by Cate Tiernan
"Morgan—"
"Yeah?"
Silence.
"Nothing. I'll see you on Monday at school. We'll miss you tonight."
We'll miss you. Not I'll miss you.
"Thanks," I said. I hung up the phone, turned my face into my pillow, and cried.
CHAPTER 15 Killburn Abbey
"There is power in the plants of the earth and the animals, in every living thing, in weather, in time, in motion. If you are in time with the universe, you can tap into its power." —
— To Be a Witch, Sarah Morningstar, 1982
Samhain is coming. Last night the circle was thin and pale without her. I need her. I think she's the one.
"You know, some kids actually get pregnant when they're sixteen," I muttered to Mary K. on Sunday afternoon. I couldn't believe my life had come to this: sitting in the back of a school bus packed with a bunch of jolly, devout Catholics on our way to Killburn Abbey. "They have drug problems and total their parents' cars. They flunk out of school. All I did was bring home a couple of books!"
I sighed and leaned my head against the bus window, torturing myself by wondering what had happened at the circle the night before.
If you've never spent an hour on a school bus with a bunch of grown-ups from your church, you have no idea how long an hour can be. My parents were sitting a few rows up, and they looked happy as pigs in mud, talking and laughing with their friends. Melinda Johnson, age five, got carsick, and we had to keep stopping to let her hang out the door.
"Here we are!" trilled Miss Hotchkiss at last, standing up in front as the bus lurched to a wheezy halt in front of what looked like a prison. Miss Hotchkiss is Father Hotchkiss's sister and keeps house for him.
Mary K. looked suspiciously out the window. "Is this a jail?" she whispered. "Are we here to be scared straight or something?"
I groaned and followed the crowd as they tromped off the bus. Outside, the air was chill and damp, and thick gray clouds scudded across the sky. I smelled rain and realized no birds were chirping.
In front of us were tall cement walls, at least nine feet high. They were stained from years of weather and dirt and crisscrossed by clinging vines. Set into one wall was a pair of large black doors, with heavy riveted studs and massive hinges.
"Okay, everyone," called Father Hotchkiss cheerfully. He strode up to the gate and rang the bell. In moments the door was answered by a woman wearing a name tag that said Karen Breems.
"Hello! You must be the group from St. Michael's," she said enthusiastically. "Welcome to Killburn Abbey. This is one of New York State's oldest cloistered convents. No nuns live here anymore—Sister Clement died back in 1987. Now it's a museum and a retreat center."
We stepped through the gates into a plantless courtyard covered with fine gravel that crunched under our feet I found myself smiling as I looked around but didn't know why. Killburn Abbey was lifeless, gray, and lonely. But as I walked in, a deep, pervasive sense of calm came over me. My worries melted away in the face of its thick stone walls, bare courtyard, and caged windows.
"This feels like a prison," said Mary K., wrinkling her nose. "Those poor nuns."
"No, not a prison," I said, looking at the small windows set high up on the walls. "A sanctuary."
We saw the tiny stone cells where the nuns had slept on hard wooden cots covered with straw. There was a large, primitive kitchen with a huge oak worktable and enormous, patterned pots and pans. If I squinted, I could see a black-robed nun, stirring herbs into boiling water, making medicinal teas for sisters who were ailing. A witch, I thought.
"The abbey was almost completely self-sufficient," Ms. Breems said, waving us out of the kitchen through a narrow wooden door. We stepped outside into a walled garden, now overgrown, sad, and neglected.
"They grew all their own vegetables and fruit, canning what they would need to last through a New York winter," Ms. Breems went on. "When the abbey first opened, they even kept sheep and goats for milk, meat, and wool. This area is their kitchen garden, walled off to keep out rabbits and deer. As is typical in many European abbeys, the herb garden was laid out as a small, circular maze."
Like the wheel of a year, I thought, counting eight main spokes, now decrepit and sometimes indistinct. One for Samhain, one for Yule, one for Imbolc, then Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lammas, and Mabon.
Of course, I was sure the nuns had never intended to use the Wiccan wheel in their garden design. They would have been totally horrified by it. But that's how Wicca was: ancient and gently permeating many facets of people's lives without their being aware of it.
