by Isobel Bird
“That’s an Ostara ritual in England,” Netty told Kate. “That coven has been in existence for almost seventy years. That woman in the center has been in it for almost sixty. Her mother was the founder.”
Kate put the photograph next to the other ones her aunt had brought. All of them depicted women participating in rituals of one kind or another. There were pictures taken at a pagan women’s weekend retreat, where the women all painted their bodies in bright colors and danced around a fire. There were some showing women clad in black robes standing waist-deep in the ocean and pouring water from their hands into the sea. Another focused on the radiant face of a woman dressed as the goddess Kali during a celebration.
“These are gorgeous,” Kate said to her aunt. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were doing this.”
Netty shrugged. “I didn’t want to say too much about it,” she replied. “You know, in case it didn’t work out. But bit by bit over the last six months it’s really been coming together. Whenever I go on an assignment somewhere I see if I can locate Wiccan groups in the area and photograph them. I’ve met some really amazing people.”
“What are you going to do with them all?” Kate asked.
“A book,” said her aunt. “I want to do a photo book about women and Wiccan spirituality.”
Kate’s eyes lit up. “That’s a fantastic idea!” she said. “People would love to see these pictures.”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” said her aunt as she began gathering up the pile of photographs. “I’m going to start putting together a proposal for it. Sophia is going to help me. Then I’m going to show it to some of the editors I know through my magazine work and see if I can’t get something happening.”
Kate helped Netty put the images away. She was so proud of her aunt. Ever since first meeting Sophia and the other witches who had helped perform a healing ritual for her when she was battling cancer, Netty had gotten more and more interested in Wicca. She had been attending rituals with a group near her home, and she and Sophia had become good friends. Now she was using her photography skills to combine her interest in the Craft with her professional life.
“I almost forgot to tell you,” said Netty as she zipped up the portfolio in which she’d carried the photographs. “I’m a novice in my coven.”
“No way!” Kate exclaimed.
Her aunt nodded. “They said I was hanging around so much it was either that or make me their mascot,” Netty joked. “So I decided to officially join. They have this training program you do, after which you become a full member. They pair you up with an older witch in the group, and that person is kind of like your teacher until they feel you’re ready. I’m working with this great woman. She’s been a witch for thirty years, and she’s also a doctor. She loves that I had cancer. I guess she’s always trying to get her patients to try alternative approaches to healing. She says she’s going to use me for show-and-tell one of these days.”
Kate laughed. She looked at her aunt’s smiling face. It was hard to believe that less than a year earlier they had been afraid that Netty would die. At the time, Kate would never have believed that her aunt would be sitting across the table from her, showing her pictures she’d taken of women involved in witchcraft. Kate had been afraid to even say the word witch to her family then. But now both she and her aunt were deeply involved in Wicca.
“Now tell me about you,” Netty said. “What’s happening with initiation?”
Kate took a sip of her drink. “It’s weird,” she said. “It feels like when they have pledge week at the university and all the fraternities and sororities recruit the freshmen. We’re learning about some of the different covens there are around here. Then we’re supposed to pick the one we think we’ll fit into the best. I thought we’d all just be initiated into the coven Sophia is in.”
Her aunt laughed. “She mentioned that they were trying something new this year,” she said. “But I think it’s smart. No coven can be perfect for everyone. I went to rituals held by three or four different ones before I settled on the Coven of the Waxing Moon.”
“Why did you pick them?” Kate asked.
“It was just a feeling I had,” replied her aunt. “The first coven I met was too formal. I was always afraid I was going to do something wrong during their rituals. It felt like being in school. The others I tried were okay, but nothing special. Then I went to a full moon circle held by the coven I’m in now, and it just felt right. I liked the energy. Plus, they had great snacks afterward.”
“Which is key to working good magic,” said Kate seriously, making her aunt laugh. “I guess that’s how I’ll decide where I want to go, too,” she added.
“Are you leaning one way or another?” her aunt inquired.
“I really like Sophia and Archer and the women from the store,” Kate said after a moment. “They’re all really great.”
“But,” her aunt said when Kate hesitated.
Kate shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I feel sort of like a traitor saying this, because they’ve been so great and everything, but I don’t know if I fit in with them.” She looked at her aunt. “Don’t take this personally or anything, but most of them are a lot older than I am.”
Netty pretended to be horrified. “I can’t believe you’d say such a thing,” she said. “Why, they’re the same age as I am.”
Kate rolled her eyes at her aunt’s dramatic statement. “That’s the point,” Kate said. “I’m afraid I would always think of them as teachers. You know, instead of friends.”
“But you and I are friends,” Netty reminded her. “Even if I am your ancient auntie who’s about to crumble to dust at any second.”
“I’m sorry I mentioned it,” Kate said sarcastically. “I know they aren’t that old. And I know you and I are friends. I think of Sophia as a friend, too. But not the same way I think of, say, Annie and Cooper as friends. When we do magic together it’s like we’re all learning together. There’s something really cool about that. We’re all going through a lot of the same stuff, with school and boyfriends and parents and all of that.”
