Born of Shadows- Complete Series

by J. R. Erickson

  ****

  After Helena disappeared through the mirror and Lydie went in search of Baboon, Abby slipped off to her room. She sat on the window seat that looked out over the bay and pulled out her journal. Journaling had always been a solace, a place to unleash her thoughts, but in the last year, she'd barely lifted a pen. She had taken her journal when she fled Nick and Lansing and the life that left her gasping for breath. She had even opened it a time or two and glanced back over the previous entries. She read about her frustrations with Nick, her feelings of ambivalence in the relationship, her desperation to run away from it all. A dozen or more entries ended with the words "Why do I feel like I'm faking my own life?" It had been one of the questions, maybe the question, that ultimately drove her to pack her bags that fateful August morning and flee to Sydney's lake house. It had felt like a big decision. It wasn't one of those tiny choices like running to the supermarket for bananas that transformed her life forever. She knew the moment she left, she would not return. She had no idea, however, about the life waiting for her. A beautiful life, she realized, feeling the soft nudging of the child within her. A terrifying life, too.

  She had packed away the old journal and purchased a new one. She bought it from True Self, the new age bookstore in town that offered tarot readings, sold crystals, and always smelled of lavender and eucalyptus. The woman had been generous and sweet as she guided Abby toward the journals. She was not a witch, but what Elda would call an empath. Abby could feel the woman feeling her. An emotional exchange that Abby would not have sensed before becoming a witch. The woman had shown Abby a wall of leather journals with images burned into their surfaces.

  A caramel journal, embossed with a black tree, tiny birds fleeing its branches, had caught her eye. She took it home and struggled to write her first entry. Eventually, she had found herself writing letters to her baby rather than anecdotes from her day.

  She usually started each entry with My Love-but that morning, without even realizing it, she had written, Dear Vidya. She stared at the entry now, relishing the thought of her daughter's name.

  "Vidya," she said out loud.

  She tried to remember where the name had come from. Had she heard it? Read it in a text at Ula? Nothing obvious drifted to her mind and she knew that, like many things, an answer to her question might never surface. Elda said that witches and people were meant to ask questions they may never get answers to. Questions were the spark for growth and evolution. Answers were an end to a story that was never meant to end.

  Chapter 28

  "What do you think of the name Vidya?" Abby asked Sebastian that night as they lay in bed.

  Sebastian rolled onto his side and smiled, knowingly.

  "What? Why are you looking at me like a sly fox?"

  "I love it and I knew that you were going to choose it."

  Abby widened her eyes.

  "How?"

  "I had insider information," he admitted. "Claire told me in the dream wood."

  "You didn't tell me that!"

  "I know. Claire told me you would arrive at it on your own and, honestly, I was curious to see if that would happen. How did it come to you?"

  "I don't know," Abby admitted. "I was writing a letter to the baby in my journal and realized I'd addressed it to Vidya. Where's the name from, I wonder?"

  "Not my life," Sebastian admitted. "I don't have any great-grandmothers named Vidya that I'm aware, but in this strange world, who knows."

  Abby laughed.

  "Yeah, me neither. Though I was thinking about the Sanskrit word Avidya, which Elda told me means 'lack of knowledge of the true self.' So maybe Vidya is actual knowledge of the true self, knowing oneself?"

  "I like that," Sebastian decided

  "Middle name Claire?" Abby asked.

  Sebastian studied her face.

  "Vidya Claire Hull," he said. "A great name."

  "Yes," Abby agreed, realizing that soon she would no longer be Abigail Daniels, but instead Abigail Hull. That too felt right. Like her old journal that no longer suited her new life, she felt a name change was also in order.

  ****

  "We'll be seeing you two lovebirds tomorrow," Oliver grinned.

  "Is this going to be one of those gushy weddings where everyone cries?" Lydie asked, tracing her finger along the edge of the huge gilded mirror propped in the hallway.

  "Probably," Sebastian smiled. "But only the boys, I'm sure you girls will be dry-eyed."

  "With Helena in attendance?" Lydie giggled. "Don't count on it."

