Veiled Enchantments

by Deborah Blake

  Blinking rapidly, she purposely tried to envision a more realistic scene. Her, back at home, with some suitable Witch mate and their children, sitting at Saturday dinner at her parents’ house. But she couldn’t seem to make that work either. Magnus’s face would appear across the table or the kids would disappear, or both.

  The truth was, she was much more likely to end up an old maid Witch like her great-aunt, stirring potions in a basement with a parrot on her shoulder. That was okay. She loved and admired Tatiana. Donata could do worse than to follow in her footsteps.

  “Donata. Donata.” Magnus was saying her name in a way that made her think he’d been trying to get her attention for some time.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about getting a parrot.”

  “What?” He looked at her like she was crazy, which probably wasn’t as far from the truth as she’d like.

  “Nothing. Just daydreaming. What’s up?”

  “The kids wanted you to come play cards with us. I’m teaching them to cheat at poker, and I told them you were an expert.” His gaze softened. “Are you okay, ’Nata? For a minute you seemed kind of sad.”

  She gave him her best cheerful smile. “Very funny. You know perfectly well I never have to cheat at cards; I beat you fair and square every time.” She heaved herself out of the chair. “Are you really teaching them to play poker?”

  “Actually, we’re playing gin rummy, but don’t think I didn’t notice you avoiding my question.” He gave her a quick kiss. “And just for the record, I don’t think Grimalkin would get along with a parrot.”

  Good point. Maybe she should just get another cat or three. She could be one of those crazy cat-lady Witches. It would be better than sitting around brooding over something she couldn’t have. That ship had sailed a long time ago, for better or for worse.

  “You’re probably right,” she said in a light tone. “Now remind me, when was the last time you beat me at gin rummy? Was it the twelfth of never or the thirteenth?”

  In the end, she lost every game. It was embarrassing, although the kids seemed to find it pretty amusing. Eventually she pled exhaustion, which was true enough, although it hadn’t been that long a day, and went back to Magnus’s wing of the house to go to bed. But sleep eluded her. Sometime around eleven, she heard Magnus’s heavy tread come down the hall and stop in front of her door.

  She held her breath for a moment, not sure what she wanted, but eventually he walked away and closed his own door behind him. Even though Donata knew it was for the best, she spent most of the rest of the night fighting the impulse to tiptoe across to his room and slide under the covers and into his warm arms, where for at least a while, she might enjoy the illusion of safety and love.

  Monday morning came too soon. The mid-November sky was still dark at five a.m., and the temperature was considerably cooler than it would be back in the city. Donata could see her breath fogging the air as she and Magnus walked briskly toward the practice hall where the Ulf candidates met at the beginning of the day, and she hugged her borrowed down coat around her gratefully. Even her thick leather jacket wasn’t up to dealing with Maine in November.

  When they got there, Jonah, Lita, Knud, Arvid, and Olaf were already in the large room, drinking coffee from a large pot set on the woodstove that someone had started up to take the edge off the cold. Gunnar staggered in a few minutes later, as grumpy as the bear they all channeled. He grunted at the rest of them and ignored Donata, which suited her just fine. She wasn’t awake enough to deal with his antagonism.

  Their teacher for the day, a gnarled old oak of a man with long gray hair tied back with a leather cord and sinewy arms showing under rolled-up shirtsleeves, set the Ulfhednar to a series of exercises that would, he said, “wake them up so they wouldn’t be stupid.” Donata followed along, more to get warm than anything else. Fortunately, her martial arts practice and plentiful nights spent at the gym because she didn’t have any better plans meant that she kept up reasonably well. Sometimes it was good not to have a life.

  She was just beginning to think that maybe shadowing the prospective Ulf wasn’t going to be too bad when the teacher, Harald, clapped his hands together and gathered the company at the front of the room. He’d simply nodded when Magnus had introduced Donata and explained her presence, and other than the occasional rumble of approval when she’d managed a particularly difficult maneuver, he’d mostly behaved as though she wasn’t there. Now he gazed at her dispassionately and shrugged before turning his attention back to his official charges.

