Catherine Fraser didn’t learn witchery in the classrooms set in what used to be Moira Blair’s sitting room and bedrooms. She learned chemistry and biology, she grew plants in the greenhouse set in the back garden, and she learned Latin and French. She passed her old primary school every so often when she was sent out on errands and could not resist slamming the old man’s windows shut with a flick of her wrist when she saw him standing by the old writing desk. He always jumped, and Catherine always laughed to see it. The vibration in her mind and hands was ancient and powerful. Deep somewhere in the lowland crags, an ancient hag stirred slightly and slumbered on. All was quiet for now, but she knew a great awakening was nigh. The Cailleach settled in for a final rest before the dawn; the promise of Ingwaz that had stood for thousands of years was coming round. The ancient line of hags was beginning to remember, and soon they would cross Lethe and into the light.
ON THE LONGEST NIGHT of the year, when the wind howled through the streets of Glasgow, Catherine dreamt she was sitting by a fire in a great stone hearth. She was wrapped in layers of rough cloth, and still she shivered. Her house was empty and it smelled of death. She knew that inside the bedroom behind her lay the body of a man she loved dearly, his death shroud neatly sewn around him; he lay quiet and still, the deformities brought on by illness and pain hidden by the smooth muslin cloth. She knew that she was the only living person in the entire village; the rest were as dead as the man in the next room was. In her dream, she stared into the fire and knew that a ship full of rotting corpses sat a short distance from the docks, the sickness that had destroyed the village festering and growing within its rotting shell.
As she sat by the fire, the sound of the waves crashing outside her door and a storm born of grief and loss whipping through the hills, she stared into the fire and saw a young woman walking with a group of robed priestesses. In her dream state, Catherine felt a rush of gratitude that this young woman had escaped the sight of such atrocity. She also felt the great raw patch on her heart that the girl’s departure had left. As the fire snapped and popped in the hearth, Catherine sat still and watched as an entire life was played out without the burden of lost memories. She saw the cabin on the cliffs and the fire-haired, coral-eyed girl walking down to the village. She saw everything: a man who had no idea his lost daughter had come home to him, a happy sort of existence for a time. She felt a rush of heat through her body as she brushed hands with a young man who would become her husband. She felt the firmness of her belly and the sharp stab of a tiny foot beating its way into her ribs.
As Catherine slept, she understood that this was no ordinary dream but a window into yet another layer of the cloth. She understood that this reality was happening alongside hers, and in the same breath was long past and nothing but a memory. The two worlds spun alongside each other, neither more nor less real than the other. In her dreams, she understood the woman’s pain as though it were her own. As the fire licked and devoured the wood and kindling, Catherine knew that this woman and the one on the cliffs and those who had come before her were all squares of thin muslin cloth stacked on top of each other, each reality a drop of ink left to permeate and stain the layers below. Catherine closed her eyes and let the realization of this truth overwhelm her. On her forearm she felt a gentle burning sensation and looked down to see the two sets of jagged lines intersecting with each other inked onto her left wrist. She was descended from something greater than man, and as the fire warmed the tiny cottage and the sea raged outside, Catherine understood the weight of her blood.
Morning came, and she immediately grabbed the small notebook next to her bed and wrote down as many details as she remembered, but the sensations and the clarity were already fading. She drew the symbol that had appeared and tried to describe the smell of death, the sound of the waves, the unknowable reality that she was alone, all the others she had ever known dead and rotting. Mum frowned when she recounted the dream over breakfast and dug out an old family Bible with names listed in the margins. The jagged, intersecting lines appeared over and over, and Catherine stared at them in fascination.
Later that day on her way to the baker, she waved her hand and slammed the windows of the old man’s classroom just to see him jump. He shot a glare in her direction, and Catherine smiled and waved as was her customary response. It was becoming easier and easier to channel her intent into a flick of her wrist or twirl of her hand. Grandmum Muriel had noticed and responded with an uneasy agreement that she was to come to the shop after school from now on for extra tutoring. More than lessons, they examined the old Bible and listed the names that lay inside. Each generation of women had added the names of their mother and children, and the list seemed endless. Catherine and Grandmum listed each and tried to put it all into order, tracing the symbol with the jagged lines as they talked and discussed.
She was starting to remember, and soon she would find herself on the far banks of the Lethe laden with the knowledge of her lineage. But for now they drank strong black tea and sounded out the ancient names of a line of hags whose reach far surpassed their understanding. The winter winds screamed past the door to the little shop on High Street, and deep in her cave, the Cailleach slumbered on.
THE ONCE-GRAND HOUSE on Cathedral Court was in ruins. Mum gasped and held on to Alice to steady herself. After Grandmum Rowan’s passing, Mum had hired a caretaker for the ancient manor, but it was clear he had been negligent in his duties and spent more time at the Saltmarket pubs than he had tending the house. The last time they had seen it was when Coira had been just an infant, and Mum and Aunt Polly had flown across the ocean to visit her. It had been a boarding house then, and apart from a somewhat-neglected yard, it had seemed to be in good shape. That, however, had been years ago, and now the stone exterior was stained and crumbling in places. The fine shrubberies and foliage out front were brown and dry. The real horror was the inside. The caretaker had stopped vetting his tenants long ago; he lived in the cottage on the far end of the property and paid no mind to the parties and drugs that had come and gone in the big house. Many-Greats Grandmum Moira’s front parlor walls were speckled with holes and covered with graffiti. A mattress stained with unimaginable fluids was on the floor. The kitchen, which Alice remembered from her childhood with Grandmum Rowan, was a wreck. The sink was lined with a black mold that would be impossible to clean. The stove was missing entirely, and the cooler stood open, obviously not used for some time.
