Poison

by Molly Cochran

  The apartment was dark. The kitchen was clean, with no dishes in the sink. His bed was made. The papers on the desk in his office were neat. His answering machine had sixteen messages on it. For a while I just wandered from room to room, listening to the quiet. It felt like a professor’s home, spare and utilitarian, with no frills except for hundreds of books, most of them old, lining shelves in every room and smelling musty and comfortable. Plus it was quiet. That was undoubtedly due to the snowstorm and would change as soon as the roads got cleared, but for that night, anyway, it felt safe. Almost. I knew I’d never really be safe again.

  I plopped down on a wing chair—a Salvation Army special, from the looks of it—and closed my eyes. My life had become a horrible dream, so frightening that I couldn’t bear to think of it. Later, I told myself. Later I’ll go over everything that has happened. Later, when I can picture Peter’s face without dying inside, when I can speak Bryce’s name without tears, when I can think of the young girl from Avalon who withered just by being near me, I will remember.

  I ran into the bathroom and threw up, again and again, until I was weak and shaking and sobbing again.

  Later, I reminded myself. Think of something else. Anything.

  Something was pressing against my hip. In the pocket of my jeans were the two pieces of Morgan’s amber.

  Yes, I thought. I can go there, to her world, sixteen hundred years in the past. Whatever she had done, I would rather be in her skin than mine.

  • • •

  Morgan is in the center of the reverse pentagram, where I left her, casting her spell. She walks widdershins, or counterclockwise—another sign that the magic she is performing is black. It will bring harm.

  She calls on the elements of fire, water, air, and earth, and their compass points—north for the great powers of earth; south for fire and passion; east for air and its provenance, thought; and west for water, comfort, and healing. The homage she pays to the lords of air and water is perfunctory; she does not need them. Her driving force is her passion, and her ultimate goal is an object forged from earth things.

  During the ritual the air stills around her as the earth inside her magic circle heats and trembles. The moon is new, invisible, and there is no light. She has chosen a place far removed from human habitation, where thunderclouds obscure the moon and stars.

  “Be with me, Darkness, thou who art the center of the world, the perfection of the universe,” she says in her peculiar old-woman voice.

  How aged she has become!

  What? My own thought startles me. Aged? How could Morgan be so old? It is Morgan I’m seeing, isn’t it?

  Isn’t it?

  I am biting my fingernails. Again, odd. I never do that. In fact, I feel completely different again, in the same weird way I felt the last time I’d picked up the amber pieces. And again, an insistent question burns through my brain: Who am I watching—the witch, or the watcher?

  And then I realize, understand, grasp at last what has happened. I am no longer Katy Ainsworth, but Morgan herself. It is Morgan who is standing behind the tree, holding her breath, biting her nails. And I am inside with her, feeling her fear, hearing the sound that has been bothering me since I came upon this evil sight.

  The sound is a cry of wretched terror, uttered by a child. The cloaked figure inside the reverse pentagram reaches out bony arms to pick up the toddler—a boy no more than two years old—screaming through the gag in his mouth, struggling against the ropes that bind him.

  “For you, my Sire, a sacrifice,” the old woman says. The child squirms wildly; he kicks off the woman’s head covering.

  I almost scream as I recognize the rheumy eyes, the mouth filled with brown teeth, the thin white hair plastered against the pink spotted head.

  It is the Seer and I know her for I am fully Morgan now.

  • • •

  The Seer . . . the Seer . . . I remember her from an incident in my childhood. My father had left me in a meadow and had vanished into the worldly realm. I called for him to come back. I ran after his shadow, already gone.

  “Da!” I screamed. “Da, come back!”

  But he did not come back to me. He had gone to his child of preference, the boy, Arthur. The boy my father would one day make into a king, while I was left as a plaything for the vultures who served the Seer.

