Black Pool Magic

by Jennifer Willis

  She turned down a side street to get away from the inebriated crowds and motorized traffic and tried a different path to the Dublin Castle green. The cobblestone street took her directly to the complex’s black gate, which was locked tight for the night. She rattled the bars, hoping for a faulty latch or a slipped bolt, but the gate refused to give. She walked along the wrought-iron perimeter, looking for any gap where a teenager might squeeze through.

  Then, through the black bars, Sally spotted Clare’s dark red cloak—the girl’s sacred ritual garb. Far removed from the fence, Clare lowered herself onto the grass and started pulling objects out of her tapestried satchel. Sally wanted to call out to her but was afraid her voice would carry farther and louder across the open space than she intended, and they’d both be caught by the guards.

  Sally kept an eye on Clare while looking for a way in. She pushed and shoved against the black metal bars. Clare lit a quartet of candles and placed them at the cardinal points in the grass. The bars wouldn’t budge. Sally moved farther down the fence and found a hole where the concrete foundation was crumbling away from the iron. She tried to force her way through the gap and watched Clare finish calling the quarters as she knelt in the grass inside her ring of candles.

  Sally squeezed her head, chest, and arms through the gap, but the waistband of her jeans caught on one of the capped bolts lining the bars. As she struggled to wiggle free, Sally saw Clare pull her recent purchase out of her bag and carefully unroll the paper wrapping.

  “Clare!” Sally hissed toward the candlelit circle. “Clare, stop!”

  Clare was too far away. Sally’s warning was lost on the crisp breeze that was beginning to pick up.

  “Oh, this is so not good.” Sally cursed. She grabbed hold of a metal post just inside the fence and used it to pull herself through. There was a disconcerting rip of fabric as she wrenched away from the iron, but she was free.

  Sally scrambled to her feet and dashed across the cobblestones toward the wide grass circle at the center of the Dublin Castle garden.

  “Clare!” Sally called in hushed tones, still worried about attracting the attention of the guards who were probably roaming the grounds. But her voice caught when she saw the thick mist that had started to swirl up from the grass to encircle Clare. Sally could barely make out Clare’s red cloak, and her roommate looked to be holding some kind of feathery object in her hand.

  “Clare! You need to stop right now!”

  Clare was oblivious to Sally’s cries. Sally’s feet left the cobblestones as she reached the heart of the castle grounds and ran onto the grass. The mist had grown so thick that Sally had to guess at her friend’s location, but she kept moving. Whatever chaos might ensue from Sally sprinting through another witch’s sacred circle would have to wait.

  “Clare!” Sally called again, this time not caring who else might hear. “Clare! Where are you!” The last syllable was barely out of Sally’s mouth when she tripped over Clare’s knees and fell on her face in the grass.

  “Sally!” Clare cried in surprised pain. The mist dissipated quickly, and Sally could see her roommate rubbing her knee.

  “What in the world do you think you’re doing?” Clare demanded. “You’re going to ruin everything!”

  Sally spat out a mouthful of grass. “I’m trying to keep you from getting arrested.” She sat up and tried to catch her breath. She decided to ignore the cool draft hitting her left hip—no doubt from a sizable hole in her favorite jeans. She gestured around the grass circle, where remnants of Clare’s misty calling still hung in the air. “This kind of thing isn’t normal, is it?”

  A wide smile broke across Clare’s freckled face, and she brushed her chunky bangs away from her eyes. “Isn’t it cool? I knew this place was powerful, but this? This is positively wicked!”

  Sally’s voice dropped. “What do you mean, powerful?”

  Clare laughed with unveiled condescension. “Really, Sally, you should have studied up more on Dublin before you came here. You know this green is the former location of the Black Pool.”

  “No, I . . .” Sally was distracted by the appearance of searchlights running along the black fence and sweeping toward the grassy circle. “Tell me later. We need to get out of here.”

  Clare looked around with alarm. “Yeah, okay.” She grabbed up her things—four spent candles and their crystal holders, a box of safety matches, a damp smudge stick, and a palm-sized talisman that looked to Sally to be made of feathers and technicolor laundry lint—and shoved them into her bag.

