Hexen's Binding

by J. Kowallis

  “You have Druw blood running in your veins, Alina.” Dad sticks his hands in his pockets. “And the truth is, we need you desperately.”

  My sister carefully hands the bowl to me and I snap my fingers, making it disappear. I don’t know why, but there’s actually a moment when I see a glimpse of compassion. Some form of determination. It peeks out through her eyes and then vanishes.

  “I’m sorry. I really, truly wish I could help. But you have to understand, if I go with you, if I participate in magic, I’ll be risking my marriage. My children. I made a promise to my husband, and I will not break it. Not even for you. You understand, don’t you? If this man that you love asked you for something, anything, you’d do it for him. Wouldn’t you?”

  My jaw juts forward and I shake my head, knowing all along that this is exactly how she would respond.

  “No,” my voice cracks. “I wouldn’t. I haven’t. Believe me, Coll asked me to do a lot of things, like staying away from his sisters, all of which I refused to do. Because I knew there were things more important. And Dad,” I motion toward him, “helped me to realize that doing the right thing to protect those we love, even if it means we lose them, is still the right thing. Honestly, though, this isn’t about Carl. Your unwillingness to do what you need to do isn’t about your marriage, or your children. I think you’re afraid. And I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry that you can’t be who you are because your true self terrifies you.”

  Alina looks at the floor, avoiding my gaze. Every muscle in her body tightens. She licks her lips, shaking her head. “Get out of my house,” she whispers. “Please.”

  I nod. Nothing about her answer surprises me. I swivel, addressing Dad. “Come on. I’m sure we can find someone else to do her job.”

  Dad clicks his tongue and gives my sister one final apologetic look before following me out the front door. Alina stays close on our heels. Instead of slamming the door, it quietly latches behind us, and the lock returns with a click.

  Refusing to wait for my father, I travel back to the cottage in Ireland and walk to the lake’s edge. Dad soon joins me and grips my shoulder with a large, warm hand.

  “We’ll figure this out, Bug.”

  I shake my head. “Ruhmactír won’t be held for long. We’ve already had him chained for—” I reach into my back pocket and retrieve my phone to look at the clock, “two hours. Who knows how long the binding will hold. And, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s next and I . . . I’m afraid for Coll.”

  “I know. But you are part of an ancient prophecy. As is Coll. So, trust me when I say, we’ll figure this out.”

  A few light tears trickle down my face and I look up at my dad. He puts his arm around me and pulls me in tight. I lay my head on his shoulder, breathing deep, and trying to believe that I haven’t just failed Coll again.

  Twenty-Three

  I stand with my arms crossed, glaring out of the bedroom window to the moon-lit lake outside. Two and a half hours. I’m antsy. I’m anxious. It doesn’t help that Ruhmactír continues to whisper my name from his chained prison on the bed like some stupid record with a scratch in it, asking about Craniarann. After being stuck in this room with him for the last hour or more, Angie needed a break, and I was too angry to tell her what happened with my sisters, so Dad took her downstairs to explain everything. That left me as the bedside babysitter. I’ve been doing my best to keep the bastard occupied. It hasn’t taken much. Ruhmactír seems to enjoy tempting a rise out of me. Once or twice he’s almost succeeded. Luckily, I didn’t react, and he seemed to accept that he wasn’t quite hitting the right buttons yet.

  With a mental exasperated groan that I refuse to let him hear, I turn to glare at him and pace to the other side of the bedroom.

  “You never did tell me. How are your little sisters?” he asks, looking out through Coll’s eyes. “Best of friends, are you?”

  I continue to keep my mouth shut, offering a look that’s half revulsion and half boredom. “Shut up. Or I’ll shut you up.”

  He smiles pleasantly. “I dare yeh.”

  “Toile,” I whisper, snapping my fingers. Ruhmactír opens his mouth to speak, and when nothing comes out, he smiles again. He pats the mattress rapidly as if he’s clapping.

