Many nights I had laid in bed, wondering what it would have been like to have him here. To have his family visit us or to go visit them. It was all a fantasy, though, because my mother would have never allowed that. I knew from the hate his family had for my mother and their refusal to acknowledge me that she’d already alienated him from his family when he had died.

As soon as my foot hit the bottom floor, I knew my mother was awake. I could smell her cigarette. That was her breakfast of choice. Geneva was going on about her future husband’s mother and how she was ready to be rid of her. I winced because I knew, without a doubt, she would indeed do exactly what my mother had done to my father.

To avoid them, I turned right and walked toward the back of the house on the west side. My mother would know I was awake and what I was doing. There was little in this house she missed. I was relieved when she didn’t call my name or summon me to the kitchen. Opening the backdoor, just beyond the library that had been my dad’s but I wasn’t allowed to use, I stepped outside onto the warm green grass and let my bare feet soak in the soil beneath me as if we were one. I felt most at peace when I was touching the earth. I closed my eyes and walked into the garden that stood under the sun’s warmth, not needing to see to get there. I’d made my sanctuary here so many times in my life. I had a power here that neither my sisters nor my mother possessed. They didn’t bother me here. Because here, my power became stronger than any of theirs. Without me, they’d never know the strength of it, which made them crave the joined power of three even more. It wasn’t me they wanted, but what I could do.

Standing in the stone circle I’d created as a child, before I even realized what it was meant for or what it would do, I held my arms up to the sky, tilted my head back until my face heated from the sun, and chanted the words that only I knew. The words that came to me alone.

The heat inside the core of the earth rose until my feet felt as if they were standing on coals yet the pain was beautiful not painful. I embraced the heat and the earth, and it was the only time in my life I felt as if I weren’t alone. Then I did what my sister had demanded I do. I controlled the rain, I controlled the sun, and I controlled the sky. Just like the prophecy had said upon my birth. Yet unlike any Kamlock witch or warlock before me.