Crescent Calling

by Nicole R. Taylor

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked, watching him return with his find. “That’s a leaf. What’s that got to do with casting spells?”

  “It’s a hawthorn leaf,” he retorted. “And I know a little. Robert gave me some pointers, but there’s only so much I can do. The rest is up to you.”

  “Don’t tell me there’s some mystical prophecy about having to find my own path and learn my own lessons,” I complained. “What a cliché.”

  Boone shrugged.

  I threw my hands into the air. “Typical!”

  “Concentrate,” he coaxed, placing his hand on my shoulder. The movement was intimate, and I tensed as he held up the leaf in his open palm.

  “What do I do? Make it float or something? How about bursting into flames?”

  “How about floatin’? I left me fire extinguisher at home.”

  “Ha, ha. Real funny.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I had no idea what I was doing, but I tried to will the leaf to rise. Nothing happened. I screwed up my face and tried again, knowing I looked like I was borderline constipated. This better not be one of those hidden camera shows, I thought.

  “Float, you little piece of—” Just as I was about to throw a tantrum, the leaf began to twitch in Boone’s palm, and before I realized what was happening, it fluttered upward.

  “Yes!” I fist pumped the air. “It worked!”

  “Uh, it more than worked,” Boone said, looking around the clearing.

  Lifting my head, I gasped. We were surrounded by thousands of floating leaves. The effort I’d placed in making a single little thing float had blown out to a seven-meter radius. Wow, talk about putting your back into it.

  Reaching out, I tapped a leaf, and it spun around once before settling back into place.

  “How do they go down?” I asked.

  “You’re askin’ me?”

  “I don’t see anyone else here.” Sighing, I lifted my hands and held them out palm down. “Let’s see… Down!” I waved my hands downward, and the leaves fluttered back to earth. I laughed. “Ha! Take that!”

  “You showed them.”

  “Did I really do that?” I asked, twirling around. “It wasn’t some illusion like one of those Las Vegas magician shows?”

  “Aye. It was you,” Boone replied, his voice echoing through the clearing. “Do you want to try again?”

  “I…” I glanced around uncertainly, not sure I wanted to find out how deep this magic ran. Now that I’d disturbed it, I could sense something just below the surface of my skin. It tingled and crawled, unsettling my heart.

  It was wonderful and amazing and all of those kinds of words, but it was also frightening. I was the last Crescent Witch. I was alone with a monumental task—protecting magic from extinction.

  “Can we walk for a while?” I asked. “I just…”

  Boone frowned but didn’t press. “Sure. Of course, we can.”

  We walked for some time, venturing deeper into the woods than I’d ever been, but Boone seemed to know his way, so I allowed him to take the lead.

  My thoughts rambled, and my uneasiness grew. I wondered what the tarot cards would say about this now that the Tower had played out. I made a mental note to draw a card when I got back to the cottage.

  We must’ve walked a mile or so into the wilderness when Boone suddenly ground to a halt.

  Turning, I asked, “What is it?”

  “This is as far as I can go,” he said mysteriously.

  “What do you mean?” I screwed up my face.

  “If I go any further, I step outside the protection of the hawthorns.” He held up his hand like he was pressing his palm against an invisible wall.

  “I don’t understand. You’re trapped in Derrydun?” It was absurd, but I’d seen stranger things.

  “I told you somethin’ was chasing me the night I came to this place,” he murmured. “If I step outside the boundary, they’ll be able to sense me. I can’t take the risk…”

  I frowned, not liking the tinge of fear that had crept into his voice. It was pointless asking him who was after him because he didn’t remember.

  “Then we go back,” I said, not making a big deal about it, but unfortunately, the weather did.

  Turning my face toward the sky as the first drops of rain fell, I yelped. It was big, fat, and heavy rain, the kind that soaked a person through even though they were in a forest.

  “Dammit,” I cursed. I’d been so lost in my thoughts I hadn’t noticed the weather turning.

