A Circle of Ashes

by Cate Tiernan

Sophie and Ouida nodded, then the three of them sat lost in thought. The only sound was the rhythmic click of the ceiling fan, going around.

  On Saturday Clio and I did errands together, hitting the plant store, returning a pair of shoes. I looked out the car window, still learning how New Orleans looked and smelled and felt. Huge live-oak trees lined St. Charles Avenue, which was where the main streetcar line ran. The tree branches almost met over the center of the median, making an incredibly green, lush tunnel to drive through. Dad would have loved it. Maybe he’d seen it before.

  Dad. I still missed him so much. Despite everything that had happened, there were a hundred times every day when I turned to say something to him, wanted to ask him something, wondered when he would be home for dinner.

  He hadn’t looked much like me. His hair had been dark, but mine was darker. He’d had brown eyes. But he’d felt so totally mine, my blood father, the one constant in my life since I was born. Realizing all over again that Clio had never known him was sad. I decided I would make her a little scrapbook, with pictures of him in it, and I would write about him in the pages so she would know him.

  “Well, can you choose just one thing to work with?” I asked Clio.

  It was almost dinnertime, and we were sitting at the kitchen table. Petra—I still didn’t call her Nan; it felt too strange—hadn’t come home yet.

  “Yeah,” she said. “A lot of people have a favorite assortment of materials to work with, like if they have a special affinity for herbs or crystals or metals. And you can do powerful spells with just those. But Nan always said that the best spells, the strongest ones, are balanced, with elements of each. Though there are also some spells that specifically don’t need crystals or herbs or candles or whatever.”

  “And you know everything about all this?” I felt dismayed by how ignorant I was, how much I had to learn.

  Clio grinned. “Not everything. Talking to you helps me realize how much I actually do know. But I’ve been studying this since I was really little. You’ll catch up.”

  This was so depressing. “It’s like every plant in the world has some use.” I groaned. “How can I learn them all? I mean, trig is too much for me.”

  “Me too,” Clio said. “But with magickal things, it’s like any other subject—you learn it a little bit at a time. And yes, many, many plants in the world can be put to some kind of magickal use or have certain attributes. Pretty much everything does. Every grain of sand, every drop of rain, blah, blah, blah. Magick is in everything, yours for the taking. And then of course, certain human-made objects can also be very powerful.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said glumly. “Like, give me a plant example.”

  Clio looked around, thinking. “Okay, something easy and common. Holly.”

  “Like we have outside? Christmas holly?”

  “Actually, we call it Soliver holly,” Clio told me. “Soliver is our winter holiday. In Wicca it’s called Yule. Yule log, et cetera. At roughly the same time, the Christians have Christmas. Jews have Hanukkah.”

  “I’m a Christian, sort of,” I said. “We don’t have Christmas?” This was not good news.

  Clio looked at me like I was an idiot. “We have Soliver,” she said patiently. “It’s a lot of fun. It’ll be okay. Very festive. Do you want to know about holly or not?”

  I sighed. “Tell me.”

  “Okay, holly.” Clio looked at the ceiling, thinking. “The broad Latin name is ilex. You learn the Latin name because it’ll be the same in most languages. It’s the scientific name and helps you be precise. Then you have its true name, which for the kind of holly we have outside, but not for other types, is bestgriel. You use its true name in some kinds of magick. It’s considered a masculine plant, not because it actually has a gender, though it does, but because its properties align along the masculine scale. The element associated with holly is fire, our element. Which would make it a bit more effective or appropriate for us than for someone whose element is something else. Mars is the planet associated with it, so certain spells can take Mars’s orbit or properties into account. And mostly, holly is used for protection, all sorts of protection. And good luck. At Soliver we decorate the house with it, and it helps us have good luck in the coming year.”

  Until now, my main knowledge about holly had been “prickers.” “And you know this kind of info about a lot of plants?”

  “I better. It’s going to be a big part of my rite of ascension.”

  I breathed out. “So maybe when I’m thirty.”

  “Maybe.” Clio looked smug, but not in a mean way. I decided to change the subject.

