Page 8 of A Winding Wave of Magic
The scent of brimstone.
Was that the scream of a witch being carted away to be hanged on some frigid day like this? Or someone who had lost a child to typhus?
I couldn’t tell. My reality was too blurred, incomprehensible as the overlapping experiences and sensations of so many others invaded.
I tried to relax, like my grandmother had taught me.Visions are like anyone else,Gran would say.They just want to say their piece. Ignore them, and they’ll stay that much longer. Give them a bit of empathy. Look at them, really Look, and Listen for what they have to tell you. They’ll get what they came for and be on their way.
So I tried to let the visions wash over me, ignoring the strange looks from passersby as I stood to one side of the walk and did my best to open my mind and heart to the snippets of thoughts, voices, and events that had happened in this spot.
Perhaps it would have been more bearable if any of it had been coherent. I had heard of seers who could channel the past with perfect clarity and summon events from a given day or even moment in recent times. As a student of history myself, the idea of seeing actual events would have been the greatest gift I could imagine.
But the Fates were so much crueler than that.
There in the middle of the quad, I was surrounded by a nameless mob, but even less organized. Jostling specters whom I couldn’t understand any more than I could See clearly trapped me here. They threatened to hold me down. Take over my last coherent sense of self. Sweep me up with them.
Panic set in. I was finding it hard to breathe.
Get. Out.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Is everything all right?”
Were those real people? Or one of these phantoms?
I flapped my arms in case it was the former, hoping to signal I would be fine. Their proximity would only make it worse. Away, I had to get away. If I ran, I would fall. My body would touch even more ground, and it would get even worse.
Home, with my bundles of fresh juniper, sage, and rowan and tub full of water, might as well have been thousands of miles away. I didn’t even have a lighter here (and I was fairly sure the Catholic priests who ran BC wouldn’t appreciate one of their students conducting a pagan ritual in the middle of campus). Fingers trembling, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, used my teeth to remove a glove, and viciously swiped through to a contact while the voices shouted in my ears. The only person who could help, even from thousands of miles away.
“Shh,” I hissed, though to anyone passing, I’d look completely crazy.
The phone rang out. I tried again. And again. She was probably out in the garden. Or on the beach.
“Gran!” I groaned when I finally gave up.
The voices were at a roar. I could barely see a damn thing.
Focus,CassandraI ordered myself, marveling for at least the thousandth time at the utter irony of my mother naming me after a crazy prophetess.
What would Gran do right now? WhatdidGran do?
Find the elements.Touch the water. Breathe the air. Feel the earth. Light the fire. Hear the silence.
It wasn’t a spell, but it might have been. Like I was thirteen again, quaking with the first barrage of memories, I kept my eyes closed until I could hear my own memories of my grandmother’s voice louder than the ones threatening to drown me. As a teenager, I’d make for the ocean, the roaring Pacific fifty feet from her house. I’d run into the waves, let the cold and the salt and the frigid wet sweep away the visions that plagued me.
But I had no ocean here. When I opened my eyes again, I focused on a rooftop peeking over the edge of the quad. Black and straight, the student athletic center loomed. But although the pool was a daily refuge, right now jumping into waters with anyone else seemed like the worst idea in the world.
The voices howled. I looked frantically over the campus rooftops for a glimpse of something blue. No, not blue. Silver. The top of the football stadium. And beyond that, the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, maybe half a mile away as the crow flew. I’d jogged this exact route so many times over the past six years, I could do it blindfolded. Couldn’t I?
It wouldn’t take long. A polar bear dip, right? I’d jump in, jump out, then trudge back through the snow and sit in front of the juniper and cedar fire I could make in our little hearth. Embrace the quiet. Find my center. Locate my strength before I could face the world again.
Touch the water. Breathe the air. Feel the earth. Light the fire. Hear the silence.
“Touch the water,” I murmured, my feet already starting to move.
So, I went, ignoring the curious looks of students and faculty as I sprinted down Campanella Way. I wasn’t the only runner, even in the cold, but I was the only one in boots and a skirt, a messenger bag under one arm instead of a water bottle. I didn’tcare, struggling as I was to make out the shapes of cars on the winding concrete. Because I knew this path. Taken it plenty of times, on too many missions just like this.
I jumped into traffic, barely comprehending the blare of horns as I crossed Chestnut Hill Driveway and found the trail that looped the reservoir.
