Rise of the Moon: Arcana Book One

by JB Caine

  Holy Halloween. I just realized that I’d be at a party on Halloween. A party where Alex would also be. Thereby, I would be at a party with Alex on my favorite holiday. The stakes just got a whole lot higher.

  I ran through maybe two dozen ideas, but none of them seemed quite right. Either they would cost too much to purchase (period costume for Mary Shelley), they were overly commercial (Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas), or they were too generic (dark elf)...I just couldn’t find something that clicked. I didn’t want to take a chance that anyone else would have the same costume as I did. Now that I had a tiny bit of Alex’s attention, I couldn’t bear to lose it. I needed to really think about this one.

  I’d been sitting on the couch, agonizing over my costume (or lack thereof), when the doorbell rang.

  “Lia, could you get the door?” my mother called from upstairs.

  I groaned and hauled myself to my feet. I tried to shake off my lethargy, but still found myself practically dragging myself to the door. When I opened it, I found myself looking at a very distinguished-looking middle-aged man. I couldn’t quite place his age, but he looked vaguely familiar. He had grey eyes and the thick, black hair, and his gaze was almost uncomfortably intense.

  “Hi! Can I help you?” I asked.

  He smiled, and I found myself feeling suddenly much more awake. “Good afternoon, miss. I’m new in the area, and I’m sorry to bother you, but I found this on your sidewalk, and I thought I’d better bring it to you. It looked like it might be important.” I looked down and realized that he was holding my Anatomy and Physiology folder. I couldn’t imagine how the bright green folder had made it out of my backpack and onto the sidewalk.

  “Oh, wow, thank you. I don’t know how it got there! I really appreciate you returning it.” I took the folder from his hands and held out my own. “I’m Lia. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  He shook my hand gently, and I was surprised that his skin was so cool, considering that Florida October still easily hits 85 degrees. “Nice to meet you, Lia. That’s a beautiful pendant.” I looked down and realized I was still wearing the tri-moon pendant I’d used in the play. I hadn’t taken it off in days.

  “Oh, thank you.” I felt suddenly self-conscious.

  “You are most welcome. I have a million things to do. But I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.” He smiled enigmatically and waved as he made his way back down our driveway.

  I reluctantly closed the door, tempted to watch and see where he went. I didn’t remember seeing any houses for sale in our neighborhood. I figured that watching him would probably be creepy, though, so instead I bounded up the stairs.

  “Hey, Mom, there’s a new guy in our neighborhood.”

  “Really?” She looked up from her computer, surprised. “I don’t remember seeing any houses for sale.”

  “I thought the same thing. Maybe he’s renting,” I shrugged.

  “Maybe so. Was he nice?”

  “Yeah, I guess. He found my folder outside and brought it up to return it.”

  “Oh, that was considerate of him.” She turned back to the report she was working on.

  “I thought so, too. Oh, hey, by the way, I got invited to a Halloween party next Friday night. Is it okay if I go?”

  “A party?” She stopped working again, clearly pleased. “That’s terrific! Who invited you?”

  “Trina. She’s Gemma’s best friend. You might have seen her at the play.”

  “Well, I think that’s great. Is Treigh going?” Mom always liked it if Treigh was there to look out for me.

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Well, alright then. Home by 1, since it’s Halloween. I’m sure there will be some big hullabaloo at midnight. And I’ll need Trina’s address and phone number.”

  “You got it. I’ll get all the details from her and let you know.”

  “Sounds good. Hey, listen, I’ve got a big meeting tomorrow, and I’m having to rework all these slide decks. You okay with a cereal-for-dinner night?”

  “As long as there are Lucky Charms, I’m in.”

  “Ugh...I’m going to jail. I’m a horrible mom.”

  I laughed and hugged her. “I promise not to tell the cops that you’re a slave to your spoiled daughter’s whims.”

  “Thank heavens for that,” Mom chuckled. She stood, and we headed to the kitchen for some marshmallow-y goodness.

