Daughter of Light and Shadows

by Anna McKerrow

  As she stirred in the oils to the wax, making hearts and pentagram shapes with the spoon, nine times each, she concentrated as hard as she could on the feeling of love that was in the music. Is that what love is? Not for the first time, she wondered if she wanted something so destructive in her life. Wasn’t it better to be undisturbed by the storms that raged in the battle for love? And yet her heart yearned for it, and she poured her heart’s longing into the wax.

  As Faye watched the candles cool in the pretty pink glass holders she had sourced, and inhaled the scent of rose, she placed seven dried rosebuds into the half-melted wax of each candle. With each rosebud, she made a wish for the user of the candle – for romance, passion, mutual love, appreciation, kindness, longevity and healing. Last, she traced a heart in the top of the almost-set wax of each one. She would trim the wicks tomorrow and restock the shelves in time for Valentine’s Day.

  She sat down on the kitchen stool, closed her eyes and focused on the music, feeling the longing for all the things it spoke of and all the things she never let herself believe – love at first sight, that special knowing people talked about when they met the love of their lives. The magic of meeting your soulmate, the person who knew you without being told. It was a fairytale, wasn’t it? Those people were deluded; hypnotised with lust and illusion. People weren’t perfect. Lovers left. Moddie’s lover – her father, whoever he was – had left. She wanted to believe, but she didn’t.

  Someone would get the benefit of her creations, but she didn’t believe it would be her.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Annie, you can’t drink all the wine. It’s an offering for the sunrise.’ Faye hugged the foil blanket around herself and pulled her scarf back over her nose. It was December and they were camping out on Black Sands Beach, waiting for the cold sun to break over the black night horizon for the winter solstice.

  Annie drained the insulated travel mug of the home-made raspberry wine they’d brought. Faye made it from the raspberry bushes in the garden behind the shop; like any good witch, she had maintained the garden that had always been there as far as she knew. Scabious, comfrey, lavender, dandelion, mugwort and nettles grew along the stone-walled edges of the long garden behind the house. Two apple trees stood like guardians at the end, and the raspberry and bramble bushes dominated the east side of the garden, drinking the sun into their ripe fruit every summer. On the west side of the garden, wild white and yellow roses clutched their wall like possessive lovers, not allowing anything else to grow there.

  ‘Cannae let these good offerings go unappreciated.’ Annie burped. She did the same thing every year. In a way, it was part of their tradition now. She and Annie usually came to the beach late on the night of the 21st December, the shortest day, and camped on the beach, ready to watch the sunrise and welcome in the new solar year. Faye liked presents and turkey dinners as much as the next person, but she had always celebrated the old ways in private – when Moddie and Grandmother had been alive, they had too. Now Annie had become her solstice companion.

  Grandmother had died of a heart attack when Faye was twelve, and Moddie had passed, suddenly and without warning, from a stroke when Faye was eighteen. The local doctor was surprised as Moddie was young still, having had Faye when she was in her early twenties, and in generally good health. She had steered Faye away from where Moddie had been laid peacefully in the spare room and made her a cup of tea. Strokes can happen at any time, she’d said, handing Faye a mug with a generous amount of sugar stirred into it. I mean, it’s something that happens in your brain, as you know. But it’s like a lightning strike. Something as fast and savage as heartbreak. Or, falling in love in the first place.

  Faye, who suspected Moddie had been heartbroken over something in her past for some time, hadn’t answered. A stroke was medical; it was mercurial, exactly like lightning. It was just one of those things; she suspected the doctor of trying to make her feel better. But death was a door that seemed to swing open easily for some as soon as they walked near it, and was slowly, creakingly pushed open for others, after a long struggle. For some, it seemed that they danced with one hand forever on the door, daring it to open, until one day, it acquiesced. Moddie, for some reason, had prompted the door into the next life to swing open suddenly and gather her into its velvety blackness at the first hint of her passing by.

