by Cate Tiernan
“Oui, oui,” murmured the midwife. She was down at the end of the bed, pushing the girl’s knees up, and besides that I didn’t want to know. I stayed near the head of the bed, looking into the girl’s bottomless black eyes, holding her hand, sending calming waves. Her eyes were much calmer and more present; she looked more like a person.
“Elle arrivé,” the midwife murmured, and the girl’s face contorted, and fast, fast, I sent images of things opening up, flowers blooming, seeds splitting, anything I could think of in my panicked state. I thought relaxation, concentration, releasing of fear, surrendering to her own body. As I looked at her, her eyes went very wide, her mouth opened, she said, “Ah, ah, ah, ah,” in a high-pitched voice, and then suddenly it seemed like she kind of deflated. I made the mistake of glancing over to see the midwife pulling up a dark red, rubbery-looking baby, still connected to her mother by a pulsing blue cord. Sweat broke out on my forehead, and my skin grew cold, as if I were about to faint. The baby squinched up its quarter-size mouth, took a breath, and wailed, sounding like a tiny, infuriated puppy.
My patient’s face softened, and she instinctively reached out her arms. The midwife, beaming now, wrapped the kicking, squalling baby in a clean towel and handed her to the mother, the cord stretching back behind her. As if the entire episode of terror and gut-splitting pain had never happened, the girl looked down at her baby and marveled at it. Feeling somewhat queasy, I looked at the infant, this end product of two people making love nine months earlier. Her face was red and raw looking. She had a cap of long, straight black hair that was glued to her little skull with what looked like petroleum jelly. Her skin was streaked with blood and white goop, and suddenly I felt like if I didn’t have fresh air, I would die.
I staggered to my feet and lurched from the room, through the lounge and out the front door. Outside, I took in great, gulping breaths of icy air and instantly felt better. Somewhat embarrassed, I went back in to find that some of the other women had come into the bedroom. They were smiling, and I felt their waves of relief and happiness. They praised the girl, who was now beaming tiredly, holding her new daughter close. The midwife was still busy, and when I glanced over, she was picking up the cord, so I looked away fast.
I had never seen a human birth before and wished I hadn’t seen this one. Yes, it was a miracle, yes, it was the Goddess incarnate, but still. I would have given a lot just then to be sitting in a pub, knocking back a pint and watching a football game on the telly.
The girl looked up and saw me, and she smiled widely, almost shyly at me. I was struck by how regular she looked, how girlish, how smooth her soft tan skin was, how white her teeth were. The contrast with how she’d been, while racked with pain and fear, was amazing. I smiled back, and she gestured to the baby in her arms.
“Regardez elle,” she murmured, smoothing the baby’s cheek. The baby turned her head toward her and opened her rosebud mouth, searching.
Quickly I said, “Elle est très jolie, très belle. Vous avez bonne chance.” Then I cornered the woman who had brought me and took her arm. “I have to go home now.”
We were interrupted by other women thanking me gravely, treating me with distant gratitude, then turning, all warmth and smiles, to the girl. They knew I had helped the girl but also knew I was a witch and probably couldn’t be trusted. I had mixed feelings. Surely a girl this young ought not to be having a baby. From looking around, I could see these people had no money; who knew how many of them lived in this four-room cabin? Yet seeing how the women clustered around the girl, praising her, admiring the baby, tending to them both, it was clear that the girl was safe here, that she would be treated well and her baby looked after. There was love here, and acceptance. And often, that was most of what one needed.
I tapped my driver’s arm again—she was cooing over the baby, who was now attempting to nurse. I kept my eyes firmly away from what I considered a private thing (I was the only one who thought so—there were at least five other people in the room). “I have to go home now,” I said again, and she looked up at me with impatience, and then understanding.
“Oui, oui.Vous avez fatigué.”
