by Ayse Hafiza
He put his mug down and leaned in. He wasn’t checking the length of his stubble he was willing his adversary to show herself.
The faint image of Jane was looking back at him, with a soft smile. He felt his heart melt. He touched the surface, and after the longest time waiting, the surface rippled it would let him through.
Stepping into the reflection of his bedroom, he walked around his house that existed on the inside. There was a distinct lack of ghosts this time, and he knew it was because they had all passed through into his house. Frank walked to the window on the top floor landing and looked out at the sea of expressionless faces. The Oban witches captured souls. He saw the military man who would have returned from fighting in the second world war, he had seen his face among his father’s photos. Instinctively Frank knew that man had been important to his mom. He remembered the brown envelopes of love letters addressed to her, among her keepsakes. He was stuck here, and the clothes of the others were older still, all important people and mainly men who had been taken over the centuries. He knew it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but he had to find her. Walking out of the house into the back garden, he saw the energy from the fig tree and the souls stood underneath it. The fig tree was an epicenter of energy in the world of the mirror. Why wouldn’t it be, it was the place that the Hamilton witches had hung from. For the Priestess of the Oban, it would be her most revered place. Walking among the sea of expressionless faces he pushed his way to toward the fig tree.
Then he saw her, but she didn’t look like the woman he remembered. This one had a dark aura surrounding her. It didn’t stop him just jarred him.
She still wore her black knee length skirt and her sensible police shoes, with her houndstooth black and white necktie. He moved toward her and put his arms around her. She tried to struggle and get away, of course she would. Maybe she didn’t remember him.
“Jane, Jane, darling it’s me. . .Frank”
She struggled to remove his arms from around her waist.
“Let me go, or I’ll call Mother” she threatened.
“Shh. . .please, don’t do that. Jane, it’s Frank. Don’t you remember me? Please try and think. I lived in London, you came to meet Mom and me after my dad’s death, you agreed to go out for drinks with me. I know I look different now, but that is because twenty years have passed, and the mirror imprisoned you.”
Jane struggled in his arms.
“You lived in London, a different place.”
She stopped struggling so hard and looked at him.
“A different place.”
“Yes, with red buses and telephone booths. You upheld the law and worked for the police. You were a police constable, you still wear their uniform,”
Jane looked down at her necktie.
“See, you aren’t dressed like the other people here. Because you were taken prisoner.”
He knew he was blowing her mind.
“How to do you know this?”
Her face started to ease, and he could see the hint of blue in her eyes start to brighten. He led her away from the tree to the stump where he had sat with Mrs. Boswell, he wanted to speak to her.
“You lived in London and worked for the police, my father died and that was when we met. . .we fell in love. When that happened, the Priestess of the Oban captured you, pulled you from my life and caused me to chase you.”
He knew it sounded crazy, but he could see her skin color start to return, a warm pink tinge slowly replaced the gray hue. Jane was starting to remember who she was.
“And who are they all?” asked Jane pointing at the mass of expressionless faces that watched them.
Frank stood on the tree stump he was taller than them all. In a loud voice so all the captives of the witch could hear.
“They are all people who fell in love with a Hamilton witch, and the Oban witch captured them because of a power struggle between witches and clans,” Frank announced. “A power struggle that doesn’t exist today.” He knew they were all listening to his words, he could see the flicker of recognition at the names Hamilton and Oban as he said them. The changing expression on the faces of those who were prisoners.
“We need to defeat her, only then can you really be free,” Frank said rabble-rousing.
Jane looked at him, pulling him down from the tree stump the dark expression back on her face. He knew she was going to say something negative, so he didn’t let her. He pulled her closer to him, slipping his hand behind her neck and he planted his lips on hers. It had been a kiss that had imprisoned her, maybe it would be a kiss that would set her free.
With his eyes closed, he felt her negative energy slip away. Jane began to lose her darkness. She didn’t fight him, she submitted to it.
“Oh my God Frank,” she said in his ear as she held him close.
He knew she remembered him now.
“I said I would come and get you, sorry it took so long,” he said smelling the sweet scent of her hair. Holding her in his arms was paradise in itself. He had waited so long for this moment. But the reunion couldn’t dictate the task.
“Tell me everything that you know about her because you won’t be free until she is dead.”
They sat together, and the others listened. He knew what he needed to do, and he also knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
The only advantage that they had was time, the Priestess of the Oban hadn’t discovered that he was in her realm because he had got rid of the demonic maid. The other prisoners understood what he was saying that he heard them talk to each other having their own epiphanies as they began to remember life outside the mirror. Frank was so engrossed in his conversation that he missed the white light that came from the leaves of the fig tree, formed into a being and walk through the crowd toward him.
