“Are you okay?” Josh asks me.
“I’m fine,” I say, even though I’m not.
“Okay, everyone, back to your rooms.” Mr. Donovan’s voice carries across the garden, and I’m able to pick out his tall frame in the crowd.
Students walk back to their houses, but I feel stuck, the colors in the sky illuminating my guilt and fear, judging my choices the way Paige does.
“Get some sleep, Clara,” Mr. Donovan says. He runs a hand through his thick brown hair and winces as another flash of light steals the darkness. He’s young, probably in his midthirties, but worry creases the skin around his eyes.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” I ask.
Mr. Donovan shakes his head. “We’re too far south; it’s up to the witches stationed at the pole. There’s nothing we can do from here.”
I try to ignore the apprehension in his voice, but it stays with me as Josh and I walk back to my cabin. Josh packs his things and leaves his phone number and mailing address so I can contact him if I want to.
“Just in case,” he says, even though we both know I won’t reach out.
After he leaves, I stand at my window and stare outside. I pick up Nox and scratch his head, pull him close to my chest.
If I devote my life to this the way Paige and Mr. Hart and the administration want, I’ll be giving in. I’ll be saying it’s okay that people have died and will die for my magic.
But I’m not okay with any of it.
Which is why in eleven months, as the rest of the witches flee from the total solar eclipse that’s coming, I will stay outside and stand in the shadow of the moon. I will lose my connection to the sun and be stripped of my magic. And no one will die because of my power ever again.
I’ve been planning this as long as I’ve known it was coming. Total solar eclipses are rare, and to have one occur where I live during my lifetime is an opportunity I refuse to waste.
There are only two ways for a witch to lose their magic: to be in the path of totality during a solar eclipse, or to be depleted. Most witches die from depletion, though, and other witches usually step in if they see it happening, which makes it a suboptimal plan.
I’ve heard that being stripped is absolute agony, pain unlike any other. But it won’t be as painful as burying my parents was. Or burying my best friend.
I’ll survive it, and then I’ll start over.
Maybe I’ll go to a shader school and make real friends. Learn about things I’m interested in, no longer forced to practice a magic that takes and takes and takes.
I don’t know what I’ll choose to do, but that’s the point: I’ll have a choice.
Chapter Four
“The calm before the storm is a myth. It’s simply the moment in time when you’re most certain nothing will happen.”
—A Season for Everything
I still see the colors of the aurora even though it happened weeks ago. Greens and blues and violets flash across the lids of my eyes the way lightning flashes through clouds.
It was all over social media, the shaders posting picture after picture. They thought it was beautiful, a wonder of nature, instead of an indication that the atmosphere is becoming erratic. The shaders trust us, but a consequence of that trust is their complacency. It hasn’t occurred to them that something might be wrong.
And as hard as it is to admit, we need their trust.
We’ve told them things are getting harder for us, but they reply the same way every time: “We know you’ll figure it out. You always do.” And we have always figured it out. When they wanted to expand, to industrialize the most unforgiving places on Earth, we warned them against it, said there was only so much magic to go around. But they didn’t listen, certain we were being overly cautious, and when the terrain we told them was inhospitable turned out to be just that, we stepped in so no one would die. We figured it out.
But these events, the wildfires and the aurora, they’re like drops in a bucket. We see the bucket filling, we watch it closely, and we try to control the rising water as best we can. But at some point, it’s going to spill over, and we won’t be able to stop it.
We’ve lived peacefully with the shaders for so long, protected them for so long, that they thought we were giving them a brilliant show with the aurora. But we can’t keep protecting them at the cost of our home. We won’t. And if they want to survive, they’ll have to make the same choice.
Assembly let out ten minutes ago, a tense, strained hour of announcements that was hard to get through. The aurora has covered our campus in a fog of anxiety that’s difficult to see past. Everyone, even the faculty, is stressed.
I’m sweating beneath my assembly robe, the satin resting heavily on my shoulders. The dark navy makes my red hair stand out more than normal, and I pull several strays from the material. Orange, crimson, emerald, and sky-blue silk line the shawl around my neck and weigh me down with crushing expectation.
Mine is the only striped shawl the Eastern School of Solar Magic has ever issued.
I take my time walking to the farm. Rays of sunlight reach through the trees and reflect off the old brick buildings and pathways, drenching the stone in bright-yellow light the color of daffodils.
A group of autumns is in the orchard harvesting apples. They talk among themselves, dropping their apples into burlap sacks that hang from their shoulders. Part of me wants to join them, to give in to the pull and harvest alongside them. But it’s too risky.
Magic is deeply personal, intertwining itself with all the emotions of
