by Cate Tiernan
“I understand. Can you tell me where she lives?” Kennet gave me directions, and I fetched the map from the car and traced the route, making sure I understood. She lived in Ontario Province, near a town called Foxton. It appeared to be about three hours’ drive from Saint Jérôme du Lac. When I rang off with Kennet, it was almost dark. I stopped in at the grocer’s to get more milk and more apples, feeling the irony of wanting to feed Da and yet resenting the fact that it gave him the strength he needed to get to thebith dearc. But I felt we had made real progress today. He had stayed away from thebith dearc. We had talked, really talked, for the first time. I hoped it was just the first step.
However, when I got back, the cabin was empty, the fire burning unbanked in the fireplace. I knew immediately where he had gone. As fast as that, my anger erupted afresh, and in the next second I had thrown the groceries across the kitchen, seeing the container of milk burst against the wall, the white milk running down in streams. This wasn’t me—I had always been self-control personified. What was happening to me in this place? This time it took only twenty-five minutes to get to the hut, despite the fact that the path was still spelled and it was dark outside. My anger propelled me forward, my long legs striding through the woods as if it were daylight. The closer I got to the hut, the more I was assaulted by waves of panic and nausea. When I could hardly bear the feelings of dread, I knew I was close. And then I
was in the clearing, the moonlight shining down on me, witnessing my shame, my anger.
Without hesitation I stormed into the hut, ducking through the low doorway, to find Daniel crouched over the eerily blackbith dearc. He looked up when I came in, but this time his face was excited, glad. He flung out his hand to me. “Hunter!” he said, and it struck me that this was perhaps the first time he had used my given name. “Hunter, I’m close, so close! This time I’ll get through, I know it.” “Leave off this!” I cried. “You know this is wrong; you know this is sapping your strength. It’s not good, it’s not right; you know Mum would have hated this!” “No, no, son,” Da said eagerly. “No, your mum loved me; she wants to speak to me; she pines for me as I pine for her. Hunter, I’m close, so close this time, but I’m weak. With your help I know I could get through, speak to your mother. Please, son, just this once. Lend me your strength.”
I stared at him, appalled. So this was what thebith dearchadreallybeen about. Not helping others—that was incidental. His true goal had always been to contact Mum. But what he was suggesting was unthinkable, going not only against the written and unwritten laws of the craft, but also against my vows to the council as a Seeker. “Son,” Da said, his voice raspy and seductive. “This is your mother, yourmother,Hunter. You know you were her favorite, her firstborn. She died without seeing you again, and it broke her heart. Give her the chance to see you now, see you one last time.” My breath left my lungs in a whoosh; Da’s low blow had caught me unaware, and I almost doubled over with the pain of it. He was wily, Daniel Niall, he was ruthless. He had seen the chink in my armor and had rammed his knife home. It was a mistake for anyone to discount him as weak, as helpless.
“It’s a powerful magick, Hunter,” he wheedled. “Good magick to know, to be master of.” I snorted, knowing that anyone who thought he was master of abith dearcwas telling himself dangerous lies. It was like an alcoholic insisting he could stop anytime he wanted. “It’s your mother, son,” said Daniel again. Oh, Goddess. The reality of this opportunity suddenly sank in with a power that was all too seductive. Fiona . . . I had missed seeing my mother by two short months. To see her now—one last time—to feel her presence . . . Fiona the Bright, dancing around a maypole, laughing. I sank to my knees across from my father, on the opposite side of thebith dearc. I felt sick and weakened; I was angry and embarrassed at my own weakness, angry at Da for being able to seduce me to his dark purpose. Yet if I could see my mother, just once . . . I knew how he felt. Da reached out and put his bony hands on my shoulders. I did the same, clasping his shoulders in my hands. Thebith dearcroiled between us, a frightening rip in the world, an oddly glowing black hole. Then together, with Daniel leading, we began the series of chants that would take us through to the other side.
