by Terri Garey
“Can’t you just wave a magic wand over them, or something?”
That earned me another lowered look, which I knew better than to ignore.
“Fine.” I turned on the hot water. “But after that, I’m going to bed.”
“That’s a good idea,” Mom said crisply. “The sooner you get to bed, the sooner your birthday will be here.”
“Happy birthday to me,” I muttered, deeply dreading tomorrow’s party.
It was going to be so lame, I knew it.
* * *
Unable to sleep, I lay in bed for hours, stewing over what Tiffany said to me at the soccer field, and moping over Derek. I heard Mom rattling around in the kitchen, and smelled cake, fresh from the oven. I heard the drone of the television, turned low, and the soft sound of the bathroom door closing when she finally went in to get ready for bed. When her footsteps passed my bedroom door, I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, just in case she peeked in, but she didn’t. Finally, when all the lights were out and I hadn’t heard a sound for almost an hour, I got out of bed, opened my door as quietly as I could, and sneaked into the kitchen.
My eyes were fully adjusted to the dark and I knew the kitchen like the back of my hand, so I didn’t need to turn on the overhead light. I opened the junk drawer and got the lighter, then crossed to the bookshelves and took down a candle, putting it in the middle of the kitchen table. I felt a little bit guilty when I saw my birthday cake sitting there beneath a glass cover, but I just looked away and lit the candle. Then I went back to the bookshelf and lit a smaller candle, holding it while I looked over Mom’s spell books.
Garden Magic. Mysteries of the Divine. Sacred Signs. Dream Exploration. Taming the Tarot (seriously, Mom?). I found books on Moon rituals, meditation, astrology, the power of crystals and the reading of palms, even an old pamphlet on something called phrenology, which was basically about how to read the bumps on somebody’s head. Finally, on the bottom shelf, so small I almost missed it, was a slim black volume called spells and charms.
I took it over to the kitchen table and sat down, flipping through it by the light of the bigger candle. Spells for love, prosperity, protection, none of which did me a bit of good. Finally, near the end, I got to the good part: How To Give Someone Nightmares, Revenge Curse, Bad Luck Hex, along with some really serious stuff like Pain Ritual and Death Curse. Swallowing hard, I decided to skip the reading of these two, and settled on the very simple spell of How To Give Someone Nightmares, mainly because it didn’t require very much in the way of ingredients.
“Candle, check.” I muttered. “Black pepper, red pepper, paper, pencil, clear mental image of intended victim.” I had all of that, including a clear mental image of Tiffany, with that stupid, sneering smile on her face, from earlier in the day. The pencil and paper I got from the junk drawer, the two types of pepper from Mom’s spice cabinet.
Make a crude drawing of the intended victim, the spell read, making sure to include any identifying marks.
I drew the stick figure of a girl with long hair, giving her a too-big smile and beady little eyes. For good measure, I added two stupid looking pom-poms and a cheerleading skirt.
Concentrate on the image as you sprinkle a ring of black pepper around it, and recite the first two lines of the spell.
I did that, keeping my voice to a whisper. “Shadows and darkness, come to my aid, plague the one whose image I made. Give them no rest, awake or asleep, torment them with fears, dark and deep.”
Cover the image itself with red pepper, obliterating it from sight. Take the candle, and drip wax over all, sealing the pepper to the page, while reciting the rest of the spell.
“Whispers above you, shadows below, terror and dread, these things I sow. Dreams of heat, dreams of blood, dreams of sorrow and dreams of flood. All of these dreams I send to the one, who once had sweet slumbers, but soon will have none.”
It took me a little while to drip enough wax to cover all the pepper, but I was patient, all the while keeping an ear out for Mom, just in case she woke up.
When the wax has cooled, take the paper and crumple it into a ball, then bury it in the ground beneath the light of the moon. The closer to the intended victim that the spell is buried, the stronger the spell will be.
