protect Her.”
Cleo could never explain how it felt, the purity of purpose, the unity of thought when the coven’s will merged and tightened. Regardless, she felt the energy flowing around and through her, and she directed that will towards the mirror.
It felt just as slimy magically as it looked. Cleo felt the others reaching for it with their magic too, and knew the twisted snakes of ill-intent of the curse slipped out of her coven’s magical hands, too. She would almost, almost get a hold of its magic with her will, only to feel it wriggle away, the dark magic muscular after so many years of negative energy. The snakes felt old, strong, and hungry. They nipped at the sides of Cleo’s attention, trying to feed on her doubts and worry.
The nips turned into bites, which cut into her magic in harsh, angry rips of will. Her hold was weakening. She held on as long as she could, the magic in her burning
