Initiation

by Isobel Bird

  “Sure,” Sophia said. “Robin, can you watch the register for a minute?” she asked the other woman.

  Robin nodded and Sophia led Annie to the back room.

  “What’s on your mind?” Sophia asked as soon as they were alone.

  Annie tried to think of how to begin. Not that it matters, she told herself. The ending will be the same no matter what you do.

  “I think I made a mistake,” Annie said quickly, before she could change her mind. “I don’t think I belong in the Daughters of the Cauldron.”

  Sophia’s smile faded a little. “Oh,” she said. “Can I ask why?”

  Annie grimaced. “That’s the embarrassing part,” she said. “I don’t really know why. It’s just this feeling that I have. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the coven. It’s me.” She paused and said it again. “It’s me, not you.”

  Sophia laughed. “That’s like a bad breakup line,” she said.

  Annie clapped her hand to her forehead. “That’s exactly what I was afraid of,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Sophia came over and put her arms around Annie. “It’s okay,” she said consolingly. “I’m just wondering what’s making you feel this way.”

  “I wish I knew,” Annie said. “I’ve been over and over it. I love all of you guys. I love the coven. But when it comes down to it, I just think I belong somewhere else.”

  “Where?” Sophia asked her.

  Annie sighed again. “That’s the rest of the problem,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t think any of the other covens are right for me either.”

  Sophia let go of Annie and stepped back, looking at her. “That is a problem,” she said. “It’s hard to initiate someone when there’s no coven to initiate her into.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of, I don’t know, generic initiation?” Annie asked hopefully.

  Sophia shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said.

  “I thought you might say that,” replied Annie sadly.

  “I have to say, you’ve taken me by surprise,” Sophia told her. “However, I know you well enough to know that you don’t act rashly. If you feel that the Daughters of the Cauldron isn’t the coven for you, then I think that’s the right decision.”

  “Except that it leaves me with no coven at all,” said Annie.

  Sophia looked at her for a moment. “Let me think about this,” she said finally. “Maybe there’s an answer somewhere.”

  “If there is, I hope you find it,” said Annie, looking at Sophia and smiling weakly. “Because I sure can’t.”

  CHAPTER 18

  On Saturday, Kate and Cooper went over to Annie’s house to help get things ready for the wedding the next day. When they arrived, Annie met them at the door.

  “Quick,” she said. “Get in here. We need reinforcements. Aunt Sarah has gone completely insane.”

  “What’s she doing?” Cooper asked as Annie hustled them into the house.

  “She’s all freaked out,” Annie answered. “Juliet says it happens to every bride the day before the wedding. Something about their being convinced that everything will go wrong.”

  At that moment Annie’s aunt appeared. Her hair was disheveled and she was holding two different earrings up to her ears.

  “Which ones?” she asked the girls, sounding a little hysterical.

  “The small ones,” Annie said quickly.

  Cooper and Kate nodded. Aunt Sarah looked relieved. “Thank you,” she said, turning and disapearing up the stairs.

  “It’s been like this all morning,” Annie said as she led her friends into the kitchen. “Grayson and Becka went to the grocery store to get away from it. Juliet is finishing the last-minute touches on the costumes. I’m stuck here making bags of birdseed for everyone to throw.”

  The kitchen table was spread with piles of netting, a bowl of birdseed, and several spools of different colored ribbon. The girls sat down and Annie showed them how to take one of the squares of netting, place birdseed in the center, and then tie it up with the ribbon so that it made a little bag.

  “How many of these are we making?” asked Cooper as she picked up a piece of netting.

  “Only about forty,” Annie answered.

  “Hey.”

  They all jumped as Aunt Sarah surprised them by popping into the kitchen. When they turned to look at her, she had a concerned expression on her face.

  “Should we have ordered an ice swan?”

  Kate and Cooper looked at Annie, who shook her head patiently. “No,” she said. “Remember, we decided on a nice flower arrangement for the table.”

