Blood Witch s-3

by Cate Tiernan

  On the left side of the house, past the shaggy rhododendrons, I found the place where Maeve had been standing in my vision. There was an opening between the low brick foundation and the floor supports. The opening was barely twenty inches high. I glanced back at the car. Robbie was leaning against it in case he suddenly needed to come to my aid. I smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. He smiled back reassuringly. I was lucky. He was a good friend.

  Crouching down, I peered underneath the house and saw only a dense, inky blackness. My heart was pounding loudly, but my senses picked up no people above or around me. For all I knew, I would find dead bodies and crumbling bones in there. Or rats. I would freak if I came face to face with a rat. I pictured myself screaming and scrambling to get out from under the house as fast as I could. But there was no sense in waiting. My magesight would guide me. I crept forward on my hands and knees. As soon as I had edged under the house, I paused to give my eyes time to adjust.

  I saw a lot of junk, glowing faintly with time: old insulation foam, an ancient, dirt-encrusted sink, old pipes and chunks of sheet metal. I maneuvered my way carefully through this maze, looking around, trying to get some idea of what I could be looking for. I could feel the cold dampness seep through my jeans. I sneezed. It was dank under here. Dank and musty.

  Again the questions festered in my mind. Why was I here? Why had Maeve wanted me to come here? Think, think! Could there be something about the house itself? I glanced upward to see if runes or sigils were traced on the bottom of the floor supports. The wood was old and dirty and blackened, and I saw nothing. I swept my gaze from side to side, starting to feel incredibly stupid—

  Wait. There was something… I blinked, rapidly. About fifteen feet in front of me, next to a brick piling, there was something. Something magickal. Whatever it was, I could sense it more than I could see it. I crawled forward, ducking low under water pipes and phone wires. At one point I had to shimmy on my belly beneath a sewer line. I was going to look like hell when I got out of here—I could feel my hair dragging in the dirt and cursed myself for not tying it up.

  Finally I slithered out and could crawl normally again. I sneezed and wiped my nose on my sleeve. There! Tucked between two supports, practically hidden behind the piling, was a box. In order to get to it, I had to stretch my arms around the piling; the supports blocked my path.

  Tentatively I reached for it. The air around the box felt thick, like clear Jell-O. My fingertips pushed through it and reached icy cold metal. Gritting my teeth, I tried to pry it out of the dirt. But it wouldn't budge. And in my awkward position I couldn't get any leverage to give it a good wrench. Again yanked at it, scratching my fingers on its rusted, pitted surface. there was no use, though. It was stuck.

  I felt like screaming. Here I was, on my hands and knees in the mud, under a strage house, drawn here—and I was helpless. I leaned forward and squinted at the box, concentrating hard. There, carved into the lid and barely visible under years of dust, were the initials M. R. Maeve Riordan. To me they were as clear as if I were seeing them in sunlight.

  My breath came fast. This was it. This was why my mother had sent me here. I was meant to have it—this box that had remained hidden for almost seventeen years.

  A memory suddenly flashed through my mind: that day not so long ago, right when we had all first discovered Wicca, when a leaf had fallen on Raven's head and I'd willed it to hover there with my thoughts. It had been nothing more than a flight of whimsy and a gesture of defiance against her for being cruel to me. But now it took on a deeper significance. If I could move a leaf, could I move something heavier?

  I closed my eyes, focusing my concentration. Again I stretched forward and touched the dusty box with my fingertips. My mind emptied, all my thoughts vanishing like water down a drain. Only one thought remained: What had once belonged to my birth mother now belonged to me. The box was mine. I would have it.

  It jumped into my hands.

  My eyes flew open. A smile crossed my face. I'd done it! By the Goddess, I'd done it! Clutching the box under one arm, I scrambled out of there as fast as I could. Outside, the sunlight seemed overly bright, the air too cold. I blinked and stood, my muscles cramped, then stamped my feet and brushed off my coat as best I could. Then I hurried forward.

  A middle-aged man was walking up the sidewalk toward the house. He dragged a fat dachshund behind him by a leash. As he caught sight of me coming around from the back of the house, he slowed and then stopped. His eyes were sharp with suspicion.

