Reckoning s-13

by Cate Tiernan

  Yet Brigid's feelings were still so close, so strong. She loved Charlie—who wouldn't? He was adorable and funny and smart. Tall. Powerful. She had turned her back for a moment—to be responsible and go to work, no less—and then her weird out-of-town cousin appeared, broke into her house, and made out with her boyfriend.

  I trudged along, seagulls screaming overhead, my hair slowly collecting dampness for the air. It took me about forty-five minutes to get back to Sam's. When I got there, Enya was playing and delicious smells of garlic, fish, and cooking tomatoes were coming from the kitchen. Sam had obviously gone to the trouble to make sure I came back to a nice welcome—and I returned, the other woman, the coven wrecker…

  "Did you have a good day?" Sam asked, putting a salad bowl out on the table.

  "Great!" I said with forced enthusiasm.

  "What did you do?"

  "Oh," I said, picking up Mandu and letting him climb up on my shoulder, "just hung out with Charlie."

  "Charlie's a great guy." Sam nodded. "A fantastic witch, too."

  You have no idea, I thought… Sam looked up at me strangely, and I banished all thoughts of Charlie from my mind and set a straight and steady expression on my face.

  "Before I forget," he said, "I found some pictures of your mother I wanted to show you. Could you watch the stove for a second? And feel free to start the salad."

  "Sure," I said, setting the cat on the floor. As Sam headed for the stairs, I started making the salad, dumping the mesclun into the salad bowl and replaying the kiss again and again in my mind. I set it against the music, felt the surge of bliss thrumming through my body. Charlie was so handsome, so tall, so funny, so nice, so smart, so…

  Taken. By my cousin. What was I thinking?

  I tossed some vinaigrette into the greens a little more aggressively than was really necessary. The cats cocked their heads at me.

  Just as I had the night before, I suddenly felt something in the pit of my stomach telling me that something was wrong, very wrong. I looked up, all senses alert. Something was here. A presence. Something very foul. I let go of the salad tongs and looked around the kitchen.

  And then it happened.

  The first blow was on my left arm, and it sent me reeling backward, pain jagging all the way down my hand. I heard glass shattering behind me. I whirled around to see all of the dishes flying out of the open rack under the cabinets, and they all came at me, one after the other. I didn't have time to move or think. Something broke against my head. Glass fell onto my eyelids. I pulled my arms up to guard my face and head as best I could, but the blows were coming harder, pushing me back against the wall.

  Something in me stirred, ready to battle. I felt every fiber of my being tingling. I could stop this. I could…

  I concentrated hard. Some of the dishes started to pop and splinter midair, before they got to me. It was as if they where smashing against an invisible wall, and I knew I was doing it. No idea how—but I was doing it. Some still made it through. There were so many. The drawers were rattling, coming loose, coming at me. I dropped to the ground and started crawling for the table, elbowing my way through the shards.

  I could see Sam trying to get to me, but I felt myself growing weak. Everything went black and white, and there was a ringing in my ear that drowned out every other sound. I was fainting, I realized.

  The next thing I knew, Sam was putting me down on the sofa. My clothes sparkled with bits of plate and drinking glass.

  "I'm all glassy," I said, tears welling into my eyes. "Sam, I'm all glassy."

  "I know," he said, checking over my head, my face, my eyes. "Look at me, Alisa. Look at me."

  It was hard, but I focused on his face. He studied me.

  "I'm going to take off my clothes," I said, standing uncertainly and wobbling from foot to foot. For some reason, the glass on my clothes was really preoccupying me. "I have to get this stuff away from me."

  "Steady now, sweetheart." He looked over the shards that dangled like icicles from my clothes. He yanked a pair of pajama's from the top of my bag and set them down. "Get changed. I'll be back in a second."

  I heard him run upstairs, heard the bang of a cabinet door. I pulled off my pants and T-shirt and dumped them in the center of the room. Then I put on some soothing fleece pants and the camisole pajama top. That was better. So much better.