  “Hope you’re all feeling rested up from the weekend,” he said with a glint in his moss-green eyes. “Because it’s a test day today.”

  Arvid groaned. “We just had one last Thursday,” he said. “I was hoping we’d have a few more days to recover from that disaster before we headed into another one.”

  “You had the weekend,” Harald replied. “When you are Ulf and working in the field, you think the challenges are going to stop coming at you because you had a rough day and need a break?” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I even bother to show up and train you. Worst class of candidates ever. Pathetic, the bunch of you.”

  Donata would have been offended on their behalf, but Magnus had explained before Harald arrived that this was pretty much how he’d talked to every Ulf he’d ever taught.

  “Can you tell us what the test is?” Magnus asked, throwing a concerned glance in Donata’s direction.

  “Nope. Grab your gear and follow me. You’re going to want to travel light for this one. Shirts and jeans but no jackets. Small pack with basic necessities only. Plan on getting dirty.” With that, he turned on his heel and marched out the door. The Ulfhednar all followed, their winter coats left hanging sadly on their hooks by the woodstove.

  Donata shivered as soon as she hit the outdoors, although now that the sun had come up it was at least ten degrees warmer than it had been earlier. She tried to be grateful for small favors. As she drew even with Magnus, he handed her an extra leather bag that belted around her waist much like a fanny pack.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

  “I’ll let you know when we get where we’re going,” she said, suppressing a shiver. “Hopefully it’s not someplace high, like the top of a cliff or a tall pine tree.”

  Twenty minutes and a brisk hike later, she wished she could take the words back. The top of a cliff was starting to look pretty attractive in comparison with the hole in the ground she was facing instead.

  “Caves,” she said in a dire voice. “Why is it always caves?”

  Magnus grinned at her, knowing her dislike of dark enclosed spaces. “Not too late to turn back, ’Nata. I think my mom is baking cookies today.”

  “Make up your mind, Witch,” Harald said, not sounding as though he cared one way or the other which choice she made. “In five minutes, everyone in this clearing is climbing down into that hole, making their way through the caverns underneath us, and coming out the other side. I’ve hidden prizes in the caves. The one with the most ‘gems’ wins for the day, but everyone who goes in has to at least make it out the other side or they fail the test.”

  Crap. Donata absolutely hated caves. Hell, she didn’t even like the subway. But she’d gone spelunking a few times with her family, because her mother was a firm believer in getting in touch with Mother Earth in all possible ways. Donata much preferred sitting in a pretty park smelling the flowers to crawling around stalactites and stalagmites, which always made her think of giant teeth, but she also had a feeling that a dark cavern was the perfect place for a ghost to show up.

  She figured she’d at least go inside and see how bad it was, and if it was too horrendous, she could always turn around and come back out. Thankfully, she didn’t have to pass the damned test.

  “I’m going,” she said, setting her jaw.

  She waited for Magnus to argue with her, but
when she looked at him, she could see that he was already focused on the task, turning inward to access his connection to the bear spirit inside. She envied that a bit, since it would figure that bears would be more comfortable in caves than most people, but she was also glad he wasn’t being distracted by her presence. She’d worried a little that he’d be too busy watching out for her. Apparently he’d decided to trust her to take care of herself; he’d always been good about that.

  When the others delved into their bags and pulled out small headlamps and gloves, she took out hers and put them on. There wasn’t much else in there: a coiled length of thin but strong-looking rope, a packet of jerky, and a flask of water, plus a couple of other small items. When Harald said they’d be traveling light, he wasn’t kidding.

  By the time she was ready, most of the others had already headed down into the caves. She paused at the edge of the hole to send up a quick prayer to Hecate for strength and courage, then swung her legs down into the opening, trying not to think of it as a gaping maw getting ready to swallow her up.

