by R.E. Rule

We were witches, Delilah and I. All that summer we braided old thread into charms and walked invisible when barefoot. Once we held hands and chanted until thunder cracked the horizon and rain dug rivers in the dirt. Maybe she’d always been a witch. She’d come to live with Ms. Gray down the street, and I’d always been too embarrassed to ask why. But I’d never known what I was until Delilah came.

It was Delilah who found our magic place. She’d crawled under the cedar that slouched between the cornfield and the Big Wood, and when I followed, she was sitting on the dark earth, her arms spread wide. “This is it,” she said. “Our Sanctum.”

Then I saw it too: a green mossy room lit with golden lights, a stairway of branches leading up to a sky that was always dark and scattered with stars, and real gold ran in amber beads down the red trunk. We brought in chairs, and a table, and a cauldron for potions, and jars of ingredients for brewing them. Like an incantation, we carved our names into the largest branch: Maddy and Delilah.

Nobody ever found us there. Sometimes they walked by so closely we could see their feet, and Delilah put her hand over my mouth to hold in my laughter.

It was nearly autumn when she came to the Sanctum and told me she was leaving. She handed me the bracelet she always wore and I’d always secretly coveted. It was a bright string of beads, the largest embossed with a silver “D.” She’d let me wear it once, only once. “It’s magic,” she’d said, sliding it back over her hand. “But it only works for me.”

Around her wrist, the beads had gleamed like red and purple stars, so I knew she was right. Now she dropped it into my hand like it was nothing.

“We’ll meet here when you come back,” I said.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” she said. “It’s far away, where I’m going.” She was different today, her head held up like she knew something I didn’t, and I hated that. She sat and looked out the door, though the corn was too tall to see anything but a green wall.

I went cold all over, though I didn’t know why. Then I walked to the cauldron and clenched my fists in terror. The potion inside had curdled. It was nothing but pine needles floating on dirty water. I ran up the stairs to make sure the dark sky and the stars were still there, then I ran down again. Delilah was still doing nothing.

I knew then, though it was too horrible to say: She was going and not coming back and taking with her our magic.

“We’ll make a pact,” I blurted. “We’ll meet here in ten years. We’ll be old enough then to do what we want.”

Delilah turned to look at me, and the potion in the cauldron shimmered green. She stood up and took my hands in hers, the way she did when we made our strongest magic. “Ten years,” she said, smiling. And I knew it would happen because Delilah had said it would.

Not once did I go back to the Sanctum in those ten years. Never tried to cast a spell or brew a potion. Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t work without Delilah. Under my breath, I chanted our incantations to feel the familiar taste in my mouth. I didn’t mind being the strange girl who muttered to herself and made no friends. I was a witch. What friend could I have but Delilah?

When I finally walked through the sharp stalks of cut corn to the cedar tree, the forest had grown into a stranger. Delilah’s bracelet was around my wrist. I’d worn it until the elastic broke and the beads scattered under chairs and into cracks in the floor. I’d crawled after them and strung and restrung them, trying to put their magic back together. But after that, it had never fit right. The silver “D” had worn away.

I sat in the dirt beside the field and waited. She’d come from the road, and like the forest, I might not recognize her. But I’d know her. That was our magic.

In a blaze of orange fire, the sun set. Crickets began to sing. Stiff from waiting, I walked to the road and back again. “Delilah?” I called, thinking she’d come another way and was waiting for me.

Above me, the cedar shivered in the wind. The night had grown massive and dark. “Delilah?” I called again, louder.

No answer. She’d broken her promise. She hadn’t come.

I clutched the beads around my wrist. I hadn’t minded waiting when I knew she was coming back, when magic lay ahead of me. I needed it, like needing water after years of thirst. Now it, like Delilah, was gone. Horror tasted like iron in my mouth. Clenching my eyes against the scratching branches, I rushed into the Sanctum.

Broken cups and chipped plates littered the dirt. The cauldron lay on its side, its bottom a rusty maw. Sap had covered our names in a hard yellow shell. There was nothing left but an old tree and the smell of animal dung. Sharp and angry, the branches shrunk around me, pushing me out.

I ran, away from the tree and across the field. At the far edge, I stopped, panting, and looked back. The moon had risen. Blue light shone on the cedar, and for a moment, it glittered with gold. Two girls danced around it, feral in the night, their laughter like shaking wind. Ten years of loneliness surged like nausea in my stomach. Pleading, I reached out to them and saw then that Delilah’s bracelet had vanished from my wrist.

A cloud passed over the sky, and just as quickly, they were gone.