  I looked down and saw that my forearms were dripping with blood.

  The sofa loomed up at me, and I grabbed for it, holding tightly to the cushions for balance. And then everything went black again.

  The lights in the room were dim. I was waking up. I was under a blanket. Was it morning? I didn't think so.

  Where was I?

  Sam's, I realized after a moment. The dishes. I remembered now. I looked up to see Ruth sitting next to me, holding an ice pack to my forehead with her uncasted arm. I tried to sit up, but she put a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  "Stay down, Alisa," she said.

  "What happened?" I asked.

  "We don't know." Ruth smoothed my hair. "We're trying to figure it out."

  "We?" I asked.

  "Charlie was here when you were out," she said. "He put a ring of protection spells around the house."

  "While I was out?"

  "You've been unconscious for hours," she explained. "It's almost ten. Kate Giles is here now. She's another member of Ròiseal. She works in defensive magick."

  "Where's Sam?" I said, trying to lift my head to look around.

  "Doing a divination spell to see if he can find out what caused this," she answered, indicating that I should rest again. "He's fine."

  I took an inventory of myself. Both my arms were wrapped in gauze from my palms to my elbows. I felt something on my head as well. I had no shirt on—that was probably why I was under the blanket. There were soft little things resting on various points of my stomach and chest—they felt like little cloth bags. I guessed they were full of herbs or witch ointments. I was generally a bit sore, but nothing felt broken.

  I'd done a lot of strange telekinetic things in the last few weeks, but I'd never attacked myself. Also, what I'd felt right before the dishes started flying hadn't come from inside me. I'd felt something coming from the outside, like a magickal draft. This time it hadn't been me. What was happening? I thought of calling Hunter. He would know what to do. This was his kind of job.

  There was the sounds of loud heels on the steps. A young woman, maybe just around Hilary's age, came into the room.

  "She's awake," Ruth said. "Come on over."

  The woman approached. She was strinking—definitely shades of Raven. Her hair long and auburn with a dramatic streak of blond in the front. She had a powerful body, with sleek, defined arms and a Celtic tattoo up near her right shoulder. The whole effect was set off by the formfitting black pants, sleeveless shirt, and black boots she wore. This was Kate, I guessed. She looked really tough, but also feminine. Pretty much exactly how you think a female defensive magick expert should look—kick-ass and cool.

  "Alisa, this is Kate," Ruth said, confirming my suspicion.

  "Hi Alisa," Kate said, sitting down on the floor next to me. "How do you feel?"

  "Like I've just been hit on the head with a lot of plates."

  She smiled. "Well, at least your sense of humor is still intact. That's a good sign." She looked up at Ruth, "Sam get anything?"

  "Not yet." Ruth shook her head. "So, what do you think?"

  "Well," Kate said, twisting one of her many silver rings, "it looks a little like Oona. I'm finding the same residual energy disturbance that I usually see after she graces us with her presence. It's not exactly the same, but it's close enough."

  "But how can Oona be here?" Ruth asked, putting her hand to her head in concern.

  "Beats me," Kate replied. "She's never transferred her energy like this before. This is totally new. Charlie covered this place well, but I'll add another layer of protection spells before I go. It's all I can think to do."

>   "Goddess," Ruth groaned, panic in her voice. "Oh, Goddess. It's spreading."

  Sam came in from the kitchen. He looked to Kate, and she repeated what she had just said to Ruth. Then he came over to me.

  "Hey, kiddo," he said, squatting down.

  "Sorry about your dishes," I said.

  He broke into a boyish grin and stroked my hair.

  "Okay," Kate said, "I'd better get back. Don't worry, Alisa. We've been spelling this house for hours. Rest easy tonight. If you have any more trouble, Sam, I'm a phone call away."

  Kate gave Ruth a gentle pat on the shoulder, pulled on a black leather jacket and a pair of gloves, and headed out.

  "Do you want me to stay?" Ruth asked. "Or I'm sure Aunt Evelyn is home by now. We can call her…"

  "No," said Sam, standing up. "Let's not. We've done all we can do. Alisa just has to be able to rest. There's nothing left here. I don't see any immediate threat."

