by Cate Tiernan
Next to me Mary K. took a sip of wine. I caught a whiff of the fruity scent. A moment later it was my turn. Father Hotchkiss stood in front of me, wiping the large silver chalice with a linen cloth.
"This is the blood of Christ our Lord," he murmured. "Drink this in his name, that you may be saved." I tilted my head forward to sip.
With an unexpected stumble Father Hotchkiss lurched toward me. The chalice slipped from his hands. It dropped to the white marble floor with a metallic clang, and Father Hotchkiss gripped the wooden rail that separated us.
I put my hand on his, searching his face. "Are you okay, Father?" I asked.
He nodded. "I'm sorry, my dear. I slipped. Did I splash you?"
"No, no." I looked down, and sure enough, my dress was wine free. Deacon Carlson was hurrying to get another blessed chalice, and Father Hotchkiss stepped away to help him.
Mary K. was waiting for me, looking uncertain. I stayed kneeling, watching the dark red wine flow across the white marble floor. The contrast of color was mesmerizing.
"What happened?" Mary K. whispered. "Are you okay?"
That was when the thought came to me: What if I was the one who had made Father Hotchkiss stumble? I almost gasped, with my hand over my mouth. What if, in the middle of all my Wicca thoughts, a force had decreed that my taking communion was not a good idea? Quickly I stood, my eyes large. Mary K. headed back to our pew and our parents, and I followed her.
No, I thought. It was just a coincidence. It didn't mean anything.
But inside me a witchy voice said sweetly: There are no coincidences. And everything means something.
So what did it mean, exactly? That I should stop taking communion? That I should stop coming to church altogether? I glanced at my mother, who smiled at me with no awareness of the confusion that was raging inside me. I was thankful for that.
I couldn't imagine cutting church out of my life completely. Catholicism was part of the glue that held our family together; it was a part of me. But maybe I should hold off on taking communion for a while, at least until I figured out what it all meant. I could still come to church. I could still participate. Couldn't I?
I sighed as I sat back down beside Mary K. She looked at me but didn't say anything.
With every door that Wicca opened, I thought, another door seemed to shut. Somehow I had to find balance.
After lunch at the Widow's Diner we stopped at the grocery store. I bought a litter box and a scoop, a box of cat litter, and a bag of kitten food. Mom and Dad pitched in for a couple of cat toys, and Mary K. bought some kitty treats.
I was really touched, and I hugged them all, right in the pet aisle.
Of course, when we got home, we found that Dagda had peed on my down comforter. He had also eaten part of Mom's maidenhair fern and barfed it up on the carpet. Then he had apparently worked himself into a frenzy sharpening his tiny but amazingly effective claws on the armrest of my dad's favorite chair.
Now he was asleep on a pillow, curled up like a fuzzy little snail.
"God, he's so cute," I said, shaking my head.
CHAPTER 7
Symbols
I had to draw a spell of protection tonight. I invoked the Goddess and drew the runes at the four points of the compass; Ur, Sigel, Eolh, and Tyr. I took iron nails and buried them at the four corners, wearing a gold ring. And from now on, I will carry a piece of malachite for protection.
A seeker is here.
But I am not afraid. The first blow has already been struck, and the Seeker is weakened by it. And as the Seeker weakens, my love grows stronger and stronger.
— Sgath
On Monday, Mary K. and I were late for school. I had stayed up late reading Maeve's BOS, and Mary K. had stayed up late having a heartfelt, tortured talk with Bakker—and so we both overslept. We signed ourselves in at the office and got our tardy slips: the New York Public School System's version of the Scarlet Letter.
The halls were empty as we split up for our lockers and headed toward our respective homerooms. My mind swam with what I had been reading. Maeve had loved the herbal side of Wicca. Her BOS was filled with several long passages about magickal uses for plants—and how they're affected by time of year, amount of recent rainfall, position of stars, and phases of the moon. I wondered if I was a descendant of the Brightendale clan, the clan that farmed the earth for healing powers.
