Black Pool Magic

by Jennifer Willis

  Sally didn’t need any further excuse to walk away from the old woman and her wares. She turned the heavy ring on her finger, trying to get used to the feel of it against her skin. She reached the next row of tables just as Clare stepped away from the young man in black.

  “You ready to go?” Clare slipped a small, colorfully-wrapped package into her purse. She looked at Sally’s hand. “I see you found something for yourself, too. I told you you’d like it here.”

  “Yeah,” Sally replied curtly. “What about you?”

  Clare gave her an impish smile—at least, Sally guessed that was the effect Clare was going for. “It’s a secret. It’s for my special project.”

  “Listen, Clare, about all these spells and things you’ve been trying to do—”

  “I told you I’d be happy to show you how, just not right now, okay? Maybe after Halloween.”

  “That’s not really what I meant.” Sally looked over her shoulder at the table in the back corner. The old woman was back at her knitting behind her display of green marble.

  Sally then glanced at the young man in black, who flashed her a strangely excited grin before he began talking to a trio of students dressed in matching plaid trousers.

  She turned back to Clare. “Have you thought about what you might be getting yourself into?”

  Clare patted Sally on the arm in such a condescending manner that it was all Sally could do not to stomp on her roommate’s brown-booted foot.

  “You don’t have to be scared of magick, Sally,” Clare said. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

  Sally bit her tongue. She’d heard that before. She’d said that before.

  “Come on.” Clare hooked her arm through Sally’s and guided her out of the ballroom and back up the stairs into the hotel lobby. “Fisherman’s chowder is on me tonight. Or at least a plate of scones.”

  Clare launched into a one-sided conversation about candle colors and their significance to the upcoming Halloween holiday. Sally was about to open her mouth to change the topic to more mundane matters—namely, whose turn it was to do the vacuuming in the apartment—when she noticed her friend Niall from her Global Currents class hanging about in the lobby. Her stomach sank like a stone. Niall was friendly enough, but seeing him reminded Sally about the paper she was supposed to be researching and outlining for their class, and she was still looking for a reasonable approach to the topic of “personal ethics and individual responsibility as it relates to membership in the larger community” that Professor Ball had assigned.

  Niall seemed to be loitering without purpose, pacing slowly back and forth across the lobby’s marble tile floor and occasionally glancing toward the staircase leading down to the ballroom where the marketplace was bustling.

  Sally tuned out Clare’s prattling about her plans for Halloween, and she disengaged herself from her roommate’s grasp to approach her friend.

  “Niall? What are you doing here?” Sally glanced around at the wide, ornate foyer and the grand sitting parlors on either side. “This can’t be for research for your paper?”

  Niall chuckled. “No, I’m a far cry from being ready to set pen to paper on that one. I’m here to look after my gran. She’s down at the marketplace.”

  “Shopping?” Sally glanced back at the ballroom.

  “Selling,” he answered in a low voice.

  Beaming an excited smile, Clare stepped up beside Sally and extended her hand to Niall. “I’m Clare! I’m Sally’s roommate. So your family’s in the Craft, then? Real Irish magick?”

  Sally sighed heavily. “Clare . . .”

  Niall accepted Clare’s outstretched hand. “Not at all. I’m not really caught up in all of that myself, but I suppose you could say it’s kind of the family business. I’m Niall.”

  “Ooh!” Clare cooed in her Texan drawl as she tried to hang onto his hand. “I love your accent! Your lilt is simply to die for.”

  “Well, we are in Dublin. The city’s lousy with Irish, you know.” Sally pulled Clare’s arm back, forcing her to break off from Niall.

  Clare’s dark, shoulder-length hair bobbed in her excitement as she turned to Sally. “It must be fate! Here I am, having come all this way to learn Irish magick, and just like that! I cross paths with the heir to an honest-to-goddess bloodline of Celtic witches.”

  Sally gritted her teeth. There was so much about what Clare had said that was wrong and uncalled for.

  “I’m afraid I’m not heir to so much as a potato patch, miss,” Niall offered in a deadpan tone.

