by Isobel Bird
“Exactly,” Annie replied. “We can do something asking the universe to use his own energy against him. We wouldn’t be doing anything bad to him ourselves, but we’d be teaching him a lesson.”
Cooper looked at Kate. “What do you think?” she asked.
Kate nodded. “I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “But we’ve never done anything like that. How would it work?”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Annie said. “I think we need to raise energy somehow, the way we usually do during rituals. Then we need to send it out into the universe, directing it at Ray.” She looked at the others, who nodded in agreement. “Oh, and I think we should ask one of the crankier goddesses for some help,” she added.
“Come again?” Kate asked.
“You know,” said Annie, “one of the goddesses who likes to kick butt every now and then. I was thinking maybe Kali.”
Kate looked hesitant. “I don’t know,” she said. “Don’t you remember what happened when I asked Oggun to do me a favor like that?” She didn’t want to go into the whole story, primarily because it had involved her trying to get revenge on Annie and Tyler for their little indiscretion, and she didn’t want to bring that up again. But Annie had cut her hand quite badly as a result of Kate’s asking the Santerian god for help. In fact, she still had the scar as a reminder.
Annie rubbed her finger, as if feeling the place where her stitches had been. “I know,” she said. “But this is different. We’re not asking for revenge, exactly. We’re asking that the energy Ray put out be turned back toward him.”
Kate thought about it for a minute. It was true, they weren’t asking the Goddess to hurt Ray. They weren’t even necessarily suggesting that something bad happen to him. They were just asking for the Law of Three to be enacted. That didn’t seem so bad.
“Okay,” said Kate. “I think it sounds good.”
“Great,” Annie said. “Then when Sasha gets here we can start.”
“Should I really be involved in this?” asked Becka. She’d been silent during the whole conversation. Now she was looking at the three girls with a questioning expression. “I mean, I know I’ve learned some stuff about magic and Wicca from Annie—and from books and stuff—but it’s not like I’m in the same league as you guys.”
“You’ve helped me with rituals before,” Annie told her.
“And Sasha isn’t in the group, either,” Cooper said. “I mean technically. There’s no reason the two of you can’t be part of the ritual, though. The more people we have raising energy, the better.”
As Cooper finished speaking Sasha walked in. She looked exhausted, as if she hadn’t slept at all.
“Do you feel as bad as you look?” Cooper asked her.
“Worse,” said Sasha, sinking onto Annie’s bed and reclining against the pillows. “I’ve been at the hospital all day, and I only slept for maybe half an hour last night.”
“But Mallory is going to be okay, right?” asked Kate. “So you can relax a little bit.”
Sasha groaned. “It’s not just what happened to Mallory,” she said. “This whole thing has brought up a lot of really awful memories. I just wish Ray was out of the picture permanently, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t hit him harder,” Kate said.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Sasha, sitting up. “It’s just that I thought that part of my life was behind me for good. Now it’s right here in Beecher Falls.”
“Well, we have a plan to maybe get it out of Beecher Falls,” Annie told her. She explained their idea for a ritual to Sasha.
“Sounds good to me,” Sasha said when Annie was done explaining. “So, you want to ask Kali for help, huh?” she added.
“I thought she’d be good,” said Annie.
“Can I ask who Kali is?” Becka said sheepishly. “I mean, I know she’s a Hindu goddess, but why her?”
Cooper looked at Annie. “Professor Crandall, would you like to explain?” she said.
Annie made a face at Cooper. “Hinduism basically divides the deities into three groups,” Annie told Becka. “There are the creators, the sustainers, and the destroyers. Kali is one of the destroyers, at least some of the time.”
“That sounds really grim,” remarked Becka.
“Not really,” Annie told her. “It’s all part of the natural cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Kali is a destroyer because it’s believed that when she gets angry she devours the demons of ignorance and anyone who follows them. She destroys things that need to be destroyed so that new things—good things—can be created.”
“Kind of like a killing frost,” Cooper said thoughtfully.
“Whatever,” Annie said. “The point is, I thought she would be a good goddess to ask for help because what we’re really trying to do is destroy the evil that Ray creates with his actions.”
“Got it,” Becka said. “So, what do we do?”
“Kali likes fire,” said Annie. “She also likes drumming and chanting. I thought we could make a circle with some red candles and then raise energy by doing those things.”
“We need a chant,” Cooper said.
“That’s your job,” Annie told her. “While we set up the circle, you write.”
“Why do I always get the hard stuff?” complained Cooper as the others got up to help Annie.
For the next fifteen minutes Annie, Sasha, Kate, and Becka set up the sacred circle. They cleared the floor in the middle of the room and arranged red candles in a circle. Annie put her small cauldron in the center of the circle to represent more fire. Then she produced a small drum from her closet.
“I picked it up at the store,” she said. “You know, because of the workshop and all.”
“How’s that chant coming?” Kate asked Cooper, who had been busily writing.
“Not bad,” Cooper said. “Almost done.”
“Good,” Annie said. “We’ll start in a few minutes, then.”
