Sorciére

by J. R. Erickson

  Oliver reached over and squeezed her hand before climbing back to his feet. He helped her up as the first droplets hit the tops of their heads. A crack of thunder snapped Abby's focus. Beneath them the water became liquid again and they both plunged down.

  It was icy and Abby felt the breath sucked from her lungs. They were in over their heads, but they both laughed and choked as they struggled back to the beach. When they emerged, Abby spotted Dafne. She stood in the greenhouse, watching them from a circle, smoothed clear, in the fogged windows. Her black eyes locked with Abby's and then her face was gone.

  ****

  "Sebastian?" Abby knocked again and, when he didn't answer, she pushed his door with her foot. It opened and she called his name once. "Sebastian? Are you in here?"

  No answer.

  Sebastian's room was similar to hers, except the windows faced the lagoon and it was decorated with medieval torture devices that made her shudder whenever she visited him there. One wall held five different axes, their blades revealing slivers of her face in the candlelight.

  Sebastian was not an organized guest. His duffel bag lay open on the floor, his clothes a plume of debris surrounding it. An enormous oak desk stood beneath one of his windows covered in books, many lying open, their spines bent back. She walked to the books and glanced casually through them. Every title spoke of Vepars or demons.

  Abby knew that Sebastian continued to hunt Tobias, at least in his mind. He had stopped speaking of it with her, but occasionally slipped and let out some Vepar fact or trailed off about some secret location that he wanted to investigate. Abby hated his obsession with the killers. She wanted to forget them, but her opinion seemed of little matter to him lately.

  She wanted to bridge the gap, but simply could not find a way. Part of her felt deeply in love with Sebastian, but another part of her felt utterly detached from him. She thought of his beautiful blue eyes that glittered with a mystery that she could not begin to comprehend. She could sit and stare into his eyes and never grow tired of the light that she saw in them. At least she had felt that way a week earlier, but doubt had taken her love hostage and she could not shake it off.

  She sat on the edge of his bed and took his pillow in her hands, lifting it to her face and inhaling his scent. Her feet did not reach the floor, but her heel knocked against something hard. She hopped from the bed and squatted, reaching below the hanging comforter. Beneath the bed, her fingers sought an edge and she gripped it and pulled it towards her.

  As she tugged, a large wooden box emerged. It was lidless and inside, items and photos were carefully placed, many pinned to the box's walls and others glued to the base. There were photos of Claire. Claire in a red prom dress posing in front of a park swing set. Claire bikini-clad on a beach towel. Claire as a young girl with her arms wrapped around a stuffed turtle and two fingers stuck in her mouth. Around the pictures, Abby saw twigs, herbs and pieces of cloth. Several small containers glued to the bottom of the box were filled with liquid, one that looked strangely like blood.

  "What are you doing in here?"

  She paused with her hand above the box, only seconds from dipping her fingers into the brownish liquid, and took a deep breath.

  Sebastian stood in the doorway, his face empty of emotion, but his arms crossed defensively over his chest.

  "I was just looking for you," she started.

  "I was in the Healing Room getting a tincture for Bridget."

  "What tincture?" Abby desperately wanted to distract him from her snooping.

  "I don't know. Something for mosquito bites." He looked perturbed, his eyes moving toward the box, but he said nothing. "Are you ready for dinner?"

  She nodded and stood, following him out of the room.

  ****

  "So what costume will you wear to the All Hallow's Ball, Abby?" Elda called down the dinner table.

  Abby stopped, her forkful of chicken poised halfway to her mouth. All of the witches looked at her expectantly and her face burned. She noticed that Sebastian was staring intently at the garlic mashed potatoes he'd prepared earlier that day. He had been spending more time in the kitchen with Bridget, which relieved Abby because it meant that he was not stalking the library for more titles on Vepar destruction.

  "Ummm, well..." she choked and found herself looking to Oliver for help.

  His lips were folded in a grimace and when they made eye contact, he shrugged as if to say 'guess you're telling him after all.'

