The Lost Enchantress

by Patricia Coughlin

  There was no denying that. After years of flitting like the free spirit she was from one job to another, her sister seemed to have found her bliss as a wedding planner. Not ordinary weddings naturally, but one-of-a-kind weddings in exotic, far-off locales. It was the perfect career for a diehard romantic with boundless creativity and a wanderer’s soul. The downside was that Chloe was away from home for weeks at a stretch. At the moment she was on a private island somewhere off the coast of Greece. And when she was away, Eve picked up the slack at home. She didn’t mind; she shared a special bond with her only niece, and it had been that way since the day Rory was born. Actually, since before she was born.

  Chloe was only seventeen when she announced she was pregnant, father unknown, and that she intended to keep her baby. A senior in high school, she was still living with their paternal grandparents, who had taken them in after the fire that killed their parents and destroyed their home. The Lockharts were horrified by Chloe’s pregnancy. Wealthy and prominent in the community, they were as concerned with appearances as Grand was totally unconcerned with what anyone else thought or said about her. Their response to the situation involved equal parts shame and secrecy. They wanted to pack Chloe off to give birth somewhere far, far away, arrange for a private, sealed adoption and never speak of the matter again. Ever.

  Eve’s father had been their youngest and most troublesome son. They’d strongly disapproved of his marriage and had little to do with his family when he was alive. That changed upon his death. They had more money, more influence and more friends in high places than Grand did, and they’d used all of them to elbow her aside and claim full custody of Eve and her sister. In true Solomon fashion, Grand had elected not to fight them, legally or otherwise, though she surely could have prevailed had she chosen to do battle on her own unorthodox terms. She’d stepped aside because she believed the girls had been through enough.

  The Lockhart name made the fire front-page news locally, and Grand’s long-standing reputation as the neighborhood’s resident witch provided the media and the public with plenty of scandalous details. Rumors and half-truths attributed to anonymous sources were twisted and exaggerated, with vague insinuations of animal sacrifices and black masses. When the state fire marshall’s final report said that the fire was caused by candles left burning unattended in the turret room, it was taken for granted that Grand was to blame. Whispers about a charred crystal ball and silver pentagram found among the ruins fanned speculation about what she had been doing that night.

  Grand rose above it all, neither denying nor explaining the rumors, and not allowing a custody battle to incite more hurtful publicity and prolong the public ordeal for Eve and Chloe. Instead, she made do with only occasional visits with the granddaughters she loved, and it was years before Eve learned about the sacrifices she’d made.

  Eve was out of college and living in New York when Chloe called to tell her she was pregnant. She had just been awarded a prestigious fellowship to study international journalism; it was the next step on her carefully planned path to becoming a foreign correspondent. Those were heady days when it seemed that every piece of her life was falling into place.

  Her immediate response to Chloe’s announcement was to return home and try to negotiate a compromise. She reasoned and pleaded and cajoled, but her grandparents stood their ground and her sister stood hers. More than once Eve wanted to throw up her hands and walk out. She wanted to go back to New York where she had a real life tied to a real future, a future she’d dreamed of and worked to make happen. The reason she didn’t was because when she tuned out the arguments and threats and accusations being hurled all around her, and listened instead to her heart, one truth stood out above all else: Chloe needed her. That came before everything else.

  The night after their parents died, she and Chloe slept in the same bed. Huddled beneath the covers, they had linked pinkie fingers and sworn they would always be there for each other, no matter what. It was a childish gesture made by children desperate for comfort and reassurance wherever they could get it. But Eve had meant every word. It wasn’t simply a sense of obligation that brought her home to stand by Chloe. She wanted to be there for her sister. No matter what the price.

  There had been a quick trip to New York to settle matters there. Eve salvaged what she could and said good-bye to what she couldn’t, and she moved on. When she got back to Providence, she called Grand to broach an idea she had, and the three of them—Grand and Chloe and she—banded together and forged the arrangement that had worked pretty well ever since.

