by Kali Emerson
I stood there with the box in my hand, waiting for Alex to say something that would signal for us to leave. I wanted to leave, I just wanted to be in my own home. It was eerie though, being in a place where I had lived in a life before. It didn’t feel like home did. It didn’t even feel like my childhood home, which felt distant, but still comfortable and familiar. While It did feel familiar, I had no current earthly connection to the place.
Alex slid his arm around me, and touched the box in my hand. I felt a sudden burst of energy radiate through my body, starting from my fingers all the way down to my toes. The way his arm tightened around me, I knew he felt it too. It was like when he touched the box we connected through it, through the memories that the box contained.
“Are you ready to go home?” Gideon turned to open the door.
“What if we have more questions?” Alex stood there, not budging.
“All of your questions will be answered with time. As far as we know this is not time sensitive.” He turned the handle and the large door swung open, exposing the cool air just outside. Alex nudged me forward, so I could leave first.
“How do we get home?” I looked at Gideon as I exited.
“The same way you came.” He smiled.
As we made our way back out to the middle of the meadow, a few people from the village gathered and I couldn’t figure out what they were looking at. I walked in step with Alex. As we approached the edge of the forest, Gideon stopped and motioned his hand to reveal a portal.
“Through here?”
“Yes.”
Alex let go of me and stepped through first, disappearing into the darkness. I looked behind me, realizing the villagers had been watching us. They must know why we were there, and who we were. It must be true, what they were saying. What Maria said.
“We will be in contact.” Gideon nodded his head at me, and I stepped through the portal following Alex. It was dizzying, but less than the first time and I arrived back in my living room quicker. He was standing there, waiting for me to come back.
He stared at me for a long time, and I gazed back at him.
“Are you ready for this?” He stepped closer, grasping the box.
“I think so.” I sat the box down on the table and stood back up. Alex held my face, and kissed me so gently.
“Whatever happens, just remember that this is ours.”
11
Trouble always found me, even if it wasn’t what I was looking for. Although I had been looking for it recently. I always ended up off the deep end. It was probably because I always had one foot over the edge, waiting for something to tip me over and make me fall off completely.
So I just stayed there sinking deeper into a darker existence than I had been living in the days before. I sunk further into the rayless abyss letting it obsess over my helpless soul. Alex was just as far gone as I was. He was just as battered and broken. It wasn’t a coincidence that our two souls had existed as one.
We had nothing to fill each other's cup, so we had to seek out the contents to fill it on our own. The greatest part of being an empty person filling up another empty person, was the ability to choose what we were going to fill them up with. We could seek out our own, and fill the other with the new joys we found instead. I had hoped for so long to get rid of the aching night inside of my head and not only did Alex understand, he knew what it felt like. We had both accepted our fate long ago, but I caught a glimpse of hope in the form of a dream waking me up from what felt like an eternal slumber.
He held me, standing in the living room with the box of past life memories spread out on our table. We had spent all night scanning through them, looking for something that pointed us in the right direction. We searched for an answer to the lingering question that had been asked for centuries. Is the future set in stone?
Through the letters exchanged back and forth for years, the two of our souls tried to figure out the same thing in every life, always getting the same inconclusive answer. We didn’t know who to trust, even though we had previously trusted one side so much. It was hard for me to trust people, and the only other person I felt complete trust in beside myself was Alex.
His hands squeezed me tighter, and I melted into him. He had me entirely, and without question. If I had been sure about anything in my life, it was him. He held such a defenseless part of me I almost felt naked when I walked away.
He took a step back and his hand ran down the back of my arm stopping at my hand. We had our music shuffled and a song came up, which I had told Alex reminded me of him. He remembered when I said it the very first time, the first day we met. We listened to it on the way home from the party when he dropped me off at my condo when he didn’t even try to kiss me, even though we both wanted to.
I lifted my hand toward the stereo, attempting to use my magic to turn the volume up. I had to concentrate really hard, but slowly the nob moved and the ballad continued to serenade us. He rocked back and forth while swinging my hand back and forth, enticing me to dance with him. It was a slow song, so I smiled and wrapped my arm around the back of his head, swaying on the beat with him. He nestled his nose into my neck while we let the music engulf us in melodic movements.
I kept my face close to him, moving to each beat and cord played effortlessly and so weighted to each other. I pulled back and he playfully pulled me back into the embrace, swaying again. Suddenly I felt our energies shift, pulling up and out like it had a few days ago. Then I felt something else happen, a swift variation in the energy around us. I took a step back and opened my eyes to see all of the papers from the box floating around us, intermixed with our auras floating around us. When he looked too, I could see the amazement in his eyes.
My powers started to show up in intimate moments that were filled with emotion, and that had been the largest display by far. We continued to sway and sing the rest of the song, laughing at the great magic that I had been able to do.
