Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.
Washington Irving—“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Prologue
1862
Baltus Van Buren sat in front of the roaring fire with a stiff shot of bourbon in his hand, pretending he wasn’t waiting for his wife, Sarah, to leave. She took her time as she always did when she went to the school, puttering around the house as if she were perpetually about to forget something. Over the years, Baltus realized it wasn’t absent-mindedness, though that sometimes came into play, rather it was her reluctance to leave him and Katrina on their own. Sarah went to the school only on the nights before, after, and during a full moon, but one would think she had to go to the other side of the country, not a forty-minute horse ride into the dark woods of Sleepy Hollow.
She’s afraid, Baltus thought absently as he swirled the amber liquid in his glass. But of what?
Though he always asked the question, he had his suspicions. That was why he was waiting for Sarah to leave that night, because he wanted a moment with Katrina alone.
She was nine years old, and it was time for his daughter to finally know the truth.
“Goodbye, dear Baltus,” Sarah said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. She smelled of cloves and something earthy, like the hard, dark soil that lay under the thin layer of evening frost, rich with decaying leaves.
the wrinkles deepening around her eyes and mouth. But she always looked this way before she left for the school. She’d look much better upon her return.
She would have said goodbye to her daughter, but Katrina was already in her bed, fast asleep. At least that’s what Sarah thought. Baltus knew otherwise.
The door opened and closed, and Sarah was gone, a blast of frigid air blowing in and tickling the fire. The flames leaped and danced and then settled, and the entire house seemed to relax as if letting out a sigh.
Baltus waited a moment, had another swig of his drink, and listened to the branches of the bare trees tapping the narrow windows of the sitting room, wanting to come in. They sounded like a ticking clock.
Then he said in his loud, fatherly voice, “Katrina?”
He waited a beat, and the door to her bedroom opened a crack, and her pale face peeked through.
“I know you’re not sleeping,” he continued, and gestured to the velvet chair beside him. “Why don’t you come here so we can have a chat.”
She paused in the doorway, large blue eyes, pale skin, and hair like cornsilk. “Am I in trouble?” she asked in a small voice.
“Not even a little,” he said, his smile raising up the corner of his mustache. “Come here, my child.”
Katrina walked toward him, her bare feet smacking the floor loudly, which made her father smile to himself. His daughter was never the most graceful little girl, always loud and brash and clumsy, as if her feet were too big for her body, and she had no sense of the space around her. He wondered if one day her mother would make her attend a finishing school or if Sarah would use her own magic to help Katrina be more “refined.” He prayed Sarah would leave Katrina as she was.
Baltus was a kind and loving man, beloved all over town for his thoughtful and genial ways, but he was a coward when it came to his wife, and he knew it. Sarah Van Tassel’s roots in Sleepy Hollow were so deep that sometimes he worried he could be uprooted at any moment and tossed away with one defiant look from his wife. After all, when they married it was she who decided to keep her maiden name—Van Tassel—because of tradition on her maternal side, and pass that name on to Katrina. And though Baltus was a witch too, his magic paled in comparison to Sarah’s.
When it came to Katrina, however, her magic was yet to be seen.
“What is it, Papa?” she asked, climbing into the chair beside him, her legs swinging back and forth. If she had been sleepy before, she was fully awake now, her bright blue eyes looking him over curiously, eagerly, for it wasn’t often she was encouraged to stay up late. “Did something happen to Mama?”
He glanced at her, bushy brows furrowed like dueling caterpillars. “What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Your mother is fine,” he said. He shouldn’t be surprised at how observant she was. That was the whole point of this talk. “She left to go to the school.”
“I know. I heard her say goodbye. It’s just that the house feels different.”
“How so?”
“Like it was holding its breath, and now it’s not.”
Very astute, he thought. He cleared his throat. “Well, dear Kat, that feeling you have, what you’re noticing, that’s energy. And not many children your age would be able to put that feeling into words like you have, but that’s what makes you special.”
She stared at him, a tiny smile on the corner of her lips. He knew she liked being called special.
“You know what else makes you special?” he asked.
“I think you do.” He gestured to the fire with a nod. “The fire listens to you, doesn’t it? You can make the fire dance with your fingers.”
Her eyes went wider, like fancy blue-and-white porcelain saucers Sarah brought out when they had company.