  I froze for an instant, my heart thumping. I am invisible, I am invisible, I am invisible. I hurled the thought at him with as much force as I could.

  A moment later his gaze seemed to lose its focus. His eyes slid aside, and he began walking again.

  Wow. I felt a spurt of elation. My powers were growing so strong!

  From his vantage point beside Das Boot, Robbie had seen it all. He opened the back door without a word, and I gently placed the box in the backseat. Then he slid smoothly behind the wheel, I got in, and we drove off. Over my shoulder I watched the little house grow smaller until finally we went around a bend and it disappeared from sight.

  CHAPTER 17

  Treasure

  January 14, 1999

  I am sitting up. Today I ate some broth. Everyone is tip-toeing around me, and Uncle Beck looks at me with a coldness in his eyes the likes of which I've never seen. I keep asking about Linden, but no one will answer. They finally let Athar in today, and I caught her hand and asked her, too, but she just looked at me with those deep, dark eyes. Then they let Alwyn in to see me, but she just sobbed and clutched my hand till they took her away. I realized she's almost fourteen-three months away from her initiation.

  Where is Linden? Why has he not come to see me?

  Council members have been in and out of the house all week. A net of fear is closing about me. But I date not name what I fear. It is too horrible.

  — Giomanach

  "What's in the box?" Robbie asked after a few minutes. He glanced at me. I had cobwebs in my hair, and I was filthy and smelled musty and dirty.

  "I don't know," I said. "But it has Maeve's initials on it."

  Robbie nodded. "Let's go to my house," he said. "My folks aren't there."

  I nodded. "Thanks for driving," I said.

  The drive back to Widow's Vale seemed endless. The sun dropped out of the sky shortly after four-thirty, and we drove the last half hour through chilly darkness. I was aching to open the box, but I felt I needed complete security to do it. Robbie parked Das Boot outside his parents' tiny, run-down house. As long as I had known Robbie, they had never repainted their house, or repaired the walk, or done any of the usual homeowner-type stuff. The front lawn was ragged and in need of mowing. It was Robbie's job and he hated it, and his parents didn't seem to care.

  I'd never liked coming here, which is why the three of us had usually hung out at Bree's house, our favorite, or my house, our second favorite. Robbie's house was to be avoided, and we all knew it. But for now, it was fine.

  Robbie flicked on lights, illuminating the living room, its dingy floor, and the permanent odor of stale cooking and cigarette smoke.

  "Where are your folks?" I asked as we walked down the hall to Robbie's room.

  "Mom's at her sister's, and Dad's hunting."

  "Ugh," I said. "I still remember that time I came over and you had a deer hanging from the tree in your front yard."

  Robbie laughed, and we passed through his older sister Michelle's room. She was away at college, and her room was maintained as a kind of shrine in case she ever came home. Michelle was his parents' favorite, and they made no effort to conceal it. But Robbie didn't resent her. Michelle adored Robbie, and the two of them were very close. I caught a glimpse of a framed school picture of him up on her shelf, taken last year. His face was almost unrecognizable: his skin covered with acne, his eyes concealed by glasses.

  Robbie flicked on a lamp. His room was less than half the size of Mi
chelle's, more like a big closet. There was barely enough space for his twin-sized bed, which was covered with an old Mexican blanket. A large chest of drawers toped with bookshelves was wedged into a corner. The shelves were over flowing with books, most of them paperbacks, all of them read.

  "How's Michelle?" I asked, setting the box carefully on his bed. I was nervous and took my time unbuttoning my coat.

  "Fine. She thinks she'll be on the dean's list again."

  "Good for her. Is she coming home for Christmas?" My pulse was racing again, but I tried to calm myself. I sat down on the bed.

  "Yeah." Robbie grinned. "She's going to be surprised by my looks."

  I glanced at him. "Yeah," I said soberly.

  "Well, are you gonna open this thing?" he asked, sitting at the other end of his bed.

  I swallowed, unwilling to admit how anxious I was. What if there was something awful in there? Something awful or—

  "Do you want me to do it?" he asked.