The chants were long and complicated; I had learned them, of course: they were part of the basic knowledge I had to prove before I could be initiated. But naturally, I had never used them and had forgotten them in places. Then Daniel sang, his voice cracked and ruined, and I followed as best I could, feeling ashamed for my weakness and his. I don’t know how long we knelt there on the frozen ground, but gradually, gradually I began to become aware of something else, another presence. It was my mother.
Though I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in eleven years, there was no mistaking the way her soul felt, touching mine. I glanced up in awe to look at Daniel and saw that tears of joy were
streaming down his hollowed cheeks. Then I realized that my mother’s spirit had joined us in the
hut. I could sense her shimmering presence, floating before us. “At last, at last,” came Da’s whisper, like sandpaper. I was scared, my mouth dry. I was not master of this magick, and neither was Daniel. This was wrong, it was trouble, and I should have had no part of it. This was how my brother had died, calling on dark magick to find ataibhsthat had turned on him and taken his life. “Hunter, darling.” I felt rather than heard her voice. “Mum,” I whispered back. I couldn’t believe that after eleven years, I was near her again, feeling her spirit.
“Darling, is it you?” Unlike Da, Mum seemed genuinely happy to see me, genuinely full of love for me. From her spirit I received waves of love and comfort, welcome and regret— more emotion than my father had spared for me so far. “Oh, Gìomanach—you’re a man, a man before my eyes,” my mother said, her pride and wonder palpable. I started crying. “My sweet, no,” came her voice inside my head. “Don’t spoil this with sadness. Let’s take joy from this one chance to express our love. For I do love you, my son, I love you more than I can say. In life I was far from you; you were beyond my reach. Now nothing is. Now I can be with you, always, wherever you are. You need never miss me again.” I’ve never been comfortable with crying, but this was all too much for me—the pain of my last five days, my fear and worry for my father, my anger, and now this, seeing and hearing my long-lost mother, having her confirm what I thought I would wonder about my whole life: that she loved me, that she’d missed me, that she was proud of me, of who I had become. “Fiona, my love, you’ve come back to me,” said Da, weeping openly. “No, my darling,” said Mum gently. “You’ve called me here, but you know it can’t be. I am where I am now and must stay. And you must stay in your world, until we can be together again.”
“We can be together now!” my father said. “I can keep thebith dearcopen; we can be together.” “No,” I said, pulling myself back to reality. “Thebith dearcis wrong. You have to shut it down. If you don’t, I will.”
His eyes blazed at me. “How can you say that? It’s given you your mother back!” “She’s not back, Da,” I said. “It’s her spirit; it isn’t her. And she can’t stay. And you can’t make her. This isn’t good for her, and it’s going to kill you.” Angrily my father started to say something, but my mother intervened. “Hunter’s right, Maghach,” she said, a slight edge to her voice. “This isn’t right for either of us.” “It is. It could be,” Da insisted.
“Hunter is thinking more clearly than you, my love,” Mum said. “I am here this once. I can’t come here again.”
“You must come back,” my father said, a note of desperation entering his voice. “I must be with you. Nothing is worthwhile without you.” “Be ashamed, Maghach,” my mother said in her no-nonsense tone. It gave me joy to hear it, bringing back memories of my childhood, when I’d had parents. “To say that nothing is worthwhile dishonors the beauty of the world, the joy of the Goddess.” “If you can’t stay, then I’ll kill myself!” Daniel said wildly, his hands reaching for her spirit. “I’ll kill myself to be with you!”<
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My mother’s face softened, even as I despised the weakness my father was showing. “My darling,” she said gently. “I love you with all my heart. I always did, from the first moment I saw you. I look forward to loving you again, in our next lives together, and again, in our lives after
that. You will always be the one for me. But now I am dead, and you are not, and you mustn’t
desecrate the Goddess by wishing to be dead yourself. To deny life is wrong. To mourn in a negative, self-centered way is wrong. You must live for yourself, and for your children. Hunter and Alwyn need your help and your love.” I was glad to hear my mother confirm the feelings I’d had about this. I felt a mixture of pathos and disgust, pity and shame, watching the despair on Da’s face. “I don’t care!” he cried, and I wanted to hate him. “All I want is to be with you! You are my life! My breath, my soul, my happiness, my sanity! Without you there is nothing. Don’t you understand?” My father fell forward onto his arms, sobs shaking his thin frame. Once again I felt this couldn’t be the father I had known. I was horrified at how weak he had become. “Don’t judge him too harshly, Hunter,” came Mum’s voice, and I sensed she was speaking to me alone. “When you were a child, he was a god to you, but now you see that he’s just a man, and he’s mourning. Don’t judge him until you too have lost something precious.” “I did lose something precious,” I said, looking in her direction. “I lost my brother. I lost my parents.”
