"Who was the man that organized the dig?" Julian asked.
"A man by the name of Ira. Course I didn't know Ira from any other Tom or Harry. My friend Troy called me up and said there was money to be had and off I went. I lived in Michigan in those days, Grand Rapids area. I packed up my shovels and drove north and met the boys out in the woods. Ira had a map, real clear-like. He knew exactly where to dig for those bones. Of course, I realized later he tricked us good. He knew darn well there was no treasure with those bones." He shook his head as if still amazed by the betrayal.
"What did he look like?" Sebastian asked, wanting to ensure they were talking about the same man.
"Tall, real skinny with short little arms. Weird looking, and weird acting, too. He was not a friendly fella, and Troy swore later that the man had smiled at him with sharp teeth like a vampire might have." Jack shuddered and picked up another cookie, taking a bite and chewing slowly. "Sugar helps, you know? Makes the memories a little easier to look at."
"You uncovered the bones, and then what?"
"I jumped in the hole, swearing like a sailor. 'Where's all the damn gold?' I said. But that man Ira just kept pointing to the amulet. He handed me a black cloth and asked me to wrap it up. Somethin' strange happened right about then, we all got a little fuzzy headed. You see, I'm not the kinda man that takes a beating lying down, but I took that cloth, folded the amulet inside, and handed it over. He told us we had to bury the bones in a different location, at the base of a big oak tree, and we did, with barely a grunt among us. I don't remember much after that, but when we woke in the morning, Ira was long gone. He muddled our brains. Don't know how, but he did."
"Yes, I'm sure he did," Julian agreed. "I still don't understand how Stephen found you, though. We were told that you recognized the name Kanti, but obviously Ira didn't give you that name."
Jack started to struggle up from his chair and Sebastian stopped him.
"What can I get you?"
Jack gestured to a small dining table stacked with books. "There's a folder there on the top, green one."
Sebastian went to the folder and glanced at the books. Many had subjects about Native American history while others appeared to cover the occult and the supernatural.
"I couldn't sleep for months after that dig. I began to dream of a Native American girl, and I knew who she was, the owner of those bones. I started to do research and in those days we didn't have the interweb so I did a lot of travelin' and talking. You might say this was a strange thing to do, but I couldn't let it rest. Lost my wife fer it. She couldn't take the obsession no more. Took our two kids and found herself a dentist to marry. But that's neither here nor there. My big break came one day in Trager City. They was holdin' a Native American festival with dancing and singing and a pow wow. I got to askin' questions and a man said to me, 'You mean Kanti?' I didn't know that name, but let me tell you it struck me like a tuning fork finding home. I took that man for a beer that turned into about six beers."
Sebastian handed him the green folder and Jack picked up a pair of reading glasses, sliding them on as he flipped through pages. He pulled out a sheet of paper covered in tightly written, nearly illegible, words.
"I wrote it all down, had to. I wanted to mull it over when my belly wasn't full of beer. This man described Kanti as a 'gifted child in an Algonquian Tribe. Daughter of Nadie and Ahanu.' He said 'she had the sight.' She could see visions in the fire, speak to it, sing to it. The tribe would later come to believe that Kanti was taken for her specialness, but when she first disappeared, they believed an animal attacked her. A boy in the tribe saw her get abducted. He described a huge hairy beast. He believed it was a man, but he also called it an animal. They thought they were looking for a bear or perhaps a very large wolf. However, it made little sense that such an animal could take her so quietly. In the forest, they found the remains of a camp near their own. Remnants of a white man and a giant man remained. They began to search for her. It was a frustrating and fruitless search. They would hear tidbits about the girl. They would follow a trail of sightings only to discover that the white man, the girl, and his giant had left days earlier. Her tribe heard that she had escaped from the man and fled. But she did not merely run away. She turned the tables. She killed the giant in a brutal way. She and the white man vanished without a trace. They never received another sighting, another clue as to her whereabouts. They learned of a child, but they never found the child. Kanti's mother mourned her for the rest of her life. The entire tribe mourned her. She became a mythical figure. Kanti the Destroyer. The children told stories of the great woman, stolen from her tribe, who gave birth to a half-man half-bear that would someday rule the world through magic fire. Beware of Kanti if you play with fire, if you stray into the woods, if you disrespect your mother and father. She will punish you. The phantom of the great beast she killed will steal you from your bed at night, it will drag you into the forest where she waits to punish you for your crimes."
Jack stopped reading and slipped his glasses off.
"Man," Sebastian leaned back and let out a long sigh.
"Who was the person that gave you this information?"
"Called himself Grandfather, didn't give me another name. He carried the traditions, I believe, told stories to the young ones in the Native American culture."
"And the white man and Kanti both just vanished? She and this man? There was no story of one killing the other? Of a body? Anything?"
"Well," Jack paused. "I heard a handful of strange tales over the years. One man said that the white man had been a murderer and a thief. They called him the Snake Tamer. This man told me that the Snake Tamer could live forever, but he exchanged the lives of others for his immortality."
Sebastian frowned, thinking of the bit of history that he and Abby had read just the day before about Snake Island.
