by Isobel Bird
“It’s very Scarlett, don’t you think?” Sherrie asked.
“Oh, very,” Kate said.
Jessica unrolled some of the cloth and Sherrie wrapped it around her shoulders. Kate laughed as Sherrie batted her eyes and did an impression of a Southern belle. Then Kate held up the two colors she was trying to choose between and listened as her friends gave their opinions of each one.
Eventually she decided on the blue material. Taking the bolt and the pattern up to the counter, she asked one of the clerks to cut it for her while she tried to hide the pattern from her friends’ prying eyes.
“Not until the dance!” she said, even when they begged her to show them what she had decided on.
Afterward, the four of them stopped at a restaurant to eat. They laughed and joked as they shared an order of onion rings, pointed out guys they thought were cute at nearby tables, and picked food off each other’s plates when they came. Kate was happy. It felt good to be with her old friends. There was something safe and familiar about them. She wondered what Annie and Cooper were up to, though. They’d probably stayed and looked through the books from the store and found out more about Wicca. She wished she hadn’t had to leave. She sighed, realizing that she wanted to be in two places at once, and she knew she couldn’t be. She hoped she would never have to choose between them.
CHAPTER 12
The next afternoon, after returning from church with her parents, Kate went over to Annie’s. Cooper hadn’t arrived yet, so she had a few minutes to talk to Annie alone in her room.
“Do you go to church?” she asked.
“No,” said Annie. “My parents weren’t really into religion, and neither is my aunt. She practices Buddhist meditation, but she doesn’t call herself a Buddhist. She also does yoga and all kinds of other things. She says she likes to explore different spiritualities.”
“What about you?” Kate said. “What do you consider yourself?”
“Nothing, I guess,” Annie answered. “I’ve never really gone to any one church or been part of any group. Why do you ask?”
“I was just thinking about what Sophia said yesterday about Wicca being a religion. The Goddess religion, is what she called it. I’d never thought of it as a religion before.”
Annie picked up one of the books that Sophia had suggested to them. “I read some of this last night,” Annie said. “It’s really interesting. The woman who wrote it got into witchcraft after studying it for a class she took in college. She was raised Jewish, but after learning about Wicca she became a witch.”
“But who is the Goddess?” Kate asked.
“That’s kind of hard to explain,” Annie said. “I think basically she’s the force that created nature and everything in it.”
“And what does all of this have to do with magic and spells?” Kate asked.
“Remember what Sophia said about magic being energy?” Annie said.
Kate nodded. “You said something about that when we cast a circle,” she said.
“Right,” said Annie. “Well, witches believe that energy comes from the natural world, and from within themselves, and that magic is learning how to use that energy to change things.”
“Why do you have to worship this Goddess to be able to do that?” said Kate.
“I don’t think you do,” said Annie. “I mean, you and I both cast spells, and neither of us worships the Goddess.”
“But our spells didn’t work right,” Kate said. “Maybe it’s because we aren’t Wiccans.”
“What are you two talking about?” asked Cooper, entering the room. As she took off her coat she added, “Your aunt let me in, Annie, in case you thought I snuck in a window or something.”
“We were talking about whether or not you have to be Wiccan to really do magic,” said Annie.
“Lots of religions have magic,” said Cooper. “Not just witchcraft.”
“Like what?” asked Kate. “I’ve never heard of any.”
“What do you call prayer?” said Cooper.
“Prayer is talking to God,” Kate answered. “It’s not magic.”
“I know you don’t call it that,” said Cooper. “But think about it. What do you do when you pray? You ask God to make things happen, right?”
“Sometimes,” said Kate.
“Or what about when people say prayers to the saints?” Cooper went on. “You know, like when you lose something and you pray to Saint Anthony to help you find it.”
“That’s not the same thing,” said Kate.
“Maybe not exactly the same,” said Cooper. “But it’s the same principle. Isn’t praying the same thing as sending your intentions out into the universe?”
“I guess doing a spell to get a better grade on a test is sort of like asking God to help out a little,” said Kate doubtfully.
“And people do that every day in schools across the world,” Cooper said. “But they would freak out if you told them they might be trying to do magic.”
“But it’s not exactly the same,” said Annie. “I mean, when you do magic, you aren’t asking anyone else to help you out. It’s just you. And the universe.”
“And God isn’t the universe?” Cooper asked.
“I guess it depends on how you look at things,” Annie said.
Cooper sighed. “Whatever,” she said. “So, what are we going to do this afternoon?”
Kate looked at Annie. She was still trying to work out the different arguments about God and magic. What Cooper had said made sense, but Kate knew that it wasn’t quite as simple as Cooper made it out to be.
“Well,” Annie said. “I don’t think we’re quite ready to do any kind of spell to stop what Kate’s and my spells have done. But I thought maybe we could try raising some energy. I read about it in one of the books I got yesterday, and it occurred to me that maybe what we need is a little practice before we move on to the big stuff.”
“Fine with me,” Cooper said.