Well, there was no way I could go traipsing off to Tiffany’s house in the middle of the night, so I figured that the edge of my backyard would have to do. Very quietly, because the back door squeaked, I snuck outside and dug a hole near the azalea bushes, using a spoon I lifted from the sink. It was quiet out there, and peaceful, and I only felt mildly guilty as I patted the dirt back into place over the paper.
It was all make-believe, anyway, despite what Mom said, and even if it worked, so what if Tiffany had nightmares?
She deserved them.
Chapter 3
“Wake up, Cassie.”
“Mmmmphff.” I kept my eyes closed, and stayed where I was, under the covers.
“Wake up! It’s your birthday!”
I cracked one eye, saw that it was still dark in my room, and closed it again. “Go away, Mom,” I mumbled, “it’s not morning yet.”
“It’s one minute past midnight,” she said excitedly. “You’re thirteen! Wake up!”
I rolled onto my back, wanting only to go back to sleep. I’d been in the middle of a great dream, where Derek and I had been laughing at something, though I couldn’t say exactly what.
“C’mon, Cassie. There’s someone here I want you to meet!”
That got my eyes open in a hurry. I sat up, looking around in the dim light. “What? Who?”
“Me!” a voice said triumphantly.
I looked over toward the window, and bit back a shriek. A girl was standing there, bathed in moonlight. Curly hair, with a tomboy figure, sturdy and straight. Rounded chin, snub nose… she looked exactly like me. Stunned, I just stared.
“Hi, Cassie,” she said.
“Who are you?”
“I’m you,” she said, as though it were obvious. “Your familiar.”
I threw back the covers, sitting on the edge of the bed. She did look exactly like me, but there was something about her smile that I didn’t like.
“My familiar?”
She nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “All witches have them.”
Fumbling for my bedside lamp, I clicked the switch, but it didn’t come on.
“You don’t need the light,” the other Cassie said. “Some things are better in the dark.”
I had goose bumps on my arms.
“Am I dreaming?”
She laughed, but it was a mean kind of laugh. “No, you’re finally awake.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told her warily. “I think I’ll just go back to bed.”
“Fine, but then you’ll miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“Your initiation, of course.”
I shook my head, pretty sure I was having one heck of a really weird dream.
She came toward me, and without thinking, I scrambled backward on the bed to get away from her.
“What’s the matter?” she asked softly. “Are you afraid of me?”
I opened my mouth to call for Mom, but nothing came out.
The other Cassie came even closer, and that’s when I saw the knife in her hand. “Here,” she said, holding it out. “Take it.”
I shook my head again, terrified.
“It’s your athame,” she said, pronouncing it “aH-tha-may”, with the emphasis on the first syllable. “Take it.”
“I don’t want it.”
She chuckled in an ugly way and moved the knife slowly in the air, so that moonlight from the window glinted along the blade. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” she said oddly, leaning in closer. Her breath smelled terrible, like rotten eggs. “Your mother is a witch, isn’t she?”
Horrified, I could only stare, watching myself make fanciful patterns in the air with the knife.
&nb
sp; “She’s weak,” said the other Cassie. “She’ll never let you live up to your full potential… dragging you down, creating a trail of laughter and whispers behind your back. Everyone laughs at her, just as everyone laughs at you.” Her eyes narrowed, her tone vicious and hate-filled. “You’re better off without her! Take control of your own destiny, and make the laughter stop!” She thrust the knife at me, hilt first. “You are a woman now, in full possession of your birthright! Take the blade from my hand, and do it!”
I was cold all over, so cold. The knife gleamed, and the other Cassie’s eyes bored into mine; I’d never been so terrified in all my life.
“No,” I shouted. “Get away from me! Leave me alone!”
There was a knock at my bedroom door, and it opened. “Cassie?”
It was my mom. She was fully dressed in jeans and a jacket, backlit by the hall light. “Are you all right?”
