For seven generations, the fates of the Blackburn daughters have been bound to Anathema Island and to the descendants of the Original Eight. One can’t help but wonder what this might mean for Nor, the eighth and therefore last of the Blackburn daughters. Could it be that for her, love was a choice, a hand she could either grasp or push away? And, more importantly, would that impressive line of family talent finally come to a quiet and unremarkable end with her?
Nor had been counting on it.
Nor Blackburn wasn’t afraid of blood.
There were several things she was afraid of, but blood wasn’t one of them. This was fortunate, because when she picked up shards of glass from the cup she had dropped, she cut her finger, and it bled. It bled a lot.
For a moment too long, Nor looked at her finger and watched the blood well up and trickle into the sink. It reminded her of how, in the past, she had sometimes been “careless” with knives when loading the dishwasher or chopping vegetables for dinner. It was a way to cause pain without appearing to do so deliberately. It was a way to disguise spilled blood as accidental.
Nor ran cold water over her finger and then wrapped it quickly with gauze. She was more careful when picking up the rest of the broken glass. Nor wasn’t afraid of blood, but not being afraid of blood was one of the things she was afraid of.
In her bedroom, Nor found the little dog still asleep on her pillow and an early morning September rainstorm beating against the windows. She stretched her arms over her head, and her fingertips brushed the slope of one of the eight walls that made up the room. With windows and a skylight on every side, Nor’s room seemed closer to the heavens than to the ground. At night, the dark blue of the sky was her blanket, and the glow from the stars illuminated her dreams. On clear days, she could usually see most of the island from up there. On this morning, a thick, dreary fog blanketed the ground, and Nor could see only the tops of the trees along the shoreline and the rocky gray waters of the Salish Sea.
It had been Nor’s great-grandmother, Astrid — a woman who could lift a length of timber twice her size over her head — who had built the Tower in the shape of an octagon, making it virtually indestructible. “It is not impossible to destroy a witch,” Astrid had been known to say, “so her home should be sturdy enough to at least give her time to escape through the back door.”
Nor pulled a pair of ripped jeans out from under a pile of clothes on the floor. She tugged the jeans up over her hips and pulled on a black sweater. The stretched-out sleeves flapped at her sides like broken wings, but they did a good job covering the thin white scars that ran across her wrists and along her upper arms.
She paused just long enough in front of the mirror to line her blue eyes in shimmery black and attempt to rake her fingers through her wild waist-long hair. She found her phone on her dresser beside an old book of Greek myths, then snagged her muddy running shoes by the laces and stepped over her grandmother’s dog, Antiquity. The wolfhound, transfixed by a pair of crows perched outside one of the windows, gave a low growl.
“Oh, hush,” Nor scoffed. “We both know you’d have no idea what to do with one if you caught it. Your hunting days ended lifetimes ago.”
Antiquity pondered the truth behind this, then, giving a final huff at the crows, stood, pushed past Nor, and bounded down the stairs, the windows of the house rattling with each thunderous step. The little dog in the bed burrowed farther under the covers.
Unlike the rest of the Blackburn daughters, Nor’s gift — or “Burden,” as the Blackburn women called it — hadn’t arrived until the first penumbral lunar eclipse after her eleventh birthday. She had awoken early that morning — so early that the moon still shone brightly in the dark February sky — to find her grandmother Judd standing at the end of her bed.
“Well, what is it then?” Judd had spoken around the rosewood pipe clenched in her teeth. Having only moved into the Tower the year before, Nor had been still unaccustomed to her grandmother’s gruff ways. Her heart had quickened when Judd peered at her; there was never any hiding from her all-seeing eyes.
Judd was the sixth daughter, Burdened with the gift of healing. Nor had always feared those times when she found herself at her grandmother’s mercy, when all of her discrepancies, all of her flaws and fears were exposed, and Judd calmly repaired the parts of her that she’d broken.
“Take a deep breath,” Nor’s grandmother had ordered. Nor did as she was told, and a surge of relief filled her. She felt — nothing. Perhaps she’d been spared? Judd exhaled a plume of smoke so that the next breath Nor took was thick with it. It tickled her throat. And in noticing that, she’d noticed something else.