  Boone grabbed my hand and tugged be back in the direction of the hawthorn. “C’mon, I know a dry place.”

  We ran through the undergrowth, leaping over fallen logs, skidding across moss, and kicking aside ferns. My hair was dripping as the rain morphed into a full-on downpour.

  “Here,” Boone said, guiding me toward an opening that had appeared out of nowhere.

  Making a break for it, I followed his lead, desperate to get out of the rain and someplace dry.

  “It’s a little cave,” I said, moving inside. The scent of damp earth wafted up my nose, and the air around us closed in. “Wow.”

  “’Tis a druid’s cave,” Boone said, his voice sounding close in the heavy air.

  I turned, my interest piqued. “Druids?”

  “It’s said they used to meet in caves similar to these to practice their faith in times of persecution. They were also safe havens in times of trouble or a dry place to rest one’s head. They’re mostly gone now, but you can still find some hidden in the forests.”

  It was a romantic notion, and the thought of the mystical people made me think of Merlin and the Arthurian legends of Britain.

  “Well, at least it’s dry,” I said, squeezing out my sopping hair.

  He peered out of the opening. “We’ll be here a while.”

  “What? Are you a weather whisperer now?” I asked, sitting on the dirt. I was soaked through, so no use worrying about a bit of dirt on my bum now.

  “No, nothin’ like that. I work outside a lot. I’ve come to know the rain. Ireland is famous for it, after all.”

  He sat next to me, and our arms touched, sending tingles all the way up and down my body. Shivering, I sank into my wet cardigan, and Boone, taking my movement to mean I was cold, wrapped his arm around my back.

  He smelled like nothing I’d ever smelled before. All woodsy and spice. Nestling into his side, I turned toward him and studied the line of his jaw. He swallowed hard and angled his face toward mine. His eyes were so dark they almost looked black, but there were tiny flecks of chestnut through them. When he was a fox, they were a rich honey. He was cute as a fox, I hadn’t lied about that, but as a man…phwoar.

  “Skye…” he murmured, drawing attention to his mouth.

  Realizing I was an inch away from kissing him, I turned away. Tucking my chin against my shoulder, my cheeks flushed scarlet. That was a really close call.

  The last thing I needed right now was to fall in love with a shapeshifter. Everything was in chaos, and flinging myself into a romance with the one person who understood what I was becoming would only lead to more shenanigans I didn’t have the heart to deal with.

  At the thought of my heart, my mind turned to Aileen and her heart attack. The more I learned about this secret supernatural world, the more I was beginning to doubt. And that included the circumstances of her death.

  “Boone?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If there are creatures out there hunting witches… Then… Was it really a heart attack that killed Aileen?” Now that the almost-kissed moment had passed, I was able to look at him again.

  He hesitated, and I knew it had been a lie.

  “Was it a craglorn?” I demanded. “Did it… Was she…”

  “No,” he said firmly. “No, it wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it like?” He didn’t move. He just sat there uncomfortably, not uttering a single world. “Tell me!”

  “I… I went outside the boundary,”
he began, shifting away from me. “There was a woman who used to live here, though no one remembers her. Hannah. I thought she was like me, but she wasn’t.”

  “What was she?” I asked as dread began to seep into my bones.

  “She was one of the higher fae. A spriggan, she was. A spirit of the forest. A trickster.” He ran his hands over his face. “She broke my arms and legs and trapped me. It was Aileen who…”

  He didn’t have to say it. He’d been foolish enough to believe a fae, walked headfirst into danger, and my mother had to bail him out…at the cost of her own life.

  “It was your fault?” I demanded, recoiling. “You were the reason she died?”

  “Nay…” His expression was twisted in agony. “Nay, I wasn’t.”

  “I trusted you!” My heart broke as I scrambled to my feet so fast I almost hit my head on the roof of the druid’s cave.