  She and Sam shared a long look, as if they were communicating telepathically. (Which they may have been able to do, I had no idea.) Ruth finally nodded.

  "Leave these packs on for another half hour," she told Sam. "Also, put some marigold tisane and apple cider vinegar on a washcloth. You can apply that to the bruises tomorrow. But I'll check in and see how things are going."

  After Ruth had gone, Sam and I sat down at the kichen table and drank tea out some paper cups he had left over from a picnic. Sam lent me a snuggly bathrobe to wear since I couldn't put my shirt back on over the packs that Ruth had attached to my chest with medical tape. The kitchen looked more or less normal, just with piles of broken glass swept into the corners.

  "Tomorrow," he said, "I'm taking the day off. How about we go to Salem? You know, get out of here for a little while."

  "Sounds great," I said, holding out a bandaged hand to accept a cookie he passed over to me from the counter. He looked like he wanted to say something but didn't quite know how to put it.

  "What is it?" I asked, cracking the cookie in two.

  "Some of those dishes," he said, his big blue eyes fixing on me hard, "I saw them burst in midair. They were being deflected."

  "I have powers," I said quietly. Though there was nothing wrong with this fact, I treated it like it was my dirty secret. It still felt foreign.

  "That's not possible," he answered, shaking his head.

  "I don't know why or how, but I do," I said. "Honest."

  "Goddess," he said. "So all this time, you've been fully capable of doing magick?"

  "Yep," I said, biting my cookie. "Poorly, but I can."

  Now that I thought of it, Sam would be the perfect person to teach me how to scry. Scrying seemed like a perfect way to get some information—maybe find out something about why I was supposed to come to Gloucester.

  "You work in divination, right?" I said.

  "Mostly," he replied.

  "Can you teach me how to scry?"

  "Scry?" He shrugged. "Sure. I can try. Not all witches can scry succesfully. It's a personal thing, and there are lots of different methods. You have to find out which one is right for you. We'll try method first. We're related, so we might use the same element."

  He got up and went into the living room and returned with a large black bowl. He filled this from the contents of a jar he pulled from one of the kitchen cabinets.

  "It's seawater," he said, setting the bowl down on the table. "I gather up a jar a week. A major rule of Wicca—never take more natural resources than you need, even from something as huge as the ocean."

  Sam lectured me on the basics. I was impressed with the depth of his knowledge. Part of me always saw Sam as the goofy kid my mother had described in her book. Now I see what he really was: a mature and incredibly responsible witch with years of training. He placed five white candles around the bowl, elevating them on stacks of books so that they sat just above the rim. After lighting them with a match, he turned of the overhead light.

  "All right," he said, taking my hands. "Relax. Breathe deep. Focus on the water."

  I did. At first nothing happened. It was just us, sitting in the dark, staring into a bowl of water for about twenty minutes. Then I realized I was looking down through a square form, as if I was peering into a box. There was a flash of purple, then we were back to the water. I'd been hoping to see people, to hear them say clever, cryptic things. All I got was a box full of purple.

  "I think I've had enough, Sam," I said, sighing.

  "Did you see something?" he asked.

  "I don't think it was anything," I said. "Just a flash of color."

  "You're probably exhausted." He got up and turned on the light. "We'll try again when you're feeling better. For now, I think we both need some rest."

  14. Witch Trials

  March 21, 1953

  Ostara already. I've been so busy the past few months, I've barely noticed how the time has gone by since the dearc. No visits from Oona, thank the Goddess. We seem to have been completely successful.

  In the meantime the little child inside me grows. She is a girl, of this I am certain. I never knew what utter joy motherhood would bring. I have become even more aware of the turning of the wheel and the phases of the moon. I feel her movement when the moon is full. She tends to be sleepy when it wanes.