  "Well, I've been so busy, I haven't given it much thought." An absolute lie. "By the way, Sebastian, I forgot to tell you about the All Hallow's Ball."

  "Oh." he mumbled, finally looking up. "Lydie mentioned it last week."

  Abby sucked in a breath and felt her blush deepen.

  "Yeah, I told Sebastian that he should be the Goblin King from Labyrinth," Lydie quipped, spooning potatoes into her mouth.

  She had recently dropped the clichés and Abby loved the change. She was much more like an adolescent girl than Abby had realized.

  "Ha, the Goblin King, Lyds?" Oliver laughed. "You want poor Sebastian in spandex pants and a pirate shirt?

  "I wasn't sure if it was a witch only thing..." Sebastian said, ignoring Oliver.

  "Well, I'm not totally sure either," Abby said looking at him apologetically. She reached beneath the table to squeeze his knee, but discovered that he was sitting too far away.

  "I'm sure that he can be concealed," Dafne muttered and Abby glanced toward her, bewildered. Oliver too seemed shocked at Dafne's comment, but her gaze had drifted back to her plate and no one else seemed to notice.

  "It can be done," Faustine said simply. He rarely spoke more than a few words at dinner, sometimes none at all, and Abby was surprised that he chose this moment to tune in. He looked down at her sideways, but his expression remained a riddle and Abby could not perceive his intentions.

  "Great," she said with feigned enthusiasm, but Sebastian did not mirror the sentiment.

  "It's so much fun," Helena mouthed at Sebastian, grinning.

  He nodded at her, but his eyes wandered to the windows at the far end of the room.

  "Last year," Helena started, "I went as Medusa. Elda enchanted real snakes for my hair. It was amazing."

  "Yeah, that was cool," Lydie perked up. "Elda, could you enchant wings if I go as one of the winged monkeys from Wizard of Oz?"

  Elda smiled and dabbed her mouth with her napkin.

  "We'll see, Lydie."

  ****

  After dinner, Abby and Sebastian returned to her room. He had brought a book about Vepar venom and said nothing as he settled onto Abby's bed and flipped it open.

  "Do you want to talk? she asked.

  Despite her growing intuition about the emotions of others, Sebastian's continued to elude her. Was he angry that she had not mentioned the Ball? Or merely so preoccupied with thoughts of Claire that he'd barely considered it?

  He glanced at her over his book and shrugged.

  "If you feel like we need to."

  "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the party. You've just seemed so...distracted."

  The rain grew louder and Sebastian looked at the window and then at Abby expectantly.

  "It's not me," she said.

  "It's fine that you didn't mention it. We've both been busy with more important things."

  His words stung since most of her energy as of late had been directed at the party and the conundrum it had created in her life.

  "Honestly, Sebastian, I chose not to mention it because you haven't seemed interested in much of anything these last few days."

  He cracked a cold smile and stared hard into her eyes.

  "What does that mean?"

  She hesitated.

  "Okay, I said that wrong. You haven't seemed interested in the coven or in me."

  He closed the book and rested it on his lap.

  "I love you, Abby. I'm crazy about you, but this..." he held the book up, "...is my purpose in this world. I doubted it,
but now I know and I have to pursue it all the way to the end."

  "What does that even mean? Your purpose is to kill Tobias? Come on, Sebastian, what kind of purpose is that?"

  "Could there be any greater?"

  "Sure, how about love, Sebastian? Taking all of that energy and pouring it into love."

  "This is about love," he whispered.

  Abby felt her chest thicken, but she stifled the tears.

  "Okay, fine. I'm going to run a bath." She left him in the bedroom where he had already returned to his book. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching the water pool, and wondered what had happened to their love.

  ****

  "Dafne has been blocking me," Faustine said suddenly.

  He and Elda were seated in the dungeon oratory. It was no longer a place of prayer, but an enchanted space meant to bind the energies of their coven.

