by Cate Tiernan
"Here we go." She pulled a quaint pair of half-moon I glasses from her sweater pocket and perched them on her nose. "Let me copy this down for you." Then, just like the women at my church exchange recipes and knitting patterns, Alyce copied down an age-old Wiccan spell that would bind my mother's tools to me.
"It will be almost as if you're part of them and they are part of you," Alyce explained as I folded the paper and put it in my inside coat pocket. "It will make them more effective for you and also less effective for anyone else who tries to use them. I really think you should do this right away." Her gaze, usually so mild, seemed quite piercing as she examined me over the rims of her glasses.
"Um, okay, I will," I said. "But why?"
Alyce paused for a moment, as if considering what to say. "Intuition," she said finally, shrugging and giving me a smile. "I feel it's important."
"Well, all right," I said. "I'll try to do it tonight."
"The sooner the better," she advised. Then the bells over the door rang as a customer came in. I hastily said good-bye to Alyce and David and went out to Das Boot. I flipped on my one headlight, blasted the heater, and headed for home.
CHAPTER 5
Bound
June 2000
Two covens in Scotland were wiped out: one in 1974 and one in 1985. the first was in the north, the second, toward the southeast. Now the trail is leading into northern England, so I am making plans to go. I have to know. This started out being about my parents. Now it's a much bigger picture.
I've heard that the council is seeking new members. I've put my name in. If I were a council member, I would have access to things that are usually not publicized. Its seems the fastest wayb to have my questions answered. When I come back from the north, I'll learn of their decision.
I applied to become a Seeker. With a name like mine, it seems almost inevitable.
— Giomanach
Mary K. breezed in halfway through dinner. Her cheeks were pink. There was also something wrong with her shirt. I gazed in puzzlement at the two flaps of the hem. They didn't meet—the shirt was incorrectly buttoned. My eyes narrowed as I thought about what that meant.
"Where have you been?" Mom asked. "I was worried."
"I called and let Dad know I'd be late," my sister said, sitting down at the table. Seated, her telltale shirt wasn't so obvious. "What's that?" she asked, sniffing the serving platter.
"Corned beef. I made it in the Crock-Pot," Mom said. Dad had glanced up at the sound of his name, pulled back to reality for a moment. He's a research-and-development guy for IBM, and sometimes he seems more comfortable in virtual reality.
"Hmmm," said Mary K. disapprovingly. She picked out some carrots, cabbage, and onions and conspicuously left the meat. Lately she'd been on a major vegetarian kick.
"It's delicious." I said brightly, just to needle her. Mary K. sent me a look.
"So I think Eileen and Paula have decided on the York Street house, in Jasper," my mom said.
"Cool," I said. "Jasper's only about twenty minutes away, right?" My aunt and her girlfriend had decided to move in together and had been house hunting with my mom, a real estate agent.
"Right," Mom said. "An easy drive from here."
"Good." I stood up and carried my plate to the kitchen, already anxious for my family to be asleep. I had work to do.
The spell for binding tools to oneself was complicated but not difficult, and it didn't involve and tools or ingredients that I didn't have. I knew I would need to work undisturbed and I didn't want to do it outside. The attic seemed like a good place.
At last I heard my parents turn in and my sister brush her teeth noisily in the bathroom we shared. She poked her head into my room to say good night and found me hunched over a book discussing the differences between practicing Wicca on your own and within a coven. It was really interesting. There were benefits—and drawbacks—to both ways.
"Night," said Mary K., yawning mildly.
I looked at her. "Next time you're late, you might want to make sure your shirt is buttoned right," I said
She looked down at herself, horrified. "Oh, man," she breathed.
"Just… be careful." I wanted to say more but forced myself to stop there.
"Yeah, yeah, I will." She went into her room. Twenty minutes later, sensing that everyone was asleep, I tiptoed up the attic stairs with Maeve's tools, the spell Alyce had written out for me, and four white candles.