  “You know who’s good-looking? Kevin LaTour.”

  “Sylvie’s friend?” Clio considered it. “Yeah. He is. You hung out with him the other day, right?”

  “And Sylvie and Claude. Kevin seems nice, too.”

  “I’ve never talked to him.” She looked at me speculatively. “Are you… interested in him?”

  There it was again. The unspoken gulf between us. Luc. I hadn’t told her a lot of how I felt about him, and she had her secrets too, I was sure. They’d probably even slept together, but I didn’t let myself think about it, because it made me feel sick.

  Anyway, Luc was behind me. I was moving on, facing the future. A future without him.

  “Interested is a strong word,” I said cautiously. “I’ve just noticed that he’s nice and also really good-looking.”

  “Yeah. Well, more power to you if you like Kevin.”

  I looked into her eyes, identical to mine, as if I might see what she was thinking behind them. Was she hoping I would forget about Luc? Did she still want him? I looked away.

  I shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  We worked silently for a few minutes, each with her own thoughts.

  “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question, but it just popped out.

  “In a general sense or just your clothes?”

  I made a face at her, and she smirked. “I mean my magick. Is it just because I have no idea what I’m doing? Do spells go that wrong very often?”

  “No. Hardly at all that I’ve heard of,” said Clio, more seriously. “I mean, maybe they won’t work or they’ll work but in a skewed way. But getting knocked out of a circle? Doesn’t happen.”

  “So it’s just me, then. Something about me.” That idea upset me, even though I still hadn’t totally embraced Bonne Magic as a way of life.

  “Hmm,” said Clio, looking at me.

  “What?”

  “I just remembered a spell I heard of once,” Clio said thoughtfully. “It was, like, to see someone’s aura. I mean, during a circle, you can usually see everyone’s auras, and some people can see them on other people all the time, just walking around. But I remember reading about a spell where it reveals a person’s inner state, like an x-ray of your soul. Sort of. I remember thinking it was pointless because people usually know their inner state and express it if it’s good—if it’s bad, they wouldn’t do the spell in the first place and let anyone see.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “You mean you want to do that with me? Nan said we shouldn’t—”

  “Nan said we shouldn’t try any twin-magick magick,” said Clio, standing up and heading to the workroom. “But this would be more diagnostic. Besides, we’ll do it outside so we won’t get thrown into a wall. Your eye’s finally better—don’t want to do that again.”

  Out in the backyard, Clio cleared a little space on the brick walkway that wound through the foliage, much like Racey’s backyard. There were six-foot wooden fences on both sides and a brick one in the back.

  It had taken Clio almost half an hour to find the spell and assemble what we needed. Now she set up a brass bowl the size of a cantaloupe and kindled a small fire in it. I was worried that Petra would come home and be mad about this, but she hadn’t returned yet. Clio told me that it wasn’t unusual for Petra to miss a meal if she was at a birthing.

  Clio drew a circle ar
ound us with salt, then took a chunk of broken red-clay brick and drew different symbols on the walkways around us. “This is épine,” she said, drawing a vertical line with a little triangle on one side. “It’s to help us achieve our goal. This is ouine.” She drew what looked like a pointy letter p. “It’s for success and happiness. Porte is for revealing hidden things.”

  I recognized that one from the spell we had done at Racey’s house.

  “Ôte is all about one’s ancestral birthright,” Clio explained, drawing the symbol on the ground. “It’s about what you’ve inherited, and it can mean personal or material things. Okay, I think we’re about ready?

  “No candles? No incense? What about those four little cups?”

  “We don’t always use those,” Clio said, sitting down across from me. “This one is aimed differently.”

  “Okay.”

  As with the other spells we’d ever done, we sat facing each other, holding hands on either side of the little fire bowl. The sun was setting. It was hot and humid.

  I was afraid to do this. I didn’t know what would happen, and I dreaded feeling that blast of magick in my chest like before. And even the smaller spells we’d done had spiraled out of control and been scary. I was tentatively getting used to feeling the spark of magick in me and even kind of liking it. But actually doing something with it was so much scarier. What was I doing?