In homeroom I slithered into my desk chair. Out of habit I glanced at Bree, but she ignored me, and I felt irritated that it still caused me grief. Forget her, I thought. I'd once read somewhere that it takes about half as long to recover from a deep relationship as the relationship lasted. So in Bree's case, I would still be upset about her a good six years from now. Great.
I thought about Dagda and how Bree would adore him: she'd loved her cat Smokey and had been devastated when he died, two days after her fourteenth birthday. I'd helped her bury him in her backyard.
"Hey. Slept late?" my friend Tamara Pritchett called softly from the next desk. It seemed as if I barely saw her anymore, now that Wicca was taking up so much of my time.
I nodded and started organizing my books and notebooks for my morning classes.
"Well, you missed the big news," Tamara went on. I looked up. "Ben and Janice are officially going out. Boyfriend and girlfriend."
"Really? Oh, cool," I said. I glanced across the room at the lovebirds in question. They were sitting next to each other, talking quietly, smiling at each other. I felt happy for them. But I also felt removed—they, too, were friends I'd hardly seen in recent weeks.
My senses prickled, and I glanced across to see Bree's dark eyes on me. I was startled by their intense expression, and then we both blinked and it was gone. She turned away, and I was unsure if I had imagined it or not. I felt unsettled. Cal had said there was no dark side to Wicca. But aren't two sides of a circle opposite each other? And if one side was good, what was the other? I had disliked Sky as soon as I had met her. What was Bree doing with her?
The bell rang for first period. I felt sour, as if I shouldn't be there—and thought enviously of Dagda at home, wreaking feline havoc.
During American lit it started to drizzle outside: a depressing, steady stream that was trying hard to turn into sleet but not quite making it. My eyelids felt heavy. I hadn't even had time for a Diet Coke yet. I pictured my bed at home and for just a moment considered getting Cal, skipping out, and going home to be alone with him. We could lie in my bed, reading Maeve's BOS and talking about magick….
Major temptation. By lunchtime I was really torn, even though I never skipped school. Only the knowledge that my mom sometimes popped home in the middle of the day prevented me from bringing up the idea to Cal when I saw him.
"You bought lunch?" he asked, eyeing my tray as I slid it onto our lunch table. He met my eyes. As clear as the rainfall, I heard the words I missed you this morning inside my head.
I smiled and nodded, sitting down across from him, next to Sharon. "I overslept, so I didn't have time to make anything at home."
"Hey, Morgan," Jenna said, brushing her wheat-colored hair over her shoulder. "You know what I've been thinking about? Those words you said the other night. They were so amazing. I still can't get them out of my mind."
I shrugged. "Yeah, it's funny. I don't know where they came from," I said, popping the top off my soda. "I haven't had time to research it, either. At the time I thought it felt like a spell, calling power to me. But I don't know. The words sounded really old."
Sharon smiled tentatively. "It was kind of creepy, to tell you the truth," she murmured. She opened her container of soup and took out a crusty roll. "I mean, it was beautiful, but it's weird to have words you don't even know coming out of your mouth."
I looked up at Cal. "Did you recognize them?"
He shook his head. "Uh-uh. But later I thought about it, and I felt like I had heard them before. I wish I had taped our circle. I could play it for Mom and see if she knew what it was."
&n
bsp; "Cool, you're speaking in tongues," Ethan joked. "Like that girl in The Exorcist."
I pursed my lips. "Great," I said, and Robbie laughed.
Cal shot me an amused glance. "Want some?" he asked, handing me a slice of his apple.
Without thinking, I took a bite. It was astonishingly delicious. I looked at it. It was just an apple slice. But it was tart and sweet, bursting with juice.
"This is a great apple," I said, amazed. "It's perfect. It's the uber-apple."
"Apples are very symbolic," said Cal. "Especially of the Goddess. Look." He took his pocketknife and cut his apple again-but across the middle instead of top to bottom. He held up a piece. "A pentacle," he said pointing to the pattern made from the seeds. It was a five-pointed star within the circle of the apple's skin.
"Whoa."I said.
"Awesome," said Matt. Jenna glanced at him, but he didn't meet her eye.
"Everything means something," said Cal lightly, taking a bite of apple. I looked up at him sharply, reminded of what had happened yesterday in church.