  "Okay Lyds, safe travels through the never-sphere. I'll see you in a few hours." Oliver wrapped Lydie in a funky maneuver that combined a hug and a headlock.

  Lydie hugged back and then wrestled away.

  "Au revoir," she said, giving them a quick salute and falling backward into the mirror.

  "Is she going to come crashing out the other side and give Faustine a heart attack?" Abby asked.

  "Probably."

  "No mirror travel for you?" Sebastian asked.

  "Nope, can't leave my magic bus behind and I need to swing by my post office box. I try to make it twice a year in case the IRS is after me."

  Abby gave Oliver a hug and Sebastian offered him a fist bump.

  Outside they heard a car pull into the driveway.

  "Jim, I hardly think it's appropriate to bring fast food. I'm sure they've cooked a meal," they heard Abby's mother shrill.

  Oliver widened his eyes and Sebastian pretended to grab Abby's hand and pull her into the mirror.

  "If we move fast, we can all be in Ula in half a second," Sebastian coaxed.

  "Surely you're not trying to escape your future in-laws?" Oliver joked, peering around them toward the door as if a ghoulish beast might burst in.

  "If my dad had any hair left, it fell out on this drive." Abby sighed, picking up the black cloak bewitched to obscure the mirror. She threw it over the top and Oliver adjusted it into place.

  "Why did your parents drive up together?" Oliver asked. "Attempting a reconciliation?"

  "Doubtful," Abby muttered. "Honestly, I don't know. My mom called me last night and said 'Abigail, your father and I will arrive tomorrow. Is there a suitable place for us to sleep?'"

  "I told her we'd roll out a couple sleeping bags in the shed." Abby grinned.

  "You did not!" Sebastian laughed. "Did you? Please tell me you didn't?"

  "Okay, I thought it really loud, but kept it to myself."

  "I'm gonna make a run for it," Oliver told them.

  They walked outside to greet her parents.

  "Hi Mom, Dad," Abby called.

  "This is a great house," her dad said, popping the trunk and grabbing a large gold pull-behind suitcase-her mother's no doubt. "What'd it go for? Half a million?"

  "Jim," Becky seethed.

  "Hi, Mr. Daniels," Sebastian shook his hand and took the suitcase. "Mrs. Daniels," he offered her an awkward one-armed hug that Becky leaned away from.

  Oliver opened the door to his van.

  "Hi, Abby's parents, nice to see you again. On a deadline, but I'll be seeing you tomorrow." He tipped a hat he wasn't wearing and threw the van in reverse.

  "This is very nice," Becky commented, sizing up the house and turning to scan the property. "The color is rather strange though, and that widow's walk up there gives me the absolute creeps." Becky shuddered.

  Sebastian caught Abby's eye and gave her a look that said, "play nice."

  "Let me give you guys a tour," Abby said, beckoning them toward the front door.

  ****

  "G'day." Oliver smiled as he murmured the Australian greeting with barely a thought.

  The post office clerk beamed at him and she looked mildly disappointed when he turned toward the post office boxes rather than stepping to the desk.

  He hadn't checked his mail in four months. He rarely received correspondence, but a couple times each year his brother or parents sent him a letter and he relished their every word. Though his fam
ily believed he lived in India, he had given them the post office box in the UP, with an unlikely explanation about regularly traveling there for wilderness meditations. The box had popped into his mind when he told Ezra about missing his family and he'd been unable to shake it from his thoughts. Dropping the stack of mail into a bag, he returned to his VW bus and rifled through the contents. To his delight, cards had arrived from his brother and mom. A third envelope caught his eye, written in painfully tight, nearly perfect cursive. He set it on the dash and ripped open the card from his brother.

  The picture on the cover revealed Oliver's brother with his wife and sons standing next to a giant Christmas tree. Christmas in New York announced huge red block letters above the smiling family. Oliver could see that Jeannie, his sister-in-law, was pregnant with a third child. They wore funny Christmas sweaters sewn with google-eyed reindeer. His brother wrote that he missed him, hoped that next year he would visit for Christmas, and announced the rather obvious news that another baby was on the way.