“It’s your secret, I know,” he said gently. “But I am your father, and there is no hiding things from me. I also know that you talk to birds and animals and that they understand you. That when you’re really upset, a gust of wind will flow through the house, slamming all the doors. And I know you’ve made yourself disappear on more than a few occasions, something that has always given me such a fright.”
Katrina swallowed hard, her legs no longer swinging. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, and Baltus felt bad for bringing it up.
“I’m not telling you all of this to punish you, my dear,” he said. “For I know it is not your fault. If anything, it’s because of your mother and I. Because we are also special in similar ways.”
She nodded slowly. “I know.”
He chuckled. “Of course you do. Do you know what that’s called? The name we have?”
She shook her head.
“A witch,” he said.
She stuck out her lower lip and pouted for a moment. “No. That can’t be. Witches are bad. You’re not bad. And men can’t be witches.”
He straightened up in his seat. “Men can very much be witches, and witches aren’t bad either.”
Except for a few, he thought.
you have been told. That they are bad and wicked and up to no good. That is not the case, but the world doesn’t understand. Sleepy Hollow is the last safe haven for us, and even then, not everyone is…as special as we are. As you are.”
She seemed to think that over. “So I’m a witch?”
“You are. A beautiful, wonderfully good witch. But because you are a witch, you have a responsibility you must adhere to. It will keep you safe. It is so important to keep yourself safe, Katrina.”
“You keep me safe,” she said with a smile.
His heart pinched at that. “I won’t always be there to keep you safe, my dear.”
“Then Mama will keep me safe.”
“Of course she will,” he said, feeling the pinch in his heart grow tighter. “But one day, your mother might not be able to protect you. One day, you’ll be on your own.”
“I won’t be on my own. I’ll be married to Brom Van Brunt,” she said proudly. “You always tell us that we are to marry each other when we’re older.”
Baltus tried to keep a smile plastered on his face, but it faltered. “Yes. Your mother has seen to that.”
“Brom is my best friend, so that’s okay,” she said. “And he’ll protect me.”
Brom was a couple of years older than Katrina and a good kid, if not a bit wild. His parents were spineless though, and Baltus always thought it odd how much Sarah pushed for the two children to be together. Brom’s mother, Emilie, was a witch, but his father was not, and Brom himself showed no signs of magic at all. But when Sarah set her mind to something, she’d keep going until the whole town agreed with her. She was persuasive like that.
“Be that as it may,” he continued gruffly, “one day, you might be alone, and you’ll need to keep safe. So in order to stay safe, I need you to promise me something. Are you ready to promise your father something very, very important?”
“What?” she asked.
“I want you to never tell anyone that you’re a witch. Even your own mother. I want you to keep it a secret from the world, even from yourself. We don’t show our magic and powers, and you won’t show yours either. You must hide all of that deep down until you’ve forgotten it.”
“Why?”
“Because the world is cruel. You know what happened to the witches of the past.”
“But they were bad,” she said, her nose scrunching up.
He quirked a brow. “Were they? Or is that what people were told? They might have been as innocent as you are. The world isn’t ready for people like us. Even this town.”
“Are there other witches in Sleepy Hollow?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer that. The truth would come out soon, once Katrina learned what her mother was doing at the institute and what the school was doing with their students. Who the students really were.
“There are other witches,” he said carefully. “But they hide it too.”
“So we can’t all be friends?” she asked.
He shook his head. He knew it was safest for Katrina to seem like a magical dud, to appear uninteresting, to appear to have no powers or interest in the occult at all, whether that was among other witches or normal people.
Because if she let her magic keep developing, they would discover her. And they would take her for every ounce of her soul.
Panicked by the thought, Baltus reached out and grabbed Katrina’s hand, squeezing hard. “Promise me this, Katrina. Promise me that when you feel the call to magic, to the strange and the unusual, to power, that you ignore it.
That you bury it deep inside you. That you will do all in your power to not be a witch. That you will never show it or tell anyone about it. Including Brom, including your mother, including me. Please.”
Katrina blinked at him in shock, then studied his face. He knew there was nothing but anguish on it, a desperate plea for her to understand and obey.
Finally, she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I can do that.”
“Do you promise, dear daughter?”
“I promise,” she said.
And God, he hoped she meant it. He hoped that this would stick and that it would keep her safe in the end.
It was as if he knew he didn’t have much time left with her.
1
Kat
1871
There’s something at my window.