Across the lunchroom I saw Bree sitting with Raven, Lin Green, Chip Newton, and Beth Nielson. I wondered if Bree was enjoying hanging out with her new crowd… people she had once referred to as stoners, wastoids. Her old crowd—Nell Norton, Alessandra Spotford, Justin Bartlett, and Suzanne Herbert—were sitting at a table near the windows. They probably thought Bree was crazy.
"I wonder how their coven's circle went on Saturday," I mumbled, half to myself. "Bree's and Raven's. Robbie, do you know? Did you talk to Bree?"
Robbie shrugged and finished his piece of pizza.
"It went really well," said Matt absently. Then he blinked and frowned a tiny bit, as if he hadn't expected to say anything. Jenna looked at him. "How do you know?" she asked.
Matt's face turned slightly pink. He shrugged, his attention on his lunch. "Uh, I talked to Raven during English," he said finally. "She said it was cool."
Jenna regarded Matt steadily. She started to gather up her tray. Once again I remembered seeing Matt's car and Raven's car on the side of the road. As I wondered what it could mean, I heard Mary K.'s laughter, a few tables away. She was sitting next to Bakker with her friend Jaycee, Jaycee's older sister, Brenda, and a bunch of their friends. Mary K. and Bakker were looking into each other's eyes. I shook my head. He had won her over. But he'd better watch his step.
"What are you doing this afternoon?" Cal asked in the parking lot after school. The rain had all but stopped, and an icy wind was blowing.
I glanced at my watch. "Besides waiting for my sister? Nothing. I have to get dinner together."
Robbie snaked his way through a few cars, heading toward us. "Hey, what's going on with Matt?" he called. "He's acting all squirrelly."
"Yeah, I thought so, too, " I said. "Almost like he wants to break up with Jenna but doesn't want to at the same time. If that makes any sense."
Cal smiled. "I don't know them as well as you guys do," he said, putting his arm around me. "Is Matt acting that different?"
Robbie nodded. "Yeah. Not that we're bosom buddies or anything, but he seems kind of off to me. Usually he's really straightforward. He's always just right there." He gestured with his hands.
"I know," I agreed. "Now he seems to have something else going on." I wanted to mention the Matt-Raven car thing but thought it would be too gossipy. I wasn't even sure if it meant anything. I suddenly wished Bree and I were still close. She would have appreciated the significance.
"Morgan!" called Jaycee. "Mary K. asked me to tell you that she was catching a ride with Bakker." Jaycee waved and trotted off, her blond ponytail bouncing.
"Damn!" I said, disengaging myself from Cal. "I have to get home."
"What's the matter? Do you want me to come with you?" Cal asked.
"I would love it," I said gratefully. It would be nice to have an ally in case Bakker needed to be kicked out of the house again.
"See you, Robbie," I called, hurrying off to my car. Damnation, Mary K., I thought. How stupid can you be?
CHAPTER 8
Muirn Beatha Dan
Ostara, 1993
Aunt Shelagh told me she saw someone under a braigh before, when she was a girl, visiting her granny in Scotland. A local witch had been selling potions and charms and spells to cause harm. When Aunt Shelagh was there one summer, the Seeker came.
Shelagh says she woke in the night to screams and howls. The whole village turned out to see the Seeker take away the herbwife. In the moonlight, Shelagh saw the glint of the silver braigh around the herbwife's wrists, saw how the flesh was burned. The Seeker took her away, and no one saw her again, though they whispered she was living on the streets in Edinburgh.
Shelagh doesn't think the woman was ever able to do magick again, good or bad, so I don't know how long she would have wanted to live like that. But Shelagh also said that one sight of that herbwife under the braigh was enough to make her promise to never ever misuse her power. It was a terrible thing, she said. Terrible to see. She told me this story last month, when the Seeker was here. But he took no one away with him, and our coven is placid once more.
I am glad he's gone.
— Giomanach
I drove home as quickly as I could, considering that the streets were basically one big ice slick. The temperature kept dropping, and the air was miserable with the kind of bone-drenching chill that Widow's Vale seems to specialize in.
