Spun by Sorcery

by Barbara Bretton

  “Go ahead,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “I’m listening.”

  “Aerynn is the reason Sugar Maple came to be,” he said, “and you are the reason why it is gone.”

  If you want to put it that way . . .

  “Hold on,” Luke said, stepping forward. “You were up here in a lighthouse while we were fighting Isadora in Sugar Maple. You don’t have a clue what happened.”

  I shot Luke a warning look. Samuel Bramford might be old but I had the feeling his powers went far beyond anything we’d ever encountered.

  And there was the fact that, blood relative or not, I still wasn’t convinced he was on our side. It was hard to tell friend from foe around here without a scorecard.

  “I made mistakes,” I admitted. “But the Fae didn’t pull the town beyond the mist. I know that for a fact.”

  “And who said they did?” Samuel’s words seemed to require enormous effort on his part and I found myself almost feeling sorry for him again. “Nobody stole Sugar Maple from you, Chloe. Your commitment was not strong enough to keep it, so the town was taken from you for its own protection.”

  “Not strong enough?” I laughed in his face. “Nobody loves Sugar Maple more than I do.”

  My life up until now had been played out within the township limits and I hoped the rest of my life would be as well. In what crazy world did that constitute danger?

  “Think, Chloe,” Samuel said as he rested his head against the back of his chair. “Know the truth so the path will be illuminated.”

  I groaned out loud. “Spare me the fortune-cookie wisdom, if you don’t mind.”

  “Temperance,” he warned. “Think before you speak, child, or you will never achieve all that is within your power.”

  Now he sounded like Mr. Miyagi from the original Karate Kid. Why did everything have to be larded with metaphor and deep-fried in self-help speak?

  “You said I’m not committed to Sugar Maple,” I said with as much restraint as I could muster. “I want to know what you mean.”

  Samuel leaned his head against the back of his chair again and closed his eyes. I exchanged looks with Luke and Janice. Janice pointed toward the staircase but I shook my head. We had come here for answers and I wasn’t going to leave until I had them.

  We waited. Then waited some more.

  “Is he breathing?” Janice whispered.

  I wasn’t sure. I stepped closer.

  “I’m still of this dimension.”

  I jumped back at the sound. His eyes were closed. He hadn’t moved a muscle. But his voice filled the room like a philharmonic orchestra in a concert hall.

  “Aerynn was as wise as she was powerful,” he continued. “Long ago she understood that the ultimate safety of Sugar Maple depended upon the strong, undivided commitment of its leader.”

  The man could say more by saying little than anyone I had ever met. I instantly felt small and foolish but not contrite. A girl had to draw the line someplace.

  “There was fatal dissension within your town,” he continued. “You allowed yourself to be distracted by matters of the heart.”

  “I fought Isadora,” I said. “I was there at the waterfall to keep her from taking away the town.”

  “When you saw the child, you lost sight of everything beyond her tears.”

  So he knew about Luke’s late daughter, Steffie, and the battle for her spirit. Interesting.

  “I reacted to the problem at hand.”

  “While Sugar Maple slipped away.”

  “I didn’t know it was slipping away.”

  “The true leader would have.”

  For once I kept my mouth shut, but the truth was I would do the same thing over again. The lonely little girl who still lived inside of me would choose to help Steffie every time.

  “You have nothing to say in your defense?” he asked after a few moments passed by in silence.

  “Do you?” I retorted. “You ignore me for almost thirty human years then do everything you can to keep us away from here—”

  “He didn’t do it,” Luke broke in.

  “Luke’s right,” Janice said. “It was the local Fae.”

  I spun around to face them. “Where did you get that idea?”

  Janice explained about Penny and the glittered hairball.

  “The second she got rid of all of that gunk she headed down to the water and we followed her.”

  “It was deliberate,” Luke said. “The cat had a plan.”

  Samuel laughed. “In truth I had the plan. Penelope helped me to execute it. I needed to bring you to me and this was the only way at hand.”