  “Nay, Skye, it was no one’s fault. Let me explain…”

  But I didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. Bolting from the cave, I ran through the rain, leaping over logs, and sliding down embankments, trying to get as far away from him as I could.

  “Skye!” he shouted after me. “Wait!”

  His cries only spurred me on, my feet pounding on the earth as I fled back toward the village. I ran so far and fast I was back on the main road in no time.

  Bursting into Irish Moon, the bell jingled furiously, and Mairead shot me a surprised look from behind the till.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, curling her lip. “You’re drippin’ all over the floor, and I just swept there.”

  “I… I need a towel,” I declared.

  There was nothing else to say.

  Chapter 13

  I sat on the end of Aileen’s bed, the spell book and tarot cards in front of me. Now completely dry, I was a sight warmer, but my heart was still a freezing block of ice.

  A spriggan had killed Aileen? I didn’t understand, which explained how I’d felt the entire time I’d been in Derrydun. I didn’t understand the accent. I didn’t understand my mother. Now I didn’t understand the secret world of witches and fae that apparently coexisted with reality and mediocrity. Who knew what was real anymore, anyway? Not me.

  Grabbing my phone, I tapped spriggan into a search engine. I could ask Boone, but I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye. His stupidity had brought about my mother’s death and everything that had happened to me since that day. He was the reason the Crescents had called me ‘home.’ He was the reason my life had fallen apart.

  The Internet was no help with my spriggan search. All I found were silly stories about treelike creatures that apparently stole mortal babies only to replace them with changelings. And something about guarding buried treasure, which sounded like something from a video game. It also said they were ugly old men with big heads, which was a complete contradiction to Boone’s story.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” I asked the air.

  She died saving Boone, and everyone thought she’d had a heart attack. How could he live with himself? Rubbing my tired eyes, I sighed. It was like she’d died all over again, only this time, I couldn’t tell anyone about it.

  Opening the tarot cards, I shuffled the deck, taking comfort in the repetitive motion. Taking a deep breath, I pulled a card from the middle of the pack, just to confuse the Universe, and turned it over. It was an image of a naked woman standing in a pond full of rushes. Above her was an array of stars, and she was holding a jug in either hand, filling them in the waves of twin waterfalls. She was called the Star.

  Flipping open the book, I found the page describing her qualities. The star hints at the possibility of rebirth. You have endured life’s challenges brought forward by the collapse of the tower, and you are now open to healing and transformation if you choose to be open to it. The Star is a symbol of rejuvenation and hope. You may now be in a phase where you have to have faith in yourself and the world around you. A better future is possible, but you must remain steadfast.

  A better future? I snorted and tossed the card down. How was this a better future than the one I already had in Australia? Was being a witch supposed to be like this? Clueless and alone, hunted by twisted, starving creatures for my magic…magic I couldn’t even feel inside me.

  I’d made a bunch of leaves float, but that was at the hawthorn with Boone’s help. Now that I was alone, the tingling sensation was gone, leaving me cold. I couldn’t feel my power at all. Some Crescent Witch I was. Last in the line and they’d gotten a complete dud.

  Shuffling the cards again, I drew another. There she was again. The Star. I put the card back and shuffled the deck a little more violently. I pulled another, but this time, from the bottom. The Star.

  I drew again and again, each time turning the card over to find the same bloody thing. Every time, the Star. Star, Star, Star. I drew her so many times the word began to lose all meaning.

  Letting out a frustrated cry, I flipped through the spell book, but the words ran into each other, making less and less sense as I went.

  This was ridiculous. I couldn’t do it.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I exclaimed to the empty room around me. “I can’t even light a candle. You know, like all those witches do in TV shows and stuff? There’s the one with the witch and the vampires, and she’s all like, I found out I was a witch five minutes ago, and look at all these feathers just hovering in the air. I just need to raise my hands and poof! Like she was some witch prodigy or something. I made a bunch of leaves hover, but I guess that had everything to do with the hawthorn and nothing to do with me. You know, I got a C minus is maths, but somehow, I don’t think that counts. This witch stuff isn’t like astrophysics, is it?” I waited for a moment, almost expecting a reply to my rant, but I only got silence. “C’mon, you don’t have to tell me everything, I’m not a cheater, but just give me a little bitty clue. Please? An incy wincy clue? You know, incy wincy like the spider? Ah, forget it.”