"I thought Mary K. broke up with Bakker after what happened," said Cal.
"She did," I grumbled. "But he's been begging her to take him back, it was all a mistake, he's so sorry, it'll never happen again, blah blah blah." Anger made my voice shrill.
My tires skidded a bit as I turned into our driveway. Bakker's car was parked out front. I slammed the car door and crunched up our walk—only to find Mary K. and Bakker huddled together on the front steps, shaking and practically blue with cold.
"What are you doing?" I exclaimed, relief washing over me.
"I wanted to wait for you," Mary K. muttered, and I silently applauded her good sense.
"Come on, then," I said, pushing open the front door. "But you guys stay downstairs."
"Okay," Bakker mumbled, sounding half frozen. "As long as it's warm."
Cal started making hot cider for us all while I stayed outside and salted the front walk and the driveway so my parents wouldn't have a hard time when they got home. It was nice to get back inside, and I cranked up the thermostat, then headed to the kitchen. It was my night to make dinner. I washed four potatoes, stabbed them with a fork, and put them in the oven to bake.
"Hey, Morgan, can we just run upstairs for a sec?" Mary K. asked tentatively, clutching her mug. Since I'd met Cal, I'd begun drinking a ton of cider. It was incredibly warming on cold days. "All my CDs are in my room."
I shook my head. "Tough," I said shortly. I blew on my cider to cool it. "You guys stay downstairs, or Mom will have my ass."
Mary K. sighed. Then she and Bakker brought their stuff to the dining-room table and self-righteously started to do their homework. Or at least they pretended to do their homework.
As soon as my sister was gone, I waved my left hand in a circle, deosil, over my cider, and whispered, "Cool the fire." The next time I took a sip, it was just right, and I beamed. I loved being a witch!
Cal grinned and said, "Now what? Do we have to stay downstairs, too?"
I let my mind wander tantalizingly over the possibilities if I didn't practice what I preached but finally sighed and said, "I guess so. Mom would go insane if I was upstairs with an evil boy while she wasn't home. I mean, you've probably got only one thing on your mind and all."
"Yeah," Cal raised his eyebrows and laughed. "But it's one good thing, let me tell you."
Dagda padded into the kitchen and mewed.
"Hey, little guy," I crooned. I put my cider down on the counter and scooped him up. He began to purr hard, his small body trembling.
"He gets to go upstairs," cCl pointed out
, "and he's a boy."
I grinned. "They don't care if he sleeps with me," I said.
Cal let out a good-natured groan as I carried Dagda into the family room and sat on the couch. Cal sat next to me, and I felt the warmth of his leg against mine. I smiled at him, but his face turned solemn. He stroked my hair and traced the line of my chin with his fingers.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"You surprise me all the time," he said out of the blue.
"How?" I was stroking Dagda's soft triangular head, and he was purring and kneading my knees.
"You're just—different than I thought you would be," he said. He put his arm across the back of the couch and leaned toward me as if trying to memorize my face, my eyes. He seemed so serious.
I didn't know what to think. "What did you expect me to be like?" I asked. I could smell the clean laundry scent of his shirt In my mind I pictured us stretched on the couch, kissing. We could do it. I knew that Mary K. and Bakker were in the other room, that they wouldn't bother us. But suddenly I felt insecure, remembering again that I was almost seventeen and he was the first boy who'd ever asked me out, ever kissed me. "Boring?" I asked. "Kind of vanilla?"
His golden eyes crinkled at the edges, and he tapped my lips gently with one finger. "No, of course not," he said. "But you're so strong. So interesting." His forehead creased momentarily, as if he regretted what he'd said. "I mean, right when I met you, I thought you were interesting and good-looking and the rest of it, and I could tell right away you had a gift for the craft. I wanted to get close to you. But you've turned out to be so much more than that. The more I know you, the more you feel equal to me, like a real partner. Like I said, my muirn beatha dan. It's kind of a huge idea." He shook his head. "I've never felt this way before."
I didn't know what to say. I looked at his face, still amazed by how beautiful I found it, still awed by the feelings he awoke in me. "Kiss me," I heard myself breathe. He leaned closer and pressed his lips to mine.