Under Her Spell

by Bridget Essex

  “I don’t know. But I think it’s imperative that we find Emily now. That ghost came directly to you. That’s odd. They don’t do that often; you know that,” said Alice, leaping off of her shoulder.

  Isabella gazed down at her costume and shook her head. There just wasn’t time to change. She braided her hair quickly and tied it in a knot, hoping it would hold, and began to follow Alice around to the steps from the stage down to the main floor and into the sanctuary.

  “What are you doing?” asked Pye after her. Isabella put her finger to her lips—no one else had seen her about to leave.

  “Isabella,” whispered Pye, ducking behind the scenery with her, “you can’t leave—it’s about to start! You’ll miss the ritual!”

  “Something’s wrong… I have to find Emily,” said Isabella resolutely. Pye’s mouth quirked to the side, but she said nothing, only nodded.

  “Quickly, though—maybe you could make it back in time…” she whispered, voice trailing off as Isabella turned, dashing away from the stage and into the audience, Alice parting the crowd a little ahead of them, as if by magic, small body darting between legs that moved obligingly out of her way. No witch wanted to get on the bad side of a Familiar. And Alice had a certain reputation.

  Isabella gazed back at the sanctuary only once, taking in the candles lit overhead, affixed in the old, bronze chandelier that arched far away against the mosaic of the ceiling. The stained glass windows of the goddesses were darkened by the night sky.

  But, strangely, the largest of the windows, the one at the very center of the far wall of the sanctuary depicting Cordelia, shone. For a single moment, Isabella’s heart leapt, for it seemed as if the window moved. She stared harder, and her heart did leap up then, into her throat, her pulse thundering inside of her.

  Because, as Isabella stared at the stained glass window...well, it seemed as if the goddess stared back at her.

  And then, as Isabella continued to watch, the goddess in the window smiled, just a little—almost imperceptibly. And winked.

  Isabella stared for another long moment, but whatever she had seen...it was now gone. It seemed as if everything had gone back to normal. With a shrug, Isabella opened the large oak door between the festivities of the sanctuary and the darkness of the empty corridor beyond. Alice snaked through and trotted down the length of it, tail twitching. “Come along, Isabella,” she called back over her cat shoulder.

  “But...the window...” she began, but her Familiar was having none of it. Alice trotted away at quite a good clip, and Isabella would have to run to catch up with her now.

  And Isabella shut the door behind her, closing out the happy sounds of the people and the beginnings of the Imbolc ritual with a sigh.

  She followed after the cat without another backward glance.

  “You can scent her, yes?” asked Isabella, coming to a crossroads of the corridor. Ahead of them was another long row of doors that held the priestesses’ rooms, and the cross section veered away to the left and right with more doors. It was anyone’s guess as to where Emily might be or which direction they should take, but Isabella paused for a moment as Alice raised her little nose to the air. The witch felt a chill wind drifting toward her like a beckoning finger from the right. She turned, peered down the darkened corridor, and could have sworn that she saw something white and drifting up ahead…

  “I think it’s this way, Alice,” said Isabella, feet moving of their own accord, already beginning down that branch of the corridor.

  “How are you so sure?” asked Alice, trotting after her, whiskers twitching.

  Isabella could never have put her surety into words. Why did she think that the ghost was going to Emily? Why was the ghost leading her on at all—or was she? The ghosts came out on Imbolc night because that’s when Lunarose Abbey was in its upheaval time, with the play and ritual and party and vigil, and ghosts deplored any sort of change. Isabella knew these facts, but she couldn’t place them in perspective with this ghost, for the ghost did not behave as ghosts usually did—wandering, gazing ahead into nothingness, sighing a lot and maybe wailing occasionally (contrary to popular belief, there were rarely any rattling chains involved). This ghost had moved through the assembled peoples and had sought Isabella out specifically.

  That was unusual. And Isabella needed to get to the bottom of it. And find Emily now.

  “C’mon,” she whispered, and Isabella began to run down the hallway.