  Once inside, her headlamp barely lit the empty space below the entrance, its tiny light bouncing off the shadows to show her multiple tunnels leading outward. There was nothing to indicate which one might be the right one, if there even was a right one. It was more likely that most of them led in more or less the right direction, with a few going off into side caverns and dead ends.

  She really wished she hadn’t thought of the word dead.

  There was no sign of any of the Ulfhednar, or any ghosts, for that matter, so she sent out another silent request to Hecate for guidance and then picked a tunnel at random and started walking. Before too long the ceiling lowered to the point where she had to hunch over, and soon after that she was crawling. The narrow space closed in around her, smelling of dirt and damp and something she hoped wasn’t bat guano. Soil wedged itself under her fingernails and drifted into her hair, and occasionally she had to blink it out of her eyes. The knees of her jeans were soon caked with mud. She felt completely connected to the earth. And she hated it.

  Even as a child Donata had fought a touch of claustrophobia when under the ground, and it was clear that hadn’t improved with age. Her own rough breathing was the only sound she could hear, and as the tunnel she was in narrowed even further, the pounding pulse of her heartbeat echoed in her ears. Just as she was on the verge of panic at the thought of possibly having to back out the entire way, the passage opened up into another wider space, where there was actually room enough to stand upright briefly.

  Donata stretched for a moment, her cramped muscles crying out in relief, and gazed at the two options in front of her, and the one behind. If she turned back, at least she knew exactly how long the journey would take and what to expect at the other end. Otherwise, she had to choose between an opening that swung to the left and one that curved to the right. Both of them were tall enough to walk into at this point, but she didn’t have any guarantee that would last.

  A glint in one dusty corner drew her eye and she picked up what had to be one of Harald’s “gems.” It looked like a piece of quartz crystal about the size of her thumb and shone like a diamond in the light from her headlamp. She decided to take it as a sign, and after a moment of hesitation, wondering if she should leave it for one of the actual test takers, she tucked it into her fanny pack. Too bad there wasn’t a compass in there. Since they’d entered at the southern side of the mountain, the exit she was aiming for would be toward the north; a compass would have come in quite handy right about now.

  Then she laughed at herself for forgetting the obvious. She wasn’t an Ulfhednar. She was a Witch. She didn’t need a damned compass.

  Since most magical rituals included calling on the four directions, one of the first simple spells a young Witch learned was how to find north. Usually you used a stick, or even a piece of jewelry, and attached the spell to that. Donata wasn’t wearing a necklace, and there were no handy sticks lying around, but the gemstone she’d just picked up should work almost as well. Hopefully her magic would work for this small cantrip.

  She pulled it back out of the pack and set it on the ground in front of her, reciting the words she’d learned when she was younger than Magnus’s niece. In response, the crystal began to glow gently—a faint light that probably wouldn’t even have been visible up on the surface, but down here it showed up just fine. As she turned it toward the tunnel on the left, its glow grew dimmer. Turned toward the other opening, it brightened slightly. Right it was.

  Donata took one more deep breath and set off again. The sooner she started, the sooner she could be out the other side and in the open air again.

  The new passageway shrank down eventually, too, just as the first one had. Soon enough, she was back to crawling on her hands and knees. Time compressed until there was nothing but the next breath, the next yard forward. She started to hear tiny sounds behind her and imagined some kind of animal trapped down here with her. Something hungry, with big teeth and claws. But every time she stopped to listen, there was nothing but silence. Eventually she decided it was all in her head and resolved to ignore it. If it was a ghost, it was going to have to wait until she got outside to talk to her.

  In the end, the thing that stopped her wasn’t a ghost but rather a voice inside her that whispered, Wait, something’s not right here. She reached out a hand and felt cautiously in front of her. Where there should have been solid ground, there was only empty space. Crap.

