Witches Burn at Dawn ✔

5. Yaroslava

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Seven years ago

It'd been over a year since I'd seen Vlad. Late September, and he hadn't come this summer. I didn't know his number or what relatives he had in our town-not that I'd go and beg to see him, anyway. I asked Dan though, and he loathed my questions every time.

"Why do you want to see him?" He laughed, contempt in his voice plain. We took a walk into the grove, not far from the hospital, it followed the river and gradually merged with a forest that led far to the east. Well, I was taking a walk, pushing Bogdan's wheelchair in front of me. The path between the trees was narrow, but even, easy to tread, the air calmingly fresh, the world quiet.

"I just want to return him his book," I said. I want more books. "Maybe he gave you something else to read?"

Bogdan glanced up at me from over his shoulder, shadows falling across his furrowed brow. "So this is what it's all about? His books are ridiculous, throw yours away. Or burn it." He sighed. "Not once did you come to talk to Vlad last summer before he gave one to you, and this summer you never even visited me. Texts and calls are fine, but...feel empty."

"Sorry." The word fell from my lips too quick, a shallow apology. I looked at my bandaged wrist, the real reason I came to the hospital today. Bogdan was my best friend, or the only person I considered a true friend, but it unhinged me to go to the place I usually dropped by to mend the outcomes of my school fights. "I help mom in the garden during summers. Don't you know Vlad's phone number or something?"

"No."

Bogdan had always loved stories, loved finding hidden meanings behind them, loved spooky legends and mystical fables and everything that suggested there was more to the world that eyes could behold. So why wouldn't he like another mystery?

"If you believe angels watch over you, even though you've never seen them, why can't magic be real?" I pressed as we turned toward the river.

There was a long pause. "It can. But if so, it's evil. Magic is unnatural, Yara."

Yeah? And those children you watch playing football every day, throwing stones at me, calling me a freak, are natural? I itched to bristle. That some angel of yours wasn't watchful enough, and now you're stuck in these wheels, is natural? We didn't ask for this nature. But if I could ask to change it, I would.

I didn't stomach to say it out loud. And more silence was all I had in response.

"If what's written in those books is real, then don't you think it can hurt you?" Bogdan finally said, his tone guarded. "Magic can hurt you."

So you are interested, I realized. But you're also scared.

And he did have more books. Good. "It doesn't seem evil to me." I shrugged, breathing the air spiced with autumn leaves. "The one I read rather looked like, I don't know, folk medicine?" Under the leather-bound cover was a collection of lores and poems, each rhyming spells and rituals of luck, healing, forecasting the future, summoning courage, and even invoking spirits. Some lines seemed to be in riddles, others required rare herbs and ingredients I couldn't figure out, like immortal fire. What the hell was that?

But what they promised...Vlad had been right, I'd never encountered anything like it before, anything that not only bragged about witchcraft but actually claimed it to be real. So what if? What if.

We stopped by the river bank, the branches low above the water. The slope was short and abrupt, dangerous to come too close, but a perfect hiding spot even in daylight. "Folk medicine does not include drops of your own blood and performing under the full moon," Bogdan teased, gazing upon the waters glittering in the sunlight. Yet the tension around his jaw told me he didn't find it amusing at all.