Maggie Shayne - Return of the Light

by Return of the Light

  She closed her eyes. “Oh, no.”

  “I was on my way to get you. Been trying to call, but—”

  “I was outside.”

  He peered at her as if she were insane.

  “It’s the solstice,” she said.

  His face cleared. “You went to our cove, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, Dori there’s so much…” Then he stopped himself and gave his head a shake. “But it has to wait. The boys first. And if it being solstice means it’s a good night for calling down magic, put in for some, would you?”

  He stopped outside the rec center, a very large, perfectly square, metal building the town used for bingo, auctions, town dances and anything else that came up. It was probably where they would hold their precious Holiday Craft Fair.

  Right now, it held people. The entire police force—which consisted of about six cops—and half the town. Maybe more than half. Up close she could see dozens of vehicles parked around the building. They’d been out of her view before as the parking lot was dark and on the far side of the building.

  “What are all these people doing?”

  “Praying, mostly,” he said. “That storm’s gonna hit and hit hard, Dori.” He started to get out of the car.

  She stopped him with a hand to his arm. “Jason…why did you come for me?”

  “The first thing I thought of was to call you.” He searched her eyes. “Hell, the first thing I think of when I wake up is you these days. And the last thing before I go to sleep.”

  “Jason—”

  “Don’t,” he said. “Let’s not do this. Not now, Dori. I need you to help me with this. Help me find those boys.”

  She nodded, opened her door and got out of the car. They went into the rec center together, and Dori took in the scene with a swift glance. Women huddled with their husbands, people weeping, people pacing. Cops and others hunched over a table spread with maps and charts. One was talking on a cell phone; another manned a portable radio.

  “We have the state police out in boats,” Jason explained. “It’s too windy for helicopters.” He glanced at his officer on the radio. “Anything yet?”

  “No sign.”

  A huge gust hit, and suddenly, the room full of people was pitched into total darkness. One woman cried out.

  “Stay calm,” Jason called. “If anyone brought a light, get it out now.”

  Dori thought of the candle in her bag. If ever she had needed its magic, she thought, she needed it now. She took it out, flicked her lighter, touched it to the wick.

  Its golden light gleamed.

  “You!” a woman said.

  One by one other lights came on. Someone lit a gas lantern, which spilled a lot more light on things. Someone else offered to go get a generator.

  But Dori was focused on Alice Redmond making a bee-line for her. She was about to roll her eyes and tell the woman that this was not the time, but then she noticed the redness of the woman’s cheeks and the hollow emptiness in her eyes. She’d seen a look like that before.

  “Oh, my Goddess,” Dori whispered. “One of the missing boys is yours, isn’t he?”

  The woman stopped moving when she couldn’t get any closer without mowing Dori down. She stood nearly nose to nose with her, only the dancing light of the candle in between them. “Kevin. He’s seventeen.”

  “I’m so sorry, Alice. I mean it.”

  “Do you?”

  Others were starting to turn toward the two of them now. More lanterns were lit, more candles, and several flashlights. Alice’s voice was agitated and overly loud.

  “Of course I mean it,” Dori said. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”

  “Then help him.”

  Dori blinked. The room went dead silent.

  A man who was probably her husband laid a hand on her arm.

  “You’ve done it before,” she went on, not even acknowledging her husband’s touch. “If you can really do what they say you can do, then do it. Help me find my son. I just want him back. Please…”

  The woman was sinking to the floor at Dori’s feet, weeping, and her husband caught her in his arms. “Of course I’ll do whatever I can,” she said, bending down, helping the man bring his wife to her feet again. She handed her precious candle to the nearest person and then smoothed her hands over the woman’s back. “I promise, Alice, I’ll try my hardest.”

  She didn’t know if the poor woman was listening or not. She didn’t care. She turned and found Jason without having to search for him. She said, “I need to get out on the lake. I need some men to help me launch my uncle’s boat.”