The caretaker clearly had not expected anyone to ever come back and did not even wait for Mum’s line of curses and demands for explanations. He had left before they arrived, leaving the cottage empty and usable for the time being. The old man had miraculously been collecting rent, albeit a pittance, up until the time the last official boarder had left, which had been shortly before Mum had written him to let him know they were returning.
It was shocking that so much damage could be done in so short a time; not that many years had passed since the closure of the girl’s school and Grandmum Rowan’s passing, but, as Mum reminded Alice, Grandmum Rowan had never lived in the big house. She and Granddad had always preferred the cottage on the edge of the property. The decline had most likely started as soon as the school closed and the boarders arrived; the parties and neglect had escalated the process. The neighbors were grateful that there was an end to the madness that had ensued; they’d issued complaints with the polis so often that they had stopped coming out to write them up. It’s about time, they said to Mum and Alice; it’s about time it was a proper house.
As had been true in its heyday, the grand manor house on Cathedral Court was the subject of vast and varied rumors and stories. Even in the last few years, when dirty syringes and filth had collected in the corners, local children had dared each other to sneak up the cracked and broken stone walkway and peek in the window. Alice worried about Coira, who was so little, newly five years old. Would she be scared of the old place? All the worry was for naught, however. She stood on the stone steps, looking up at
the grey stone spires and arched doorway, and smiled. She had always been a quiet child and had hardly spoken since her father had died. Alice worried about her greatly, but she knew that some things are only healed with time and space.
Mum had a sizable check from her half of the sale of the cabin in Colorado Springs. As Alice and Coira cleaned and settled the back cottage, Mum hired a crew to gut the house and begin the extensive job of renovating the sad exterior. The three of them settled into the little cottage that Alice remembered from her childhood. In her memory, she could still hear the dull rumble of far-off explosions. The table, which she had huddled under with Grandmum Rowan, was still there in the tiny dining room. There were only two bedrooms, so Alice held Coira tight to her as they slept in the narrow bed.
Alice had fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Between the move and the house and getting Coira settled, she could barely keep her eyes open when it fell dark. Alice sat up in bed. Coira was still curled into a tiny ball, her chest rising and falling in perfect rhythm. She could hear Mum’s soft snores in the bedroom next door. The ink mark on her wrist pulsed and throbbed, and she rubbed it absently as she looked around the room. The moon was unnaturally bright; the entire room was lit as though the sun had risen. Alice shook her head. She did not remember that being the case when they had gone to bed. Careful not to wake her daughter, Alice crawled over the little girl and pulled a soft knit blanket around her own shoulders. Her feet bare, she padded out into the main room. The cottage was still and quiet, but there was something not quite settled. She walked to the door and turned the knob. The elm and birch trees that lined the land reflected the unnatural brightness of the moon. As though entranced, Alice stepped out onto the rough dirt and began walking to the main house.
The manor house rose up before her as she remembered it from her childhood. The perfectly sculpted stone spires and grand archways, the meticulous molding on the awning, and the prim and manicured shrubs and flowers lay before her. Alice shook her head. The house began to glow, and Alice realized that the light she had attributed to the moon was emanating from the house itself. The very stone was giving off starlight, and the sight made Alice draw in her breath and wrap the blanket tightly around her shoulders. It was terrifying, but also beautiful and familiar. She could hear a low hum coming from the stones and glass. She took a step forward, pulled from her gut toward the structure that seemed to heave and vibrate with its own breath.
Alice opened her eyes with a start. Her body was rigid and her fists clenched. The moon was no more bright or dull than it should be. Coira slept next to her, undisturbed. Alice sat up and looked out the window at the thick grove of elms and willows. A dream; that was all it had been. A dream that had seemed absurdly real. It was the stress, she repeated to herself. Next to her, Coira stirred and looked up at her.
“I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean to wake you,” Alice whispered, brushing a strand of raven-black hair with a bite of fire from her forehead.
“It’s not time yet, Momma,” Coira said simply. It was more than she had spoken since they arrived, and Alice was startled to hear her small, sweet voice.
“Not time for what, darling?” Alice asked quietly, lying back down and propping her head on her elbow so she could look directly into Coira’s honey-brown eyes.
“She hasn’t woken up yet. But soon. She talks to me in my dreams. Don’t be afraid,” Coira said, and without offering any further explanation, she turned and curled back up into a ball, her plush teddy bear pressed to her chest.
Alice stared at the ceiling and tried to make sense of it all. The tiny mark of the intersecting jagged lines pulsed. She suspected that the little girl was more powerful than all the women in her family put together. She listened and watched with an intensity that unsettled others and that Alice recognized as a step in gathering her strength.
