Hexen's Binding

by J. Kowallis

  “Who?” Angie scrunches her face.

  Exasperated, I turn to her. “The truth of the matter is, most people don’t think enough when it comes to their feelings. Basing every action and every decision on how we feel is a recipe for disaster. If there’s anything I’ve learned from history . . . and my junior high television addictions . . . is that wild passions need to be thought through just a little more.”

  “So, you have wild, passionate feelings for him?” Angie ventures, a sense of jest under it all.

  “Oh, spirits,” I groan. “Just let it go.”

  Silence settles over the car. Angie seems to submit to my stance and doesn’t argue the matter anymore. After a few more minutes, we find ourselves driving through the main center of Rosslare until we come to a little shop tucked down one very narrow street. Angie practically parks her car on the sidewalk and then turns to me.

  “I have to ask.”

  “Ask what?”

  “About your feelings. Because I don’t know what will happen to Coll. If he is somehow possessed, or if he’s permanently lost his memory, he may not ever be the man you remember him to be. Hell, our understanding of an actuve is so limited, I can’t even tell you if he’s still in there. That being said, he’s destined to help you in the prophecy, but I can’t make any guarantees. I can’t even guarantee that he’ll live.” She reaches for my hand and I’m half tempted to yank it back. “Taran, you picked up on his differences faster than I did. And as much as I want to believe that he’s simply adjusting to his new reality, the fact that the girls think he’s different and you think he’s different, convinces me otherwise.”

  Angie grips my hand tighter. “You saw the differences in him because you care for him. You don’t just care about him. You have a tie to him. One of your own choice and doing and it has nothing to do with the prophecy.”

  My eyes lightly mist over again, and I take a deep breath. Yes, I felt something with him that I’ve never felt before. Yes, when I first saw him today, I wanted to run over and throw my arms around him. Yes, he has a way of emotionally stripping me naked, but . . ..

  “Taran, I’m worried about my boy. And I’m worried about you.”

  My fingertips feel cold. Frigid. I keep thinking about all the possibilities that Angie’s suggested. That Coll may never be the same. That perhaps he is possessed, and we won’t be able to bring him back. It makes my eyes burn.

  I look up at the ceiling of the car, hoping the tears will somehow just sink back into my eyes. “I don’t really want to talk about this right now, Angie.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to face it.” She squeezes my hand again for good measure and this time, I pull away.

  “No. I don’t.” My voice comes out sharper than I anticipated. I reach for the car door handle. “Listen,” I smile and glance at her even though I know my eyes are red, “I’m going to travel back to help Alaric and do some additional practicing. That’s what I need to do, right?”

  Angie opens her mouth. I cut her off.

  “Okay. Um, I’ll see you back at the house.”

  I open the door against Angie’s protest and step out of the car. I hear her own door open and a sentence beginning with, “Taran, I know that—” but I don’t hear the rest of it. Seeing that no one else is around, I connect to my magic and travel back to Angie’s cottage, landing right at the edge of the lake where I estimated. And this time my feet are not soaking in the water.

  I take a deep breath and hug my arms around me, looking out over the lake. There’s no real reason or rhyme to my thoughts. All I know is that I needed to get out of that conversation. Wind blows across the lake, threading through my hair, and chilling my skin.

  Taking a deep breath in, I close my eyes and slowly put my hand out in front of me.

  “Teand komce. Teand adlyen,” I whisper.

  I hear the water splashing long before I open my eyes. When I do, I manage to actually startle myself. The water shifts and transforms into the Himilæsa again. This time even bigger than before. It towers over me by nearly two hundred feet if I had to guess. The branches glisten, the leaves of water sparkle and drip with crystal-like beads of lake water. Each time I even jostle a finger, the tree shifts slightly to the left, or the right, obeying the gentle twitch of my command.

  I take only two steps forward. Any farther and I’ll be ankle deep in water again. As the drops of water fall and sparkle before rejoining the lake or trickling to the ground, I close my eyes again. A drop on my forehead. My left eye. My shoulder. My chin. Nose.