  My head started to throb like a headache was coming on, and I glanced around the room. What if the wolf came back? Boone had said someone had come looking after Aileen’s death like they were waiting to see if a Crescent Witch would show up and take over her duties. She’d left me in Australia with bound powers to protect me, and now I was exposed with no way to protect myself.

  Oh, no. What if the wolf was a shapeshifter like Boone? What if it was hunting me for another reason? If I was right, and I couldn’t get hold of my magic, then I would be up shit creek without a paddle. Anyway, if it weren’t the wolf, it would be something else, and it would be all over red rover.

  Aileen, why did you have to leave me? Springing off the bed in a fit of passion, I turned around and around, searching for something to grab. My gaze settled on the dresser, and I strode toward it, my heart beating frantically as desperation began to tear at my fragile emotions.

  “Who were you?” I exclaimed, tearing through the drawers. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do!”

  I pushed clothes aside, searching, hoping, desperate to find something, anything, that would give me a clear answer.

  “You owe me this!” I said, fighting back a torrent of tears. “You left me all alone, and now you’re doing it again! I hate you!”

  Flinging open the closet, I pulled out clothes, tossing them over my shoulder and digging deeper. There were no hidden compartments or mythical door to Narnia, so I turned my attention to stomping on the floorboards. There had to be something here. I’d found the spell book, right? But…nothing else moved.

  Bolting downstairs, I tore apart the living room, tossing books off the shelves and flipping through pages. I pulled the horrible floral cushions of the couch, but they were just ordinary pieces of furniture.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I shrieked. “Show yourself!”

  In the kitchen, I opened cupboards, banged pots and pans, and leafed through recipe books but still found nothing out of the ordinary. There was nothing magical in this w
hole cottage.

  Where would I find her? Where… I froze, my pulse racing.

  Snatching my jacket from the kitchen chair, the house keys rattled in the pocket, and I raced outside, slamming the door behind me. Running through Derrydun, I saw the spire of St. Brigid’s peeking over the treetops. Not giving one hoot, I rounded the end of the little church, skidded on the slippery grass, and fell to my knees beside Aileen’s grave.

  At some point, someone had placed some flowers beside her headstone, some red things I didn’t know the name of, and the capstone had been set into place. It was a really nice grave if the dead gave a toss about what their remains were stuffed in after they’d crossed over.

  Placing my hands on the stone, I closed my eyes and prayed. I had no idea if I was doing it right or if I was being reckless with something I would likely never understand, but I did it anyway. I needed my mother now more than ever.

  I felt my mind fall through the earth, and dizziness almost brought me back, but I forged on. I sensed worms wriggling through tons of dirt and then a void. That had to be the coffin, but there was nothing. It was just a space filled with air.

  The moment I realized the truth was the moment I felt a familiar presence behind me.

  I didn’t have to look up to know it was Boone. The one thing I could control was sensing his aura. His and no one else’s. What was the definition of irony? Probably this.

  “I can’t feel anything,” I said, not even glancing up.

  “It’s because she isn’t there,” he murmured, voicing what I already knew deep down.

  Lifting my hands off the stone, I pushed to my feet and slid my ass onto the end of the empty grave. I didn’t feel so bad about sitting on it now I knew no one was down there.

  “I want to hate you,” I whispered. “So much.”

  “I deserve it.”

  Allowing my head to fall into my hands, I covered my eyes and tried to halt my tears. For a woman I grew up despising, I sure felt drawn to her now.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Tell me how it happened. From the beginning.”