The House of Winter

by Isobel Bird

  “Can you believe this place?” Cooper asked, looking around the room. It was furnished with antiques, including two huge wooden beds that faced a fireplace. The windows opened out on to a balcony, and the view was incredible.

  “Wait until you see the bathroom,” Kate called from that very room. “We have a huge claw-foot bathtub.”

  “Ghosts or no ghosts, this is going to be a fantastic week,” said Annie.

  “What about those twins?” Cooper said. “Nora seems nice, but what was Lucy’s problem?”

  “She seemed a little uptight,” agreed Annie.

  “Maybe she’s just weirded out by the idea of all these witches being here,” suggested Kate, emerging from the bathroom.

  “Maybe,” Annie said. “But there was definitely tension between them.”

  “Not our problem,” Cooper replied, stretching out on one of the beds. “I don’t know about you guys, but for the next five days I am not going to get caught up in any drama. Life has been exciting enough recently.”

  Kate and Annie glanced at each other and then looked away.

  “Right,” Kate said. “This week should be about having fun.”

  “Yeah,” Annie said unconvincingly. “Fun.”

  CHAPTER 2

  A little before six o’clock the girls went downstairs to the lobby. They had each bathed and changed, and they were anxious to see who had arrived since they had. There had been no sign of Sasha, and they were wondering where she was. They found out when they entered the lobby and saw her standing at the reception desk with Thea.

  “Hey, girlfriends!” Sasha exclaimed when she saw Annie, Kate, and Cooper. She ran over and gave them all big hugs. “Isn’t this place the coolest?”

  “What took you guys so long?” Cooper asked.

  “Oh, you know Mom,” Sasha said, rolling her eyes. “Do I bring the white robe or the blue robe? The pink crystal or the black crystal? The mint tea or the dandelion tea?”

  They all laughed. It was good to see Sasha talking about Thea as if they’d lived together forever. Really, Thea had only been appointed Sasha’s legal guardian earlier in the year, after Sasha’s parents had given up custody of her.

  “Honey, I’ve got my room key,” Thea said, coming up to greet the girls. “But they say you’re in another room.”

  “Right,” Annie said. “You’re with us.”

  “Goddess help us,” commented Thea kindly. “Well, I’m going up to change before dinner. Do you want to come?”

  “I’m fine,” Sasha told her. “I’ll take my stuff up later.”

  “Okay, then,” Thea told her. “I’ll see you all in a while.”

  “Can you believe this place?” Sasha said as the four of them sat on one of the big couches in the lobby. “It’s like something out of The Shining.”

  “You and your Stephen King fetish,” Cooper teased. “But this time you’re not far off. The place is haunted.”

  “Or at least that’s what they told us,” said Annie.

  “I believe it,” Sasha replied. “This place just screams haunted.”

  “Wait until she hears what happened in our room,” said Annie.

  “What?” Sasha said excitedly. “Tell.”

  Kate started to tell her the story of Rose and Edgar Whiting. But she got only as far as the part about it being their wedding night when she stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” Sasha asked. “You’re all pale. Don’t tell me you’re seeing ghosts already?”

  Kate shook her head. “Not quite,” she answered.

  The others turned and followed her gaze to where Tyler was standing in the doorway of the hotel. He was with his mother and his sister. They were bringing their bags in, and Tyler hadn’t seen them yet. But a moment later he did. For a brief moment, a strange look came over his face. Then he smiled and waved. They all waved back.

  “Stop staring,” Sasha ordered, not looking directly at either Kate or Annie. “Tell me the rest of the story.”

  “Oh, right,” said Kate, sounding distracted. “Where were we?”

  “At the beginning,” Sasha said.

  Kate began the story again. She was almost at the part where the door was locked from the inside when Tyler walked over to them. “Hey,” he said.

  Sasha groaned. “You have got the worst timing,” she told him.

  Tyler’s face fell. “What did I do?” he asked, confused.