  Then, I have a thought.

  I open my eyes and look down at the water near my feet. With my left hand, I make a circular motion and start to pull my hand up. A flat stepping-stone-looking disk of water lifts into the air—small blades of glass and particles of lake water swimming around in it. If this doesn’t work, the worst that can happen is my feet will get wet. And I’ve already done that.

  I lift my right foot and step onto the disk of water. Expecting my foot to go through it, I bite down on my lip. Instead, my foot meets some resistance. Not like stepping onto an actual stone, but more like . . . walking over a soft bed of memory foam. Realizing I’m not about to soak my feet, my excitement soars. I start breathing faster and put all my weight onto the water stone. My right hand continues to command the tree, my left keeping the stone beneath me from returning into the lake. I need another stone.

  “Okay,” I whisper softly to myself, my breath shaking. “Cast the spell without using your hands.”

  Using my mind, I visualize a second stepping stone in front of me. The lake water trembles and a palm-sized ball of water struggles to lift away from the lake mass.

  “Come on.”

  I look back down at the full stepping stone beneath me and freeze that image in my mind. A second water stone. That’s all I need.

  Once again, I focus on the water. This time, a larger ball of water bubbles from the lake and attempts to shape itself into a flat stone. “Almost . . . there,” I whisper.

  “Taran,” a voice rumbles behind me.

  I jolt backward and my control over the water Himilæsa and the stones collapses. I fall forward with the loss of the stepping stones and crash into the lake. The shock of the cold water makes me scream before I even come back up for air. Sprays of water tumble down on top of me—remnants of the Himilæsa and I slip around in the water for a while, grasping at grass before I’m able to stand up straight.

  “Oh, shit! Bug, are you all right?” Alaric asks, wading into the water.

  Disgusting lake water taste lingers in my mouth and I spit and cough until I have no more saliva to spit. It tastes like mud and mildew and shit.

  “Yeah,” I shiver, wrapping my arm around me and reaching for my dad’s outstretched hand with the other. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  Alaric chuckles. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. First, I thought you’d gone with Angie to the herbalist, then I saw you replicate the Himilæsa again, and then . . . I see my daughter walking on water. If anyone was scared, Bug, it was me.”

  We step out of the lake and my feet slosh around in my shoes. Water drips from my hair into my eyes, and from my clothing onto the ground, creating a pathway of damp footprints and mud drops all the way toward the cottage. When we reach the front doorway, I ring my hair out on the grass and shake my hands dry.

  “Gransui,” I say aloud. My hair dries in a snap and my clothes quickly return to their normal dry state. Although, the smell of lake water still remains in the fabric.

  “Why weren’t you with Angie?” Alaric asks, snapping his own fingers and drying his shoes and feet.

  I sigh. “It’s a long story.”

  “Well,” he sits down on the step leading into the cottage, “if I know Angie, she’ll be gone for at least an hour. We’ve got some time. Explain to me what’s going on.”

  There are no words strong enough to convey just how much I don’t want to talk about that again. So instea
d, I sit down next to him and slump my shoulders. “Actually . . .” I breathe out, “I’d rather not. I think I’ll just go inside.”

  “Well,” Alaric interrupts me. “If you don’t want to discuss that, we have time. Let’s talk about us.”

  “Us?” I narrow my eyes. “How so?”

  Alaric shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s been a while since we’ve spent this much time together. You must . . . have something to say about it.”

  I sigh and lean forward on my knees. “Alaric, I haven’t had you in my life for over twenty years, and ever since we arrived at Angie’s I’ve been training, studying, eating, drinking too many cups of tea and whorla, and more studying. I haven’t really had the time to think about you.”

  Alaric shifts his tongue around in his mouth and nods. “I understand.”

  “But now that you bring it up. I am curious. About you. A big part of that curiosity stems from the years I wanted you in my life, and now I have you and I don’t know how to act. I don’t know you.”

