Merry Meet

by Isobel Bird

  “I’ll think about it,” she said, and her friends groaned. They knew that whenever Kate said she’d think about something it really meant she didn’t want to do it but was afraid to hurt their feelings.

  “Think fast,” Cooper said. “It’s tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow is tomorrow,” Kate said, thinking about what Scott had said earlier in the evening. “We have lots of time. Now, don’t you want to hear about this ring?”

  Chapter 2

  “Not that one,” Sherrie said the instant Jessica emerged from the dressing room smoothing the front of the blue flowered dress she’d gone in to try on. “You looked better in the green. Don’t you guys agree?”

  “Definitely,” Tara responded. “The straps on that one make you look way too Christina Aguilera.”

  Kate listened to her friends’ banter as they thoroughly critiqued the dress. Sherrie, ever the boss, was making Jessica turn around so that she could see how the dress looked from all angles. Jessica, who was never exactly thrilled about trying on clothes, looked like a reluctant farm animal being judged at a state fair. A farm animal with gorgeous long blond hair and sparkling green eyes.

  “Come on, you guys,” she said. “It’s just a cello recital. It’s not like I’m going to the Oscars or something. Why can’t I wear plain old black like everyone else does?”

  “That’s the point,” Sherrie said, handing Jessica another dress and motioning her back into the changing room. “If everyone else is wearing it, you want to look different. Like Kate did at the Valentine’s Day dance.”

  Leave it to Sherrie to bring that up, Kate thought. Sherrie, Jessica, and Tara were her oldest friends. Until recently, she would have said they were her best friends. But that was before Annie and Cooper had come into the picture. Now she wasn’t always sure. Things had definitely changed after the Valentine’s Day dance the month before, when Kate had shown up with Cooper and Annie, the three of them dressed like the fairy godmothers from the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty.

  Before the dance—and before stumbling upon the spell book—Kate had spent most of her time with Sherrie and the girls. They’d been best friends since second grade, doing practically everything together. Kate was on the basketball team with Jessica and Tara, and together with Sherrie the four of them were one of the more popular groups at Beecher Falls High School. But now things were changing. Kate was spending more time with Cooper and Annie. Her old friends, particularly Sherrie, couldn’t understand why she would want to hang around with girls they considered, for various reasons, two of the least suitable friends Kate could have.

  For their parts, Annie and Cooper viewed Sherrie, Tara, and Jessica with a mixture of envy (on Annie’s part) and disdain (on Cooper’s). They could understand why Kate might want to remain part of the popular crowd, but she knew they didn’t entirely get it. And she couldn’t explain it to them, the same way she couldn’t explain to Sherrie and the others why she liked Annie and Cooper. Both groups played important parts in her life, and she couldn’t give up one for the other. When she was with Cooper and Annie, talking about Wicca, she felt they shared a secret from everyone else. But when she was with Tara, Jessica, and Sherrie, she felt a part of things, like any high school girl with a great boyfriend and a fabulous social life. She didn’t have to worry about magic and what getting involved with witchcraft meant or any of that.

  Kate ignored Sherrie’s comment, knowing that responding to it would just cause an argument. As it was, she had managed to negotiate an uneasy truce between her two sets of friends, carefully dividing her time between them. Later today she was supposed to go back to Annie’s, although she still hadn’t decided whether or not she was going to the Spring Equinox ritual Cooper and Annie had tried to talk her into.

  She looked at her watch. It was two-thirty. She still had some time before she had to make a decision. She’d told Cooper and Annie that she’d return around four.

  “That ring Scott gave you is so pretty,” Tara cooed as they waited for Jessica to come out. “Let’s see it again.”

  Kate held up her hand. That was another thing she liked about hanging out with her old friends—she could talk about her relationship with Scott. They’d asked her to repeat the story about the ring several times, but Annie and Cooper had listened to it once, and then with only the barest hint of interest. Cooper, in fact, refused to even call Scott by name, referring to him as “the dumb jock” or “Lover Boy.” Annie was more polite, but Kate knew that she couldn’t really see the appeal of Scott either.

