Initiation

by Isobel Bird

  They sat on the rock for a while longer, until it was dark and it had become a little too cold to sit in the wind any longer. Then they walked along the beach, talking, and climbed the stairs to the wharf.

  “I’ve got to get home,” Kate said. “Tomorrow’s the big night, and I have some stuff I want to do to get ready.”

  Tyler nodded. “I guess I’ll see you at the party afterward, then,” he said.

  Kate nodded. She hesitated a moment and then gave Tyler a hug. He held her, his arms around her back, and then let her go.

  “Bye,” he said, smiling and looking a little sad.

  “Bye,” Kate answered.

  She turned and walked to the bus stop. She wondered how her relationship with Tyler would change in the coming weeks and months. Would they really become closer? She hoped so. He was a wonderful guy, and there was a lot about him she loved. But he wasn’t the guy for her. Someday she would find that guy. But I’m not in any hurry, she told herself.

  She rode the bus home and let herself into the house. Her mother was still out, catering a party, and her father hadn’t gotten home from the sporting goods store yet. Kate went into the kitchen, looked in the refrigerator to see what her mother had left for dinner, and took out a couple of containers. She was opening them, investigating the contents, when she had a sudden thought.

  This is how it all started, she reminded herself. The day she’d brought the spell book home from the library, her parents had both been out. She’d had the house to herself, and she’d gone to her room and performed her first spell. Now, a year later, she was alone again on the night before her initiation. That gave her an idea.

  She put the containers of food away and went upstairs to her room. Going to her closet, she removed the bag of ritual items she kept there. Once she had been forced to hide her magical things from her parents so they wouldn’t discover them, but now she had no such fears.

  She opened the bag and took out some small red candles. These she arranged in a circle on her bedroom floor. In the center of her circle she placed a small incense burner and the statue of the Goddess that sat on her altar. Then she turned off the lights so that the room was shrouded in darkness, with only the light of the waning moon to illuminate things.

  Returning to the circle, Kate sat cross-legged in the center, her hands clasped gently in her lap. She remained like that for a few minutes, quietly breathing in and out and focusing her thoughts. She pictured all of the small doubts and worries that cluttered her mind being blown out when she exhaled, scattered like leaves in the wind. When she breathed in, she imagined herself breathing in light and warmth.

  When she felt ready, she began lighting the candles one at a time. As the ring of fire grew around her, she pictured it glowing with golden light, making a circle of protection in which she could safely rest and do her magic. As she lit each candle she silently cast the circle by saying to herself, With each flame my circle grows stronger. When she had lit the last one she sat up straight, pictured in her mind a circle of fire whose walls rose up around her, and said aloud, “My circle is cast.”

  Now she turned her attention to the incense. She held a match to the cone that sat in the center of the burner and watched the cone begin to glow and smoke. She extinguished the match and sat back, closing her eyes and breathing in the scent of amber, cedar, and patchouli. Smelling the sweet, earthy scent made her feel as if she were in an ancient temple somewhere, a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis, or perhaps Cerridwen. It didn’t matter what name she used—they were all names for the Goddess, and Kate knew that she answered to many different names.

  Kate opened her eyes and looked at the statue in front of her. It represented the goddess Demeter, the Greek earth goddess. Demeter’s face wore a serene expression, her lips turned up in a gentle smile and her eyes looking out at Kate with a motherly expression. Looking at the statue, Kate felt a sense of acceptance and love. It was the same feeling she felt when she was in the midst of her friends in a circle, or during a ritual.

  “Thank you for sending me on my journey,” Kate said, addressing her remarks to Demeter but actually speaking to the Goddess. “Thank you for the challenges, and for the help you gave me during the year. It wasn’t always very easy, but it was definitely worth it.”

  She thought about everything that had happened since she’d first picked up the spell book the previous February. During that first ritual she’d done, she hadn’t been concerned with learning anything about Wicca, or with becoming a better person. She had only cared about getting what she wanted, getting Scott Coogan to fall in love with her. As she’d done the Come to Me Love Spell, she hadn’t thought about the consequences of her actions or about how her selfish act might affect other people. She had wanted to use magic to get something for herself, not to help anyone. She’d had no interest in knowing what witchcraft was really about. She’d only been thinking of herself.

  Things had certainly changed since that night, particularly when it came to Kate’s relationship with people. Scott had come and gone, as had her romance with Tyler. She and her family had learned a lot about each other. She had lost friendships with Sherrie, Tara, and Jessica, only to later reconnect with Jessica and Tara in a new, better way. Their friendship was stronger now than it had been before, and Kate was glad that the two of them were considering taking the Wicca study class when it started up again. As for Sherrie, well, Sherrie was always going to be Sherrie. Kate had to laugh as she thought about the run-ins she, Annie, and Cooper had had with her former best friend, from the infamous slapping incident between Sherrie and Annie to Kate’s own mud-wrestling encounter with her on the floor of the school science lab. They say that in Wicca every challenge makes you stronger, Kate thought. If that’s true, then I definitely have Sherrie to thank for making my magic muscles bigger. She had a feeling Sherrie would give her a few more workouts in the coming months, but she knew now that she could handle anything the other girl threw her way.