“Master of the Coven,” said a voice. The way the words were spoken, he knew that he had heard them before, but not in a living dimension, it was the voice inside his head, that spoke to him when he was undertaking his shamanic duties. It caught his attention straight away. Turning to the light it was almost too bright to look into, he closed his eyes and with his eyelids to dull the white vision, he saw a tall man in flowing white cotton robes, with majestic long hair, a beard and staff. He knew the man was his spiritual master. A voice that had guided him on his shamanic journey.
“I represent the soul of the ancestors. And we bestow upon you the gift of revocation. If you choose, you can withdraw our solemn oath from the pact with the Oban clan. But choose wisely young master because you will bear the consequences of unleashing witchcraft.”
Frank nodded, he hadn’t realized he needed permission, but now he had it. For the first time he really was Master of the Coven. His spirit master turned and walked back to the fig tree which gave off a purple glow which reached to the sky. This was the moment he had been looking for. The time when he really was Master of the Coven and with the support of his coven and its ancestors. Destiny was calling, and in it, there was a witch that he needed to take down.
22
The Gifts
Inside the mirror Frank was in the witch’s domain. Here the rules were different and that gave her an advantage. She had defeated him many times before, but he couldn’t afford to let her defeat him again.
The Shaman had come from behind the tree, all his sources of power were from the ancient tree. Understanding what needed to be done he reached down and touched a root that protruded from the fig tree. Saying an incantation, he asked for the merger of his shamanic powers with that of his newly found witchcraft. Inside his mind he felt the merging of two immerse powers, intertwining and each amplifying the other. They pulsed through his body, like a shock of electricity.
Then the tree shook in the winds and as if he was being shot with a laser the power of the ancestors pulsed through him, in a trinity of power which penetrated every vein.
Power surged through the roots of the fig tree until leaves began to shed. Traveling to him, allowing him to breathe far deeper than
ever before and making him sit up straight to honor and receive the real gifts he was being given.
The electricity inflated every cell in his body.
He felt invincible. Accepting this gift Frank reveled in the majesty of the moment, he kept his eyes closed. Through his eyelids he could see the fig tree become a duller glow of purple as its power transferred to him. Whispered spells filled in his mind. Ones he recognized from the book and ones which he hadn’t been able to understand and would have spent a lifetime studying opened themselves to him. As if they were living beings sharing their secrets, their purpose and how to use them. As spells that influenced the natural world came into his mind, he knew that this was his graduation ceremony and now he really was becoming the leader of the coven and with that accolade a warrior at the same time. Spells were his armor, he just needed to utter them in his mind and the balls of energy inside him mustered into position. These were the troops to be commanded. The power he wielded was far superior to any weapon.
After the power transferred to him, he sat down. On the tree stump with his eyes closed he saw everything, the energy of everything. All the colorful vibrations of all the living beings. Different types of power and intuition were being transferred. Even with his eyes closed he could see the aura of colors that he was able to give off coming from the back of his hands. He knew if his commune dwellers would be able to see him, and all the different colors that his face could emanate they would be scared of him. He wasn’t just Frank the weird Shaman, he was Frank Blades, Master of the Hamilton Coven. He was growing into his birth rite, and no one had bet on him getting here. He felt as if all his organs had been well oiled and any niggling doubts had been taken away. Frank was becoming, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing. Internally he chuckled when he thought about how in his human form he had nearly defeated the witch. Now as the real representative of the coven he would be able to do the job properly, she would be no match for him. As he began to relax his mind opened and accepted more of the knowledge that was being shared, he knew that he would never be able to really look at the world again in the same light.
A leaf blowing across the ground would be a magical experience for him, seeing the wind and all its colors, and feeling the breeze with its hands that pushed and interacted with the structure of the leaf at a cellular level would fascinate him for hours. He would never be able to unsee these things. He didn’t let that knowledge worry him, he needed the transference of the power of the ancestors to fulfill his destiny and revoke the curse that plagued his family. If losing his limited human ability to perceive was its cost, then he needed to pay.
When the transference was complete his eyes flicked open. His first glance was of the fig tree, it had dulled, its bark no longer a healthy brown, but a gray. He had stripped life from it, and although Frank had never really seen it, he knew now that it was a living being and had been an ally for him. Leaves dropped to the floor, and its dry branches hung heavy, he knew that he had emptied the vault of all its energy, he could feel it pulsating in his blood. He thanked the tree silently, and he knew then that soon it would crumble and fall into the sea. Its job of serving him and his coven was done.
Frank stood on the stump looking over the heads of the captive souls in the garden.
“Priestess of the Oban, I, Master of the Hamilton Coven summon you,” he bellowed. His words carried onto the winds, echoing from the cliff faces.