  Finally, happy to have a little peace, I pull up one of the chairs near the wall—still keeping my right palm out of his sight—and take a seat. I close my eyes, relishing in his absolute silence. I even close my eyes for a few minutes. After a while, I look back over at him, and he stares right back. I shift, reaching into my back pocket and pull out my cell phone. Minutes pass by while I scroll through emails from work (I only respond to ten of them), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. After a while, I glare at him.

  “Stop staring at me.”

  He makes a motion as if to shrug. As much as he can under all those chains and straps. Ruhmactír sniffs and gazes up at the ceiling.

  I glance back at my phone and after a few minutes, I hear him making noises. When I look up, I realize he’s mouthing something. Short. Two words. I just can’t make out what they are.

  “By the ancestors, I’ll find a way to glue your mouth shut.”

  The bastard smiles. He jerks his chin up. Again. He wants to say something.

  “I’m sure you would. Now shut up.”

  He mouths again. This time the word is very noticeable. Taran. Taran. He mouths it twice.

  I groan and snap my fingers again, the spell, techair echoes in my mind. “Fine, what is it?” I bite.

  Ruhmactír grins, chuckling. “He begged for yeh, yeh know. Horrific howls. Took me forever to shut him up.”

  He? My blood chills. At first, my thoughts go to my father. Thinking that maybe Ruhmactír means the day he killed Dad, but then I realize who he’s actually talking about. I attempt to school my reactions and find a mask of disinterest, but it’s already too late. He must see it in my eyes. His tawny eyes light up and his pupils dilate ravenously.

  Wolves, when on the hunt, assess their kill, looking for any sign of weakness before they act. As a Geri, I recognize what he’s doing, knowing this is just the beginning.

  Ruhmactír breathes in deeply. A pleasurable growl rumbles in the back of his throat. “I didn’t smell yeh react like that the night you were with me. No wonder Coll tore at my mind the way he used to when you were in the room. Interestin’. ‘Course, he don’t do that anymore.”

  I sit back in the chair, trying to relax my body, knowing all the while that all I want to do is reach out and claw him out of Coll with my bare hands. He keeps using past tense words. Past tense. As if Coll no longer prods at him from inside. He don’t do that anymore.

  I should shut him up again. I should shut it out, but I can’t.

  “Yeh already knew I wasn’t Coll that night. Yeh didn’t feel with me the way yeh feel wit’ him.”

  “We already established that. I just needed confirmation.”

  “And how was it? Havin’ his hands on your body, knowin’ it was really me?”

  I successfully manage a look of apathy. I think. “Eh, I’ve had better. Half-assed is probably the best description of your work. Especially considering the position you’re in.”

  His top lip curls. “The moment my magic returns, I’ll enjoy endin’ your life.”

  “Toile.” I snap my fingers again and he goes mute.

  A knock on the door makes me turn around and Dad steps in. He first acknowledges Ruhmactír with reasonable caution and then motions to me with his hand. Leaving the prisoner to seethe on the bed, I stand and pace for the door. There’s a new weariness on Dad’s face. Like gravity drags down on every nerve in his skin.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “I think I have an idea of how we might find another Druw.”

  “Yeah?”

  Dad gently bobs his head to the right, indicating for me to follow him.

  “What about this asshole?” I ask, thumbing toward Ruhmactír behind me.

  “It’ll be just a few
minutes.” Dad snaps his fingers and the chains and straps tighten even more over Coll’s body. He snarls and struggles to breathe easily under the pressure. “Come on.”

  Dad wastes no time bolting down the stairs and I have to skip a couple to keep up with him. Below, Angie leans over the kitchen table. She looks up at us as she spreads out the bottom corner of a worn and faded map of the world. It’s not terribly aged. Probably produced in the sixties or somewhere thereabout. I thoroughly enjoy the fact every country is indicated in various colors—like something off the wall of a third-grade classroom.

  “What’s this for?” I ask, shaking off the discomfort of my conversation with Ruhmactír.

  “Your dad had a fairly ingenious idea,” Angie says, reaching for the mug of black tea behind her.

  “What’s that?”

