The Once and Future Witches

At sundown, the three witches march to St. George’s Square and step up on the marble plinth that once held the statue transformed into a pig. They send their familiars to work two spells for them. The first causes all the policemen and guards in the Hall of Justice to fall asleep. The second causes all the bars and chains in the prison to rust, freeing all the prisoners. Meanwhile, Lee creeps into the orphanage to recover Eve, leaving a charmed lump of clay in her place.

Hill arrives in the square with a band of Inquisitors to arrest the witches. He tells Agnes that he has no intention of returning her daughter. Instead, he orders iron collars placed around the witches’ necks and metal bridles put in their mouths to prevent them from speaking magic. They are taken to an upper floor of the Hall of Justice for the night.

The Eastwood trial begins the following day, unfolding similarly to the unjust witch trials in Old Salem. The newspapers depict the Eastwoods as wild-eyed hags. The mock trial continues for two more days, during which Hill unsuccessfully tries to extract confessions using torture. Eventually, the Eastwoods are found guilty, as expected, and condemned to burn at sundown the next day.

That night, Hill visits Juniper in her cell. Juniper is curious about his past, so he tells her the Tale of the Brother and Sister. This is a variation of Hansel and Gretel. However, the witch in this story is kindly to the abandoned children, teaching them both magic and giving them a home. Hill, enraged by his parents’ neglect, seeks only revenge. Once he has learned enough magic to be dangerous, he goes back to his village to find his mother and father. He steals their shadows and free will, forcing them to live happily with him for a time.

Hill continues his story. The price for his abusive brand of magic is a strange fever that besets the villagers and spreads beyond his control. Hill deflects blame by pointing to the witch in the woods who taught him the magic. When his sister refuses to reunite with him, she burns along with the old witch. Juniper thinks, “So: the young George of Hyll had broken the world, then pointed his finger at his fellow witches like a little boy caught making a mess. He had survived, at any cost, at every cost” (455). Hill proposes that Juniper should ally herself with him. He offers to teach her more magic. She retorts that he already has a daughter in Grace Wiggin. Hill says that he stole Grace’s shadow and free will a long time ago and that she doesn’t possess Juniper’s power. After Juniper rejects his offer, he leaves.

The following evening, the sisters are led back to the square for their execution, where a scaffold has been erected over the statue plinth. An observation platform has been built nearby for Hill and the judges to watch. By Hill’s side is Grace Wiggin. Eager spectators and a multitude of unseen allies fill the square.

Once the fire is lit, the onlookers are amazed to see that the witches are not burning. Lee, with Eve safe in his arms, is working a spell to keep the fires at bay. The other witches are using wand lights to send Hill’s army of shadows back to the people from whom they were stolen and return their free will. The Eastwoods chant a spell to show Hill’s true form to the crowd. Juniper then conjures a snake and sets it on Hill, intending to kill him. At the last moment, she loses her rage and feels sorry for the lost boy that he once was. Hill thinks he will escape after all, not realizing that Grace, who is standing beside him, has gotten her own will back.

Before anyone can react, Grace takes her sash and wraps it around Hill’s neck, slowly choking him to death. Agnes thinks, “He […] ate them whole and spat out the seeds and never once worried that one of them would sprout behind him and bear poison fruit” (475). In the midst of the crowd’s confusion, Lee hands Eve back to Agnes and gives her a rowan broomstick, urging her to fly away. Agnes reaches for Bella, but neither one can locate Juniper. Their youngest sister is watching Hill expire. As he dies, his fingers release a lock of bright red hair belonging to Eve.

Juniper realizes in a flash that Hill has bound his soul to Eve’s and intends to take over her body as he knows the Eastwoods will never destroy her. Juniper intercepts his slithery dark essence before it can reach Eve and traps Hill’s spirit. Even though he is confident that he will eventually overpower his host, Bella and Agnes combine their wills with Juniper’s to pin Hill in place.

Juniper knows that the only way to destroy Hill completely is to destroy herself. She climbs back up to the burning scaffold and steps into the fire, at the same time repeating the unbinding spell that will sever Hill’s soul completely from this world.

Lee tries to pull Juniper out of the flames, but she refuses to let go of the scaffold. Juniper is afraid she might burn up before she completes the spell. At the last moment, she receives a familiar in the form of a crow, who voices her incantation until Hill’s soul is completely cast out. Juniper burns to death.

Bella asks Quinn for the rose petal ring and uses it to perform a resurrection spell for Juniper’s soul. She chants, “Ring around the roses, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all rise up” (492). Agnes takes up the chant, and she is followed by all the witches in the square. Afterward, Agnes, Eve, and Bella mount broomsticks and fly off to safety.

It is now the spring equinox of 1894, exactly a year after the Eastwood sisters found each other in New Salem. Agnes works to spread magic in Chicago, attending secret meetings with factory workers and providing them with spells “on thin slips of paper, rolled tight. There were words for binding tongues and breaking machines, for healing hurts and causing them, for setting fires and walking through them unscathed” (500). When the work in Chicago is done, Agnes, Lee, and Eve slip through magical portals and return to the tower.

During the same equinox, Bella and Quinn are living in New Orleans, Louisiana. Quinn has been commissioned by a publisher to write a lurid book about the resurgence of magic in the South. With Lee’s help, the witches are repairing the interior of the tower, and Bella hopes to rebuild its contents as well, collecting spells wherever she goes. Bella also has time to find a proper gold ring for Quinn, which she enchants to ward off evil.

Juniper enjoys the same spring equinox from the vantage point of her family farm; the resurrection spell worked. She is corporeal again though she doesn’t require food or sleep. Juniper’s cousin inherited her property, but she uses a variety of spells to discourage him from ever coming there. The tower has been relocated to the back acreage where nobody will notice it. The rest of the family is often in residence there.

Sometimes her sisters bring women who need Juniper’s help, and she teaches magic to anyone who wants to learn. She anticipates that she will remain on the farm until her sisters pass on. Then, she will join the spirits of the Last Three and merge with the tower itself. For now, she lives happily ever after among her sisters, seeing them as “the first lines of a story that has been told before and will be told again: Once upon a time there were three witches” (514).