  “It’ll be okay,” Clio said confidently, as if she could read my mind. “But this time, don’t say anything, or sing, or do anything, okay? I’ll do it.”

  “Okay.” I tried to calm my breathing and relax, but it was hard. It seemed to take forever before I felt myself unwind. I closed my eyes. I tried to open myself to the world, like Clio had said, but I didn’t even know what that felt like.

  And then I did. I felt the “magickal” essence rising in me, as if a peony were blooming, unfolding inside my chest. I felt happy, peaceful—calm and excited at the same time. I was part of everything, and everything was part of me. Clio and I were connected, and I’d never felt so whole or complete. Was this because we’d done the joining spell?

  I vaguely heard Clio chanting, singing a spell in a soft voice. My hands and knees were a little warm from the tiny fire kindled in the brass pot. Clio’s fingers tightened on mine, and just like that, we were off.

  Suddenly I felt like I was trapped on a roller coaster that was speeding recklessly around a track that I couldn’t see ahead of me. My eyes popped open and all I saw was Clio’s face, my face, looking scared. Was she seeing my soul, my aura? Could she tell what was wrong with me?

  Then we were seeing images, flashed in front of us like before, when we’d had the swamp vision. This was very similar—only this time, I knew who most of the people were. We saw Petra, looking younger than she did now, arguing with a black-haired man. He turned and stormed away from her, and we saw that he had our birthmark on one cheek. We saw Richard, not tattooed and pierced and gothicky, but looking happier, more innocent, and dressed like he was in a colonial movie. He was chasing a girl through a meadow, and she fell, laughing. Richard fell next to her, and then they were rolling through the tall grass, kissing wildly, her hair flying bright against the birthmark on her cheek. With a gasp I recognized her. This happy, laughing girl, so full of life, was the same girl from our other vision—the one who had died in childbirth at the witches’ circle. I could see her face still and gray in the rain, the ground beneath her running scarlet. It was only then that I realized she looked almost exactly like Clio. Like me.

  The scene shifted abruptly, making me almost motion sick. None of this seemed to be about the spell Clio had cast. I didn’t know why we were seeing any of this. We saw another woman, dark-haired, running through a moonless swamp. Her face was beautiful and cruel, her eyes black. She looked behind her, and then we saw her lying facedown in the shallow water, her bare feet stained with mud. There was a dark figure over her, a man, holding something in one hand. A tool? A scythe or an ax? Had he killed her?

  Then once again we saw a huge multi-forked bolt of lightning split a huge tree. The witches in the circle were almost knocked off their feet, and the tree was on fire, burning brightly. I could hear the hissing as the rain hit the fire, sending up tiny jets of smoke.

  The tree’s fire was so hot I felt it on my face, uncomfortably warm and too bright to watch. I tried to pull back, but Clio was gripping my hands tightly. I blinked and saw her face red with heat, flames dancing all around her. Her eyes were wide and still, unfocused, and somehow that made me more afraid than anything.

  “Clio!” I yelled, shaking my hands, locked in hers. “Clio!” I pulled back as hard as I could, knocking us both to one side, and all of a sudden we were lying on the ground in Clio’s backyard. I’d broken the spell. It was nighttime, the sky above me dark and speckled with stars and … sparks, flying upward? I jumped to my feet.

  “Oh God, Clio!” I yelled, looking past her. I grabbed her shoulder and shook her—she hadn’t sat up yet. Now she blinked slowly, looking at me like I was a stranger.

  “Clio! Get up! The house is on fire!” I shouted, shaking her hard enough to rattle her bones. With the next breath she seemed to awaken, sitting up quickly and looking around her. She gasped and put her hand over her mouth, as horrified as I was.

  This time we hadn’t gotten thrown across a room.

  We’d started a fire that had leaped away from us, and our house, my new home, was ablaze.

  First Thais was shaking me, her face pale but brightly lit. She was yelling something, but I couldn’t hear it. She shook my shoulders hard, and then I made out the word fire!