Coira spent her days in the wooded patch that surrounded the cottage, sending dandelion fluff sailing through the air so thickly it looked like snow while she twirled and danced, a contented smile on her face. One day, a spin of crisp leaves flew over her head in a cyclone much like the release of Paul’s ashes back in Colorado. It spun higher and higher, creating a wind that made the workmen over at the main house look to the sky and climb down from their ladders. Alice knew that a simple truth was looming. Someone had to teach her how to use this. She did not know where to begin. All the things she had ever been capable of had happened without her knowledge of how or why they existed. The children back in the classroom in Los Angeles; the men on the street in Caracas. All these things happened out of a sense of anger and survival.
Coira, however, seemed to have no anger in her. Her eyes had aged a century since her father died, and the honey-brown innocence had been replaced with something else, but it was not anger. No, Coira looked as though she were waiting, biding her time. Whoever spoke to her in her dreams was not awake yet, and Alice tried not to shiver when she repeated the little girl’s words in her mind.
Alice lay in bed and eventually fell back into a deep and dreamless sleep. It was not time yet, and of all the uncertainty they lived with, she knew beyond a doubt that the day that her daughter truly awakened would leave little time for rest.
ONE MORNING, NOT TOO long before they were able to move into the big house, Alice woke to find Coira and Mum sitting at the table with a small stack of squares of cloth in front of them. Next to that was a small inkbottle. The combination of the two seemingly disconnected things made Alice stop in her tracks and stare, the words caught in her throat.
“It’s not entirely right,” Mum explained apologetically. “I can’t show her the same way I was shown. I saw this in a dream, you see, a dream from a long time ago, a dream I believe was sent to me by one of our line.”
Alice sat down across from the pair and watched as Mum showed Coira the stack of cloth, the pieces all lined up with each other, layer upon layer. Using a dropper, she leaked a single drip of black ink onto the topmost layer. “See how it moves,” Mum said to Coira, who sat stock-still, watching. “All time is stacked up on top of each other; the things that happen to us, the births and deaths and everything in between, is happening at the same time.” Mum spoke slowly, trying to make sense out of it herself as she explained it to the silent child. “My many-greats grandmum is up there in her house right now, and it’s the grandest manor in all of Glasgow. We are living there right now, too. You have a bedroom the size of this entire cottage.” Mum smiled at her granddaughter. “Your animals are all lined up on your bed; you’re taking a nap maybe. That’s right here on this layer of cloth, and all the other people who have lived in the house, the revelers who left all their trash behind, are still there. Your Great-Grandmum Rowan is off at war; your mum is a little girl in Colorado Springs. It’s all happening on top of each other. Everything we do is like this drop of ink: it leaks to the next layer of time and reality and leaves a mark, and sometimes we don’t know quite what it means.”
Alice sat mesmerized, watching Mum explain the unexplainable to her granddaughter. Coira took it all in with her great, ancient honey eyes. Her plush bear sat in the chair next to her. In some ways, she was older than all of them; in others, she was still a child.
“It’s too much, Mum,” Alice said softly.
“We don’t have time,” Mum said quietly, locking her eyes on Alice. “I already failed a score by not teaching you what I knew. I thought I could protect you, that if you didn’t know, you’d live an ordinary life like your aunt. My mum’s gifts were different; her sight was subtler and she showed me what she could, but it wasn’t near enough. I learned from your Great-Grandmum Muriel, and I learned about things she had done that made me want to close it all down. I tried to shut it all out, ignore it, cast it aside, but I see now that the danger comes in closing our eyes to it, not bringing it into the open.”
Coira listened to all this intently. Alice sat speechless and still. Coira took the ink dropper and let a black point of ink fall to the st
ack of cloth.
“It’s almost time,” she said, then stood, taking her bear outside to dance with the butterflies.
THE NEEDLE STINGS AND bites, but Catherine sits as still as she can.
“C’mon now, love, this is just a tiny little mark. Think about the state you’d be in if you were really letting me work!” The woman with the bob cut and lines of ink running up and down her arms and chest giggled softly. Catherine’s left wrist was outstretched, and the woman was meticulously inking the symbol of the intersecting jagged lines into the soft flesh. She ran her shop not far from Grandmum Muriel’s on High Street. Grandmum frequently sold her crèmes and lotions to soothe the freshly inked skin and relieve pain. When Catherine told Grandmum what she felt she must do, Muriel had sighed and then led her to the woman with the bob cut and bright eyes, who had carefully examined the symbol that Catherine had etched out on a notepad.
“Runes,” she had said simply.
Catherine had nodded. She had been researching the runes and their meaning in the Girls’ Academy library as well as at Queen Margaret College while she waited for Mum to be done teaching for the day. Catherine had not been able to explain the urge she had except that it appeared over and over in the dreams that felt more real than her daily life. Mum was strictly against it; the idea of a woman getting tattooed like a circus freak was beyond her understanding. Grandmum Muriel had been a bit more understanding about it and had listened quietly while Catherine recounted the dreams that had barraged her sleep for the last few months.
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