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Agatha runs the thumb of her left hand along the edge of her brooch, pad switching to nail and catching on one of the nits in the golden bronze. Three witches in feigned marble – crone, mother, maiden – dancing as though they didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe they didn’t when they were first placed there; maybe they don’t now. Not that it matters, really. They aren’t – weren’t, have never been – real.
It isn’t like she had the best of relationships with her mother, but the thing about death is that it cast a shade, a pallor on everything. Her mother put her on trial because she believed she was a danger to the coven, and she was a danger to the coven. Putting her on trial had only proven that. Maybe she was only a danger because of the trial.
It’s been over a century at this point.
Her throat still tightens at the thought of her mother.
Agatha still pins the brooch just at the hollow of her neck, feels the weight of it nestled there, as though it might choke her itself, and then pretends as though she doesn’t notice it at all.
When Agatha was a small child, her mother hadn’t worn the brooch everywhere. In point of fact, Evanora had rarely worn the thing at all, except when on official coven business. The other residents of Salem had been expected to keep a much cleaner appearance and rarely wore any jewelry at all, other than their wedding rings, and so, to fit in, the brooch had been hidden away. Kept safe.
Agatha had peeked in on the small velvet box where the brooch rested once when she was barely five years old; her blue eyes wide as she’d held tight to the top of her mother’s dresser with tiny hands, making sure to keep herself upright as she stood on the open bottom drawer. She’d still been almost too small to see it; her nose had just breached the top of the dresser, and her eyes had only barely been able to see the box itself. But she remembers how carefully the brooch had been placed there – just so, as if it, too, were as important as the engagement rings that some of the sailors might carry in boxes just like this one, that they might pull out of their vest pocket when they got down on one knee in front of some woman or other.
She asked her mama, once, why it was so special, but her mother hadn’t answered her question. Instead, Evanora told her daughter that she would have it all to herself one day, and so she needed to make sure to take special care of it when she did. She hadn’t remembered the special velvet box with the stained wine color when she left Salem, but Agatha certainly had taken care of the brooch.
It glistens at the nape of her neck, and when Agatha looks in the mirror, sometimes that’s all she can see. Just that brooch, the same as it was at her mother’s neck, only not holding a thick cloak to keep her hidden, not anymore. She breathes in, and the brooch lifts; breathes out, and it falters. Breathes in again, and it lifts again; feels the weight of it pushing down on her chest and forcing the breath back out.
Once, just once, Agatha allowed someone else to hold it.
Cian – eventually, the Ancient One, although they hadn’t used that moniker yet and wouldn’t for another half-century at least – asked about it while not even looking at it, while pouring a cup of tea from a teapot that was probably as old as Agatha herself was. “You never told me where your brooch came from.”
For a moment, Agatha’s defenses shot up. She had to remind herself that this was Cian, this wasn’t some random sorcerer making a comment about something they didn’t understand, this was the person who found her freezing to death – probably actually frozen to death, although Agatha has never asked – and decided she needed to live, decided to bring her back – whether that was from the edge or not, she doesn’t know. She does know, however, that Cian had taken the brooch from her then in their desperate need to make sure she was warm, to make sure she survived, and that they had not done anything to it.
They must, too, remember the panic she’d felt upon waking and finding that it was gone.
Once, of course, she’d realized that 1) she wasn’t dead and 2) Cian themself was not an angel of sorts meant to carry her…elsewhere.
Once she’d been conscious enough to realize it was missing at all.
“It was my mother’s,” Agatha said, glancing down at it where it rested just as it always did, barely able to see it and certainly not able to see it in full. “She wore it to coven meetings.” She runs a finger along its edge. “I honestly just thought it had a spell on it.”
Liar.
“I can check for you.” Cian turned, holding out a teacup etched through with violets and lavender, full with a not quite steaming helping of peppermint tea.
Agatha took the cup, held it up to her lips, and blew across the top of it. Steam or not, if she tried to drink without doing that, she knew she would burn her tongue.
For a moment, all Agatha did was sip at her tea. That was fine. Cian wasn’t the sort of person to push her. She knew that. If anything, Cian acted as though they hadn’t asked her a question at all, simply turning back to their tea kettle and pouring themself a cup of tea. When they turned around with their teacup covered with dandelions, there wasn’t anything insistent in their gaze, and there still wasn’t when they lifted it to their lips and took their first sip.
Agatha sighed. Glanced at the brooch again. Set her teacup to one side, unhooked the brooch, and held it out in the palm of her hand, heart tightening as she did so. “Here.” Her throat tightened. “You can—” She couldn’t quite get the words out. “—check.”
There isn’t any magic embedded in the brooch.
Agatha knows that because she hadn’t felt any magic herself, and she knows that because Cian hadn’t felt any sorcery, and after a long enough time of study, she hadn’t felt any sorcery either. It’s just an ordinary brooch, and it does nothing.
And yet, she still feels compelled to wear it everywhere.
Agatha asked, once, in the same conversation when she’d asked her mother why it was so special, where she had gotten the brooch.
Evanora explained in a hesitant, careful way, that she’d inherited it from an older sister who had died to a mysterious illness, who had inherited it from their mother who had also died from a mysterious illness. The way she said it made Agatha believe that there wasn’t anything so mysterious about their illnesses at all, and later, thinking about the conversation, she was almost convinced that they hadn’t died to illness either.
But by then, her mother was dead, and she couldn’t needle her for an answer.
Not that Evanora would have told her the truth if she’d asked.
Agatha stares at the normal brooch that certainly has not cursed her with a mysterious illness that also killed her mother – because her mother hadn’t died from a mysterious illness but from trying to root a weed from her coven and finding that she didn’t quite have the proper tools to do so – and she thinks—
Maybe, today, I won’t wear it. Maybe, today, I’ll take it off. Maybe, today, I’ll do something with it.
But she never does, and she never will.