As we walked down the crumbling stone paths, worn smooth by hundreds of years of sandaled feet, Mrs. Petrie, the herb gardener, was practically in rapture. I walked behind her, listening as she murmured, "Dill, yes, and look at that robust chamomile. Oh, and that is tansy; goodness, I hate tansy; it takes over everything…."
As I followed her, I swear a wave of magick passed over me. It lifted my spirit and made the sun shine on my face. Each bed, though no longer tended, was a revelation.
I didn't know the names of most of the plants, but I got impressions of them. A few times I bent and touched their dried brown heads, their broken seed pods, their withered leaves. As I did, shadowy images formed in my mind: boneset, feverfew, eyebright, meadowsweet, rosemary, dandelion again and again.
Here in front of me were the sparse autumn remains of plants with the power to heal, to work magick, to flavor food, to make incense and soap and dye… My head swirled with their possibilities.
Kneeling, I brushed my fingers against a pale aloe, which everyone uses to help with burns and sunburn. My mom used it all the time and didn't worry about witchcraft. A shrubby bay laurel bush stood nearby, its trunk twisted with time and age. When I touched it, it felt clean, pure, strong. There were thyme bushes; a huge, dying catnip; caraway seeds, tiny and brown on brittle stems. It was a new world for me to explore, to lose myself in. Tenderly I touched a gnarled spearmint plant.
"Mint never dies," Mrs. Petrie said, seeing me. "It always comes back. It's actually very invasive- I grow mine in pots."
I smiled and nodded at her, no longer feeling the chill of the air. I explored every path, seeing empty spaces where plants had been or where their stems still stood, awaiting their rebirth in the spring. I carefully read the small metal plates, each with a plant's name handwritten in a feminine, even cursive.
My mom came and stood next to me. "This is so interesting, isn't it?" I felt she was trying to make amends.
"It's incredible," I said sincerely. "I love all these herbs. Do you think Dad would give me a little space in the yard so we could grow our own?"
My mom looked into my eyes, brown into brown. "You're that interested?" she said, glancing down at a tough, woody clump of rosemary.
"Yeah," I said. "It's so pretty here. Wouldn't it be cool if we could cook with our own parsley and rosemary?"
"Yes, it would," my mom said. "Maybe next spring. We'll talk to Dad about it." She turned away and went to stand next to Miss Hotchkiss, who was discussing the history of the abbey.
When it was time to get back on the bus, I had to tear myself away. I wanted to stay at the abbey and walk its halls and smell its scents and feel the drying leaves of plants crumble beneath my fingertips. The plants called me with the magick of their thin, reedy life forces, and there, outside the gates of the Killburn Abbey, it came to me.
In spite of my parents' objections, in spite of everything, it wasn't enough for me to learn about witches. I wanted to be one.
CHAPTER 16 Blood Witch
"There is no choice about being a witch. Either you are or you aren't. It's in the blood."
— Tim McClellan, aka Feargus the Bright
Frustration makes me want to howl. She isn't coming to me. I know I can't push her. Goddess please give me a sign.
On Monday after school Robbie and I ditched chess club and went to Practical Magick. It was getting to be a real habit with me. I bo
ught a book about using herbs and other plants in magick and also a beautiful blank book with a marbleized cover and heavy, cream-colored pages within. It would be my Book of Shadows. I planned to write down my feelings about Wicca, notes on our circle, everything I was thinking about.
Robbie bought a black penis candle that he thought was hysterical.
"Very amusing," I said. "That's going to make you popular with the chicks." Robbie cackled.
We headed to Bree's house and hung out in her room. I lay on her bed and read my herb book while Robbie fiddled with Bree's stereo, checking out her latest CDs. Bree sat on the floor, painting her toenails, reading my book about the Seven Great Clans.
"This is so cool. Listen to this," she said as the doorbell rang downstairs. Moments later we heard Jenna and Matt's voices as they came upstairs.
"Hi!" Jenna said brightly, her pale blond hair swinging over her shoulder. "Gosh, it's so chilly outside. Where's Indian summer?"