  After a thoroughly sugared-up dinner, I resigned myself to focusing on homework. As much as I’d rather have been combing the internet for costume ideas, that Trig wasn’t going to do itself.

  I flopped down at my desk and pulled out my book and calculator. I was not exactly sining, cosining, and tangenting like a pro tonight, and before I knew it, the long shadows from the oak outside began to stretch into my room. I knew I should turn the light on, but I just didn’t feel like getting up and walking the eight feet to the wall switch. After a few minutes of squinting, I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. I sighed dramatically and looked mournfully across the room at the switch.

  And it flipped on.

  The room was awash with light, and my jaw was hanging open.

  No. Couldn’t be. I closed my eyes tightly and looked back at the switch, and with a click, I was sitting in semi-darkness again. Was this real? On. Off. On. I squeaked and covered my mouth with my hands. What was happening?

  I looked around the room in disbelief. A part of me was attempting to remain rational...was I somehow being punked? Who would play a trick like this, and how? I focused my attention on the open bathroom door a few feet away. With a thought, I slammed it shut.

  “Everything okay up there?” Mom called from downstairs.

  “Uh, yeah, sorry! Didn’t mean to close it so hard!” I called back. What was I going to say, sorry, I slammed the door. I don’t know the strength of my own mind?

  I really didn’t, though. What was I capable of doing? I focused my attention on random items around the room: shoe, sweater, hairbrush, book, pen. Before I knew it, a dozen items were levitating, orbiting around me. I flipped a switch in my mind and everything clattered to the ground.

  “What is going on up there?”

  “Sorry, Mom!”

  I heard her feet coming up the stairs. Should I tell her? No, definitely not. Not till I was sure what was happening. I wasn’t even sure I could do it again. She pushed my door open and poked her head inside.

  “Holy moly, what happened in here?”

  “What? Nothing! Definitely nothing!” Cool under pressure. That’s me.

  She looked around at the mess of objects. “What in the world…” She pulled my favorite jacket off of my computer screen. “Just be sure you clean up before bed, okay?”

  “I will. Promise.” She gave me a long, appraising look, handed me the jacket and walked out.

  I let out a whoosh of breath. I needed to get ahold of myself and figure out what was going on. I grabbed my phone and hit speed dial. Treigh’s voicemail picked up immediately.

  “Treigh, call me asap. Strange things are afoot.” I tried not to sound panicky, but in reality, I was pretty close to a grade-A freak out.

  Okay, so no Treigh. But I had to talk to somebody… and then I remembered my Aunt’s strange warning on the phone the day before. I scrolled through my call log and punched the button next to her number. She answered on the second ring.

  Chapter 10

  “Hey, Aunt Kitty...so you know how you asked me if anything strange had happened?”

  She was suddenly deadly serious. “What happened?”

  “I...well, I sort of...became telekinetic.”

  “You WHAT?”

  “Telekinetic. I can move things with my mind.”

  “I know what telekinetic is, Lia.” She paused, processing. “When?’

  “It just started like 15 minutes ago. I accidentally switched the light on. And I can pick up small stuff. And close doors from across the room. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s cool, but it’s freaking me ou
t.”

  “I should think so. Have you told your mom?”

  “Not yet, I--”

  “Don’t.”

  I was startled by her abruptness. “Oh...okay. Is this bad?”

  “Not too bad, yet,” she hesitated, then went on. “But it could get out of control very quickly. What you can do is exceedingly rare, and probably shouldn’t be possible. It’s very odd for anything like this to manifest without training. You haven’t been training with a witch, have you? Playing with my Book of Shadows?”

  “Book of what?”

  “Shadows. A grimoire. Spellbook.”

  “No, nothing like that. I looked through yours and wrote down that one incantation for my play, but that was it.”

  “When you drew down the moon in your play.”

  “Well, yes, but I don’t know anything about being a witch, not really. Did I do something?” I asked, suddenly afraid.

  “I think you may have. It didn’t look anything like the ritual we used to do in the Circle, but that doesn’t really mean anything.”