  “Hurry!” Sally crouched low in case the searchlights started moving their way. Once Clare was on her feet, Sally reached for her hand and started dragging Clare back toward the gap in the foundation where she’d wriggled inside.

  Clare dug her heels into the ground and pulled Sally in the opposite direction. “No, this way! There’s an unlocked passage on the far side.”

  Sally followed Clare across the grass and down another cobblestone walkway. They stopped short a few times and jogged sideways to avoid the searchlights, but by the time they’d cleared the garden courtyard and were headed down a wide driveway bounded by modern offices built into the old castle, the searchlights had shut off.

  Sally stopped and looked back at the courtyard. “Why’d they stop?”

  Clare took Sally’s elbow and kept moving. “They turn them on every so often. I haven’t figured out the schedule yet.”

  Sally frowned sideways at her. “You’ve been out here at night before?”

  Clare tossed her hair over her shoulders. “Of course. I mean, that’s the first time I was out in the grass when it happened, but I told you I know what I’m doing.”

  Sally sighed. “Tell me.”

  Clare stopped in front of a barred pedestrian door that had been cut into the larger iron gate. The door was slightly ajar. “What, right now?”

  “Yes.” Sally passed through the door and waited for Clare on the other side. “Tell me everything.”

  Clare fidgeted with her bag’s leather strap on her shoulder. “Okay, but I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  Sally nearly laughed. “You’d be astonished how quickly even the most innocent spell can go horribly wrong.” Her face snapped upward as she heard voices from the ramparts above. She grabbed Clare’s arm and hurried away from the castle complex. “We’ll get some tea, and you’ll tell me. Okay?”

  They skirted behind the castle grounds on Ship Street and headed toward the crowded pubs and Trinity’s campus beyond. Sally glanced over her shoulder as they turned a dark corner, and she could have sworn she saw a trio of tiny, blinking lights drifting along behind them.

  Fireflies? In October? In Ireland? Sally blinked hard and chalked it up to after-images of the searchlights burned into her retinas.

  Badbh felt a warm surge rise from beneath her feet, and it soaked her skin like rainwater pushing upward. The bubbling mists of her underground cauldron broke the surface of the grass and swirled in thick tendrils on the chilled air.

  She breathed in the vapors of her well and opened her eyes. This was no dream, not like her previous reverie of sitting in the grass and stretching her limbs in the dim light of the dark half of the year.

  Her clawed fingers and toes tingled with the sharp startle of awakening after centuries of stillness and silence. She struggled against the dankness that surrounded her, even as she delighted in the slow thrill of vitality trickling back into her body.

  “Yes,” she exhaled in a voice hoarse from ages of disuse. “Yes!”

  But what was the nature of this rising? Badbh didn’t have a name for the hateful spark that first intruded on her sleep and given her dreams. Now it had shaken her back into semi-consciousness. She would settle that concern soon enough.

  “Scouts,” she commanded, and a trio of golden pinpricks of light rose from the depths and ascended to the surface.

  Badbh pushed against the rocks and clay overhead, unhappy to find herself trapped under many meters of soil—a
ll the dirt and debris the human creatures had dumped into her sacred waters to make more room for their roads and buildings. But she could reach up and touch the tangled roots of the grass. She could grasp the soil in her long, taloned fingers. She could almost taste the soot-filled air above.

  She closed her eyes and reached out with ancient senses. There were yet faint glimmers of her people, scattered across the land and driven underground just as she had been. But they were still there, waiting.

  “I have not abandoned you, my children,” the sister-goddess of The Morrigan called out. “Soon you will return to the Black Pool and be reborn.”

  4

  There was the usual Friday afternoon bustle at the Lodge, preparing for Odin’s weekly family meeting and setting out another fully stocked feast.

  Freya was in the kitchen with Frigga, spooning a massive quantity of mashed potatoes and turnips into a huge ceramic tureen. Her vision narrowed as a powerful flutter hit her chest, and she dropped the bowl onto the tile counter.