“Okay,” said Kate, wishing that she could be as confident about everything as Cooper seemed to be. Instead, she was feeling more and more uneasy about everything. Cooper seemed to be able to accept everything easily, and Annie was willing to consider everything and test it out, but she herself had a lot of questions. Still, they were all in this because of her, so she thought it best to go along.
“The exercise is actually pretty simple,” Annie said. “We’re supposed to sit holding hands and visualize ourselves filling with white light. Then we imagine passing the light to each other through our hands until we’ve formed a circle of light around us. Once we’ve done that, we picture the light moving up and forming a cone over our heads. It’s called a cone of power, and it’s a way of concentrating your energy and then releasing it into the universe.”
“Sounds like a blast,” said Cooper, seating herself in the center of the room and patting the floor with both hands.
Annie and Kate sat on either side of Cooper. Kate looked from one to the other. “How do we picture this light?” she asked.
“Just close your eyes,” said Annie, taking Kate’s hand.
Kate closed her fingers around Annie’s. She reached out her other hand and took Cooper’s hand in hers. Cooper squeezed tightly, unlike Annie’s gentle pressure, but when Kate shook her hand a little Cooper eased up. They all closed their eyes.
Kate sat silently, trying to picture herself filling with light. But for some reason she was having a hard time concentrating with Cooper and Annie beside her. Her mind kept wandering, and suddenly she would realize that instead of thinking about white light she was thinking about when Scott was going to kiss her or her dress for the dance or about what she might have for dinner. Finally, after several minutes of trying to focus, she gave up.
“I can’t do this,” she said, opening her eyes.
“I was having a hard time, too,” Annie admitted.
“Ditto,” said Cooper. “It’s like all of our different thoughts were interfering with each other or something.”
; “Maybe we need to try something else,” said Annie. “I read something interesting in one of the books. It suggested raising energy by chanting. You make up a chant by doing word association.”
“Word association?” said Cooper. “How’s that work?”
“I say a word,” Annie explained. “Then Kate says a word that my word makes her think of. Then you say a word that her word makes you think of. We keep going around the circle chanting, and as we do we let ourselves think about the images the words bring up. It’s supposed to help us focus.”
They joined hands again and closed their eyes. Then Annie began. “Snow,” she said.
“Cold,” Kate said, the word springing into her mind immediately.
“Ice,” said Cooper.
“Water,” Annie said after a short pause, and the second round began.
They went around, each saying a word, and the sound filled Kate’s mind. “Water, Ocean, Swim, Beach, Sand, Warm, Fire, Sun, Moon, Star, Night, Black.” The words flowed easily as they circled around and around. With each one, a picture flashed into Kate’s mind and was quickly replaced by another as the next word was spoken. Soon she found herself sinking into a comfortable, relaxed state. And then she saw herself filled with light, and Annie and Cooper on either side of her, also filled with light.
The sound of their voices took on a new tone. It reminded Kate of bees buzzing on a warm summer day, lulling her to sleep but also filling her with excitement. She imagined the light in her body flowing out through her fingers and into Cooper’s and Annie’s hands. She saw it join with the light coming from their fingers, and she imagined their different lights forming one continuous ring that flowed around them like crystal-clear water.
They kept chanting, the words coming out like a song. Their voices blended together into one, and Kate imagined the words flying around their heads, carrying the light above them like butterflies. “Earth, flower, bloom,” she heard them say.
The light rose up, and Kate pictured it coming to a point. The words grew louder. “Wind, fly, bird,” they chanted. “Feather, float, dream.”
Cooper squeezed Kate’s hand, and Kate squeezed Annie’s. It was as if they were signaling one another. They lifted their joined hands up into the air. “Mother, child, birth,” they said, and let the last word hang in the air as they stopped chanting.
Kate’s heart was beating fiercely in her chest. She could feel the blood moving through her body. She could feel Annie’s and Cooper’s hands in hers, and it was almost like they shared the same blood. She’d never felt anything like it. It was as if the whole room were filled with light, and they were at the center of it.
Kate opened her eyes. Annie and Cooper had also opened theirs, and they all looked around at one another.
“Did we do it?” Kate asked.
“I think so,” said Annie.
“I’m really hungry all of a sudden,” said Cooper. “Do you have anything to eat?”
Oddly enough, they all felt hungry. Going downstairs, they searched the kitchen for food and returned to Annie’s room carrying bags of chips and things to drink. Sitting on the floor, they ate and talked about what they’d just done.
“That was amazing,” Annie said. “I could really feel something moving inside me.”
“I felt a little of that when I did my own ritual,” Kate said. “But it was nothing like what we did.”
“The chanting really helped,” said Cooper. “But why are we so hungry?”
Annie picked up one of the books she’d gotten at the bookstore and opened it. “I think I saw something about that in here when I was reading,” she said, leafing through the pages. “Here it is. ‘After raising and releasing energy, you may feel a sense of exhilaration,’” she read. “‘You may even feel lightheaded or slightly dizzy. It’s important after doing this kind of energy work to eat and drink something. This helps reconnect you with your body and with the earth, and it allows any excess energy you’ve raised to be reabsorbed. This process is called grounding.’”
