Through the Veil

by Isobel Bird

  Kate looked at the cards in front of her. She knew from experience that they really could reflect what was going on in a person’s life and what could happen to that person in the future. Did she want to choose one and see what it said? She wasn’t sure. So many things in her life were up in the air—her relationship with her parents, her relationship with Tyler, and her involvement in the Wicca study group. Part of her was afraid to choose a card and see what it said. What if it indicated that things weren’t going to get any better for her? What if it showed her that her parents weren’t going to let her continue to study witchcraft? That would be devastating.

  But she also knew that the cards showed only what would happen if she continued doing things the way she was currently doing them. They didn’t mean that a particular future was set in stone. If she saw in the card something negative, there were still ways to change the course of events. She decided to look. She reached out and picked a card.

  “The Three of Cups,” said the woman. “Do you know its meaning?”

  “Oh, yes,” Kate said, a sense of joy building in her. She’d seen the card before. In fact, it was the card that she’d drawn in her very first Tarot reading, with Archer, back when she was debating whether or not to get involved with studying Wicca with Cooper and Annie. It was the card that had brought them together. Looking at it now, she hoped that its meaning was the same this time.

  “Take the card,” said the woman. “It is your guarantee of being able to leave the land of the dead. Go through the door behind me and rejoin the living.”

  Kate saw another door open. Through this one poured pale light, like the light at the end of a tunnel. She stood up and passed through the door. It shut behind her and she was in another hallway. Somewhere beyond her she heard the sounds of music, and she knew that the Samhain dance must be somewhere at the end of the hall. She walked toward the sound, holding the Tarot card in her hand.

  Annie passed through the torn veil and walked down the hallway. When she came to the woman holding the candle, she chose the left-hand path. She walked up the stairs, seeing another flickering light at the top, and came to a door. She pushed it open and found herself in a room lit with black candles. Around the room were many mirrors hanging on the walls, and the light of the candles was reflected in their surfaces. In the middle of the room stood a man in a gray velvet robe.

  “Welcome,” the man said. “Enter and close the door.”

  Annie did as she was instructed, discovering when she closed the door that it too had mirrors on the back. She stepped into the room and stood in front of the man, seeing herself reflected many times over in the mirrors.

  “You have passed through the veil,” the man said. “In this place you may see things you do not see in the realm of earth. If you look into the mirrors you may see reflections of things to come. Do you wish to see these things?”

  Annie thought seriously about the question. She’d experienced glimpses of the future before, and she knew that looking too deeply could cause trouble. Besides, there were a lot of questions in her mind at the moment, questions about Tyler, about Kate, and about her aunt and Mr. Dunning. Did she really want to see what might be going on with any of them?

  “These mirrors reflect those things you need to address as the year turns,” said the man in gray. “If you look into them you will see your challenge.”

  Annie took a deep breath. She knew that refusing a challenge when one was walking the Wiccan path would probably be a mistake. No matter how difficult the ones in her past had been, they’d always taught her something.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll look.”

  “Close your eyes,” the man instructed her. “Clear your mind. When you are ready, you may open them again.”

  Annie closed her eyes. She heard the man move away from her, then the sound of a door opening and closing softly. Had he left her alone? She tried to not let that thought trouble her. She knew that she was supposed to be clearing her mind and focusing her attention. She tried to do that, emptying her head of random thoughts.

  Okay, she thought. Show me what happens next.

  Almost immediately she heard the voices. “Annie,” they called.

  Her eyes flew open. Not again, she thought, panic gripping her. It was the sound of her parents’ voices. She looked around her. The man was gone. But in the mirrors she saw reflected the ghostly faces of a man and a woman. They were faces she knew. They belonged to her mother and father.

  At first she thought it must be a trick. But who would do such a thing? She whirled around. In each mirror she saw a face. They all stared out at her with sad expressions.

  “Annie.” The voices came again, and Annie saw the mouths of the reflections moving. Her parents were talking to her.

  “But you’re supposed to have passed over,” she cried. “We did the ritual.”

  She couldn’t help but look at the faces. Her parents looked exactly the way she remembered them. But why were they there? What did they want? She didn’t have any answers.

  Suddenly a door opened on the other side of the room. Light poured in. The faces vanished instantly from the mirrors, and Annie was left staring at her own face in their polished surfaces.

  She ran from the room. Beyond it was another set of stairs, this one going down. She heard voices coming from the bottom, happy voices, and the sound of laughter. She knew it was the party.

  Looking back, she saw that the door to the room of mirrors was shut. Probably someone else was in there now. What was the new person seeing? she wondered.

  She walked down the stairs, anxious to find her friends. It was time she told them the truth about what she’d done.

  CHAPTER 17

  Two days later, on the actual evening of Samhain, Annie, Cooper, and Kate were seated in Annie’s bedroom. The room was lit by candles, and the three friends were gathered around the cauldron.

  “Meg looked really cute as a hobbit,” Kate said as they relaxed before beginning the night’s work.

  “She’s been reading Tolkien,” said Annie. “She wanted us to glue fake fur to her feet to make them look realistic. Luckily, she settled for fuzzy slippers.”