“I can hear the bees,” Nor had whispered, and, closing her eyes, the sound of the hibernating hive in the garden grew louder in her head. “They aren’t talking to me exactly. But I can hear them. I can hear their queen. The next snow will be here in a week. And the rooster in the yard will be dead by spring.”
Judd confirmed Nor’s Burden with a firm nod. “So the plants and animals can talk to ya, can they? That’s a fine one, Nor.”
Nor had understood what her grandmother was telling her then: that she was safe. As long as Nor stayed content with her innocuous ability, there was little chance of her becoming like her mother.
Which was why, long after Judd had gone back to bed, eleven-year-old Nor had watched the moon fade into the morning sky and tried to pretend that the Burden she’d told her grandmother about was the only one she’d received.
Although a fair portion of Anathema Island remained mostly uninhabited, the more populated part of the island was a composite of farmhouses and beach rentals, historic buildings and the occasional tourist trap. Most of the shops and businesses sat along the main road, Meandering Lane, named for the way the street twisted and turned along the island’s southwestern coastline.
The Witching Hour sat atop the Sweet and Savory Bakery. As Nor started up the outside stairs, she noticed the door to the bakery had been flung open, and the aroma of freshly baked bread — cinnamon and pumpernickel and sourdough — wafted over her. She could see Bliss Sweeney, a smudge of flour on each of her rosy cheeks, sharing a morning cup of coffee with Vitória Oliveira, the proprietor of the Milk and Honey Spa down the street. They both waved when they saw Nor.
“Would you mind putting these out for your customers?” Nor asked. She stopped and handed each woman a stack of flyers she pulled out of her bag. “I promised they’d be on every countertop of every business on the street.”
“Madge is going all out this Halloween, isn’t she?” Bliss mused, examining the flyer.
“A lantern-lit midnight tour of the island cemetery. A séance and palm reading. Any chance she’ll convince our own young Blackburn to join the festivities this year?”
“Not if I can help it,” Nor said with a smile.
“But what if Rona Blackburn shows this year?” Vitória Oliveira teased. “Madge has been making that promise for years.”
“All the more reason for me to stay at home,” Nor said. “I’m going to turn out the lights and eat all of the candy Apothia buys for trick-or-treaters.”
Bliss laughed. “No interest in meeting your infamous matriarch?”
“Not in the least.”
Despite her being a Blackburn, no one on Anathema had ever treated Nor any differently from anyone else. Eclectic characters were just a part of island life. This, after all, was a place where street names were reminiscent of fairy tales, with names like Red Poppy Road and Stars-in-Their-Eyes Lane. It was a place where bohemians came to retire, to spend their free hours creating sculptures out of recycled electronics or painting large graphic nudes of one another that they proudly displayed at the weekly street fair. It was where Harper Forgette — who, genealogically speaking, was Nor’s sixth cousin — and her girlfriend, Kaleema, ran an alpaca farm on the Forgette family land. It was where clients looked forward to a taste of Vitória Oliveira’s lavender jam just as much as they did to her lavender-i
nfused pedicures, and where Theo Dawson, the island’s sole mechanic, had been known to accept payment in croque monsieurs.
Heckel Abernathy, the owner of Willowbark General Store, on the other hand, insisted to all who would listen that the Blackburn family was very special indeed. To him, they were the living embodiment of a good luck charm or a talisman, and the cause of the island’s good fortune. It was understandable why he might think so. The link between the Blackburn daughters and the island was so strong Nor often imagined that the veins that ran underneath her skin and the tree roots that ran under her feet were one and the same.
The island itself was rich with relics of Blackburn family lore. A plaque sat in front of every building constructed by Astrid Blackburn, the fifth daughter, designating it a historical landmark. A statue of Astrid’s mother, Scarlet, stood in front of the library she’d rescued books from when a fire surged through the island in 1928. The island cemetery boasted headstones of all five departed Blackburn daughters, as well as Rona Blackburn herself. It was said that leaving a white lily on the grave of Mara, the third daughter, would ensure safe passage into the afterlife for departed loved ones.
