by Isobel Bird
When the phone rang Cooper jumped. She looked at it for a moment, hesitating before picking it up. “Hello?” she said warily, afraid it might be Kate or Annie wanting to talk about class.
“You’ve got to save me.” It was T.J. He sounded slightly hysterical.
“Why?” Cooper asked him, thoughts about herself pushed from her mind as she worried that he might be in trouble. “What’s wrong?”
“Our mothers are driving me crazy,” T.J. replied.
Cooper grinned despite herself. Her mother and Mrs. McAllister had been spending a lot of time together in recent weeks. That night they had gone to dinner. Apparently they had ended up at the McAllisters’ house afterward.
“What are they doing?” Cooper asked her boyfriend.
“At the moment they’re looking at photo albums,” T.J. answered. “Your mother seems particularly amused by the pictures my mother took of me dressed as a pink bunny rabbit for Halloween when I was four.”
“I can see why,” remarked Cooper. “I wouldn’t mind getting a look at those myself.”
“Ha ha,” T.J. said. “Anyway, I just wanted to call and see how you are.”
“I’m okay,” said Cooper. “Jane just left. We worked on some stuff.”
“Okay,” T.J. said. “Now tell me the truth. How are you?”
“I ate a box of Oreos,” admitted Cooper. “Well, not a whole box. Jane took them away from me.”
“Smart move,” said T.J. “Can I do anything to cheer you up?”
“Hold that thought,” Cooper said. “Someone is beeping in.”
She put T.J. on hold and answered the second call. “Hello?”
“Hi, honey,” said her father.
“Hey there,” said Cooper. “Hang on. I have to say good-bye to T.J.”
This time she put her father on hold while she switched back to her boyfriend. “I have to go,” she said.
“A better offer?” T.J. asked.
“My dad,” Cooper told him. “I haven’t talked to him in a while because he was out of town. Should I call you back?”
“No,” T.J. said. “I’m going to go out to the garage to play for a while before Mom starts showing your mother photos of me in the bathtub.”
“Ooh,” Cooper said. “That could be embarrassing.”
“Tell me about it,” said T.J. “Especially since I was fifteen when she took them.”
“Very funny,” replied Cooper, laughing at his joke. “Tell her not to stay up too late. And thanks for calling. That does make me feel better.” She lied. It won’t do anyone any good to make him feel bad, too, she thought.
T.J. hung up, and Cooper switched back to her dad. “Sorry about that,” she said.
“No problem,” Mr. Rivers said. “I always knew I’d lose you to a boy sometime. If it has to happen, I’m glad it’s T.J.”
“Please,” Cooper said. “Don’t start tossing rice just yet.”
“So, how are things?” her father asked her.
“Okay,” Cooper answered. “Mom is fine. I’m fine. We’re fine.”
“Hmm,” Mr. Rivers said. “All of those fines sound awfully suspicious.”
“No,” Cooper said. “Really. Everything is pretty much fine. How about you?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, fine,” said Mr. Rivers.
It was Cooper’s turn to be suspicious. “That fine didn’t sound so fine,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Well,” said her father, “there is something I want to talk to you about.”
“I told you, I really am thinking about colleges,” said Cooper, not wanting to get into that particular annoying discussion.
“It’s not about college,” Mr. Rivers said. “It’s about me. I’m sort of seeing somebody.”
Cooper was taken aback by her father’s statement. “Seeing someone?” she said. “I take it you mean as in seeing a shrink, or seeing a proctologist, right?”
“No,” Mr. Rivers answered. “I mean as in I’m dating someone.”
“Dating?” said Cooper. “But the divorce was only, like, ten minutes ago.”
“The paperwork might have been completed recently, but the emotional separation happened a long time ago, Cooper,” her father said. “Look, I know this is hard to hear. But I wanted you to know so that when you meet this woman it won’t be so awkward.”
“Meet her,” Cooper parroted. He wants me to meet her? she thought.
Her father sounded excited. Cooper wanted to be happy for him, but she was still having trouble accepting that he was dating someone. She listened to him talk, but heard almost nothing of what he said until he asked, “So dinner on Friday is okay with you?”
“What?” Cooper said.
“Dinner,” her father repeated. “On Friday. The three of us.”
“Oh, sure,” Cooper said without thinking. “That would be fine.”
“Good,” Mr. Rivers said. “How about seven o’clock at Shiva’s Garden?”
“Okay,” said Cooper. Shiva’s Garden was a cool vegetarian Indian restaurant. Cooper loved it, but she knew it wasn’t her father’s favorite. If they were having dinner there he really wanted her to like this woman.
She hung up and flung herself backward on the bed. Suddenly it seemed as if every aspect of her life had been thrown off course. Everything had been going along pretty well for a while. Her mother was doing okay. She and T.J. were happy. She’d been looking forward to the end of her year and a day of studying Wicca. Now she wasn’t being initiated, it looked like she and T.J. would be going to different colleges after they graduated, and her father was dating someone. What else could possibly happen?
“Don’t ask that,” she scolded herself as she closed her eyes and tried not to think about what her mother would say when she heard that Cooper’s father was dating someone—as she eventually would. “You probably don’t want to know.”