  The dream came rushing back to her—familiar skies and rolling green hills filled with lilting music and the voices of her ancient kin. But mostly, she saw the ghostly after-image of dark eyes gazing out from a tangle of black hair . . .

  “Freya?” Frigga paused over the roasted root vegetable salad she’d been tossing. “Whatever is the problem?”

  Freya leaned against the kitchen wall and quickly brushed the tears from her eyes. She turned to Frigga with a forced smile.

  “It’s nothing.” Freya added a lilt to her voice, but she feared Frigga would catch the false note. “I stupidly slept at my desk again last night, reconciling the books at the dojo, and it’s catching up with me.”

  Carrying a colander of chopped sweet potatoes from the refrigerator to the large kitchen island, Saga paused and eyed Freya. Freya gave her cousin a warning look.

  Frigga clucked at her adopted niece and went back to seasoning the vegetables. “Immortal or not, you should take better care of yourself. Hire a temporary accountant if Freyr’s not pulling his weight. Your brother’s a wonderful teacher, but I don’t recall him being a financial genius.”

  Freya shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.”

  A boisterous argument erupted on the other side of the sliding glass door that separated the kitchen and den from the outside deck. Lightly stained planks ran the length of the house, and half the deck was sheltered by a matching roof with the other half open to the elements.

  Thor stood beneath the shadow of the deck’s roof and hovered over a massive grill where he tended two dozen bratwursts, a handful of quail, and at least thirty vegetable kabobs. Beside the grill, a leg of lamb roasted on an open spit.

  Freyr loitered over his hulking cousin’s shoulder, apparently pointing out Thor’s many failures as a grill master. While Freyr looked to be on the verge of hilarity, Thor grew more red-faced by the second. He stomped his foot heavily on the wooden planks. Inside the kitchen, Frigga grabbed a glass bottle of malt vinegar at the edge of the counter before it rattled off to the floor.

  Saga pulled three baking sheets of fresh rolls from the oven. “Will Freyr ever quit? It’s like it’s his sole purpose in this world to goad Thor.”

  “I think Thor enjoys it, in his own way.” Freya watched her brother through the glass. Freyr was hunched over laughing at Thor, who appeared to be threatening to throw half-cooked brats at his head.

  Freya smiled. Her brother was particularly good at irking the hot-tempered god of thunder. Freyr might have had another destiny as an inspirational nature king before the twins joined the Æsir clan, but Frigga was right about his organizational short-comings: Freyr would require an entire squad of CEOs and administrative staff to keep his native Vanaheim from falling apart.

  Vanaheim. Freya closed her eyes and allowed memories of her homeland to roll over her. Even after centuries of warmth and welcome in Odin’s Lodge, she could smell the turf fires in cozy country dwellings and feel the thick carpet of grass beneath her feet.

  Her thoughts went to Sally. If there were any problems with the young Rune Witch being in Ireland, the Lodge would have heard about it by now. Still, Freya hoped Sally would heed her advice about the Connemara marble. Better safe than sorry.

  Frigga came up behind Freya and rested a hand on her shoulder. “You should get out of my kitchen, dear. Rest. Go lie down in one of the bedrooms.”

  Freya nodded and excused herself. Her feet felt strangely light in her deerskin slippers, and she still hadn’t shaken the uncomfortable buzzing in her chest. She ran her fingers along the wall as she made her way down the hallway to prevent losing her balance and to keep her grounded in her present reality.

  “Freya?”

  She turned to find her brother coming down the hall after her. He was frowning.

  “Frigga said you weren’t looking too good.”

  Freya reached the carpeted staircase and lowered herself onto the bottom step. “It’s getting stronger.” She looked into Freyr’s face and read him like an open book. “You’ve felt it, too.”

  He leaned against the wall. “I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

  “Like a surge of voices, and consciousness.” Freya leaned close and whispered. “Voices of the Vanir.”

  Freyr grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “What are we going to do?”

  Freya interlaced her fingers and squeezed her hands together. “I think we’re in for a very unpleasant conversation.”

  The twins fell silent as Heimdall came through the Lodge’s front door and started switching out his muddy work boots for a pair of slippers. Pushing past Heimdall, the gray-and-white wolf-dog Laika rushed inside, pausing only for a quick nuzzle from Freya before making a dash for the kitchen.

