"Close your eyes," Binda told him.
She was a tall, foreboding woman with thick graying black hair tied in a white scarf. Like Matilda, she wore a sheer white robe that billowed in the wind. Unlike Matilda, she had intense masculine features and a rigid demeanor that put Sebastian on edge. She scanned him like an interesting sea creature she had found on the beach.
He felt her hands move over his scalp and neck and shoulders. He could not imagine what she might discover by touching him, but he had decided to play along. His curiosity about his developing powers forced him to be open to all manner of probing.
"Open your eyes," Binda commanded.
She held a large opal in her hand.
"Stare at the opal please."
He gazed at the shimmering stone. It was a large raw purplish mineral with a dazzling rainbow of colors sparkling from its depths. Binda watched him closely.
"Am I supposed to see something in this?" he asked, glancing at her.
"It is I who sees," she told him. "Don't break your gaze, stare deeply."
He did. He had never looked all that closely at an opal before. The colors swirled and shifted, refracted and expanded. He started to feel dizzy and clutched his stool with both hands.
Binda abruptly pulled the opal away. She folded the gem within a piece of white silk and tucked it into a leather case.
"Have you discovered my life's purpose?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow.
"You are a conflicted spirit, Sebastian. I sense deep love in you, but also great anger. You are vengeful, insecure, and obsessive."
Sebastian frowned. He'd been joking.
"You also have powers that defy ordinary man. We have come to call your kind hybrids."
"Hybrids?"
"I believe that a hybrid is created when the desire for power-for magic, if you will-creates an opportunity for transformation. If the individual meets the power that he desires, he will assume some of it."
"That makes me sound power hungry."
"You are," she said shortly, and left him alone in the room, contemplating her words.
Chapter 2
"It is fifty thousand years old," Matilda told them, pulling the curtain back to reveal a warped and ancient-looking tree. It twisted and curled toward the light shining through an opening in the domed roof. A sliver of iridescent water ran in a moat around the tree and thousands of hairline cracks spider webbed toward the trunk.
"It's beautiful," Helena whispered, stepping closer.
Matilda put an arm out to stop her.
"It's enchanted. The water, the air. Best not go farther. Only Binda and I have access here."
Abby watched the tree warily. Beautiful was not the word she would have used to describe it. Creepy maybe, definitely eerie.
"Why do you keep the ax here?" Oliver asked.
In his tone, Abby sensed her own feelings mirrored. The tree made him uncomfortable.
"The ax was found with this tree. The Mother Tree, we call her."
"And you transported it?"
Matilda laughed.
"Goodness, no. When you discover such eternal magic, you do not uproot it and steal it to make it your own. You uproot yourself and move to be with it. Binda built our coven around this tree. This tree is one of the greatest mothers of all time. Can you imagine the seedlings that have populated the earth from this ancient beauty?"
"Hmmm," Helena murmured, awash in a glow of reverence that matched Matilda's.
Abby, soon to be a mother herself, did not share in their admiration.
"Makes my skin crawl," Oliver whispered to her from the side of his mouth.
Abby held out her arm so Oliver could see the prickling of goose bumps there.
He shuddered in response and they took a couple steps away from the tree.
Julian walked through the doorway behind them.
"Ah, the great slayer. She looks youthful and vibrant as always."
"Slayer?" Oliver grumbled.
Matilda stopped at the water's and carefully slipped her fingers through the air over the stream. Abby realized that the water was not merely a moat, but a wall of water surrounding the tree. She looked around for the source. Matilda stepped through the water. As she moved closer to the tree it seemed to sense her presence and shift toward her. She walked to the trunk and laid her head on the charcoal colored bark. She stood that way for a long time.
"She secretes a poison through her bark. We believe the original bearer of the ax fell prey to her charms and perhaps rested against her trunk. He never woke up."
"You found his bones, then?" Helena asked, backing away from the tree as if she suddenly saw it in a new, more sinister, light.