Right. Whatever. I looked for my coat and shrugged it on. My right hand was sore from being squeezed so tightly. I suddenly felt bone weary, mentally and physically exhausted, and I was ashamedly aware that out of all of us, I had done the least work. Men might have bigger muscles, bigger hearts and lungs, but women have greater stamina, usually greater determination, and a certain patient, inexorable will of iron that gets hard things done. Which is why most covens are matriarchal, why lines in my religion usually went from mother to daughter. Women usually led the hardest, most complicated rites, the ones that took days, the ones that took a certain ruthlessness.
I sighed and realized I was punchy, my shoulder brushing against the door frame as I went through. The night air woke me up, making me blink and take in deep breaths. I groaned audibly as I saw my nemesis, the blue pickup truck from hell. The woman, whose name I had never learned, walked briskly to it and pulled herself into the driver’s seat. I climbed into the passenger’s seat, pulled the door closed, and reflexively clutched the door handle.
Then the door of the cabin opened, and a sharp rectangle of light slanted across the dark yard. “Attendez!” cried a woman, and she came toward us. She gestured to me to roll down my window, but it didn’t unroll, so I opened my door. “Merci, merci beaucoup, m’sieu sorcier,” the woman said shyly. I saw that it was the older woman who had been in the kitchen.
I smiled and nodded, uncomfortable about being openly identified as such. “De rien.”
“Non, non.Vous aidez ma petite-fille,” she said, and pushed a package toward me.
Curious, I opened the brown paper and found a warm loaf of homemade bread and, beneath it, a somewhat new man’s flannel shirt. I was incredibly touched. Right then I broke off a piece of the bread and bit it. It was incredible, and I closed my eyes, leaned back against the truck seat, and moaned. The women laughed. "C’est très, très bon,” I said with feeling. Then I unfolded the shirt and looked at it, as if to assess its quality. Finally I nodded and smiled: it was more than acceptable. The woman seemed relieved and even proud that I thought her gift was fine. “Je vous remercier,” I said formally, and she nodded, then clutched her shawl around her shoulders and ran back into the house.
Without another word, my chauffeur started the engine and hurtled us down an unpaved road that I couldn’t even see, but she obviously knew by heart. By holding on to the door handle with one hand, I was still able to break off chunks of warm bread with the other and eat them. I was happy—I had done a good day’s work—and then I remembered that I had been there only because Da hadn’t.
“Daniel— souvent il vous aidez?” I said, butchering French grammar.
The woman’s dark eyes seemed to become more guarded.
I motioned back to the cabin. “Comme ça?” Like that?
“Comme ça, et ne comme ça,” she said unhelpfully.
“Do you speak any English at all?” I asked, frustrated.
She slanted a glance at me, and I thought I saw a glimmer of humor cross her face as I flinched, going over a pothole.
“Un peu.”
“So Daniel helps you sometimes?” I asked in my neutral Seeker voice. As if the answer didn’t matter. I looked out my window at the dark trees that flashed past, lit momentarily by the truck’s unaligned headlights.
A slight frown wrinkled the skin between her brows. “Quelquefois.” She hesitated, then seemed to make up her mind. “Not so much maintenant. Not so much. Good people, only when so desperate. Like today.”
Every Seeker instinct in me came to life. “Good people?”
She looked away, then said in a voice I could barely hear over the engine, “People who don’t walk in the light—they go to le sorcier more often.”
Oh, Goddess, I muttered to myself. That didn’t sound good. We were both silent the rest of the ride. She pulle
d up in front of Da’s cabin but didn’t shut off the engine.
“Merci,” she said quietly, not smiling. “Elle est ma fille, vous aidez.”
“Soyez le bienvenue.” Then I got out of the truck, knowing that I would probably never see her, her daughter, or her new granddaughter again. Her tires spun on the snowy dirt behind me as I went up the steps to the porch. Inside, my father was there, in the kitchen, eating some meat I had browned hours ago. He looked up as if surprised to see me still around.
“We have to talk,” I said.
8. Answers
In the time I’ve been here, I’ve come to fully appreciate the pristine and harsh beauty of winter. Five years ago it was spring that made me feel alive, the unstoppable power and bursting rawness of life renewed. Now that seems so naïve. For me, winter is the culmination of nature’s beauty, winter that shows the perfection, the bare bones of the world I live in.