  The point was that now, sitting in the same room a year later, she was a wiser person. She understood that the purpose of Wicca—the only real purpose of Wicca—was to help each witch learn more about herself, the world, and the differences she could make in both. It wasn’t about getting things, or controlling other people, or manipulating situations. It was about connecting with the energy that flowed through everything, and using that energy to create positive changes.

  When Kate thought about how she’d taken the Ken doll and used it to represent Scott and make him notice her, she felt both embarrassment and gratitude. She was horrified to recall how elated she’d been at realizing she could make a guy like her, and how eager she’d been to try even more spells that she had no business doing. She wanted to forget all about that person, to pretend she didn’t exist. But if it hadn’t been for the girl she’d been at that point in her life, she would never have met Annie and Cooper. It was her misfired spell that had made her seek out Annie and, later, Cooper for help. It was her foolishness that had started the chain of events that would end the next day, when the three of them were going to be initiated into the same coven.

  Once again she thought about the idea of cycles. Just as her relationship with Tyler was changing and becoming something else, her relationship with her friends was becoming something else. They’d gone from being three very different people forced together through fate to being three people who, while still very different from one another, had learned how beautiful and powerful those differences were. They had discovered how to take the things that made each of them unique and use those things to make magic, to make changes in their lives and in the lives of others. They had journeyed a very long way together, and while their final step was, in a way, bringing them back to where they’d started, it was bringing them back as stronger, wiser, and happier people.

  And we’ll just have to wait and see where the next cycle takes us, thought Kate with a sense of peace mixed with anticipation. She knew that wherever their path led them, sh
e would be ready to face the challenges she met there.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Is this what it feels like before you go onstage?” Annie asked Cooper as they waited with Kate in the guest bedroom of Archer’s house. The three of them were standing, too nervous to sit, on the big wooden sleigh bed that took up most of the room.

  “I think this might be worse,” answered Cooper. “At least when I go onstage I know what to expect.”

  Kate was looking at her reflection in the mirror that hung over the dresser at the end of the bed.

  “Is my hair okay?” she asked her friends.

  Cooper groaned. “You look fine,” she said.

  Silence descended. The three of them had been making small talk for the half hour since Archer had led them to the room and told them to wait. There they had found three new white robes, which they had been told to put on. That’s what they were wearing. The robes were loose, and there had been no belts provided for tying them, so they fluttered around the girls, making them look like ghosts.

  “I feel like Casper,” remarked Cooper, flapping the arms of her robe and making the other two giggle.

  “I think we’re supposed to be serious,” said Annie reproachfully. “Isn’t this supposed to be a solemn occasion?”

  Cooper gave her a look. “As if we’re ever totally solemn,” she said.

  “Well, we can try,” Annie replied, feigning irritation.

  “Yes ma’am,” said Cooper.

  They tried listening at the door to see if they could hear anything, but the bedroom was on the second floor of the old farmhouse Archer lived in, and the coven meeting was downstairs in the living room. The girls couldn’t hear anything at all, which made the waiting even harder to take.

  “Remember our dedication ceremony?” Kate asked, sitting on the bed. “They had us blindfolded in the storage room at the bookstore for hours.”

  “It wasn’t hours,” Cooper said.

  “But it felt like it,” remarked Annie. “I was so scared, especially when we had to list the gifts we were bringing to our journey.”

  “Do you remember yours?” Kate asked her.

  Annie thought for a moment. “Honesty,” she said. “Curiosity.” She paused, trying to recall the third. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Patience.”

  Kate and Cooper gave snorts of laughter.

  “What?” Annie demanded. “I’m patient.”

  “Then why are you tapping your foot?” Cooper said, pointing to Annie’s rapidly moving toe.

  Annie stopped tapping. “Fine,” she said. “What were your gifts, Miss Smarty Pants?”

  Cooper sighed. “That was so long ago,” she said. “I think they were creativity, loyalty, and stubbornness.”

  This time Annie joined Kate in laughing. Cooper didn’t even bother to argue with them, knowing they were making good-natured fun of her mulish nature.

  “Kate?” Annie asked when they had finished laughing.

  “Willingness, friendship, and doubt,” Kate said automatically.

  “How do you remember so well?” Cooper asked her.

  “Easy,” Kate answered. “I looked in my journal last night. I write everything down.”

  “Actually, I think we did pretty well with our gifts,” said Annie thoughtfully. “I know I used mine a lot.”

  “Same here,” agreed Cooper. “Especially the stubbornness part.”

  “And what about our challenges?” said Kate. “Mine was truth. That certainly has come up again and again for me this past year.”

  “Mine was healing,” Annie said. “When I think about how much I was hurting because of my parents’ deaths, and how now I have you guys and a big new family, I can’t think of a more accurate challenge.”