  “Scrying. Typically, you need something from the person you’re looking for, which is why I haven’t thought of it until now, but I remembered something.” His tired eyes look down at the floor and I follow them. It’s not the floor he’s looking at, but his shoes. And then, I remember.

  “The blood drops you got on your shoe.”

  Angie nods.

  “That’s exactly what I thought,” Dad confirms. “So, I figure we can use those to find someone with a similar blood gift. Of course, it’s pretty much guaranteed that it’ll keep wanting to seek out Alina, but hopefully, like a radio, we can—”

  “Tune into a weaker station?” I ask, arching my eyebrow.

  Dad points to me and then gives a thumbs up. “You got it, Bug.”

  “Perfect, so how do we do this?” I approach the map.

  Angie puts a polished piece of quartz on the map. “You’ve seen a Ouija board, right?” She sniffs.

  “Yeah. They’re junk.”

  “You and I both know that. Your dad knows that. Hell, the entire Hexen world knows that. But, where do you think the idea came from?” Angie winks at me.

  The curiosity of watching a location scrying is almost too much. I take a seat at the side of the table while Angie snaps her fingers. Dad nearly yelps in surprise as his shoe leaves his foot and appears on the table next to Angie. Using a cotton bud that she might as well have pulled out of thin air, she wets it under the sink faucet and then runs it along the bloody drops on Dad’s shoe. The tip of the moistened cotton bud turns an orangy-red and she places it in the center of the map.

  “Fai deu a scaler fuil.” She whispers, placing the first two fingers of each hand on the scrying stone. Her hands begin to move the stone around the map, magnifying certain countries and areas. With her eyes closed, she feels her way across the map, traveling from the United Kingdom to Africa, and across to South America. The stone jolts to the right and back across the Atlantic to Europe where it pauses on Denmark.

  “Scandinavia?” Dad asks.

  “Makes sense,” Angie pauses. “About five hundred years ago, many of the remaining Druws in England left shortly before Cardinal Wolsey ordered the burning of all the Lutheran books of scripture. What most don’t realize is that he didn’t just burn Lutheran books. He was on a witch hunt of his own. Druws warned other clans to stay low, feign allegiance to the Catholic church and they immigrated to Denmark and parts of Sweden.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I mumble under my breath.

  “Well, how to we find the Druw there in—” Dad leans in closer to see what city the quartz rests on.

  The quartz, jerks, then shoots just inches to the left, landing on Ireland. Where we are.

  “What?” I whisper. “What does that . . .”

  Three loud, powerful knocks sound on Angie’s front door and we all simultaneously swivel. We take turns asking each other questions with our eyes and after a while, the person at the door knocks once more.

  “Alaric! Angelica!”

  “That—” I pause. “Is that Móraí?” My grandmother? She’s a Druw?

  Dad rushes to the door and swings it open. Standing out in the early evening dusk is my own móraí. Her face is set into a stone wall, while her thin fingers are wrapped like a vice around the arm of someone else.

  Alina.

  Twenty-Four

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, stepping forward. “Móraí, did you drag her here?”

  Alina closes her eyes in dejection. She sighs, “No. I called Móraí. I told her I needed help getting to you, and instead I got a ten-minute lecture about duty and a rather traumatizing jump across the pond.”

  I fold my arms, looking back and forth between my sister and my móraí. “That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

  Móraí nudges Alina and there’s an unspoken conversation between the two of them.

  “Mamor?” Dad looks at his mother. “What’s going on?”

  “Tell them,” she grumbles.

  Alina might as well have rolled her eyes. “After you left, Carl came back upstairs and practically told me I was a shit wife for allowing our kids to be around this kind of ‘magic crap.’ We got into a huge fight. I told him he had no right to tell my family they couldn’t be around our kids, and the next thing I knew, I was calling up móraí and asking her for help. Mostly to just piss him off some more. I mean, Carl was already ticked, and he threatened to leave. I was in just such a rage,” she huffs in anger, “so I told him he might as well take the kids with him because I was going to be gone in Ireland for a while.”

  “What?” I gasp.

  “Then,” Alina motions to Móraí, “grandma showed up and saw what was happening and she put a stop to it.”

