by Cate Tiernan
Jenna and Matt drifted toward us.
"Hey, guys," Jenna said. The October wind whipped her pale hair around her face, and she shivered and clutched her books tighter to her chest "Hey, Robbie." She looked at him as if trying to figure out what was different.
"Hey, does anyone have a copy of The Sound and the Fury?" Matt asked, pushing his hands into the pockets of his black leather jacket. "I can't find mine, and I've got to read it for English."
"You can borrow mine," Raven said.
"Okay. Thanks," Matt said.
No one mentioned Robbie's appearance again, but Robbie kept looking at me. When at last I met his gaze squarely, he looked away.
By Friday, when Robbie's skin looked smooth and new and completely blemish free, when practically every student in school recognized that he was no longer a pizza face, when girls in his classes suddenly realized that hey, he wasn't bad looking at all, he decided to tell everyone how it happened.
On Friday afternoon I was in my backyard, raking leaves or, rather, raking occasionally but mostly seeing stunning maple leaf after stunning leaf, picking them up, examining them, admiring the passionate blotch and smear of colors across their finely veined skin. Some were still half green, and I imagined that they felt surprised to find themselves on the ground so soon. Some were almost completely dry and brown, yet with a defiant border of red or bloody tips as if they had raked the bark on the way down. Others were ablaze with autumn's fire of yellow, orange, and crimson, and some were very small still, too young to die, yet born too late to live.
I pressed my palm against a crisp leaf as big as my hand. Its colors felt warm against my skin, and with my eyes closed, I could feel impressions of warm summer days, the joy of being blown in the wind, the tenacious hanging on, and then the frightening, exhilarating release of autumn. Floating, finished, to the ground. The smell of earth, the joining to the earth.
Suddenly I blinked, sensing Cal.
"What is it telling you?" His voice floated toward me from the back steps. I startled like a rabbit and rocked backward on my heels. Looking up, I saw Mary K. at the back door, directing Cal, Bree, and Robbie to the backyard to find me.
I looked at them in the darkening afternoon. I glanced around for my leaf, but it was gone. I stood up, brushing off my hands and my seat.
"What's up?" I asked, looking from face to face.
"We need to talk to you," Bree said. She looked remote, even hurt, her full mouth pressed into a line.
"I told them," Robbie said bluntly. "I told them you gave me a homemade potion in a container, and it's fixed my skin. And I… I want to know what was in it."
My eyes opened wide in dismay. I felt like I was being judged. There was nothing to do but tell them the truth. "Catnip," I said reluctantly. "Catnip and chamomile and angelica and, um, rosemary and cucumber. Boiling water. Some other stuff."
"Eye of newt and skin of toad?" Cal teased.
"Was it a spell?" Bree asked, her forehead wrinkling.
I nodded, glancing down at my feet, kicking my clogs through the leaves. "Yeah. Just a beginner's spell. From a book," I looked up at Robbie. "I made sure it wouldn't have any harmful effects," I said. "I would never have given it to you if I thought it might harm you. Actually, I was pretty sure it wouldn't do anything at all."
He looked back at me. I realized that he had the potential to be good-looking, behind the clunky glasses and the lame haircut. His features had been obscured by his awful acne. His skin, now almost perfectly smooth, was etched very slightly with fine, white lines in a few places, as though it was still healing. I stared at it, fascinated by what I had apparently done.
"Tell us about it," Cal invited.
The screen door opened again, and my mom poked out her head."Hey, honey. Dinner in fifteen," she called.
"Okay," I called back, and she went in, no doubt curious as to who the unfamiliar boy was.
"Morgan," Bree said.
"I don't know how to explain it," I said slowly, looking down at the leaves. "I told you about the abbey upstate with an herb garden. The garden… I felt like it spoke to me." My face got red at the far-fetched words. "I felt… like I wanted to study herbs more, know more about them."
"Know what, exactly?" Bree asked.
"I've been reading and reading about medicinal, magickal properties of herbs. Cal said I was… an energy conductor. I just wanted to see what would happen."
