Hawthorn
This story was inspired by the artwork of Maxine Vee. Check out her website and Instagram to see more of her beautiful paintings!
Almost a hundred moons had crossed the sky since Hawthorn’s last descent from the mountains into the rolling foothills below. For all those lunar cycles, she had been so deep among the stone giants that she had almost forgotten what the lowlands looked like. She’d had no reason to descend until today. Her studies were of the stars and the planets alone, and so her gaze was almost always focused on the heavens above the clouds.
Besides, there had been nothing left for her down in the tundra, where mist rolled in thick banks across the hard ground and the nights were filled with the calls of owls on the hunt and wild dogs ran in packs across the moor.
As a child, it had been her home, and she had adored it, but even then, her young eyes had been drawn upward. When her first broom had been bestowed upon her and she mastered the art of remaining seated upon it, she took to the skies and tried to join the celestial lights in their indigo world. Her hands froze around the broom handle. The air thinned the higher she flew, and frost coated her hat and cloak. That was the day she learned just how far the heavens truly were. They would always be beyond her reach. It was a heavy knowledge to bear.
Hawthorn stepped out from the shelter of the pine trees and picked her way through the meadow, lantern held aloft to illuminate her path. The sun had already sunk so low as to nearly kiss the horizon. The sky had taken on shades of lilac, pink, and cool blues in its impending departure.
She paused on the sloping path to take in the view. Behind, the trees of the evergreen forest tilted their highest branches toward her as if in greeting. She turned her gaze skyward. The first few stars had unveiled themselves, faint lights just visible in the darkening sky. Their message was the same as the night before, when she had set down her quill and stepped back from her astrascope with her heart skipping in her chest.
Briar is home, said the stars, and she is waiting for you.
They were not sisters, having been born to different witches and raised in different houses, but they had grown up together as close as if they were two parts of the same soul. Many a night meant for mushroom foraging had instead been spent playing goblins and pixies in the long grass of the plains. They had worn out their first brooms at the same time after so many races across the tundra, no matter the weather.
On the eve of Hawthorn’s thirteenth birthday, Briar had kissed her on the cheek and blushed. The next day saw her packed off to an academy and Hawthorn never saw her again. Stars knew she’d tried. She ran away on her broom to fly to the academy at night so many times that her mother had locked her broom away in the cupboard under the stairs until she turned sixteen.
It hadn’t mattered anyway. One letter about Hawthorn from Briar’s grandmother to the headmaster had resulted in the glamour used to keep mortals from seeing the school nestled in the White Mountains being extended to the young witchling. She could have flown right by Briar’s dormitory window and not known it.
Now, her friend’s grandmother had passed on, leaving her solitary cottage on the plains to her wayward grandchild, and Briar had come home.
Hawthorn hesitated on the porch. She could have flown there in a matter of hours, but there was something calming in the act of walking – the feel of her boots upon solid ground and the prickle of burs on the hem of her cloak and gown when she picked them off one by one each evening. But in truth, she had chosen to walk all this way to give the stars time to correct themselves – to change their message. They did not.
Her hand trembled on the door as she lifted the latch. Light from a crackling fire filled the room with amber and gold, the heavy scent of mulled wine in the pot over the flames permeating the air. A witch with loose blonde curls sat beside the hearth with a tabby cradled in her lap. She turned at the sound of the door, stood abruptly, sending the cat leaping from her arms in a sulk.
Her smile was brighter than a thousand stars.