"Come on in," Bree said. She glanced around her bedroom. "Maybe we should go down to the family room."
"I'm for staying here," Robbie said.
"Yeah. It's more private," I agreed, sitting up.
"Listen, guys," Bree announced. "I was just reading this book about the Seven Great Clans of Wicca."
"Ooh," Jenna said, pretending to shiver.
"'After practicing their craft for centuries, each of the Seven Great Clans came to work within a single domain of magick. At one end of the spectrum is the Woodbane clan, who became known for their dark work and their capacity for evil. "
A real shiver went down my spine, but Matt wiggled his eyebrows and Robbie let out a diabolical laugh.
"That doesn't sound like Wicca," Jenna said, pulling off her jacket. "Remember? Everything you do comes back to you threefold. All that stuff Cal read last weekend. Bree, that color is fantastic. What's it called?"
Bree examined the polish bottle."Celestial Blue."
"Very cool," Jenna said.
"Thanks," Bree said. "Hold on—this is really interesting. 'At the opposite end of the magickal spectrum is the Rowanwand clan. Ever good, ever peaceful, the Rowanwands became known for being the repository of much magickal knowledge. They wrote the first Book of Shadows. They gathered spells. They explored the magickal properties of the world around them. "
"Cool," said Robbie. "What happened to them?"
Bree scanned down the page. "Um, let's see…."
"They died," came Cal's rich voice, from Bree's open door. We all jumped—none of us had heard the doorbell ring or his tread on the stairs.
After her moment of surprise, Bree gave him a brilliant smile. "Come on in," she said, clearing her nail polish stuff away.
"Hey, Cal," Jenna said with a smile.
"Hey," he said, hanging his jacket on the doorknob.
"What do you mean, they died?" Robbie asked.
Cal came and sat next to me on the bed. Bree turned around and saw us sitting there together, and her eyes flickered.
"Well, there were Seven Great Clans," Cal reiterated. "The Woodbanes, who were considered evil, and the Rowanwands, who were considered good, and five other clans in between, who were various shades of good and evil."
"Is this a true story?" Jenna asked, throwing her gum into the trash.
Cal nodded. "As far as we know. Anyway, the Woodbanes and the Rowanwands basically warred with each other for thousands of years, and the other five clans were sometimes allied with one, sometimes with another, during that time."
"Who were the other five clans?" Robbie asked.
"Wait, hold on. I just saw it," Bree said, trailing her finger down a page.
"The Woodbanes, the Rowanwands, the Vikroths, the Brightendales, the Burnhides, the Wyndenkells, and the Leapvaughns," I recited from memory. Everyone looked at me in surprise, except Cal, who smiled slightly.
"I just read that book," I said.
Bree nodded slowly. "Yeah, Morgan's right. It says here the Vikroths were warrior types. The Brightendales worked mostly with plants and were sort of doctors. The Burnhides specialized in gem, crystal, and metal magick, and the Wyndenkells were expert spell writers. The Leapvaughns were mischievous and humorous and sometimes pretty awful."
"The Vikroths were related to the Vikings," Cal said. "And the word leprechaun is related to Leapvaughn."
"Cool," Matt said. Jenna came and sat on the floor in front of him so she could lean back against his legs. His fingers absently played with her hair.
"So how did they die?" Robbie asked.
"They battled each other for thousands of years," Cal repeated. A strand of his hair shadowed one cheek. "Slowly their numbers dwindled. The Woodbanes and their allies simply killed their enemies, either by open warfare or through black spells. The Rowanwands also hurt their enemies, not so much with black magic but by hoarding knowledge, letting the other clans' lines of knowledge die out, refusing to share their wealth. Like, if members of the Vikroths became ill and the Rowanwands could cure them with a spell, they didn't. And so their enemies died."
"Those bastards," Robbie said, and Bree giggled. A tiny spark of irritation made me frown.
Cal shot Robbie a sardonic look.
"Go on, Cal," Bree said. "Don't mind him."
Outside, it had been dark for a while, and a cold, steady rain began to patter against the windowpanes. I hated the thought of having to go home to Mary K.'s hamburgers and french fries.