  “Dammit, Dori, you can’t go out there,” Jason said. “Work from here. Wave a pendulum over the charts and tell us where to send the state patrol boats. But don’t go out on the lake.”

  She moved closer to him, clasped his hands in hers. “I think I have to. Don’t you get it, Jason? Maybe this is why I had to come back here. To save this kid. And even if it’s not, I’m going to try, no matter how much time you waste arguing with me.”

  He swallowed hard, holding her eyes. “Then I’m damn well going with you.”

  HE COULD NOT BELIEVE he had let her come out on the boat in this weather. The waves battered the small craft mercilessly, and he was at the controls, following her directions. The boat had no cabin. A large glass windshield was all that stood between them and the biting wind.

  “Where did you say they started from?” she asked. She was sitting in a vinyl seat beside him.

  “The boat launch, a mile down the beach.”

  “Then go west.”

  “That’s the opposite direction!”

  “There’s a strong current. It would have pulled them west. Especially if they’ve been out here any length of time.”

  He searched her face. Pale cheeks in the glow of the panel lights. Wide, intense eyes.

  “Trust me, Jason.”

  “I do.” He headed the boat in the direction she told him. “But I have to ask, what are you basing this on?” he asked. “Instinct or…”

  “Experience.”

  “With missing kids?”

  “No. With the lake. I know every inch of it, Jason. I’ve spent every summer out here since I was twelve, right at Uncle Gerald’s side. Studying his maps, charts, the currents, all the topography of the lake bottom. He took this Champ stuff seriously. And he taught me everything he knew.”

  Jason nodded slowly. “You’re right. Hell, you’re probably more familiar with the lake than anyone in town.” He stared at her face. “But what about…the other?”

  She nodded. “I’m open. I’m just…not getting anything yet.”

  “So you just…wait?”

  “You keep us afloat, Jason. I’ll worry about the spooky stuff, all right?”

  He seemed completely baffled. “I can’t help in some way? Like at your place the other night?”

  She pursed her lips, sent him a sad smile. “It’s all right, Jason. I realize it probably freaked you out a little—that night, I mean. All the Witchcraft stuff.”

  He tipped his head to one side.

  “Look, it’s all right. Some people aren’t comfortable with Witchcraft, and that’s fine. But I can’t give it up, Jason. I think I had to go through this past year of trying to before I realized that. It’s who I am.” She reached to the wheel, putting her hand over his on it, and moved it slightly.

  “I kind of figured that out before you did, remember? Wasn’t I the one who tried to tell you that very thing?”

  “Yeah, you did at that.” She smiled slightly. The wind was whipping strands of hair that had escaped her knit hat. “That was pretty cool of you, especially given your feelings about it all.”

  “What feelings? What are you talking about?”

  She shrugged, averting her eyes, scanning the pitch-dark waters again. Then her eyes went stone-cold serious. “This way,” she said. She lifted a hand and pointed.

  He steered the boat where she instructe
d. “Well?” he prompted. “Dori, don’t tell me you suspect I have a problem with your witchiness?”

  “Are you saying you don’t?”

  “I don’t. Tell me where you got the idea that I did.”

  She bit her lips, then shrugged and blurted it. “You haven’t asked me out again since you found out.”

  “Ah, hell, Dori.” He faced her, gripped her shoulder with one hand to keep her attention. “I haven’t asked you out again because you told me you were as determined as ever to leave Crescent Cove. And because I couldn’t take your walking out on me again.”

  She stared at him. “Really? That’s why?”

  “It almost killed me last time. You’ve got no idea how hard it hit me, Dori. No idea.”

  She blinked, and he thought there might have been tears pooling in her eyes. But all of a sudden, they widened, and she swung her head around. “They’re close!” she shouted. “This way!” She grabbed up the spotlight and turned it slowly over the water, shouting the boys’ names over and over again.

  The wind came harder, snow blasting them now with such force it stung his face. He got caught up in her certainty, though the logical part of his brain told him this wasn’t possible. There was no way she could just know. No way.