  Sally placed her hands on Clare’s shoulders and turned her toward the door. “Well, we really should be going.”

  Clare reached back toward Niall but didn’t quite make contact. “You should stop by our flat! We’re on the third floor of House XXV in Rubrics. Room number five. We can put on some tea and talk about witchy things!” Clare called out as Sally pushed her toward the exit. “You know I’m part Irish myself, and a real practitioner, too! We’ll break out the biscuits and the Tarot cards!”

  “Sorry,” Sally offered over her shoulder to Niall. “She’s kind of enthusiastic.”

  “That I can see,” Niall nodded. “But I just might take you up on that offer,” he added with a wink.

  “Ooh!” Clare’s eyes sparkled as she clapped her hands together. “Real Irish magick, in our apartment!” Clare glanced sideways at Sally as they exited the hotel. “I mean, more real magick, of course.”

  Sally didn’t comment. She felt the weight of the marble ring on her finger and walked down the damp steps to the street.

  2

  Clare clutched her bag and practically skipped through the Leeson Street gate into St. Stephen’s Green.

  “I’m living the dream, Sally,” Clare mused. Her broad smile was almost ethereal, and only a tiny bit smug.

  Sally turned her face upward and eyed the clouds drifting lazily in front of the late October sun. She’d always loved autumn, especially that unique shade of gold cast by the sun’s rays slanting low in the sky—“October oblique,” she called it. This time of year was pure bliss in Oregon, and Sally thought the turning of the seasons in Ireland was particularly beautiful.

  The rains hadn’t started in earnest, but Sally pulled the collar of her rain jacket close against the wind. The other Americans studying at Trinity College complained about the city’s typical dreary dampness, but the Irish weather appealed to Sally. It was remarkably similar to Portland.

  She would have thought of the experience as magickal, but the whole point of starting her college career so far from home was to take a break from magick. She knew there’d been some tense discussion at the Lodge about her plans, but Maggie had mercifully stepped in to suggest to Frigga and Odin that maybe Sally would benefit from some time on her own with Ireland’s rich Viking history and walking the same streets that Odin’s people had paved.

  Or something like that. Sally hadn’t really been listening. And she wasn’t really listening now to her flatmate babble on about magickal correspondences and local legends, either.

  “. . . Which connects back to the water and therefore to the grass itself.” Clare sighed and paused before a statue of the Fates.

  The three sisters, cast in bronze, watched in silence as a group of school children passed by. The scene was almost eerily peaceful. Sally wondered if the three Norse Fates—who were prone to wild shrieking and ridiculous, mind-bending riddles to convey even the simplest information—had allowed a single quiet moment in their long lives.

  Heimdall said the Norns always gave him a headache. Sally smirked, imagining that Odin’s right hand would probably prefer these silent sisters in bronze. Their prophecies might be more accurate, too.

  “It is enchanted, isn’t it?” Clare beamed at the surrounding shrubs and trees. “I’m almost tempted to try a couple of spells here in the Green sometime, but obviously that will have to wait until after Samhain.”

  Clare pronounced the word “Sam-hain.” Sally cringed behind Clare’s b
ack but didn’t correct her. She didn’t want to invite her roommate to pester her for information, tutelage, and even rescue when Clare’s haphazard magickal recipes went inevitably wrong.

  In some twisted, cosmic joke, Trinity’s computer system had paired Sally and Clare to share a two-bedroom flat on campus. As soon as she’d arrived, Clare had accosted her new roommate’s sensibilities with pentacle posters, winged goddess tea light holders, Enya playlists, herbed smudging sticks, an amethyst-studded wand, and even an old wicker broom.

  Clare certainly possessed all of the exterior trappings of being a witch, but Sally soon discovered that her roommate had no real knowledge of true magick—and no interest in learning.

  “Could you at least pretend to pay attention, Sally?” Clare pouted. “I promised I’d treat you to tea and scones.”

  “I was just . . . admiring the scenery.” Sally gestured toward the statue.