  They picked me up with their talons and carried me to the rock where she lived within the deepest crevasse, away from all light. I caught only a glimpse of her in that dank, dark place, but the image of her face never left me. She was as pale as a worm’s belly, almost iridescent in the gloom.

  “I have seen your future,” she whispered, dragging a long fingernail lightly across my cheek. “One day you will be me.”

  I was too frightened to answer, but in my heart I knew that she was wrong. I would never be one of her ugly birds. I would never serve her or whatever Master she answered to, because I would not remain in Avalon for one moment longer than I had to. One day my father would teach me how to enter that other, better realm, and when I got there, I would never return.

  Or so I thought. I was very young then.

  • • •

  The Seer looks around now, watchful, her movements those of a small bird. She knows she has been seen. She senses me.

  She swallows, afraid, guilty. “Who is it?” she asks, slipping her hand over the child’s mouth. The boy tries to scream again.

  “Stop it!” I rasp, stepping out from my hiding place. “Let him go! He’s a baby!”

  For a moment the hag hesitates. Her grip loosens. But then her eyes narrow, thinking, calculating. “I know you,” she says. “You are Merlin’s wild and unloved daughter.”

  This hurts. The Seer’s gift is that she is able to look into your heart and find your weakness. This is what has enabled her to be our leader. We all fear her. We do not question her, because she is immortal. She will outlive all of us, no matter what we do. But she will outlive us far longer if we dare to criticize her.

  “Why have you returned to Avalon, child?” she asks sweetly. “Ah, but of course. You have come for some magic, haven’t you? Do you think I do not know your dark dreams?”

  I know that I will not be forgiven for my intrusion. I should have let her kill the child. But I could not. I have not yet lost all of my humanity.

  Is it worth my life? I ask myself. Because I know that will be the price I will have to pay.

  Ah, but I do not have to decide to end my life as a hero. This evil woman is the Seer. She sees me, the black heart of me. She knows I would never save anyone but myself.

  “A gift,” she says, extending her skeletal hand. In it is a ring, blue as ice, shimmering with beauty and evil. She adds in a whisper: “A gift to kill a king.”

  I fall back. How did she know? Even I myself . . .

  A gift to kill a king.

  Oh, my. How extreme! And how exactly right.

  I reach out to touch the blinking, inviting jewel. It smiles, in its cold way, like an impossibly beautiful woman or an unattainable man who knows the power of his charm.

  But would that solve anything? Would it make my father love me?

  It would make him sorry.

  Would that be enough? For such a crime . . .

  Perhaps he would notice you again. Turn flowers into butterflies for you. Walk through open fields with your hand in his, teach you the Merlin’s magic, talk with you the way he talks with Arthur, easy, comfortable, caring.

  “Da,” I whisper aloud. “Oh, Da, don’t leave me. Don’t go.”

  The hag gestures curtly for me to take the ring. My hand closes over it, trembling, lovingly.

  Oh, Morgan, think what you’re doing!

  I feel its warmth pour through me like warm syrup. All is well. All shall be well. All manner of things shall be . . .

  There is a sharp, sickening crack as the Seer breaks the boy’s neck and the child goes limp in her arms.

  I gasp as she shudders, holding the dead child close.
As I watch, the tiny corpse turns to ash and disintegrates in her arms while, at the same time, the Seer’s face becomes relaxed, calm again, alive. The skin of her hands fleshes out. She breathes deeply, relieved, whole again.

  She has not taken her eyes off me. They flash now, teasing, sparkling, cold.

  I look at the ring in my hand. It is the seal of the covenant I have made with the Darkness, the seal that has bound me to this creature of death forever.

  “No,” I moan. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t in my right mind. I didn’t mean . . . ”

  But we both know that all that is of no importance anymore.

  The Seer, now serene and in control, turns away from me with a sneer.

  I have become her servant, and I am sick with grief.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FORTY-FOUR

  The next day dawned clean and sunny, with the sound of snowplows coming from everywhere in the city. I’d fallen asleep in the wing chair, and woke up squinting into the sunlight streaming through the window.