"I started having nightmares the night we dug up the body. Horrible dreams of being buried alive and trying to claw my way out, dreams of being burned. We woke that girl. And you know what? I started thinking those dreams were her memories."
Julian shot Sebastian a look out of the corner of his eye and he knew why - Abby was having very similar dreams.
"I heard another story too." Jack pulled out a faded napkin from his folder. "A woman told me this one, an old brittle thing with one glass eye and teeth full of gold. She looked like something out of one of my own Gramma's story-books. I was sittin' having a cup of coffee, mindin' my own, and she slid onto the stool right next to me. She said, 'listen stranger, I hear you're lookin' for a little Indian girl went missin' a few centuries back?' I turned and looked at her like an alien had just waltzed in and struck up a conversation with me. How on earth could she know what I was lookin' fer? Ya know? Anyway, she told me that the girl cursed her own child and if I wasn't careful, that poisoned blood would find a way into my family and it'd eat us all alive."
Jack slid the napkin back into his folder and glanced at a picture on his side table. It showed a young girl, around ten years old, practicing hula-hoop in the sprinklers.
"My granddaughter, Amy," he said proudly when he noticed them looking.
"You believe the white man that kidnapped her, murdered her, and buried her in the woods where you recovered her bones?" Julian asked.
"I believe he did far worse than that," Jack answered. "No justice in this sick world." He shook his head sadly.
"Oh, she's getting her justice all right," Sebastian muttered.
"How so?"
Julian gave him a warning look, but Jack had moved to the front of his chair and his eyes gleamed.
"There is a curse?" he prodded.
"Maybe you did wake her," Julian murmured, thinking. "Dafne did not know of her, nor did the Lourdes as far as we can tell. Only Abby has had contact with her."
"And Victor," Sebastian added.
"Yes, and why Victor?"
"Who's Victor and Abby?" Jack asked.
"It's a long story."
Jac
k sat back in his worn recliner and folded his hands in his lap.
"I've got nothing but time these days. Clear your heads, boys, tell me a story."
Julian looked reluctant, but Sebastian felt the old man deserved a story in exchange for the information he'd given them.
"Sure, why not."
They began to talk, each telling bits of what they knew and the other filling in the gaps, carefully omitting the word 'witches.'
"We believe the curse began with Kanti. We don't know how she did it, but the curse appears approximately every one hundred years, and we assume the time-frame triggers it," Julian explained.
"Or some other catalyst," Sebastian added. "Such as the woman," he nearly said witch and caught himself, "falling in love."
"Both the woman and her lover are effected. The lover is drawn to do terrible things in pursuit of power."
"Such as killing family and friends."
"The curse seems to have a timeframe. A few months of chaos and then the darkness subsides."
"And there's quiet for another hundred years."
"What does she gain? Kanti? What is the point of the curse?" Sebastian asked out loud. He had asked the question in his head a hundred times, but still had no answer.
"Maybe I have an answer for you," Jack said, looking thoughtful. "I worked for about ten years as a crisis counselor. Hard work, and if you do it long enough you grow bitter, jaded with life. Fortunately, I saw that happenin' and pursued my calling as a fly fisherman. I learned something in those years, though. Trauma has a life all its own. It needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most people, when they get hurt or abused, get stuck in the middle. Their beginning was the abuse, their middle was the shock, the denial, the trying to understand. Their ending, for the ones that get it, is acceptance. The only people I met who were ever okay looked upon that trauma with wide-open eyes. They said, 'it happened, it was wrong, but now it's over.' They said it until they accepted that it was a part of their story and it was okay that it had happened. That was the ending, their acceptance, their willingness to look at it without spending their whole lives asking why. Why is a great jumping-off point, but you gotta land sometime. You gotta get two solid feet back on the ground and start walking into the future. A lot of people who get traumatized float and flail. They want an answer that this world will never give them. I think this Kanti might be flailing. She was a special kind of someone. Maybe special enough that she can hold onto a grudge so hard that it keeps her in the world. People who have been abused often become abusers. Kanti gets to relive her own suffering every time the curse swings back around. It keeps her tethered to her experience, it brings others into the experience with her so that she's not alone."
"You're telling me she created a centuries-long curse because she was traumatized and never got over it," Sebastian asked, unconvinced.
"Sure," Jack said mildly. "Do you know what trauma looks like in the normal world? A child gets abused, he abuses his children, they abuse theirs. Generations, centuries of pain, all paying it forward. They're stuck. They never get the closure they need so they have to revisit the experience again and again. Now take that trauma, which in a normal person can span centuries, and put it into the body of a magic child. A child who is forced to create another child. I believe in the power of our intentions. I've seen things with my own two eyes that don't abide by the laws of our world."
Julian took a big breath and let it out slowly.
"You know Jack, I think you may be right."
Chapter 23
"It's best if I go to Montana as well," Elda told Faustine.
They shared tea and biscuits in the breakfast room and discussed Elda's conversation with the witch Ellen.
"Yes, I agree. Julian is abrasive. We don't want to upset her. Julian and Sebastian are meeting with the man in Texas today. Shall we see if Julian wants to join you in Montana?"
