by Sarah Dreher
“Several. Fortunately, none of the old crowd. They’d have wanted to gossip and give me advice all day and into the night.” She took a sip of the tea, which was herbal and quite refreshing. “The animal that led me to the Lower World was a spider.”
“Oh?” Elizabeth seemed as delighted as a child.
“A small brown spider. It said its name was Rusty.” She filled in what else she could recall about webs and breezes.
“That’s perfect, isn’t it?” Elizabeth’s eyes glittered. She started a fresh page in her notebook and scribbled madly. “Navigating your way through a troubled wind, and using it to your advantage. Exactly what you need.”
This time she couldn’t help smiling at the Shaman’s excitement. “It’s wonderful to meet someone who’s excited by her work.”
Elizabeth looked a little embarrassed. “I’ve been doing this for years, and it always surprises me. I think there’s a part of me that doesn’t expect it to work. Or at least not in such elegant ways.”
“Spirit’s full of surprises,” Hermione said.
“More than we could ever imagine,” Elizabeth agreed. “There’s one thing here that concerns me, though.”
She knew exactly what her Shaman meant. “My niece.”
“My Guide told me it’s absolutely essential that she be involved.”
Hermione nodded. “I’ve had that message, too.”
“And yet… from talking to her... I hope I’m not betraying any confidences, but I get the feeling she’s not comfortable with this.”
“She’s not.”
“It puzzles me. Especially growing up with you.”
“It puzzles me, too,” Hermione said. “Maybe something in a past life. We’ve lived quite a few together, but there are always a few dark corners from other times.” She looked around the little room where they sat. The candles were still lit and glowing softly. The bowl of water for the Water Spirits was calm and smooth as glass. No unwanted vibrations in this room. The walls were hung with medicine shields made from skins and tiny bones and dried plants and colorful bits of string. Crystals lay everywhere. On the floor, the shelves, the low tables. Even between them on the couch. It was a restful room, with a healing atmosphere.
Geddown came to the French doors that led to the living room beyond and glared at them malevolently.
“Are we in his spot?” Hermione asked.
“We’re keeping him from his favorite sunbeam.” Elizabeth turned and stuck her tongue out at the cat, which walked away with a look of disdain. “It’s only his favorite because we’re keeping him from it.”
Hermione laughed. “Cats are all alike,” she said. “But you don’t dare tell them that. You’d think,” she went on after they had silently contemplated the joy and mystery of cats, “she’d take the psychic world in stride. Stoner, that is. Not your cat. She’s not exactly a stranger to it. Certainly she believes it works for me, and I’ve never heard her be critical or mocking. But when it comes to her personally… she’s never been taken with it. There’s always a little fear.”
“There is with me, too,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t you feel it?”
Hermione thought. “A little. Not exactly fear, more like apprehension. You never know what they’re going to want from you next.”
“Exactly.”
“And, frankly,” Hermione said, leaning forward confidentially, “I’ve had to ignore them on more than one occasion.”
“Me, too. And times I wish I had. Not that what they ask is that bad, it’s the getting to it that can be hellish.”
“I suppose that’s because it’s left to us to work out the details.” Hermione chuckled. “And their sense of time...”
“Don’t even talk about it,” Elizabeth said. “They think we can take a minute and stretch it into a year. Just because they can.”
“A skill we lose when we incarnate. And you can spend an entire incarnation getting it back.”
“And then you pass into transition, where you don’t need it.”
“Does it ever occur to you we might be a little bit nuts, doing this plane over and over?”
“Absolutely,” Elizabeth said. “Earth is the mental hospital of the universe.” She stretched her arms over her head. “You know, it’s a real luxury to talk with someone like this. When we both know what we’re talking about.”
“Or flatter ourselves that we do,” Hermione said.
Elizabeth laughed.
How many lifetimes did I go through and never meet this woman? Hermione wondered. And why did we wait so long?