  Tara, however, couldn’t stop oohing and aahing over the ring. And although Sherrie pretended to not be that impressed, Kate knew that inside she was wishing that a guy would pay as much attention to her.

  “What do you guys think?” Jessica asked, stepping out from behind the curtain in the dark red dress Sherrie had insisted she try on.

  Kate, Sherrie, and Jessica looked at one another. “That’s the one,” they said in unison.

  Later, as Kate rode the bus back to her neighborhood, she thought about the Spring Equinox ritual. Did she want to go? Part of her did. But part of her was afraid. She had already taken some big steps away from the security of her old group of friends and the social world they moved in. It wasn’t like she was being ostracized or anything, but she definitely felt that she didn’t belong entirely to that world anymore. And, despite promising Annie and Cooper that she would give it serious thought, she really hadn’t decided how involved she wanted to be with Wicca. Reading about it was fine, and doing the occasional ritual with Cooper and Annie was fun too. But she certainly didn’t consider herself a witch or anything.

  The bus stopped at the corner of Annie’s street and Kate got off. She hurried up the sidewalk. After shopping, she and her friends had stopped for pizza, and she had lost track of time. It was already after four, and she knew that Annie and Cooper were going to be annoyed that she had kept them waiting.

  But when she got to Annie’s house she found a note taped to the front door.

  Kate:

  We’ve gone to the Equinox gathering. We hope you come too. We’ve got everything you need. Just bring yourself!

  Annie and Cooper

  They’d written the address on the bottom of the note. Kate considered it. The house where the gathering was taking place wasn’t far away. She could easily walk there and still be on time. But she could just as easily not go and blame her absence on her lateness. In fact, if she went home she might still be able to spend the evening with Scott.

  She decided to start for home, and had taken a few steps down the sidewalk when she stopped and looked at the note in her hand. She knew Cooper and Annie would be disappointed. And what was the big deal about a little ritual? It can’t be that bad, she told herself as she switched directions and headed the other way.

  The house where the Equinox ritual was being held was farther away than she’d thought, and Kate arrived at the door a few minutes before five. Part of her hoped that no one would answer the door when she knocked, giving her another excuse to go home, but a moment later the door swung open and a woman peered out at her.

  “Hi,” Kate said, feeling slightly foolish. “I’m here for the ritual. I’m supposed to meet my friends.”

  The woman smiled. “You must be Kate,” she said. “Come in. We’d almost given up on you.”

  Kate entered the house, wondering how the woman knew her name. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said.

  “Never mind,” the woman said. “We’re about to start. The others are in the garden. Follow me.”

  They walked through the house and into a large kitchen filled with delicious smells that came from the bowls and trays of food arranged on a big wooden table. That must be for the potluck, Kate thought. I wonder if Annie and Cooper brought anything.

  The woman opened the door at the back of the kitchen, and Kate saw that behind the house there was a large garden area ringed by tall trees whose branches were covered in small, new leaves. An
herb garden, its plants still dead from the cold of winter but with tiny, tentative, shoots poking out of the earth, took up one corner. The lawn was dotted with purple and white crocuses, and around the edges clumps of snowdrops nodded their heads on delicate stems.

  A group of about twenty people was gathered in the garden. Many of them wore long white robes. Others wore robes of different colors, and a few just had on their everyday clothes. Kate scanned the faces, looking for Annie and Cooper, and found them standing together talking to a small woman with short brown hair. Kate recognized her as Archer, one of the women who worked at Crones’ Circle. Annie and Cooper were wearing the robes that Kate had made for their very first ritual together. Annie’s was green, while Cooper’s was purple.

  “Did I miss anything?” Kate asked, walking up to the three of them.

  “You made it!” said Annie, sounding pleased.

  “Barely,” said Kate. “And I didn’t bring a robe or anything.”