  The card from his mother was more generic with a smiling Santa Claus on the front. What the card lacked in personality, she had made up for by writing a novella inside. She outlined the previous months in detail, from his dad's unruly ulcer to the new dining room table she bought. She reserved the end of the card for how much she missed him, pleading with him to visit and finally with the question that she always asked, "What did I do wrong?"

  He cried while he read the cards and when he finished them, he tucked them inside his shirt to feel their words against his chest.

  He picked up the third envelope and glanced again at the writing. It looked familiar, but the sender did not immediately come to him. Ripping it open, he pulled out a single sheet of thick cream stationary. He recognized it immediately from the library at Ula.

  Dear Oliver,

  Perhaps when you read this, I will be sitting beside you. I will have told you, "Let's get that letter and burn it," because as you know, I am thorough and would worry that it is unsafe, even in your post office box. Maybe you will laugh at me and insist on reading it before I can light it on fire, which I will do as you hold it in your hands. There is another option, a more likely one, I fear, and it is that I am no longer of your world. My story is long-the tale of a witch is rife with tragedy, is it not? But how can I pass out of this life without leaving that story behind? So I have written it in detail in a journal, which I hid at Ula. Ula is great for hiding things, all those secret passageways you used to sneak into with Lydie during our games of hide and seek. I would practically have fire coming out of my ears, I'd get so angry with you. I will miss the two of you most of all. Before you came to Ula, I was a broken woman. It was only through your humor and Lydie's innocence that I learned to feel love again and I am grateful eternally. I have left something else in the journal, another letter that outlines what I have been up to. You're onto me by now, I'm sure. I am reluctant to mention names in this letter. The paranoia in me wins out yet again. Therefore, I will refer to the entity as K. I have learned much about K in the past year and things are not as they seem.

  Do you remember the secret passage that led from Lydie's room to the library? At the second bend, reach to the ceiling. I will say no more, you were always a better sleuth than me.

  Despite how all of this may seem, I loved all of you. Everything I did was to protect you, to protect Ula, and I now know that I was chasing phantoms, the wrong ones. I love you. In the journal, you will also find letters to each of the witches of Ula. I wanted to write them just in case, maybe we'll be burning them together later, by the light of the library fire, drinking a cup of Bridget's cocoa and celebrating life.

  Dafne

  Oliver, not realizing he'd been holding his breath, let it out in rush. He read the letter again and then a third time. Dafne had left a journal. Dafne had suspected that her death was imminent. He tucked the letter back into the envelope and leaned his head back.

  ****

  "Why would Dafne hide it in the passage by my room?" Lydie asked, gazing at the stone wall hung with a purple tapestry that Helena had made for her. She looked again at the letter that Oliver had received from Dafne.

  "I don't know, Lyds," Oliver admitted. "Maybe she wanted us to remember better times."

  Lydie nodded and swallowed the lump gathering in her throat. It hurt to think of Dafne. It hurt most of all to think of Dafne in the years before Abby and Sebastian arrived at Ula. She was never a bowl of cherries, but she had a lighter side. Helena used to lovingly call her the Tender Dragon. Dafne had put a lot of effort into easing Lydie's transition into Ula, and as a fellow fire element, she believed it her duty to show Lydie the ways of fire.

  Lydie remembered nights on Oliver's balcony. Dafne performed fire tricks and Oliver poked fun at the outlandish displays. Dafne liked to say earth elements were jealous of fire elements, but Lydie knew they were teasing. Oliver was the only witch who truly connected with Dafne until Lydie came along. Dafne felt protective of Lydie and wanted to help guide her.

  "She wrote all of us letters?" Lydie asked, slightly afraid to read hers. It would make her cry and miss Dafne and wish to turn back time.

  "It seems that way."

  Lydie pushed the tapestry aside and fit her fingers into the grooves between two bricks. A tiny metal hook stuck from the cement and she flicked it with her finger. The stone wall shifted, swinging slowly in and back, revealing a passage behind the wall.