  “Um, this might be a dumb question, but my foot was bleeding when I danced around the table. Could that have done anything?”

  “Okay, yikes.” She paused, thinking. “Blood is like life energy. So that may have intensified the ritual. Still, without a talisman, the most that should have done is make you open to insights and intuitions.”

  “A talisman?”

  “Yes, a blessed object. Something to draw the moon into that carries its own power. If you had something like that, it could amplify the effect.”

  I fell silent, a dark truth weighing on me.

  “Lia? What? What is it?”

  “Could this talisman be anything?”

  “Technically, sure… Lia, what did you do? What was on that table?”

  “Um...I may have accidentally borrowed something from your house.” The words came out in a rush. “I really didn’t mean to...I was just kind of holding onto it and forgot to ask you. When I realized I had it, I was going to give it back to you the next time I saw you…”

  “What. Did. You. Take?”

  “It was a card. A tarot card. I promise I didn’t damage it or anything.”

  Aunt Kitty was silent for a moment. “A tarot card? Was it The Moon?”

  “Yes. I’m really sorry. I just found it in your book along with the incantation.”

  “Oh, no.” I heard Aunt Kitty’s breathing quicken, and I could picture her pacing back and forth in her kitchen.

  “What? What is so bad about that card?” I was becoming genuinely scared.

  “Lia, that card is more than blessed. It’s enchanted by the goddess Selene herself. I just don’t understand how it ended up in your hands.”

  “I told you...I found it in your book.”

  “Lia, it wasn’t in my book. We buried that card with your grandmother.”

  The next evening, Aunt Kitty paid us a surprise visit, bearing a basket overflowing with baked goods. My mother’s eyes widened as she began pulling things out and laying them on the kitchen counter.

  “Kitty, it’s wonderful that you came out to see us, but I don’t know how the two of us could ever eat this much food.”

  “Nonsense. Part of it is dinner. Do you have olive oil, salt, and pepper?” My mother nodded. “Marvelous.” Aunt Kitty reached for a round loaf of rustic-looking bread that smelled like herbal heaven. She grabbed a shallow dish from the cabinet and poured and seasoned the oil. We sat around the kitchen table and she pulled a chunk of the still-warm bread off, dipped it in the oil, and began munching. Mom and I followed suit, reveling in the makeshift meal.

  I was twitchy as we ate, not sure how much trouble I was in. Aunt Kitty had reiterated the importance of not talking to people about my newfound skillset or the card, and I had obeyed. I knew that that was the real reason for her visit, not the baking marathon she was using as a cover story.

  When dinner was over, she turned her attention on me. “Lia, dear, how about if you take me for a walk so I can burn off some of these carbs?”

  “Sure, you bet. Mom, do you need help with the kitchen?”

  “Certainly not,” she smiled. “There’s hardly anything to do. You two have a nice walk.”

  We stepped out into the cooling night air. For half a block, we walked in silence.

  “I’ll be sure to give you the card back when you leave,” I offered. It was an awkward ice-breaker, but it was all I could think of to say.

  She shook her head. “It wouldn’t matter if you did. It would just show up somewhere in your room or your backpack. The card chose you, found its way to you. It chooses someone in our family each generation. I didn’t have any children, so it passes to you.”

  “So you knew this would happen?” I asked in disbelief.

  “No, honestly, I thought we’d broken the circle. It passed from your grandmother to me, and when she died, I passed the card back to her the day she was buried. I hadn’t seen it since, so I thought perhaps that was the end of it. A foolish hope, I suppose.”

  “Am I cursed?” There was the slightest tremor of panic in my voice.

  “No, dear, no. But there will be challenges, to be sure. The magic is hard to control because it comes from the moon goddess Selene herself. She’s not evil, but she’s also not human, and doesn’t feel bound by our society or its rules. It’s only a matter of time before she makes herself known to you directly. You’ll have to decide how you’re going to relate to her.”