"And I was your guinea pig," Robbie said flatly.
I looked up at him, this Robbie I barely recognized. "I've been feeling really bad about missing two circles in a row. I wanted to work a little on my own. I decided to try a simple spell," I said. "I mean, I wasn't going to try to change the world. I didn't want anything huge or scary. I needed something small, something positive, something whose results I could evaluate pretty quickly."
"Like a science project," Robbie said.
"I knew it wouldn't hurt you," I insisted. "It was just ordinary herbs and water."
"And a spell," Cal said.
I nodded.
"When did you do it?" Bree asked.
"Sunday night, at midnight," I said. "I guess I was feeling pretty depressed about being stuck home Saturday night during the circle."
"Did anything happen when you did the spell?" asked Cal, looking at me with interest. I could feel Bree's anger.
I shrugged. "There was a storm." I didn't want to talk about the candles going out or the crack of thunder that had been so amazingly loud.
"So now you control the weather?" Bree said, hurt in her ice.
I winced. "I wasn't saying that"
"Obviously it's just some sort of weird coincidence," Bree said. "There's no way you could fix Robbie's skin, for God's sake. Cal, tell her. None of us could do something like that. You couldn't do something like that."
"No, I could," Cal contradicted mildly. "A lot of people could, with enough training. Even if they weren't blood witches."
"But Morgan hasn't had any training," Bree said, her voice strained."Have you?" she asked me.
"No, of course not," I said quietly.
"What we have here is an unusually gifted amateur," Cal said thoughtfully. "I'm actually glad this came up because we should talk about this stuff." He put his hand on my shoulder. "You're not allowed to perform a spell for someone without his or her knowledge," he said. "It's not a good idea, and it isn't safe. It isn't fair."
He looked uncharacteristically solemn, and I nodded, embarrassed.
"I'm really sorry, Robbie," I said. "I don't even know how to undo it. It was stupid."
"Jesus, I don't want you to undo it," Robbie said, alarmed. "It's just I wish you had told me first. It kind of spooked me."
"Morgan, I really think you need to study more before you start doing spells," Cal went on. "It would be better if you saw the big picture instead of just little parts of it. It's all connected, you know, everything is connected, and everything you do affects everything else, so you've got to know what you're doing."
I nodded again, feeling horrible. I had been so impressed that my spell had worked, I hadn't even thought through all the far-reaching consequences.
"I'm not a high priest," Cal said, "but I can teach you what I know, and then you can go on to learn from someone else. If you want to."
"Yes, I want to," I said quickly. I glanced at Bree's face and wanted to take back the speed and certainty of my words.
"Samhain, Halloween, is eight days away," Cal said, dropping his hand. "Try to start coming to circles if you can. Think about it at least."
"Pretty intense, Rowlands." Robbie shook his head. "You're like the Tiger Woods of Wicca."
I couldn't help grinning. Bree's face was stiff. My mom tapped on the window to tell me dinner was ready, and I nodded and waved.
"I'm sorry, Robbie," I said again. "I won't ever do anything like that again."
"Just ask me first," Robbie said, without anger. We walked across the yard, and I led my three friends through the
house and out the front door. "See you," I called to them as Cal met my eyes again. Halloween was eight days away.
CHAPTER 19 A Dream
"Witches can fly on their enchanted broomstickes, fabricated not only for sweeping."
— Witches and Deamons
Jean-Luc Bellefleur, 1817
The signs are there. She must be a blood witch. Her skin is splitting, and white light is leaking through. It's beautiful and frightening in its power. I vow on this Book of Shadows that I have found her. I was right. Blessed be.
That night Aunt Eileen showed up unexpectedly for dinner. Afterward she hung out with me in the kitchen and helped me clean up.
Out of nowhere, as I was scraping plates into the disposal, I found myself blurting out: "How did you know you were gay?"
She looked as surprised as I felt. "I'm sorry," I rushed to add. "Forget I asked. It's none of my business."
