My great-aunt takes the knife to my wrist.
Maud means well.
I catch glimpses of my cousins and grandmother behind her, four figures not too close, but jostling for a peek. Hoping to catch the moment when what's meant to happen does. All of us equally anxious — gods know the others proved themselves well before this. At eight, I'm a very late bloomer.
Around us, the stone circle, the sacred place, deep in the woods. If it's going to happen, it will — must! — happen here. Above, bright blue sky, summer-solstice warm. Beneath me, the cool smoothness of the sandstone altar. Birds singing somewhere, the murmurings of my cousins, the jingling of Maud's silver chatelaine at her waist, our grandmother Gisela calling her sister's name.
However: nothing.
Still.
My forearm's littered with cuts, mostly shallow, all red. I feel no pain and I'm urging Great-Aunt Maud on because I share her belief that if I just surrender enough blood to pay the red price, my magic will — finally — manifest. That I will be like my family. That I'll belong.
And she slashes again — a little frenzied by frustration — and I think she's done it because I'm getting dizzy. The menhirs are beginning to spin, I'm light as a feather, liting up, flying, and at last — at last! — I'm a witch.
Except Gisela isn't calling anymore; she's yelling and doesn't sound relieved. Sounds panicked. 'Too deep, Maud! She's bleeding too much!'
And after that I don't remember a thing about the days that followed, nothing except the cold and miserable disappointment of knowing I'd failed yet again.
* * *
The autumn sun on my face is gentle, shining red through my eyelids, and the scar on my wrist feels like thick silk under my fingertips.
Such a deep cut, no less noticeable than it was eleven years ago. Malice was absent from the act — or mostly — although vexation at my lack of 'development' ran high. Maud had been trying, I believe, to shock something out of me. Or into me. To awaken the magic that should have been lying just beneath my skin, or deep in my bones, or growing at the roots of my light-brown hair — but was clearly missing from any part of me.
It serves as a reminder of my basic flaw, that ridge of healed flesh; hastily pulled together with cousin Eira's neat stitches even though she was only a year older than me — because everything's a learning experience — but her magic wasn't quite good enough to leave to cicatrice. Every morning, my family take their fine silver knives and make small cuts in arms and hands and thighs, release a little blood, offering the red price, the crimson tithe for any magic they might do during the day. A ritual from which I'm forever excluded.
Out past the hedge-fence that surrounds the Briar House, Silverton bustles at its usual afternoon pace, the particular sort of babble a town of almost two thousand souls makes. People going about their days, working hard, preparing for what comes next. For life. For tomorrow night. Not me, though. Not at this very moment, no.