  "Dafne?" Elda asked, peeling her eyes from the Book of Shadows she had been vigorously scribbling in.

  "Yes, I wasn't sure even a few days ago. But today I am. Her mind is not available to me."

  "Even in the tower?"

  He nodded.

  "Perhaps you should ask Helena if she is sensing anything in Dafne," Elda told him.

  She looked down at her book where she'd been writing Bridget's new anti-fungal remedy, but suddenly she could not concentrate.

  "The energy has been off lately," she murmured, setting a palm out as if collecting rain drops.

  "Yes. I thought that it was Abby and Sebastian and all of the chaos of late, but now..." he trailed off.

  Elda set her pen down and stood, moving into the circle in the center of the room. The Magic Circle, marked by the runic symbol X, was a sacred space that the witches used to call forth and join their powers. It had been months since they had last performed the ritual, largely because they had all been preoccupied.

  "Yes," Faustine responded to her thoughts. "We should gather and call the Magic Circle. We need to bind Abby into the coven."

  Elda nodded, but felt uneasy. She was not sure that Abby was content at Ula and she knew surely that Sebastian was not.

  "It is simply young love," Faustine concluded reading her mind. "It is volatile. I would not give it much thought."

  "What about their connection? Helena witnessed Sebastian ripping an arm off a chair when Abby became upset."

  Faustine furrowed his brow and nodded.

  "I know, but I'm not so sure that the connection transcends the most basic link of loving one another. Have we not all experienced the passion, rage or pain of our partner?"

  "Yes, of course, but to physically act it out?"

  "It is worth investigating in the future, but right now my focus has shifted to Dafne and why she is putting a wall in front of my eyes."

  "I will speak with her," Elda said, nodding in tune with her thoughts. "I will try to discern her intentions."

  Both she and Faustine knew that Dafne was a powerful witch whose mind, when closed, would not be penetrated.

  ****

  Dafne whispered a hurried incantation and the pile of items on her desk vanished. Technically they did not vanish, but became the exact color of the cherry wood, knots and all, making them nearly impossible to detect.

  "You busy?" Elda asked, pushing open Dafne's bedroom door.

  Dafne had one of the only dungeon rooms. She preferred it because the earth's thermal energy strengthened her own fire element.

  "Uh, no, writing a spell in my journal." She held up her journal, a tattered old thing that was legible to no one but her.

  "Anything interesting?" Elda asked sweeping into the room and scanning it quickly. She did not detect the flurry of items on Dafne's desk.

  "Hardly. I've been trying to pull from the sun at night, but the energy is just...weaker."

  Elda nodded, sensing that Dafne was eluding her, but did not want to give her suspicions away.

  She lifted a pile of books from a leather club chair, one of two in Dafne's room, and sat down. Dafne, seated in the other chair, seemed unperturbed by Elda's visit and gave nothing away.

  Elda felt the first stinging fingers of a headache behind her eyes and lifted her thumb and forefinger to massage the bridge of her nose.

  "Not feeling well?" Dafne asked

  "Just a little headache," Elda trailed off. She lifted one of the books and eyed its title. It was not unusual, a memoir written by a witch in another coven.

  "Remedy?" Dafne asked, pointing toward a chest kept at the foot of her bed filled with tinctures and poultices.

  "No, thank you, dear." Elda fingered the fabric on the chair and stole glances beyond Dafne, again searching for anything out of the ordinary. However, Faustine was right. Dafne had a steel wall up. Elda could not get a sense of her emotions nor could she catch a fleeting thought. It was intentional, she was sure of it, but why she didn't know.

  Dafne was a moody witch and had been since her arrival at Ula nearly a century earlier. Despite her devotion to the coven and her steadfast adherence to the witch's rule, harm none, she never fully opened up to any of the witches, except for maybe Oliver, but Elda could sense that crumbling as he grew closer to Abby.

  "How are you doing?" Elda continued. "I feel that we haven't spent a moment alone in ages..."