  Because Faye was eighteen already and an adult in the eyes of the law, no arrangements had to be made to look after her; she continued running the shop almost without a break. But she was still young, and Annie had taken to dropping in more to help and staying over at the house a few nights a week. Neither of them ever talked about it, but Faye knew that Annie was substituting herself for Moddie in all the little spaces she had used to inhabit in Faye’s life. And that included the solstices.

  Every year, Faye and Annie brought Grandmother’s grimoire with them and recorded their thoughts and impressions of the solstice in it. The grimoire was a book of old Scottish folk magic, added to by generations of Morgans. In the blank pages at the back, after the pages of remedies, rituals and strange sigils, there was a handwritten section which was a cross between a diary, recipe book and magical journal, where Grandmother and the Morgans before her had observed the moon, the seasons, recorded the magic they did and how well it worked. That aspect of the book was what people called a Book of Shadows, nowadays: a kind of reflective journal of magic which was always a work in progress. Faye had found it a few years ago when she needed more stock space for the shop and had finally set to clearing out Grandmother’s room which was downstairs at the back of the cottage. It had been convenient for the formidable woman to be on the ground floor when she’d started to find the stairs difficult. Not that she gave up her mobility easily, Faye had remembered with a smile as she’d packed boxes with the blankets, throws and nightdresses that had stayed in Grandmother’s wardrobe after she died, as if she’d just been away on holiday. And after walking became tough she’d taken up residence in the easy chair by the fire in the shop, which had been the sitting room when she was a bairn, telling stories, reading palms and dispensing advice. Sometimes Moddie had rolled her eyes, not wanting her mother in the shop all the time, but Grandmother wasn’t going anywhere.

  At the bottom of a drawer containing woollen socks, scarves and various hairbrushes – Grandmother had kept her white hair long, and still brushed it a hundred times every night, just like she had done with Faye and Moddie’s deep red auburn curls when they were children – Faye had found a large, brown leather-bound notebook. It was plain on the cover and wrapped with a leather thong. When she opened it, she found Grandmother’s neat, copperplate handwriting. The Magical Record of Alice Morgan, it read.

  It started with some passages that concerned local faerie lore.

  At Midwinter one of the faerie kingdoms of Murias, Falias, Gorias or Finias take a child and, at Midsummer, a willing woman. The child must be under a year old, so that it can be raised in the Glass Castle with no memory of its mortal parents, and the woman must be fair, and willing to join the Faerie Dance forever more. In thanks, the faerie king and faerie queen will bless the land and grant boons to the villagers of Abercolme for their generous offerings.

  There was a song that Faye remembered from childhood:

  Midsummer, Midsummer, Midsummer delight; go to the faeries on Midsummer night

  Take thee a maiden, take thee a wife –

  Take thee a bairn for the rest of its life –

  Midsummer, Midsummer, Midsummer delight; go to the faeries on Midsummer night.

  Grandmother had taught it to her, and they’d sing it together at Midsummer on the 21st June every year, when Grandmother insisted that they take a picnic to the beach. They’d sing and dance and have all of Faye’s favourite things to eat, and lemonade to drink, but Grandmother would always insist they were home by teatime.

  Faye looked out at the black sea and sky, smiling at the memory. Grandmother said that the faeries were the reason that Abercolme
seemed to have always been blighted – at least, for as long as anyone could remember. According to Grandmother, the frequent storms, flooding and subsequent loss of crops on the farmers’ lands were because the villagers no longer observed the old ways. Moddie had rolled her eyes when Grandmother started on that particular topic. It’s nothing to do with the faeries, Mother, she had said. It’s just bad luck. Sometimes bad things happen.

  However, a lot of bad things had happened in Abercolme: there was no denying that. In the 80s and 90s, the local fishing community had been hit hard by the effects of overfishing in the Scottish coastal waters, and many old local family businesses – bakeries, butchers, blacksmiths – had not survived the financial struggles of a national recession, leaving Abercolme a ghost of what it had once been. Before that, though, there were worse things. Strange tragedies: unexplained house fires that had killed whole families; a busload of children from the village school, killed in a crash on a road across the local moors. Broken families, drug-taking, alcoholism. There had been a number of murders, more than a small coastal community should have had. There was a dark side to Abercolme, and even though the locals might have got used to it, Faye still felt it, like an icy wave underneath a warm summer tide. She had stayed, though: where else could she go? All Faye had was the shop, and Annie. Leaving Abercolme, as dark as it could sometimes be, would be to leave her heritage. Her ancestors had trod this sand; Faye at least had the comfort that the rising Midwinter sun might cast her shadow on the same place it had theirs.

