So Mote it Be

by Isobel Bird

  “You two have no idea what you’re playing with, do you?” said Cooper.

  “And you do?” Kate shot back. She hated being talked down to, and Cooper was doing exactly that.

  “Yeah,” said Cooper. “Maybe I do. And what I know is that you shouldn’t go around playing with things you don’t understand, because you can get into a lot of trouble.”

  “Oh, now suddenly you’re the great expert on magic?” said Kate. “A few minutes ago you didn’t know anything about it.”

  “I know enough,” said Cooper.

  “Then will you help us?” Annie asked. “Please, we don’t know who else to go to. We’re not asking you to be our friend. We just need to know if there’s anything we can do to stop all of this and make things normal again.”

  Cooper looked down at the floor, sitting in silence while Kate and Annie exchanged glances and wondered what she was thinking about. Then Cooper looked up at them and sighed. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it. I hate to think of the danger you two are likely to unleash if left unattended.”

  “Thanks,” said Annie, smiling. “Now, tell us what you know.”

  “I think I need some hot chocolate first,” said Cooper, standing up and taking a mug from the dresser. Then she sat back down on the cushion and took a sip while Annie got the other two mugs and handed one to Kate.

  “Like I said, I checked out that book,” Cooper said. “Let’s just say I had some interest in finding out what was in it. But it’s pretty much useless.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Kate. Her initial dislike of Cooper hadn’t faded entirely, but she was intrigued by what the other girl had to say.

  “Well, some of it is okay,” Cooper continued. “But the author pieced it together from a lot of other books. It’s hard to separate the good stuff from the bad stuff. It’s the kind of book bought by people who talk to crystals and listen to too much Stevie Nicks music.”

  “And how do you know so much about witchcraft?” asked Annie.

  “Let’s just say it runs in the family,” Cooper said cryptically. “Why don’t you tell me what exactly you did.”

  Annie and Kate took turns telling Cooper which spells they’d done and what had happened. When they were done, she looked at them and shook her head. “Kind of like the sorcerer’s apprentice,” she said.

  “The what?” asked Kate.

  “The sorcerer’s apprentice,” Cooper said. “You know, that story where the sorcerer goes away for the day and his apprentice decides to use his magic wand to get all his chores done. Only everything goes wrong, and the place ends up trashed. It’s what happens when people play with magic and don’t know how to use it properly.”

  “You keep talking as if you know so much about all of this,” Kate said. “But you never tell us why or how.”

  “Like I said before,” Cooper said. “It’s in my genes. The real question is what we’re going to do about the mess you two have made.”

  “Do you have any ideas?” asked Annie.

  “I’m not really sure,” Cooper admitted. “But I think I know a good place to start looking. Do you know a store called Crones’ Circle?”

  “That’s where I bought my copy of the book,” Annie said. “Why?”

  “I think we need to pay them a little visit tomorrow,” Cooper said.

  CHAPTER 11

  The next morning, after a quick breakfast, they were standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus to take them to the downtown shopping area.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Kate asked as the bus stopped and they got on.

  “Information,” said Cooper, settling into a seat. “We need to find a way to stop or reverse what you two started.”

  “Why can’t we just make something up?” Kate asked.

  “Because that’s what got you into trouble in the first place,” Cooper responded. “You can’t just do whatever you want to. You need to follow certain rules.”

  “But I did follow the rules,” Annie said. “And things still came out wrong.”

  “Maybe you just need a little more practice,” Cooper suggested. “You can’t be expected to hit a home run your first time at bat.”

  “You keep talking as if this is something we’re going to keep doing,” Kate said. “Don’t you get it? We just want this over with. Right, Annie?”

  Cooper looked at Annie. “Is that right?” she asked.

  “I guess so,” Annie answered, but she didn’t sound sure.

  They sat in silence for a while as the bus moved through the winter morning, stopping every so often to let people on or off as they left the college area and entered downtown Beecher Falls with its streets filled with shops of all kinds. As they passed Kate’s father’s sporting goods store she saw him through the big front window, animatedly waving his hands around as he showed a customer a backpack.

  They got off four stops later, close to the town’s waterfront. Kate loved this part of town. The sea air smelled wonderful, and the sound of gulls flying around looking for scraps of food filled the air. She put her hands in her coat pockets and enjoyed the feel of the sun on her face as they walked along.

  Cooper led the way down the street and into a narrow lane that Kate had never really noticed before. Halfway down they came to Crones’ Circle. It was a small store sandwiched between a coffee shop on one side and a bakery on the other. The sign outside depicted three old women wearing black robes and holding hands as they stood around a cauldron. A full moon hung over their heads. The door to the shop was painted to look like it was covered with ivy.

  Cooper pushed the door open and a little bell rang as the three girls walked inside. The first thing Kate noticed was that the air was rich with the smell of incense. The second thing she noticed was a fat gray cat sleeping on the counter by the cash register. The cat opened one eye and looked at them, then seemed to go back to sleep.