  “I don’t understand what that means.” My head was beginning to hurt from the magnitude of what Aunt Kitty was discussing so casually.

  “It means that you will have to decide what you will be to her. You can worship her, you can serve her, you can deny her. It’s in some ways like any relationship. But as in any relationship, your choices have consequences. What I can tell you is this: you cannot control her; she is a goddess. You cannot trick her; she is the mistress of illusion. You also cannot avoid her. She is coming.”

  “You chose to deny her?”

  “Oh, no, not at all. I worshipped her. In some ways, I still do. I just didn’t want the temptation of her power anymore. That’s why I buried the card.” She looked wistful, and looked up at the cloudy sky. Somewhere behind those clouds, the moon was rising.

  “What about Grandmother?”

  “I don’t really know too much about their relationship. Your grandmother wouldn’t talk about it. But I know that, for a time at least, she had great power. And it put her in great danger.”

  This just kept getting worse. “Danger?”

  “Yes, not from Selene, if that’s what you were thinking. From...others. People who wished to increase their own power by taking Grandmother’s.”

  A realization was nagging at the corners of my mind. “Others? Who already had power?”

  My aunt nodded. “Their own was not enough to satisfy them.”

  I had a moment of clarity. “There are other cards.”

  “There are indeed. Twenty-one others, if the stories are to be believed. I have seen three others, but we kept them--and their owners--separate. We thought that was safer.”

  “We?”

  “Other practitioners of various forms of magic. Good people do good things with magic, just as they would with their other gifts. Bad people...well, it’s better if we don’t put too much power in one place as a temptation.”

  “What happens if the cards are together?” I prodded.

  “It’s not so much the cards, it’s the deities they represent. Each card has been blessed by a different deity. The truth is, I don’t know what would happen if more than a couple of cards were in the same place at the same time. We were never brave enough to try to bring deities together like that. It didn’t always go well in ancient times, you know.”

  I nodded. “If the myths I studied are any indication. What about Grandmother? You said she was powerful and in danger. Did she try bringing cards together?”

  “I believe that s
he did, yes, but I don’t have much to go on there. She wouldn’t discuss it, as I told you.”

  We walked quietly for awhile. This was all too overwhelming, and it seemed unreal, impossible. Yet somehow it seemed right and true, part of the natural order.

  “What do I do, Aunt Kitty? How am I supposed to know what’s the right way to handle this? There are no books on how to cope with this kind of thing.”

  She smiled, and linked her arm in mine. “You are a good person, Lia. Selene has much to offer, and it’s best that you think about who you want to be before she starts tempting you. If you follow the goodness in your heart, I believe you will make good decisions. And I will be here for you.”

  We came around the block and my house came back into sight.

  “I have one more thing for you, but I wanted to talk to you first.” She approached her car and popped the hatchback. She gingerly picked up a package wrapped in tissue paper. I didn’t need to open the wrapping to know what was inside. I could smell the now-familiar aroma.

  “The dress,” I breathed.

  She nodded, smiling at some distant memory and ran her hand across the top of the paper. “This is yours now. Your grandmother gave it to me when she passed the card into my keeping.”

  “Is it magical?” I breathed, taking the package from her as if it were made of glass.

  “Magical?” she laughed. “No, honey, it’s just a dress. But Selene likes it. So now it’s yours.”

  After Aunt Kitty left, I found myself sitting on the window seat by my open window, staring at the midnight-blue velvet frock laid out on my bed. Finally, I lifted it up and stood in front of my mirror, holding the dress in front of me, wondering how it had looked on my free-spirited aunt. Wondering how it would look on me. I decided to find out the answer to the latter question.

  I pulled off my school clothes and tossed them aside, and slid the fragrant velvet over my head. It was stretchy and slid on easily, and the dress fit surprisingly well, though it was maybe an inch too long and pooled around my feet. The sleeves were form-fitting and reached just below my elbow, and I was pleased to find that they didn’t hamper my movement at all. The neckline was a dramatically wide V, but plunged tastefully only as far as the line between my armpits.