Cassandra was my older sister. Our mother was extremely distant as we were growing up, so Cassandra had in a way, become my mother as well. Mother was the daughter of a powerful witch who kept her magic a secret since she had escaped the Salem witch trials and live on for hundreds more years, using magic to keep her young and beautiful. My grandmother would rarely speak of her magic, in fear that she’d be discovered by the spirits… but it wasn’t her they wanted, after my mother had been born, grandmother was cursed by the spirits to never again bear children.
Cassandra was 17 at the time, and I was 16. We had different fathers, and both lived with grandmother. My sister had just shown me how to apply eye liner gracefully on my upper eyelids when grandmother called us down. She had prepared a beautiful dinner for us in the late evening, and all was just as any other night – that is, before I had asked a question better left unmentioned. “Grandmother, why can I use magic like you, and Cassandra cannot?” Grandmothers eyes widened and she immediately began to clean the dishes before they had even been cleared of food. “Cassandra, take your sister upstairs to the attic. I will meet you there when I’m finished cleaning.” The attic had been forbidden since we first moved in when mother abandoned us back when I was 8. My sister nodded and grabbed my hand, leading me there; her expression looked just as clueless as I had felt.
Grandmother soon met us and told Cassandra to leave and stay in her room, of course, she obeyed.
“June…what do you mean that you can use magic. Can you show me dear?” she asked with a worried tone to her usually strong voice. I shook my head;
“I don’t want to get in trouble.”
Grandmother gently took my hands in hers;
“Show me darling, you are not in trouble.” I sighed with a hesitant attitude. Closing my eyes and focusing, I showed my grandmother was I had recently found I could do and a dark fog exploded around me, pushing everything in a 5 foot radius several feet away – other than grandmother. She quickly rushed over to a treasure chest that had dust covering every inch of it and unlocked it. She pulled out a large book;
“June, be brave for me dear, do not fear magic,” she stated before opening it slowly. I crawled over and sat beside her, observing as she flipped through the hundreds of pages. She finally came to a stop on ta page that read “Voice of the Prophecy” at the top. She spoke in tongues of which I couldn’t understand, and suddenly the book had a voice “ask a question, and we will answer.” It was like several women who had once been powerful witches, their souls, trapped in the book.
My grandmother quickly asked, “Tell me the prophecy of the last witch.” The book replied with no hesitation.
“There will be a powerful with who escapes the Salem witch trials. Her name will be Salem, after the escape, and she will live on to have a child. Should that child be a witch, she will be found and killed by the Spirit of death once she is found by the souls of tortured witches. We will bring an end to all witch deaths by preventing any more births,” she sighed and began to close the book, but it had continued to speak after only a few seconds;
“There is a child though. One that has just been seen by the spirits. She will grow to be Deaths queen, or his unsuspecting victim. She is the last witch able to birth. She must die Salem.”
She turned to see that my forehead began to run hot and my hands grew ice cold.
“Grandmother… The spirits. They found me because you opened the book. You… you have caused my death,” I stuttered as my vision began to fade. She closed the book and quickly caught me as I fell backwards.
“No, No I would never. I wanted to protect you. I thought the prophecy ended with your mother. She had never left you and your sister, death took her. She had began to lose her sanity because her mind absorbed the power of so many witches that had been lost. She was trying to reach them, talk to them, and it went wrong. They all poured their magic into her, in hopes she would bring them back to life. Death had to kill her before she birthed another witch… no one knew you had absorbed the magic. I thought you’d be safe if I took you and your sister into hiding. I thought he would never find you.” I could feel power suddenly flowing into my mind, magic flowing through my veins. The spirits were trying to overwhelm me as well… they wanted me dead. And now. It’s your turn.