“Well,” Elizabeth said, “I suppose we should think about getting your soul pieces back. I saw at least four, myself, but I’m sure there are more lurking here and there.”
“No wonder my fuel tank’s approaching empty.”
“Now, here’s what we’ll do.” She took a sheet of paper from her notebook and started a list. “It would help if you can round up as many of your close friends as possible for the ceremony. It’s good to have loved ones to welcome you back.”
“All right.” That meant Grace and Gwen and Marylou and Stoner...
Stoner.
She had a gnawing feeling she didn’t like. As much as she felt it would be good for her niece to learn a little about psychic matters in a participatory way, now that she was actually faced with it, she was hesitant. Stoner’s reluctance could be based on very real dangers.
“What is it?” Elizabeth asked.
“I was thinking about Stoner. I don’t know what to do about this.”
“Yes, it’s a judgment call.”
The trouble was, Hermione trusted intuition. Even the intuition of people who didn’t believe in intuition. Maybe even more so, since it had to be a strong message to cut through all that disbelief.
She stared into a candle flame. If it would just come clear. Or even only a little clearer. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“Well, let’s schedule the retrieval for a week from now. It’ll give you time to make up your mind. And maybe you can go a little deeper into what’s bothering Stoner about it.”
Hermione nodded. “Elizabeth, in my place, what would you do?”
The Shaman thought. “I think I would dance.”
“Dance? ”
“Dancing can be very powerful. Dance your Power Animal until you feel at one with it, then ask what you should do.”
She couldn’t help smiling a little. “And how does one dance a spider.”
“Simple,” Elizabeth said. “Dance the way a spider would dance.”
“Hang a rope from the rafters and swing from it? At my age?” Hermione chuckled. “I’m afraid that would be too much even for Shelburne Falls.”
“You haven’t lived there very long, have you?” Elizabeth said. “Oh, and by the way, to draw in real power, dance naked.”
“Now, that,” Hermione said, “is going too far. I may be New Age, but I’m not young. It’s important to set an example of dignity and restraint for the young.”
“From what I can sense,” Elizabeth said as she got up, “you already have a model of dignity and restraint in your household. You need to set an example of risk and play.”
Stoner wanted to run. Anywhere. And keep on running. Somewhere there were no problems, and nobody needing her and no occult mumbo jumbo. Where there was nothing to be afraid of and no one to be afraid for. Where she didn’t care about anyone.
She looked up at the moon, pale against the daytime sky—a crescent moon, its horns pointing north. Waxing or waning? Coming or going? She could never remember which.
Aunt Hermione always knew what the moon was doing. Witches were like that. Some of them really got into it, basing haircuts and house cleanings and bill paying on the lunar phases. Aunt Hermione had pared it down to a simple principle. The lunar month was divided into comings and goings. If you want to start something, do it at the waxing moon. If you want to end it, do it while the moon is waning.
And to catch a soul-taker? Is t
hat a coming thing or a going thing?
She had a hunch Mogwye would know the answer to that. And a lot of other things besides. Like when and how to cast a spell. And how to heal, and how to catch a soul.
Mogwye wouldn’t pursue the soul, Stoner thought. Mogwye would spin a web or set a trap, put out a little bait and let it come to her.
Maybe she was doing that now. Arousing Stoner’s interest and concern at the potluck, then sitting back to see what she’d do with it.
Well, two could play at that game.
Assuming both of them knew how the game was played, which Stoner definitely did not.
There was nothing she could do about Mogwye, anyway. That was for Marylou to handle
She sighed. Life had certainly decided to throw a lot of challenges her way. Foremost being its habit of constantly putting her in situations where she had to think deviously, something she’d never been able to do. If there was a lesson in this, she wished someone would give her a few hints as to what it was. The only one that came immediately to mind was, “Learn to approach life as though you have a criminal mind.”
She hardly thought the cosmos would put that out as a good thing.
