Maddie O’day's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

The sun had not risen in three days, and Maddie O'Day was running out of candles. She stood at her workbench in the cottage, sun pendant knocking against her collarbone, and stared at the empty setting she meant to fill. The pendant was the first thing that ever made her believe magic was real. Now she needed to build something stronger. An amulet that could break the curse eating the sky over Everwood, before the dark crept past the treeline and swallowed her street too. Tank sat by her boots, jowls resting on her ankle. She had only recently learned to hear him speak, and the newness of it still made her flinch. "You're guessing," he said. "I'm choosing." She spread four things across the wood: a shard of quartz, a dried marigold, a copper coin she'd carried since childhood, and a lock of her own hair. "One of these goes in the setting. The rest are wrong." "And if you pick wrong?" "Then the night keeps spreading and I've burned my one window." She'd read every book she owned twice. None of them agreed. Power came from rare stones. Power came from living things. Power came from what you loved. The books were writing about different worlds. She pulled out her notebook. For months she'd tracked timing: which spells worked, which failed, what she'd been wearing, what she'd been feeling. She flipped back through the pages under the candle. A pattern surfaced she had missed before. Every spell that held had one thing in common. She had been touching the pendant when she cast it. Not the stone. Not the herb. Her. "The amulet isn't the power," she said. "It's the anchor. The witch is the power." Tank huffed. "Took you long enough." She cut a strand of her hair with the kitchen shears and coiled it into the setting. She pressed her thumb until it bled and let one drop fall on top. She closed the clasp and held the finished amulet up to the window. The flowers in the window boxes were gray now, colorless in the endless dark. The amulet caught the candlelight and threw a warm ring across the wall. Her chest went hot. The pendant at her throat went hot too, in answer. Two suns, talking. Then the ring on the wall flickered and shrank. Maddie lowered her hand. The amulet was warm, and it was working, but it was small. A candle where she needed a bonfire. It could light a room. It could not break a sky. Tank stood up. His nails clicked on the boards. "Something's outside." She heard it then — a slow drag along the porch, testing the wood. The dark had noticed her. She had made a light, and the light had called something to the door. Maddie closed her hand around the new amulet and blew out the candle.