Healing Hands (The Queen of the Night series Book 2)

by Laura Emmons

  “…there’s Punxsatawney Phil!”

  “Are you talking about the groundhog from the movie?”

  “Yup,” he answered, “He lives not too far north of here. That’s what this girl said.”

  “So is Imbolc another name for Groundhog Day?”

  Rose shook her head. “There’s a lot more to the ancient customs than watching a groundhog. I would say Groundhog Day is derived from Imbolc, not the other way around.”

  “What else do we do on Imbolc?”

  “Well, the holiday starts the night before...”

  Corey interrupted again. “That’s great,” he groaned, “another sleepless night. It’s hard to be a healthy, growing boy around here. We never get enough sleep.”

  “Well this time you will, because after our nighttime ceremony, we all have to go to bed. Otherwise, Brighid won’t visit our house.”

  “Who’s Brig-heed? I thought Santa Claus was the guy who wouldn’t visit unless all the kids fell asleep,” I commented.

  “On February first, she’s the Light-Bringer, and her name is Brighid.”

  “Okay, so what’s the custom?”

  “You’ll see, but first we have to do spring cleaning. You can both start by cleaning your rooms.”

  “Well that doesn’t sound very magical or very interesting,” grumbled Corey.

  “Nope,” I agreed with him. “It sounds like a way to get us to do more housework.”

  ***

  The next day at school, Evan also complained about his mother’s insistence on his cleaning his room. Apparently, Jenny took Imbolc seriously. I sympathized with him. We’d cleaned our house thoroughly when we moved in a month earlier, so we didn’t have much to do. Instead, Rose brought home a bunch of dried corn husks and we made ‘Wheel of the Year’ crosses out of them. The symbols were also called Celtic crosses or Bridghid’s crosses. Rose explained how the ancient Celtic goddess and the more modern Saint called Bridget, or in Scottish Gaelic, Brighid, was the minor deity most associated with Imbolc.

  The time of year was so important to the people in the British Isles the early Christian Church had found a way to incorporate the holiday into their calendar. They associated it with the christening of the baby Jesus. Candles were lit to illuminate the path of the baptism procession, so they called it Candlemas. They created a story to go with the new saint, and gave her most of the attributes of the pagan goddess.

  ***

  As we got closer to the actual holiday, Fiona and Rose set about tailoring robes for Corey and me to wear at the initiation ceremony. Fi went over the entire initiation rite and made us practice our parts. I reinforced Corey’s healing stone jewelry by rinsing off any negative energy and restringing parts, where necessary. We made special dishes to get ready for the event, including Caledonian Cream, a thick, sweet cream which had the consistency of butter but incorporated brandy and marmalade into the recipe. We also made oatcakes and Crowdie. The oatcakes were pancakes made with oat flour. The Crowdie was a Scottish cream cheese.

  A couple of days before Imbolc, Rose made Corey and I choose ribbons in various colors. She said if we were lucky, they’d be blessed by the deity and would afford us more protection against people who might want to harm us. I stopped scoffing at her beliefs. After seeing how Arianrhod was a tangible entity with a unique intelligence and personality, I didn’t doubt a minor deity named Brighid existed. I just didn’t think she’d be visiting people all over the world in one night. Someone had done a scientific analysis about Santa and his sleigh. They’d concluded that Santa would have to travel many times the speed of light and the friction caused by his journey could generate enough heat to fry the planet.

  I understood the traditions were important for other reasons, including the preservation of a culture which had lasted for thousands of years. Selecting a pink ribbon, I figured Mom would have liked my choice.

  At this point, my meditations were just starting to pay off. I could generate the flow of energy to my hands at will, but was still a long way away from using them to either diagnose or heal. I really didn’t understand what was wrong. No one seemed to have a clue as to how I should find my mojo. It was becoming really worrying.