“Are you saying you would like to be in a circle of all young people?” asked Netty.
“No,” Kate answered quickly. “I know we need more experienced people to teach us. But I’d like to find a coven that has some of that newness to it.”
Her aunt was nodding. “I get it,” she said. “So, what are your other options?”
“I don’t know yet,” Kate said. “I’m waiting to find out. The only other group I know of right now is the Coven of the Green Wood.”
“The one Tyler is in,” her aunt said.
Kate nodded. “Right.”
“And so that’s not an option?” Netty asked.
Kate screwed up her face in a look of thoughtfulness. “I don’t think it’s not an option,” she said carefully. “Tyler has already said he wouldn’t have a problem about it.”
“But would you have a problem with it?” her aunt inquired gently.
“The jury is out on that one,” Kate told her. “The Coven of the Green Wood does have some young people in it. Tyler and his sister, for starters. And I like a lot of the people in it.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Netty remarked. “But could you work magic with your ex-boyfriend?”
“I don’t know,” Kate replied. “Honestly? I think it would be weird.”
Her aunt didn’t say anything. Kate knew that Netty was attempting to remain neutral. She also knew that remaining neutral was practically impossible for her aunt.
“What do you think?” she asked Netty, seeing if she could get her to crack.
“I think our lunch is here,” Netty replied, clearly relieved to see the waiter arriving with their food.
“Good save,” Kate told her as the waiter set their plates down. “But I’m not letting you off the hook. What do you think?”
Netty picked up her fork and jabbed it into her salad. She held up a lettuce leaf and waved it at Kate. “I think
that for once I’m staying out of it.”
“Come on!” Kate wailed. “You’re supposed to be my all-knowing aunt. My beautiful aunt,” she added.
Netty snorted. “Now you’re pushing it,” she said. “If you’d said smart, or talented, you might have had me.”
Kate groaned. “At least give me something,” she implored.
“Okay,” Netty said. “Here’s what I think. I think that you’ve learned a lot in the last year. I think that you’ve found out a lot about who you are as a person. I think that you’ve learned to trust your instincts. So trust them.”
“That is your advice?” Kate said, glaring at her aunt over her sandwich.
“Fine,” Netty told her. “Don’t take it. Why don’t you just do whatever your friends are doing? That would make it easy for you.”
“Not really,” Kate said. “For one thing, Cooper isn’t being initiated.”
It was her aunt’s turn to be shocked. “What?” she said in bewilderment.
“They said she’s not ready,” Kate explained.
“How’s she taking it?” asked her aunt, chewing a crouton.
“Like Cooper,” said Kate. “She’s pretending it’s fine, which means she’s basically pretending it didn’t happen.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Netty said. “It must be making things hard for the three of you.”
“It’s not making it easy,” admitted Kate.
“And what about Annie?” asked Netty. “Has she said what she wants to do?”
Kate shook her head. “I think she likes the idea of joining the Daughters of the Cauldron,” she answered. “But we haven’t talked about it a lot. She’s been busy with her aunt’s wedding and getting the house ready and all of that.”
Her aunt put down her fork. “Hey,” she said, suddenly sounding concerned. “Is something wrong?”
Kate sighed and poked at her sandwich. “I don’t know,” she said. “Things just don’t feel quite right.”
“Things?” Netty said.
“Yeah,” said Kate. “I guess it’s that I had this idea of how everything would be when this time came, and now things are totally different. Cooper isn’t being initiated. Annie has this whole new family coming. And I’m sort of left in the middle.”
Now that she’d started speaking, Kate found herself pouring out her feelings to her aunt, feelings she hadn’t even realized were building up inside of her.
“Last year when I thought about initiation I pictured the three of us doing it together. Then I imagined us all doing rituals with the coven. Me, Annie, Cooper . . . and Tyler,” she concluded.
“But now that isn’t happening,” her aunt said.
“No,” Kate said. “Tyler and I aren’t together. Cooper, Annie, and I aren’t together. It’s just all . . . different.”
“Different isn’t necessarily bad,” her aunt told her after a moment. “Contrary to what the fairy tales tell you, life doesn’t usually work out the way you expect it to. Some days you wake up and find out you have cancer, or that the person you love doesn’t love you back. Plans fall apart. Directions change.” She looked at her niece. “But those aren’t always bad things. Sometimes they make you go down a road you would never have considered, and sometimes you find something really wonderful waiting for you there.”
Kate looked at Netty. She knew her aunt was right. Look at her, Kate told herself. She could have let the cancer destroy her life. But she didn’t, and now she’s doing this cool photography project. And you’re whining because you have to choose which coven to join? When she put it that way, her problems seemed kind of stupid. But they didn’t feel stupid to her. They felt very real.
“I remember coming home from my doctor’s office the day I found out I had cancer,” her aunt told her. “I sat on the couch and I looked at the pictures on my mantelpiece—pictures of my friends, pictures of you and Kyle and your parents. I got really angry, and not because I was upset that I might never see you all again.”
Kate looked at her aunt, not understanding.