  After a quick look in the refrigerator, which contained a dried-up piece of smoked mozzarella, a jar of mustard, and two bottles of Dos Equis, I decided to venture outside to search for food. It was the last thing I wanted to do. I felt guilty about everything, even eating, but even though I may have wanted to die from shame and regret, my belly was still rumbling ferociously.

  Outside, I felt as if I were in the middle of a gigantic maze. Most of the streets had been plowed, but they were all flanked on either side by snow walls four feet high. On some corners where the plows had deposited their loads, the snow reached eight or nine feet. Already at eight in the morning, little kids were hanging on to those snow mountains like monkeys while cars zipped around below.

  I found an open deli near my dad’s apartment and bought a bagel with cream cheese. There didn’t seem to be much point in taking it back to the apartment, so I kept walking until I reached Central Park a few blocks later.

  It was like fairyland there, the sparkling snow reflecting so much light that it was hard to look at anything without my eyes watering. All sorts of people were in the park—runners jogging along the roads, cross-country skiers, lots of kids sliding down hills on sleds and saucers, and even a few snowboarders, plus old people who walked down the lanes wearing overcoats and hats, as if this were just another winter morning instead of the weird, rare, citywide snow day it was.

  I found a bench that I knew no one had sat on since before the snowstorm because at least a foot of snow had accumulated on the slats and an equal amount rose up from the ground beneath it. After sweeping the snow away with my arm, I sat down and bit into my bagel, feeling like I was a part of this phenomenon, this scene, an instant New Yorker. For once I felt like there was nothing dangerous or horrible about me. I was just another face in the crowd.

  Like I was before I went to Whitfield. All those years when I struggled to fit in, so that my freakish abilities wouldn’t be noticed. Until last year, when I’d moved to Whitfield and discovered that there were others like me, my life had been nothing but lies and hiding and shame.

  Pretty much what it was now.

  I’d been really hungry, but suddenly the bagel seemed to turn to raw dough in my mouth. I put the rest of it back into the bag and leaned back on the bench.

  At about the same moment a man sat down next to me. He looked like he was homeless, with a scraggly black beard shot with gray, and long hair and a filthy ski jacket full of holes where the stuffing stuck out. He smelled like a sewer. The first thing he did was take a bottle from inside the jacket and glug it so that his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  “Ahh,” he said. Then he turned to face me. He had turquoise-colored eyes, but they weren’t looking at me. They were fixated on the paper bag in my hand. Hesitantly I offered it to him. He grabbed it, tore open the bag, and gobbled what was left of the bagel. Then he threw the bag onto the ground. Passersby gave us both dirty looks as he quaffed some more from the bottle that had been nestled against his chest.

  The blue eyes fastened on my face this time. “Wine?” he croaked, holding out the bottle to me. I shook my head, thinking that the last thing I ever wanted to do was drink from that bottle.

  He shrugged, then took another slug. “Ahh,” he said again. I stood up. “The feast of Christmas,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked, immediately regretting saying anything at all to him.

  “Bread and wine. It brings us all together. We are one.”

  I started backing away.

  “Just do what you can,” he said, the blue eyes boring into me like lasers.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  He belched. I ran away, out of the park, down the mazelike streets. I was thinking that I should have gone in the other direction so that I could have picked up the paper bag. I kept thinking about the homeless man’s piercing turquoise blue eyes. In other circumstances he might have been considered good-looking. Handsome, even. I wondered what made people give up their whole lives and live the way he did, eating someone’s old discarded bagel. Drinking rotgut wine from a bottle.

  The feast of Christmas.

  I checked my cell phone. It was December 21, the eve of the winter solstice. I guessed that was as much of a Yuletide celebration as I was going to get, me and the homeless guy offering to swap spit on a public bench. With a little littering thrown in for excitement.

  Just do what you can.