  “So you gin up mermaids and tidal waves to get me here? Why not just summon me here for a family reunion without all the drama?”

  Ha! I thought. Try to weasel out of that, Mr. Wizard.

  “The old magick is strong and I am old. I’d used my resources to break Penelope free and, beyond releasing you from the rest stop, I couldn’t protect you from random mischief. You had to find your own way through it.”

  Random mischief? That was one way to put it. Wait a second—

  “You’re telling me that you’re the one who broke me out of the rest stop?” He’s lying, Chloe. You know he’s lying.

  “You believed it was your mother, didn’t you?” He sounded regretful. “That was unintentional.”

  He relayed some convoluted story about getting my subconscious to share one of its most powerful happy memories in order to relax me enough to break the Fae’s hold on me.

  “I am sorry if you read more into it, Chloe, than was actually there.”

  You mean like thinking that maybe my mother actually loved me and watched over me?

  Janice had been right. I should have known better.

  I forced my thoughts away from the past. I had more than enough bones to pick with him right here and now. “So why didn’t you contact us as soon as we were in Salem?” I demanded. “Why all the cloak-and-dagger nonsense? Janice and I could have whipped up a spell that didn’t involve underwater highways and waterspouts.”

  “Warning you would have opened up a conduit for thought probes.”

  “Thought probes don’t require conduits.”

  “Remember, we use the old magick here. I couldn’t risk another obstacle placed along your pathway.”

  I had to hand it to the old guy: He had an answer for everything. “And you believe staying on my pathway will help me restore Sugar Maple.”

  “Staying on your pathway will help you to claim what is yours.”

  “My hometown.”

  “Your heritage.”

  “Sugar Maple is my heritage.”

  “No!” His eyes blinked open and an explosion of light illuminated the room. “Without this, you have nothing.”

  25

  CHLOE SALEM, 1692

  The cottage smelled of hay and sheep, salt air and wood smoke. I moved through the door with a spirit’s ease and settled myself on the trestle table against the roughly plastered back wall of the keeping room.

  Heavy snow pelted the closed shutters but the fire roaring in the enormous hearth made the dwelling surprisingly toasty and bright. Near the hearth a round black cat slept peacefully atop a basket of yarn.

  “Penelope?” It couldn’t be. Penny had been sprawled across Samuel’s bony shoulders when I took my leave.

  The Penny clone lifted her head at the sound of her name and winked one enormous golden eye then settled back to sleep.

  A shiver ran up my spine as I realized what was going on. This is really happening, I told myself. I’m here where it all began.

  That was my Penny and yet it wasn’t and it was clear I wasn’t the only one who knew the difference.

  Samuel hadn’t enough strength to accompany me on this trip into the past or to send Luke or Janice with me. But what magick he had at his command was seamless. I moved from the twenty-first century to the end of the seventeenth in the space of a single breath without any of the car-crash aspec
ts that usually went hand in hand with astral transport.

  I sensed, rather than saw, the landscape beyond the small whitewashed cottage. The harbor clogged with fishing boats preparing to head out toward Stellwagen. Dirt roads that led to the center of the small New England town we now knew as Salem. The silence was rich and deep, unbroken by the incessant hum that marked the years after the Industrial Revolution that still lay ahead.

  Two young women, teenagers really, swept into the room, arms piled high with fleeces and roving. They wore plain dresses of light brown wool with white aprons tied over full skirts. One girl was tiny and dark and beautiful in the way only a member of the Fae could be. Her eyes were wide and sea green, framed by thick dark lashes that cast a shadow on her sculpted cheekbones. A narrow trail of bluish purple glitter followed her as she walked.

  The other girl was tall and skinny with long arms and legs and unruly blond hair that poked out from beneath her starched white cap. She had a big laugh and wide golden eyes and for a moment I thought my heart had stopped beating inside my chest as I realized who she was.

  Aerynn Hobbs.