I swept one area clean of dust and set the four candles in a large square. Inside the square I drew a circle with white chalk. Then I entered the circle, closed it, and set Maeve's tools on one of my old sweatshirts. Theoretically, it would be full of my personal vibrations.
I meditated for a while, trying to release my anguish over Hunter, trying to sink into the magick, feeling it unfold before me, gradually revealing its secrets. Then I gathered Maeve's tools: her robe, her wand, her four element cups, her athame, and things I wasn't sure were tools but that I'd found in the same box: a feather, a silver chain with a Claddagh charm on it, several chunks of crystal, and five stones, each one different.
I read the ritual chant.
"Goddess Mother, Protectress of Magick and Life, hear my song. As it was in my clan, so shall it be with me and in my family to come. These tools I offer in service to you and in worship of the glory of nature. With them I shall honor life, do no harm, and bless all that is good and right. Shine your light on these tools that I may use them in pure intent and in sure purpose."
I laid my hands on them, feeling their power and sending mine into them.
The same way it had happened in the past, a song in Gaelic came to my lips. I let it slip quietly into the darkness.
"An di allaigh an di aigh
An di allaigh an di ne ullah
An di ullah be nith rah
Cair di na ulla nith rah
Cair feal ti theo nith rah
An di allaigh an di aigh."
Quietly I sang the ancient words again and again, feeling a warm coil of energy circling me. When I had sung this before, it had drawn down an immense amount of power—I'd felt like a goddess myself. Tonight it was quieter, more focused, and the power flowed around and through me like water, going down my hands into the tools until I couldn't tell where the tools left off and I began. I couldn't feel my knees where I was kneeling, and giddily I wondered if I was levitating.
Suddenly I realized that I was no longer singing and that the warm, rich power had leached away, leaving me breathing hard and flushed, sweat trickling down my back.
I looked down. Were the tools bound to me now? Had I done it correctly? I had followed the instructions. I had felt the power. There was nothing else on the paper Alyce had given me. Blinking, feeling suddenly incredibly tired, I gathered everything up, blew out the candles, and crept downstairs. Moving silently, I unscrewed the cover for the HVAC vent in the hallway outside my room and put my tools, except the athame, back into my never-fail hiding place.
Back in my room, I changed into my pajamas and brushed my teeth. I unbraided my hair and brushed it a few times, too tired to give it any real attention. Finally, with relief, I got into bed with Maeve's Book of Shadows and opened it to my bookmark. Out of habit I held my mother's athame, with its carved initials, in my hand.
I started to read, sometimes pointing the athame to the words on the page, as if it would help me decipher some of the Gaelic terms.
In this entry Maeve was describing a spell to strengthen her scrying. She mentioned that something seemed to be blocking her vision: "It's as if the power lines are clouded and dark. Ma and I have both scryed and scryed, and all we get is the same thing over and over: bad news coming. What that means, I don't know. A delegation is here from Liathach, in northern Scotland. They, like us, are Woodbanes who have renounced evil. Maybe with their help we can figure out what's going on."
I felt a chill. Bad news coming. Was it the mysterious dark force that had destroyed Belwicket, Maeve's coven? No, it could
n't be, I realized; that hadn't happened until 1982. This entry had been written in 1981, nearly a year earlier. I tapped the athame against the page and read on.
"I have met a witch."
The words floated across the page, written in light within the regular entry. I blinked and they were gone, and I stared at Maeve's angular handwriting, wondering what I had seen. I focused, staring hard at the page, willing the words, the writing to appear again. Nothing.
I drew in my breath, staring at the page. The words appeared beneath the athame. When I drew it away, they faded. I passed the knife over the book again. "Among the group from Liathach, there is a man. There is something about him. Goddess, he draws me to him."
Oh my God. I looked up, glanced around my room to make sure I was awake and not dreaming. My clock was ticking, Dagda was squirming next to my leg, the wind was blowing against my windows. This was all real. Another layer of my birth mother's history was being revealed: she had written secret entries in her Book of Shadows.
