We reached the coast. I tie the horse to the nearby tree. I help the two kids down. "Take off your shoes first." I instruct and they follow. I take off my own shoes. The sand felt weird. The sun was setting and the ocean reflected the colors.

"This place is beautiful!" Josephine shouts.

"Yeah it is." I smile at them as they dig around in the sand. We hadn't stopped in any towns along the way after the last one. I rubbed the exhaustion away so that I could appreciate the beautiful scene before me. I can't believe I made it.

"What are we going to do now?" Josephine asks me.

"We can't go to the towns any more." I tell her and she frowns. "If the Witch Hunters find us I will have to do more mean things to people. That isn't something I want."

"That makes sense." She turns back to her brother. "They are weaker than us, aren't they?" I nod. "I have to protect my brother. He is weak like them"

"You are right, Josephine. Such a smart girl." I sit down in the sand. "You must promise to never use your powers to hurt someone unless you absolutely need to, ok?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good, because the one thing they are right about is that we are dangerous." I look at the little girl and then at her little brother, making sandcastles. "Soon, you will become very powerful too, once you figure out how your magic works."

"Will I be as strong as you?"

"Yes, you will, maybe even stronger." She lights up at this before running off to play with her brother again. I watch them play in the sand. What will I do now? It's not just me that I have to take care of now. Joseph runs up to me this time.

"Mari! What's your dream?" He asks me as he catches his breath.

"I want to open a bakery and cafe." He sits next to me and Josephine joins us. "That was my dream before I even found out I was a witch!" I tell them and they smile. "I love to bake. I wanted to bake cakes and cookies and sell them. I can make tea and herbal medicines that I wanted to sell there as well."

"We could do that now!" Josephine says excitedly. "We could make a witch bakery and cafe! A safe haven for witches!" She says excitedly.

"We could do that. That's not a bad idea but we don't know any other witches." I break the news to her calmly.

"Hmmmmm." She taps her chin as she hums. "We could go and search for witches and bring them to the bakery. With all of witch magic it makes it even easier to build a safe town for witches!"

"We should focus on making a place to stay first, don't you think?" I smile.

"Oh, I didn't think about that." The little kids giggle.

They end up falling asleep on me. I stare up at the night sky. There were so many beautiful stars up there. I started munching on an apple. Joseph snores and Josephine mumbles in her sleep.

"Good lord! I finally found you." I snap my head to the side. Ropes made out of sand form out of the ground and wrap around Seth. My heart was beating in my ears.

"Where are the rest of your men?" I ask quietly. I ease myself out from under the kids and place my cloak over them.

"It's just me, Mariposa." Seth looked horrible. Bags were under his eyes and his hair was disheveled and his clothes were ripped.

"What happened to you?"

"They found out that I was trying to talk to you before they started to get to you. They were gonna burn me at the stake for being a witch sympathizer." His eyes looked terrified and worry spiked strongly in my heart. I let go of the magic binding him and helped him over to my stuff. "I wanted to help you."

"If you are lying I won't hesitate to kill you. You know that right?" He nods. "If you harm a hair of those kids' heads I will murder you and anyone you hold dear." I lay him down on the ground.

"I won't hurt the kids. I won't hurt you. I won't hurt another witch for as long as I live." He says breathlessly.

"Good, because I will have to kill another man in a horrific way if you do." Several vials float over to us. I pour a liquid down his throat. I spread different pastes on his many wounds. I touched his forehead. "Goodness, you are burning up."

"Yeah..." He closes his eyes and I continue to work on him. My anger, fear, and worry were hitting me hard and I tried hard to not let my magic spike out of control. "Don't you have healing magic or something?"

"I do, but it's very flashy and I don't want to wake up the kids." Herbs pick themselves and a bowl forms from the ground. I mashed up more paste and am now applying multiple at the same time. "You really got yourself messed up."

"Your magic is very impressive." He watches as bowls float around us, herbs are added to the bowls, mashed, and then spread themselves. Glass vials form and extras are poured into them and then secured all at the same time.

"Not really."

"How did you find out you were a witch?" He asks as he stares into my eyes. "How old were you?"

"I found out about two months ago." He blinks up at me. "I was in my personal garden, tending to my herbs when something jumped out of the bushes and frightened me. There was a loud pop and a small fire."

"How did you know that it came from you?" His face scrunches up. He looked dazed so I wasn't sure if he would remember the conversation later.

"My mom ran away when I was ten, apparently my dad found out she was a witch. So, my first guess was that I was a witch too." He ran a hand through my hair and I tried not to react. He was a patient in distress.

"Why is your hair this color?"

"My mom had hair like this." My heart was pounding in my ears with my strong anxiety. "Is there a problem with it?" I try to make him less focused on questions about me and why I am the way that I am.

"No, it's pretty." He says it so delicately.

"Alright." I place my hand on his forehead and put him to sleep. He fights against the magic. It's surprising and reminds me of the tea that had worked on every other man but barely worked on him. My journal floated over to me and wrote this fact down. My heart also beat faster and he made my emotions more extreme. He also had the same effect on Josephine.

There was something strange going on with Seth. How many times will we lose control before I figure it out?