  Yeah, dude. If you only knew what I can do. A human hydrogen bomb, that was me. The next deadly plague, artfully packaged in a school uniform. Miss Teen Death.

  We are one.

  But we weren’t. Even being you would be better than being me. Wiping my eyes, I walked as fast as I could toward the apartment, where I once again sprawled across the big wing chair.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FORTY-FIVE

  I don’t know why I picked up the amber pieces again.

  Yes, I do. I was lonely. It was almost Yule, the solstice—a date that didn’t mean much to anyone except witches. And even for us Yule wasn’t a big holiday, at least not compared to times of huge Wiccan celebrations like Imbolc or Samhain, but it was still important. Yule was for family. For seeing old friends. For having a quiet day in a warm place by a fire. None of which I had.

  Just do what you can.

  And join hands and sing “Kumbaya” and hug the trees and pray for world peace. Oh, yes, what a big difference each one of us can make.

  Right. Excuse me while I barf. Or cry. My tears are for myself, and also for Morgan, whose face, as I see it in my vision, is also wet with tears.

  • • •

  They stream down Morgan’s face. She knows the magnitude of the step she has taken, and it frightens her.

  She has forgotten the dead child and the evil, satisfied face of the Seer. She must forget, or she will lose her footing on the slippery slope she has chosen to walk.

  I will kill the king, she thinks, and then my father will love me. He would understand how she had loved him, waited for him all these years, how she had tolerated living in the prison that was Avalon until he showed her how to leave it.

  She had listened to the Merlin, her father, who was filled with greatness. She had stepped aside like a good girl while he’d lavished his love on the boy he had painstakingly raised in her place. He had used his powerful magic to place a sword in a stone—a sword that only Arthur’s hand could remove, ensuring that the boy, the Merlin’s new “son,” would one day rule all of Britain.

  I gripped the amber harder and allowed myself to be pulled into Morgan’s mind. Waves of bitterness and anger washed over me as I let Morgan bare her very soul.

  • • •

  It’s not that I want to rule Britain, or even live here, particularly. I just want my life to be more than scrambling for food in a place where the future doesn’t exist. And I want my father to see me for who I am—witch, magus, Traveler, mind—and not just
a potential helper for some man who’ll think I’m lucky to have been chosen to serve him.

  I have more talent than anyone I know. That includes all the boys I’ve met and all the men, including Arthur, king of Britain. The Merlin loves him because he has a pinch of magical blood. Arthur’s mother, Igraine, was Welsh, descended from the original Travelers, the witches who left Avalon before it was sealed against the world. The concentration of Arthur’s magic isn’t much, but it’s enough for the Merlin to accept him as the son he never had. Enough to replace the daughter he never wanted.

  The force of Morgan’s fury shook me from my intense concentration. I held fast to the amber, but I had lost hold of Morgan’s mind. Suddenly I was just watching again.

  “Give me justice!” Morgan demands, and the demand is answered. The starless sky bursts into sudden blinding light. A hundred miles away on the open sea, a crew of Italian sailors looks up in wonder at the blazing star. Some, the Christians among them, fall to their knees, crossing themselves. Others tremble in fear that the end of the world has come.

  But the light vanishes as quickly as it came, leaving the sea engulfed in darkness once again. And in that darkness gleams a stone of unearthly blue, the seal of her pact with the Darkness.

  She touches it, feels the stone’s magnificent power coursing through her like sunlight, like love. It hums through her blood. She has never felt so well.

  But she knows it is not for her, but for the king. For Arthur of Britain, his final gift.

  For the briefest of moments she hesitates. This is wrong, she thinks. And for a moment she shivers with fear and indecision.

  But there can be no turning back. The Darkness has been summoned. The Darkness will have its way.

  So be it.

  I fell asleep, exhausted from all I’d seen.

  • • •

  The amber dropped to the floor with a small click, and I awoke, stiff from my weird position on the chair. Slowly, painfully, I unpretzeled myself and sat blinking in the darkness.