  And then her light fell on something, and she whispered, “There they are.”

  It was a little boat, bouncing on the rough waters. And it was capsized.

  Chapter Eight

  The boys were in the water, clinging to the boat, cold and exhausted and weak. “Over here, help us,” was all Dori heard. There were three of them. Dori clutched Jason’s arm as he steered the boat closer. “How many were missing?”

  “Three. It’s all right, Dori. They’re all there.”

  She felt the tension rush out of her, and would have sagged in her seat, except that he needed her. Those boys needed her. Jason eased the boat alongside the capsized, smaller craft, and before he even came to a stop, Dori was leaning over the side, reaching for them.

  “Take Kev first,” said the boy nearest her outstretched arms. He pulled his limp, soaking wet friend nearer, struggling to keep a grip on him at the same time. “He can’t hold on anymore. I’ve b-been keeping his head above water for the p-past half hour.”

  Kev. This was Kevin, she thought, as she pulled the boy’s soaking wet, icy cold upper body into the boat. Jason was beside her then, helping her. They got the boy into the boat, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  Dori dragged him to the port side, to provide a counterbalance to Jason as he hauled the other two boys aboard. Kevin was freezing cold and drenched, but he was breathing and had a pulse. Poor thing must be damn near frozen.

  “We have to get him warm, Jason.”

  “We have to get back to shore first.” He helped the other two boys onto the bench-type seat. Kevin was on the floor in front of them.

  Dori leaned over the boy, tucking an emergency blanket around him.

  “I can’t believe you managed that, Dori. I can’t…you’re something else.”

  “Yeah. The question is, what?” She’d done all she could. She was shivering, her fingers numb with cold as she got back into her seat. Jason had put the boat back into motion now, was speeding along, into horizontal snow and a wind that blew the small boat sideways with at least as much velocity as its small engine drove it forward. They continued that way for more than thirty minutes, plenty of time for them to have gotten back to where they’d started. But there was no shoreline in sight. Then again, it could have been twenty yards away and they wouldn’t have seen it in this blizzard.

  “Jason?”

  “Yes?”

  “Where are we?”

  He looked at her, licked his lips. “I don’t know. I do know we’re headed east, and I believe that wind is blowing us toward shore. We’ll find it.”

  She leaned closer to him. “Will we find it before that boy goes into shock?”

  “I don’t know.” He stared into her eyes. “But if you have any more tricks up your sleeve, baby, now would be a good time to pull them out. Can’t you conjure up or something? Isn’t that what Witches do?”

  “I haven’t been much of a Witch for a year now. And when I tried, my casting and conjuring didn’t amount to much.” She drew a breath. “Then again, maybe I wasn’t working for anything I really needed. I thought I was at the time. But with hindsight…”

  He frowned at her. “Dori?”

  “Stop the boat.”

  He didn’t even question her. He just eased back on the throttle. “I can’t stop us entirely. The wind…”

  “This is fine.”

  She sat there a moment, grounding into herself, into her body, into the waters beneath them, all the way to the bottom and then into the Earth. She opened her senses, becoming one with the wind that blew around her, even with the frigid, piercing snow that snapped the skin right off her face. One. One. She swore her body temperature dropped. She opened her arms wider, rose slowly from her seat.

  “I am the wind,” she whispered. And she felt it. The wind moving through her, within her, her body, her mind. And she was the wind. “I am calming. I’m slowing. I’m easing.”

  It was working. She felt it.

  “I am the snow,” she said. “And I am fading, slowing, stopping. I am the lake and I am calming, calming, calming. I am the Goddess, and all things are within me. By my power, I still the wind, and the water, and the snow.”

  She opened her eyes slowly, brought her hands down to her sides with deliberation and intensity. “So mote it be!”