“Amazing.” He stopped and leaned down, meeting my lips in a kiss. Even after the song was over, we stood there for a while longer, and the photos and letters dropped down floating slowly on the floor all around us. He leaned over to turn the volume back down.
“I can’t wait to see what else you can do.” He took my chin and cupped in his hand, looking down to me with a smirk growing across his face.
We gathered all of the papers together, and brought them into the kitchen where we could spread them out more. We decided to start logging our own journal as we read through everything. They were out of order and it was hard to keep their stories straight.
Alex sat at my kitchen table with a cigarette hanging out his mouth. It was so cold from the window being open, I thought about getting a jacket to sit down with him. He was shifting through a stack of old papers that had yellowed at the edges. Some of them were so old I thought they would disintegrate in his hands. Other papers were photographs. Staged, and in copper tones. He flipped through another stack of papers, and was separating them into different piles.
“What are those?” I leaned over at what he was doing.
“Some of them are diary entries.” I noticed only a few of the pictures depicted Cassandra and Oliver. They aged only slightly. The only sign of it was three different pictures where her hair was slightly longer in each one. The diary entrees were all separate pieces of paper rather than a book that was being written in.
Alex handed me a stack of small sand colored papers.
“These are from before Cassandra and Oliver.”
“Before?”
“Yes. We've been there three times before.” He moved one stack of papers toward me.
“I'm organizing the papers into piles based on who wrote them. Then, some of them are diary entries and those I have right here.” Alex slid another picture across the table to me. The back dated 1925 with a note reading ‘To My Love, I will see you in the next life.’ in a familiar cursive twist. The pair were standing in front of the cottage.
“We spent a lot of time
there.”
“Maybe they were telling us the truth.” He added another paper to one of the three piles.
“Or maybe we were just gullible a lot.”
A slight curl of his lips, cheered him up slightly. He had been so focused and obsessed I could barely get him to look at me the past few days.
“Alex.”
He looked up at me with tired eyes.
“Let's take a break.”
He looked back down at his project, and sat back thinking about what I said.
“Okay. What kind of break.”
“I always celebrate Yule with my family, but my dad is doing something at the restaurant this year, so I want to go somewhere with you. If you’re up for it.”
He thought for a moment, not having celebrated any Pagan holidays before he agreed. He had told me before he wanted to know what it was like. He liked to call himself a solo witch, not really identifying with any particular craft. Since he didn’t know his parents well, they didn’t teach him anything from their own spiritual path. He said he remembered some things from when he was a kid, but nothing that would help guide him through learning it.
“You want to go away on a vacation?”
“Yes.”
“Well, where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere you want. I just want to be with you.”
He thought for a moment, I could see the wheels spinning in his head, trying to think of a place he wanted to go. I half expected it to be a ridiculous answer, but what he came back with surprised me even more.
“Lets go to New York.”
The trip made sense because we could drive there in a few hours, and we could find a nice hotel and look at the lights that would be up for Christmas.
“Okay.”
We spent the next few days sorting through the rest of the box, while also preparing for our extended trip. I was excited to get away with him, even though he practically lived with me, and even moved his art table into my spare bedroom on the other side of the condo. We spent all of our time together, but still the difference would be a luxurious hotel room and undisturbed time alone with him.
I loved that city. It was one of my favorite places to go, and I had made Fiona travel with me there several times before. We always went when it was warmer outside, because we did a lot of walking and it was more enjoyable when we weren’t covered from head to toe in fabric.
We arrived the day before Christmas Eve which meant we had one day of shopping before all of the stores would close down for the Holiday. The only places that remained open were the bars and restaurants. New York City was a diverse place, and even though there was a majority that celebrated Christmas, there were still plenty that didn’t.
We left our things at the hotel and set out to 5th Ave. We walked there from our hotel, making our way through the crowds of hundreds of people on the sidewalk. We both looked up at the lights, and all of the illuminated and merry decorations that lined the streets so fully. For a moment I reimagined the holiday the way that I wanted. With Alex, strolling the streets and buying things that we didn’t need, then going home to sit by the fireplace with hot coffee in our hands. There wouldn’t be room for chaos, only ease.
It was nice to see him smile so wide. The lights twinkled in his eyes as we passed each one. For a few blocks we didn’t even go into any stores, we just walked and blinded ourselves with Christmas. We finally got to an area where there were less people, and then were consumed by a crowd again as we approached the enormous tree at The Rockefeller Center. We stopped in front of it, and stood there for a while. Alex could barely look away, but when he did it was back at me.
My eyes met with his gaze, and he leaned down to kiss my cold lips, then returned back to look at the tree.
“In all of this craziness, you’re the only thing that’s making it worth it. I wouldn’t do anything else like this for anyone else. I’ve had some fucked up shit happen to me, but Mara you are the only good to come out of it.” He turned to look at me directly.