They lit the candles while Cooper wrote the last of the chant. Then she joined them inside the perimeter of the circle. Annie turned off the lights and the room glowed with a fiery light.
“I’ll cast, if that’s okay,” Annie said. “I have an idea for something good.”
She looked around at her friends, and they all nodded. She then picked up one of the candles and held it in front of her. Walking clockwise around the circle, she said, “One time ’round I cast the circle with the fire of protection. May this circle be a place of safety and refuge.” She then walked around again, this time saying, “Two times ’round I cast the circle with the fire of justice. May this circle be a place of strength and fury.” The third time around she said, “Three times ’round I cast the circle with the fire of renewal. May this circle be a place of cleansing and healing.”
When she was done she returned the candle to its place in the perimeter and said, “The circle is cast. Let us make magic.”
The girls sat down in the circle of fire. Annie turned to Kate. “Would you like to invoke Kali?” she asked.
Kate nodded and stood up. She stood in the center of the circle and held up her hands. “Kali,” she called out. “The Destroyer. Mother of Death and Change.” She thought about what Kali represented, and about what they wanted her help in doing. Then she continued speaking. “If you will, join us in our circle tonight. Lend to us your gifts of strength and anger. Help us create magic that will change what has been made wrong and destroy the hatred that has harmed our friend Mallory. Devour the evil that we seek to end.”
When she was finished she sat down again. “How was that?” she asked, not sure if she’d done a good enough job.
“Perfect,” Cooper said. “Very forceful.”
Kate looked at Becka, who was watching everything with interest. “It’s not an exact science,” she remarked. “We kind of make up a lot of it as we go along.”
“Okay,” Annie said. “I think it’s time we raised some energy. Cooper, do you want to teach us the chan
t?”
Cooper held up the paper she’d been writing on. “It’s not perfect,” she said, “but I think it will do. I’ll sing it through once and then you guys can join in.” She cleared her throat and then sang:
In the belly of the cauldron,
in this circle made of flame,
call we up the burning power,
conjure it in Kali’s name.
Strength and anger, rage and fury,
fuel the flames and raise them higher,
fill them with our mighty spirit,
form a ring of cleansing fire.
Crackling, sparking, never fading,
fire pure and fire wild,
go and do our magic bidding,
go avenge the Mother’s child.
She looked around. “Got it?” she asked.
Everyone nodded. Annie began playing a simple beat on her drum. After a moment Cooper began the chant, followed soon after by the others. They sang the entire chant through three times, then Annie said, “Imagine our voices and the sound of the drum producing energy. Imagine it rising up inside the cauldron and forming a living flame, bright and powerful. Picture it bubbling in the cauldron, growing stronger and fiercer with our intentions.”
They chanted some more. Some of them closed their eyes. Others clapped along with the rhythm. Their voices became stronger and louder, and Annie’s drumming matched them.
Then, as if by some signal, they reached out and took one another’s hands, forming a living circle. Annie stopped drumming but they all kept singing for a few more minutes.
“Now imagine the flame we’ve created leaving the circle,” Annie instructed them. “Imagine Kali scooping it up in her cauldron and sweeping across the night sky to wherever Ray is. Imagine her finding him and pouring the fire over him. See it encircling him, trapping him inside of it. He isn’t burned, but he can’t move. The fire is our energy, our intention to keep Ray trapped.”
She paused, letting this image fill their minds. Then she continued. “Imagine Ray fighting the fire,” she instructed them. “Picture him trying to put it out with his anger and his rage. But no matter how hard he tries, his energy is turned against him. It makes the fire stronger. Three times as strong as his own emotions. It feeds off him, turning his hate into love and making the flames grow higher and brighter.”
The five girls sat quietly in the silent room. Around them the candles seemed to burn more intensely, more brightly. The air was shimmering with the heat, and with something else. When they looked at one another, it was like looking through white fire. Their faces glowed, and their linked hands were hot to the touch.
“I think we did it,” Annie said, smiling at everyone.
“It’s amazing,” Becka said, her voice filled with awe. “I could feel everything and see everything just the way you described it.”
“Go, Kali,” said Sasha, nodding her head appreciatively. “She was here, guys. I could tell.”
“I think so, too,” said Cooper. “Good work, everyone.”
“Now what happens?” Becka asked.
“We wait,” Annie said.
“And we hope Ray isn’t wearing fire-retardant clothes,” Cooper added.
CHAPTER 13
What are we doing here? Cooper wondered as she looked around the room. They were in the basement of a church, sitting on metal folding chairs and holding cups of coffee. Her mother was sitting beside her, anxiously picking pieces from the edge of her cup, while next to Mrs. Rivers, Mrs. McAllister kept up a steady stream of conversation.
“I’ve been coming here nearly every Friday night for six years,” she told them.
