“I really don’t want to do this here,” I protested. Although I’m pretty certain we were both aware of how flimsy that excuse sounded.
“I imagine you don’t want to do this anywhere, but I need the truth. All of it. Even the parts you don’t think I need to hear.” His jaw set and his eyes finally met mine. He would not be dissuaded from this course of action. Not a conversation I never wanted to have with Jack—not then, not now, not ever. On my side, but he still harbored doubts. Conversations like this only went two ways. He accepted me or he didn't. Loving someone wasn’t the same as trusting or believing them.
Staring out the window at all the traffic, I sought answers from license plates, huffy drivers, and pollutions. The little hamlet threatened to burst into a bustling city center in its own right. The urban areas of D.C., Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax continually crept further west. Like a virus replicating itself, concrete and glass structures spread into the native environment and pushed out the rolling green, lush trees and verdant grasses that made the area so beautiful.
Perhaps that was what the past did to me now, spreading into my future like a disease left unchecked. I struggled with the wealth of reasons why I didn’t want to do this, but no argument could be twisted into something resembling valid.
“I’ll tell you…” My voice hoarse after the long pause. “But not here. I’d rather have some privacy. Away from all of this.” I gestured to the bustling area around us, but I meant the car.
“All right.” Jack backed the car up, tires squealing to head into traffic. He drove silently from Herndon to Sterling, and then up a little-used back road to a forgotten park nestled between two developments. He pulled into one of the empty spaces and shut off the engine. When he glanced at me questioningly, I gestured toward the park.
“Walk with me?”
“Sure.” We climbed out of the car, more like strangers than close friends for nearly a decade. Jack smoked and I nursed my mocha in those first few steps from the parking lot to the grass. The park was silent, save for a small breeze that rustled the trees. Suck it up, Chance. Trust him.
The grass swallowed our feet as we left the concrete behind. The natural surroundings offered a deep comfort. I maintained the silence for another long breath or two, gathering my courage.
“I met Colleen Masters when I enrolled as a freshman.” I remembered that particular October afternoon clearly. I returned to my dorm to find the agent waiting for me. “She’d come to the college to meet me specifically. At first, I was flattered by the attention. She seemed so perfectly poised and beautiful, and made it sound like a real honor that she took time out of her busy schedule to meet with me.”
I shook my head in self-deprecation. “I know better, now, but I was still a kid in a lot of ways. Living on campus was a whole new experience for me. No grandmother, no rules, no adult looking over my shoulder every five minutes. I felt independent, smart and ready to take on the world. I even thought I could handle Masters.
“Anyway, I came back to my dorm and I found her there. She wanted to speak with me for a few minutes. She knew a lot about me and held up this manila folder containing my personal data. Or at least, that’s what she said it contained. She wanted to discuss the contents with me. She said she worked in special projects, and I thought she meant she worked for the college, though she never actually said that. She was interested in getting to know me better for the benefit of the program.
“I was flattered and eager to make a good impression. We took a walk, and then she took me out to a nice dinner. It wasn’t until we were sipping coffee afterward she dropped the bombshell.” The weight of Jack’s assessing gaze pressed on me. “She knew I was a hedge witch. She probably had me investigated.” I didn’t bother to sugarcoat it. At this point, Jack either believed me or not. His choice. I really needed him to believe me.
“Chance…”
“Jack.” I stopped, looked at him and tried to convey as much sincerity in my expression as I could muster. “I’m serious. You wanted the truth, and I’m telling you the truth. I’ve told you this particular truth for years and you act like you’re humoring me. But I am what I am. I share a bond and connection with the Earth. I see things other people don’t. I have an affinity for the world you cannot understand, but I need you to believe me. I am what I am.”
Jack stopped walking when I did, and a war of emotion clouding his eyes. He frowned and turned the scowl on his latte cup. “Chance, I want to believe you, but it’s awful hard to believe in something that sounds straight out of J.R.R. Tolkien.”
