The tea witch knows that watched pots do, in fact, boil. She knows because she watches them now, all ten of them, full of nettle and barley and sugar cane. Plumes of steam rise and heat her face and pain her fingertips. She breathes in deeply and smells the rosemary and the spearmint and the magic.

A chime sounds and she watches a woman poke her head in. The look she has on her face is one the tea witch is deeply familiar with: curiosity mixed with revulsion. How often they twine into the same thing, growing together like moss on trees.

The tea witch says nothing and neither does the woman, who edges closer and closer to the boiling pots. At last, she takes a seat on the pink cushions in front of the tea witch’s cauldrons.

“I’m here for love,” the woman says at last, eschewing a greeting.

So many are, thinks the tea witch. Enough to make you believe that real love without magic may not even exist. 

The tea witch removes one of the boiling pots and strains the leaves. She adds a dab of honey, watching it curl from the silver spoon just so until it settles heavy at the bottom of the pot. The woman grows uneasy waiting for a reply.

“I must warn you,” says the tea witch, “that making someone fall in love with magic is a dangerous game.”

“What if that person is me?”

The tea witch stops. She looks into the pot and sees herself reflected. “You?”

The woman nods. “I don’t love him. I’m marrying him.” There is no but. It is not a ‘but’ kind of statement. Just two true statements standing side by side.

“Arranged?”

The woman nods.

The tea witch has never considered this kind of magic. She is not sure she has the ingredients. Because it isn’t quite a love spell—at least not any she’s seen before. “I can help you, but not today. Give me a week.”

The woman is taken aback. “A week? The wedding is in two days.”

“Then fake it for five.”

The woman wants to argue, but at last relents, bowing her head down like a dog that’s been struck. “Very well. I’ll return then.” She rises, the cushion still misshapen and soft from her body. “You promise it will work?”

The tea witch sips from the mug. She found long ago, in the hardest of ways, that her own magic doesn’t affect her. “My dear woman, it’s magic,” she says, “nothing is promised.”

She drains the mug as she watches the woman leave, the door chiming a final goodbye.

+

The woods are quiet until the tea witch arrives to crunch the bramble and brush the leaves. The trees are wet with the dew and the birds croak words the tea witch understands, but ignores.

She cannot believe she hasn’t thought of this kind of magic before. Because it isn’t love—it’s delusion. And delusion is easier than love and skates so deliciously close to it. And self-delusion is the easiest delusion of all.
Why has she bothered all these years with love?

The tea witch collects sage, white and fluffy as a ball of cotton, and more of that weed-like nettle and some of the bright-red berries that grow along the riverbanks. She gathers so many they stain her fingers a soft red.
The sun watches her.

There are no recipes for the teas she makes. There were, once upon a time. When she still had a coven. When there still was a coven. She knows the recipes now by heart. That is, not by rote memorization, no, but by heart. She holds the ingredients in the palm of her hand and she knows when they are right or wrong, as if her heart is singing.

Once upon a time, there was a witch in her coven that sang her magic. She remembers the witch’s voice, lilting and reedy, like wind through the grass. As she remembers, she crushes a few of the berries in her hand.

“What are you doing?”

The tea witch turns slowly. Staring at her, tall grass tickling her chin, is a child. The girl’s braids are coiled in two circles and she stares with hard eyes.

“Are you the witch?”

“I’m not a witch,” the tea witch says. 

“What are you doing?” The girl asks again, pointing at the tea witch’s hands.

The witch shows the berries and the sage and the nettle. The girl stares at her still with those hard eyes.

“Collecting ingredients for tea.”

“My mom says you’re a witch. That your tea is boiled by little devils.”

“I told you I am not a witch.” The tea witch closes her fingers around the ingredients, obscuring them from view. “What is the point of asking questions if you do not accept the answers?”

The girl considers this thoughtfully. At last she asks, “Can I help you?”

The tea witch turns away. “No.” 

But she doesn’t stop the girl from picking sage and pricking her fingers on the nettle. Soon, the child is bringing her all sorts of things she hasn’t noticed in the grass: abandoned snail shells and broken pieces of pinecone. All seem to sing to her heart, as if the child knows all the missing ingredients.

The sun is stronger now. The clouds have been banished.

“How do you do that?” the tea witch demands.