  ***

  In my Seer studies, Jenny had moved from reading auras to working on my dream diary. She did this mostly because I kept having a recurring nightmare. The weirdest part was the subject of my nightmare. Seers couldn’t see their own futures, and rarely saw futures of their closest loved ones, being that they usually spent so much time with those people, but I didn’t even like this woman. I didn’t dislike her, either. I dreamed about Madison McLoed, Evan’s stalker. In the dream, she ran for her life down the side of a mountain, she slipped, fell and broke her neck. I’d had the same dream every night for the last week. She ran down a narrow trail. There were roots and rocks sticking out everywhere. The trail slalomed back and forth down the steep slope. She kept looking back over her shoulder. The purple streak in her hair kept flying into her mouth and she repeatedly spit it out. When she didn’t spit, she kept her mouth open, gasping for air since she was not in good aerobic condition. Her eyes screamed her fear instead of her mouth. I had no idea what chased her. Then she tripped over a root and tumbled over the edge. She bounced off a craggy rock and landed awkwardly on a boulder. An ominous crack sounded; it always left me with the taste of bile in the back of my throat when I awoke. The last image I had in the dream was of looking over the side of the mountain from a perch above her. She was dead; her purple streak had been replaced by a pool of red. The gross dream made no sense at all. I hoped fervently it was not prophetic, but recorded it and told Jenny. She seemed to think it might be.

  There were three problems with trying to approach Madison. One, Madison didn’t like me at all. She resented my relationship with Evan, even though it was purely platonic. Okay, it was mostly platonic. Two, how does someone prevent this situation from occurring? What would I say? “Excuse me Madison, for the rest of your life, avoid walking up mountains. You might find yourself being chased down by someone or something.” We lived in West Virginia for heaven’s sake. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a mountain. Three, I wasn’t supposed to have Seer gifts at all, and I’d just get myself and my whole family in trouble if I admitted it. Besides, I doubted anyone would believe me. They’d wait to hear the same news from Evan or a more senior person in the clan.

  I told Jenny and let her run with it.

  ***

  The day before Imbolc, I visited Fi in the store and decided to walk up to the jewelry counter just to see how Madison fared. She acted like her usual caustic self, but I ignored her attitude. Then, I noticed several interesting dolls made of dried corn husks sitting on the counter. They wore simple white dresses and held white wands in their right hands. The dolls had all different combinations of hair and eye color. I asked her about them.

  She looked at me curiously for a moment, and I wondered if she was deciding whether to answer me. In the end, she said they were Brideog, or Little Brighid, dolls for the young maids of the clan. I held one up for inspection. They really were elegantly crafted. She asked me if I wanted to take it and I declined. As I left the store, I caught a glimpse of her taking the doll and hiding it behind the counter. With my luck, the stalker girl would take the doll I’d touched and turn it into a black magic poppet. Maybe she planned to stick pins in it. As I opened the front door and walked outside, I shivered, but not because of the cold.

  ***

  Later that evening, I asked Rose about the dolls.

  She explained, “The little brides are used by unmarried young women to attract a suitor. It’s an old, old custom. The tradition goes like this: if a girl is interested in a guy she’ll leave the Brideog in a doll bed outside her front door. If her potential boyfriend comes by in the night and picks up the doll and cares for it until morning, they’re committed to each other. It’s like saying you’re going steady. No one uses the dolls like that anymore, but Madison make
s them and the tourists find them quaint. They’re like a Valentine’s Day card. We usually sell quite a few each year. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, no reason,” I said, but I thought to myself, Madison, what are you doing with the doll I touched?

  ***

  On the night of Imbolc we hung our corn husk-constructed Celtic crosses on the front door and in the kitchen. We made a roaring fire in the fireplace. We left our ribbons out on the front porch. Rose sprinkled some cold ashes across the threshold. She said that if the ashes were disturbed when we opened the door in the morning, we would know Brighid had visited during the night. We left a slice of cheesecake and a cup of fresh milk out there. I believed the ashes would be disturbed and the dairy products gone by morning, but only because the stray cats in town would be eating well.