  She had showed the book to Annie, and together they’d leafed through the thick pages. Grandmother had written down her dreams in it as well as spells, healing she’d performed for various villagers, and accounts of her rituals at the new, full and dark moon.

  Annie had always been fascinated by Faye’s witch heritage: the fact that she could trace her family back to Grainne Morgan, hundreds of years ago, and further before that. But Faye didn’t like to think about it; every time she did, it was as if she could feel the fire licking up her own skin. The ancestral trauma from such a thing, she had read, lived on in the generations following. She could well believe it. She had had nightmares as a child: of being shut in a dark, smelly room with no light or air. She would wake up from those dreams crying and with a sensation around her wrists as if they had been chafed by rope.

  How to explain the crackling panic that engulfed her when she thought about those women? The great-grandmother Morgans, who had, perhaps, if this legend was to be believed, overseen the sacrifice of babies and women to the faeries? And what did that really mean, if it was true? Faye knew of the old beliefs that if a baby was sick, you could leave it out for the faeries who might take it and leave a changeling in its place – a faerie baby to be brought up as human in the place of the ailing human child which would be spirited away to be faerie for ever more. But that was an old belief, and the world had moved beyond leaving sickly children in the wild to die.

  ‘There’s all kind of things in here. Look – spells for health, luck…’ Annie said, interrupting Faye’s thoughts. She was flicking through the thick, handwritten pages, absorbed, until she exclaimed and jabbed her finger down on the paper. ‘Ha! Knew it. Spell for love. To summon passionate love, aye, that’s what we want! Good on ye, Grandmother Morgan.’ She pulled out her glasses and slid them onto her nose. ‘We’re gonna do this.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Faye replied.

  ‘Why not? Bet it’s good. Your grandmother was brilliant, aye. Every year I find something new in this book. I don’t know why you don’t have it out in the shop all the time. People would love to see it.’

  The thought filled Faye with a worried panic.

  ‘Oh no. I couldn’t do that. This is her grimoire. It’s so personal.’

  ‘But, Faye… she’s passed, sweetheart. Can’t hurt.’ Annie held her torch up to the book again. ‘Says here that the first step is to make dolls. The object of your desire is to be rendered as dutifully as possible, with the hair and fingernails if it is to represent one person in particular.’ Annie read it aloud in her actress-y voice, as if she were a television announcer from the 1950s. ‘Wow. D’ye think Grandmother Morgan was out and about, picking toenails out of people’s bins, aye? Not for me. But it says here ye can just make one up that represents your ideal partner. I’d be well up for that. Why not? We could ask Aisha to do it with us, she’s single.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I want that. It’s… I dunno. More trouble than it’s worth.’

  ‘Course ye do. You’re always moonin’ around like some kind a lost faerie, Faye. Look at ye. Made for romantic hair-whippin’ in the wind, moonlit seaside rendezvous.’ Annie shone her torch into Faye’s face. ‘Look at that face, aye. If no-one takes ye soon I’m going to try and convert ye to a lesbian.’

  Faye shrugged. ‘No offence, but I don’t think I’d be a very good one.’

  ‘Aye well, don’t rule it out. But the ceremony? Come on, Faye. What d’you have to lose? I know you’re shy. I know ye don’t want to get hurt. You’re afraid. But it doesn’t have to be earth-shattering, okay? Ye could just have a little fun. Ye need some fun, sweetheart.’ Annie put her gloved hand on Faye’s shoulder and looked into her eyes in the dim light of the torch. They had a campfire but it was burning low and the coals were only a dim glow in the dark.