  Feeling Freya and Freyr’s eyes on him, Heimdall paused and looked up. “Everything okay in here?”

  “Yeah, fine.” Freya kneaded the muscles in her upper arms.

  At the far end of the hallway, there was the sound of toenails dancing across linoleum and the loud clatter of dishes.

  “Get this beast out of my kitchen!” Frigga shouted from the kitchen. “Heimdall!”

  Heimdall grimaced at the sound of his mother’s voice, and he stepped closer to Freya. “You sure about that?”

  “She’s just tired.” Freyr stepped between Heimdall and his sister. “She’s going to lie down for a bit.”

  Frigga shrieked a few curses in old Norse in the kitchen. Heimdall winced when he heard Laika yelp, followed by the sound of the sliding glass door slamming shut.

  Heimdall crossed his arms and leveled his gaze at Freyr. “What’s going on?”

  Freya leaned out from behind her brother and looked up at Heimdall. “Like he said, I’m feeling fatigued.” She sighed and looked down at her feet. “Ah, crap. I’m not going to lie to you, Heimdall. We’ve got a bit of a situation.”

  Heimdall knelt on the thick runner that overlaid the hallway carpet. He rested a hand on Freya’s ankle. “How can I help?”

  Freya glanced at her brother, then looked back to Heimdall. She hugged herself tightly. “It’s not good. Something’s stirring. I think it’s . . .” She cleared her throat. “If we want to preserve the peace between the Vanir and Æsir, I’m afraid you’re going to have to convince Odin to send us back to Vanaheim.”

  Sally and Clare settled into a back corner at The Palace Bar. It was the wee hours of Saturday morning and the place was packed, but they’d managed to secure a tiny table in the shadows. The other pubs they’d passed were standing room only, with scores of hopeful patrons milling about on the street as they waited for an open spot at the bar.

  As the rush of their recent excitement cooled, Clare had grown increasingly irritated over having her spell-work interrupted at the castle. Sally thought the thick smudges of Clare’s black eyeliner, combined with her foul mood, made her look like a rabid raccoon. She was wary of Clare’s mounting aggravation with every step toward mundane reality, and she was relieved when the waitr
ess arrived with two bowls of seafood chowder, a generous basket of brown bread and butter, and two pots of hot tea.

  “Honestly, I don’t know why you won’t let me have a pint. Just one.” Clare dipped a chunk of bread into her chowder and took a bite. “We’re of age here, you know. Might as well kick back and have some fun,”

  “I need your mind clear.” Sally poured herself a cup of tea and stirred in a packet of sugar. “You can get drunk on your own time.”

  A raucous cheer arose from the U-shaped bar in the next room. Sally winced at the rowdy patrons and loud music. She usually enjoyed the trad musicians and the people-watching, but right now she needed answers.

  She didn’t dare take Clare back to their apartment; for the moment, she had to keep Clare far away from the rest of her magickal implements. But she also didn’t want anyone to overhear their conversation, and the campus libraries would be too quiet.

  So, a loud pub it had to be, even though Sally could barely hear herself think. She held up her hand, palm out to face the crowd, and swiftly moved it from left to right across the scene beyond their small table. The volume of the room instantly reduced by three-quarters. Sally picked up a piece of bread and slathered it with salted butter.

  Clare stared wide-eyed at Sally. “Did you do that? How?”

  Sally gestured with her buttery knife toward the other patrons. The rest of the pub looked slightly out of focus beyond the dampening veil. “They can still hear and see us, if they want to. But this makes it easier for us to hear each other.”

  Sally bit into her bread. She didn’t elaborate and tell Clare that the veil was improvised magick and that she hadn’t been sure it would work. But Clare was still staring at her. Sally swallowed and smiled. “Relax, Clare.”

  “But, if you can do that . . .” Clare gulped down a large spoonful of chowder. “Are you sure I can’t have that pint? Or maybe a shot of something stronger?”

  Sally laughed. “That phrase from Hamlet you’re always quoting at me?”