  “I know you’d do anything to help Chloe and that you love Rory as if she were your own,” Grand was saying now. “But a schedule as hectic as yours takes its toll on a body. I should think it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.”

  Eve shot to her feet, ignoring the chill on her bare shoulders as the shawl slipped from them. “Something like this? What are you saying? That more things like this could happen?”

  “I’m saying that when a body’s resistance to anything is low—”

  Eve cut in. “My resistance isn’t low. When it comes to magic, I’m as resistant as hell . . . I’m every bit as resistant as I ever was.”

  “If you say so,” Grand returned, her dubious tone saying something else.

  Eve crossed her arms, defensive, not wanting Grand to be right. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the proof is in the pudding. That tonight happened because I somehow dropped my guard and that if I don’t get more sleep and take more vitamins it could happen again.”

  “Oh, I don’t think vitamins have a thing to do with it. And what I was thinking was that you have a peculiar bump inside your dress. Just there,” she said, pointing.

  Eve glanced down. “That’s just the pendant.”

  Grand was suddenly still. “What pendant might that be?”

  “This one,” Eve replied, starting to pull the pendant from inside her dress only to have the chain get caught on the material.

  “I’m sure I mentioned it.”

  “I’m certain you didn’t,” Grand countered, reaching behind her for her reading glasses. “I surely would have taken notice if you had.”

  “Sorry. It must have gotten lost in the babble. The pendant is what started the whole thing,” she explained, trying to loosen the link without tearing her dress. “No, that’s wrong. It really started with the guy in the lobby. I know I mentioned him and how I felt so drawn to him.”

  “That’s not so unusual; you did say he was quite handsome.”

  Eve shook her head. “It wasn’t that. This feeling was different, and much stronger; it was like being hypnotized and fully aware at the same time. I never felt anything like it, and I knew even then something strange was going on. But when I walked away, I assumed the spell was broken. I thought I had things under control and that if I just kept my head, I could make it through the rest of the night.”

  She finally managed to free the chain and slip it over her head.

  “This man . . . he would be the same man who jumped off the roof of the garage?”

  “It wasn’t the roof, but yes, he’s the one.”

  “And you think he’s the mage who cast the spell?”

  “I have no idea what he is,” Eve said as she placed the pendant in Grand’s outstretched palm. “I’m not even sure it was a spell. But it was definitely something; I felt it. And whatever it was, he was connected to it . . . to all of it. He wanted the pendant every bit as badly as I did, and that’s saying something. As soon as I saw it, I went into some kind of mad shopaholic trance. Everything just . . .” She made an exploding sound and threw her hands up in the air to illustrate. “It was like a Bewitched episode . . . minus Darren and the laugh track.”

  “Saints be praised!”

  Grand’s cry commanded Eve’s full attention. When Grand was a girl, the only school in Glengara was run by nuns, and her beliefs were a comfortable mix of magic and Christianity. Through the year
s, Eve heard all manner of colorful exclamations delivered in that musical brogue, but “saints be praised” was reserved for things of real significance.

  “What is it, Grand?”

  “The answer to your question . . . the reason for everything that happened tonight. Now I understand.” She lifted her gaze to meet Eve’s, cradling the pendant in both trembling hands. “Oh, Eve, do you have any idea what this means?”

  Before she could admit that she didn’t, Grand was up and hurrying toward her bedroom, still clutching the pendant. Eve watched from the kitchen as she went straight to her dressing table and opened the ancient silver box that held things she cherished. Returning, she handed Eve an oval frame a little smaller than a deck of cards. It held the image of a woman, a girl really, with dark hair, a sweet smile and eyes as blue as Grand’s.

  “That is your great-great-great-great . . . I lost count, was that three greats or four?” Her hand fluttered impatiently. “Never mind that. The girl is Maura T’airna; she sat for that portrait in 1790. She was seventeen.”