And though there were many stories about why these extraordinarily gifted women could do the extraordinarily gifted things they did, thankfully for Nor, those who truly believed it was because they were witches were few and far between.
Nor left the bakery and continued up the staircase, careful not to slip on the wet blanket of red and orange leaves covering the steps. The second-floor porch had been decorated for the season with cornstalks and pots of Chinese-lantern flowers. A hand-painted sign in the window read:
GUIDED WALKING TOURS OF ANATHEMA ISLAND’S
WITCH-RELEVANT LANDMARKS AND LEGENDS.
AVAILABLE THRICE DAILY.
FOR TIMES AND PRICES, INQUIRE WITHIN.
Nor stomped her wet boots, entered the shop, and was greeted by the tiny clang of bells and a thick haze of incense. Walking into the Witching Hour always felt to Nor like she was walking into a secret. The dark purple walls and velvet curtains gave the room an air of mystery. A black-painted pentacle covered the wooden floor. Short, fat candles flickered from the windowsills. Grimacing gargoyles and death masks hung from the walls alongside dried herbs and shelves of apothecary bottles filled with all kinds of nefarious contents: graveyard dirt, dried scorpions, bat’s blood. There were broomsticks that smelled faintly of cinnamon, and tall, pointed hats crafted by a local milliner. The shop even had its own familiar, a skittish black feline by the name of Kikimora.
It was a shame really. If any of the Blackburn daughters had been gifted with a talent for spell work, the Witching Hour would have had everything they could ever need. But the art of casting spells had died with Rona, it seemed. And good riddance to it, Nor thought.
As Nor hung up her jacket, a woman she’d only ever known as Wintersweet bounced into the room, a black-hooded cloak hanging from her shoulders.
“Tonic?” she squeaked, offering Nor a mug. “Just brewed it this morning.”
Nor took the mug, trying to avoid the woman’s gaze as she waited, expectantly, for Nor to take a sip. When she did, Wintersweet clapped her hands gleefully and skipped back into the adjoining room. Nor put the mug down. The contents tasted too vile for her to drink.
Nor took her place behind the cash register as the participants of the morning’s tour began to trickle steadily into the small shop, rain jackets and umbrellas dripping. The Witching Hour’s owner, Madge Shimizu, appeared in the back doorway.
“You forgot this,” Madge teased Nor, then plopped a tall, black, pointed hat onto Nor’s head. Nor grimaced, and Madge laughed. “If you get a chance,” Madge said, “there are some boxes in the back that need to be stocked.” She pulled up the hood of her own black cloak and welcomed the small crowd. Once she and Wintersweet had led the group out into the rain, Nor plucked the hat from her head and tossed it to the floor.
Despite the best efforts of a well-meaning guidance counselor, Nor had dropped out of high school after her junior year. In their last required meeting, the counselor had declared that Nor lacked, to use her words, “the intrinsic motivation to do anything of importance or relevance with this life.”
This wasn’t exactly a surprising revelation. Teachers had been saying roughly the same thing about Nor for as long as she could remember. Nor’s report cards were typically littered with phrases like “lacks initiative” and “is easily discouraged.” She did, at her grandmother’s insistence, take the exams required to earn her General Education Diploma — which, it turned out, wasn’t actually a diploma, but a certificate that Nor was supposed to print off the Internet herself.
Nor had never had the heart to tell anyone that all she wanted was to make the slightest mark as humanly possible on the world; she was too preoccupied with proving to herself that she was nothing like her mother to be focused on anything else. Which was exactly why the link to that GED certificate was sitting unopened in Nor’s inbox, and she was still working the same delightfully dull part-time job at the Witching Hour, stocking the shop’s sagging shelves with tarot cards and spell kits, selling faux love potions to tourists, and attempting to stay awake through slow afternoons.