"One shard, embedded in the bark."
"So, the tree ate him?" Abby asked, feeling a sudden chill.
Matilda pulled her hands from the tree and rinsed them in the cascading water.
"I believe that she did, yes."
A gleaming ax with a spiraled bronze handle and a black razor-sharp blade stood propped against the tree. A shimmer of red undulated down the blade when Matilda touched it.
"It hasn't been used in well over a decade," Matilda told them, lifting the ax.
She looked at the weapon with a tenderness that Abby found rather unnerving.
"I wish you had brought your magical item here, Julian. I am reluctant to part with this."
Julian nodded.
"I understand, but as I mentioned, the item in question houses an evil spirit. I hardly wanted to contaminate your sanctuary and risk leaving some remnant of her behind."
"Oh, there is no risk of that," Matilda continued. "This weapon lets nothing escape."
"How are we getting it on a plane?" Oliver asked. "I have a feeling the scanner might pick that one up."
Matilda laughed.
"Always joking," she said merrily. "Why do you hide your fear behind jokes, Oliver?"
She turned her inquisitive blue eyes on Oliver, and Abby noticed the color rising in his cheeks.
"The case will be enchanted," Julian cut in. "They'll never detect it."
"Right you are," Matilda agreed.
****
"Why do they call themselves the Sky Mothers if there are no children?" Sebastian asked Julian that afternoon as they lounged by the pool.
"Coven names are generally not chosen, but given," Julian explained. "Take Ula, it means jewel of the sea. When Faustine came to America to start his coven anew, he spent many months wandering the shores of Lake Superior. He saw a gleaming quartz stone sticking from the sand and picked it up. A fisherman happened upon him that morning, gestured to the stone and said, 'Ula-Jewel of the Sea.' It was an answer. A coven should not choose its own name. It is spoken in the old ways as an egoic misdirection that will likely lead to egoic pursuits. The name should be chosen for it. From what I know, the Sky Mothers were originally a small group of witches deep in the outback, midwives, healers, hunters. And then Binda, during a walkabout, had a visit from a spirit beyond the veil. This spirit directed Binda to the ancient tree they call the Mother Tree. She told Binda that she would have a vision and know it was time to build her coven, a coven of women."
"So Binda is the original? Now I see why she seems a bit old and cantankerous," Sebastian muttered.
"Don't say that to her or she'll have your hide. Literally, I'd imagine."
Sebastian laughed, but Abby squirmed at the comment.
Binda had put her on edge as well. She gave off a hostile and inquisitive energy. Abby felt a bit flayed after a few minutes with her. Her questions alone seemed to go beyond her general thoughts and into some subconscious chamber that she had intended to keep closed to herself, and most definitely to Binda.
"She called me a hybrid," Sebastian said.
"Like if a Dalmatian and chihuahua had a baby?" Oliver asked.
Abby punched him lightly on the arm.
"Interesting," Julian responded. "I know very little of hybrids. I've surely never met one. Until now of cours
e." He winked at Sebastian.
"You've heard of them, though?"
"Over the years, sure, in various circles. In a way, they are like urban legends for witches. They are humans and witches. They are considered dangerous because they tend to be emotionally vulnerable and less in control of their powers."
"I hate to say that it makes sense," Sebastian continued. "I'm definitely not in control of my powers."
"You opened the earth when Kanti attacked us so that we could escape," Abby argued.
"I didn't, though. I mean, I did, but I wasn't visualizing the earth splitting and trees falling. Do you think I would have killed that big oak tree? I wanted to hang a tire swing from that one! I just concentrated all of my energy on making something happen and it did."
Julian nodded.
"You see the challenge with the idea of a hybrid, Sebastian, is that we don't have a classification. There aren't tens of thousands of hybrids that we can look at and say, 'Yep, they have these powers and abilities and this weakness.' We witches have been around for thousands of years. We have a specific timeline. We begin exhibiting powers at a certain point, we are defined by our element of power, and we can learn to direct that element. But witches have other superhuman capabilities that we all share. Then there are powers beyond those universal capabilities, but they don't differentiate us in a substantial way."