“Grounding,” said Cooper, taking a handful of chips. “Like when you work with electricity. You always have a ground wire to channel the electrical current so it doesn’t run wild and do damage. I learned that when I rewired my guitar amp.”
“I just hope we didn’t bother your aunt with all the chanting,” Kate said.
“Don’t worry about that,” Annie told her. “You can’t hear much downstairs. Besides, I don’t think we were that loud.”
“I wish we’d written down the words to the chant,” Kate said. “I don’t really remember them.”
“Maybe that’s part of the magic,” Cooper suggested. “If you did the same chant all the time, it wouldn’t be spontaneous. I think one of the reasons it was so powerful was because it came from the moment. You know, like when you make up poetry on the spot. It has an edge to it.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that one,” Kate said. “I’m not really an on-the-spot poet.”
“What about cheers at basketball games?” said Annie. “That’s kind of the same thing.”
Kate thought about it. Annie was right. She always liked it when the crowd started doing cheers at the games. It lifted her spirits and made her feel like she could do anything. The pounding of their feet, the clapping, and the sound of hundreds of voices working together had a special effect on her.
“As long as we don’t have to have cheerleaders,” Cooper said. “Those ditzes make me sick with their pom-poms and their little skirts.”
Cooper’s description of the cheerleaders made Kate think of Sherrie. She pictured her friend leading cheers at one of the guys’ games. Sherrie was really good at it. She loved to come up with new chants and new routines to get the crowd into the game. But what would she think of the chant that Kate, Annie, and Cooper had just done? Would she think it was cool, the way she thought a new cheer was cool? Would she see raising the energy level at a ball game the same way she would see raising energy in a magical circle? Kate knew that she wouldn’t, and that bothered her.
“I’ve got to get home,” she said suddenly. “I have a lot of homework to do before tomorrow.”
“I guess I should do some work, too,” Annie said reluctantly.
“What about planning a ritual?” Cooper asked. “Shouldn’t we talk about what we’re going to do to fix the things Kate started? I thought that was the whole point of getting together in the first place.”
“I think maybe we need some more practice,” said Kate, gathering up her things. “Can we talk about it later?”
Cooper shrugged. “It’s your life,” she said.
As Kate walked home, her mood worsened. She’d felt so happy and powerful sitting in the circle with Annie and Cooper. But that was only one part of her life. The rest of her time centered around being on the team, trying to be a normal high school student, and, she hoped, being Scott’s girlfriend. If she kept practicing Wicca, she wouldn’t be able to keep what she was doing a secret forever, and she knew her friends would never understand her involvement in something like witchcraft. She wasn’t even sure she believed a lot of the things that witches seemed to believe. Sure, it had been fun raising energy, but she wasn’t sure how all the new beliefs sat with her. Annie and Cooper seemed to be able to accept things so easily, but Kate wasn’t sure she could do the same thing.
CHAPTER 13
That night, while she was working on an English assignment, Scott called her to tell her that he’d cobbled together his Prince Phillip costume for the Valentine’s Day dance and to ask her what color her dress was going to be. “I want to make sure the flowers I get are exactly right,” he said.
When Kate hung up, she started thinking about the dance and about Scott. She knew that witchcraft had had a lot to do with why he had asked her out. Now that she knew a little more about how magic worked, that made her uneasy. But what made her even more uneasy was the thought that, even if he liked her for who she was, Scott probably wouldn’t want a girlfriend who
practiced Wicca. He probably didn’t even know what Wicca was.
And she knew that Scott wouldn’t be the only boy who didn’t know anything about witchcraft. How would she ever have a normal social life if she remained involved in Wicca? She imagined trying to explain to a guy that she couldn’t go out with him on a Friday night because she and her friends had to raise energy or cast a spell. He’d think she was out of her mind.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Wicca was just a little too weird for her. She wasn’t like Sophia, with her Indian print clothes and her funny store. She wasn’t like Annie, who would rather sit up in her room reading than hang out with other kids. And she definitely wasn’t like Cooper, who didn’t seem to care whether anyone liked her or not. She was plain old Kate Morgan, with a normal family and a normal life. She just wanted to fit in. And becoming a witch was not going to help her do that.
Maybe, she thought, the problem wasn’t that the spell she’d cast was out of control. Maybe the real problem was that she wasn’t letting it run its course. Things did seem to be calming down a little. Her friends were hanging out with her. Scott was still interested. Sure, people were mad at Annie about Terri’s accident, but they’d forget about that eventually. And it wasn’t like Annie had been popular before anyway. She wouldn’t care if people thought she was kind of weird. Maybe the best thing was to just let everything settle down on its own. Maybe doing more spells would just stir up the energy again and cause more bad things to happen.
The more she thought about it, the more Kate became convinced that this was the best way to go. By the time she turned out the light and went to bed, she’d decided that maybe she didn’t need to ever do another ritual. Now she just had to tell Cooper and Annie.
She got her chance first thing the next morning when she arrived at school. She spotted Cooper and Annie near the entrance, talking, as she approached.
“Hey,” Annie said, smiling. “Cooper and I were just talking about what kind of ritual we should do. We had this idea that—”