“Well, I’m not an elf. I’m not a dwarf, and I’m definitely not a Halfling. I’m a hedge witch.
He shrugged and scuffed the toe of his boot against a dirt clod. “There are a lot of Earth based, new age religions. I just figured…”
“That I was Wiccan?” I stared at him for a moment, torn between laughter and tears. Laughter won out. “No, I’m not Wiccan. I’m a hedge witch.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not faith, it’s fact. It’s who I am, what I am. It means I can sense the Earth. She can tell me things, and I can tell Her things, too. Creatures that share an affinity with the Earth also share an affinity with me. I know how to use these latent skills to communicate with the Earth, drawing strength from it and healing it sometimes. It…it’s hard to explain. It just is.”
“That’s the part I have trouble with. You can’t quantify it.”
I rubbed a hand against my temple. A vicious headache thundered inside my skull. This was why I avoided this discussion for so long. My grandmother could explain it to me because she understood it just as I did. Jack didn’t understand, and maybe he couldn’t.
“Look, I’m sorry.” Jack’s voice softened and I looked back at him to find his gaze gentled as well. “I don’t mean to make this hard on you. I want to understand it. But I just don’t.” Just like that, the pain clouding my head receded. He wanted to understand.
I looked quietly around the park for a moment, before setting my mocha cup on the top of a trash receptacle we’d stopped near. “Do you have anything we can use as a blindfold?”
“What?” His eyes widened with surprise at my odd request.
“A blindfold. Something to cover my eyes.” He wanted to understand. I needed him too. Weirdness aside, I needed to show him something he could see.
“I know what a blindfold is. Why do you want one?” He fished around in his pockets.
“Here. Let’s use your tie.” I reached over and started unknotting his tie. Large, warm hands clasped over mine and he stared at me. Heat stole up my arms, skin tingling where he held them.
“Chance, have you lost your mind?”
“Is it an expensive tie?” I paused, looking up at him. He gazed at me with wariness and another emotion that looked suspiciously like desire, but I refused to identify it. My heart already beat faster and reacted to his proximity. I didn’t need to give it any other ideas.
“It’s not the cost. Why do you want to be blindfolded?”
“Because I want to prove something to you. Something you are not going to believe until you see it with your own eyes.” I didn’t have to force sincerity. Exhaustion left me raw, open and vulnerable. I met his gaze unflinchingly. It was the total, unmitigated truth. He frowned briefly, but acquiesced, releasing my hands so they could pull his tie free. I shivered at the loss of physical contact.
“It’s really very simple.” Sliding the sunglasses up onto my head and then pulling the wider portion of the tie over my eyes, I turned so that he could secure it for me. His faint snort of disbelief echoed in my ears, but his hands brushed mine aside to take on the task. I inhaled the rich, masculine scent of him. He finished tying the blindfold and dropped his warm hands to my shoulders.
Seriously, Chance? Not the time or the place for this.
“Check it. I want you to be certain I can’t see around this thing. And by the way, polka dots really aren’t a
good look for you.”
A half-heartbeat long pause filled the air with silence before he chuckled. He moved around me. Coffee tinged with cinnamon flavored the breath that fanned warmly on my cheek. I swallowed the urge to turn my face toward the warm breath and the tantalizing possibility of a kiss. Focus, Chance.
“Now what?” Amusement mingled with curiosity in his tone.
“Now, without saying another word to me I want you to walk away. A hundred paces, a hundred and fifty if you like.”
“Just walk away?”
“Yep. Pick any direction and just go.” He said nothing, and I gave him time before settling myself into the embrace of the Earth that always waited for me. The park terrain was rich and verdant with life. Dozens of children played here every weekend, lovers took long walks in the park and artists seemed to favor the area—bicyclists, as well. All in all, this was a very well-tended patch of Earth.
