“What are you looking for, dear?” Ms. Talbot asks, standing in front of me.
My mother begins speaking, but I cut her off. “I’d like something the color of the ocean,” I say. “As if I were born of the sea. Train in the back. No lace or frills. I want to look dramatic. Alluring.”
“Tana, don’t you want something a little brighter? Softer?”
“No.”
My mother takes a sip of her tea. “Very well. That sounds lovely.”
Ms. Talbot claps her hands, then rushes to the back for fabric samples.
My mind wanders as Ivy and my mom begin talking about Ivy’s ball, which will be just a few months after mine. Their conversation is easy and smooth—they get excited about the same things and emphasize the same words. They are both such perfect products of their environment, put together and warm and powerful.
Wolfe is wrong about low magic. He’s wrong that we’re cowards and a disgrace to witches. He thinks we’re weak because he can’t see past his narrow definition of strength.
Strength is shrouding ourselves in a veil of passivity to save the people we love.
Strength is allowing the mainlanders to see our vulnerabilities in order to be accepted.
Strength is swallowing our words when people like Wolfe dare to label us as weak.
I shake my head. God, he’s infuriating.
I huff and cross my arms, wanting nothing more than to storm to the western shore and tell him off.
“Tana?” my mother asks, her teacup raised halfway to her mouth.
“Sorry. What did you say?”
She shakes her head and puts her cup down on its saucer, the porcelain rattling. “What is going on with you lately? You’re unfocused and aloof. I need you to be here, Tana. This is important.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’ve just been tired.”
She looks at me for a moment, studying my face before finally nodding. “Well, try to get to bed early tonight. We can stop at the Enchanted Cup on the way home and get some of their Sleepful blend.”
“That would be nice.”
“Ivy, why don’t you tell me more about your Covenant plans?” My mother picks up her teacup again and looks at Ivy.
Sometimes I think Ivy is the daughter my mother wishes she had. I don’t resent Ivy for it—not at all. If anything, I wish I could be more like her. I have this incredible role to play, and I know I’m doing a poor job of it.
Ivy would be better, and we all know it. But my last name means it is my responsibility, as if a name makes a difference.
The thought startles me. It does matter… doesn’t it? When did I start questioning these traditions and values that are pillars of our coven?
But I know the answer: it was the moment I touched the moonflower and it didn’t hurt. It was the evening I practiced a magic I was never meant to encounter, and it makes me angry, enraged that I’ve allowed a single person to plant these ideas in my mind. As I raise my teacup to my lips, I notice the porcelain is trembling in my hand. I quickly put it down, but it’s too hard, and it slams into the saucer on the table.
“Tana, be careful!” my mother exclaims. She looks mortified, even though Ms. Talbot is still in the back. “Your behavior is troubling. Please pull yourself together.” She shakes her head. “I certainly hope Landon has recovered from his autumnal swim with you. Honestly, Tana, what were you thinking?”
“There was nothing to recover from,” I say. “It was his idea.”
“Here we are!” Ms. Talbot singsongs as she comes out of the back with folds of fabric draped over her arms. All of them are shades of blue, deep navy and cerulean, stone and azure. The fabric shimmers in the light like the sea beneath a full moon, and I sit up in my seat and reach toward the silk.
“Oh, Shawna, this is gorgeous,” my mother says, pulling a piece of fabric from Ms. Talbot.
“That’s the one I like best, too,” I say. It’s the stone silk, a blue-gray fabric that could be mistaken for foaming waves. Mom meets my eyes, a warm smile spreading across her face. “It will look perfect on you,” she says, and it somehow fills all the empty spaces inside me.
She’s proud of me. I know it even when I set my teacup down too hard and when my mind is elsewhere. I feel it radiating from her, and I wish I were at the perfumery so I could bottle it up in one of our scents, spray it in the air when I need a reminder.
“Tana, that color was made for you,” Ivy says.
Ms. Talbot beckons me to the platform and begins taking my measurements. She wears narrow wire-rimmed glasses, and her brown skin is pulled taut at her forehead by the sleek bun atop her head. She bites her lip as she measures, writes down the numbers, then measures again. The dress will be cinched at the chest and will flow down from the waist, but there will be no crinoline or extra fabric beneath the silk. It will trail behind me, and I will glisten just like the water.
I’ve never had anything like it, such a far cry from the pastels and soft colors of the Witchery. I can’t wait to wear it.
My mom comes up behind me and places a gemstone necklace around my neck, heavy with the weight of a dozen sapphires.
My hand drifts up to the necklace, but as I look at myself in the mirror, it doesn’t feel right.
“I was hoping I could wear your pearls,” I say.
I see the surprised look on my mother’s face, followed by the small smile that tugs at her lips. She swallows and pulls the necklace away.
“Of course you may,” she says, her eyes meeting mine in the mirror.
When Ms. Talbot is done with my measurements, she tells us to come back in two weeks for my first dress fitting. We finish our tea and walk out onto Main, not as busy now that it’s later. The days are getting shorter, and most of the shops have lanterns lit outside that cast a warm amber glow over the cracked stone and climbing vines.
“Why don’t I take you girls out to dinner?” my mother asks, pulling Ivy and me in close.
“Just the three of us?” I ask. We eat dinner with Dad almost every night; I don’t think Mom has ever taken me out to dinner with a friend.
“Just the three of us.”
“I’m free,” Ivy says, and I lean into them.
“Sounds perfect.”
There are moments when I think I’ll be crushed by the weight of expectation and responsibility, when I worry I will never live up to the role I’m meant to play. But then there are moments when I look around the Witchery, at my parents and friends, and I’m filled with a deep pride that runs beneath my skin, nourishing every part of me.
Now is one of those times.
We don’t talk about Landon over dinner. We don’t talk about the mainland or the Covenant Ball or the proper etiquette when hosting a distinguished visitor. We talk about the small, inconsequential details that make up our lives on this tiny island.
And it’s everything.
seventeen
I haven’t slept well since my date with Landon, preoccupied with things I shouldn’t give space to. I’m frustrated by my lack of understanding and the incessant questions that hammer my mind. I wish I could let the moonflower go, let high magic and Wolfe Hawthorne be carried away by a vicious current, never to be seen again. But I can’t, and I’m so angry at myself for that.
Once my parents settle in with their evening tea, I find my harvesting basket and slip outside. I need to clear my head, and I follow the shoreline to the western edge, to the wild coast where I won’t be disturbed. I still haven’t asked my mother about the moonflower, and I know I need to, that I need to put this to rest. But ever since that first night I met Wolfe in the field, an awful feeling has settled in my stomach; this could change everything, and in some ways, maybe it already has. But I’m trying so hard to stay in control of my life, and I think not asking is my way of doing that, of clinging to the way things were before I missed the rush.