Do you know that we used to switch places all the time, laughing behind our little fists as we tricked some of the savviest witches in the world into calling us by the wrong names? (Of course you didn’t know that; you’re a diary.) We played that game for ages, and it always worked, until the day sparks first shot from her fingers and mine stayed perfectly normal. Until there was no fooling anyone because her magic was a river and mine was a raindrop. I still remember the day I couldn’t be Tamsin anymore and realized that all there was left to be was me.
It was the worst day of my life.
FOUR
WREN
The baker had no bread.
It was just after daybreak. The market in Wells had been open no more than a matter of minutes, but already the loaves had been picked over, nothing left but a handful of crumbs and a light dusting of white powder. Wren tried not to let her face twist into a grimace as she surveyed the scraps.
“The ones I sold were near two days old,” the baker said, wringing her hands nervously. “Last night I found my flour turned to ash, right in the barrel.” Her voice was hushed, almost as though she didn’t believe it herself.
Next to the baker stood her wife, weeping steadily into a yellowing handkerchief. Both women had dark circles beneath their eyes. Both glanced darkly around the meager market.
Most of the merchants hadn’t even bothered to come. The ones who had were armed with wares that lacked their usual liveliness. Potatoes were withered, their peels nearly black, their eyes blooming strange, gnarled roots larger than the starch itself. Milk, once white as fresh snow, now shone a sickly silver blue in bottles only half-full. The only vendor with a fully stocked stand was a tinker, selling bottles of bright purple potion—PLAGUE PREVENTERS, his sign said—for the criminal price of pure silver. Wren wasn’t certain if the reason his stand was empty of customers was the asking price or the potion’s impossible promise.
Even her own basket was lighter than usual. The henhouse had been filled with the stink of sulfur, and though she had searched high and low, she’d found nothing but nest after empty nest. The chickens had been eerily still, nothing like the usual squawking and ruffled feathers that came when dragon hatchlings snuck inside and swallowed the still-warm eggs whole. It wasn’t a creature that had stolen her eggs. It was the plague.
Wren waved away the baker’s string of apologies. She didn’t blame the woman for her misfortune. Everything was harder these days. Tensions between witches and ordinary folk were at an all-time high. The Coven’s High Councillor had issued a statement proclaiming the emergence of another dark witch, who had used dark magic to create the memory-stealing plague. The minds were the first to go, but—as everyone who had survived the Year of Darkness knew—it was only a matter of time before the bodies followed.
Crops were withering. Giant waves of water flowed through the streets, soaking everyone’s ankles and ruining their shoes. The wolves had left the forests and had begun feasting on farm animals. Farmer Haddon’s youngest son insisted they’d start eating little girls next.
Stepping out of the house had begun to feel like darting, unarmed, through a battle zone. Wren hadn’t wanted to go outside, not after the raindrops that had left behind the smell of sizzling skin, but her cupboard was down to its last onion, and if her father was going to get better, he needed something solid to eat.
His system couldn’t handle the disappointment of hunger.
Hers couldn’t handle the disappointment of disappointing him.
“It’s so quiet.” Wren’s voice was no more than a whisper. The baker’s eyes went as dark as the heavy gray clouds hanging low in the sky.
“Most took off west, toward the sea. As though sickness can’t reach the water.” She frowned, her eyes flashing with annoyance. “Some are caring for the fallen. The rest, well…”
She didn’t need to finish.
Around them, the air crackled with caustic energy, the scuffling of scattered footsteps, the swish of cloaks as the wearers drew them more tightly around their noses and mouths despite the heat of the summer sun. The first case had struck the town of Wells three days prior. For two days the plague limited itself to the ill and elderly, but then yesterday a ten-year-old had come running to the town square, shouting that his sister had dropped to the ground before springing up and running, screaming, into the fields.
The townspeople had sent out a search party, but no one had found her. Now neighbors looked upon neighbors suspiciously, scouring for symptoms. No one knew how to prevent the plague. They only knew it was spreading through their town faster than the wind, which had taken to blustering at speeds capable of toppling an ox. The world was falling apart, and not a single person knew how to save it. They hardly knew how to save themselves.
Wren bid the baker and her wife a somber farewell. Each step she took left her uneasy. The magic from the stones beneath her feet made her feel as though someone were churning butter inside her stomach.
She made her way quickly through the rest of the market, picking up a limp head of cabbage and a cut of meat so small it wouldn’t fill a child. Wren cringed as she parted with two copper coins. Her savings were already dwindling.
At the market’s edge, a foul taste overtook her, as though her tongue had been coated with ash. Her attention caught on something moving swiftly across the square. At first she thought it a snake, but upon closer inspection, she realized it was magic—thick, dark, and slimy—oozing across the cobblestones.
Wren had never seen magic so gruesome. The longer she watched it, the more it became clear
