Page 92 of The Magic We Made

That’s right. I might as well admit that I love Ash Merit. I don’t want to, but I do. And I will do whatever I have to in order to keep him safe, even swim through freezing lake water and hallucinogenic fog...

It’s then that something completely unexpected happens: the face in the mist disappears, and the curtain of fog before me parts.

I can’t explain it any other way. The fog parts the way the water of the Red Sea parts in one of my mother’s favorite movies,The Ten Commandments, which she puts on every Easter after church and before Sunday Gravy, and which I have consequently seen thirty-seven times.

In the movie when the Red Sea parts, there’s an incredible swell of orchestral music. But when the mist before me parts, there’s no sound at all. It simply curls away, creating a sort of arched pathway through the fog, leading me directly to the shore.I can see the narrow, rocky beach ahead of me, lit by the occasional appearance of the moon through the clouds and smoke, and the yellow reflection of the flames further inland.

I don’t waste time wondering how this is happening. I swim as hard as I can for that shore. My legs and arms know exactly what to do. I’ve never felt stronger. I’m no longer noticing the cold, only my wildly pounding heart. I keep swimming as hard as I can until I finally feel the muddy bottom. Normally at this point in my swim, I’d turn, plunge my toes into that mud, and push off to swim back to my own dock.

But today, for the first time ever, I put my feet down into that muddy bottom and walk to the shore, not stopping until the tiny rocks that line the narrow beach cut into the soles of my feet.

Then I promptly collapse onto those rocks.

I don’t know why I’m so tired. I swim twice this far every day and it doesn’t exhaust me the way this short swim has.

Then again, most days I don’t have terrifying visions of my dead dad floating in front of me as I swim.

When I feel able to move again, I check my fitness tracker and find that my heart rate accelerated so much during that swim, it basically registered as a cardiac event. The tracker suggests I visit a healthcare provider at my soonest opportunity.

But I don’t have time to worry about that now. I open my swim bag, strip off my suit and dry myself, then slip into the sweatshirt, yoga pants, and running shoes I’ve brought with me. I’m not cold at all. I’m sweating so much from my swim (and my scare) that I don’t even feel the temperature anymore.

When I switch on my flashlight to look around to find a path into the woods, I realize I can hear voices ahead through the trees, near the same place where I can see the glow of the fire.

I also catch sight of the Rubensteins’ pontoon boat. It’s run aground in the rocky sand since there’s no dock to tie it to, which is a shame. Itwasa big, beautiful party boat...

But even the briefest of glances shows me there’s no sign of anyone still being on board... or of Ash, either. Tracks—all made by small women’s sneakers, except for one set that are clearly drag marks—lead from the boat, through the sand, and into the woods.

So he’s alive. Well, of course he’s alive. They might be witches, but they’re still teenage girls. They aren’t going to kill him.

Right?

I follow the tracks, listening to the voices I begin to hear more and more distinctly as I head deeper into the forest, thorns and brambles tearing at my pant legs and shirt sleeves, and mist making everything more difficult to see.

“For far too long,” a confident female voice rings out from somewhere through the deep brush ahead of me, “we witches have lived in fear—fear of discovery, and fear of the judgment of others. But why?”

I switch off my flashlight because I feel like I’m close enough that one of them might spot it. The light from the fires—and it isn’t only one fire, I can see now, but multiple bonfires, along with individual torch flames—is enough to guide my path.

“What is it about us that’s so threatening?” the girl asks. “I’ll tell you what it is. They fear us because we’re so powerful. We’re more intelligent than they are, and they know it. And unlike the rest of humanity, we won’t settle for greed, selfishness, and ignorance. We want to make the world a better place, and we want to do itnow!”

Cheers erupt. Whoever is speaking, her speech seems to be going well. She’s got her audience’s full attention.

It’s only because of this that I’m able to crawl undetected toward the sound of the voice. The girls are too engrossed to notice the crack of underbrush beneath me.

It’s there, on my hands and knees, that I peek through the branches of some kind of prickly bush, and peer over the side of a deep split in the earth... a crevice that, according to my sixth grade biology teacher, was formed many thousands of years ago, during the ice age, when glaciers moving south just suddenly stopped.

There are ravines like this one all over New England, many of which have rock formations at the bottom of them, boulders that were carried along by the ice sheet until it melted. I’ve never given a second thought to the name locals gave the rock formation on Center Island. It’s a tall chunk of limestone jutting out of the earth, with another, flatter chunk sort of collapsed against it, causing it to look—with some imagination—like a giant chair.

That’s why everyone has always known it as Satan’s Seat: only the Devil is large enough to sit on it.

But viewed from this angle—above—I can see for the first time that the seat isn’t a seat at all. It’s a table.

More specifically, it’s an altar.

I only realize this when I see there’s a man stretched out across the top of that altar, his wrists and ankles bound in what looks like blue tow rope. His eyes are closed, and he’s not moving.

It’s Ash. And I can’t tell if he’s alive.

But he has to be. Hehasto be. Why else is there a girl in a long white robe standing below him at the bottom of the altar? Her back is to me as she addresses her followers—only around twenty or so of them, also dressed in white robes, and kneeling as if in prayer before her. But I can see the girl in front has long blondehair that gleams in the torchlight. Every once in a while, she turns her face enough to show her profile. That’s how I recognize her from the videos Ash showed me.