I hold my breath, my eyes darting across the dark room. I had been in a deep sleep, and the noise brought me out of the depths.
A tapping sound.
At first, I think it’s a tree branch at the window, moving in the wind, but the elm outside doesn’t reach this far.
Then I hear it again.
Something small strikes the pane.
A stone or pebble.
Brom, I think, getting to my feet. I look around for my dressing gown. When I was younger and he came visiting, I would have just gone to the window, but now that I’m eighteen, my mother has drilled a sense of modesty into me.
I slip on my dressing gown and hurry to the window, looking out onto the yard. Brom is lurking in the shadows beneath the elm, its leaves shadowing his face from the half-moon. Beyond him and the fields is the Hudson River, which laps softly at the edge of our property, reflecting the moonlight.
I push up the window, a chill sweeping into the room, bringing with it the first smells of autumn, fallen leaves and damp earth, and the fading smolder of a bonfire. And something else. Something dark and strange that puts a shiver down my neck.
“Brom? What are you doing?” I whisper harshly, sticking my head out the window. I hadn’t seen Brom for a few days, which wasn’t unusual lately. This past year, he’s been around less and less. Where he goes and what he does and who he does it with is a mystery to me, despite there being less than a thousand people here in the town of Sleepy Hollow.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he says, his voice low and gruff.
A tiny thrill runs through me that I do my best to ignore. We were the best of friends when we were younger—spending every moment playing together, sharing secrets, creating dreams—and to have this distance now as we’ve gotten older has felt a lot like rejection. I know that we’ve been betrothed to each other by our parents since I was born, but I often wonder if Brom really has any intention of marrying me when I turn eighteen or if he’ll rebel against his parents and choose someone else.
For the first time in my life, that thought strikes a pang of jealousy in me.
“It’s the middle of the night,” I point out.
He gives the faintest of shrugs, but his silhouette is tense, like an animal ready to run.
Or to strike.
“Can we go somewhere private?”
I nod. “Let me grab my shoes.”
slippers out from under the bed, hoping he doesn’t plan on going far. I put them on and go back to the window, sliding the rest of it up. I’m not the thinnest nor the most graceful person, so getting through the window is a bit of a struggle, but luckily, Brom comes forward just in time to help me down.
My skin tingles where his strong, warm hands wrap around my waist, my dressing gown feeling too bare and thin under his grip. I want to apologize for weighing so much more than I used to—I can’t remember the last time he helped me sneak out through the window like this—but I don’t want to bring it to his attention. My body has gone through so many changes these past few years, and it’s now more apparent than ever that we are no longer the children we used to be. The more I think about it, the more it overwhelms me, like I’m barreling toward adulthood faster than I can breathe.
But despite my weight, he easily places me down on the ground, my slippers sinking slightly into the dew-damp earth. We’re so close here that I suck in my breath, suddenly feeling too shy to meet his gaze. How odd it is that someone can go from feeling like your friend to feeling like a stranger, and so quickly.
“The barn?” he murmurs, and I finally meet his eyes. They’ve always been dark, the deepest shade of brown, but in the shadows, they are coal black and brimming with an intensity that I can’t read.
I nod, and he grabs my hand, taking it in his, leading me silently along the side of the house and across the back meadow, the grass now short and stiff from a dry August. We don’t have a working farm anymore, not since my father passed, so we lease out the fields to neighboring farmers to use. The red barn that sits among leafy oaks remains neglected, though the two of us used to use it all the time as a secret clubhouse of sorts, a place where we could escape our families.
“Is everything all right?” I ask him quietly as we approach the barn. I don’t think I’ve ever come here in the middle of the night, and the half-opened doors remind me of a jaw about to shut. I suppress a shudder, not liking where my thoughts are going.
He doesn’t say anything, but he gives my hand a squeeze, his skin damp now and not as warm as it first was.
Brom has always been a moody boy. I think that’s why we’ve gotten along so well. I’m prone to similar tempers, so I know when he needs space and time to work through things. Often, we’ll just sit together in silence, enjoying each other’s company but letting each other be lost in our own thoughts.
Tonight feels different though. There’s something unsettled and tense about him, more so than normal, and the early September air feels thick and electric.
Change is coming.
For a moment, I close my eyes, my body wanting to become one with the cool breeze, to join with the natural world and uncover its secrets, ...
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