  Meg and Aunt Sarah were out trick-or-treating with some of Meg’s friends. Aunt Sarah had donned a long beard and a blue robe to be the wizard Gandalf. The girls had said good-bye to them before coming up to Annie’s room, and now they had the house to themselves for a few hours. Annie hoped it would be enough time for them to do what needed to be done.

  “So, Mom and Dad are letting you out of the house again?” Cooper asked Kate.

  “For now,” Kate answered. “The ritual wasn’t too weird for them. My mother even ended up keeping the Tarot card she drew in that red room. She put it on the refrigerator with a magnet. And they ended up talking to Sophia and Archer quite a bit at the party afterward. I guess they decided that they’re okay.”

  “Does this mean you’re coming back to class on Tuesday?” Annie asked her.

  Kate nodded. “They said I can go back to class, although I don’t think they’re all that thrilled about it. And Tyler is still off-limits for the moment. I think studying witchcraft and dating a witch are just a little too much for them, or maybe they think I’m only into it because he is and if I don’t see him it will wear off. But that’s okay. You guys can still hang out with him, and I’ll see him at class on Tuesdays. I’m just glad my Tarot card turned out to be true. Here we are, the three of us, back together. And I’ll show them that this isn’t just a passing thing. Then I know they’ll change their minds.”

  Annie didn’t say anything at the mention of Tyler. Standing beside him in the ritual circle had been hard, but she’d managed to pretty much avoid him at the party. She still hadn’t said a word to Kate about the kiss, and she still hadn’t decided what to do about it. There was a bigger issue she had to deal with first. That’s why her friends were there. She had asked them to come over and help her do something. She had told them most of her story the pr
evious day over a long walk. It had been difficult, and they had been shocked to hear what she had to say, but they’d been incredibly supportive.

  “Did Jane have a good time?” Kate asked Cooper.

  Cooper nodded. “Big time,” she said. “I don’t know if she’ll make a visit to class one of these days or not, but she enjoyed herself. Even if she doesn’t, we’ll still hang out. I really like her, and it never hurts to have more friends.”

  “If she does turn out to be interested, that would mean Sasha and Jane will be in next year’s class,” Kate said thoughtfully. “If we can get Jess and Tara to come, too, we’ll have the beginnings of our very own little coven.” She laughed. “We can call ourselves the Witch Babies.”

  “Right,” said Cooper. “And if Annie’s aunt marries that writer guy we can recruit Becka, too.”

  “The way they’ve been talking on the phone every night, you never know,” Annie remarked. “But first things first. Let’s get this ritual started, okay?”

  “You’re the boss,” said Cooper. “What are we doing?”

  “I want to do a ritual for my parents,” Annie said. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think that they’ve been trying to contact me for some reason. You both know what happened.” She paused as her friends nodded. “Well, I think they have something to say to me. I’m not sure I want to hear what it is, but I think I need to give them the chance to say it.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Kate asked.

  “Tonight is the night when the veil between the worlds is thinnest,” Annie said. “I’m just going to see if I can get through to them. Nothing fancy. Just me asking them to show up. I asked you guys to come over because I think it might help to have a stronger circle. And because I’m a little scared, too. It’s not every day you ask your dead parents to come by for a visit.”

  “I have enough trouble with my living ones,” remarked Kate. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yeah,” Annie said, nodding. “I’m sure. This has been a long time coming. I need to face it now.”

  “Okay, then,” said Cooper. “Let’s do it.”

  They all stood up. Annie struck a match and lit some incense she’d picked up at Crones’ Circle that afternoon. It was a special blend made just for Samhain, and when she lit the charcoal it sent out a plume of bluish smoke that filled the air with the smell of roses, sandalwood, and amber. Then Annie held out a hand each to Cooper and Kate. They took them, then joined their other hands to form a circle around the cauldron.

  Annie breathed in the heady scent of the incense. She gripped her friends’ hands in hers and felt stronger and safer with them around her. She took several deep breaths, then she spoke the words she’d written earlier for casting the circle.

  Once around the wheel turns,

  as guided by her magic hand.

  Three times ’round we cast our circle,

  in its golden light we stand.

  She paused, imagining a circle of brilliant light forming around them, creating a safe space in which they could work their magic. She pictured the light as one of the whirling dervishes she’d seen the other night, spinning quickly as it circled them and surrounding her, Kate, and Cooper in its protective glow.

  When she felt that the circle was cast, she proceeded to the next part of the ritual. Again she spoke some words she’d written especially for the occasion.

  As the year comes to an ending,

  in the hour between old and new,

  part the veil and let pass

  the spirits who would travel through.

  She had asked the powers of the universe to pull aside the veil. That had been the easy part. Now came the more difficult one. For this there was no easy invocation. She simply had to speak what was in her heart.

  “Mom and Dad,” she said softly. “It’s me. Annie. I know you’ve been trying to talk to me, and I know I’ve been running away. I didn’t understand what you want. I still don’t understand. But I know you want to talk to me. So if you’re still there, please speak to me now.”