  Aerynn, who had led the hunted from Salem to Sinzibukwud.

  Aerynn, who was the mother of us all, a sorceress whose magick remained legendary and unequaled.

  The sorceress whose blood ran in my veins, whose legacy shadowed every breath I took, every decision I made, the sorceress I would become.

  I wanted to touch her hand. I wanted to look into her eyes and see myself reflected in them.

  She exists only as a reflection. Samuel’s voice rumbled against my breastbone. You can’t make contact with her.

  But Penny saw me, I said deep within myself. She winked at me.

  Watch and learn, child. Aerynn sat down at her wheel, the same wheel that had been my mother’s and her mother’s before her. The same wheel Janice had saved before she fled Sugar Maple in my Buick.

  “Are you most certain, Da’Elle? I could brew the indigo once the wool is spun and achieve a most pleasing effect.”

  The tiny brunette shook her head. “’Tis plain I want. With the troubles afoot, plain is best.”

  My mother Guinevere had been the most gifted spinner I had ever seen. Even as a little girl I had known I was in the presence of something very special. But watching Aerynn at her wheel was to see magick happen right before your eyes.

  The roving raced through her fingers in a spray of silver and gold sparks I knew very well and was transformed into yarn as fine as a spider’s web in the blink of an eye. I could have sat there, perched on the heavy pine table, and watched her forever.

  You are her image. Can you see it?

  I nodded, unwilling to break the spell I was falling under.

  “The meetinghouse is no longer safe,” the dark-haired Fae said as she settled down on the long bench with her needles and ball of yarn. “Mary Hopson passed word to Willem that we need to go underground.”

  “It is time.” Aerynn’s eyes never left her wheel. “We need to leave quickly, Da’Elle,” she said, and my heartbeat quickened. “The madness is knocking at the door.”

  “Humans have a limitless capacity for evil,” Da’Elle said. “They drove us from our homes across the ocean and now they are driving us from our homes in the New World. Our only recourse is to slip beyond the mist where we belong and leave this world to them.”

  “We belong here in this dimension,” Aerynn said. “Our ancestors decreed it to be so.”

  Da’Elle’s lovely face darkened. “And they have long pierced the veil.” Her knitting was all sharp angles and stabbing motions. “There are those who would sweep down upon the humans and kill them as they sleep.”

  “Then we would be no better than those who have oppressed us.”

  “But we would survive,” Da’Elle said, tugging hard at the yarn as she formed a stitch. “Is that not what we are striving toward?”

  Aerynn shook her head and said nothing as she applied herself to her spinning. A ripple of apprehension moved between my shoulder blades. There was something about the way Da’Elle looked at Aerynn that chilled my blood. I knew that look. I had felt the edge of its sharpened teeth.

  Isadora, I thought, and knew the truth of it in my bones. Isadora was one of the beautiful young Fae’s descendants. Was I seeing the beginning of the war between our families?

  “How is your Samuel?” Da’Elle asked in a casual tone of voice.

  “He is well, thank you. He will be home from the sea any day.”

  Da’Elle’s mouth tightened. “You are in love.”

  Aerynn’s cheeks reddened. I smiled to myself. So it was hereditary after all. “We have not tried to hide it.”

  “And how do his human parents feel about it?”

  “Samuel was taken in by his human parents when he was a baby,” Aerynn said carefully, “but they knew from the start that he is full-blood magick and welcomed him as such.”

  Da’Elle’s laughter held the sound of breaking glass. “And you believe that.”

  “They have moved among us every day since we first came to be. You know this to be true, same as I.”

  “You know because that is what Samuel wishes you to know.”

  Tiny flames of anger danced from Aerynn’s fingertips. She curled them closer to her palm and continued spinning.

  “He clearly has you bewitched,” Da’Elle said. “There is no other reason for you to cling stubbornly to your idea of migrating northward.”

  Aerynn’s laugh was uncertain. “I am most certainly not bewitched.”