  “Oh,” said Aunt Sarah. “Right.” She scurried out of the kitchen, off on some other errand.

  “Amazing,” Cooper said, tying up her first bundle of birdseed. “People get so funny when they’re under pressure. I hope we’re not like that during our initiations.”

  Neither Kate nor Annie said anything. Cooper looked at them. “What?” she said. “Did I say something wrong?”

  Annie cleared her throat. “I have something to tell you guys,” she said. “I may not be getting initiated.”

  Kate and Cooper stopped working on their birdseed bags and just stared at Annie. Kate in particular seemed shocked.

  “You’re not getting initiated?” she asked.

  “Maybe not,” answered Annie.

  “What happened?” Cooper inquired. “I thought you were all set to join the Daughters of the Cauldron.”

  “I was,” Annie said. “But the more I thought about it, the more it just didn’t feel right. So yesterday I went and told Sophia that I didn’t think I should do it. If I can’t find another coven I want to join, I probably won’t be initiated.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Kate laughed. She put her bag of birdseed on the table and sat there, shaking as she giggled more and more loudly.

  “I don’t think this is funny,” said Cooper, giving Kate a displeased look.

  “No,” Kate said. “It’s not funny. Only it sort of is, because this morning I called Thatcher and told him I didn’t think I should be initiated by the Coven of the Green Wood.”

  Suddenly the attention turned to Kate. She wiped her eyes, which had started to tear, and looked at her friends. “I was trying to figure out how to tell you guys,” she said. “It never occurred to me that Annie might beat me to it.”

  “And what’s your excuse?” Cooper demanded.

  “The same as Annie’s,” Kate said. “I thought I was really sure about joining the Coven of the Green Wood. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was just doing it because it was the safe thing to do, not because I really thought it was the best place for me to be.”

  “What did Thatcher say?” Annie asked her.

  “He understood,” said Kate. “He was disappointed, but he understood. I still haven’t told Sophia. Or Tyler,” she added.

  “I can’t believe this,” Cooper said, sitting back in her chair and looking at her friends in amazement. “Last week I was the one who wasn’t being initiated and you two were all set. Now I’m the only one doing it?”

  Kate and Annie looked at her and nodded.

  “It looks that way,” Kate said. “Unless we can find another coven, and I can’t say any of the other ones appealed to me all that much.”

  “Same here,” said Annie.

  Cooper was dumbfounded. “Great,” she said when she could finally speak. “Wonderful.”

  Annie put her hand on Cooper’s arm. “It’s not like Kate or I planned this,” she said.

  Cooper looked up at her. “If we’d started our own coven, this wouldn’t be a problem,” she said.

  Annie shook her head. “That’s not the answer either,” she said. “Maybe if we had more experience, but not right now.”

  “So what, then?” asked Cooper, sounding exasperated. “You guys just don’t do anything?”

  “I still think there’s an answer,” Kate said. “I just don’t know what it is.”

/>   “Well, time is running out,” Cooper said. She groaned. “I don’t believe this,” she said again. “What else could go wrong?”

  A scream pierced the air in answer. A moment later Annie’s aunt tore into the kitchen, a look of utter horror on her face.

  “What?” said Annie, leaping up.

  “The minister,” Aunt Sarah said. “I just got a phone call. She came down with the flu. Her daughter said she couldn’t even come to the phone. She’s not going to be able to make it.”

  “No minister?” Kate said. “You can’t have a wedding without a minister.”

  “I know!” Aunt Sarah shrieked. “That’s it. It’s a sign. We have to call everything off.”

  “Calm down,” Annie said soothingly, taking her aunt by the arm and putting her into one of the chairs. She turned to Kate. “Get her some tea, will you?”

  As Kate went to get a cup and a tea bag from the cabinet, Annie talked to her aunt.

  “We’ll find you a minister,” she told Aunt Sarah. “It can’t be that hard. There are lots of ministers in town.”