Quickly I flipped to the very beginning of the book, which Maeve had started when she was first initiated at fourteen. Holding the athame close to each page, I scanned the writing, seeing if other hidden messages were revealed. Page after page I ran the knife down each line of writing, each spell, each song or poem. Nothing. Nothing for many, many pages. Then, in 1980, when Maeve was eighteen, hidden words started appearing. I began reading, my earlier fatigue forgotten.
At first the entries were things Maeve had simply wanted to keep hidden from her mother: the fact that she and a girlfriend were smoking cigarettes, about how Angus kept pressuring her to go "all the way" and she was thinking about it, even sarcastic, teasing remarks or observations about people in the village, her relatives, other members of the coven.
But as time went on, Maeve also wrote down spells, spells that were different from the others. A lot of what Maeve and Mackenna and Belwicket had done was practical stuff: healing potions, lucky talismans, spells to make the crops perform. These new spells of Maeve's were things like how to communicate with and call wild birds. How to put your mind into an animal's. How to join your mind to another person's. Not practical, perhaps. But powerful and fascinating.
I went back to the passage I had found a few minutes ago. Slowly, word by word, I read the glowing letters. Each entry was surrounded by runes of concealment and symbols I didn't recognize. I memorized what they looked like so I could research them later.
Painstakingly I picked out the message.
"Ciaran came to tea. He and Angus are circling each other like dogs. Ciaran is a friend, a good friend, and I won't have Angus put him down."
Angus Bramson had been my birth father. Ciaran must be the Scottish witch Maeve had just met. Previous entries had detailed Maeve and Angus's courtship—they'd known each other practically forever. When Belwicket had been destroyed, Maeve and Angus had fled together and settled in America. Two years later I had been born, though I don't think they ever married. Maeve had once written about her sadness that Angus wasn't he
I believed Cal was mine. I'd never felt so close to anyone before—except Bree.
"Today I showed Ciaran the headlands by the Windy Cliffs. It's a beautiful spot, wild and untamed, and he seemed just as wild and untamed as the nature surrounding him. He's so different from the lads around here. He seems older than twenty-two, and he's traveled a bit and seen the world. It makes me ache with envy."
Oh, God, I thought. Maeve, what are you getting into?
I soon found out.
"I cannot help myself. Ciaran is everything a man should be. I love Angus, yes, but he's like a brother to me—I've known him all my life. Ciaran wants the things I want, finds the same thing's interesting and boring and funny. I could spend days talking to him, doing nothing else. And then there's his magick—his power. It's breathtaking. He knows so much I don't know, no one around here knows. He's teaching me. And the way he makes me feel…
"Goddess! I've never wanted to tough anyone so much."
My throat had tightened and my back muscles had tensed. I rested the book on my knees, trying to analyze why this revelation shook me so much.
Is love ever simple? I wondered. I thought about Mary K. and Bakker, boy most likely to be a parolee by the time he was twenty; Bree, who went out with one loser after another; Matt, who had cheated on Jenna with Raven… was completely discouraging. Then I thought about Cal, and my spirits rose again. Whatever troubles we had, at least they were external to our love for each other.
I blinked and realized my eyelids were gritty and heavy. It was very late, and I had to go to school tomorrow. One more quick passage.
"I have kissed Ciaran, and it was like sunlight coming through a window. Goddess, thank you for bringing him to me. I think he is the one."
Wincing, I hid the book and the athame under my mattress. I didn't want to know. Angus was my birth father, the one who had stayed by her, who had died with her. And she had loved someone else! She'd betrayed Angus! How could she be so cruel, my mother?
I felt betrayed, too, somehow, and knowing that I was perhaps being unfair to Maeve didn't help. I turned off my light, plumped my pillow up properly, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER 6
Knowledge
I'm going to have these scars forever. Every time I look at my wrists, I feel rage all over again. Mom has been putting salves on them, but they ache constantly, and then skin will never be the same.