  He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You’re not alone in that.” His hands twist and knot and rub each other. “I’ve been absentee. Or dead,” he lifts his brows, “your whole life. I suppose I just don’t know what my place is, and I’ve really been trying not to push it.”

  Sinking down even further in my spine, I sniff. “I understand.” Deep breath in. Exhale. And I finally get up the courage to ask, “Alaric, can we start again?”

  My dad turns his head to look at me and his smile is genuine, though small. “What? This conversation, or . . .”

  I chuckle. “All over. From the beginning.

  Alaric nods. “I’d appreciate that. Can I ask you something first?”

  I nod.

  “This might sound morbid. Maybe a bit sick. But, tell me about my death. Tell me everything you remember.”

  Morbid is right. “Why?” I wonder, feeling just as gruesome as he warned me. Talking about my dad’s murder . . . with him.

  He sucks on his teeth and scratches his facial hair. “I want to understand everything you know about me. If I want to have a stronger relationship with you, I want to see myself the way you do. I suppose.”

  I clear my throat. “Makes sense. It’s just a little weird. Talking about that. With you.”

  He sits up, looking uncomfortable. “Oh, well, if you don’t want to, you don’t need to relive it again.”

  “No, it’s not that. I mean, I’ve dreamed about it and relived it enough in the last few months that it’s permanently engrained in my brain.” I offer a sad excuse for a chuckle and press my lips together. “That weekend,” I begin, “was the eclipse in Coeur d’Alene. Móraí invited Mom to go with.”

  This time I actually do laugh. And so does Alaric.

  “I remember that. Boy was that an eye opener for her.”

  I smile. “I can imagine.”

  “So, what happened?” Alaric asks.

  “I stayed home. Lotte was still nursing, and Alina was ‘old enough’ in Móraí’s warped mind to go with. But I was sick. I think it was the flu or something.”

  “Strep throat,” he corrects me. “Is seems not everything has changed.”

  I smile. “You wanted to be the one to watch over me.”

  Alaric nods.

  “Well, one night, he arrived. Radolf Wolf. Only, you didn’t know it, but it was really Ruhmactír. You’d been working with him to find Craniarann, and with you being as brilliant as you are, you found it before he did. Luckily, you didn’t trust him, so you never told him where it was. But he still found out that you knew.”

  I continue to tell him about the cupboard, the fear, the door flying open, and then the red spell. The tás.

  “I didn’t dare leave the cupboard. It wasn’t until the next morning when Mom and Móraí got home that they found you, and me. I had nightmares every night for a few weeks and then, they slowly started to go away. It wasn’t until a few months ago that they started up again. Vivid and real. Imagine my surprise when I found out after everything happened that you were alive again.” I look at him, and he’s just staring at the ground near his feet. “I was freaked out, to say the least. Excited, but I still had no idea what I felt, let alone what I should feel.”

  Alaric sits quietly for a while. Doesn’t really surprise me. I can imagine that hearing about your own death is a bit overwhelming. When he does talk, his voice is measured, thoughtful. “You know, it was shortly after the eclipse that I left. About two weeks after your mom and Mamor got back, I got the call from the Donovans. And I left.”

  “Alaric I—”

  “I never,” he cuts me off, “stopped loving you girls. Or your mom. Those years apart were the worst of my life. And no amount of third eye draught and observation spells can make up for actually being there to watch you grow up.”

  I can’t stop it. A tear trickles from my eye and I quickly brush it away. “You . . . you watched?”

  “Every night. I’d take a dose of draught, cast an observation spell over you girls and fall asleep. Not in a creepy way, mind you. But I’d get glimpses of you running through the sprinklers in your Strawberry Shortcake swimsuit—”

  “Not creepy?” I ask, an easy smile accompanying it.

  He grins. “If it wasn’t that it was watching Alina’s tea parties.”

  “She loved to mix milk and water and serve it to us. It was disgusting.”