  ‘I am having fun. I’m here with you on a sub-zero beach, waiting for the sunrise. Honestly. Who else is doing this?’ Faye argued, but she knew Annie was right. And that Annie normally got what she wanted, one way or another.

  ‘Promise me, sweetheart. You need this. I bloody need it too.’

  ‘You get a new girlfriend every other week.’ Faye rolled her eyes. Annie wasn’t usually this earnest, and it felt strange.

  ‘I know, I know. But I want someone I really like. That I can trust.’ Annie looked at Faye out of the corner of her eye. ‘Not just to sleep with. I want someone to love.’

  ‘Are you being serious?’

  ‘Aye. Why not?’ Annie looked away wistfully at the black sea. ‘I’ve only been in love once, and that was a long time ago.’

  Faye narrowed her eyes at her friend; she was an actress, after all, so she could roll out the drama if she wanted to. But Faye knew her well enough to know when she was being real or not, and she thought that in this case she was.

  ‘Fine, fine. We’ll do it. Anything to stop this emotional blackmail.’ Faye grinned and took the grimoire from her friend. Grandmother’s handwriting was so familiar; neat copperplate, spidery with time. She felt the tears spring to her eyes as the memory of the woman she had loved so much came back, breathing and vivid. ‘Let’s see what we’ll need.’

  She was still peering at the book with the torch in her hand an hour or so later when she noticed the light had changed, and she could see the page better. She looked up and saw the first faint rays of the sunrise reaching out over the horizon, and nudged Annie, who had dozed off inside the tent.

  They walked down the beach a little together, foil blankets tied around their shoulders like magicians’ capes, passing a flask of mulled wine between them.

  ‘Happy solstice.’ Annie hugged her and they stared up at the sun, blanketed by dawn-pink clouds, glinting on the grey-green sea. ‘May all our wishes come true this year. Make a wish on the new sun.’ She raised her thermal cup to the sun and closed her eyes. Perhaps Annie really was wishing for someone she could love.

  Faye held the Thermos up and made her own wish on the new sun, before taking a drink and pouring a small libation of the wine into the sand by her feet. She had, in previous years, wished for her health and for the shop to be successful. She was about to do the same again, but as she closed her eyes and felt the faraway warmth of the new sun caress her skin, a sense of bravery overtook her. I wish for love. True love to come to me, she said, and was surprised at how much she found that she truly meant it.

  Chapter Three

  ‘So. Are we all ready?’

  F
aye looked at the other women in turn. Annie, her many-ringed hands folded in her lap, sat cross-legged on the old black sheepskin rug in front of the hearth, the firelight flickering on a pair of oversized reading glasses. Next to her was Aisha, wearing a vest top that said Witch, Please in bright pink on stretchy black fabric, grinning excitedly.

  ‘I can’t wait!’ Annie looked around her at the candles that flickered around the shop: on the shelves, on the counter and in lamps around them as they sat in a circle on the rug. ‘This is awesome. We shoulda done this years ago.’

  It was past closing time and Faye, Annie and Aisha sat on the sheepskin rugs in front of the hearth fire in the shop; a sweet incense burnt in the air.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Aisha muttered. ‘I have needs, ladies.’ Aisha had been working part time in the shop alongside doing her PhD at Edinburgh Uni for the past year, job-sharing with Annie. It worked well, as neither Annie or Aisha could commit to full-time hours and, anyway, Faye couldn’t afford to pay them both to always be there. Aisha was a huge music fan and had slowly been trying to educate Faye, bringing in CDs for her to try every week. Usually she came to work in jeans and scruffy band T shirts, although she couldn’t ever quite disguise her small waist, delicious curves and glossy black hair, which she usually tied up in a knot. Tonight, though, it was loose; Annie gave her a long look as she came in and took off her coat, hat and gloves.

  ‘Scrubs up well, this one, aye.’ She raised her eyebrow at Faye. ‘Seems like my troubles might be over.’ She winked theatrically at Aisha.

  ‘I wouldn’t stop your search just yet.’ Aisha grinned. ‘Faye said to come in the mood for love, so I thought putting a bit of lippy on wouldn’t hurt.’