But something isn’t right when I take hold of it.
It feels different. Familiar, but different. It isn’t aggressive or deliberate or cold. It’s patient, in a way, waiting for whatever I’ll ask of it.
I shake my head and refocus.
I reach for my magic once more and send all my energy into it, creating the biggest flood of power I can.
Sang screams.
Then, all around us, tiny green plants push through the snow.
I scramble back.
My hands are shaking, and my eyes are wide.
Sang sits up, so close to me his shoulder touches mine. Our legs are tangled together, but we don’t move.
The magic. It felt like spring.
“What…” I start, but my voice fades. I don’t even know how to ask it. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” There’s wonder in his voice. “But I felt it.” I lift my gaze from the small green sprouts encircling us, and instead focus on the gold in his eyes. “I felt you pull it out of me.”
“But that’s impossible.” I watch him closely, aware of every breath he takes. I don’t dare look away.
“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “But look around us. Those sprouts could only come from spring magic, and I would never be strong enough to grow new plants this quickly in winter. They had to come from you.” He pauses. Then, “Try again.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. Whatever this is, it terrifies me. “No,” I say again. There is no way to pull magic from a witch without them handing it over, without them weaving it in with yours. And even then, it can only be done between witches of the same season.
A winter witch pulling magic from a spring is unimaginable.
Sang takes off his gloves and grabs my hands. “Try again.”
Almost instantly, I feel Sang’s magic moving through his veins, pulsing beneath his skin. I’m desperate to touch it, as if it’s life itself, and before I know what I’m doing, I close my eyes and reach.
It responds, and I pull it from him in one strong motion.
Sang gasps.
The earth shifts as a birch tree shoves through the ground and grows right next to us, tall and white and real.
Spring magic heightened to its full strength in the dead of winter.
Impossible.
I want to reach out and touch the smooth, white bark, feel it against my skin, but I’m scared it will vanish.
Sang opens his eyes, and we stare at each other. Our chests heave, our breaths heavy between us.
The magic beneath his skin still reaches for mine, our hands vibrating with the force of it.
It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, as if I’ve seen his soul, read his mind, touched every single part of him.
He is as good, as genuine, as I thought he was, distilled into the most perfect stream of magic.
I cannot tear my eyes from his.
He swallows hard. “Clara,” he says, his voice rough with something that sets my insides on fire. “If you don’t want me to kiss you right now, you’re going to have to stop looking at me like that.”
But that’s exactly what I want. I don’t care that his lip is bleeding and I’m out of breath. I want it so badly it doesn’t feel like a want. It feels like a need.
I keep my eyes on his for several seconds, the idea of looking away as impossible as the birch tree standing next to us.
I lean toward him, ever so slightly. He does the same.
Then I pause.
If I kiss Sang after what just happened, I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself. And if I can’t control myself, I can’t control my magic.
I slowly look down and pull my hands from his. Sang leans back, the cut on his lip bright with blood.
We’re silent, our legs still tangled, our breaths still coming shallow and fast.
The birch tree beside us is tranquil and quiet, as if it has lived in the center of this field forever.
I can see my breath in the cold winter air. I watch it mix with Sang’s in the space between us.
His magic is still wrapped up in my own, winter and spring colliding as if it was always supposed to be this way. I could push my magic down, break the connection.
But I don’t want to.
So I don’t.
Spring
Chapter Twenty-Three
“And just when the world is certain it cannot handle another day of winter, the vernal equinox arrives in a rush of sweet rain and awakening color.”
—A Season for Everything
The vernal equinox has come and gone. The days are getting longer, and the Earth is beginning to warm. The quiet and stillness of winter is replaced with the bustle of spring as birds return home and animals wake from sleep.
It’s been two weeks since Sang’s and my discovery, and I haven’t told a single soul. We tried it several more times before the equinox, just to be sure, and each time confirmed the impossibility that I can summon off-season magic.
Not even Alice’s memoir alludes to this kind of power, and I’m unsure if it’s because she never discovered it or if she simply referred to it as “magic” because she was always able to do it. Or maybe it’s that the Earth was happier when Alice was alive and hadn’t yet been pushed too far. Maybe this kind of magic wasn’t needed.
Sang uprooted the birch tree and replanted it somewhere else on campus, along with the sprouts that pushed through the soil around us. The control field is back to normal. No one else knows what we discovered that day.
I try to concentrate on what Mr. Mendez is saying at the front of the classroom, but all I can think about is the way it felt to be tangled up in Sang’s magic, as if I’d been wandering alone for seventeen years and finally came home.
Sunlight reaches through the windows and reflects off Mr. Mendez’s glasses. His black hair stays perfectly in place when he looks down at his book to close