  Before we sat down to dinner, Rose insisted Corey and I clean up and change into fresh clothes. When we met back in the kitchen, she performed the Seven Candles Blessing. In the center of our farmer’s table, she placed a small cauldron. She poured salt into the cauldron to create a base. Then she pressed three red tea lights and four white tea lights into the salt so they covered the base of the cauldron. She uttered an incantation as she lit the first candle using a long barbeque match.

  “Although it is now dark, we defy the night.”

  She lit the second candle, and said, “We call upon fire, to bring us warmth and light.”

  She lit the third candle. “This light is a boundary. That which is outside, shall stay out. That which is inside, shall stay in.”

  With the fourth candle she said, “In the dead of winter, we come seeking life.”

  She lit fifth candle. “Like fire, love will always grow. Let the love of this family always surround us.”

  With the sixth candle she said, “Like fire, wisdom will always grow. Let wisdom govern our choices and make our family strong.”

  Finally, she lit the last candle. As she did, the flames grew until the seven flames came together and formed one large finger of fire. She called out, “Let the fire purify us. Blessed Be.”

  We sat down to dinner. It seemed important to Rose that we spend part of our dinner conversation discussing what we wanted to accomplish in the coming year because Imbolc was a time for new beginnings.

  Corey wanted to learn how to use the BMX bike he’d received for Christmas at the half-pipe park in Winchester, and he wanted to survive the sixth grade.

  Rose wanted to spend more time with Pat and take over more of the responsibilities at the store, so Fiona wouldn’t have to work so hard. She wanted to see us settle into our new home.

  I told them I wanted to master healing hands, get straight A’s, and do well in the Sleepy Creek Youth Chorale. To myself I admitted I’d give up all of those things if I could just find a way to stop aching for the one thing I could never have: Evan.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Groundhog Day

  “Hello,” I heard a voice call out from the foyer, “Is anyone home?”

  “I’m in the kitchen,” I called back, scooping a fresh batch of oatcakes from the skillet and placing them in a plastic storage container. The breakfast feast would be held after Corey and I completed our initiation into the clan. Evan was our designated ‘Guide’. He would officially lead us to the sacred meadow. He entered the kitchen. I dropped the oatcake, spatula and my jaw.

  “What the hell are you holding?” I cried in shock.

  “I found her on the front porch. Isn’t she yours?” He reached into the doll bed he held with one hand and picked up the Brideog with the other. “Look at her,” he said, I cringed, “She’s got brown hair like you do and violet eyes.” He looked confused. “There’s a ribbon tied around her neck, too.” He held the effigy up for me to see clearly. The pink ribbon I’d left out for Brighid’s blessing was tied to the doll.

  “Get it out! Throw that thing away! It’s not my doll. It’s Madison’s.”

  “No…Madison’s doll would have short black hair, with a purple stripe…”

  I took the offensive totem and, opening the back door, tossed it out. I looked at him pointedly, then at the doll bed. “Out,” I commanded.

  He still looked deeply confused, but he tossed the toy bed out with the doll and I slammed it closed.

  As I cleaned up the pancake mess, I explained. “She played a nasty trick,” I started, “because she hates me. She wanted you to find the doll and think I was hitting on you.”

  “Oh,” he said, taking a seat at the table, “does this mean you’re not hitting on me? Darn…and I treated her well, too. I took the doll home, introduced her to my family, and everything.”

  “Shut up,” I snapped, throwing a kitchen towel in his face.

  Luckily Rose entered the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

  Evan responded. “Good morning, Rose. You’ll be happy to know I stepped over your ashes on the porch, but they were disturbed anyway. The dairy products are gone as well. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Evan. Are the ribbons still out there?”

  “All of them except for the pink one,” he answered.

  “What happened to the pink one?” she looked at Evan and me.

  I lowered my gaze and grumbled, “Never mind.”

  She narrowed her eyes and looked as if she would demand an explanation. Her expression changed as she consciously decided to let it go. Instead she said, “You’d better get changed into your robe, Maggie. It’s time to leave.”

  ***

  Once in the car, Evan continued to tease me. “Should I hold the door open for you? I held the door for your dolly.”

  “Cut it out.”