  The store reminded Kate of what she had always imagined a witch’s cottage would look like. The floor was bare wood, and the walls were painted a smoky purple color. Near the back of the store there was a small table covered with a white cloth on which sat some kind of statue of a woman and several lit candles. The entire place was filled with shelves of books. But there were other things as well. Behind the counter there were glass jars filled with herbs of all kinds. Another shelf held candles in tall glass holders. There were bundles of incense sticks, baskets of different colored silk cords, and even a rack of CDs.

  But the books were what interested Kate the most. There were so many of them. As she wandered through the store she saw books about dream interpretation, Tarot cards, and herbal healing. Every book seemed more interesting than the last one, and she wanted to open them all and see what they had to say. Then she turned a corner and found herself in a section of books all about witchcraft. There were books of spells, like the book she’d checked out of the library. There were books about rituals and ceremonies. Kate had never seen so many books about witches before, and she just stood there, staring at them all.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” she said to Annie and Cooper, who had come to stand next to her and were also looking at the books.

  “Maybe I can help,” said a voice behind them. Kate turned to see a woman standing there. She was tall and thin, and she was wearing a gauzy blue skirt and a loose black shirt printed with orange and yellow fish designs. Her dark hair hung to her waist, and her arms were covered in silver bracelets of all kinds. Her dark eyes sparkled, and Kate liked her almost immediately.

  “Do you work here?” Kate asked.

  “I’m one of the owners,” the woman said. “My name is Sophia. What kind of witchcraft are you interested in?”

  “I don’t know, really,” said Kate. She looked at Annie and Cooper for help.

  “We’re interested in Wicca,” Cooper said confidently.

  The woman smiled. “Well, there are all kinds of Wicca,” she said. “People tend to use the terms ‘witchcraft’ and ‘Wicca’ to mean th
e same thing, but actually there are many different types.”

  Cooper looked annoyed, as if she’d been shown up. “What do you suggest then?” she asked.

  Sophia turned to the shelves. “Well, there are some really good basic books about the different kinds of witchcraft,” she said. “I usually suggest that people read several of them and decide what interests them the most before they do any in-depth exploration. What have you read so far?”

  “Not much,” admitted Annie when neither Kate nor Cooper spoke up. “We’re kind of new to all of this, and we’re just looking for some basic information.”

  “Well, then, I can suggest a few things,” Sophia said. “This one here is one of the most familiar books about the Goddess religion,” she said as she held up a book with a blue-spiral cover.

  “Religion?” said Kate. “Witchcraft is a religion?”

  Sophia nodded. “Yes, absolutely,” she said. She pulled a book from the shelf and handed it to Kate. “Here’s one that has some solid background information. It’s a great place to begin. I might also recommend this one over here as well. They both give good, but different, perspectives on how some people practice.”

  “What about spells?” Cooper said, speaking up. “What spell books do you recommend?”

  “I don’t recommend any spell books to people who are just starting out,” Sophia said kindly. “Magic isn’t something you should just leap into. You need to understand the basics first.”

  Kate hoped she didn’t look as embarrassed as she felt. She’d had no idea that there was so much to know about witchcraft. She hadn’t even known there were different kinds, or that it was a religion. It had all just seemed like something to do. She felt even more in over her head than she had before she walked in.

  “What if you’ve already sort of tried some spells?” Annie said hesitantly.

  Sophia looked thoughtfully at them. “I guess that would depend on what kind of spells they were and how well they turned out.”

  “Suppose they didn’t turn out all that well,” Annie said.

  “Or too well,” Kate added. “Say, for example, you wanted to sort of take back a spell that was doing more than you wanted it to.”

  “That’s a hard one,” Sophia said. “Magic is really just a kind of energy. When you do a spell, you’re sending that energy out into the world.”

  “Like when you cast a circle,” Annie said.

  Sophia nodded. “Right,” she said. “That’s one kind of energy. Spells involve another kind of energy that we call intention. When you cast a spell, you focus your intention on a specific goal.”

  “Like getting someone to fall in love with you,” Kate suggested, hoping she wasn’t giving away too much.

  “You could do that,” Sophia said. “But I wouldn’t recommend it. There are spells for helping you find love, but actually getting someone to fall in love with you is another thing. That kind of magic is manipulative. You’re trying to get someone to do something he or she might not do otherwise. That’s asking for trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” asked Kate, not at all sure she really wanted to hear the answer.

  “Witches believe in what we call the Law of Three,” Sophia explained. “We believe that whatever kind of energy you send out into the universe will come back to you three times as strong. For example, if you do a spell to help heal someone, we believe that eventually you will receive healing energy of some sort yourself, and that it will be three times as strong as the energy you sent out.”

  “And if you do a love spell?” said Kate.

  Sophia smiled. “You never know,” she said. “Sometimes you find that too many people fall in love with you. Other times you get what you want, but you pay a price for it. A very dear price.”

  Kate could definitely relate to that. She’d gotten way more than she’d bargained for from her two attempts at magic. “So if you send out an intention to get someone to fall in love with you, you can’t take it back?” she asked.

