Black Magick

CHAPTER 7 Self

July 2000

The council called me to London upon my return from the North. I spent three days answering questions about everything from the causes of the Clan war to the medicinal properties of mugwort. I wrote essays analyzing past decisions of the elders. I performed spells and rituals.

And then they turned me down. Not because my power is weak or my knowledge scanty, nor yet because I an too young, but because they distrust my motives. They think I am after vengeance for Linden, for my parents.

But that's not it, not anymore. I spoke to Athar about it last night. She's the only one who truly understands, I think.

"You aren't after vengeance. You're after redemption," she told me, and her black eyes measured me. "But, Giomanach, I'm not sure which is the more dangerous quest."

She's a deep one, my cousin Athar. I don't know when she grew to be so wise.

I won't give up. I will write to the council again today. I'll make them understand.

— Giomanach

Our kitchen was about one-sixth the size of Cal's kitchen, and instead of granite counters and custom country French cabinets, we had worn Formica and cabinets from about 1983. But our kitchen felt homier.

I rested my legs over Cal's knees under the table and we leaned toward each other, talking. The idea that maybe someday we would have our very own house, just us two, made me shiver. I looked up at Cal's smooth tan skin, his perfect nose, his strong eyebrows, and sighed. We needed to talk about Hunter.

"I'm really shaken up," I said quietly.

"I know. I am, too. I never thought it would come to that." He gave a dry laugh. "Actually, I thought we would just beat each other up a bit, and the whole thing would blow over. But when Hunter pulled out the braigh—"

"The silver chain he was using?"

Cal shuddered. "Yes," he said, his voice rough. "It was spelled. Once it was on me, I was powerless."

"Cal, I just can't believe what happened," I said, my eyes filling with tears. I brushed them away with one hand. "I can't think about anything else. And why hasn't anyone found the body yet? What are we going to do when they do find it? I swear, every time the phone rings, I think it's going to be the police, asking me to come down to the station and answer some questions." A tear overflowed and ran down my cheek. "I just can't get over this."

"I'm so sorry." Cal pushed his chair closer to mine and put his arms around me. "I wish we were at my house," he said quietly. "I just want to hold you without worrying about your folks coming in."

I nodded, sniffling. "What are we going to do?"

"There's nothing we can do, Morgan," Cal said, kissing my temple. "It was horrible, and I've cursed myself a thousand times for involving you in it. But it happened, and we can't take it back. And never forget that we acted in self defense. Hunter was trying to kill me. You were trying to protect me. What else could we have done?"

I shook my head.

"I've never been through anything like this before," Cal said softly against my hair. "It's the worst thing in my life. But you know what? I'm glad I'm going through it with you. I mean, I'm sorry you were involved. I wish to the Goddess that you weren't. But since we were in it together, I'm so glad I have you." He shook his head. "This isn't making sense. I'm just trying to say that in an awful way, this has made me feel closer to you."

I looked up into his eyes. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

We stayed like that, sitting at the table, our arms around each other, until my shoulder blades began to ache from the angle and I reluctantly pulled away. I had to change the subject.

"Your mom seemed really excited about my tools," I said, taking a sip of my tea.

Cal pushed his hands through his raggedy dark hair. "Yeah. She's like a little kid—she wants to get her hands on every new thing. Especially something like Belwicket's tools."

"Is there something special about Belwicket in particular?"

Cal shrugged, looking thoughtful. He sipped his tea and said, "I guess just the mystery of it—how it was destroyed, and how old the coven was and how powerful. It's a blessing the tools weren't lost. Oh, and they were Woodbane," he added as an afterthought.

"Does it matter that they were Woodbane since Belwicket had renounced evil?"

"I don't know," said Cal. "Probably not. I think it probably matters more what you do with your magick."

I breathed in the steam from my tea. "Maybe I bound the tools to me without thinking it through too well," I said. "What would happen if another witch tried to use them now?"

Cal shrugged. "It's not predictable. Another witch might subvert the tools' power in an unexpected way. Actually, it's pretty unusual for someone to bind a coven's tools only to themselves." He looked up and met my glance.

"I just felt they were mine," I said lamely. "Mine, my birth mother's, her mother's. I wanted them to be all mine."

Nodding, Cal patted my leg, across his knee. "I'd probably do the same thing if they were mine," he said, and I adored him for his support.

"And then Mom would kill me," he added, laughing. I laughed, too.

"Your mom said I was an unusually powerful witch, this morning in the car," I said. "So witches have different strengths of power? In one of my Wiccan history books it talks about some witches being more powerful than others. Does that mean that they just know more, or does it mean something about their innate power?"

