Autumn 1990
*
If the coven could see what Zaya was doing, they’d serve her up to Satan himself. Probably on some rusted, antique platter, forged centuries ago from hellfire and sacred silver. But they won’t find out. Right?
As far as they are aware, Zaya is safely tucked away in her bedroom, pondering over spells to keep her plants alive, because she can’t do that herself. As far as the coven is aware, she is not peeking out from the tree line of the forest. What they don’t know won’t hurt them. Or her. Hopefully.
From her hiding spot, she studies the little strip of shops that runs parallel to the forest. They’re the newest development in the remote town of Pinewood. The old mill workers’ cottages were turned into a bookshop, wool store, and electronics supplier. It was hoped that these shops would bring visitors to the town, but the only visitor they attracted was Zaya. Not that they know it, of course.
Pinewood is its own little world. Sheep and cattle graze the surrounding fields. Cobblestone roads and thatched cottages paint the picturesque image of the perfect English town. It is stuck years in the past with no need for a car due to the narrow roads. Many of the townsfolk ride bikes or their horses around, and a bus only occasionally stops at the edge of the woods. Rarely do people leave, with a literal pine wood enclosing the town on one side and the sea on the other. The same families have lived here for centuries, and no one new is entering.
You live here, you die here, but you don’t visit here.
Zaya is grateful for the new shops. The bookshop is her favorite. No longer does she have to wait for the quarterly deliveries of books to the library and use all her strength to transport herself there without anyone seeing her. Every week the same truck crosses the bridge into Pinewood, and she waits out of sight, behind the trees for the delivery man to enter the shop. She has roughly three minutes and twenty-nine seconds (depending on how long he takes to meander back out of the shop) to cast her spell to materialize inside the truck, pick a few books and materialize back into the trees. All the while praying to the Gods that she can find something good before the driver comes back to find a pale, oddly dressed, goth girl lurking in his truck.
Today, a light fog settles across the ground. The sky is a dull grey and the shadows of the forest thick, so Zaya has little concern over being discovered by anyone in the town. The truck approaches, and a balding but jolly-looking man climbs down. It takes him a moment as his legs are just short of the pavement, and he has to execute a little hop, which he does rather gracefully for his stature.
As he enters the shop, Zaya closes her eyes and clasps her hands together. The wind picks up swirling around her, sparks fly from her hands, and she doesn’t let go of the breath she is holding as she murmurs the incantation. “Evanescet et comparuit.”
Fire ignites behind her left eye, but she doesn’t open them until the soft soil under her feet turns solid. She opens her eyes, and her body is squished between towers of books. An array of genres greet her greedy eyes, and she begins pulling the most cliched, fluffiest romance novels from the piles. They are her guilty pleasure. Not that she would ever let anyone find out. If anyone in the coven knew she was reading any books other than those assigned—oh, she couldn’t even imagine the punishment. Mortal literature, unless by the great philosophers, is forbidden. But, Zaya has always wanted more than to study Aristotle’s Poetics. Well, Aristotle wasn’t mortal, but that isn’t the point.
Ever since Zaya was just a girl, she’s known she doesn’t want any part in the witchery her coven practices. She wants to live. She wants to love hard and feel her first heartbreak tear her in two. She wants to go swimming with friends, friends she wants to cry and laugh with. She wants to spend weekends lounging around in bed, and then the evenings giggling over a pint in the Pine Tree and talk about her future.
But Zarina Lightfoot was born into the Umbra coven, and that is a life sentence.
After picking a few Halloween romances, she moves on to the next crate, which is full to the brim of one bestseller. She studies the cover where the sketch of an angel sits centrally. Usually, Zaya would stray away from anything like it, but the title entices her.
“Good Omens,” she murmurs as she turns it in her hands.
The bell from the bookshop rings, and heavy feet plod over the pavement. “Got a big one for you today, Mols,” a gruff voice says.
It is time for Zaya to leave. Her black hair flicks around her face as she turns quickly, accidentally sending crates tumbling out the back of the truck. Squeezing her eyes closed she musters all her power and speaks her incantation into the universe. Her body feels as though it is covered in static, and when she reappears in the woods, she sprawls out across the damp ground, the books she had been holding discarded in the mud. She dusts off the books and watches as the man and a girl, who she guesses is Mols, sets the books which had fallen into neat piles, Mols giggling as she does so. Mols looks to be a few years younger than Zaya and has fluffy brown hair.
Zaya had never been that close to getting caught by mortals before. It must be bad luck from picking up that new book.
As Zaya slinks through the trees, she imagines being friends with someone like that girl. But the thought is worthless, and the pang of sadness is stupid. She could never be friends with a mortal. She isn’t even allowed to talk to one. She can’t risk them discovering the existence of the coven in the woods. The girl is yet another thing to mourn the loss of. The loss of someone she never even had in the first place.
As she reaches her hideaway, nestling into blankets she found in the eaves of the castle, she pulls out one of her books and for just a moment pretends she is normal.
Eliza Wilson has always had a wild imagination and a need to share it with the world. As a Creative Writing graduate, she spends most of her time working on her fantasy trilogy, Secrets of Pinewood. You can usually find Eliza sitting in a cozy corner of a cafe, oat milk, iced vanilla latte in hand, hunched over a notebook, and escaping into the world at the tip of her pen.
Featured image by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash.