"Yes, I think so. Helena and Bridget are busy with the wedding preparations, and I believe Helena is finally getting Lydie excited as well so this is an ideal time to slip away."
"Adora is improving. Bridget told me she took eggs and toast to her room this morning and that the sores in her mouth are all but gone."
Elda sighed and smiled.
"That warms my heart. I feared for her, Faustine. That perhaps we would lose her too."
"Not if I have any say in it," Faustine told her. "We've had too much death at Ula. A balance must be restored."
"I feel as if we're close, so close."
"As do I."
****
He wore her down. Oliver knew if he hung around long enough, Ezra would eventually open up to him.
One night as they walked along the Chicago River, he reached for her hand. At first she stiffened, and he knew she considered pulling her hand out of his, but in the end, she held on.
"I miss my brother most of all," he admitted.
They had been talking about what they most missed from their pre-witch lives.
"You don't see him at all?"
"No, he got married, had a set of twin boys. I hunt Vepars. I'm not interested in watching them die because of me. I learned really quickly at Ula that the life of a witch can be pretty perilous, especially for the human families of witches."
"Elda and Faustine don't seem like the doomsday types. What made you believe that?"
"Elda and Faustine weren't my teachers. Julian and Dafne were. They both lost the people they loved to Vepars. They had no reservations in stressing to me the realities of life as a witch. If a Vepar believes they can get to you through your family, they will. I cut ties with my family within two months of entering the coven. I pretended to join a religious cult. I told them I was moving to India and they would never see me again."
"And you stuck to that?" Ezra asked, surprised.
"Yeah, they've never seen me again. I've seen them, of course. I can't help it. I want to know my nephews. Sometimes I want to hug my brother so much it hurts. I miss my parents too. I watch my mom go to the country club to play tennis. My dad sits on the back deck and watches birds. I can imagine walking through the front door. I've come close a few times, but for their sakes, I don't."
Ezra gave his hand a long squeeze.
"What about you, what do you miss?"
Ezra ran a hand through her short spiky hair. He'd found her making coffee in the kitchen loft that morning with white hair streaked pink and yellow.
"I miss my dog Elanor."
Oliver snorted.
Ezra elbowed him and laughed. "I loved my dog, thank you very much."
"A dog named Elanor no less." he joked.
"My grandma's name was Elanor and my dad insisted on it. I could have vetoed him, but I loved Grandma too, so I figured, why not? My dad died before I became a witch. My evil step-monster kept Elanor."
"Where was your mom?"
Ezra rubbed her neck and shoulder.
"In rehab, on drugs, in rehab. I don't know. She was off and on with heroin before I even came into the world. My dad was pretty much a shell of grief until he met Mary. She hated me in the fashion of step-parents the world over. I had a brother who died of a heroin overdose when I was eight."
"I'm sorry," Oliver told her, stopping. "Here, let me."
He turned her to face the water and massaged her neck and shoulders. Earth elements had a special talent for massage, manipulating the physical. He felt Ezra lean into his touch.
"My dad died of a heart attack. The truth is that he had been a heroin user too. When my mom got pregnant with me, he checked into rehab, got clean, and never looked back, but once an addict, always an addict. He would be the first to tell you that. He stopped doing heroin, but took up whiskey, cigarettes, weed, gambling, TV, sugar. He picked up a million new addictions to kick the worst one of all."
"Damn," Oliver murmured, at a loss for words.
"You don't need to," Ezra told him, before he could go on. "Believe me, I get it. I'm surrounded by tragedy every day. Words of comfor
t don't actually exist. It's enough to have someone that listens, even better if they don't offer some false sentiment about how they're in a better place, which I believe, by the way. I'm a witch. I know that our souls transcend, that there is freedom after the bondage of this life, but the human still lives in me too, and she curses the gods that created love."
"Love? Rather than mortality?"
"Who would care that we live and die if it weren't for love? I don't see death as the issue, but our desperate love for the person slipping through our fingers. We want so much to keep them, hold on so tight, but still, they go."
Oliver felt in the earth around them with his energy. When he found the rock he searched for, he held out his hand, drawing it forth. The rock rose up, hovering in front of Ezra. She stopped an inch before it smacked into her face.
"Very suave." She laughed, reaching up to touch the crude heart-shaped rock.
"Best I could do on the fly."
Ezra smoothed her fingers along the rough edges.
"This is a much more appropriate depiction of love," she said. "Rough, gritty, a little ugly even. Those smooth glossy red hearts that I see everywhere around Valentine's Day make me want to gag."
"Mental note taken," Oliver told her, pulling on her hand until she stopped.
He brought her close.
She was short, the top of her head fit easily beneath his chin. Instead of looking up at him, she stared straight ahead at his chest. He gently pressed his fingers under her chin until her soft brown eyes stared into his.
"Oliver, we've had this conversation."
He kissed her anyway, knowing that she might reject him a second time. It would hurt a bit, but it was worth it, on the slim chance that she kissed him back.
At first, she didn't. She stood perfectly still as his lips pressed against hers and then slowly, reluctantly, she parted her lips and kissed him.
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 107