  “Ones that will marry people dressed in Alice in Wonderland costumes?” her aunt said, clearly on the brink of losing it. “On such short notice?”

  “I’m sure we can think of something,” Annie said.

  Kate brought Aunt Sarah her tea and handed it to her. Aunt Sarah took a sip, and indeed seemed to relax a little, although her hands were still shaking.

  “Wait a minute,” Cooper said suddenly, and everyone looked at her. “The person who marries you just has to be a licensed member of the clergy, right? It doesn’t matter what religion.”

  Aunt Sarah shook her head. “I don’t think it matters,” she said. “Why?”

  Cooper looked at her friends. “We know several licensed members of the clergy,” she said, smiling.

  Annie snapped her fingers. “Right,” she said. “We do.”

  “Who?” asked Kate, a little slow to figure out what her friends were talking about.

  “Thatcher, for one,” Cooper said.

  “And Sophia,” added Annie. “Remember, they became licensed so they could do handfastings for coven members,” she explained, referring to the Wiccan term for weddings.

  “Do you think they would do this?” asked Kate.

  “All we can do is ask,” replied Annie. “Would that be okay with you?” she asked her aunt.

  Aunt Sarah nodded. “I’ll be married by circus clowns as long as it’s legal,” she said.

  “I’ll call Sophia right now,” said Annie.

  She left the kitchen and returned a minute later holding the phone. “Sophia wants to know if she can come over to talk to you about the wedding,” she told her aunt.

  “Tell her to come right now if she can,” said Aunt Sarah.

  “Did you hear that?” Annie said into the phone. She laughed. “Okay, we’ll see you then.”

  “What did she say?” asked Aunt Sarah as soon as Annie had hung up.

  “She said she’s hopping on her broom right away,” Annie answered. “She’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

  “Thank God,” Aunt Sarah said, sounding completely relieved.

  “No,” Annie corrected her. “Thank Goddess.”

  Aunt Sarah got up. “I’m going to go lie down for a few minutes,” she said. “Either that or throw up, I can’t tell which. Call me when Sophia gets here.”

  She left the room, leaving the three girls to finish making the birdseed bags.

  “She really said she would do it?” Cooper asked as they resumed work.

  “She said she’d be happy to,” Annie told her. “I guess she’s forgiven me for dumping her.”

  Kate snorted. “Wait until she finds out I’ve dropped out, too,” she said.

  “Makes me look pretty good, doesn’t it?” Cooper said, grinning at them. “The one who was almost left back is now the class valedictorian.”

  “Just worry about your birdseed,” Annie told her.

  That’s exactly what all of them did until there was a knock on the door a little while later. Annie went to answer it and came back with Sophia. Sophia eyed the bags of birdseed. “There will be some happy sparrows tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “You guys have been busy.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re the one who’s saving the day,” said Annie. “For a minute there I thought Aunt Sarah was a goner.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Sophia said. “But first I want to talk to the three of you.”

  The girls looked at one another.

  “Kate, Thatcher told me about your decision not to join the Coven of the Green Wood,” Sophia said.

  Kate blushed. “I was going to call you later today,” she said.

  “That’s all right,” said Sophia. “I called to see if he would help me officiate tomorrow. It just came up. Nobody is mad.”

  “Are you sure?” Kate asked doubtfully.

  “I’m sure,” said Sophia. “I’d rather have initiates be absolutely certain of their choices than have them choose just because they think they have to. Trust me, we’ve had people do that before and it turned out to be a disaster.”

  “I was afraid I was letting everyone down,” Kate said.

  “Well, I know Thatcher would love to have you in the coven,” Sophia said. “Just as I would love to have Annie. But we respect your decisions. We may think you’d be right for our covens, but you’re the ones who know for sure.”

  “It wasn’t easy deciding not to do it,” Kate said. “And I still haven’t told Tyler.”

  Sophia smiled at her. “That conversation will probably be harder than the one you had with Thatcher,” she said knowingly.