"No, it's okay," she said, thinking. "That's a fair question." She considered her answer for a few moments. "I guess when I was growing up, I always felt kind of different somehow. I didn't feel like a boy or anything. I knew I was a girl, and that was fine with me. But I just didn't get the whole point of boys existing." Her nose wrinkled, and I laughed.
"But I don't think I really figured out I was gay until about eighth grade," she went on, "when I got a crush on someone."
I looked up. "A girl?"
"Yes. Of course the girl didn't feel the same way about me—and I never told her about it or acted on it. I was so embarrassed. I felt like a freak. I felt there was something terribly wrong with me, that I needed counseling or help. Even medicine."
"How awful," I said.
"It wasn't until college that I came to terms with it and finally admitted to myself and everyone else that I was gay. I had been seeing a therapist and he helped me see that there really wasn't anything wrong with me. It's just how I was made."
Aunt Eileen made a wry face. "It wasn't easy. My parents—your Grammy and Pop-pop—were so horrified and upset. They just couldn't deal with it. They were so disappointed in me. It's hard, you know, when the way you are, the way you were born, just totally bewilders and embarrasses your own parents."
I didn't say anything but felt a spark of recognition at what she was saying.
"Anyway, they gave me a really hard time. Not to be mean or because they didn't love me but because they didn't know how else to react. They're a lot better now, but I'm still not at all what they want me to be. They don't ever want to talk about my being gay or people I'm involved with. Denial." She shrugged. "I can't help that I've found that the more I accept it and accept myself, the less friction I have in the rest of my life and the less stressed and unhappy I am."
I looked at her in admiration. "You've come a long way, baby," I said, and she laughed. She put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed.
"Thank God for your mom and dad and you and Mary K.," she said with feeling. "I don't know what I would do without you guys."
For the rest of the night I sat on the carpet of my room, thinking. I knew I wasn't gay, but I understood how my aunt felt. I was beginning to feel different from my family and even my friends, strongly drawn to something they couldn't accept.
Part of me felt if I allowed myself to become a witch, I'd be more relaxed, more natural, more powerful, more confident than I'd ever felt in my life. Part of me knew that if I did, I'd cause pain to the people I loved most.
That night I had a terrifying dream.
It was nighttime. The sky was streaked with broad bands of moonlight highlighting clouds in shades of eggplant dove gray, and indigo. The air was cold and I felt the chilly breeze on my face and bare arms as I flew over Widow's Vale. It was beautiful up there, calm and peaceful, with the wind rushing in my ears, my long hair streaming out behind me, my dress whipping around my legs and molding to the outline of my body.
Gradually I became aware of a voice calling me, a frightened voice. I circled the town, wheeling lower like a hawk, circling and diving and floating on great strong currents of air that buoyed my body. In the woods at the north edge of town, the voice was louder. I went lower still until the tops of the trees practically grazed my skin. At a clearing in the middle of the woods I sank down, landing gracefully on one foot.
The voice belonged to Bree. I followed it into the woods until I came to a boggy area, a place where an underground spring seeped sullenly up through the earth, not flowing strongly enough to make a creek but not drying, either. It provided just enough moisture for breeding mosquitoes, for fungus, for soft green molds glowing emerald in the moonlight.
Bree was stuck in the bog, her ankle trapped by a gnarled root. Gradually she was sinking, being sucked under inch by inch. By the time the sun rose, she would drown.
I held out my hand. My arm looked smooth and strong, defined by muscles and covered with silvery, moonlit skin. I clasped her outstretched hand, slippery with foul-smelling mud, and I heard the suck of the bog around her ankle.
Bree gasped in pain as the root gripped her ankle. "I can't!" she cried. "It hurts!"
I made waving motions with my free hand, my brow furrowed with concentration. I felt the ache in my chest that signaled magickal workings. I began to breathe hard, and my sweat felt cold in the night air. Bree was crying and asking me to let her go.
I waved my hand at the bog, willing the roots to set Bree loose, to uncoil themselves, to stretch and open and relax and set her free. All the while I pulled steadily on her hand, easing her out as if I were a midwife and Bree was being born out of the bog.