I gasped with relief, heart pounding, and looked back at the other Cassie, but she was gone. My bedroom was empty. “I’m not…I’m not sure.”
Mom came all the way in the room, bringing with her the scent of patchouli and sunshine. She came and sat next to me on the bed, putting an arm around me. “Bad dream?”
I nodded, looking around the room again, just to make sure.
“Want to talk about it?”
The dream had seemed so real, so awful. It had been so creepy to see myself the way other people must see me, and even creepier to see myself looking and acting so… so vicious, and spiteful.
“No,” I told her, taking a deep breath. “It was just a dream.”
“Well, then,” she said with a smile, “I guess the next question is, ‘Are you ready’?”
“Ready for what?”
She put her other arm around me, and drew me close in a hug. “To claim your birthright, my darling.” Pulling back, she held me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye, her face glowing in the moonlight.
“Today is the day you become a full-fledged witch.”
* * *
The woods behind our house were usually one of my favorite places, but I’d never been out there in the dark. It looked very different at night, all shadowy and quiet, nothing green or cheerful about it.
“I’m not taking off my clothes and dancing around a bonfire, Mom.”
She laughed, the beam of her flashlight skipping along the ground as we walked. “You’ve seen too many movies, Cassie.”
“I’m not drinking any blood or promising my soul to the Devil, either,” I said stubbornly, letting her lead me by the hand.
“We’re not doing any of that,” she said calmly. “We’re just going to the top of the ridge, where we can see the stars.”
“I can see them just fine from here.”
She stopped, turning to face me.
“Don’t you trust me?”
Her flashlight was pointed at the ground, making it hard to see her face. I didn’t really need to, though, because I had a clear mental image of it. Blue eyes, laugh lines at the corners. A snub nose, just like mine, lips that were usually curled up in a smile, or caught between her teeth while she concentrated on a recipe or a TV show.
“Of course I do.”
She squeezed my hand, which she was still holding. Around us, the night was quiet, just the faint rustle of leaves in the trees above our head. “Then trust me now, and don’t be afraid.”
“The dream I had,” I blurted, “it was really bad.” I didn’t want to tell her all of it, but if being a witch meant that I had to put up with doppelgangers with knives, I really wanted no part of it. “There was a girl who—well, she looked exactly like me.”
Mom’s head, covered in curly hair a lot like mine, tilted as she considered this.
“Did she say anything?”
I sighed, looking away into the darkened woods. “She said she was my familiar.”
There was a silence, during which I literally heard crickets chirping. Or it could’ve been cicadas, I wasn’t sure.
“Did she urge you to do something that you didn’t want to do?”
I looked down at the ground. “Yes,” I said, but I didn’t tell her what it was.
“Were you tempted to do it?”
“No!”
Mom’s teeth flashed in a grin. “That’s very good news, Cassie.”
I tugged my hand from hers and took a step back. “I don’t understand.”
Mom sighed, reaching into her coat pocket. There was a rustling sound as she pulled out a crumpled, dirt-covered ball of paper. “It probably had something to do with this.”
For the space of five heartbeats, I just stared at it. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, not even bothering to ask how she’d known.
She tucked it back into her pocket, then gathered me close in a hug. “Oh, Cassie,” she said against my hair. “There are so many things you don’t understand yet, but you will.” Drawing back, she held me by the shoulders and made me look her in the eye. “It’s a very good thing that you were still twelve when you did this,” she told me earnestly. “I shudder to think what might have happened if you’d been thirteen.”
With a sigh, I gave up trying to figure everything out, and just decided to believe that it would all become clear in the end. “Ok, Mom. I give up. Let’s get this initiation thing over with, so you can tell me what’s what.”
Five minutes later, we stood on the ridge, which, as ridges go, wasn’t very much of one. This being Florida, the ground is pretty flat, but this particular spot had the advantage of being so surrounded by trees that you couldn’t see any houses, any streetlights, or any lights of any kind.
