Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
by Grady Hendrix
Contents
Chapter 18
Overview
Fern and Rose reach Miss Parcae’s hidden coven and meet the witches living on the run in the Florida woods. Rose demands a revenge spell for the theft of her baby, and Miss Parcae agrees to teach her, explicitly separating Rose’s vengeful path from Fern’s desire to only save Holly. Around the fire, Fern learns the coven’s worldview of women being hunted across history and hears how Mags bears traumatic ancestral memories as a “line” of inherited voices.
Summary
Fern and Rose are marched at gunpoint into a hidden camp in the woods, terrified they have stumbled into something violent. The tension eases when they see the group is mostly women and includes a nursing mother with a baby, but the armed guard, Pagan, keeps watch. The women confirm Decima brought them and send Periwinkle to escort them to Miss Parcae.
Periwinkle leads Fern and Rose to the bookmobile, now lit with candles and used as Miss Parcae’s quarters. Miss Parcae appears frail and elderly and says she has little strength tonight, but invites them to sit and speak quickly. Fern explains she has been studying the witch book to help Holly; Rose cuts in and demands a spell to hurt the people who stole her daughter.
Miss Parcae warns that power without mercy becomes cruelty and offers instead to make Rose forget her child, but Rose refuses, clinging to grief and insisting on revenge. Miss Parcae forces Rose to say her desire plainly, and Rose states she wants to make them feel helpless the way she did. Miss Parcae, smoking a strong joint Periwinkle brings, agrees to help anyway, telling Rose and Fern that either they will learn to control power or power will control them.
Miss Parcae sends Fern away, saying this moment is where Rose’s path diverges from Fern’s because Fern “lacks the heart for revenge.” Back at the fire, Fern tries to make polite conversation and learns the coven is always moving because they are hunted. Periwinkle describes global myths and brutal punishments used to target “witches,” arguing the real reason is hatred of women.
Mags, the disoriented elderly woman, panics and relives memories of a burning, sobbing about her mother’s death. Dolores explains Mags carries a hereditary “line” of women’s collective memories like a living vessel, a burden that broke something in her, while Dolores claims to carry the line of Diana as a source of strength; Joy affirms the line continues through daughters. Rose returns looking grim but satisfied and confirms she “got it,” and Little Robin prepares to lead Rose and Fern back.
Who Appears
- FernPregnant teen; meets the coven, seeks to save Holly, and is excluded from Rose’s revenge lesson.
- RoseGrieving mother; confronts Miss Parcae for a revenge spell and returns saying she got what she needed.
- Miss ParcaeWitch leading the coven; hears Rose’s desire, agrees to teach power, and declares Rose and Fern’s paths diverge.
- PeriwinkleCoven member who escorts the girls to Miss Parcae and explains the group’s members and persecution.
- DoloresPrim coven elder; explains witch “lines,” claims the line of Diana, and frames Miss Parcae as “the library.”
- MagsElderly, confused woman; panics with traumatic visions and is described as carrying ancestral memories.
- Little RobinScrappy coven member; feeds and comforts Mags and offers to lead Rose and Fern back.
- PaganArmed guard who initially threatens Fern and Rose and mistrusts Miss Parcae’s secrecy.
- JoyDolores’s daughter; fiddle player who affirms the mother-to-daughter continuation of their witch line.
- JourneyBanjo player at the fire; provides music and watches the group’s tense moments.
- StarNursing mother in the coven; her presence and baby calm Fern’s fear of immediate violence.
- SparrowStar’s baby; visible proof the camp is a family-like community, not killers.
- CelestiaPagan’s mother; quietly present as part of the coven and later holds Mags.
- DecimaDog who leads Fern and Rose to the camp and is greeted as a trusted companion.