  "Fine. I'm preparing for All Hallow's and trying to stay out of everyone's way," Dafne said shortly, glancing at her journal with a growing looking of impatience.

  "Hmm...," Elda searched Dafne's face, but she returned Elda's gaze dispassionately.

  "Was there anything else?" Dafne asked.

  "No, I don't think so," Elda said standing with a flourish of her dark robes. "But I'm here, Dafne. You can always come to me if you need to talk."

  She left the room slowly, stealing another long glance around the space, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  Chapter Four

  Late one afternoon, Lydie climbed the steep sand dune that served as the westernmost border of the island. It was no more than fifty yards across, but it seemed to rise forever. The top offered a blow-out view of the vast lake beyond. The nearly vertical dune on the other side, long eroded into sandstone, was a dizzying drop.

  "Into the clouds," Lydie whispered with a grin and a mostly unconscious thought of her dead mother whom she often imagined as residing in the clouds, but only the really white fluffy ones. The gray clouds never held more than rain.

  Her feet were cold because she had foregone shoes to feel the sand a final time before fall took hold completely. Sand wedged beneath her toenails and it hurt, but she forged on, her ankles slicing through sugar and her feet creating small divots as she ascended.

  The sky was blue and clear. She felt her breath growing short as she trudged up the dune. Generally, her superior strength made the climb easy, but nightmares had plagued her recently and she felt tired. She did not remember the nightmares exactly, only that Sebastian's face floated before her when she woke. She wanted to tell someone about the dreams, but everyone in the coven had seemed preoccupied and Oliver, her usual confidante, was spending all of his time with Abby or patrolling the mainland.

  She reached the dune peak and dropped to her knees, lowering her face to the sand and resting her cheek against it. It felt like home, the home she'd shared with her parents in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Forest, and sometimes she climbed the island dune to return there. She sank both hands deep into the sand and massaged it with her fingers. With her eyes closed, she concentrated on one of the more poignant memories of her childhood home. In her memory, her father carried her up a sand dune on his shoulders. It was spring and cool so she wore fleece pajamas. Her mother laughed and ran ahead, cart-wheeling back down the dune to meet them.

  As she guided energy into the image, she felt the stirrings of her astral body. It broke away from her physical body and a wave of seasickness washed over her as she traveled at light speed to the terrain of her childhood. She did not travel back in time. No, that was a feat that even witches
, as far as she knew, could not accomplish. But suddenly she was there again at the wide expanse of sand dunes that dipped and soared like a great desert. In the distance, she saw the rippling waters of Lake Michigan, but she turned her astral body south and began to float back down the dune that she had climbed with her parents so many years before.

  At the base of the bluff, she came to a dense wood. She wound her astral body through it easily. She had visited it before, several times, and though Max still believed that Lydie could not travel in her astral body, she could actually do it quite well. If she knew more about the capability of witches outside of her coven, she would have learned that very few witches could take their astral body to far away locations at will. Most of them could visit the sacred caves and areas nearby, but to travel elsewhere was a special skill which Lydie had mastered years earlier, but told no one.

  In the woods, she paused, pulling memories out of the mind that rested peacefully on top of the dune at Ula. She remembered learning to climb trees in the forest. Her mother often climbed with her in a small sack that wrapped across her chest. Lydie knew what it felt like to be a monkey, a koala bear, an animal baby whose mother could leap from branch to branch. Her parents were not like the witches at Ula. They were lovers of life and they were kids in their hearts. They danced and ran and climbed and kissed. They inspired in Lydie the magic of life that had nothing to do with their powers as witches. Perhaps they were careless as Lydie had once heard Faustine call them, but she missed them desperately.

  Lydie knew that Elda and Faustine were unaware of her memories. They did not realize how clearly etched in her thoughts were the years that she spent with her parents. They did not know that she longed to live a life very similar to theirs, a life that was not part of a coven, that had no rules and that considered joy to be as sacred as a Book of Shadows.