  “So two of us are out,” Annie said. “At least there’s one of us left in the game.”

  “Not quite,” Sophia said.

  Cooper looked at her in disbelief. “No way,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your minds about letting me be initiated? That is so not fair!”

  Sophia held up her hands. “We haven’t changed our minds,” Sophia said.

  “Then what is it?” demanded Cooper.

  “It’s the Children of the Goddess,” Sophia replied.

  “They don’t want me?” said Cooper, stunned. “But Hunter said—”

  “It’s not that they don’t want you,” Sophia said, interrupting her. “It’s just that they’re having a few—organizational problems.”

  “What kind of problems?” Annie asked her.

  Sophia paused, clearly thinking of the best way to tell them what was happening. “Oh, there’s no other way to say this,” she said, laughing a little. “Hunter and his girlfriend broke up. They were the ones who ran the coven, and at the moment things are a little chaotic. They’re arguing over who’s going to run it.”

  “I’m not getting initiated because the coven leaders broke up?” Cooper said, as if it was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “That would only happen to me.”

  “Actually, it happens more frequently than you might think,” Sophia informed her. “Covens fall apart for all kinds of reasons.”

  “Well,” Cooper said sarcastically. “It looks like all three of us are covenless. Maybe we should start a shelter for witches who need homes.”

  “This is weird,” said Kate. “All three of us.”

  “Yeah,” Annie said. “I thought I was going to be the only one.”

  “Me, too,” said Kate.

  “And I thought I was a sure thing,” added Cooper.

  Sophia was looking at the three of them. “There may be a solution,” she said.

  The girls looked at her eagerly.

  “But I can’t say anything right now,” Sophia continued.

  A collective groan rose from the table.

  “What do you mean you can’t tell us?” Cooper said. “What kind of tease is that?”

  “Just bear with me,” said Sophia. “I’ll know more tomorrow. We’ll talk then. But in the meantime, don’t assume it’s over. Now I should go up and ta
lk to Sarah. She’s probably wondering where I am.”

  “You can’t say something like that and then not tell us the rest!” exclaimed Annie.

  “I’m sorry,” Sophia replied. “I know it’s an awful way to leave you. But I wanted you to know that there might be a chance this will all work out. I promise, I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”

  She left the girls in the kitchen and went upstairs to see Annie’s aunt.

  “What was that supposed to mean?” Kate asked when Sophia was gone. “How could things possibly work out?”

  “Maybe we’ve been traded to another coven,” suggested Cooper dryly. “For one head priestess and three initiates to be named later.”

  “All we can do is wait and see,” said Annie, picking up a piece of netting and spooning some birdseed into it. “In the meantime, we have a wedding to get ready for.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “The house looks amazing,” Kate told Annie as she carried boxes of food into the house on Sunday morning. She was helping her mother set up for the reception, and they had just arrived with the pastries, cakes, and sandwiches for what was going to be their version of a Mad Tea Party.

  “We were up most of the night,” Annie said, yawning. “Do you have any idea how many paper roses it takes to cover a stairway?”

  The stairway was only one of the things that had been decorated. Annie, Juliet, Becka, and Meg had attached paper roses to practically everything. They’d sent Aunt Sarah and Grayson out for a relaxing dinner and gone to work, covering the house in pink, red, and white flowers so that it really would resemble a garden gone out of control. Mixed in with the paper roses were huge arrangements of real ones, brought early that morning by the florist. Juliet was running around putting them in just the right spots so that the scent would fill the whole house.

  Kate took the boxes into the kitchen and put them on the counter. Her mother arrived a moment later, also carrying boxes.

  “I never want to see another tart again,” she said as she added her load to the one Kate had deposited on the counter. “Lemon tarts, peach tarts, strawberry tarts, blueberry tarts—I don’t think there’s one more thing I could possibly cram into a tart.”

  “They look delicious,” commented Annie as she lifted the lid of one of the boxes and peered inside.