Nor had unpacked half of the new merchandise, restocked the apothecary section with mandrake root and sumac berry, and added a fresh pile of the Witching Hour bumper stickers — I’d Rather Be Riding My Broom — to the front counter by the time Savvy entered the shop a few hours later. She was carrying two tall blended coffees from the Sweet and Savory Bakery, which Nor eyed greedily.
Savvy, Nor’s best friend, was a petite beam of sunshine in scuffed-up combat boots and ripped lace leggings. A punk rock Pollyanna, she was sweet and genuine and, in Nor’s opinion, extremely pretty with big brown eyes, ocher-brown skin, and wildly colored hair.
“So how was school?” Nor teased, gratefully taking the coffee.
Nor didn’t envy the load of books she could see in Savvy’s hot-pink backpack or the hours of homework she’d have to complete this weekend.
“Nothing but a shell of its former self since you left,” Savvy said. “They say no one in the history of the school made a greater impact there than you did.”
“Must have been all those clubs I didn’t join and all the classes I cut.”
“The dances you didn’t attend, the yearbook photos you never took.” Savvy shook her head. “I’ve never known anyone so devoted to anonymity.”
“Have I told you I don’t have a single social media account?”
“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Savvy stood on her tiptoes to swipe at the handwoven dream catchers hanging from the ceiling. “I tried messaging you about tonight before I remembered the only way to communicate with you is through carrier pigeon.”
“Or, you know, you could have texted me.”
“Semantics.”
“What’s happening tonight?” Nor asked. She felt something brush against her leg. She looked down. Kikimora meowed at her silently until Nor picked her up and placed her on the counter.
“A bunch of us are thinking about heading over to Halcyon Island,” Savvy said.
Some of the islands in the archipelago were so small that they were privately owned. Halcyon was one such island, named for the wealthy family who had purchased it in the 1940s. The novelty of owning an island in the Salish Sea was lost on the Halcyon heirs, and Halcyon Island was later sold. It had exchanged hands multiple times: the most recent owners — a pair of well-meaning mainlanders — had converted the Halcyon family mansion into a bed-and-breakfast. It had closed a few years ago, and the island had been empty ever since.
Nor made a face. “I don’t get why you like hanging out there. It gives me the creeps.”
“I thought we liked things that give us the creeps?” Savvy said.
“We do,” Nor said. “Just not that place. They found a body over there, Savvy.”
“It’s not there anymore!” Savvy retorted. “Plus, we live
on an island. What the fuck else is there to do?”
“You could go to work,” Nor suggested jokingly. “Isn’t the Society supposed to be open now?”
For years, the barn behind Theo Dawson’s mechanic shop had been where islanders brought belongings they no longer needed or wanted. Though money never exchanged hands — the Society for the Protection of Discarded Things, as Savvy fondly called it, was more a take-what-you-need-and-leave-the-rest kind of place — Savvy still spent most of her free time behind the front counter. She was, to use her words, the Guardian of Unwanted Things.
“I could do a great many things, but that doesn’t mean I will” was Savvy’s reply.
Nor laughed and nudged Kikimora out of the way before she lifted another heavy box onto the counter. Most of the books and curios that Madge ordered for the shop came from places with names like Crystal Waves and the Enlightened Sorcerer. Nor found a publishing house called Crone Books particularly irritating because its logo was the silhouette of a stereotypical witch, complete with a long, pointed nose and a wart on her chin.
This particular box, however, was unmarked. The return address was from some obscure town in Maine that Nor had never even heard of. She ripped the box open. Savvy reached in and pulled out a book from the stack inside.
“The Price Guide to the Occult,” she read aloud. “Intriguing title.” She flipped the book over. “A collection of magick spells, passed down for generations and now available for common use for the first time ever. They even spell magick with a k.”
“If that doesn’t make it legit, I don’t know what does,” Nor said sardonically. In most of those so-called spell books, the spells typically read more like recipes, most of which, for reasons Nor had never been able to understand, required the person who cast them to be naked under a full moon. She doubted very much that this spell book was any different.
“Wait,” Savvy said, flipping through the pages. “It’s not actually a spell book.”