Mom switched off her flashlight, and we stood there in the pre-dawn darkness, letting our eyes adjust. Above our heads, the stars got brighter and brighter, revealing themselves one at a time as though each were a special secret all its own.
“Do you see the North Star?” Mom pointed up. “Right there, at the end of the Little Dipper’s tail.”
I stared, letting the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper make themselves clear. Where the Little Dipper’s handle began, one star shone brighter than the stars around it. “I see it.”
“Now look to the right a little. See those five bright stars in a zig-zag pattern?”
I took me a minute, but the zig-zag eventually became clear. “I do!”
“Your namesake,” Mom said softly. “Cassiopeia.” She put a hand on my shoulder, while we both stared up in wonder. “According to legend, Cassiopeia was the mother of a beautiful young woman named Andromeda. She was so proud of her daughter’s beauty that she boasted of her day and night, angering the gods. She made Poseidon, god of the sea, so angry that he demanded that Andromeda be sacrificed to a sea monster.”
I’d never heard this story before, and wasn’t certain I liked it. “Doesn’t sound like a very good way to go,” I joked.
“Andromeda was rescued at the very last minute by the hero Perseus,” Mom said dreamily. “But Cassiopeia paid the ultimate price for her pride, as Poseidon had her hung upside-down in the night sky for all eternity.”
“Gee thanks, Mom,” I told her sourly. “What a great person to name me after.”
She looked down at me, squeezing my shoulder. “I did it so that every time I said your name, I’d be reminded not to brag or boast about how beautiful, how wonderful, how very, very special you are, Cassie.”
My sourness left me, replaced by a lump in my throat.
“You’re kind, you’re smart, you’re funny, and you have more power in the tip of your little finger than most people will ever realize,” she said solemnly. “From this day forward, I must show you how to use it, and pray that you will only ever use it for good, not for ill.”
The image of Tiffany Templeton reared her ugly head inside my brain. “Never? Not even a little bit?” I asked, semi-hopefully.
“Never,” Mom answered firmly. “For whatever good or ill you do, it will return to you threefold, which means that if you give Tiffany a wart on the end of he
r nose, you’ll end up with three of them yourself.”
“That hardly seems fair,” I muttered.
“It isn’t fair,” Mom answered. “It’s karma. But,” she held up a finger, eyes twinkling in the moonlight. “Karma also means that those who do wrong to you will eventually be paid back in kind.”
“So somebody is eventually going to steal Tiffany’s boyfriend, and make her feel like a piece of crap?”
Mom shrugged. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised. All you have to do is be patient. Patience is a virtue, you know.”
Rolling my eyes, I muttered, “Patience is a pain in the butt.”
“So are you,” she retorted, grinning. “Sit with me.”
I did, both of us settling cross-legged on the ground, facing each other.
For the next few hours, while the stars shone and the night breeze rustled in the trees, my mother and I just sat and talked. We talked about heartache and revenge, about friendships and kindness, about inheritances and obligations. We talked about boys and breasts, about maturity and immaturity, and the lack and/or benefits of both. We talked about ignorance and prejudice, and what it meant to become a grown woman, including the physical changes that were about to happen to me. Sometimes I talked and she listened, and sometimes we did the opposite, while I did my best to not only listen, but to actually hear what she had to say. I got the feeling she was doing her best, too, and it was all good (except for the “becoming a woman” part, which sounded not only somewhat gross, but inconvenient).
It was all so good, really, that when she finally stifled a yawn and rose to her feet, I wasn’t sure I wanted the night to be over.
“Is that it?” I asked, kind of surprised there wasn’t more.
“What were you expecting,” she teased, “a little eye of frog, toe of newt to go along with your initiation?”
“I guess.”
“It’s late,” Mom said, “and we both need some sleep. Tomorrow, after your party, I’ll start teaching you the basics of earth magic. The important things to remember are that you must not only be open to it, but you must have only good in your heart while engaged in the making of it.”