  “It’s so tiny,” Eve remarked, examining it closely. “Tiny and perfect.”

  “It’s a miniature. Before cameras came along, they were all the rage among people of means. It took quite a talented artist to capture such detail on so small a canvas. Look closely . . . do you see what she’s wearing around her neck?”

  Eve brought the painting closer and squinted, and then slid her gaze to meet Grand’s look of watchful anticipation. “She’s wearing the pendant. Well, a pendant anyway. Do you really think it could be the same one?”

  “I’ve never been so certain of anything in my life.”

  Grand sat, cradling the gold hourglass in her hands as if it were the most valuable and fragile of treasures. She gently curled her fingers around it and closed her eyes.

  “I can feel it,” she said softly. “It’s so warm to the touch.” She opened her eyes and her sharp gaze pinned Eve’s. “You must have felt it too.”

  When Eve hesitated, Grand reached for her hand and placed the pendant in her palm. Then she covered it with her own hand.

  “Close your eyes,” she instructed. “Close your eyes and let yourself feel.”

  Eve closed her eyes. “I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to be feeling.”

  “Power. Blood. Kinship.” Grand’s voice was strong, a matriarch’s voice. “But you’re fighting it; see how stiff your spine is. Listen to me, Eve. This is not simply any pendant. This is the lost T’airna talisman . . . our talisman. I’m as sure of that as I am that the sun rose this morning.”

  She drew her hand away, leaving the pendant with Eve.

  “The lost T’airna talisman?” Eve echoed the words slowly, as if they were spoken in a language she’d never heard before, which in a way they were. “How come I never heard anything about a lost family talisman before now?”

  “I suppose because when you were very young, I did my best to abide by your parents’ wishes where magic was concerned. I did,” she insisted when Eve looked askance at her. “That was my very best. Anyway, I always thought there would be plenty of time later, when you were older, to tell you everything. I expected there to be time for so many things, and then . . . and then there wasn’t.”

  Eve nodded, understanding. “How long ago was it lost?”

  “Centuries. It disappeared just after Maura sat for that portrait, stolen by the man she later married, never to be seen again. At least the family suspected it was he who stole it, and he who caused poor Maura’s death only months after they were wed. Neither was ever proven; Phineas Pavane was too slippery, all charm and smiles when it suited him.

  “T’is said he learned of the talisman from Maura, who was a bit of a flibbertigibbet. Who knows how she might have bragged to impress a suitor she fancied? But in truth Maura was a silly little thing with scant power of her own and no interest in learning how to control even that. If Pavane married her thinking she was his key to unlocking the talisman’s power, he would have soon found out differently and had no use for her.”

  “And so he killed her? That’s horrible.”

  “Indeed, for poor Maura and for all of us who followed. With the talisman gone, everything changed. T’airna fortunes dwindled, and their power too.”

  Grand’s expression hardened. Her sharp blue gaze was fixed on a point over Eve’s shoulder, but Eve surmised that whatever she was seeing was an ocean and several lifetimes away.

  “The T’airnas were once the toast of Glengara. They were beloved by their neighbors, and for very good reason; there wasn’t a soul who hadn’t turned to them for help, and help they always got. Whether it was a potion for a sick child or a charm to save a failing crop, they could be counted on in a time of need. And then there were the other matters they tended to, matters on a far grander scale, matters of life and death that their neighbors never thanked them for, because they never knew. They were spared having to know because the T’airnas were among those who kept watch against the darkness.”

  Kept watch against the darkness . . . The words stirred Eve’s imagination, and her curiosity, and sent a shiver dancing along her spine.

  “Our legacy is a proud one of duty and destiny,” Grand told her. “For all of time, enchantresses of the house of T’airna made life better and safer in ways no one else could. And then, in the space of only a generation or two, everything changed, and they found themselves working as paid servants on Pavane’s grand estate or in one of his businesses; there was naught else to do since by then he owned the village whole.”