  She could never have explained the urgency in her heart. But Isabella was a witch. And when a witch had a feeling, it must be listened to, and promptly.

  Ignoring a witch’s hunch always came with consequences.

  The shimmer of white ahead of them, impossibly, matched their speed, moving all the faster. Ghosts moved slowly; they didn’t float through the air at the speed of a running woman, but this one did now, for it was always just one corridor turn ahead.

  After several moments of running, her boots making a dreadful clatter against the stone and wooden floors, Isabella stopped at another crossroads, panting, Alice sitting down at her feet, not mussed or winded in the slightest.

  Isabella glanced around herself, perplexed. It didn’t seem possible that they were already in the oldest section of the abbey; the stonework here that had been built upon to create Lunarose was well over a thousand years old, had been rumored to house an abbey to the great star goddess, long before there were pantheons, many goddesses with specific attributes. Isabella had loved this section of the abbey when she was a child, because she and Pye and Tabby and Bridey would play that they were knights and go on scouting adventures for treasure (usually smoothed bits of broken glass from one of the abbey’s unfortunately destroyed windows—which Isabella had absolutely, positively nothing to do with, she’d tell you).

  Here, along this corridor, were old oaken doors that no one ever opened anymore.

  But a single door was opened occasionally...a very specific one.

  And it was open now.

  At the door to the rose garden, Isabella paused. She hadn’t been here in so long. The abbey’s famed garden beneath a dome of glass was where roses grew year round, tended to, but not very much, with mundane and magical means. For some odd reason, whether they were looked after or not, the roses just kept on growing. There were stories that the ghosts of the abbey tended the garden at night, but Isabella had never seen any of the abbey ghosts even near the garden, let alone in it.

  But here, now, the ghost drifted into the center of the circular room, the great glass dome above them free of snow, revealing a spangling of stars and a sharp sickle moon descending in the west. The walls were mostly glass, with thin stones between the long clear panes, and the floor was covered in dirt, Isabella knew, but you couldn’t see it—for the room was filled to brimming with roses.

  Bushes and climbing vines and rose trees—every variety of rose in the world claimed space in this room, but no matter the type of rose, when it grew in the earth here, the blossoms came out white.

  The Lunaroses.

  Some said it was the goddess blessing the abbey. Some whispered words about ghosts, about their effect on living things. But as Isabella stepped into the room, everything else fell away, because though the ghost stood in the very center of the garden, there, between two particularly large rose bushes, stood a single white doe.

  Isabella let out her breath in a rush, the tension she’d been carrying in her shoulders making them droop, for here was her beloved Emily in her deer form intently watching the ghost.

  The ghost turned, took one lingering gaze at Isabella, and disappeared into nothingness.

  Emily transformed into her human shape as Isabella ran across the space between them, putting her arms around the Changer and holding tight.

  “I thought…” Isabella trailed off, searching Emily’s face. She didn’t know what she'd thought. She’d just known she had to find her sweetheart.

  Emily looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Which she had.


  “Isabella,” she whispered, her eyes wide and dark and wild. She clung to the witch’s arms with tight fingers, and Isabella bit her lip as Emily gazed past her, unseeing, into the center of the rose garden.

  “The ghost…” she whispered. “Did you see the ghost?”

  “Yes… She led me here,” Isabella said, before she realized it sounded strange.

  “She spoke to me,” said Emily in a hushed voice, words coming out like a growl. “Isabella, she spoke to me.”

  “A ghost can’t randomly just…” Isabella shut her mouth. Well, this ghost was doing nothing randomly. “What did she say?” she asked Emily then, Emily who was still gripping her arms so tightly.

  “Giene. She said Giene.”

  “Gee-ehn,” repeated Isabella slowly. “It’s an old name.”

  “Do you know it?” Emily sounded desperate, but Isabella shook her head, eyes narrowed.

  “No, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I don’t—”

  “She needs Giene,” said Emily, breath catching. “She’s desperate for Giene.”