Then she cried out, her face alight, and we rose gracefully, effortlessly in the air tonight. Her dress and legs were covered in dark slime, and though out hand's contact I felt the throbbing pain of her ankle. But she was free. I flew with her to the edge of the woods and set her down. Rising into the air, I left her there, weeping with relief, watching me as I rose higher in the sky, higher and higher, until I was just a speck and dawn began to break.
Then I was in a dark, rough room, like a barn. I was an infant. Baby Morgan. A woman was sitting on a bale of straw, holding me in her arms. It wasn't my mom, but she was rocking me and saying "My baby," over and over. I watched her with my round baby eyes, and I loved her and felt how she loved me.
I woke up, shaking and exhausted. I felt like I was battling the flu, as if I could lie down and sleep for a hundred years.
"You feeling better?" Mary K. asked that afternoon. I had gotten up and dressed around noon and had puttered around the house, doing laundry, taking out the recycling.
I thought about Cal and Bree and everyone having a circle tonight and I was aching to go. Cal probably expected me to go after what had happened yesterday. In fact I really had to go.
"Yeah," I answered Mary K. I picked up the phone to call Bree."I just didn't sleep well, woke up all headachy."
Mary K. mixed herself some chocolate milk and zapped it in the microwave. "Yeah? So everything's okay?"
"Sure. Why?"
She leaned against the countertop and sipped her hot chocolate. "I feel like there's something going on lately," she said.
I cradled the undialed phone on my shoulder. "Like what?"
"Well, like all of a sudden I feel like you're doing stuff that I don't know about," Mary K. said. "Not that I have to know all about your life," she added hastily. "You're older; you've always done other stuff. I just mean—" She stopped and rubbed her forehead with her hand. "You're not doing drugs, are you?" she blurted out.
I suddenly saw how things looked from her fourteen-year-old perspective. True, she was an old fourteen-year-old, but still. I was her big sister, she had picked up on my tension, and she was worried.
"Oh, Mary K., for God's sake," I said, hugging her. "No, I'm not doing drugs. And I'm not having sex or shoplifting or anything like that. Promise."
She pulled back. "What were those books about that Mom got so upset over?" she asked point-blank.
"I told you. Wicca. Cr
unchy tree-hugger stuff," I said.
"Then why was she so upset?" Mary K. pressed.
I took a deep breath, then turned to face her. "Wicca is the religion of witches," I explained.
Her beautiful brown eyes, so like Mom's, widened. "Really?"
"It's just, like, living in tune with nature. Picking up on stuff that already exists all around you. The power of nature. Life forces."
"Morgan, isn't witchcraft like Satan worshiping?" Mary K. asked, horrified.
"It really, really isn't," I said urgently, looking her in the eyes. "There's no Satan at all in Wicca. And it's completely forbidden to work black magic or to try to cause harm to anyone. Everything you send out into the world comes back to you threefold, so everyone tries to do good, always."
Mary K. still looked worried, but she was paying close attention.
"Look, in Wicca you basically just try to be a good person and live in harmony with nature and with other people," I said.
"And dance naked," she said, her eyes narrowing.
I rolled my eyes. "Not everyone does that, and for your info, I would rather be torn apart by wild animals. Wicca is all about what you are comfortable with, how much you want to participate. There's no animal sacrifice, no Satan worshiping, no dancing naked if you don't want to. No taking drugs, no pushing pins into voodoo dolls."
"Then why is Mom so freaked?" she countered.
I thought for a moment. "I think it's partly that she just doesn't know a lot about it. Partly it's that we're Catholic already, and she doesn't want me to change my religion. Other than that, I don't know. Her reaction was a lot stronger than I could believe. It just really pushes her buttons."
"Poor Mom," Mary K. murmured.
I frowned. "Look, I've been trying to respect Mom's feelings, but the more I know about Wicca, the more I know that it's not a bad thing. It's nothing to be afraid of. Mom will just have to believe me."