She was in the midst of the left-handed magic of revenge, using malice and spite to get what she wanted. In no time, the magic had changed her. When she found a baby swallow and lifted it off the ground, it turned to ash in her hands. She dusted off her hands and felt a shiver of fear over what she now carried inside her. But what was done was done. She had chosen her path. In her practice she used the wild purple orchids that have two tubers, one for white magic, one for black, a plant that could heal or hurt and was called “Dead Man’s Fingers” in a play written by the man who adored the author of The Book of the Raven. Near the Minetta Stream there were old trees with hollows in their trunks, doors to other worlds where words were said backwards, widdershins, spinning left, the witch’s path that was counterclockwise. It was here that Faith gathered blackberries, long used against serpent’s bites and for setting curses. The Book of the Raven had taught her transference magic, shifting the sorrow or disease or the ill fate that a person carried into another object or being. She had small glass bottles filled with hate and fever and rage and grief, which were stored in a cabinet in her chamber, and at night they glowed with green light, as if stars had fallen from the sky.

In time she could turn a blooming flower black, stop a bird’s heartbeat, confuse men so they forgot their own names or lost the power of speech. Love was a common thing to her now, the foolish territory of those without her discipline. She knew that to undo an attraction one needed black paint, blood, a bird’s broken wing, pins, and a thin strand of lead, handled carefully, and with gloves. One night she cut her arm and let her blood sink into the ground, and in that place a stem arose with a single red rose. That rose was the magic inside of her, and every day the rose grew darker, until one morning the petals and the stem were black and the thorns were so sharp not even the bees would come near.

Faith wrote down the skills she had studied onto slips of paper to see what practice would best suit her. Invisibility. Sight. Healer. Love Magic. Revenge. She left the papers to float in a bowl of water overnight to see what her future might be. In the morning one scroll had bloomed opened. Faith’s heart beat quickly as she reached for her fate.

Her place on earth had been decided. She’d known what it would be before she read the floating word, for it was already in her heart, and the black rose in the garden had grown to be as tall as she.

Revenge was what she wanted.

III.