"Both," Cal said. He put his feet on either side of mine under the table. "It's like regular education. How accomplished you are depends on how intelligent you are as well as how much education you have. Of course, blood witches are always going to be more powerful than humans. But even among blood witches there's definitely a range. If you're naturally a weak witch, then you can study and practice all you want and your powers will be only so-so. If you're a naturally powerful witch, yet don't know anything about Wicca, you can't do much, either. It's the combination that matters."

"Well, how strong is your mother, for example?" I asked. "On a scale of one to ten?"

Laughing, Cal leaned across and kissed my cheek. "Careful. Your math genes are showing."

I grinned.

"Let's see," he mused. He rubbed his chin, and I saw a flash of bandage on his wrist. My heart ached for the pain he had gone through. "My mother, on a scale of one to ten. Let's make it a scale of one to a hundred. And a weak witch without much training would be about a twelve."

I nodded, putting this mythical person on the scale.

"And then someone like, oh, Mereden the Wise or Denys Haraldson would be up in the nineties."

I nodded, recognizing the names Mereden and Denys from my Wiccan history books. They had been powerful witches, role models, educators, enlighteners. Mereden had been burned at the stake back in 1517. Denys had died 1942 in a London bomb blitz.

"My mom is about an eighty or an eighty-five on that scale," Cal said.

My eyes widened. "Wow. That's way up there."

"Yep. She's no one to mess with," Cal said wryly.

"Where are you? Where am I?"

"It's harder to tell," Cal said. He glanced at his watch. "You know, it'll be dark soon, and I'd really like to put some spells on your house and car while Sky's still in town."

"Okay," I agreed, standing up. "But you really can't say where we are on the Cal scale of witch power? Which reminds me: is it Calvin or just Cal?"

He laughed and brought his mug over to the sink. From upstairs we heard Mary K. blasting her latest favorite CD. "It's Calhoun," he said as we walked into the living room.

"Calhoun," I said, trying it out. I liked it. "Answer my question, Calhoun."

"Let me think," said Cal, putting on his coat. "It's hard to be objective about myself—but I think I'm about a sixty-two. I mean, I'm young; my powers will likely increase as I get older. I'm from good lines, I'm a good student, but I'm not a shooting star. I'm not going to take the Wiccan world by storm. So I'd give myself about a sixty-two."

I laughed and hugged him through his coat He put his arms around me and stroked my hair down my back, "But you," he said quietly, "you are something different."

"What like a twenty?" I said.

"Goddess, no," he said.

"Thirty-five? Forty?" I made my eyes look big and hopeful. It made me happy to tease and joke with Cal. It was so easy to love him, to be myself, and to like who I was with him.

He smiled slowly, making me catch my breath at his beauty. "No, sweetie," he said gently. "I think you're more like a ninety. Ninety-five."

Startled, I stared at him, then realized he was joking. "Oh, very funny," I said, laughing. I pulled away and put on my own coat. "We can't all be magickal wonders. We can't all be—"

"You're a shooting star," he said. His face was serious, even grave. "You are a magickal wonder. A prodigy. You could take the Wiccan world by storm."

I gaped, trying to make sense of his words. "What are you talking about?"

"It's why I've been trying to get you to go slowly, not rush things," he said. "You have a tornado inside you, but you have to learn to control it. Like with Maeve's tools. I wish you'd let my mother guide you. I'm worried that you might be getting into something over your head because you're not seeing the big picture."

"I don't know what you mean," I said uncertainly.

He smiled again, his mood lightening, and dropped a kiss on my lips. "Oh, it's no big deal," he said with teasing sarcasm. "It's just, you know, you have a power that comes along every couple of generations. Don't worry about it."

Despite my confusion, Cal really wouldn't talk about it anymore. Outside, he concentrated on spelling Das Boot and my house with runes and spells of protection, and once that was done, he went home. And I was left with too many questions.

That night after dinner my parents took Mary K. to her friend Jaycee's violin recital. Once they were gone, I locked all the doors, feeling melodramatic. Then I went upstairs, took out Maeve's tools, and went into my room.

Sitting on my floor, I examined the tools again. They felt natural in my hands, comfortable, an extension of myself. I wondered what Cal had meant about not seeing the big picture. To me, the big picture was: these had been my grandmother's tools, then my mother's; now they were mine. Any other big picture was secondary to that.

Still, I was sure Selene could teach me a lot about them. It was a compelling idea. I wondered again why Alyce had urged me to bind them to myself so quickly.