It took a moment to orient myself, to exchange the pleasantry of sensations with my Earthen host, but after that moment passed, I opened my all my senses to the Earth. This association required more from me than mere association. The world snapped itself into place wonderfully. Rot attacked three of the larger oaks. It wasn’t out of hand and there was a gardener who seemed to be treating it on occasion. A few butterflies flew free of their cocoons, and an army of ants marched unerringly about on their appointed tasks. Three cats wandered along within the bowels of the woods decorating the interior of the park, and a bicyclist was just setting out from the trail and into the interior where the trees grew close together.
I was aware of something as minute as a blade of grass shifting to the vibrations of the airplane passing overhead, which briefly interrupted a sapling’s root extension. A pair of rabbits did what rabbits do well in one warren, while a groundhog made itself quite at home in his extensively well-built den.
I pivoted on my heel and turned right. I walked, following the path laid open to me toward where Jack stood near the seesaw. I couldn’t see his expression or make out any emotions, just his presence. When I reached a hand out and laid it on his chest, he sucked in a hard, noisy breath. Surprise, big boy, or am I getting to you, too?
“Believe me now?” The Voice filled again, rich and throaty with the possibilities extended by my intimate contact with the Earth.
“How the hell did you do that?” Jack demanded quietly, his curiosity far more intense. He tugged the makeshift blindfold with a single jerk, and I blinked at the glare of sunlight pressing against my closed eyelids.
“I can feel you right here. Just the same way I know a biker is approaching, there are butterflies fluttering a few meters to the south and any moment there’s going to be a squirrel startled by our presence.” I watched his expression as each one of my predictions occurred. If the consequences of my demonstration weren’t so serious, I might have giggled at the perplexed frown wrinkling his brow. “I can attune myself with the Earth. She shares her sensations and memories with me. I sort them out and apply my own sense of logic to them, and voila!”
Believe me, Jack. I'm not a freak or a crackpot. Please, just believe me.
“So all those times when you said you were helping the harvest or moving the fairies…”
“I told you the truth. It’s not just what I do for a living, it’s what I am.”
“Have you always?”
I nodded. “Since I was a child. I came into my talent early. A lot of the women in my family have it, but only one is chosen to bear the burden of the responsibility.”
“The responsibility?”
“Our gift makes us very, very open to the Earth, to the care and keeping of it. The gift seems to pass from female to female, but even if there are four or five sisters for example, only the strongest of them is chosen.”
“Chosen by whom?”
“Destiny. Fate. Kismet.” I shrugged. “Maybe it’s really only serendipity. I don’t know. I just know as long as there is a caretaker, like me, that person is bound to the Earth of their origin. That’s why I can’t go more than a few miles beyond the boundaries of Northern Virginia, some of West Virginia and only a bit into Maryland. This land is all a part of our heritage.”
“And your grandmother?”
“She was the former caretaker. When she died, that last responsibility fell to me, and what talent I possessed before seemed to double.”
We ended up sitting in the grass a little way from the empty children’s playground. Jack listened as I tried to answer his questions. His earnestness felt like a reward in and of itself.
“What about your mother?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. I loved my mother. I loved both of my parents but regret colored my memories. We never connected on the same level I did with my grandmother. “I think she was talented, too, but she rejected it. It’s a difficult thing to live with, especially when I was younger because I didn’t understand how not to let the Earth swallow me whole. When it cried out in pain, so did I. Mom argued with my grandmother for days before my parents finally let me stay with Gran for a few weeks. It was only supposed to be long enough for the old woman to teach me how to shield myself, and how to understand my gift. If my mother understood all of this, she never showed it to me.” She never had the chance, really.
“Did you ever ask your grandmother?” Compassion added depth and warmth to his already deep baritone. His body canted toward mine again, a recognizably protective posture. One I appreciated since I let him into my emotional vulnerability.