Cooper scanned the walls of the basement, which were covered with colorful banners featuring Bible verses and inspirational sayings. A large picture of Jesus holding a lamb hung directly opposite her chair, and stacks of hymnals sat beside a battered old upright piano tucked away in the corner. The basement was carpeted with a rug whose once-golden color had faded to a dull yellowish brown, tarnished with the dirt of the thousands of pairs of shoes that had walked across it in the who-knew-how-many years since it had first been put there. The smell that permeated the place was a combination of dampness, old coffee, and perfume, the last scent courtesy of a small, nervous-looking woman who sat a few seats away from them, smiling at everyone and then ducking her head to avoid their return smiles.
She looked more closely at the basement she was in. Maybe it wasn’t like being in a circle ringed with candles while someone drummed and the others chanted. But it was a sacred place of its own, a place where people came to hold their own kind of rituals with their own purposes. Maybe I’m not such a stranger here after all, she thought.
About a dozen people were now milling about the room, most of them women. One of them, a woman who could easily have been Cooper’s grandmother, clapped her hands. “Okay,” she called out, “let’s circle up.”
Cooper’s ears perked up at the word circle. She watched as the people in the room claimed chairs and then began arranging them in a circle. She scooted her own chair over so that she was seated between her mother and a man who set his chair down beside her. He smiled and nodded at Cooper, and she nodded in return.
With the circle formed, the grandmotherlike woman who had called them together looked around. “I don’t know everyone,” she said. “That means some of you are new or guests, so introductions are in order. My name is Rhoda.”
The woman beside Rhoda went next, introducing herself as Beth. They continued around the circle until coming to Cooper’s mother. Cooper watched, waiting to see what she would say. Her mother was still fidgeting with her coffee cup.
“I’m Janet,” she said finally, her voice coming out like air being forced through a very small hole. She cleared her throat and said again, “I’m Janet.”
“I’m Cooper,” Cooper said, following her mother.
The recitation of names continued on with Ralph, the man next to Cooper, and then around the circle until they returned once again to Rhoda. She looked around at everyone once more.
“Welcome,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see old friends as well as new ones. Now let me tell you a little about who we are. First of all, we are not a twelve-step program.”
There was some scattered laughter from the group at Rhoda’s announcement. She continued. “This is not AA or Al-Anon or any of those things,” she said. “What this is is a group of people who have been affected by alcohol. Some of us have been through programs like AA. Some of us are in programs like AA. But that’s not what we are. We’re simply a group that meets to talk about our lives. Sometimes we help each other. Sometimes we just listen. We don’t preach, we don’t judge, and we don’t try to get you to do or say anything you don’t want to.”
Cooper snuck a glance at her mother. Mrs. Rivers was looking at Rhoda. From time to time she looked at some of the other people as well, but only for brief moments before turning her attention back to the woman who was leading the circle.
Circle. There it was again, Cooper realized. They were all sitting in a circle. Perhaps their purpose in being there wasn’t quite like the purpose behind a Wiccan circle, but there were definitely similarities.
“We work very informally,” Rhoda was saying. “If you want to talk, you talk. Otherwise you listen. When someone is talking, we don’t interrupt or comment. We listen. So, does anyone have anything to say?”
Cooper found herself becoming a little tense. It was always awkward for her, being in groups where people spoke when they were moved to. It made her feel like she was supposed to say something, if only to fill the silence that always threatened to overwhelm things. And now she found herself becoming even more tense because she was waiting to see if her mother would talk.
It had taken a lot of coaxing to get her mother to agree to come to the group Mrs. McAllister was a part of. At first she had insisted that she didn’t need to talk about what was going on with her. She’d said she would be fine. But when Cooper had returned
home on Thursday night after her ritual with her friends, she’d found her mother sitting at the kitchen table, staring at an unopened bottle of vodka. “I think now I’m ready to talk to Mary,” she’d said to Cooper as her daughter had stood anxiously in the doorway, watching her.
The two women had talked, and the result was that they were all three sitting in the church basement, with Cooper alternately terrified that her mother wouldn’t speak and then that she would. It had been Mrs. McAllister’s idea that Cooper come. “After all,” she’d said, “this is about you, too.”
There was, of course, one member of the Rivers family not present. Cooper’s mother had asked Cooper not to mention the meeting to her father. Cooper knew it was because her mother was embarrassed, although she’d been a little bit puzzled about how going to the meeting was any more embarrassing than having Mr. Rivers see her drunk. Still, she’d done as her mother asked. She hadn’t, however, told her that she was scheduled to have dinner with her father later that same night, not wanting to do anything that might make her change her mind about attending the meeting.
“My name is Brandon,” said a man across the circle from Cooper. She looked at him. He appeared to be not much older than she was. When everyone turned to look at him, he blushed slightly and looked at his feet.
“I’m a student,” he said, “at the college. It’s the first time I’ve been away from home and living on my own.” He paused. No one spoke or interrupted him, giving him the time he needed to continue. “It’s harder than I thought,” he said finally. “You have all of this freedom. A lot of my friends like to party, and there’s always stuff to drink, you know?”
Brandon stopped talking again. The look on his face suggested that he thought he might have said something stupid. Cooper watched him. She knew how he felt. He was telling a bunch of strangers something about himself that he wasn’t very happy about. She had a difficult time talking to people she trusted about her life; she couldn’t imagine doing what he was doing.