"Why did Lydie exhibit powers so young?" Oliver asked suddenly. "I've wondered about that. I mean, I was seventeen, Abby was twenty-four. Helena told me she was fifteen."
"I was nineteen," Julian confessed. "Lydie is special. She has always been special. But it's not unheard of."
"I saw small children at the All Hallow's Ball doing magic," Sebastian added.
"You did?" How did I miss that?" Oliver asked, looking bummed.
"Not many, a group of five or six."
"Some years you will see a handful of children. Usually, the covens frown on children under ten attending the event, but some covens are more lenient. Sorciére is one of them because they have Cherie."
"Cherie?" Oliver asked.
"A young witch. She is four, I think. She is the child of two witches. She and her parents did not actually attend the Ball. Galla told me they were in Japan visiting an ill friend. However, I believe they allowed several other covens to bring their young witches because they originally thought that Cherie would be there and it would be good for her to meet other young ones."
"I'm not sure I would have liked that," Abby admitted. "To have powers when I was four."
"It's not ideal," Julian admitted. "Accidents are much more likely, and for toddlers, that's already a problem."
Abby thought of their daughter. Would she exhibit unnaturally early powers? Or would she never be a witch at all? Sometimes it hurt her brain to think about it. Mostly because she inevitably found herself afraid for her unborn child. She wanted to give her everything, but most of all happiness. Lydie often seemed troubled. Abby did not want that for her daughter. She wanted to protect her against all the evil in the world.
****
Lydie woke with a start. She blinked in the darkness of her room, and tensed, waiting for the sound to come again. Something had woken her, something foreign in the otherwise quiet night. It would be all too easy for the Vepars to attack Ula again while Julian and the other witches were in Australia. Clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering, she shoved her blankets off and stepped out of bed.
French doors opened to her balcony. As she stepped out, she felt the crisp air that signaled an end to winter and a transition into spring. It was a different kind of cold, still bone-jarring in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but the winds of change were less bitter. As a fire element, she hungered for summer. Some fire witches loved the winter. It cooled the hot energy always flowing, but Lydie found the cold stifled her energy, her creativity, her whole self.
A sliver of moon did little to illuminate the lake or sky. She watched and waited, but saw and heard nothing. Nightmares were not uncommon for her so she attempted to dismiss the noise and turned back to her bed.
The sound came again. An echo across the water like crying, or more like wailing, that rose and then disappeared. She went to the rail and squinted into the darkness, but could see nothing.
She walked to her bed where her cat Garfield, a ball of orange fluff, slept in a pile of blankets. She ran her fingers down his back and then sighed.
"The trials and tribulations of a witch," she muttered.
Her shoes were next to her bed and she slid them on and grabbed Dafne's red cloak from the hook on the back of the door.
Outside the castle, the cliff protected the lagoon from the biting lake breeze.
Lydie could wake Elda or Faustine, or even Bridget. She should wake them, but she didn't.
She climbed into one of the rowboats, eyeing Faustine's fleet of military boats warily, and rowed beyond the castle cliffs. She could see a vortex of angry wind lashing the lake into a small cyclone. It was an isolated event and the rest of the lake was untouched. Lydie knew what it meant. Someone was trying to get to Ula and the protective spells around the island were forcing the intruder to reveal themselves. Lydie had never intercepted a visitor. Faustine felt it prudent, and safer, that he do it himself.
Lydie waited for the cyclone to subside. As an eerie calm descended over the lake, she heard the cry again, louder this time and unmistakably in pain.
The truth was that Lydie did not feel afraid and if whatever lurked in the lake intended to do her or the witches of Ula harm, she would know it. She had keen intuition, always had, and she trusted those feelings first and foremost.