The girl is clutching a shiny rock to her chest. A treasure of her own. “Do what?”

“How are you choosing what to pick from the grass?”

The girl stares at her with those hard eyes again. “I don’t know,” she says at last. Each word is as carefully chosen as the leaves and the snail shells. “My heart tells me.”

The tea witch falters. She accidentally steps on a perfectly good bed of rosemary. “Your heart?”

The girl nods. She points to her chest. And then she continues her collecting until the tea witch tells her to go. Not because they are done, no. But because the tea witch is so distracted by the dirge her heart is singing that she can hardly think of tea at all.

+

The tea witch has most of the ingredients, thanks to the child. But one is missing. She knows not what it is. But she readies the herbs for drying, cuts up and crushes the petals. Collects water from the river. By the time she is done preparing ingredients, the woman is married. She knows because the big bell at the big church reaches even the tea witch’s house.

But you can’t rush tea.

As she dries the herbs and crush the leaves in a mortar and pestle, she considers her home.

In here, she can still hear the bell ring.

In here, she can still see the remnants of her coven. There is the loom abandoned by the weaving witch, the embroidery threads by the sewing witch. Old sacks of flour from the baking witch and the singing witch’s old sheet music. Her coven is gone now and yet these pieces remain. One day, she will be gone, too. The pieces will lay in her home untouched, but what is the point if there is no one to recall the way the singing witch was a soprano? The way the weaving witch kept her nails clipped too short for a witch? What is that yellowing sheet music to a stranger? Will someone ever use the old sacks of flour?

And one day, when the tea witch is gone, who will be there to stare at her rusting pots and strainers?

The tea witch will go through these things tomorrow. She will toss them away and they will vanish, poof, like magic. 

+

The tea witch goes out again to find the final ingredient. Again, the world is silent and wet with dew. Her cloak brushes against the bramble, but never snags.

The child finds her soon after she enters the field, as if the big bell at the big church has rung in warning. The tea witch says nothing to her. Her throat is as empty as her home now. They work in silence that would be companionable if the tea witch let it be so.

The sun is heavy in the sky when the child tugs at the end of the tea witch’s cloak. She is holding a perfect rose, its petals as red as blood and soft as velvet. The last ingredient. The tea witch doesn’t even notice its thorns, nor the blood dripping off her thumb. Her heart is simply singing too loud.

“It’s this one,” says the child. They both know it’s true.

“Thank you,” says the tea witch. “I lied to you the other day, you know. I am a witch.”

The child nods. “I know. I want to be a witch, too.”

The tea witch’s throat has suddenly become as dry as the grass. “I think you already are one.” She thinks of everything she has thrown away. She thinks of everything she may accumulate again one day. She plucks a single petal and hands it back to the child. “Keep it.”

The girl presses it to her cheek to feel its softness. 

The tea witch looks at her and asks, “Do you know what a coven is?”

+

The tea is ready when the door chimes. The woman lingers again in the doorway, hesitant, until she smells the softness of roses filtering through the air. She does not look at the tea witch as she sits down on the pink pillows.

Even in the weak light, her ring glints.

“It’s ready,” says the tea witch. She hands the woman a steaming mug. 

But the woman does not take it. She shakes her head. “I don’t need it anymore,” she says. She dares a smile. 

“You don’t need it.” The tea witch knows what this implies. She sets the cup down, before it scalds her hand.

“I’m sorry. I’ll still pay you.” The woman hands over the money, her ring flashing in the light again. “I do love him, after all,” she says, to make it clear. She says it to herself as much as the tea witch. 

“Thank you,” says the tea witch as she counts the money.

The woman rises and heads to the door. The bell chimes as she holds it open, but she hesitates in the doorway again. “What will you do with the tea? Will you throw it out?”

“Yes,” says the tea witch. “Teas can always be remade.”

The woman falters. “Do you think I’ll be back one day? To have the tea?”

The tea witch smiles. She looks at the empty spaces where the threads were, where the sheet music was. She sees the space on her shelf where the stem of a rose given to her still sits. 

“My dear woman, it’s love,” she says, “nothing is promised.”

+++

Ashley Burnett is a writer living in California. Her work has previously appeared in Allegory, Reed Magazine, Split Lip Magazine, and other literary journals.