The Once and Future Witches

Bella slips out early the next morning to survey the wreckage of the tower. It is a smoldering ruin, and workers rake through the debris as Hill looks on. Bella performs a shielding spell, and the tower disappears right before the eyes of the astonished workers. Hill’s rage “reminds [Bella] of their daddy when one of them thwarted him: red fury stretched thinly over gray terror” (343).

That night, the sisters confer with Quinn and Araminta. Their first instinct is to flee the city, but eventually, they resolve to stay and fight, combining the resources of the Sisters of Avalon and the Daughters of Tituba.

The following night, the sisters move to a different safe house. This time, they take refuge with Bella’s library friend, Henry Blackwell. He shows them a secret room that his family has maintained ever since the Underground Railroad to shelter those who need to hide from the authorities. Blackwell is delighted when Bella says that the Eastwood sisters brought back the Lost Way.

During their stay at Blackwell’s, Juniper slips out each night to wreak magical havoc in the city. She also passes out whatever magical craft objects she has to the women of the town. After a few nights, the Eastwoods are back on the run, moving from shelter to shelter. They even stay at Lee’s house, but everywhere they stop, they are pursued by Hill’s shadows. A fever has swept the city during the summer, and many blame the epidemic on the witches. Baby Eve seems to have caught the fever, too.

At the beginning of September, everyone waits tensely for the outcome of the mayoral election. When Gideon Hill wins by a landslide, he promptly passes a new set of ordinances calling for the arrest of all witches and stiff penalties for those that harbor them. A panel of Inquisitors is quickly assembled to try all witches by fire. Since no one feels safe harboring them anymore, the sisters take shelter in Agnes’s old rooms at the now-abandoned boardinghouse.

As the month drags on, the sisters must remain in hiding while they try to help the witches of the city. Agnes grows concerned as Eve becomes ever more feverish and unresponsive. Agnes sends a magical message to Lee, asking for a meeting. She fears bringing the baby with her to the rendezvous point and entrusts Eve to her former neighbors until she returns. After waiting tensely for several minutes, Agnes concludes that Lee isn’t coming. When she goes to reclaim Eve, the neighbors tell her that the baby was taken by Inquisitors who said that Agnes should go to see the mayor if she wants her baby back. As she hurries to City Hall, Agnes sends her hawk familiar, Pan, with a message to tell her sisters not to follow her.

Agnes charges into Hill’s office and demands her daughter. He proposes a deal. He will restore Eve and let mother and child go free if Agnes surrenders her sisters. Otherwise, all of them will burn at the stake together. Instead, Agnes tries to stab Hill in the eye with a shard of glass. He remains unharmed, and his shadows rush to restrain her. However, Pan swoops down and claws at Hill’s face, injuring him badly. In this moment, Agnes realizes that he is mortal and can be killed. Hill gives Agnes until sundown the following day to bring her sisters to St. George’s Square.

Back at the boardinghouse, Agnes breaks the terrible news to Bella and Juniper, but she has an idea. She begins gathering candles so that she can do a ritual to summon the Last Three, the witches burned at Avalon by St. George. Agnes believes their spirits still inhabit the burned tower, and they may know how to stop Hill.

Bella says that they can’t raise the tower again in the square or near the boardinghouse. Instead, they go to the Centennial Fair, which has been locked ever since the witch persecutions began. After dark, they once more conduct the ritual to call back the tower. Next, they perform a spell to call up the spirits of the dead.

When they walk inside the tower, they see three women materializing before them, “either uglier or more beautiful” than fairy tale witches and  “riddled with scars and specks and the small imperfections that divide the real from the make-believe” (399). The Maiden, Mother, and Crone originally came from different lands and different magical traditions, but they are the spirits of the Last Three.

When the conjured witches ask what is needed, the Eastwood sisters explain their problem with Gideon Hill. The Last Three say that this is the same entity who killed them. At the time, he was known as St. George. When the Last Three were cornered in Avalon, they allowed themselves to be captured and burned, reciting an incantation: maleficae quondam, maleficaeque futurae, which means witches once, witches in the future.

They bound their souls to one another and to the library for some future time when magic would return to the world. Rather than binding themselves to paper and ink, they bound themselves to the words of witchcraft, still alive in nursery rhymes and fairy tales, knowing these would endure even after the books in the tower library had burned.

The elder witches explain that the tower has been called back more than once, but belief in magic has faded. Throughout history, Gideon bound himself to different mortal bodies to acquire more magical knowledge and persecute any witches capable of stopping him. The only way to undo him is to break the binding spell that keeps him connected to his current body. The Last Three teach the spell to the Eastwoods. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Georgie together again” (414).

The sisters leave to meet with the remaining members of their group who haven’t been arrested. They decide to draw Hill out to a public space where all the witches can cast a light spell to separate him from his shadow army. Juniper proposes using herself and her sisters as bait for a public witch-burning.