  The breeze lifted Sally’s strawberry hair off the back of her neck, and she glanced up at the gray sky. It wasn’t yet 4 p.m. but was suddenly so dark it looked like the sun had disappeared below the horizon. Sally peered into the bronze faces of the three Fates as they rested in the center of their small pond.

  Six thousand miles from Odin’s Lodge, Sally couldn’t shake the imminent, ambiguous dread she felt lurking around every corner—as though something in the land itself wanted to suck the magickal marrow right out of her. She’d almost been able to ignore it in the marketplace, but now it was back again, tugging at her.

  Clare looked at the side of Sally’s face and smiled. “See? You’re already getting into the spirit of it. The Fates know all, see all.” She moved close and linked arms with Sally. “You have any questions, you just ask me.”

  Clare turned and propelled Sally forward. She resumed her recitation of what she’d read in her latest witchy book. Sally’s eyes followed a mad flutter of wings as a flock of pigeons landed on the pavement and boldly stalked a young woman and her toddler over a small bridge.

  Passing under the Fusiliers’ Arch, Clare and Sally headed out of the park. Sally kept an eye out for traffic as they jaywalked with the other students, locals, and tourists across the congested intersection to Grafton Street. After more than a month in Dublin—and several close calls with cars, lorries, and even a bicycling nun—she still had to remind herself to first look right when crossing the street.

  Clare ignored the salespeople standing in shop entrances announcing specials on souvenirs, electronics, and cosmetics. She pulled Sally along as they wove their way through slow-moving throngs of tourists who gaped at the living statues and amplified buskers.

  To avoid the Friday afternoon rush at the local pubs, they opted to step back onto campus for their tea and they were immediately caught in another crush of people flowing through the front gates of Trinity College.

  As they walked across the old campus toward the dining hall, Sally entertained herself with thoughts of the generations of students who’d trodden these same stones over the previous four centuries. So many writers, scholars, politicians, and scientists had haunted these paths—Oscar Wilde, Douglas Hyde, Ernest Watson, Bram Stoker.

  Had there ever been a Rune Witch here before? Sally pulled her jacket closer against a chill.

  Clare and Sally settled at a small table at the Arts Café inside the dining hall. Clare was true to her word and provided Sally with a tall cup of hot tea and a plate of currant scones to share. Sally poured a generous amount of sugar into her tea and then drank it slowly. She closed her eyes and felt some of her trepidation melt away as the sweet warmth slid down her throat.

  “So I picked up a new Tarot deck, too,” Clare said.

  Sally’s stomach tightened.

  “I’d been looking for some new cards at that bead shop, Yellow Brick Road. You know, across the river?”

  Sally shifted in the plastic seat. “I know.”

  Clare had dragged Sally to Yellow Brick Road, Mystic Isle, and every other novelty shop in town to waste hours ooh’ing and ah’ing over every Tarot deck, sacred dice, and crystal pendant imaginable. All part of her flatmate’s never-ending witch quests.

  “But then I found these at the market.” Clare pulled the cards out of her bag and showed them to Sally. The back design was an ancient snaking knot entwining two serpent heads that appeared unconnected to anything else in the vaguely Scandinavian artwork.

  “It’s a Viking deck, see? It’s called the Valkyrie Tarot. Isn’t it cool?”

  Sally took the deck into her hands and turned over a few of the cards. She shuffled through images of Thor’s hammer dancing across stick-figure skulls; dwarves that looked like drug-fiends stamping bastardized runes onto large gold coins; a cartoonish, bug-eyed Odin suspended on the Yggdrasil; and a silver-haired Freya in gemstone-encrusted armor standing in her chariot, drawn by what looked like a squadron of feral house cats.

  Sally paused over a card depicting a Valkyrie looming above a battlefield strewn with the mangled bodies of fallen warriors. The Valkyrie’s long, black hair was streaked with white and flowed in waves behind her. Dark purple robes billowed, blending into the sky. The sharp angles of the Valkyrie’s withered face were broken by what Sally guessed was supposed to be a terrifying, blood-chilling grin.