  The smug look of pride on Móraí’s face is almost enough to make me grin. She folds her arms, shawl over her shoulders, and almost straightens her hunch. “Made Carl sit on the couch and I told him he was first and foremost a husband. Before anything else. A few reminders about his wedding vows—”

  “You threatened him,” Alina drawls.

  “—and he was much more cooperative. Promised to watch the children while your sister helps you out and have them back before she returned. If not, I told him I’d hex him.”

  “Is that when you started lecturing Alina?” I curiously point out.

  Alina glares at me with irritation. “Don’t push me, Taran.”

  I have to bite my lips to keep myself even from the temptation to laugh. “So, you’re here to help?”

  My sister nods. “I started realizing that if Carl, Tandem, or Charlie were ever in the same place that this man of yours is in, I’d beat down the doors of Hell to bring them back. So, I felt like I needed to do something.”

  “How very valiant of you,” Angie rumbles. “Good to know your own blood sister doesn’t deserve the same love your husband and children do.”

  Alina frowns, looking disgusted. “Who in the hell are you to be talking to me like that?”

  “I’m the woman that’s been doing your job.”

  “My job?” Her eyes widen in challenge.

  “Teamliach í uoan eno mærke.” Angie nearly hisses and leaves the kitchen, plodding up the stairs with heavy feet.

  “What does that mean?” Alina frowns.

  “Family is our only power,” Dad clarifies for her, his voice soft, but firm.

  * * *

  A furious roar bellows from the bedroom upstairs and I look up at the ceiling. I wonder what Angie said to Ruhmactír that pissed him off. I go back to the mug of tea in my hands and take another sip. My sister, sitting across from me at the kitchen table does the same with her chamomile.

  “I’m sorry.” Alina sets her mug down and I finally look her in the eye. We’ve sat in complete silence with one another after Dad left the room and joined Angie upstairs in what I’m affectionately calling Ruhmactír’s “prison room.”

  “I don’t know why people keep saying that. I never asked for an apology,” I say, tucking my hair behind my ear.

  “Come on, Taran. I’m here. What more do you want from me? You can barely look at me. You’ve got this relationship with that man—” she m
otions upstairs and judging by the edge in her voice, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean Coll this time, “and you just showed up at my door expecting my help. I don’t . . . I don’t know what you want from me at this point.”

  The bottom of my mug clunks on the table as I gently set it down. “I want you to feel free to be yourself. If you want to continue to hate Dad for what he did, fine. That’s your decision. If you don’t want to do magic, again . . . fine. That’s up to you. But I want to make sure you’re the one making the decision. That you aren’t being coerced into it by someone who doesn’t care to understand and won’t even try.”

  “You think,” she looks at her tea, her voice small, uncertain, “you think I don’t make my own decisions?”

  “I worry that you don’t know how to anymore. Or at least,” I correct myself as she angrily meets my eyes, “that you felt like you couldn’t. Until today. And maybe this is still a fluke. I don’t really know how to feel right now. But I hope you know I am grateful.”

  Alina nods stiffly, taking another drink of her tea. Whether Alina still detests me for this—which is highly likely—or whether she decided to accept the circumstances, the conversation ends.

  “All right,” Angie says, thundering down the stairs, “now that, that’s taken care of, we have to get our hands on one more thing.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  Instead of replying, Angie motions both of us to stand up. “You already know,” she finally says.

  “A Geri?”

  Her wagging finger is the only thing that indicates that I hit the nail on the head. “But, first thing we need to do is teach you how to tiaseal with a second person.”

  I look at Alina and lift my eyebrow. “Why?”

  “We’ll need to bring someone along who can convince her.”

  “Convince who?” I prod.

  Angie holds out her hands for Alina. My sister responds by taking a step back. “Oh, come on. I don’t have time for this.” She lunges forward and grips Alina’s wrist, pulling her close. “Now, Taran, the first thing you’ll need to do, before you start to engage your own body is to connect with your traveling partner. I’m sure that when Coll taught you how to tiaseal in the first place, he performed an infe spioris. Correct?”