“No. After my parents died, it was very hard for me to talk about it at all. Gran tried to get me to open up for a while, but the more she tried, the more I withdrew. I guess she decided I didn’t want to share it with her.” I sighed, running my fingers over a blade of grass, rolling it around my finger thoughtfully. “What I couldn’t tell her was I felt guilty as hell for their deaths.”
“Why?” Jack frowned, sliding an arm around my shoulders, tugging me closer to him so I leaned on him physically and emotionally. Even though it was hot, his arm felt good and comforting.
“I must have been all of nine. This entire new world straight out of a fairy tale had opened up to me, and I knew my mother wanted me to have nothing to do with it. She was angry with my grandmother for interfering. If she had her way, as soon as those few weeks were up, my parents were going to take me away, maybe even as far away as California.”
“And you didn’t want to go?” Jack’s quiet tone soothed me.
“No. And after my grandmother told me about the accident, I felt this little thrill of joy. They couldn’t take me away after that, and the moment I realized that fact I was actually happy about it. Then I realized I was happy about their deaths.” The bonds I shared with the Earth around me loosened slightly as I withdrew from the embrace, actually preferring Jack’s for the time being. I didn’t want my sadness to color the happiness here.
“Chance, you were nine. You were happy about this little fear disappearing, but you obviously never wanted your parents dead.” So practical and steadfast was my Jack.
“Oh, I know that now. But I couldn’t help but wonder when I was younger if, by wanting to stay so badly, I caused the accident that killed them.” You never quite outgrow that sense of childish fear, even when you know there is no boogeyman in the closet and that the dark isn’t out to get you. Well, most of the time anyway.
Jack frowned. “They were killed in a drunk driving accident, weren’t they?”
“Yes. But I was a kid. I didn’t know how to rationalize it.” My mouth twisted into a half-smile, and I rested my head on his shoulder. He squeezed me a little tighter. “I carried that guilt for a long time. I don’t know when it went away, but one day I was sitting at their graves, leaving flowers and telling them all about what was going on in my life and it hit me. I’d missed them all those years, despite having that little wish, and my powers couldn’t possibly have been as extensive as I imagined them to be at that age.”
“And you for
gave yourself?”
“Yeah.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I forgave myself and got on with my life, which brings us back to Colleen.”
“Speaking of crap potholes in the road to life.” He teased. I laughed. Life already looked a bit better.
“She wined and dined me, then dropped the bomb about knowing what I was. I’d never spoken of it to outsiders, folks who didn’t know my grandmother or me. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and after a moment, she laughed and told me my secret was safe with her. She was a psychic herself and understood my natural fear of being discovered by the wrong people.”
I pulled out of Jack’s embrace and stretched, rolling my head from side to side to stretch out my neck. “I told her I wasn’t a psychic. Psychics and hedge witches are two different things. She seemed to understand and said she was working with the FBI, and they were developing a special program that would recruit people of my unique talents…”
“The Spook Squad.” Jack sighed and closed the distance between us again, his hand coming to rest on my leg. I liked that he didn’t let me get far away.
“Yep, and you’ve called me Miss Spooky since the day I told you I could talk to the Earth.” He had the good grace to look chagrinned.
“It seemed like a complicated cover, maybe too complicated. Admittedly, the Squad’s done some good work, particularly with identifying and catching terrorists since 9/11, but they don’t play well with others. That’s why all the secrecy. Or at least that was the gist of my five minute Mr. Wizard briefing.”
“Maybe they don’t play well with people who patronize them and don’t believe them.” I raised my eyebrows at him and then backed off when I saw a faint flush stain his cheeks. I’d made my point.
“Maybe.” Jack agreed, holding up his hands briefly in mock surrender, before reclaiming his grasp on my leg and squeezing gently. “So she offered you a job?”
“Yeah. She even offered to have the Bureau pay for my college expenses, the deal being I would train during my off times from school and go to work for them full time when I graduated.”
Earth Witches Aren't Easy Page 11