  Aiming her lamp around the immediate vicinity told her the unhappy truth: there was a break in the tunnel, and only air where she needed to move forward. A narrow ledge rimmed the side off to the left, but it didn’t look very solid. She’d have to go back the way she’d come and try again. Tears of frustration pricked at her eyes, but she fought them back and pulled herself together.

  Just as she was preparing to see if she had enough room to turn around, she heard another noise behind her. Something shoved firmly against the middle of her back, strongly enough to propel her relentlessly forward, and she plummeted into the emptiness.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Donata had just enough time to scream Magnus’s name, and then she was falling, falling, falling, arms flailing helplessly. She landed with a crash that drove all the air out of her lungs, and for a moment spots swam in front of her eyes. Consciousness tried to dart away like a fish in a river, but she refused to let go, hanging on to it with all her remaining energy.

  Finally she was able to pull in a breath and then another. After a minute, she did a quick inventory. Bones, all intact, as far as she could tell, although she was pretty sure she’d have some spectacular bruises in the morning, assuming she made it that far, and her chest hurt enough to possibly indicate a cracked rib. Skull, also intact, although she’d hit it hard enough that she wouldn’t be surprised if she had a concussion. Nerves, shot to hell, but that seemed reasonable under the circumstances, so she let it go.

  Her headlamp, unfortunately, seemed to have cracked when she fell, so that its light, while still on, was fractured and refracted dizzily around her. Or maybe that was the concussion. Either way, the hole she’d landed in seemed darker than it should be, and she doubted the illumination would be enough to guide anyone to her. When they started looking, which was likely to be some time from now. The dim glow from her little crystal was surprisingly comforting in the otherwise gloomy space.

  The chasm she’d fallen into wasn’t large, maybe about six feet around in all directions. She’d been damned lucky she’d gone straight down and not bounced off the sides or hit one of the rough edges protruding at random intervals. Donata thought maybe she could attempt to climb out using them as handholds, but when she tried to stand up, her head spun and her stomach threatened to rebel altogether. Maybe later. She sat back down as gently as possible and leaned against the wall behind her. She’d rest now and try again in a minute. Or five.

  Time passed in slow motio
n, measured by the beats of her heart and the matching pulse in her aching head. She was so thirsty her lips stuck to her teeth and it felt like dust coated the inside of her mouth. She drank a few sips of her water but tried to ration it, since she didn’t know how long she’d be there.

  Everything ached. Snatches of memories drifted in and out of her mind. The first time she’d seen Magnus, across the room in a bar frequented by Paranormals, standing out from the crowd like the sun coming out from behind a bank of clouds. The time he’d kissed her under a full moon and then lifted her up and danced around with her to music only they could hear.

  She held the ring he’d given her up to her lips and whispered his name, and almost wasn’t surprised when some moments later, he whispered it back.

  “Hey,” she said. “Took you long enough.” She blinked in the suddenly brighter light. “Huh. You’re real.”

  “Last time I checked,” Magnus said, crouching in front of her and looking her over carefully. “Anything broken?”

  “I might have cracked a rib,” Donata said. “But mostly I think it is just bruises. I hope your favorite colors are still black and blue.” She tried to laugh, but it made her head hurt, so she stopped. “Also, ow.”

  He kissed her gently on the forehead. “I climbed down here using the handholds, but I don’t think you’re in any shape to climb up. If I use our ropes to tie you to my back, do you think you can hang on while I climb us both back out?”

  Somehow, Donata didn’t think “no” was really an option. “Sure,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “But I’d like to apologize in advance for that second muffin I ate for breakfast.”

  Magnus chuckled. “Still cracking wise. That’s my girl.”

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  “I honestly don’t know,” he said in a quiet voice. “I thought I heard you call my name, but I was already almost out of the caverns, so I’m not sure if that’s possible. But Ulfhednar are all about instinct, so I just followed mine, and it led me here.”