  — Aoibheann

  Salem is only a short drive away, and Sam took a scenic route along the water. The sky was finally clear, and it was breezy. Aside from a few little aches and the cuts and bruises, I was fine. It was nice to get out alone with Sam.

  Pulling into the town, I was amazed by all the Wiccans I saw on the streets. Everyone seemed to have a pentacle necklace, or tattoo, or something kind of witchy. In fact, the witch thing seemed to be done to death. Every store window seemed to feature an picture of a little figure in a black pointed hat, riding a broom. Sam parked his car in a lot near the visitors' center.

  "Come on," he said. "There's something I want to show you."

  Tucked behind some buildings next to the lot was an ancient cemetery, with thin, frail headstones—some sunk halfway in the ground. Next to this was a square sectioned off by a low stone wall. Heavy slabs of stone jutted out from the wall at equal intervals, forming benches.

  "This is a weird park," I said as we entered the square.

  "Have a better look," Sam told me, pointing to the first bench. I went over to it. There was writing there. It read: Bridget Bishop, Hanged, June 10, 1962. I continued around, looking at each bench. Sam followed along behind me. Sarah Wildes, hanged. Elizabeth Howe, hanged. Susannah Martin, Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, George Burroughs, Martha Carrier—all hanged. Giles Corey, pressed to death. There were more still, their names carves roughly into the stones. It was so stark, so disturbing.

  "This is the Witch Trial Memorial," Sam explained. "These are the names of the people who were executed."

  I knew a bit about the witch trials from school and from some reading I'd done on my own. Two young girls had made claims that they were bewitched. From there, accusations flew and a court was set up. People were dragged in to testify. The girls continued and seemed to go crazy. More people came forward, claiming that they too had been attacked. In the end, twenty people were executed and dozens more accused or affected. The whole thing was over in a few months; then the people who ran the court were forced to close it and apologize for what they'd done.

  With a shiver I thought of my own behavior, how I'd wanted to write a letter to the local Widow's Vale paper and «expose» Wicca. While no one would have been tried or executed, I could have caused a lot of trouble for Morgan, Hunter, Mr Niall… so many others. Thank God Mary K. and I hadn't actually done anything.

  "You know what the weird thing is?" Sam said, looking down at the closest slab. "There people weren't witches at all. Some of them were outsiders, just a little weird in society's eyes. Some were prominent citizens. No rhyme or reason to it."

  "Then what happened?" I asked. "Does anyone really understand?"

  "Not really," he sai
d, carefully brushing some dead leaves that obscured the name on the bench below us. "It was hysteria. People pointed to anyone in sight, claiming anything the judges asked them to claim—if only they would be allowed to live. People admitted to things they didn't do. If you didn't confess, they executed you. These people"—he indicated the benches around the square—"they wouldn't confess to things they hadn't done. They were very unlucky, and very brave."

  "But now the town is full of witches," I said. "Why come here when the people who were killed weren't even Wiccans?"

  "The idea still remains that witchcraft is evil and dark. I guess we feel the need to come here and set the record straight."

  "All this," I said, shivering as I looked over the bleak stone benches, "just because some girls made up stories about witches."

  "It was more insidious than that," Sam said. "People were ready to rush to judgment, even to kill, just to exorcise their own dark thoughts and fears. Now everyone looks back on this, not understanding how it could have happened. But people still persecute and hurt one another over things they can't personally understand."

  "I guess maybe you know something about that," I said.

  He nodded, understanding my meaning. "I guess so. I've always been out as a witch, and I came out with my sexuality early as well. I refuse to lie."

  "My mom never mentioned that you were gay. Did she know?"

  "Well"—he exhaled and tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans—"I came out when I was eighteen, a few years after your mother left. But she always knew. I could tell. She was incredibly empathetic. She probably didn't think it was a big deal; I guess that's why she didn't mention it."

  My mother was empathetic. She could feel other people, sense their emotions—just like I have been doing more and more since I'd been here. I liked that part of being a witch. But the mention of my mother also brought my attention back to the graveyard with its decaying grave markers. We quietly walked away from the memorial.