Thanks the Goddess Giomanach won't bother us anymore.
— Sgath
"If you hum that song one more time, I may have to kick you out of the car," I informed my sister the next morning.
Mary K. opened the lid of her mug and took a swig of coffee. "My, we're grumpy today."
"It's natural to be grumpy in the morning." I polished off the last of my Diet Coke and tossed the empty can into a plastic bag I kept for recyclables.
"Tornadoes are natural, but they're not a good thing."
I snorted, but secretly I enjoyed the bickering. It felt so.. normal.
Normal. Nothing would ever be normal again. Not after what Cal and I had done.
There'd been no mention of a body in the river in this morning's paper, either. Maybe he'd sunk to the bottom, I thought. Or snagged on a submerged rock or log. I pictured him in the icy water, his pale hair floating around his face like seaweed, his hands swaying limply in the current… A sudden rush of nausea almost made me retch.
Mary K. didn't notice. She looked through the windshield at the thin layer of clouds blotting out the morning sun. "I'll be glad when vacation starts." I forced a smile. "You and me both."
I turned onto our school's street and found that all my usual parking spaces were taken. "Why don't you get out here," I suggested, "and I'll go park across the street."
"Okay. Later." Mary K. clambered out of Das Boot and hurried to her group of friends, her breath coming out in wisps. Today it was cold again, with a biting wind.
Across the street was another small parking lot, in back of an abandoned real estate office. Large sycamores surrounded the lot, looking like peeling skeletons, and several shaggy cypresses made it feel sheltered and private—which was why the stoners usually hung out there when the weather was warmer. No one else was around as I maneuvered Das Boot into a space. Wednesday, after school let out at noon, I had an appointment to take it to Unser's Auto Repair to have the headlight repaired.
"Morgan." The melodious voice made me jump. I whirled to see Selene Belltower sitting in her car three spaces away, her window rolled down.
"Selene!" I walked over to her. "What are you doing here? Is Cal okay?"
"He's much better," Selene assured me. "In fact, he's on his way to school right now. But I wanted to talk to you. Can you get in the car for a moment, please?"
I opened the door, flattered by her attention. In so many ways, she was the witch I hoped someday to be: powerful, the leader of a coven, vastly knowledgeable.
I glanced at my watc
h as I sank into the passenger seat It was covered with soft brown leather, heated, and amazingly comfortable. Even so, I hoped Selene could sum up what she had to say in four minutes or less since that was when the last bell would ring.
"Cal told me you found Belwicket's tools," she said, looking excited.
"Yes," I said.
She smiled and shook her head. "What an amazing discovery. How did you find them?"
"I saw Maeve in a vision," I said. "She told me where to find them."
Selene's eyebrows rose. "Goodness. You had a vision?"
"Yes. I mean, I was scrying," I admitted, flushing. I didn't know for sure, but I had a feeling scrying was another thing I wasn't supposed to do as an uninitiated witch. "And I saw Maeve and where the tools might be."
"What were you scrying with? Water?"
"Fire."
She sat back, surprised, as if I had just come up with an impossibly high prime number.
"Fire! You were scrying with fire?"
I nodded, self-conscious but pleased at her astonishment. "I like fire," I said. "It… speaks to me."
There was a moment of silence, and I started to feel uneasy. I had been bending the rules and following my own path with Wicca practically from the beginning.
"Not many witches scry with fire," Selene told me.
"Why not? It works so well."
"It doesn't for most people," Selene replied. "It's very capricious. It takes a lot of power to scry with fire." I felt her gaze on me and didn't know what to say.
"Where are Maeve's tools now?" Selene asked. I was relieved that she didn't sound angry or disapproving. It felt very intimate in the car, very private, as though what we said here would always be secret.
"They're hidden," I said reassuringly.
"Good," said Selene. "I'm sure you know how very powerful those tools are. I'm glad you're being careful with them. And I just wanted to offer my services, my guidance, and my experience in helping you learn to use them."