Challenges and lessons. Those were the buzzwords these days. There weren’t any tragedies or disasters any more, just challenges and lessons. Good old American Happy-Think.
Well, thank you very much, but what she was looking at now was an aunt who was unwell and losing her soul or her mind or both. Who could only be saved by Stoner doing something the nature of which she didn’t understand for beans. And, incidentally, which she really, really didn’t want to understand. That was one big hairy challenge.
She felt a rush of anger and picked up a stone and hurled it out into the street.
“Damn it, what do you want from me?”
Did anyone hear? She glanced around quickly. Nothing moving. Except maybe Cutter’s soul takers.
Sometimes these days she felt as if they were taking a little of her soul, too. Nothing pleased her. Nothing excited her. There were times over the past week when she’d looked up at Gwen unexpectedly and felt nothing. No flutters, no tingles, no rushes of warmth. One morning she’d stayed in bed pretending sleep and watched as Gwen went through the little morning rituals—finding her reading glasses, sitting on the edge of the bed while she checked her schedule, slipping her feet into her shoes, a last-minute run of comb through hair, touching Stoner’s face lightly and lovingly as she left the room—that used to reassure her that everything was right with the world. But on that particular morning she’d merely watched her coldly and wondered if she was falling out of love.
Or maybe they were only reaching a new stage in their relationship, the one in which passion deepened into love, the one in which they’d be friends as well as lovers, and family, and...
Stoner had to admit it, she was starting to know how it felt to be Aunt Hermione. Depressed was how it felt. She was beginning to be forgetful, too, because she couldn’t interest herself in anything long enough to remember it. Couldn’t focus on it, really. She’d try to read, and her eyes would dutifully travel across the page, and suddenly she’d realize she was reading the last sentence in the paragraph and had no idea what was in the middle.
Maybe someone was trying to steal bits of her soul, too. She didn’t feel as if there were much there worth stealing.
“Stoner?”
She looked up.
Gwen stood at the bottom of the porch steps, her arms filled with books and papers. Her shirt was half out of her skirt. There was a dark smudge on one cheek. Her hair looked as if she’d been attacked by cats.
Stoner felt a hard knot of fear in her stomach. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“Nothing. I got a ride home with a junior with a convertible. Always memorable but predictable.” Gwen shifted the books. “Help me with these, will you?”
She jumped up and caught the books just as they began to cascade to the ground. “Productive day?”
Gwen grunted. “Mayhem. If I make it through to the end of the week, it’ll be a miracle.” She dropped onto the porch steps and dug a crumpled envelope from her pocket. “Perfect day to get this.”
Stoner set the books aside and peered into the envelope. “Pink-slipped again.”
“No surprise, of course, and it probably doesn’t mean much. It’s just something they like to do so we can’t enjoy the summer.”
“You’ll be rehired,” Stoner said as she handed back the envelope. “No way they’re going to let you go.”
“Unless the one I’m replacing decides to come back. I’m the new kid on the block, you know.” She blew her hair out of her eyes. “Not that I begrudge her. It’s just hard going from seniority to juniority. Is that a word?”
“I don’t think so.”
Gwen leaned back on her elbows. “God, by this time of the year, I sometimes wish they’d dump me. I could spend the rest of my life supporting myself returning bottles and cans.”
“You’d be stir-crazy in a minute.” She took Gwen’s hand. “Besides, think of the winters.”
“We could move to Florida for the winter. Would you?”
“Never. Florida’s full of rich people and bugs.”
“Which do you hate more?”
“I don’t hate either of them. Bugs disgust me, and rich people scare me. I’m always afraid I’m invisible to them, and they’ll step on me or run me down.”
Gwen squeezed her hand. “And what’s new with that topic we are carefully avoiding?”
“Aunt Hermione?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s still at Elizabeth’s.”
“So you don’t know what Elizabeth recommends.”