  For a moment, just a moment, nothing happened. But she stood there, still, holding up a hand to the others for silence, her eyes straining in the darkness. And then, so gradually it might have been all in her mind, the winds began to die down. And then a little more, and a little more.

  “Holy cow,” one of the boys muttered.

  The snow fell, soft puffs instead of a blinding blizzard and the water lay calm. And still she stood, scanning the horizon. But it was Jason who pointed and said, “Look! What is that?”

  A single tiny flare of light caught her eye, and she didn’t know how she knew it or why she knew it, but she knew without any doubt that it was the light of that magic candle. Her special solstice candle.

  In an instant, it changed. It became another light and another, until it seemed a thousand stars twinkled in the distance. But they were not stars. They were candles, and lanterns, and flashlights, and lighters and anything else the people of Crescent Cove could find that would give off light. They were guiding them back, showing them the way home.

  Jason clutched her hand, pulled her until she sat down, and guided the boat in the direction of the lights. As soon as she sat, her concentration broke. The wind picked up, blasting her, and the snow whipped again. But it didn’t matter. They had found their way.

  “At the darkest moment of the darkest night,” she whispered, “that’s the very instant when the light is reborn.”

  She felt Jason’s eyes on her, felt something in them, but couldn’t quite tell what it was. And then they were at the dock, and men came running out to grip the sides of the boat, tug it farther in and tie it off. Jason handed the still-unconscious Kevin off to one of them. Others had helped his two companions out. Then Jason helped Dori out, as well, and climbed onto the dock.

  “You’re nearly frozen yourself,” he told her.

  “I could use some dry clothes,” she admitted. She watched the boys being taken to the ambulances that waited on the shore, amid what had to be a hundred people, all holding lights and candles.

  Someone started to sing “Silent Night.” Dori thought it fitting, whether one was celebrating the birth of the son, or the rebirth of the sun, or the reuniting of these mothers and their sons. One by one, others joined in the song. Dori’s eyes filled with hot tears that she imagined were probably freezing on her cheeks even as they fell. Jason’s arm came around her, and he helped her away from the dock, toward his car.

>   As they moved through the crowd, people touched them, patting their shoulders, arms. Voices broke in their singing to thank them.

  They stopped near the ambulance where the men had taken Kevin. He was already inside, bundled in blankets, and his mother was about to get in with him, when she paused and met Dori’s eyes. She didn’t say anything, just stared at her for a long moment. Then a sob broke free as if ripped from her lungs, and she flung her arms around Dori’s neck. It was a brief, fierce embrace. The woman turned away just as quickly and climbed into the back of the ambulance. The doors closed, and the vehicle trundled away.

  A hand fell on Dori’s shoulder. The husband. Dori had already forgotten his name. He smiled at her. “He’s going to be all right,” he said. “Thanks to you. Both of you,” he added. He reached out to clasp her hand, then Jason’s. Then he hurried off to his vehicle, a pickup truck, and took off to follow the ambulance.

  Jason asked one of his men to lock up the rec center and another to let the state police know the boys had been found. Then he led Dori to his car and put her inside. “Your place or mine?” he asked.

  She stared at him blankly.

  “For dry clothes, some heat and maybe something hot to drink,” he clarified. “And then a talk I think is long overdue.”

  “My place is closer. And I’m sure there’s something of Uncle Gerald’s you could put on. Not to mention, I have cocoa.”

  “No power.”

  “Gas range. And I always have p-plenty of candles. Hell, I’m starting to shiver.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” He put the car into gear and drove.

  Chapter Nine

  She heeled off her hiking shoes as soon as she got through the front door, peeled off her coat and ran in damp socks into the living room while Jason was still shucking his frozen outerwear. The fire had burned low. Glowing coals gleamed from the hearth, and were the only light in the room.

  Dori removed the fire screen, set it aside and knelt to take logs from the nearby stack and toss them onto the coals. Tongues of flame licked up around them, and the room grew brighter. She replaced the screen as Jason’s footsteps came closer.