  Sally thought the creature looked more like a constipated dementia patient having a bad hair day. She imagined asking Ted and the other members of the real-life Valkyrie biker gang back in the U.S. what they thought about such a representation. She choked back her laughter and returned the cards to Clare.

  “Not exactly accurate,” Sally commented. “Thor is much broader across the shoulders, and Freya’s hair doesn’t look anything like that.”

  She stopped herself from saying more. Clare didn’t know about her background, and she wanted to keep it that way. But it was obvious Clare had been too lost in her own thoughts to mark Sally’s slip.

  “Because, you know the Vikings founded this city, right? So I was thinking I could take these cards back to Dublin Castle, for another witchy field trip.” Clare looked at Sally expectantly.

  Sally’s shoulders sagged. “If you’d put as much effort into your coursework as you did into these ethereal pursuits . . .”

  “You know, Sally, you don’t have to be so snotty.” Clare scowled and shoved a scone into her mouth. Crumbs spilled from her lips as she chewed. She shuffled her Tarot cards and swallowed hard. “If you would try to be just a little more open-minded, you might find that you even like this stuff.”

  This stuff? Sally rolled her eyes.

  Clare looked at Sally with petulant defiance. “It might even be good for you. Who knows? Maybe you’d even turn out to be good at it. Not as adept as me, of course. But really, you won’t know unless you try.”

  Sally turned away to hide her smile. “Sure. Okay.”

  She wondered how much longer she could resist correcting Clare’s methods, presumptions, and attitude before the clueless little witch did real harm to herself or someone else. Given that they were sharing living space, Sally imagined she herself would be the most likely fly-by victim of her roommate’s magickal recklessness.

  Clare checked the time and choked down the rest of her tea. “I need to get back to the room.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Clare replied. “I just have, you know, stuff to do.”

  Sally’s eyes narrowed. “Clare, what are you working on?”

  Clare giggled. “Nothing.” She pushed back from the table and slung her bag over her shoulder.

  Sally put down her tea. “You’re planning on working a spell tonight, aren’t you?”

  Clare planted her hands on her hips and smiled down at Sally. “Fine. Yes. But nothing too complicated. It’s a surprise.”

  “Great.” Sally ducked her head as she rose from the table. She hoped her roommate wouldn’t catch the pained skepticism on her face.

  Exiting the Trinity dining hall, Sally and Clare cut through Library Square and
headed directly to the 18th-century red-brick Rubrics residence building.

  Clare still wouldn’t tell Sally what kind of magickal mischief she had planned. All Sally knew was that she was to be banned from their apartment’s parlor once Clare started her spell-work.

  They pushed open the door of Rubrics House XXV and climbed the wooden stairs to the third floor. Sally followed Clare into the narrow hallway and walked to their flat’s red door at the far end. Clare waited for Sally to fish her key out of her pocket and unlock the door.

  As soon as she stepped into the darkened sitting area, Sally’s senses were assaulted by the perfume of lavender essential oil mingled with sage and sweetgrass incense. Strains of Loreena McKennitt murmured in the background.

  “You left your MP3 player on again.” Sally jammed her keys back into her jacket pocket and closed the door.

  “I told you, you have to let the energies linger.” Clare pushed past her roommate to stand in the center of the sitting area. She lifted her hands and turned slowly in the dark. “The magick continues working long after you’ve finished your spell.”

  At least that much is true, Sally thought as she snapped on the overhead light. Clare shrieked at the sudden brightness and dove for the light switch, plunging the room into darkness again.

  “Sally!” Clare exclaimed in exasperation. “You can’t just go interrupting things like that. Here, let me.”

  Sally heard her roommate shuffling around in the darkness. It took a few seconds for Sally’s eyes to readjust, but she wasn’t surprised to see Clare leaning down to set up a haphazard ring of candles on the floor. Then Clare struck a match.

  “Please don’t set the place on fire,” Sally said. “If you don’t mind.”

  Clare stood upright and made a sour face. “That only happened one time.”

  Sally turned on a small lamp by the window. “How about this as a compromise? This is barely brighter than your candles.”