“I was angry because you were going to get to have lives that I wasn’t going to get to have,” her aunt said. “I know that probably sounds very selfish, and I suppose it was. But I couldn’t help but think that you were all going to have a lot more years of feeling the sun on your faces, and smelling bread baking, and opening birthday presents. Maybe you would get married and have children. You were going to get to do things that I wouldn’t get to do. Never mind that some of those things I didn’t even want to do,” she added, smiling softly. “The point was that I was angry that the life I had planned for myself was being taken away from me.”
Netty stopped talking and went back to eating her salad. Kate thought about what her aunt had said. “It’s not so much that I think things are being taken away,” she said. “It’s more like I thought that studying Wicca was going to bring Annie, Cooper, and me closer together. Now it seems almost like it’s forcing us apart.”
“It’s all about change,” her aunt said. “And believe me, there’s a reason for all of it. There’s a reason I got cancer, and there’s a reason I beat it. There’s a reason you met Tyler, there’s a reason you broke up, and there’s a reason you’re being asked to decide whether or not you want to work in a coven with him now. You might not see those reasons, but they’re there.”
Kate took a bite of her sandwich and chewed it while she thought. It seemed to her that ever since she’d first opened the book of spells that had started her on her journey into Wicca, she’d been asked to make one difficult decision after another. She’d had to decide whether to remain friends with Sherrie and the other girls she’d hung out with, she’d had to decide what to tell her family about her involvement in Wicca, and she’d had to decide whether to stay with her old boyfriend or start dating Tyler. And those were just the first of many more hard choices she’d been asked to make.
And here I thought that studying witchcraft was supposed to make life easier, she thought. Instead, it seemed like the more she allowed the Craft to influence her life, the more it demanded of her.
Yes, she argued with herself. But look how much you’ve learned.
That was true. She had become a much different person because of her involvement with Wicca. She had become stronger, more confident. She had learned that she could face challenges and overcome them using her strengths. She had stopped being a person who worried what other people thought of her—at least most of the time. She had learned the power to be found in standing up for what she believed in. And she had learned the joy of being part of something that connected her to other people in a meaningful way.
Okay, she thought. Enough with the Oprah-esque pep talk. You still haven’t solved your basic problem, which is what you want to do about this coven business.
She finished her sandwich in silence, thinking about everything she and her aunt had discussed. Then, as the waiter came to clear away their plates, Netty said, “You know what else I learned from having cancer?”
“What’s that?” Kate asked, preparing herself to hear another deep statement.
Her aunt waved the dessert menu at Kate. “That there’s very little that a brownie with hot fudge and vanilla ice cream can’t solve.”
Kate laughed, feeling better than she had a moment before. “Better make it two scoops of ice cream,” she said.
CHAPTER 7
“So he never called?” Jane asked Cooper. It was Monday night, and Cooper had gone over to the Goldsteins’ to practice. She and Jane had been discussing the disastrous dinner Cooper had had—or rather, had not had—with her father and Amanda Barclay on Friday night.
“Not a word,” Cooper said. “Of course, I haven’t exactly been answering the phone either. And he won’t leave a message, not if he thinks my mother might hear it.”
Jane strummed her guitar idly for a few moments. “Do you think you’d be as mad if it was someone else and not this reporter woman?” she asked.
“No,” Co
oper said instantly. “If he wants to date, that’s his problem.”
Jane grinned. “That was sort of hostile,” she said.
Cooper sighed. “Fine. So maybe I’m not thrilled about the idea of my dad dating right now. But did he have to go and pick the most obnoxious woman who ever wrote a newspaper article?” She gave Jane a meaningful look. “I don’t even think she’s human,” she said seriously.
Jane let out a laugh. “Next you’ll be telling me she sleeps in a coffin and is terrified of garlic,” she remarked.
“I wish,” said Cooper. “Then I’d know how to get rid of her. One good stake to the heart and the whole problem would be over.”
“How long do you plan on punishing your dad?” asked Jane.
“I’m not punishing him,” said Cooper irritably. “I just don’t know what to say to him.” She turned to her friend. “And what’s with making everything about me lately, anyway?” she demanded. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Jane asked casually.
“How’s the whole lesbian thing working out?” asked Cooper, trying not to grin.
“It’s fine,” replied Jane. “Thank you for asking. And by the way, I think I prefer gay, not lesbian. Lesbian sounds like something you put on toast. You know, like ‘Could you please pass the lesbian.’ ” She made a shuddering gesture. “It makes me feel like preserves.”
“Okay, so you’re gay,” Cooper said. “Whatever. The real question is, have you met any hot chicks?”
“Hot chicks?” Jane repeated. “You sound like some football player in a locker room.”
“You’re avoiding the question,” Cooper retorted. “Which probably means you have met a hot chick and you just don’t want me to know about it.”
Jane reddened. “Okay,” she said. “I give. There is this girl in my support group at the center.”
“I knew it,” Cooper said happily. “Tell me everything.”
Jane suddenly looked embarrassed. “I don’t know,” she said. “She’s just this girl.”