“It doesn’t matter what we do, who we believe, because as long as I’m with you that’s all that matters.” He leaned in to kiss me again, but that time I felt the intense energy swirl between us. I felt my purse lift up slightly, and when I realized it I shoved it back down. Alex hadn’t noticed.
“Do you think we can develop our magic on our own?”
“Did you hear anything in the prophecy that said that we needed help?”
“Why did you want to ask for help then?” I looked back up at him.
“Just for information, I only want to do this with you. I don’t care about any of them.”
“That was sneaky.” I smirked, understanding why he didn’t tell me he wanted to play both sides. They had information about our lives, and we needed it. Just the boxes of memories wouldn’t be enough to tell us everything we needed. Even the cottage held more information than what we had.
“How long are we going to keep it up?”
“I don’t know yet, but there's still so much to know I can feel it. I think Maria is hiding more information than The Coven is. Our past selves have chosen The Coven for a reason, and I really think it’s because they know more, and are willing to share more.” We turned to walk in another direction, toward the stores on the other side of the street.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, can we just enjoy the city for a few days?”
He looked at me and roped his arm around mine.
“Anything you want.”
The next few days we spent in the hotel room, changing our minds about trying to get into a restaurant on the two biggest Holidays in America. We laid in bed together, only getting up to shower in the glass shower that was in the middle of our hotel room. We watched so many movies making sure to take breaks in between, some were sexually motivated and others were brought on by hunger. We ordered room service for every meal, and spoiled the shit out of ourselves with alcohol and marijuana.
We started to fill ourselves up with gluttony and greed, but it was what the two of us deserved after all, the lack of self indulgence was the reason for having lost everything in our lives. We had spent so much time looking after and taking care of people that weren’t ourselves, so when we could indulge in each other, we did. It was time to care for ourselves in turn.
Even in the midst of a prophecy revolving around us we had to take care of other people, trust in other people to tell us what we needed to know. In the end it wouldn’t be about us, but what we could give other people.
The day before Yule, we decided to leave our hotel in Manhattan and drive down to Montauk. We found a hotel with no problem because no one wanted to drive four hours to the beach in the middle of winter. We bought a few bundles of firewood on the way, so we could make a fire on the beach in front of the hotel.
I found a cloaking spell in my moms spell book that we would use to conceal ourselves, since we weren’t supposed to be out on a public beach with a bonfire full of witchcraft.
Yule used to be my least favorite Holiday as a kid, because it was nothing like Christmas. We didn’t do gifts on Yule, and it was the time where we bore our souls and released everything that had been building up within us the last year. It was a time to get rid of anything that would hold us back from the things we wanted to do in the next year.
It’s where people got ‘New Year's Resolutions’ from. It derived from ancient Pagan practices, and was stolen to fit a more modern agent.
It was a good thing I brought warmer clothes with, because out on the beach at the end of the island was going to be frigid. I was surprised that Alex had agreed to doing it with me.
I bundled up completely and wore a hat, even though I hated hats. Alex carried the wood down. I grabbed the stack of papers we wrote on, with all of the things we wanted to manifest the next year. We walked down the stairs and out the back of the building, down a long pier in the sand leading out onto the light sanded beach. We waited until late, to reduce the amount of people that w
ould see us walking down before I did the cloaking spell.
“Is right here good?” Alex yelled from thirty feet ahead of me. The wind started to pick up and the grey waves crashed along the shore line, creating a static in one of my ears.
“Yes.” I jogged to catch up, and he dropped the logs in the sand.
“Do you have the spell with you?” He looked down at me and blew into his hands to warm up.
“I told you to wear gloves, you’re going to freeze before we’re done.”
“I’ll be fine.” He rubbed his hands together again and jumped up and down a few times. I just shook my head at him and lifted my hands in the air, holding the paper with the latin words scribbled on it in front of my face.
“Nos a facie larva” I visualized a bubble around us, masking us from someone who shouldn't be watching.
“Do you want to try and start the fire?” I looked up at Alex, still rubbing his hands together.
“Give me your lighter.”
“No, with your magic.”
“Baby, I’ve never tried that before.”
“If you can create ice, you should be able to create fire.”
He looked at me funny, twisting his face and burrowing his eyebrows together.
“I guess.” He bent down and rubbed his hands together again.
“What should I do?”
“Treat it like any other spell. Put your hands out and visualize the fire forming in the wood.”
He closed his eyes, holding his hands out in front of him. Nothing happened at first but then when he opened his eyes, we saw a spark from the center of the tipie of logs.
“I think it’s working.”
“Keep your concentration.”
He closed his eyes again, focusing on the growth of the flame. The licks of yellow and red flare danced in the air as the fire grew. The light swept across Alex’s grinning face. Once it was big enough he stood back, admiring his masterpiece.