  I shook my head quickly. "No—no. I'll do it."

  I picked up the box. It was about twenty inches long by sixteen inches wide and about four inches tall. Outside, the metal was flaking off. Two metal clasps held the box shut. They were rusted almost solid. Robbie jumped up and rummaged around in his desk for a screwdriver, then handed it to me. Holding my breath, I wedged it under the lid and pried the clasps free. The lid opened with a pop, and I dug my fingers underneath it and flung it open.

  "Wow!" Robbie and I exclaimed at the exact same time.

  Though the outside of the box was worn and rusted, the inside of the box was untouched by age or the elements. The interior was shiny and silver. The first thing I saw was an athame. I picked it up. It was heavy in my hand, ancient looking, with an age-worn silver blade and an intricately carved ivory handle. Celtic knots encircled the handle, finery carved but with the unmistakable look of handwork. This hadn't been made in a factory. Turning it over, I saw that the blade itself had been stamped with rows of initials, eighteen pairs of them. The very last ones were M. R. The ones above those were M. R.

  "Maeve Riordan," I said, touching the initials. "And Mackenna Riordan, her mother. My grandmother. And me." I felt a rush of happiness. "This came to me from my family." A deep sense of belonging and continuity made me beam with satisfaction. I set the athame carefully on Robbie's bed.

  Next I took out a package of deep green silk. When I held it up, it fell into the folds of a robe. "Cool," said Robbie, touching it gently.

  I nodded in agreement, awed. The robe was in the shape of a large rectangle, with an opening for the head and knots of silk that held the shoulders together.

  "It looks like a toga," I said, holding it up to my chest. I blinked, seeing Robbie's questioning face. I smiled at him, knowing that I would try on the robe—but at home, behind locked doors.

  The embroidery was astounding: full of Celtic knots, dragons, pentacles, runes, stars, and stylized plants worked in gold and silver thread. It was a work of art, and I could imagine how proud Maeve would have been to inherit it from her mother, to wear it the first time she presided over a circle. As far as I knew, Mackenna had still been high priestess of Belwicket when it was destroyed.

  "This is incredible," said Robbie.

  "I know," I echoed. "I know."

  Folding the robe gently, I laid it aside. Next I found four small silver bowls, embossed again with Celtic symbols. I recognized the runes for air, fire, water, and earth and knew that my birth mother had used these in her circles.

  I took out a wand, made of black wood. Thin gold and silver lines had been pounded into the shaft, and the tip was set with a large crystal sphere. Four small red stones circled the wand beneath the crystal, and I wondered if they were real rubies.

  Beneath everything, jumbled on the bottom, were several other large chunks of crystal as well as other stones, a feather, and a silver chain with a claddagh charm on it: two hands holding a heart topped with a crown. It was funny: Mom—my adoptive mom—had a claddagh ring that Dad had given her on their twenty-fifth anniversary, last year. The chain felt warm and heavy in my hand.

  My gaze swept over all the tools. So much treasure, so much bounty. It was mine: my true inheritance, filled with magick and mystery and power. I felt full of joy but in a way that I could never explain to Robbie… in a way I couldn't explain even to myself.

  "Two weeks ago I had nothing of my birth mother's," I found myself saying. "Now I have her Book of Shadows and all this besides. I mean, these are things she touched and used. They're full of her magick. And I have them! This is amazing."

  Robbie shook his head, his eyes wide. "What's really amazing is that you found out about them by scrying," he murmured.

  "I know, I know." Excitement coursed through my veins. "It was like Maeve actually chose to visit me, to give me a message."

  "Pretty weird," Robbie acknowledged. "Now, did you say that they didn't do magick while they were in America?"

  I nodded. "That's what I've gotten from her Book of Shadows. I mean, I haven't finished reading it yet."

  "But she brought all of this with her, anyway? And didn't use it? That must have been really hard."

  "Yeah," I said. An inexplicable sense of unease began to cloud my happiness. "I guess she couldn't bear to leave her tools behind, even if she couldn't use them again."