  Lydie lit a small ball of fire. It floated before them as they walked into the shadows. Sebastian paused at the second turn and reached for the ceiling. He felt a large stiff envelope fastened to the stone ceiling, He tugged and it pulled away.

  "Got it," he whispered.

  Lydie's eyes looked wide and tearful in the light of her fire.

  "What will it say?" she asked.

  Oliver shook his head.

  "We'll know soon enough."

  ****

  They could have read the letters and the journal alone, but Oliver had tired of secrets. He wanted everyone in Ula to know about Dafne's journal so they gathered in the library and opened the envelope together.

  "I feel like Abby and Sebastian should be here," Lydie broke in.

  "They arrive with Abby's parents this afternoon," Julian reminded her. "And we can't exactly have this conversation in front of her mom and dad. After the wedding will be soon enough."

  "I second that," Oliver said. "Let's give them a peaceful wedding and honeymoon before we wreak more havoc on their lives."

  Oliver passed out the letters, setting the one addressed to Abby aside. Helena cried as she read her letter. The only dry eyes in the room belonged to Julian as he did not receive a letter since he'd been away from Ula for years when Dafne disappeared. After they finished reading their letters, Oliver held up one more.

  "This letter is addressed to the coven. Does anyone want to read it out loud?"

  "I will," Elda said, sniffling into a handkerchief. She dried her eyes and stood.

  Dearest Coven-

  I hope that in writing this letter, I'm offering all that I know of the curse that plagues my bloodline. In the midst of the damage I've done, I am attempting to set things right. Such powerful witches you are, and I have no doubt you've already discovered a great deal about this curse. I blame myself for not confiding in you sooner. Together we could have overcome this, but I hated and judged myself for having loved Tobias and even more for having abandoned my child. I did not want you to see me in that light and I arrogantly believed I could thwart the curse on my own.

  As I write this letter, I am preparing to travel to France. Will I attempt again to wipe Sebastian's memories? I do not know. I am reluctant to admit that I have considered killing him. It is wrong, yes, but could it end the curse? Could it save Abby and all of you? My only hope is that you receive this information in time for it to be of some use.

  I visited the L'Obscurite and obtained a book by Joseph Yarrow. How did I know to seek this book? The Lourde
s, in one of her rare lucid moments, told me that the original owner of that book contributed to the curse on our bloodline. I do not know his name. Only that he kidnapped the girl Kanti, tortured, and murdered her. The information in that book outlines an Egyptian ritual for immortality. This man was desperate to live forever. He was not a witch, but sought power by any means possible. The girl Kanti was the origin of his magic. The Lourdes has compiled a great deal about this curse, which may surprise you. How can an insane witch trapped in a forest retrieve any information? Every potion she received, she used to those ends. She wanted to perpetuate the misconception of her evilness, and don't get me wrong, she's often malevolent and cruel. But she hoped to learn of the outcome of her abandoned child, and in searching for that child, she discovered the curse and a history of the girl Kanti.

  If I am gone when you read this, go to the Lourdes. I have given her the book on Yarrow. You shudder at this revelation, but I kept my word. She told me the name of the book and where to find it. In return I gave her the book after I read it. The witch Ethel in New Orleans believed she tricked me by ripping out the pages regarding possession, but I am not a fool. As Elda will tell you, a simple spell to reveal that which is missing produced those pages for me. Do not punish or contact the L'Obscurite in retaliation for her actions. They are a dark and ominous group and they will not soon forget a confrontation.

  When I first learned of the curse, Kanti was the only entity I could discover. I am her descendant, as was the Lourdes, and Abby. There are many, many more and I will tell you a strange and unsettling truth: Tobias, Alva, and I believe Sebastian, are descendants as well. We come from that original duo - Kanti and the man who stole her. If this man did, in fact, follow Yarrow's instructions, he has committed a great many murders to fuel his immortality. He has created multiple objects, much like relics, that house the spirits and the magic of the witches he has slain. I know of only two-an amulet and a dagger.