Her voice was sad and regretful. “I’m so sorry, my love. We did what we thought was best. Perhaps we were wrong. I know you’ve suffered. And Linden suffered, too, perhaps most of all. But that wasn’t your fault; you know that. And please believe me when I say that I loved you, Linden, and Alwyn with every breath, every second of every day. I made you, I bore you, and I will be with you forever.”
I hung my head, unwilling to start crying again. “My son,” she said, “please take your father away from here. Destroy thisbith dearc. Don’t let Daniel return. My shadow world will eventually sap his strength and take his life if he doesn’t stay away. And if he keeps calling me back, my spirit will be unable to progress on its journey. As much as I love your father, you, and Alwyn, I know that it’s right for my spirit to move on, to see what more lies ahead of me.”
“I understand,” I choked out. My father was still bent double, weeping. I felt something brush me, as if Mum had touched me with her hand, and as she faded away, I saw a flash of her beautiful face.
“Fiona! No!” Da cried, reaching futilely for her, then collapsing again. When she was gone, I swallowed hard and rubbed the sleeve of my shirt against my face. Then, getting to my feet, I grabbed hold of my father’s arm and dragged him outside, into the cold air. As awful as it was outside, it was still better than the wretched sickness of the hut. Daniel crumpled to the ground, and I stumbled, trying to catch him. I felt weak, light-headed, and sick, as if someone had dosed me with poison. At first I didn’t understand why I felt so terrible, but then I realized that Mum had meant her words literally: contacting the shadow world saps one’s life force. I looked at my father, facedown on the ground, clawing at the snow-encrusted dirt, and realized exactly why Daniel looked so awful—who knew how long he’d been doing this? Two months? It was a wonder he was alive at all, if I felt like this after only one time, and I was a young, strong, healthy man. It came to me that I might have to turn Daniel in to the council to save his life. I wondered whether I would have the strength. I staggered to my feet and pulled my father up by one arm. Then, with him leaning heavily on me, we headed back to the cabin.
Shadows
On Sunday, I woke up to find my father’s bed empty. Hell! I had been right: it was like living
with a junkie, and I always had to be on alert in case he tried to score. I immediately threw on some clothes, feeling a mixture of anger, a reluctant empathy, and a tight impatience. It was amazing what desperation could lead a man to do, I thought twenty minutes later. My father was so weak that a trip to the grocery store could exhaust him for hours, but here, in his overwhelming desire to reach hisbith dearc, he was able to trudge for miles through a Canadian forest in winter.
As I neared the place of darkness, feeling the familiar senses of nausea and fear, I wondered bleakly what I was going to do with my father—let him kill himself? Try to save him? Steeling myself, drawing on any strength I had, I ducked into the low opening of the hut and found my father, his face lighting with ecstasy. As my eyes focused, I felt my mother’s spirit take shape above the glowing opening into the shadow world. Daniel looked up, joy making him seem twenty years younger. He reached out his hands to her ethereal form. I crept close, awed by my mother’s presence as I had been the first time. Kneeling by Daniel, I couldn’t help allowing myself to enjoy the feel of her presence, which would be all I could have until I joined her one day in the shadow world.