  Another chill descended upon the room, but this time, Isabella was ready for it. She held onto Emily as the ghost appeared in the center of the rose garden again—but this time, she gazed at them both, raised her arms and transformed her glowing, shimmery substance into…a bird? A songbird floated in midair and dove into a rose bush. Somehow, impossibly, the ghost bird clutched onto the stem of a rose and ascended into the air with it, beating its see-through wings fiercely before it flew to the window, disappearing as it hit the glass.

  The rose fell to the ground, petals knocked out of the blossom, littering about the mangled stem.

  “The ghost… The ghost is a Changer. Like me." Emily's eyes were round with astonishment. "Isabella, she’s tormented… I could see it in her eyes.” Emily rubbed at her own eyes, her fingers wet when she took them from her face. Isabella reached up and swept away a single tear. “She’s tormented,” Emily repeated, voice low. “She came to me, begging me…but I could only hear one word. Giene. She came into me, and the next thing I knew…I was here. In the garden.”

  Isabella shook her head, took Emily’s hands. “You’ve had a strange experience with a ghost…who possessed you. That would shake anyone,” she said, words soft, soothing. “You’re all right, my darling. Come with me down to the ritual, and tomorrow morning, we’ll talk to my aunt. She knows all of the abbey’s history. She knows the stories of many of the ghosts here. That’s an uncommon name, 'Giene.' I’m sure she can help us.”

  Alice batted at the fallen rose out of cat obligation, but said nothing, eyes narrowed shrewdly.

  Emily nodded, but her expression remained wild as they traversed back through the corridors the long way to the sanctuary. Isabella could never have said how much time had transpired, but surely it couldn’t have been an hour, the length of the ritual.

  Still, it was.

  When the witch, the Changer and the Familiar entered the sanctuary, the ritual was over, the Imbolc party already in full swing, Pye dancing with her two lovelies, Bridey laughing together with Tabby, all of the gathered people singing and dancing and eating and living, joyous.

  It was loud and vibrant, and Isabella suddenly had no stomach for it, her heart unreasonably aching. Something was going on, something she could never have explained, and it had now snared the two of them—Isabella and Emily both.

  Overhead, the stained glass goddess Cordelia stared down at them with flashing blue eyes, cobalt and brilliant on that Imbolc night.

  ---

  “I can’t believe you missed ritual,” said Pye unhelpfully, sprawled on her favorite chair by the fire in the dining hall. Her eyes rolled heavenward as she sighed. “I mean, I know I’ve missed ritual, but you actually love it, unlike me—”

  “I wish you’d told me something was going on,” muttered Bridey, rubbing at her growing belly. “I could have talked to your aunt, maybe postponed the ritual for a little while.”

  “It’s all right,” said Isabella, nursing her cup of tea as she chewed on her lip. The evening hadn't quite followed her plans, but some things couldn't be helped. “It’s a three-day festival. Tonight’s the vigil. That’s my favorite part, anyway.” It was true, but she still carried a sadness within her for having missed the ritual, the communion with the other witches gathered together hand in hand, spinning the sacred magic together. She missed that togetherness.

  “This is just all so strange…” said Bridey, shaking her head, glancing at the silent Emily. “A ghost seeking you out, speaking. I’ve never heard that name before, 'Giene.' Are you sure it’s even a name?”

  “Yes. Don’t ask me how I know it, but I do,” said Isabella, taking another sip of tea. She rose then, clinking her cup down with finality and smoothing her skirts. “Emily and I are going to see Sophia now—”

  “We’ll come with you,” said Bridey, standing, too.

  “But…” began Isabella, though Pye and Tabby were already on their feet.

  “It’s either that or board games, and I’d rather chew on mooncow bones than play board games with Tabby,” said Pye with a wicked grin. “She cheats!”

  “I have never cheated on anything all my livelong days,” intoned Tabby with a growl, but she was grinning when she said it, and crossing her fingers, too.

  Pye and Emily were on opposite ends of the group; there hadn’t really been any non-awkward way for Pye to offer Emily an apology, and if there was one thing that Pye despised, it was awkwardness. And after the strangeness of last night, Isabella hadn’t found a moment to speak to Emily about their conversations, to tell her about Pye’s history, or about their conversation.

