Page 22 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

EIGHT

Liz asked Tara, as the youngest member, to draw the circle.

The young mother got up and removed a blue Morton’s salt box from a canvas bag. She flipped open the metal spout and poured it on the living room floor as she walked in a counterclockwise circle around the group, including Brock. The group began to softly chant, some in Latin, others in languages that might have been Old Norse, Gaelic, or Anglo-Saxon. Dory Browne had explained to me last winter that spells were in the old languages that were spoken when the fey had first started teaching humans magic.

While Tara poured the salt, Moondance removed a candle from her large, misshapen cloth bag, placed it on the coffee table, and lit it. Leon Botwin took a dagger from his pocket and laid it next to the candle. Joan Ryan opened her briefcase and produced a metal bowl, a plastic water bottle, and a small glass vial. She poured the liquid into the bowl and added a pinch of gold dust from the vial. The scent of honeysuckle wafted through the room.

“Is that Aelvesgold?” I whispered to Liz.

She glanced at me, surprised. “How do you know about Aelvesgold?” she asked.

“Liam explained it to me when we were in Faerie.”

“Ah, that makes sense. Yes, we have only a little of it. We use it to enhance the power of our circle. It’s dangerous to handle, though. You didn’t bring any back from Faerie, did you?”

I assured her I hadn’t, thinking she’d be relieved, but instead she looked disappointed. “Pity, we’re almost out.” Then she turned her attention to Joan, who was whispering over the bowl.

Joan struck a match and held it to the liquid in the bowl. Blue flames danced over the surface and then suddenly flared gold. The light from the flames was reflected in the faces around the circle, making each face glow golden. Tara stepped inside the circle and finished pouring the salt. I felt a littlesnickof energy when the circle was completed and a change in the air pressure, as if we were in a sealed plane cabin and had just changed altitude. The flames from the bowl leapt higher into the air. My fingertips tingled and I was suddenly aware of the beating of my heart and the effort it took to swallow. I looked around the circle of faces, telling myself that I had nothing to fear, that I knew half the people here, but in the gold light of the flames not even the faces of my friends looked familiar.

“Join hands,” Liz said, reaching for mine. I put my left hand in hers and my right in Ann Chase’s, being careful to cradle her arthritic fingers gently. They felt like a bundle of broken sticks. She reached for Tara Cohen-Miller’s hand and then Tara took Leon’s hand…and so on, even the Norns putting down their respective occupations to join the circle. Inoticed that Moondance made a little moue of distaste when Skald took her hand. When Urd took Liz’s hand, the circle was complete.

Heat pulsed through our hands. I felt Ann’s crumpled fingers relax and become supple. She sighed with relief. I briefly wondered what she was saving her energy for that would keep her from using it to relieve her own pain. Then my body was flooded with a wave of blinding gold light that wiped every thought from my head. I opened my eyes and saw that the mist that the Norns had woven hung like a shroud around the circle. The gold light from the burning bowl filled the circle like shimmering, sun-struck water. I felt as if I were inside a cave…

An image of a grotto flashed across my eyes, a sea cave filled with glowing blue water reflecting ripples on the limestone walls, flickering over painted images of horned animals. A figure stood waist-deep in the water, arms raised, a long-bladed dagger in her hands…

The image changed and I stood in a clearing in the woods, a fire leaping up to the sky, sparks flying into the branches of the surrounding pine trees. Against the light of the flames that same figure lifted her hands to the sky, her dagger reflecting the rays of the moon…

I was on a windswept heath standing in a circle of huge monoliths. Above was the moon. I lifted my arms, cold steel grasped in one hand, the even colder steel of the moonlight flowing through the other…

I was standing barefoot in the grass, a figure looming over me. The figure was stretching her hands up to the moon, a blade in one hand. Light flashed on silver metal as the blade came arcing down toward me…

I gasped and tried to free my hands. Something snapped. I opened my eyes and found myself back at the Olsens’ farm,sitting on the hard chair, my arms wrapped protectively over my chest. Liz was hovering over me, her brow furrowed with concern. “Oh, thank the Goddess! I thought we’d lost you, Callie.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“You broke the circle,” another voice answered. I looked around Liz and saw Moondance crouched over the chair next to me. “And broke poor Ann’s hand.”

Moondance shifted so I could see Ann Chase cradling her limp hand to her chest. Diana, kneeling next to her, was gently inspecting the hand while whispering something under her breath.

“Oh my God, Ann!” I cried, leaping to my feet. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. I saw…things.”

“The circle’s energy sometimes grants visions,” Liz said. “Especially when it’s enhanced by Aelvesgold.”

“An experienced witch knows how to tell reality from illusion,” Moondance chided. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea to introduce a neophyte to the circle. I could feel the energy was off…”

“The energy wasn’t just off,” a quiet voice said. “It was short-circuited.”

We all looked toward Skald who held up her phone. The screen was full of intricate intersecting lines that resembled runes. In the center of the pattern was a tangled knot. “I was recording the energy waves during the circle and they went haywire…” She looked up, directly at me. “Shehas a very unusual energy signature.”

“Because she’s half fey,” Moondance said. “Everyone knows that cancels out a witch’s power.”

“That’s an old wives’ tale,” Ann said, wincing as Diana wrapped both her hands around Ann’s damaged one.

“What are we but old wives?” Urd remarked, looking upfrom her knitting. She must have resumed it as soon as the circle broke. When Ann looked in Urd’s direction Diana suddenly wrenched her hand between hers. There was a sharp crack and Ann’s face turned chalk white, but then she looked down at her hand and smiled. Her fingers were unbent.

“But I don’t believe this one’s power has been canceled out,” Urd continued. “I felt a strong power in the room and then it was extinguished. As if it were being held back by something.” The ancient Norn got up and hobbled over to me. Now that she was standing I saw that she had a pronounced widow’s hump, and she was so bent over that she had to twist her neck to look up at me. As the old woman’s eyes locked on to mine, I felt a tug at the back of my neck as if she had pulled tight a cord strung through my vertebrae.

“Can you be more specific?” Moondance asked impatiently.

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