  “And you think this . . . reversal of fortune was all because of a lost pendant?”

  “Because of a lost talisman,” Grand corrected indignantly. “Even if Pavane couldn’t access its true power, its loss tipped the scales and he took full advantage. It was only years later, after he’d gathered all the wealth and power a man could want in this world, that it became known he was a necromancer, calling on the darkest of magics to work his will.”

  She held her hand out and waited for Eve to return the pendant to her. “This talisman is our heritage. It holds the wisdom and power of every woman who’s ever possessed it. And it is our future, a link to magic purer and more potent than any in this realm, a link to the divine magic of the Everrealm. That’s why Pavane wanted it so badly and why the likes of him could never make use of it on his own.”

  Eve bit her bottom lip, unsure what to say. She didn’t want to say “That sounds crazy,” though it did. It was hard to believe a simple piece of jewelry could hold such power, but the spark in her grandmother’s eyes and the stubborn set of her jaw made it clear she believed it. And that meant something to Eve. She might have given up on magic, but she still trusted Grand.

  Besides, who was she to judge? She wasn’t even sure exactly what a talisman was. Sure she’d heard the word before, but she understood its meaning in only the most general terms. And she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know more.

  She liked her life the way it was. It wasn’t perfect, but there was nothing so bad she needed an ancient good luck charm to fix it. If it even brought good luck. You could never be completely sure with magic. To her thinking, that was the big disadvantage to playing a game without rules: there were no rules.

  She liked rules. And she was good at following them. She liked that along with rules came consequences. So if you should decide to break one, you knew right up front what to expect. For instance, you didn’t go to bed one night believing you had the world figured out and wake up to find your world broken and turned upside down and with pieces missing. Important pieces that you could never get back, or replace or forget.

  That’s why she didn’t want to know more about the talisman.

  It’s why she didn’t want her pulse to quicken the way it did when Grand spoke of power and blood and kinship. And why she didn’t want to feel a small burst of excitement and something else—pride—when she realized that long before there were historians around to record such things, her
ancestors had stood against the darkness in the world.

  Most of all she didn’t want to feel the warm, urgent pull of energy stretching inside her and around her when she held the pendant in her hand.

  The problem was that what she wanted seemed less important when she considered the look of wonderment on her grandmother’s face and heard the excited lilt in her voice. She remembered both from those long-ago days when Grand had helped her prepare for the Winter Rose Spell.

  I expected there to be time . . . and then there wasn’t.

  Telling herself it couldn’t hurt to listen, she sat back down and reached across the table to cover Grand’s hand with her own. The older woman’s skin was wrinkled but silky and dear to her touch.

  Their eyes met and Eve smiled.

  “We have time now, Grand,” she said. “Will you tell me about it?”

  Her grandmother gave her a nod, the corners of her mouth lifting with pleasure as she took a minute to gather her thoughts before speaking. “The pendant was a gift from the Goddess Danu to a T’airna woman,” she told Eve.

  The Goddess Danu. Incredibly, in a single sentence the story had moved back in time from Maura and late-eighteenth-century Ireland to the era of the Tuatha de Danaan, a divine race descended from Danu herself in the time before time.

  “You know about the Danaans?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Eve replied.

  She knew enough. She knew that according to Irish mythology the Danaans conquered and ruled Ireland long before the Celtic tribes arrived. They had powers and abilities beyond those of men and were said to be the predecessors of the sidhe, or fairies. As a race they were revered as both warriors and goldsmiths, but what they were best known for was their penchant for dallying with humans. According to Grand, T’airna magic originated with the union of a besotted Danaan prince and the daughter of Irish hero Finn mac Cool.

  “The legend is that this brave woman risked her life and used her magic to stop the overthrow of the High King of Ireland by his own knights,” Grand recounted. “T’airna men among them, I’m shamed to say. To reward her for her loyalty, the goddess enhanced the woman’s power and decreed that it be carried forth in the T’airna female line for all time.”