  It was something Pye would do herself, in her own time, she knew.

  Isabella didn’t really think it would improve Emily’s mood if Pye did speak to her right now, anyway. All of that seemed forgotten to the Changer, who moved this morning as if she were walking through water, eyes dark and distant and wild, somewhere else, drawn by an invisible thread along a path only she could see.

  She brightened, though, as they ventured toward Sophia’s study. Isabella's aunt’s rooms were located on the first floor, near to the entrance of the abbey, where everything was cheerfully still. When they reached Sophia’s door, Isabella could hear humming from within. The witch took a deep breath and rapped three times at the sturdy oaken door.

  “Come in!” sang out Sophia’s voice, and the women trooped into the room, shutting the door behind them. The abbess’s study was a small room, in comparison to the grandeur of the rest of the abbey, though it did boast one small stained glass window that bore a single white rose. It shone with sunlight behind Sophia, who stood at her desk, grinning at the assembled ladies before her.

  “What can I do for you, my darling?” she asked Isabella, gathering up two of the books on her desk and tidying up the papers and scrolls a bit. “I’m sorry it’s so messy, what with Imbolc and all—”

  “Aunt Sophia, your desk has looked like that ever since I started coming here,” Isabella teased her, then sobered. “We were wondering if you could help us, actually.”

  “What is it, dear?” asked Sophia, frowning. “Did something happen—”

  “Have you ever heard the name Giene?” Emily came forward, hands in fists at her sides. Her eyes were clear now—insistent.

  Sophia stared at Emily for a full heartbeat, and in that heartbeat Isabella saw something come over her aunt’s face that she couldn’t quite name.

  “'Giene,'” repeated Sophia, clearing her throat, turning away. “Yes. I’ve heard that name. She was a knight.” She strode stiffly to her bookshelf and pulled off a worn leather tome. Sophia flipped through it for a long moment, and that’s when Isabella realized her aunt’s hands were shaking.

  “See—here it is,” said Sophia, setting the tome down on her desk so that the women could gather around and look at the curved writing. It was an old journal, Isabella realized. She glanced up at her aunt, who nodded but didn’t quite
meet her eyes. “This was a journal by one of the founders of the abbey. It talks about the knight Giene. It says she was killed in one of the battles protecting the abbey.”

  “Oh…” said Isabella then, a little crestfallen. “That’s all it says? Nothing more than that…” She flipped through a few pages as her aunt shook her head.

  “I’ve read every book in this abbey many times, and the histories of the abbey many times more than that. That’s the only mention I’ve ever seen of Giene. I’m sorry, m’dears, but I actually have a great deal of work still to get done.” The warmth was gone from her aunt’s voice, and the way Sophia paced around the edge of the desk was so unlike her. Sophia was warm, never dismissive, and Isabella felt they were being all but shooed out of the study.

  “But, Aunt—”

  “Isabella, please, not now,” said her aunt, striding to the bookshelf. Her back was turned purposefully to the women, and Isabella breathed out for a long moment before leaving the study, her friends and Emily trailing behind her.

  “That wasn’t like your aunt at all,” said Tabby, brow furrowed when the door was shut behind them. “What was all that about?”

  “Everyone’s gone moonie,” said Pye, staring down at her nails. “That was the most unhelpful bit of rubbish—”

  “You are talking about Aunt Sophia,” said Isabella with a warning tone. Pye held up her hands in appeasement, and the women began to walk down the corridor together, back the way they’d come, Emily looking thoughtful at Isabella's side.

  “The vigil isn’t for a handful of hours yet,” said Bridey, head tilted, hand to the small of her back. “The party was intense last night, and I’m quite tired… I think I’m going to go have a lie down.”

  “You’re just in love with your current book,” snorted Pye. “Don’t pull that pregnant woman stuff on us.”

  “Okay, so it is very good.” Bridey was laughing. “But some quiet time might benefit us all.”