A name. It feels irreverent somehow tonamewhat we’re doing. Then again, to Clara thisisa game. She doesn’t understand how magic can pull you in, pull you under. Every spell is a pomegranate seed on your tongue, binding you to the underworld.
Maybe not for everyone. But it is for people like me.
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds’ night migrations
“What did you say?” Leonie is looking at me strangely; I must have spoken aloud.
I swallow. “ ‘The Night Migrations,’ ” I say. “You know, the Louise Glück poem.”
Blank stares answer me. My discomfort aches inside me like a swallowed rock.
“FromAverno,” Ellis says after a moment, and when I turn to her, she’s smiling. “In which the poet writes of Persephone and her marriage to the underworld. The poems circle the same question: how one’s soul could possibly endure when life’s beauty vanishes from reach.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
Alex wrote an essay on those poems. Her copy ofAvernoprobably still resides on the Godwin House shelves.
Ellis nods once, as if a decision has been made.
“Welcome,” she says, “to the Night Migrations.”
The silence that follows stretches out like a long ribbon, silky-smooth; we are all like changeling children hanging on to Ellis’s every word.
“There are rules,” Ellis continues. “First: no talking about the Night Migrations. Not unless we’re here in the woods, or at any other meeting location.”
“This isn’t Fight Club,” Kajal says.
“No, but it’s more fun this way,” Ellis answers. “Second: Felicity and I choose when and where. There will be no argument or discussion on this point. Third, you will know the week’s meeting time and place from a note we slide under your door. Since you won’t be discussing the Night Migrations with anyone else, you won’t know what time the others are told to arrive. But Iwilltell you that the arrival times are staggered. The journey to our meeting location is part of the experience. As in life, every woman must make her journey alone.”
Ellis’s gaze flicks toward me then, and I think I catch a glint of something like amusement in her gray eyes—although that might just be the candlelight. If our game were real, the journey of the Night Migrations would play out as it does in the real world: born alone, die alone.Now,one of theAvernopoems reads,her whole life is beginning—unfortunately, it’s going to be a short life.
“And what is that?” Kajal says distastefully, pointing at the circle I’ve constructed, then at the assortment of mouse skulls lined up along the rock. All of them collected last year, all found in Godwin House. I hadn’t thought them uncanny until later, after Alex died.
“You don’t get to play the game if you don’t follow our rules,” I say.
Beside me, Ellis smiles.
—
The next morning my memories of the initiation are blurry, oil paint bleeding into water. I remember the way the others looked on the forest floor, dead leaves and bracken scattered in their laps. I remember painting the blood on Ellis’s brow, Ellis gazing at me as if she could see through my mask and into the heart of me.
My fingers were still on her skin, wet and scarlet, as she murmured my name.
Whatever else the others felt, I knew what I saw in Ellis’s eyes last night.
Euphoria.
The most vital part of any occult ritual is the closing. Witches, Druids, and Auguries might interface with creatures of the Dead, but we are also obligated to protect the mortal world from arcane influences. When we open a door, we must also shut it, or risk inviting Evil in.
—Profane Magick
Alexandra Haywood, the elite mountaineer and the second-youngest girl to summit Denali, has disappeared while attending her boarding school. She is 17. Haywood was recently in the news for her involvement in a physical altercation with fellow climber Esme Delacroix. An anonymous detective speaking to the Associated Press said the police are considering multiple theories. Divers are scouring the campus lake in case of an accidental drowning, but detectives have not ruled out the possibility that Haywood ran away to avoid public scrutiny over the assault.
—Excerpt from an article by Mariely Reyes, journalist atSport Climbing Quarterly