  “What dolly?” Corey queried from the back seat. When neither one of us responded he said, “You guys are so weird.” He pulled the ear buds for his ever-present MP3 player out of his pocket and stuck them in his ears. He sat back in his seat and pretended to ignore us.

  The whole incident still upset me. “It’s not funny,” I grumbled.

  “Then you’re in trouble,” came Evan’s reply from my side. “If you let it get to you, if you let her upset you, she’s won. Don’t give her that, Mags. Joke about it. Ignore it, if you can, but don’t let her win, okay?”

  I nodded, soaking in his words. “Okay.”

  ***

  Corey had never been to the sacred meadow. Evan let us walk on our own as far as the Well of the Young, where he made us stop. He blindfolded both of us and apologized about doing so.

  “This is part of the initiation ceremony, I’m afraid.” He tied Corey’s blindfold on first.

  “That’s okay,” I replied. “You didn’t let me fall last time.” I referred to events from the feast of Litha. Dariene had cursed me into seeing the auras of every creature around me, including microbes. I had been so overwhelmed by the sensory deluge I’d gone into a semi-catatonic state. Evan had blindfolded me and guided me on this same trail. He smiled sweetly before he put on my blindfold.

  “There better not be any smooching over there,” my brother announced.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about, kid,” Evan replied as he took hold of each of us and started walking. After a while he stopped.

  “Are we at the temple yet?” I asked.

  “No, we have to wait in the trees, outside the meadow, until they call for us.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Corey.

  “Well, right now they’re setting up the altar. There are three people who will perform the ceremony. The first person is the Fire Bearer, performed by Fiona. The Keeper of the Well is performed by Dariene, because she controls the Well of the Young. Lastly, Buach is the Tender of the Tree, since he’s the King Dryad. Most of the clan is here also. They’re standing around the meadow, grouped by households. Wait, they’re ready to start.”

  Fiona’s voice rang out across the clearing. “Welcome, members of the Cacapon coven of Appalachia! Welcome to the sacred and mysterious Temple of the Crossed Rings. We are here today to bring two more into our fold.
Let us begin.”

  There was a loud whoosh. Evan narrated, “She lit a small bonfire that’s a couple of yards behind the altar. Now she’s walking back to stand with the other two.”

  Fiona said, “I kindle the sacred fire and call upon its power to strengthen our coven.”

  Evan continued, “She’s using a censer to spread incense smoke around the altar. Okay, Dariene is holding up a pitcher of water. Now she’s pouring some of the water into a cup.”

  Dariene intoned, “I pour the sacred water and call upon its wisdom to enlighten us.”

  “Dariene is using an aspergill. She dipped it into an asperorium, and she’s sprinkling water on the altar.”

  “What’s a aspa…asp…aspa-whatchamacallit?” I was glad Corey asked, because I wanted to know, too.

  “It’s a long-handled brush and a bowl of water. The water must come from the Well of the Young. She dipped the brush in the water and is flicking it to spray water all over the place. Okay, Buach just placed a cauldron filled with dirt on the altar.”

  Buach called out, “I bring forth the sacred tree and call upon its compassion to grow within us.”

  “I love this part,” Evan said as he continued to narrate for us, “Buach is forcing a sapling to grow out of the dirt in the cauldron.”

  The three of them, Fiona, Dariene and Buach, said together, “The fire, the well, the sacred tree, flame and flow and grow in me! By Mother Earth and Father Sky, one below and one on high, grace this temple, Blessed Be!”

  Fiona called out, “Who approaches this sacred space?”

  Evan, calling from the forest, replied, “I bring you two who wish to know the mysteries of this coven, and who wish to honor the King of the Sun and the Queen of the Night.”

  Fiona asked, “Seekers, state your names.”

  As I had been instructed, I said, “It is I, Margaret Fiona MacDougall Stewart, who seeks to join this coven.”

  Corey then said, “And I, Corey Lawrence Stewart, who seeks to join this coven.”

  Fiona responded, “You have been deemed worthy. Please enter the sacred meadow, approach the altar of the Crossed Rings, and kneel in the presence of the gods.”