  This time, Alaric chuckles. “Then I’d see you girls bundled up on the bed with your mom while she read to you.” His voice tightens. The fact that he’s talking about my mom, the woman he loved—or loves seems to be a more appropriate term—has not escaped my notice. “It took everything inside me not to reach out and call her the nights she’d break down in her room and cry because she was so overwhelmed. So frustrated and falling apart. Being a single parent. I wanted to help her.”

  Alaric clears his throat. When he looks at me, it’s with tears building in his eyes. “That’s what filled my dreams for twenty-five years.”

  This time, I don’t brush the tear away, I just let it fall down my cheek and spread into the corner of my mouth. I lick it away. “It seems we have a lot to learn about each other.”

  “Indeed,” he agrees. He offers his arm, and for a short while, I hesitate. Then, I tuck under his elbow and he pulls me toward his chest. I take a deep breath and let it out. Alaric does the same.

  We sit.

  And breathe.

  Nine

  Moonlight floods the small bedroom. I push the blankets off my legs and pause at the chill in the air. The sounds of Coll’s last scream in my nightmare rings in my ears. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Slowly, I sit up.

  Coll. Possessed. Or, at least, most likely. The thought of it terrifies me. And maybe that’s what my nightmares were trying to tell me. That, that day in Bryden, Coll sort of . . . died. Not in the physical sense, but the spiritual sense? As someone else took him over, murdered him from the inside out.

  My chest tightens and I clear my throat. No. No. I want to scream it. No. He’s not dead. They’re just nightmares. Everything is okay.

  I curl my toes before setting my feet down on the floor. In a flash, I run to pick up my jeans and slip them on under the baggy Adidas t-shirt Angie gave me. I’ve actually grown quite fond of it. It has a smell that’s familiar, but I can’t quite place it since it’s buried beneath an avalanche of the other smells of patchouli, amber, and cranberries in Angie’s home.

  With my pants on, I slip out of my room and tiptoe down the wood staircase leading down to the main living area. Angie passed out in the kitchen, sitting in a chair, draped over the dining table. Her arms are her only cushion against the hard wood, while books, herbs, oils, and failed concoctions surround her. She tried all evening, all night, to find something that might work to test on Coll. Obviously, she still hasn’t found anything yet.

  I’d clean up and send her to bed, but I know that the moment I wake her, she’ll insist on getting back t
o work. Instead, I summon a throw from the living room and drape it across her back. Angie’s eyelids flitter and twitch—meaning she’s dreaming. I wonder if it’s anything of importance, if it’s a nightmare like mine, or if she just dreams of flesh-eating mermen, bigfoots who like to knit, and naked school days like everyone else.

  Angie takes a deep breath in and it rumbles in the back of her throat, not unlike a snore. I pick up a couple of the books on the table—the ones not open to specific pages that Angie’s obviously using—as well as my own grimoire and pad into the living room. After my conversation with Angie yesterday about Coll, and especially after the one with Alaric, I have even more questions.

  The most important one being, why? Why did Craniarann take me and Coll back to Woden’s time in the first place? There must have been a reason, and I want to find out what that is.

  Billowing scents of aged synthetic stuffing and more patchouli wafts from the cushions as I fall into the couch and set the books next to me. I open my grimoire that’s now half-filled with notes, spells, and information. While Angie worked on potions and solutions for Coll, she gave me even more instruction. The pages flip through my fingers using just a bit of my hexen abilities, and I look at the first spells and ingredients. Even more so, my focus turns to my most recent entries. My gothic script is getting better, not to mention my line art. It actually looks like I know what I’m doing now.

  Laying the grimoire open across my lap (the next empty page staring back at me), I reach for the top book that crowns the small stack I brought over. It’s one I’ve never heard of before. And I’m not surprised to see that the interior is all handwritten. Hexe de at Forgaite it reads across the old leather cover and the title page. Hexens of the Past. And this is only volume one. There were six other similar-looking volumes on the table that I didn’t pick up.

  Whomever wrote this was extremely talented when it came to illustration and ornamentation. The artwork is so complex and intricate, I nearly forget to look at the actual words on the page.