  “Nothing,” Cooper reassured him. “Kate was just telling Sasha about the couple who died in our room.”

  Tyler nodded, then looked at Cooper sharply. “Died?” he said.

  “We’re not starting over again,” Sasha told him. “Here’s the Cliffs Notes version: couple gets married, maid finds them dead the next morning, no one knows who killed whom. Now you’re up to speed. Keep going, Kate.”

  “There’s not much more to tell,” Kate told her. “The room was locked from the inside, and people claim that weird stuff happens in there. That’s about it.”

  Sasha clapped her hands together. “I love it,” she said happily. “Tragedy and murder and ghosts, all in one place. This is my kind of hotel.”

  “Wow,” Tyler said. “And to think that all I was worried about was getting a room with a view. I didn’t know there was a ghost option.”

  “Tyler,” said his sister, coming up to them, “here’s your room key.” She handed him a key and then smiled at the girls. “Hi, guys,” she said.

  “Hi, Hannah,” Kate answered while the others waved.

  “It’s almost dinnertime,” Hannah told Tyler. “We’re going to go up.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Tyler told her. “I guess I’ll see you all at dinner,” he added to the others.

  When Tyler and Hannah were gone there was a strained silence for a minute. Then Sasha broke the tension by saying, “I know it’s Yule and all, but if I see one piece of fruitcake this week there’s no telling what I’ll do.”

  “Where did that come from?” Cooper asked her, laughing.

  “I was just thinking about Christmas and all of that,” said Sasha. “I hate fruitcake.”

  “And it’s always said such nice things about you,” Annie remarked.

  They all giggled at the silliness of the conversation. Then Kate said, “I think it’s time we found this dining room.”

  They got up and walked through the lobby. Several other people seemed to be wandering in a particular direction, so they followed them. A minute later they found themselves walking into an enormous dining room. There were numerous round tables scattered throughout the room, each one decorated with a white cloth and white roses in beautiful arrangements.

  “They really know how to do this right,” commented Sasha as the girls walked around the room. They selected a table and sat down. In addition to the four of them, there were four empty chairs at the table. The other tables in the room were filling up quickly as more and more people came in, and the girls were happy to see their friend Archer enter, look around, and make a beeline for their table.

  “Mind if I join you?” she asked, then sat when they all nodded their heads and Cooper pointed to a chair.

  “Who are all these people?” Annie asked her.

  Archer looked around. “Well, a lot of them you know from class and from the covens in town,” she said. “The rest come from all over. This is sort of like the Midsummer gathering, only much more serious.”

  Cooper, Kate, and Annie shared a look after hearing Archer’s comment. The Midsummer gathering, which had taken place in the woods outside of Beecher Falls, had been more than a little unsettling to each of them, for very different reasons.

  “What do you mean, more serious?” Annie inquired carefully.

  Archer took a breath. “It’s just that Yule is a more solemn time of year,” she said. “Midsummer is all about partying and playing. Yule is about calling the light back on the longest night. It’s a time of reflection and looking to the future. Midsummer is all about fun.”

  “Some fun,”
Cooper said under her breath, remembering her particularly unpleasant experiences on that night.

  “Not that Yule isn’t fun,” Archer continued. “It’s a lot of fun. But there’s something darker about it. I guess it’s because long ago, when people’s lives really were ruled by the seasons and by the weather, this time of year seemed pretty bleak. They’d had nothing but snow and ice and blackness for several months. It probably seemed like spring would never arrive.”

  “What about Christmas?” said Sasha. “Presents and all of that are kind of fun.”

  “Don’t even get me started on Christmas,” Archer said. “It has almost nothing to do with Yule. But we’ll get into all of that during the week. Well, depending on which path you choose to do.”

  “Path?” Kate asked.

  “You’ll find out all about that in a little bit,” Archer said mysteriously.

  The girls tried to get her to tell them more, but she wouldn’t. She just kept saying that they would have to wait and find out. Luckily, they were distracted when three other people joined their table. One was Ben, another student from their weekly Wicca study class, and the other two were older women they had never met before but whom Archer seemed to know well.