“Daniel,” Mum said, “I’m telling you that you must stop this. You must remain among the
living. It is not your time.” Her voice sounded more firm, and I was glad. If she had been truly needy or welcoming, Da would have been dead a month ago. “I don’t know how, Fi,” Da answered, shaking his head. “I only know how to be with you.” “That isn’t true,” my mother said. “You had a lifetime of other people before me.” I felt a warmth from her directed at me, almost like a smile, and I smiled back, though I was feeling queasy and weakened by thebith dearc. “I don’t want other people,” Da said stubbornly. “You will learn to want other people,” Mum said firmly, taking on a tone that was so familiar to me—the one she took when one of us kids had persisted too long in lame excuses for a wrongdoing. “Now I’m telling you, Daniel, you must not call me back again. You are hurting me. My spirit must move on. You’re not letting that happen. Do you want to hurt me?” “Goddess, Fiona, no!” said my father, looking appalled. My mother’s voice softened. “Daniel, you were the strong one in our marriage. You kept us going when I would have given up. It was your strength I relied on. I need to rely on that strength now. You must be strong enough not to call me back, to stay with the living. Do you understand?”
Da looked at the ground, seeming lost, bereft. Finally he gave a broken nod and covered his face with his hands.
Once again I felt the warmth from my mother, but tinged with sadness—a sadness borne of understanding and empathy. She knew how much my father was suffering; she knew how much I had suffered. She loved us both with all her heart, and in return I felt an intense love for her, the mother I had lost.
Silently Fiona’s spirit brushed a shadowy kiss across us both, and floated through thebith dearc. As soon as she was gone, my father collapsed on his side on the ground. I sagged myself, hating the feeling of weakness and sickness that pulled me down. But I struggled to sit up and quickly performed the rite that would shut thebith dearcdown. When the last of it had faded and I could see solid, frozen ground again, I sat back, trying not to throw up. As soon as I could, I got Da out of there, and again we sank down outside in the snow, too weak to move. Ten minutes later I felt together enough to call to my da, who was lying, gray-faced, on the ground a few feet away from me.
“I can’t believe you!” I said, letting fly with my frustration. “Could you possibly be more stupid, more self-destructive? Could you be a little more selfish?” Da’s eyes fluttered open, and he sat up slowly, with difficulty. If he had been the old da, he would have come over and backhanded me. But this da was weak, in mind, body, and spirit. “Why are you choosing death over being with your live children?” I went on, feeling my anger ignite. “I’m the only son you have left! Alwyn’s the only daughter you’ll ever have! You don’t think you should stick around for our sakes? Not only that, but you’re deliberately hurting Mum. Every time you contact her, every time you draw her to thebith dearc, you’re slowing down her spirit’s progress. She needs to move on. She must go on to the next phase of her existence. But you don’t give a bloody flip! Because you can only think aboutyourself!” Da’s eyes were focused i
ntently on me now, and his ashen cheeks were splotched pale red with anger. “I’ve tried to resist—” he began, but I cut him off. “You haven’t tried bloody hard enough!” I shouted, getting to my feet. My stomach roiled, but I stood, looming over him like a bully. “You just keep giving in! Is that what you want to teach me, your son? You want to teach me how to give in, give up, think only about myself? That’s
what you’re showing me. You never would have been this way eleven years ago. Back then you
were a real father. Back then you were a real witch. Now look at you,” I concluded bitterly. I could count on one hand the number of times I had been this hateful, this mean to someone I cared about. I hated the words coming out of my mouth but couldn’t stop them once I started. “You have no idea how hard it is,” my father said, his voice scraped raw. I snorted and paced around the spent fire in the middle of the log benches. I felt ill, exhausted; I needed to get out of there. I knew I had to bring Da back to the cabin, but I had to talk myself out of leaving him there to freeze. Minutes passed, and I wondered what the hell I was going to do with myself. Everything in my life right now was miserable. The only person who could make me feel at all better wasn’t here, and I couldn’t seem to reach her. Bloody hell, why did I ever come here?
At last, after a long time, Da said, “You’re right.” He sounded impossibly old and broken down. I looked over at him, and he went on, struggling to find the words. “You’re right. I’m being selfish, thinking only of myself. Your mother would have been stronger. She should have been the one to live.” My eyes narrowed as I readied to nip his self-pity in the bud. “But it was me who lived, and I’m making a hash of it, aren’t I, lad?” He gave a crooked, fleeting smile, then looked away. “It’s just—I can’t let her go, son. She was my life. I gave up my firstborn son for her.”