I was halfway through making a circle before I realized what I was doing. With surprise, I looked up to find a piece of chalk in my hand and my circle half drawn. My mother's green silk robe, embroidered with magickal symbols, stars, and runes, was draped over my clothes. A candle burned in the fire cup, incense was in the air cup, and the other two cups held earth and water. Cal's silver pentacle was warm at my throat. I hadn't taken it off since he'd given it to me.

The tools wanted me to use them. They wanted to come alive again after languishing, unused and hidden, for so long. I felt their promise of power. Working quickly, I finished casting my circle. Then, holding the athame, I blessed the Goddess and the God and invoked them.

Now what?

Scrying.

I looked into the candle flame, concentrating and relaxing at the same time. I felt my muscles ease, my breathing slow, my thoughts drift free. Words came to my mind, and I spoke them aloud.

"I sense magick growing and swelling. I visit knowledge in its dwelling. For me alone these tools endure, To make magick strong and sure."

Then I thought, I am ready to see, and then… things started happening.

I saw rows of ancient books and knew these were texts I needed to study. I knew I had years of circles ahead of me, years of observing and celebrating the cycles. I saw myself, bent and sobbing, and understood that the mad would not be easy. Exhilarated, I said, "I'm ready to see more."

Abruptly my vision changed. I saw an older me leaning over a cauldron, and I looked like a children's cartoon of a witch, with long, stringy hair, bad skin, sunken cheeks, hands like claws. It was so horrible, I almost giggled nervously. That other me was conjuring, surrounded by sharp-edged, dripping wet stone, as if I stood in a cave by a sea. Outside, lightning flashed and cracked into the cave, shining on the walls, and my face was contorted with the effort of working magick. The cave was glowing with power, that other Morgan was giddy with power, and the whole scene felt awful, bizarre, frightening, yet somehow seductive.

I swallowed hard and blinked several times, trying to bring myself out of it. I couldn't get enough air and was dimly aware that I was gaping like a fish, trying to get more oxygen to my brain. When I blinked again, I saw sunlight and another, older Morgan walking through a field of wheat, like one of those corny shampoo commercials. I was pregnant. There was no dramatic power around me, no ecstatic conjuring, just peace and quiet and calm.

Now I was breathing quickly, and every time my eyes closed, I alternated between the two images, the two Morgans. I became aware of a deep-seated pain in my chest and throat, and I started to feel panicky and out of control.

I want to get out of this, I thought. I want to get out. Let me out!

Somehow I managed to wrench my gaze away from the candle flame, and then I was leaning over, gasping on my carpet, feeling dizzy and sick. I was flooded with sensation, with memories and visions I couldn't interpret or even see clearly, and suddenly I knew that I was about to vomit. I staggered to my feet, breaking my circle, and lurched drunkenly to the bathroom. I yanked off my robe, slid across the tiled wall until I hovered over the toilet and then I threw up, almost crying with misery.

I don't know how long I was in there, but it was a long while, and finally I started to cry, aching, deep sobs. I sat there till the sobs subsided, then shakily got to my feet flushed the toilet, and crept to the sink. Splashing my face with cold water helped, and I brushed my teeth and washed my face again and changed into my pajamas. I felt weak and hollow, as if I had the flu.

Back in my room, Dagda sat in the middle of the broken circle, gazing meditatively at the candle. "Hi, boy," I whispered, then cupped my hand and blew out the candle. My hands trembling, I dismantled everything, storing the tools in their metal box, folding my mother's robe, which seemed alive, crackling with energy. The very air in my room felt charged and unhealthy. I flung open a window, welcoming the twenty-five-degree chill.

I vacuumed up my circle and hid the toolbox again, spelling the HVAC vent with runes of secrecy. Soon after that, the front door opened and I heard my parents' voices. The phone rang at the same moment. I sprang over to the hall extension and said breathlessly, "Hi. I'm glad you called."

"Are you okay?" Cal said. "I suddenly got a weird feeling about you."

He would not be thrilled to hear about my using my mother's tools in a circle. Lack of experience, lack of knowledge, lack of supervision. And so on.

"I'm okay," I said, trying to slow my breathing. I did feel better, though still a bit shaky. "I just—missed you."

"I miss you, too," he said quietly. "I wish I could be there with you at night."

A cool breeze from my room gave me a quick shiver. "That would be wonderful," I said.

"Well, it's late," he said. "Sleep tight. Think of me when you're lying there."

I felt his voice in the pit of my stomach, and my hand tightened on the phone.

"I will," I whispered as Mary K. started coming upstairs loudly.

"Good night, my love."

"Good night."