  “Not really,” said Sophia. “As I said earlier, you’ve sent that energy out into the world. Now it’s out there. Getting it back would be like trying to push electricity back into an outlet. But you could try to neutralize the energy from a spell you’ve cast.”

  “How do you do that?” asked Annie.

  “It takes a lot of concentration,” Sophia said. “The best way is to do a ritual in which you thank the universe for accepting the magic that you’ve sent out and ask that it return the energy to the place it came from. But you also have to make sure that you do everything you can yourself to fix whatever has gone wrong. Magic is a two-part process. Part of it involves asking the universe for help and focusing your energies to make things happen. The other part involves doing whatever nonmagical things you can do to make what you want to happen actually happen. Magic isn’t a wishing well you can just keep dipping into whenever you want something. It’s something you do in addition to making things happen for yourself.”

  “This ritual,” Annie said. “The one to return energy to the place it came from. Does it work better with more than one person?”

  “It can,” Sophia answered. “A group of people working magic together can raise very powerful amounts of energy. That’s the principle behind a coven.”

  “I read about covens,” Kate said, thinking about her history paper research. “They’re groups of thirteen witches, right?”

  “That’s the number most people think of,” Sophia said. “But a coven doesn’t have to have a set number of members. Some have thirteen, but others have as few as two or as many as twenty or more. My own coven has nine members at the moment, but we started with three and have had as many as eleven.”

  “You’re in a coven?” said Cooper, who had remained silent while everyone else talked.

  “Yes,” Sophia said. “In fact, several members of the coven own this store together.”

  “Then you’re a witch,” said Kate.

  “For twenty years,” said Sophia. “In fact, I started practicing Wicca when I was about your age—although, back then there weren’t as many books about the Craft and it was harder to get solid information.”

  Sophia was using so many different names: Wicca, witchcraft, the Craft. Kate wanted to ask her whether they were all the same thing or different things. But just then the bell over the door to the shop rang, and Sophia excused herself to go help the new customer, leaving the girls to look at the books by themselves.

  “I like her,” Kate said. “She’s the first real witch I’ve ever met.”

  “She’s okay,” Cooper allowed.

  Annie winked at Kate. “Cooper’s just mad because Sophia knows more than she does about Wicca.”

  Cooper snorted, and the other girls laughed. “I guess we should get these books,” Annie said, looking at the books Sophia had suggested. “Then we can go back to my place and look through them.”

  Kate glanced at her watch. It was already noon. “I have to get going,” she said. “I promised my friends I’d meet up with them, and I’m late.”

  Cooper and Annie looked confused.

  “I mean Sherrie and my other friends,” Kate said, feeling terrible about her slipup. “I told them I’d go costume shopping with them. You know, for the Valentine’s Day dance.”

  “I can’t believe you’d go to something that lame,” Cooper said. “It’s just a bunch of sad and lonely losers looking to hook up with other sad and lonely losers of the opposite sex.”

  “Just because you’re antisocial doesn’t mean everyone is,” Kate replied, a little hurt by Cooper’s remark. “I’ll catch you later. And, Annie, I’ll come by and pick up my stuff later if that’s okay.”

  She left Annie and Cooper looking around the store and headed back onto the street. She was supposed to be meeting Sherrie, Jessica, and Tara in front of the Starbucks a few blocks away, so it didn’t take her long to get there. When she arrived, her friends were already waiting.

  “There you are,” Jessica
said. “We were starting to think you weren’t going to show.”

  “I got a late start,” Kate said.

  “Okay,” Sherrie said. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to hit the fabric store first to look at the costume patterns. If we don’t find anything there, then we’ll move on to some of the other stores and hope for the best.”

  “What has everyone decided on?” Tara asked.

  “I talked Sean out of the Fred and Wilma Flintstone idea he had, and we’re going as Rhett and Scarlett from Gone with the Wind,” Sherrie said.

  “Blair suggested that we go as Peter Pan and Wendy,” said Jessica. “It’s an easy costume, so I’m all for it. All I need is a nightgown.”

  “And Al and I are going to be Xena and Ares,” said Tara. “Although I don’t know where I’m going to find a breastplate around here.”

  “What are you and Scott going as, Kate?” Jessica asked.

  “It’s kind of a secret,” Kate said, thinking about her Sleeping Beauty idea. “I’d rather surprise you guys the night of the dance.”

  “More secrets,” Sherrie said, eyeing her. “You’re just an enigma these days, Kate.”

  “At least your shadow isn’t hanging around,” said Tara, referring to Annie. “She gives me the creeps.”

  Kate ignored her and headed for the fabric shop. She went straight to the pattern books, hoping she’d find what she needed. Her mother had promised to help her put together a costume as long as she bought the pattern and material.

  She was silent as she looked at the pictures in the pattern book, trying to find just the right one. Then she found it, a beautiful dress that looked just like what Princess Aurora wore in the movie. She noted the pattern number and the amount of material she would need and then shut the book.

  “Time to find some satin,” she said to Tara, who continued to look through the books.

  Kate found the section of the store she needed and began looking at the different colors of satin. She was debating between pink and blue when Sherrie and Jessica came up holding a bolt of bright red material.