  “Everybody, this is Star and Ivy,” Archer said, introducing the women. “They run a coven called the Daughters of Diana.”

  “It’s actually more like a cooperative farm turned coven,” Ivy said, her bright blue eyes twinkling mischievously in her lined and sun-browned face. “We started off raising goats and organic vegetables almost thirty years ago. The coven part came later. That was her fault,” she added, nodding at Star.

  “Oh, blame it all on me,” said the other woman, whose gray hair was tied in a thick braid and who wore a T-shirt with a Greenpeace logo on it. “You were the one who brought home the book on witchcraft.”

  “But you were the one who suggested we do that first ritual,” Ivy teased.

  “It’s no use arguing with her,” Star said to the girls. “She always has to win. But it doesn’t matter. However it got started, our coven has been going for a long time. This is our fifteenth Yule retreat here at the hotel. I think we’ve been coming ever since the first one.”

  “Do you still raise goats on the farm?” Annie asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Ivy answered. “But only for the milk. We make cheese out of it. And we have bees now, too.”

  “You girls should come visit us this summer,” Star suggested. “We do weeklong events there that you might enjoy.” Then she turned to Ben. “I’d invite you, too, but we’re a women-only coven,” she informed him, smiling. “Not that we wouldn’t welcome a visit when we aren’t holding an event. How do you feel about shoveling goat manure?”

  “I think maybe I’d be better with the bees,” joked Ben.

  Ivy and Star told them more about their farm and about their coven while they waited for dinner to start. The room rustled with conversations as the tables filled up and old friends found one another and began chatting. But all the talking ceased when a bell sounded from the front of the room and everyone looked up to see what was happening.

  Standing at the head of the room was a man. He was short and heavy and balding, and he seemed very cheery. “He looks like the mayor of Munchkinland,” Cooper whispered to Kate, forcing Kate to stifle a laugh by putting her hand over her mouth.

  “Greetings,” the man said, his voice clear and warm. “As many of you know, I am Bilbo.” Scattered laughter ran through the room as people acknowledged the man’s reference to the short, round hero of the classic fantasy novel The Hobbit, whom he very much resembled.

  “We are here in this beautiful hotel to celebrate another Yule,” Bilbo said. “And once again our thanks go out to Fiona and Bryan Reilly for their wonderful hospitality.”

  Applause erupted at the mention of the Reillys, and the two of them stood up from the table at which they were sitting and waved.

  “And of course we also thank the wonderful staff,” Bilbo continued. “And particularly everyone’s favorite head chef, Laurel Stewart.”

  The applause for the chef was even louder than that for the Reillys, as people whistled and clapped and called out Laurel’s name. A moment later a smiling woman with black hair and dark eyes poked her head into the room and waved a wooden spoon at everyone.

  “I have soup waiting for me back there in the kitchen,” she said. “Otherwise I’d stick around.”

  When Laurel had disappeared again, Bilbo continued his introduction. “As I said, we’re all here to celebrate Yule. But we’re here to work, too. As we do every year, we’ve come up with four different paths for you to choose from. Whichever one you choose, you will work with that path for the remainder of the week. Each path has a different focus, and so now I will turn the festivities over to the four leaders of those paths. Each one will tell you what her or his path is all about this year. Then you can decide which one is right for you. So let’s get to it. We don’t want any charges of favoritism here, so we’re just going to go in circle-casting order and start with the Air path.”

  Bilbo stepped aside and a woman took his place. She was slender, with skin the color of copper and black hair that hung loosely over her shoulders. “Merry meet,” she said. “I am Maia, and I will be leading the Air path this year. Our path will focus on using the creative talents of words and music to give birth to the ideas that have been germinating inside of us during the winter.”