  That woke me up, and I was back in the now. I jumped to my feet and stared, horrified—the whole back half of our house was engulfed in flames.

  “Oh, holy sh—where’s a phone?” I cried, my brain feeling scrambled. I had to think, get two thoughts together—

  Just then, one of the back windows burst from the heat. We were ten feet away but felt crystalline shards of window hissing against us.

  “Thais! Go next door! Call 911!” I shouted. I was amazed the fire trucks weren’t already here—the fire was huge and must have been burning for at least twenty minutes. It was night; I had no idea what time.

  “I can’t!” Thais cried, pointing. “The fire!” I looked and saw that she was right—like many New Orleans houses, ours was on a tiny plot of land. The fences separating us from our neighbors were only about six feet from each side of the house. The flames were already billowing out on the sides—you couldn’t get past them. The wooden fences had just caught on fire too.

  I spun, thinking. Six-foot wooden fences, six-foot brick fences. I’d never climbed over them, and it looked like it would be a bitch to try. Thais was watching me anxiously: her fearless leader.

  “Under the house,” I said.

  “What?”

  I was already moving forward. “We have to go under the house,” I explained quickly, dropping to my knees. Our house was built up on brick pilings, maybe three feet up, in case the river flooded. Most houses were. So there was a crawl space beneath it.

  “The fire is mostly higher,” I said, crawling toward the house. “Under the house isn’t on fire yet. We have to get through out to the street, and then we can call 911.”

  “What if it collapses?” Thais almost shrieked.

  “Move fast,” I said through gritted teeth. This close to the house, the fire was so hot it felt like it was scalding my skin. I hunkered down lower and bellied under the house, having to crawl over a water pipe and a natural-gas pipe that went to our stove. Oh, crap, I thought. If the fire gets to the gas pipe—

  “Come on!” I yelled back to Thais, and saw that she was biting her lip and creeping low to the ground, right behind me. Quickly I muttered an all-purpose protection spell. Oddly, my studies hadn’t included a specific spell for keeping a burning house from falling on you.

  I hadn’t been under here since I was eight, when I had been hiding and foun
d a rat skeleton. And I wished I hadn’t thought of that just now.

  Above me, I heard the hungry crackling and roaring of the fire as it happily, eagerly consumed our walls. More glass broke and I winced, though it couldn’t reach us under here. I was crawling as fast as I could through the fine, cool dust under the house, inhaling it up my nose, smelling smoke everywhere. Every couple of feet we had to crawl around pipes or wiring. I felt Thais following me, and then I saw the light of the front yard just ahead.

  “We’re almost there,” I shouted, and scrabbled right out next to the front steps, through the holly bush. I knelt and waited for Thais, and she crawled out a second later, her pale skin showing whitely through her grime.

  “Okay, you go next door and call 911,” I said. “I’m going to call Nan and Melysa and anyone else who can help!”

  Thais nodded and turned to run—then we both heard an anguished howling coming from inside the house.

  “Q-Tip!” Thais gasped.

  “Holy mother—he’s inside the house!” I said. “Wait!”

  But Thais had already run down the narrow alley between the house and fence. The fire was still mostly toward the back third of the house, but windows were breaking and I feared an explosion at any second.

  “Thais!” I yelled again, but she was running along, looking up at the side windows. At the third window in, the one in the workroom, she stopped. I saw the dim whiteness of Q-Tip’s fur pressed against the screen in the open window. Before I could think of what to do, Thais jumped up and punched a hole right through the window screen. Q-Tip shot out and raced down the alley toward the street. He streaked through our front fence.

  “He’ll be okay,” I said, grabbing Thais’s arm. “Let’s go!”

  As we were running through the front gate, I heard the droning of sirens, coming nearer. Thank the goddess, someone had called the fire department.

  The huge red fire engine stopped abruptly in front of our house. I noticed that neighbors were starting to come out of their houses to see what was happening. Thais and I were on the front sidewalk, and I realized I was shaking. I put my arm around Thais, and she put hers around me.