  “Connection,” said Cooper. “That was my challenge. I didn’t know what it meant then. I thought it had something to do with connecting to the natural world or something.” She laughed. “Man, was I wrong. I was such a loner then, and I was so proud of it. Now I have you two in my life, plus T.J. and Jane and Sasha and everyone in the pagan community. We won’t even get into how I’ve connected with my parents.”

  The three of them were quiet for a minute as they thought about how far they had come in their year of studying Wicca. Each of them had started out on the journey with some fear and hesitation. Each of them had stumbled from time to time. But now they were at the end of the path, standing together and waiting to enter the next phase of their lives.

  “We did good,” said Cooper, looking at her two friends.

  “We did well,” Annie said, correcting her.

  Cooper was about to say something sarcastic in return when there was a knock on the door. It opened and the girls saw Robin, one of the women from Crones’ Circle and one of the members of the new coven, looking in at them.

  “Ready?” Robin asked.

  The girls looked at each other. They all nodded without speaking.

  “Come with me,” said Robin.

  She turned and walked away. The girls followed, with Kate going first, followed by Annie, and then Cooper. When they entered the hall, it was filled with golden light that came from dozens of candles that had been placed along both sides of the hallway. They walked between the candles until they came to the stairway. Candles had also been placed on both sides of the stairs, forming a path of light.

  Robin descended the stairs, the girls following her. At the bottom she motioned for them to stop. They could see that the path of candles continued down another hallway and stopped at the entrance to the living room, the door of which was shut. Two other coven members, also dressed in white, stood outside the door.

  “You have journeyed far during your year and a day,” Robin said to them. “Your destination lies beyond that door. If you are ready to enter, then proceed.”

  Kate, Cooper, and Annie looked at one another. This was it, the end of their journey. It was what each of them had been waiting for all year. Annie held out her hand to Kate, who took it. Then Kate held hers out to Cooper. Linked together, they walked down the hallway to the doorway.

  “Welcome,” said one of the robed figures, a woman the girls had never met before.

  “Welcome,” said the other figure, a woman the girls recognized from several of the open rituals they’d attended.

  The second woman held a lit candle, and the first woman produced two bundles of sage leaves, which she lit by holding them to the candle flame. When the bundles were smoking, she handed one of the bundles to the second woman.

  Working together, they moved the burning bundles of sage leaves around the girls’ bodies, creating clouds of smoke. They started at their feet, moving up over their heads and then back down again, purifying them with the ritual herb. When they were finished, the two women stood on either side of the doorway. The first one knocked.

  The door opened, and the girls saw that the living room, like the hallway, was filled with cheerful candlelight. The two women outside indicated with sweeps of their hands that the girls should pass through.

  “Enter, and be welcome,” they said as first Annie, then Kate, then Cooper walked through into the living room.

  A large circle of candles had been arranged in the room, which had been emptied of all its furniture. Ringed around the circle were the members of the coven. Some of them the girls recognized, while others were unfamiliar to them. But all of them were smiling at the three initiates, and the girls felt their nervousness slip away.

  There was an empty space between two of the coven members, and it was through this opening that the girls passed into the circle. When they were inside, Robin and the two guardians of the door came in and closed the circle. Kate, Cooper, and Annie were now standing in the center, surrounded by their soon-to-be coven.

  Archer and Sybil, the friend with whom she’d decided to start the coven, stepped into the circle, one from either side. They came to stand together in front of the three girls.

  “Tonight is a very special night,” Sybil said. “Tonight we
not only initiate three new witches into the Craft, but we see the birth of a new coven.”

  “A coven is a family,” Archer said, addressing the girls. “This will be your magical family. You will share with them, learn with them, and celebrate with them. Turn now and look at the faces of your family as they speak their names.”

  The girls turned to look at the women and men gathered around them.

  “Helen,” said one of the women, beginning the naming. The girls looked at her, and saw her smiling back at them.

  “Jack,” said the man beside her.

  And so they went around the circle, with each person giving her or his name in a clear voice. “Mary.” “Crow.” “Joshua.” The girls listened as the names were spoken. “Pru.” “Robin.” Each new name brought a new face, a new smile, until they came to the final person. “Eleanore,” she said, nodding shyly.

  “This is our coven,” Sybil said. “And we name ourselves the Circle of the Dancing Goddess.”

  Archer stepped forward. “And now it is time to welcome the newest members of the coven,” she said. “Will you kneel?”

  Annie, Cooper, and Kate knelt as instructed. Four of the coven members stepped forward from the circle and came to stand around them. Each person held something in her or his hands, although the girls could not see what the things were.

  “A year and a day ago you dedicated yourselves to walking the Wiccan path,” said Archer. “You followed the voice of the Goddess as she called you to come to her. That path has sometimes been difficult, and sometimes you were tempted to turn back. But you continued, moving forward and meeting each of the challenges presented to you. Now you have come to this place, this place of magic and love. Here you will receive that which you have sought for so long.”

  One of the coven members, Pru, stepped toward the girls. She held a small bowl of salt in her hands. “With the element of Earth I consecrate you,” she said as she took a little salt and sprinkled it over the head of each girl. “May it give to you the strength of mountains.”