  A second woman stood up and said in a loud voice, “I’m Luna, and I’m leading the Fire path. Fire is an integral part of Yule, as it symbolizes the return of warmth and light, and our focus in the Fire path will be on rekindling the fire within ourselves. If there are any of you out there who feel like you need a little jump start going into the new season, this path is for you. Oh, and don’t join us if you’re afraid of dancing, because we plan on doing a lot of it.” She raised her arms and shook her body, making everyone cheer.

  After Luna, a man walked to the front. He was tall and thin, with dark blond hair and little round glasses. “I’m Jackson,” he said quietly. “I’m the leader for Water path, and what I’m going to focus on during the week is exploring the deep water within us that we’re afraid to dive into. Yule is a time of darkness pierced by light, and we’re going to use meditation and ritual to go into our own darkness and see what we find there.” He paused a moment and then added, smiling, “It’s not really as gloomy as it sounds. We’re going to have fun, too.”

  People laughed as Jackson returned to his seat, but the laughter died out as the fourth leader came forward. She was quite old, and seemed rather frail. When she spoke her voice was soft. “My name is Ginny,” she said. “You’ll have to excuse me. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this. But I’m doing it, and I’ll be leading the Earth path.”

  Ginny started to walk back to her seat when several people called out, “And what’s it about?”

  Ginny stopped. “I told you I’ve never done this before,” she joked. “Earth path this year is going to be about death. Not just death, but death and rebirth and how we think about those things. It’s not going to be an easy path, but I think it will be very rewarding.”

  Ginny sat down and Bilbo once again took center stage. “There you have it, folks,” he said. “We hope one of those paths appeals to you, because they’re all we’ve got. But you don’t have to decide right now which one you want to walk. Enjoy your dinners. When you’re done, the four leaders will be sitting at their tables waiting for you. Find the person whose path you’re interested in and introduce yourself. Right now, though, I think I smell some amazing food waiting to be eaten, so come and get it.”

  Dinner was served as a buffet, and the girls lined up with the others to see what awaited them. When they got to the table they discovered all kinds of wonderful things, from several different salads to vegetarian lasagna, pasta with Thai peanut sauce, and baked eggplant. Each dish smelled better than the one before it, and when they went ba
ck to their table their plates were piled high.

  “So, which paths are you all thinking about?” Ivy asked them after they’d eaten a little bit and weren’t so hungry.

  “I think I’m leaning toward Fire,” Ben answered, his mouth full of eggplant. “It’s been a long winter, and I could use a little boost.”

  “That one sounded good to me, too,” Sasha said. “Especially the dancing part.”

  “Luna is a wonderful teacher,” Star told them. “I’ve taken her paths before, and they’re always great. But I think this year I’m going for Water. There’s something about it that I like.”

  “Yes,” Ivy said. “You like the fact that it sounds dark. You always did like the crone aspect of the Goddess best.”

  “Maybe because I’m practically one myself,” joked Star. She added to the others, “I’ll be sixty-seven in June.”

  “I’m thinking about Water as well,” Kate said suddenly. The others looked at her. “It just sounds interesting,” she said, without elaborating before turning her attention back to her pasta salad.

  “Not to me,” said Cooper. “I’m Air all the way. Words and music? What could be more perfect?”

  “Cooper writes songs and performance pieces,” Annie explained to Star and Ivy, who nodded.

  “What about you, Annie?” asked Archer. “Do you have a path in mind?”

  Annie sighed. “There’s one I like,” she said. “But I’m kind of afraid of it, so I don’t know for sure yet.”

  “Sometimes being afraid of something means it’s exactly where you need to go,” Ivy remarked.

  They continued to eat, going back for seconds and even thirds of their favorite dishes. When everyone had eaten enough, they looked around to see which paths people were choosing. The four leaders were sitting at different tables, and the people interested in their paths were gathered around them.

  “It looks like I’ll have a lot of company in Air,” Cooper said as she surveyed the large crowd surrounding Maia.

  Ben and Sasha headed for the Fire table, leaving Kate and Annie looking from one table to the next, trying to make their final decisions.