Page 39 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite & Spellwork

Thresholds were powerful. A witch’s threshold even more so, she’d come to learn. When you crossed over it, you entered their domain. A place completely under their protection. Except that protection was gone now.

Riddle meowed encouragingly.

The sickly feeling left behind by the baneful magic that had taken her grandmother had dissipated weeks ago, but now a new kind of wrong had settled in its place.

The home had changed little in appearance over the years since Saga was a child. Her grandmother had a place for things where she liked them and saw no reason to ever shift them. Her grandfather’s favorite pipe remained cleaned and sitting on its stand by his favorite chair. Every wall with space for it became a gallery dedicated to framed family pictures.

Despite their estrangement, Saoirse kept any article that so much as mentioned Saga’s mother and attached it to the refrigerator. The home’s aesthetic and energy were constant—there was life and comfort and joy. The scent of something on the stove or in the oven. There were the echoes of laughter after Christmas crackers, the ghosts of a chorus singing “Happy Birthday,” or faint notes of a lullaby that sung her to sleep as a child sick with a fever. The house had always felt alive.

It had never felt empty.

As Saga took her first few steps inside, she was only aware of how hollowed out the space felt now. She fought back a tightness in her chest, taking deliberate slow breaths.

Riddle rubbed against her legs, and she reassured him with a smile.

“I’m okay.” Saga didn’t believe it herself, and she suspected Riddle didn’t either. When she’d thought there had been a burglar the other morning, or even when she’d discovered it was her mother, she’d been able to ignore all this. Now it felt like it might crush her. Where did one even start? “The attic.” She looked to the cat at her feet. “Magdalena said it would probably be easier to go through the things I didn’t see every day. Christmas decorations, that kind of thing.”

Riddle chittered and led Saga up the stairs. They passed the second floor with her old room and the guest room and arrived at the third floor with the primary bedroom and her grandfather’s office.

Riddle stopped in the middle of the hallway, sitting back on his hind legs and raising both front paws together in a pulling motion. He dropped back down on all fours, did a circle and meowed expectantly at Saga.

She looked up at the ceiling where he’d pointed. The ceilings on the third floor were coffered, and this particular design helped disguise that the center sunken panel was actually the hatch to the attic. “Ah, right… I’d almost forgot…”

When she was a child the attic had always seemed mysterious and magical. Even the way the ladder would unfold was otherworldly. A portal beckoning her to adventure. Sometimes, Saoirse or William would open it just to make her smile.

Saga’s eyes began to sting, and she shook herself like a runner preparing for a race. “Don’t get in your head, get into the attic.” She squinted at the panel that was nearly an entire Saga above her. “Remember how you get into the attic,” she clarified her objective.

Saoirse herself had not been a terribly tall woman, so surely there had to be something nearby that she could use without having to go all the way down to the kitchen for the stepladder.

It seemed silly, anyway, getting a stepladder to get a ladder. Silly enough that Saga refused to stoop to it (or would it be rise?), even if nobody but the cat would know about it.

Despite being the rightful owner of the town house, Saga felt nosy peeking into her grandmother’s old bedroom, at least when it wasn’t to stop a tyrant from ransacking it. She felt like she was five again and searching for Christmas presents. Still, she had to admit the residual guilt of snooping around Saoirse’s room was a preferable feeling to the sensation that happiness had vacated the premises.

The primary bedroom was the location of the second fireplace—a fact Saga had forgotten until she was staring at it. This was absolutely a plus in the “keep the town house” column. Though that would then also mean not only cleaning out her grandmother’s bedroom but sleeping in it. Would she ever get used to that? Would it ever feel like her room?

These thoughts fizzled as her attention rested on the poker next to the fireplace. It was just long enough that it might do the trick to close the gap between her reach and the attic hatch.

Armed with an extension, she returned to the hatch and held it over her head, stretching her arms, torso, and legs to reach. It was not until she pushed herself to the tips of her toes, however, that she felt the resistance of the push latch as it compressed and clicked. She stepped back, and the hatch opened with a gradual release, the ladder unfolding gently as it always had, stopping just before her in a way that felt like an invitation.

There was nowhere to set down the poker without getting soot on the carpet, so Saga scaled the steps with it in hand. It had an unexpected comforting effect, brandishing it like a sword as she faced her fear of the last month.

The attic was not a place of nightmares—even dimly lit with shadows abundant, it was clean and meticulously organized. The ceiling was gabled, but at her height, there were few places where she’d have to duck her head. Saga set the poker on the unfinished wooden floor before pulling herself to her feet.

She was about to call down to Riddle to let him know she wouldn’t be long when he came bounding up the last steps and joined her. “Oh… You can get up the ladder. Brilliant.”

The Christmas/Yule section was easy enough to spot—it took up nearly the entirety of the back corner. She started picking through it, but this proved more difficult than she’d first imagined. Each box faintly smelled of pine as she sifted through them, and every object was drenched in nostalgia. There were stockings and carved reindeer. There were countless flameless candles that Saoirse would put all over the house to the point where Saga could not remember most of the house lamps even being used in the winter. “Look.” She lifted up the star that had sat on the top of the tree since she was a child. It was constructed from hawthorn branches, tied with twine, and surrounded by thin lights. Set into the center of the star were antlers that when hooked up to the rest of the lights also illuminated to mimic the Deer Mother’s journey.23

Riddle trilled in recognition.

A question came to mind that Saga had once asked before when she was small and now asked again, knowing the answer might be different. “Riddle… If magic is real, and fey are real… Is Santa real?”

He flicked his tail back and forth, indicating this was a more complicated answer than a yes or no, thereby at least confirming that “no” was not an appropriate answer.24 Then he cocked his head to the side and gave her a judgmental squint. This was not what they came to do.

“I know, I know, I’m getting distracted,” said Saga, replacing the star. “But at least I’m here, I’m engaging with the house, I’m not ignoring it…” She closed the box and kept walking past other seasonal decorations. “I’m probably gonna keep the Christmas decorations. Especially if I don’t sell the town house. Where’s the really old stuff? The stuff Mamó never brought down?”

Riddle thoughtfully surveyed the attic and wove his way behind a stack of cardboard boxes to what looked like a few weathertight totes. He hesitated before putting both paws on one and looking over his shoulder at her. His ears drooped, as did his tail, and he suddenly looked nervous.

“What’s wrong?”