His fingertips tingled with energy, as he spoke. Energy flowed through him from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair.
He felt her presence in the same way a wasp makes itself known. . .as an annoyance. Traveling toward him on a dark rain cloud.
In the past, that display of her prowess would have destroyed his confidence made him question his sanity. But his newfound energy now had its focus.
The natural world was the domain of Wicca, seeing her grand entrance he would not give her credit for a cheap parlor trick. The energy from his presence made him shine like the north star. Frank had available to him witchcraft and powers that had been used to create her, she could not try and pretend that they were on a level playing field now.
She jumped from her cloud onto the grass and landed with an impressive thud, the sea of captives parted as they stared at each other, prepared for combat.
“Have you come to deliver your child?” the arrogance of her tone inflamed him.
“No, you will never have him,” said Frank calmly.
“But you promised.”
“I know.”
“So, what are you here for?”
“I am here to vanquish you,” Frank said.
She laughed, but he caught the nervous energy that edged her bravado. He didn’t want to waste any more time, she had been alive for far too long already.
“I, Frank Blades, Master of the Hamilton Coven, have come to revoke the oath of my ancestors.”
Her mouth dropped open, and her black eyes shone as if the words he had spoken were insolence in themselves. He could see her starting to shrink.
“The Hamilton clan revoke your powers by my command,” Frank continued.
She fell to the floor, as she became smaller and smaller. He watched wondering how she had been able to influence the health of the remainder of his clan. He was doing this for Jane, and his clan, and his unborn child. Frank extended his hand to strike her. And in the air, it formed into an iron sword with a blue tinge and with it he stuck her on the head.
She split in two like a severed worm, he saw her now for what she really was a parasite, one who had caused misery to the many captives. He wondered at how irresponsible his ancestors had been by creating her, their powers had created a monster.
His eye was drawn away from the witch, as a bright light exploded in his peripheral vision. When he looked in that direction, he saw the captives look at each other worried, then as their bodies lit up, they wore a smile. The captives started to vanish like stars in the night sky that were finally dying, the people who had been a sea of faces in the garden vanished one by one. They were being released, magic could not hold their souls.
Watching her writhe on the grass in the garden, the burden of all that had carried on his shoulders started to crumble away. He walked closer to her, to watch her demise. With her gone, with her negative energy neutralized he knew that his life was going to change immeasurably. He would be free, and truly unconstrained, as the voice had first promised him under the fig tree.
The different portions of her body started to melt, her negative energy seeped into the blades of grass and as if they were connected to Frank, and he a magnet, they moved at pace toward Frank’s feet. He wondered if this was her last attempt at an attack on him. And he expected them to stop when they came closer, but they didn’t. She had been created from magic by his ancestors, and now that same dark magic was coming home, inside Frank.
He felt the energy penetrate his shoes and then the pores of skin on his feet, burrowing deeper into his skin, it leveled the positivity that he had been feeling moments before.
Around them the souls continued to explode, but Jane ran forward to Frank, “Are you taking on her powers?”
He nodded, his portion of the Hamilton magic had only one home, and that was inside him. He couldn’t isolate it, remove it from existence, it needed to be absorbed until the negative atoms became positively charged.
Frank felt the energy pulsating in his veins slow. Intrusive and negative thoughts entered his mind as her effect penetrated his brain.
The word consequences hung in the air, that was what his spiritual master had tried to warn him off.
Finally, the witch disappeared into a puff of black ash which Frank asked the winds to carry to the four corners of the earth.
The war was finally over, and he turned his face from the remains of her black dress and turned to sit on the wooden stump. They did not speak. Jane sat next to him, as they watched souls disappear in plumes of light. He wondered if she was going to explode into a ball of
light too, then he remembered that she would also be only forty years old and that helped him relax. He held her hand.
He didn’t understand how much time had elapsed since the first soul escaped. He even doubted that time existed in this dimension. But the field was clearing, as he watched the light capture souls he knew there was a pattern, the light was going after the oldest souls first. So those who had the oldest examples of clothing, his eye found the next and next and he watched the light catch them, silently wishing them well now they were free from captivity.
The last to go was the military man, the man who had written his mom love letters. He saluted Frank before he dispersed, and Frank smiled. He knew it was a sign of respect, and the gesture was fitting Frank had just fought a war and won.
Finally, only Frank and Jane were left in the garden. He waited. She didn’t go.
“Why did you do it? You have the disease she had,” Jane said as she rested her head on his shoulder.
He felt the negative energy touch his heart, trying to putrefy and harden him.
“Her powers couldn’t just dissipate into the wind. She would have reformed somehow, somewhere. If her power is trapped inside me, then I can control her.”
“So, you did this to yourself?” asked Jane confused.