  “We brought yours,” Annie said. “I left it in the house.”

  Kate turned to go back inside to put on her robe, but Archer stopped her. “We’re about to start,” she said. “But don’t worry. You don’t really need a robe. They’re just for fun anyway.”

  The various conversations that had been going on stopped as a woman dressed in a simple, flowing white dress and wearing a garland of violets and daffodils on her head stepped into the center of the garden.

  “We’re ready to begin,” she said. “If everyone will form a circle, we can get started.”

  The group arranged itself into a circle. As people took their positions, Kate found that she was separated from Annie and Cooper by several people she didn’t know. To her right was a man with a salt-and-pepper beard, and to her left was the woman who had opened the door for her. Kate looked to see where Cooper and Annie were and saw them about a quarter of the way around the circle. Annie was sandwiched between Archer and a woman with red hair, and Cooper was several people away. A woman who could have been Kate’s grandmother was on one side of her, and on the other was a boy who looked about seventeen.

  Kate was surprised to see the boy there. She had expected that she and Cooper and Annie would be the only teenagers at the ritual and, apart from him, it looked as though they were. He was dressed in jeans and a blue sweater. His black hair looked deliberately messy, with one lock of it dipping over his forehead. He was thin, with pale skin and an intelligent face. Cooper, Kate observed, didn’t even seem to notice him standing beside her.

  The woman in the center of the circle was looking around at all of them. “Welcome to the Spring Equinox ritual,” she said. “My name is Rowan, and I’m part of the Coven of the Green Wood. Some of you I’ve seen before, and some of you are new faces. For those of you who haven’t been to one of our open rituals before, let me explain a few things. We hold open rituals four times a year—on the Winter and Summer Solstices, and on the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes. We are a coven of witches working in an eclectic style, which means we don’t follow any one way of performing rituals. These are times for us to experiment with new ways of celebrating. Our rituals involve singing, chanting, dancing, and especially eating.”

  Everyone laughed when Rowan mentioned eating, and suddenly Kate felt a lot of the tension flow out of her. She’d been expecting the ritual to be a solemn, maybe even overwhelming, affair, and she’d been afraid that she wouldn’t know what to do or say. But Rowan seemed very easygoing. Maybe it would be fun after all.

  “In case you don’t know what the Spring Equinox is,” Rowan continued, “it’s the day of the year when light and dark are in perfect balance. It also goes by the name Eostre, which most of you will probably recognize as sounding an awful lot like Easter. That’s because the holiday was a celebration of the pagan fertility goddess Eostre. In those ancient days that so many pagans and witches are fond of talking about, Eostre was a time for celebrating the beginning of the planting season and a time for asking the earth goddess to bless the fields and make them abundant. Now that we buy most of our food down at Stop and Shop, we don’t really need to do that. But those of us who follow the old religion still like to celebrate this day as a time of new beginnings. After the cold of winter, we all look forward to the warmth of summer, and we figure the earth can always use a little waking up after her long nap. So that’s what today is about—new beginnings. Now, let’s get started. Don’t worry—if you don’t know what to do, just watch. You’ll figure it out soon enough.”

  Rowan took her place in the circle. She nodded to a man who had a small drum slung over his shoulder, and he began to play a steady beat on it. As he did, the people on either side of Kate took hold of her hands, and she felt them start moving to the left. She moved with them, her feet crossing over each other as the circle turned, everyone walking in time with the drumming. When the circle reached a certain point, it stopped and a woman stepped forward, holding up her hands to the sky.

  “East,” she said in a clear, strong voice. “Place of air. The spring breeze that whispers to the flowers and shakes them with its laughter. Welcome to our circle.”

  “Welcome!” came the answering cry of the others in the circle.