CHAPTER 2
“I know a lot of you are looking at your upcoming initiation as the end of a long journey,” Sophia said to the seven people seated in the back room of Crones’ Circle. “You’ve all worked very hard for the past year, and now the final destination is in sight, right?”
The three men and four women all laughed and nodded.
Sophia smiled. “Well, you’re wrong,” she said. “This isn’t the end; it’s the beginning. It’s the beginning of a lifetime of learning and exploring and discovering. Why do you think they call your graduation from high school a commencement service? Because it’s the beginning of the rest of your life, the start of the journey you were really preparing for when you suffered through algebra and gym class.”
There was more laughter from the class members in response to Sophia’s comment. Annie and Kate, the only two members of the class still in high school, looked at one another knowingly.
“Your initiation is really a commencement,” Sophia continued. “Your year and a day of study taught you a great deal about yourselves—about your abilities and your weaknesses. You’ve come to know yourselves better, and you’ve come to understand Wicca better. But you’re still just beginning. I was initiated more than twenty-five years ago, and I still don’t know all there is to know about Wicca, or about myself.” She paused, looking thoughtful, and then added, “I think probably there are some things about myself I don’t want to know.”
Annie listened as Sophia continued her speech. It was the first of four preparatory classes before the initiation ceremony itself. When they’d begun their year and a day, the thought of initiation had been a distant one. Annie hadn’t really even allowed herself to think a lot about the actual event itself because it had seemed so far off. But now that it was just about there, four weeks seemed almost too short a time to prepare. Suddenly, Annie could only think about everything she didn’t know about witchcraft. It was the same feeling she sometimes got before a big test, like she had forgotten to study something really important and would be asked to write an essay about the topic, or she’d learned the wrong list of e
vents or formulas and would have no idea how to work out the problems.
Relax, she told herself. You made it this far. She looked around at the other six people who had been selected for initiation. Of the nearly twenty people who had started the class, the seven of them were all that remained. Several people had dropped out during the course of the year, either because they couldn’t find the time for the class or because they’d decided they weren’t really interested in Wicca enough to devote that kind of energy to it. Several more had made it to the end but decided that they didn’t want to undergo formal initiation. And still others had not been offered initiation.
Like Cooper, Annie thought sadly. She still couldn’t believe that Cooper had been one of the people whose candle hadn’t lit during the choosing ceremony. She still recalled the look of pain, anger, and sadness she’d seen on her friend’s face as Cooper had rushed from the store that night. Annie and Kate had gone after her, but Cooper had been determined to get away from them. Kate had wanted to keep chasing her, but Annie had stopped her, knowing that Cooper wasn’t angry at them but just wanted to be alone for a while.
Although the three of them had talked only briefly about Cooper’s failure, Annie and Kate had talked about it extensively in private. Neither of them could figure out what had happened. Annie had even tried to bring the subject up with Archer once, but Archer had kindly but firmly informed Annie that the decision was a private matter between the dedicant and the teachers, and refused to say anything else. Since then the subject had become one that no one mentioned in front of Cooper, although it was always there, waiting for one of them to trip over.
And it’s only going to get worse, Annie thought sadly. The fact was, she, Cooper, and Kate were best friends. There was no way Annie and Kate could immerse themselves in Wicca the way they would be doing after initiation and not be able to talk about it around Cooper. That just couldn’t happen, which meant one of two things: either Cooper was going to have to deal with not being initiated with them or . . . She couldn’t allow herself to think about the other option. But try as she might, she had to. Or the three of us won’t be able to be best friends anymore, she told herself.
That, however, was a possibility she couldn’t even imagine. Not be best friends with Cooper? Well, you barely knew who she was a year ago, she argued with herself. That was true. The first time Annie had even spoken to Cooper was after Kate had enlisted Annie’s help to correct the effects of a botched spell and the two of them had in turn had to ask Cooper for assistance. Thinking about the moment when she had confronted a reluctant Cooper in one of the school’s music rehearsal rooms, Annie couldn’t help but smile. She’d been so intimidated by the tough-acting Cooper, with her sarcastic responses and her cool demeanor. It had taken a lot for Annie to stand up to her and break through Cooper’s wall of reserve. But she had, and she had quickly come to appreciate Cooper’s unique personality. Thinking that maybe she wouldn’t be spending as much time with her friend saddened her.
“We won’t be discussing any details of the initiation ceremony itself,” Sophia said, bringing Annie’s attention back to the subject at hand. “But don’t worry, there won’t be any last-minute make-or-break questions or weird challenges or anything. This isn’t some TV reality show, where we make you vote one another out or eat sheep eyes or anything like that.”
“Darn, and I’ve been practicing with the sheep eyes,” said Ben, one of the three men undergoing initiation.
“Well, we can always add them especially for you,” remarked Sophia. “But I think probably we’ll have better things to eat than that. Now, the real purpose of these last four classes is to get you to think about covens. As you all know by now, many—but not all—witches work within covens. You’ve seen several covens in action, at least during public rituals, and you have some idea of how things differ from coven to coven. Every coven has its own way of doing things, from casting circles to working magic to celebrating the sabbats. It’s important that you align yourself with a coven that you think will both be a comfortable place for you to work and also challenge you to grow in your own practice of witchcraft.”