"Well, about three hundred years ago," Cal continued, "until the time of the Salem witch trials in this country, there was a huge cataclysm among the tribes. No one knows exactly why it happened just at that time, but all over the world, and the clans had spread a bit, witches were suddenly decimated. Over the course of a hundred years historians estimate that ninety to ninety-five percent of all witches were killed—either by each other or by human authorities that had gotten involved in the conflict."
"Are you saying that the Salem witch trials were organized by other witches to destroy their rivals?" Bree asked incredulously.
"I'm saying that it isn't clear," Cal said. "It's a possibility."
On the outside my flesh felt warm, my senses soothed by Cal's presence and his voice. On the inside I felt cold to the bone. I hated hearing about witches dying, being persecuted.
"After that," Cal went on, "for over two hundred years witches everywhere fell into a Dark Age. The clans lost their cohesiveness; witches from different clans either intermarried and had children who belonged nowhere, or they married humans and couldn't have children."
I remembered reading that people thought the Seven Clans had kept to themselves for so long that they were different from other humans and couldn't reproduce with ordinary people.
"You know so much about all this stuff," said Jenna.
"I've been learning it for a long time," Cal explained.
Bree reached over and touched Cal's knee. "What happened then? I haven't gotten to that part yet."
"The old ways and the old resentments were forgotten," Cal said. "And human knowledge of magick was almost lost forever. Then, about a hundred years ago, a small group of witches, representing all seven clans or what remained of them, managed to emerge from the Dark Age and start a Renaissance of Wiccan culture." He shifted in place, and Bree's hand dropped. Matt was making a small braid in Jenna's hair, and Robbie was stretched on the carpet, one hand propping up his head.
"The book said they realized that the major clannishness of the tribes had helped cause the cataclysm," I put in. "So they decided to make just one big clan and not have distinctions anymore."
"Unity in diversity," Cal acknowledged. "They suggested interclan marriages and better witch-human relations. That small group of enlightened witches called themselves the High Council, and it's still around today. Nearly all of the modern-day covens exist because of them and their teachings. Nowadays Wicca is growing fast, but the old clans are only memories. Most people don't take them seriously anymore."
I remembered the cle
rk at the Practical Magick asking I me what my clan was, and I remembered something else he had said. "What's a blood witch?" I asked. "As opposed to a witch witch?"
Cal looked into my eyes, and I felt a wave rise and swell within me. "People say someone's a blood witch if they can reliably trace their heritage back to one of the seven clans," he explained. "A regular witch is someone who practices Wicca and lives by its tenets. They take their magickal energy from the life forces found everywhere. A blood witch tends to be a much greater conduit for this energy and to have greater powers."
"I guess we're all going to be witch witches," Jenna said with a smile. She pulled up her knees and crossed her arms in front of them, looking catlike and feminine.
Robbie nodded at her. "And we have almost a whole year to go," he said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. His face looked raw and inflamed, as if it hurt.
"Except me," Cal said easily. "I'm a blood witch."
"You're a blood witch?" Bree asked, her eyes wide.
"Sure." Cal shrugged. "My mom is; my dad was; so I am. There are more of us around than you think. My mom knows a bunch."
"Whoa," Matt said, his hands still as he stared at Cal. "So what clan are you?"
Cal grinned. "Don't know. The family records got lost when my parents' families emigrated to America. My mom's family was from Ireland, and my dad's family was from Scotland, so they could have been from a bunch of different clans. Maybe Woodbane," he said, and laughed.
"That is so awesome," Jenna said. "It makes it seem so much more real."
"I'm not as powerful as a lot of witches are," Cal said matter-of-factly.
In my mind I traced the edge of his profile—smooth brow, straight nose, carved lips—and the rest of the room faded from view. I thought dimly, It's six o'clock, and then I heard the muffled notes of the clock downstairs striking the hour.
"I have to get home," I heard myself say, as if from a great distance. I tucked my herb book under my sweater. Then I pulled my gaze away from Cal's face and walked out of the room, feeling like I was sinking knee-deep into a sponge with every step.