  Kate knew that the woman was calling the directions. It was how most Wiccan rituals began, with the casting of the magic circle. The woman used words different from those Kate used when she, Annie, and Cooper did their rituals, but Kate knew that there were many different ways of casting the circle. She listened with interest as the ritual continued. They joined hands and moved a little farther around the circle. Each time they stopped, someone else stepped forward and called to a direction, just as the first woman had.

  “South, place of fire,” said the woman who had let Kate into the house. “Bright rays of sun that warm the earth and wake her from her sleep. Welcome to our circle.”

  As she always did during the calling of the directions, Kate tried to feel each one as it was invoked. She concentrated on the way the air moved around her and how the sun felt where it warmed her skin. When she did rituals inside, she often visualized herself in nature. But outside, she really felt connected to the elements. They were all around her, and as they were called, she imagined them answering, coming closer and joining the people in the circle.

  “West, place of water,” said the bearded man beside Kate when they stopped for the third time. “Ancient ocean and spring rain. Ever-frozen iceberg and gently rushing stream. Welcome to our circle.”

  At the final stop, Kate was surprised to see the young man across from her step forward. “North,” he said, his voice soft and pleasant. “Place of earth. Dry desert and fertile seed bed. Tall mountain and tiny pebble. Welcome to our circle.”

  “Welcome,” said Kate along with the others as the boy stepped back into the circle. Kate looked at him, and saw that he was looking back. Even from across the garden she could see that his eyes were a warm golden color, like the sun on autumn leaves. The boy smiled, then looked away.

  Rowan stepped once more into the center of the circle. Holding up her hands, she chanted, “By the earth and by the fire, by the water and the air. Cast we now this magic circle. Joy to all who enter here. The circle is cast. We are now in sacred space. Let us—”

  “Wait!” a voice cried, interrupting Rowan’s next statement. Everyone turned to look, and Kate saw a girl standing in the doorway of the kitchen. About Kate’s age, she was very thin, with long black hair that she tucked behind her ears as they stared at her.

  “Hi,” she said timidly. “Am I late?”

  The girl was wearing a dark blue robe that was too big for her. It pooled at her feet, and she kept pushing the sleeves up so that they didn’t cover her hands.

  I wonder why she got one so big? Kate thought to herself. Then she looked harder at the robe. And why does it look just like mine?

  Chapter 3

  The girl stepped into the yard and wedged herself between two of the people closest to the kitchen door, who moved over to let he
r in. When the circle was re-formed, Rowan continued.

  “We are now in sacred space,” she repeated. “Let us begin. Would you all be seated.”

  Everybody sat on the ground, which, thanks to the afternoon sun, was dry. Kate had no idea what was going to happen next. She was still a little distracted, both by the fact that the boy with the golden eyes had smiled at her and by wondering why the girl who had come so late was wearing what seemed to be her robe. She tried to push both thoughts to the back of her mind and concentrate on what was happening.

  Rowan seated herself in the center of the circle. The man with the drum sat beside her.

  “I’m going to ask all of you to close your eyes,” Rowan said. “We’re going to do a guided meditation. Keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them.”

  Kate closed her eyes and listened as Rowan began the meditation.

  “Picture yourself in a small boat,” Rowan began. “You’re riding down a swift-moving river. You don’t know where you’re going, but the boat weaves its way easily among the rocks and rapids.”

  Rowan’s voice was soothing, and Kate felt herself relaxing as she imagined herself in a little boat with a small white sail, speeding along a river in the spring sunshine. She wondered where the boat might take her, and listened for Rowan’s next suggestion.

  “You come to a turn in the river,” Rowan continued. “All of a sudden the river opens up into a wide lake. And in the center of the lake is a small island rising up from the water, which is still and clear. The boat is still moving, and it takes you to the shore of the island. When you reach it, you climb out and walk onto the grassy bank.”

  Kate could feel the rocking of the boat as she stepped out of it and put her bare foot on the warm grass of the island. She was filled with a sense of adventure, not knowing where she was or what she would find there. A small breeze blew through the garden, caressing her skin, and she smelled the scent of grass and earth around her.