  “And that is part of bewitchment,” the beautiful Fae said. “He has ensorcelled you and yet you remain unaware.”

  “I love him,” Aerynn said simply. “Magick plays no part.”

  Da’Elle’s laugh held a bitter edge. “Samuel may be magick but in many ways he is more human than sorcerer.”

  “Thanks to Joshua and Rebecca Bramford, he has seen the best the race can offer.”

  “And now we are seeing the worst.”

  Aerynn inclined her head in agreement. “And that is why we will go north in the spring. It is but a few weeks, Da’Elle.”

  “The hangings will continue. We could be dancing on air long before the thaw.”

  “I believe we have time.”

  “We need to be of one mind,” Da’Elle said, glitter spilling from her fingers and toes. “Our unity is our strength.”

  “And our strength will only grow if we remain in this dimension,” Aerynn said. “We’ll build our own town to the north where we’ll be free from persecution.” She stopped spinning and looked at her companion. “All of us together, as the ancestors want it to be, sharing our wisdom and our riches.”

  “The community must be of one mind,” Da’Elle repeated. “It has been so from the beginning in the Old Country.”

  “They’ll follow us,” Aerynn said. “North is the promise of freedom.”

  Da’Elle put down her knitting and met my ancestor’s eyes. “And the Fae can promise that and more beyond the mist.”

  “You can make many promises, but only I have the power to bring a town to life.”

  “That may not always be so and as long as you draw breath in this dimension, you will always be at the mercy of the whims of humans,” Da’Elle said. “You will take our people and walk them into bondage.”

  “Never!” Aerynn cried. “My magick is strong. I will find a way to protect our new home down through the ages, a spell that will remain unbroken as long as our town exists.”

  “Your magick is new. Your powers are yet untried.” Da’Elle gestured beyond the cottage. “In the end it will be up to them to decide our fate.”

  And in the end, that was how it happened. Samuel’s voice filled my head. But that moment of truth still lay in the future.

  What about you and Aerynn? Why didn’t you go with her?

  As you will see, that was not my destiny. He exhaled slowly. Nor was it hers.

  I don’t believe that. You could have fou
nd a way to be together. You were both magick. Your powers dwarf anything I’ve ever encountered. Don’t tell me there was no way for the two of you to spend your lives together.

  The old man was good. No doubt about it. I’d barely finished my sentence when I found myself perched in an enormous maple tree behind the meetinghouse. The night was dark and star filled. Without the ambient sounds of the twenty-first century, I found myself readjusting again to the depth of silence they enjoyed. The distant hoot of an owl sounded like a clap of thunder.

  Young Samuel arrived first. He was tall and strong and dazzlingly handsome. Magick shimmered from him like starlight as he waited for Aerynn. His serious face broke into an unguarded smile as she appeared around the side of the meetinghouse. No words were spoken. None were needed. I felt like a voyeur as I watched them melt together in the shadows.

  I tried hard not to listen but the soft sighs and gentle laughter painted a picture that broke my heart. Sometimes it was better not to know what the future held.

  “The worst is upon us,” the young and handsome Samuel said as he held Aerynn close. “The town elders will come for you and for all of us two nights from now and we cannot stop it.”

  But you can, I thought. What else was magick for if not to protect the ones you loved?

  I heard Aerynn’s sharp intake of breath followed by a prolonged silence.

  “We’ll leave tomorrow after dark,” she said finally. “That should give us time to gather everyone.”

  “Da’Elle will not go easily.”

  “But she’ll go,” Aerynn said. “Our tribes have been united down through the centuries. Our knowledge springs from the same source.”

  “She will go beyond the mist with her sisters.”

  “She’ll come with us,” Aerynn said with more confidence than I would have felt in her place. “She is as much of this world as we are.” I felt, rather than saw, her smile. “Besides, you have something she values as much as we do. She will follow where it goes.”

  “The talisman?” Samuel asked.