“Sure, I do. She told me when I saw her. That’s not going to change.” She tried to focus on the touch of Gwen’s hand, so she wouldn’t feel her own anxiety. “I’m going to have to do something I really, really don’t want to do and make a mess of it.”
“You don’t have to do it, Stoner. Everyone was clear that it’s your choice.”
Stoner grimaced. “Is it? This is about Aunt Hermione. Where’s the choice in that?”
Gwen stroked the back of Stoner’s hand with her thumb, absent-mindedly and frowned. “What are you afraid of?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know.” She glanced over. “I really don’t know. The whole thing ties me in knots. I guess I’m more comfortable in Ordinary Reality.”
“Really? Have you taken a good look around lately?”
Stoner laughed a little humorlessly. “Anyway, it’s all probably a lot of nonsense—ghosts and soul-stealing and all that. I’ll bet we’ll find out it’s some nasty person doing some nasty, very clever breaking and entering.”
“It would have to be very clever indeed,” Gwen said. “Unless you’re still thinking about an inside job.”
“Not here. But I can’t get the coven out of my mind. She goes there every week. They serve food. It wouldn’t be hard...”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“But how do I get close to that? If someone really is doing this.”
“Someone like Mogwye?” Gwen suggested.
“Yeah, someone like that. The only person she doesn’t know in the household is Marylou. And she’s talking to her again right now. If she seeks her out too many times, Mogwye will be suspicious for sure.”
“What we need,” Gwen said, “is someone who can watch Mogwye and Aunt Hermione in the same place together.”
Mogwye was pleased with herself, the way she could appear calm and unconcerned, maybe even a little stupid. Should have been an actress, or even a poker player. A riverboat gambler. She wondered if she’d ever been that. In the past, maybe, or maybe in the future. It all went around and around, anyway. Yesterday was tomorrow’s future, they said.
The woman was in the bathroom. Checking to see if anything in the house had changed since last time, she imagined. Well, it hadn’t, so she might as well not waste their time. She hadn’t
found an excuse that would take her into the sleeping loft yet, but she was working on it, you could tell. It amused and annoyed her, the way they assumed she was stupid enough to fall for this charade. If she was stupid, they were more than stupid, that was how she saw it.
She wasn’t sure why she was supposed to do this, but she’d had a dream. She always did what her dreams told her, and so far everything had come out just the way she wanted.
Her sister-in-law, the Born-again, said her dreams came from the Devil. She’d say that, of course. The bitch thought everything that was fun or even interesting was from the Devil. A great compliment to His Nibs, admirers like that.
Mogwye didn’t believe in the Devil. She didn’t believe in God, either. She only believed in dreams. It was because of dreams that she’d become a witch. After she’d seen the movie “Rosemary’s Baby,” she’d dreamed of witches for months. That was how she knew what she was supposed to be.
The toilet flushed. Mogwye focused her attention on her facial muscles, making sure everything was in placid order. She couldn’t help but smile a little, eager to go on with the pitiful lies she was telling the Kesselbaum woman.
“Inside the coven,” Stoner said. “That’d be the best place.” She frowned. “But there’s no way we could infiltrate the coven. And we don’t know where they meet. Even Aunt Hermione wouldn’t divulge that.”
“Yeah.” Gwen pulled a blade of crabgrass and made a whistle of it between her hands. She blew a couple of times. “I guess we’re stuck, unless...”
Suddenly she looked over at Stoner.
Stoner had the same thought at the same moment.
“Cutter,” they said.
Marylou couldn’t wait until after dinner to begin her story this time. “I arrived promptly,” she started in before they were all seated at the table, “bearing flowers. Mogwye mentioned last time that the only thing she missed from having paved over the yard was flowers. A bright and fragrant bouquet of old-fashioned snapdragons and larkspur.”
She stopped long enough to fill her plate with meat loaf and mashed potatoes and winter squash with a river of gravy over it all. Aunt Hermione passed her the hard rolls and she took one and broke it and dipped it in the gravy.