She rowed quickly and saw the silhouette of another small boat begin to take shape. It appeared empty. As she drew alongside the battered little boat, she heard the cry again, muffled beneath a dark blanket. Lydie glanced around, searching for anything amiss, and then climbed into the boat. As she began to pull the blanket back, the woman beneath it cried out and shrunk farther into the boat.
Rail thin, most of her hair fallen out, with patches of red welts covering her body, the woman looked near death.
"It's okay," Lydie whispered, squatting in the boat and finding a space on the woman's arm that didn't look bruised and angry to touch. The woman shivered violently and Lydie had her first regret at not waking Elda.
"There, there, you're not alone anymore. I'm here to help you," she cooed.
The woman twisted around and looked at Lydie. Lydie saw recognition in her eyes but she did not know the witch beneath her.
At night, Faustine rarely connected with the witches of Ula telepathically. It was disruptive to his sleep if he did so, not to mention theirs. Still, Lydie reached out to him. She was not telepathic, but Faustine had taught her years ago that intense concentration on another person, even without special abilities, could convey a message. With someone like Faustine, whose mind was open and receptive in a supernatural way, that was much more likely to happen. Within seconds, she felt him.
"What's happened, Lydie?" he asked.
Lydie did not respond, but looked at the witch in the boat, knowing that Faustine would sense her.
"Adora," he said. "Stay where you are. I'm coming."
Chapter 3
Set high in the forest, on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the Sky Mothers had five yurts for their visitors. A beautiful open-air kitchen with a tree growing in its center offered them a place to gather for their first morning at the coven.
Sebastian worked on preparing a French press of coffee while Abby wandered the kitchen, touching things.
"Everything is so deliberate," she said. "Look at this table."
The table was a mosaic of broken glass in a hundred different colors and shapes. It formed a goddess pattern in the same shape as the archway into the Sky Mothers' central house.
"I like it," Sebastian said. "And at the same time, I don't. Maybe it's the whole 'no man' thing, but I feel like more of an outsider here than anywhere I've
ever been."
"It's not just you," Abby admitted. "I feel that way too. Like we've stumbled into an alien civilization. Ula is different than the typical world, but there's something very human about it. Everything here feels sort of..."
"Perfect," Sebastian finished.
"Yes, perfect. And cold."
"I dig the yurts though," he said. "Making love to you with the whales calling in the ocean. I could have died a happy man last night."
Abby smiled, remembering.
It had been hopelessly romantic. Through the skylight in the roof of the yurt, they could see a billion stars. The whales sang in their deep baritone cries. Abby felt like she melted with Sebastian. Afterward, she slept better than she had in months.
"Waking up to pee was a bit harrowing," she confessed. "I was scared I would plummet over that cliff in the dark."
"That's why I peed in the bushes," Sebastian told her.
The community bathroom on the cliff was tucked near the woods. The walk only took a couple of minutes, but in the dark with the rush of the sea far below, it had been an unnerving journey.
"Is that coffee I smell?" Helena twittered, gliding into the yurt. She wore a long dress that reminded Abby of the cosmos. Dark turquoise and purples created whorls and spirals within the fabric.
"Coffee coming right up," Sebastian told her. "Cream?"
"Yes, and honey?"
Sebastian delivered Helena her coffee and slid onto the bench next to Abby.
"My head hit the pillow and I didn't move until five minutes ago. I can't remember the last time that I slept so good," Helena said, sipping her coffee appreciatively.
"Us too," Abby agreed.
"I swear I saw one of those ghostly Sky Mothers sneaking out of Oliver's yurt last night." Sebastian grinned.
"No, you did not," Abby exclaimed. "Did you?"
Sebastian shrugged. "That or he's staying in a haunted yurt."
As if on cue, Oliver lumbered in wearing only a pair of surf shorts and a vaguely guilty expression.
"Yes! The coffee gods have blessed us," he moaned, grabbing a mug hanging from a rack carved from driftwood.
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