“You mean we’re going to get choices?” asked Emma, one of the four female initiates.
Sophia nodded. “As you’ve probably guessed by now, we don’t exactly always do things by the book around here,” she said, suppressing a grin. “Traditionally you would all be trained by one particular coven for your year and a day of study, after which you would then be asked to join that coven. Not here. Here we take a different approach. During the past year you’ve received teaching from a number of different people from a number of different covens. You’ve also attended sabbat rituals involving participants from many different covens. That’s because we wanted you to experience a wide range of the ways in which Wicca is practiced. Our initiation process will be conducted in much the same way, but with a twist.”
Annie looked at Kate. “What kind of twist?” she whispered.
“Good question,” said Sophia, hearing her and making Annie blush. “The twist is that you probably won’t all undergo the same initiation ceremony.”
Again, Annie and Kate looked at one another in confusion.
“We’ll use our remaining classes to explore the different types of covens in more depth,” Sophia explained. “You will then each choose the coven you think is most appropriate for you. If the leaders of that coven agree, you will then be initiated into that coven. Because each coven has its own way of performing initiations, that part will not be done together.”
“And what if they don’t want you?” queried Ezra, a quiet man in his late thirties who had been one of the choices for initiation that had sort of surprised Annie. Ezra had rarely contributed to class discussions, and he was one of the people Annie knew the least about. But now he was one of the final seven. The other six turned to regard him.
“I just ask because I’ve sort of been through this kind of thing before,” Ezra said, clearly nervous about being paid attention to. “I’m a doctor, and when you do your final residency you have to list your first, second, and third choices for hospitals to work at. Everyone in the country finds out on the same day which choice they got, and it can be really horrible if you don’t match up with one of your choices.”
“Don’t worry,” Sophia told him. “This isn’t quite the same thing. It’s very informal. Very seldom do people ask for covens that aren’t right for them. In general we find that it’s one of those mystical experiences where everything works out pretty much the way it should. But try not to worry about that. Just sit back and listen to what the different coven leaders have to say.”
Annie leaned back and tried to relax. She saw Kate doing the same thing, and she wondered what her friend was thinking about. Annie was thinking about whether or not they would choose the same coven. She’d always assumed that they would end up together. But maybe we won’t, she thought. After all, you also thought Cooper would be here, and she isn’t. Once again Annie was struck by how you could never count on things’ going in a particular way. Time and again the truth of that had been revealed to her through her magical work.
Look at Aunt Sarah and Mr. Dunning, she reminded herself. She would never in a million years have guessed that her aunt would be marrying the author of one of Annie’s favorite book series, or that they would have met because that author was living in the house where Annie had grown up. But he did live there, and her aunt was marrying him—only a few days before Annie’s initiation. That was a whole other thing to think about, but Annie would have to do it later. Right now it was time to pay attention to learning about covens.
“Since you’ve spent a great deal of the past year looking at my face,” Sophia said, “I might as well tell you something about the coven I’m a part of.”
Annie quickly forgot about the other questions and concerns on her mind. She knew that Sophia was part of the coven that owned and ran Crones’ Circle. However, Sophia had never been particularly cl
ear about exactly what that coven did. Annie didn’t even know its name.
“A lot of you probably think we’ve been very mysterious about our coven,” said Sophia, voicing Annie’s thoughts. “Let me assure you that we weren’t trying to hide anything from you. We just wanted you to be open to all the different types of teaching and practicing that you’ve experienced. Sometimes when students know too much about a teacher’s particular background it makes it difficult for them to be as open to other possibilities. We try to avoid that in our class by not saying too much about our own coven. Until now, that is.”
Sophia held up a black three-ring binder. “This is the Book of Shadows for the Daughters of the Cauldron, which is the name of my coven.”
Annie looked at the Book of Shadows in Sophia’s hand. She knew a Book of Shadows was the collection of a coven’s—or an individual witch’s—rituals and everything pertaining to them. It might include attempted spells and their outcomes, lyrics to chants and songs, accounts of how various sabbats were celebrated, ideas for future rituals, initiation instructions, and basically anything else of importance to the coven. It was, really, a journal of the coven’s life and work, and its contents were generally closely guarded, revealed only to people within the coven. Annie herself kept a personal Book of Shadows, a notebook in which she recorded the different spells and rituals she tried and where she wrote her thoughts about Wicca and its role in her life.
Sophia waved the Book of Shadows in the air. “As you can see, this looks sort of like a cookbook,” she remarked as some loose pages fluttered out and fell to the ground. “That’s because that’s sort of how we see it. The members of the Daughters of the Cauldron are what are sometimes termed kitchen witches. That means that we don’t really have a formal way of doing things. We take a little of this and a little of that and add it together to see what happens. Sometimes what we come up with tastes great. And sometimes, as anyone who has ever cooked will tell you, what we come up with isn’t the tastiest thing ever created.”