  She stopped and waited. Had she done everything correctly? She really didn’t know. She stood with her eyes closed, feeling Kate’s and Cooper’s hands in hers. Their touch was reassuring, and she was glad that her fingers were entwined with those of her two best friends, the people with whom she made magic.

  She didn’t know what might happen. Would there be a wind, the way there had been at the house in San Francisco? Would she hear her parents speaking to her, the way they had done several times now? She had no idea. Maybe nothing at all will happen, she thought.

  “Annie.” The voices were strong and clear.

  “Mom?” she said. “Dad?”

  “Annie,” the voices came again. “Open your eyes.”

  Annie hesitated. The voices had never asked her to do anything before. Was it really her parents, or was she just hearing things because she wanted to? There was only one way to find out.

  She opened her eyes slowly and looked around. She saw Kate and Cooper standing on either side of her. Their eyes were still closed. Had they heard the voices, too? Or, as before, was Annie the only one who could hear them?

  “Annie.” This time it was just her father speaking. The sound was coming from behind her.

  She turned and looked in the direction of the big window at the end of her room. There, standing in the moonlight, was her father. Her mother stood beside him. They looked exactly as Annie always pictured them in her mind when she thought about them, although their bodies seemed to be made of mist. Behind them she could see the window, and the moon shining through it.

  “Dad?” she whispered. “Mom?”

  She let her hands slip from Cooper’s and Kate’s. As she did they opened their eyes to see what she was doing. When they saw the ghosts of her parents standing near them, they both looked at Annie with expressions of amazement on their faces.

  “Annie,” her mother said. “We’ve been waiting a long time.”

  Her mother held out her arms. Annie rushed to her, but stopped just in front of her. She longed to feel her mother’s arms around her once again. But it wasn’t her mother she was seeing. It was her ghost. Annie knew she wouldn’t be able to touch her in the same way she could touch someone made of flesh and blood. Cooper had described touching Elizabeth Sanger as passing through an icy mist. Annie knew she wouldn’t be able to bear it if that’s what touching her parents felt like. She remembered their hugs as being warm and comforting. Anything other than that would be awful.

  She looked into her mother’s face, then her father’s. “Is it really you?” she asked them, still not sure.

  “Yes,” said her father in his warm, comforting voice. “Annie. We’ve been trying to reach you for so long. Why did you keep running away?”

  Annie looked away. “I thought you were angry at me,” she said.

  “Why would we be angry?” her mother asked.

  Annie looked up at her. “Because of what I did,” she said. “Because of the fire. I caused it. I killed—I’m the reason you’re dead,” she explained, unable to say exactly what she meant.

  Her father smiled gently. “Annie, the house was old. What happened was an accident.”

  “No,” Annie cried out. “It was my fault. You had to save me. And then you saved Meg, and you died trying to get Mom out.” She began to cry. “I couldn’t do anything,” she said, her voice shaking. “All I could do was stand there in the garden, holding Meg while the house burned. I kept waiting for you to come out. I waited and waited.”

  “Annie, no one blames you for what happened,” said her mother.

  “But you sounded so angry on the beach,” Annie said, still sobbing. “That’s why I ran. And then in the house, when I went back.”

  “We’ve been trying to reach you for many years,” her father said. “But we’ve never been able to get through. That day on the beach was the first time you heard us calling. We were anxious, not angry. We were afraid we might not
get another chance.”

  “You mean you’ve been around me all this time?” asked Annie. “All these years?”

  Her parents laughed, and the sound made Annie feel much better. “Yes,” her mother said. “From time to time. We’ve watched you and Meg grow up. But we only get through occasionally, and then only for a short time.”

  “Where are you the rest of the time?” Annie asked. It was a question she’d wanted to ask of Elizabeth Sanger, but she’d never had the opportunity.

  “There’s no time for that now,” answered her father. “One day you’ll find out. But not now. Now we just want to say good-bye.”

  “You’re leaving?” Annie wailed. She felt as if her heart were being torn apart. She was finally getting the chance to talk to her parents, and now they were telling her that they couldn’t stay.

  “The magic only lasts so long, Annie,” her mother said. “We can step through only for a few minutes.”

  “But I don’t want you to go,” cried Annie. “I’ve missed you so much. It’s been so long. I have so many questions to ask you. Like why did you paint that picture of us?”

  She pointed to the picture that hung on the wall opposite her bed—the one of her mother holding her while they looked out at a full moon in which the face of the Goddess seemed to be reflected.

  Her mother smiled. “I always knew you were special,” she answered, her voice filled with emotion. “One night after we brought you home from the hospital I woke up and saw a woman standing beside the crib in our room. She was looking down at you. She turned to me and smiled. She said, ‘Tell her to look for me in the moon. I will always be there, waiting for her.’ Then she disappeared. I was waiting until you were older to tell you the story. But I painted that picture as a reminder of it. The face in the moon. That’s her face.”

  Annie smiled. “She has always been there for me,” she said.

  “Annie,” her father said. “We have to leave in a moment. I can feel the veil closing again. Before it does I want to tell you something. We love you. We love you and Meg very much. Tell her that. Tell Sarah, too.”