  "Maybe she knew she would have a baby," suggested Robbie, "and thought that in time she could pass the tools on. Which she did."

  I shrugged. "Could be," I said thoughtfully. "I don't know. Maybe I'll find some explanation in her book."

  "I wonder if she thought not using them would protect her somehow," Robbie mused. "Maybe using them would have given away her identity or her location sooner."

  I gazed at him, then back at all the stuff. "Maybe so," I said slowly. The unease began to grow. My brows came together as I went on. "Maybe it's still dangerous to have these things. Maybe I shouldn't touch them—or maybe I should put them back."

  "I don't know," said Robbie. "Maeve told you where to find them. She didn't seem to be warning you, did she?"

  I shook my head. "No. In my vision it felt positive. No warning signs at all." I carefully folded the robe and placed it back in the box, followed by the wand, the athame, and the four small cups. Then I closed the lid. I definitely needed to talk to Cal about this, and also Alyce or David, the next time I saw them.

  "So, are you getting together with Cal tonight?" Robbie asked. He grinned. "He's going to flip over all this."

  My excitement began to return. "I know. I can't wait to hear what he says about it. Speaking of which, I better go. I have to get cleaned up." I bit my lip, hesitating. "Are you going to Bree's circle tonight?"

  "I am," Robbie said easily. He stood and started walking back down the hall. "They're meeting at Raven's."

  "Hmmm." I put on my coat and opened the front door, the box tucked securely under my arm. "Well, be careful, okay? And thanks so much for coming with me today. I couldn't have done it without you." I leaned forward and hugged Robbie hard, and he patted my back awkwardly. Then I smiled and waved, and headed out to my car.

  My birth mother's tools, I thought as I cranked the engine. I actually had the same tools that had been used by my birth mother, and her mother, and her mother's mother, and so on, for possibly hundreds of years… if the initials on the athame represented all the high priestesses of Belwicket I felt a sense of belonging, of family history—one that I knew had somehow been lacking in my life until now. I wished that I could go to Ireland to research their coven and their town and find out what really happened. Maybe someday.

  CHAPTER 18

  Sigils

  January 22, 1999

  Now I know. Linden, my brother, barely fifteen years old, is dead. Goddess help me, I am alone, but for Alwyn. And they say I murdered him.

  I look at the words I just wrote, and I cannot make sense of them. Linden is dead. I am accused of Linden's murder.

  They say my trial is
starting soon. I can't think. My head aches all the time, what I eat my body rejects. I've lost more than two stone and can count my ribs.

  My brother is dead.

  When I looked at him I saw Mum's face. He is dead, and I am being blamed, though there is no way I would have done it.

  — Giomanach

  When I got home, no one else was around. I was glad to be by myself; I'd had an idea while I was driving back from Robbie's, and I wanted to test it in private.

  First, though, it was time to take some precautions. I got a Phillips-head screwdriver from Dad's toolbox in the mud-room. Then I carried the box with Maeve's tools up to the second-floor landing. Unscrewing the HVAC vent cover, I pulled it out from the wall and set the box inside the vent. When I screwed the cover back on, it would be totally invisible. I knew because I'd used this spot as a hiding place over the years—I'd kept my first diary here, and Mary K.'s favorite doll when I hid it from her after a huge fight.

  Before I closed the vent, though, I took out the athame, the beautiful, antique athame with my mother's initials on it. I loved the fact that my initials were the same as hers and my grandmother's. I ran my fingers gently over the carved handle as I carried the athame downstairs.

  About a week before, I'd been looking for information about Wicca on-line, and I'd come across an old article by a woman named Helen Firesdaughter. It described the traditional witch's tools and their uses. The athame, the article had said, was linked with the element of fire. It was used to direct energy and to symbolize and bring about change. It was also used to illuminate, to bring hidden things to light.

  I pulled on my coat, then stepped outside into the frigid dusk and closed the front door behind me. A quick glance up and down the street assured me that no one was watching. Holding the athame in front of me like a metal detector, I began to walk around my house. I swept the ancient blade over windowsills, doors, the clapboard siding, whatever I could reach.