Today I walked for miles, up to Drandfather’s Knee. The air was sharp and cold, like a knife, and by the time I reached the top, every breath seared my lungs. I felt alive, completely connected to everybody around me. The sound of ice cracking in the sun, the rare, startled flight of a bird, the occasional wet drop of snow from a tree limb—all these things filled me, awoke my senses, until I felt almost painfully joyful, painfully ecstatic. I fell to my knees in the sun-softened snow and blessed the Goddess and the God. My entire life felt like a song, a song that was reaching a crescendo, right then.
through the crust to forage. As I knelt there, I was startled by a flash of dusty white-a winter hare, zigzagging crazily across the meadow, running so incredibly fast that I could hardly follow it with my eyes. It was beautiful, a slightly darker white than the snow, designed to run, its feet sure and strong. A second later I saw the reason for its flight: a red-tailed hawk, its wingspan more than four feet, was wooping toward it. In the time it took me to blink, the hawk had swung its feet down and up and was already beating the air with its wings, heading skyward with its prey.
I didn't think. There was no time. Instinctively I traced the sigil and cried, "srathtac! Srathtac!"
As if shot, the hawk faltered in midair, one shoulder dipping, its wings beating arrythmically. I sent the message, "Drop it. Release." And in the next moment the hare was falling like a soft-bodied stone toward the earth. I was already on my feet and running.
The hare lay stunned, near death, its eyes wide and yet unseeing. Its dusky fur was streaked with blood from the hawk's talons; I felt its labored breathing, its pain, the panic that went beyond fear. It blinked once, twice, and then its life began to ease away. "Sassen," I murmured, not touching it. Its little sides had quit heaving for breath. "Sassen," I said softly, tracing several sigils in the air above it, calling it back. "Sassen." I sang it coaxingly, and then the hare blinked, its eyes taking on a new awareness. It breathed deep, its velvet nose twitching. I watched as it rolled to its feet in a smooth movement and bounded, off to the brush.
I know that some would say that what I did today was wrong, that it is interfering with nature's will, which should be held sacred. But I believe that as witches we should have the ability to use our own judgement. Nothing I have done today will throw off the balance of the universe. The hawk will catch more prey, the hare will die sooner or later. Both will go on with their lives, unaware of what I've done.
Animals are innocent. People never are.
— J.C.
I told Da about helping the First Nation girl give birth. He seemed interested, his eyes on me, as he finished eating. I gave him the tiny piece of bread I had left, and he ate that, too, though it seemed to take effort.
“It sounds like you handled it well, son,” he said in his odd, raspy voice. “Good for you.”
My heart flared, and I became humiliatingly aware that part of me still longed to impress him. Impress him, this pale imitation of my father.
“Da,” I began, leaning forward. “I need to talk to you about how you’ve been helping people around here. I’m a Seeker, and you must know that some of the things I’ve seen and heard concern me. I need to understand what you do, what role you play, how you’ve made it safe to be known openly as a witch.”
For a moment I thought he might actually try to answer, but then he raised one hand in a defeated gesture and let it fall again. He glanced at me, gave a faintly embarrassed half smile, then stood and headed to his room, just like that.
I sat back in my chair, unreasonably stunned—why had I expected anything different? Maybe because when I was a child, my da had never turned away from answering a question, no matter how hard, how painful. He had given it to me straight, whether I really wanted the answer or not. I had to let go of that da—he was gone forever. In his place was this new man. He was what I had to work with.
That night I lay on the lumpy couch, unable to sleep and unwilling to do a calming spell until I had thought things through. I was a Seeker. Every instinct I had was on alert. I needed to find out what my father was up to. I needed some answers. If Da couldn’t give them to me, I would find their answers myself. Then I would have a decision to make: whether to notify the International Council of Witches or not.
On Wednesday, I awoke early with renewed determination. I was going to follow Da today. All I had to do was wait for him to get up, then track him, something I was particularly good at.
Within moments of waking up, however, my senses told me the cabin was empty except for me. I frowned and swung my legs off the couch. A stronger scan revealed no other human around. How could that be? It would have been impossible for Da to wake and leave without my knowing. I was a light sleeper to begin with, and the couch of torture had only increased that. Then it occurred to me: it was impossible for Da to have left without my knowing. Which meant that my father had spelled me to keep me asleep. I sprang up, my hands clenching with anger. How dare he? He’d spelled me without my knowledge. There was no excuse for that, and it only emphasized how shady his business must be.
Swearing to myself, I shoved my feet into my boots and tied them with jerky movements. I pulled on the flannel shirt I’d earned, grabbed my coat, and stomped outside.
Outside, I saw that it was still early, and the air smelled like coming snow. The big pile of black garbage bags filled a corner of the front yard, and the thin, half-melted snow was tracked with my footprints. There were no tracks leading away from the house; none headed into the woods. Obviously Da had covered his trail.
I stomped a small circle into the snow and stepped into it. It took several minutes for me to release my anger, to summon patience, to center myself and open myself to the universe. At last I was in a decent state, and I began to craft revealing spells.
I had to say this for him, Da still knew his spells. His concealing spells were in several layers and included some variations that took work and thought on my part to break through. Either he was a naturally gifted and innovative spellcrafter, or he had considered me a real threat. Or both.
When I was done, I felt cold and drained and wanted nothing more than a cup of tea and a warm fire. Instead I got up and retraced my steps around the cabin. I saw the repeated tracks of my feet leading to the woodpile, but this time I also saw a set of new footprints, one that definitely hadn’t been there earlier: tracks leading from a corner of the porch into the woods. My mouth set in a firm line, I followed them.
How had my emaciated, malnourished father been able to hike this far the last couple of days, I wondered some forty minutes later. Granted, it was taking me longer because the tracks doubled back on themselves, I had to clear away other concealing and illusion spells, and I had to watch out for traps—but still, it had to be something desperately important to compel Da to trek this far every day in his weakened state.
A few minutes more and I became aware of a growing uneasiness, a bad taste in my mouth. I felt nervous; the back of my neck was tingling; all my senses were on alert. It was unnatural for the forest to be this quiet, this still. There were no animal
s, no birds, no movement or life of any kind. Instead, a feeling of dread and disturbing silence pervaded the area. If I hadn’t been on a mission, if I hadn’t known I was tracking a witch—my father—I would have fled. Again and again, every minute, my senses told me to bolt, to get the hell out of there, to run as fast as I could through the thick forest, to not stop until I was home. It took all my self-control to ignore them, to push those feelings ruthlessly down. Goddess, what had he done?
I pressed forward and came at last to a smallish clearing. To one side of the clearing stood an old, round-roofed hut, made of sticks and covered with big strips of birch bark, like an Indian house. A fire burned unenthusiastically outside the hut. It was surrounded by huge logs, easily two feet in diameter, that looked like benches.
I felt ill. Nausea rose in my throat; my skin felt clammy, cold, and damp with sweat. From the strong pulls on my senses I could tell I was at a huge power sink, much like the one in the cemetery in Widow’s Vale. But this one was made up of crossed lines, light and dark—it would be easy to work dark magick here, I realized, and my heart clenched.
I approached the hut. Every sense in me was screaming for me to get away from this place, to leave, that I was about to die, that I was suffocating. Dimly I was able to understand that these feelings were the effects of spells designed to ward off anyone who stumbled upon this place by accident, and I forced myself to ignore them. Taking a deep breath, I ducked down and pushed myself into the hut through its low doorway.
Immediately I was assaulted with feelings of out-and-out terror. My mouth went dry; my eyes were wild; my breath caught in my throat. Fighting for control, I looked around the hut with magesight. There was Da, crouched on the floor in a deep trance, his face alight with an unearthly eagerness. He was leaning over a dark. . hole? Then it came to me, and my throat closed as if a fist were squeezing my windpipe shut. Dear Goddess. I had never seen one of these before, though of course I had read about them. My father was in front of a bith dearc, a literal opening into the netherworld, the world of the dead. My brain scrambled to understand, but nothing came to me except a horrified recognition. A bith dearc. . if the council knew about this. .