Reckoning

16. Bloodline

October 3, 1971

There was an incident today in the kitchen.

Sorcha came to me, extremely upset. She was speaking wildly about the craft, saying that it was dangerous and that we shouldn't be allowed to wield as much power as we do. I attributed the remarks to an emotional reaction to the storm. Both Somhairle and Sorcha seem to have been very affected by it.

As we were speaking, one of the drawers pulled itself out and flew across the room, right at Sorcha. She stepped aside, and it fell to the ground. In the same moment, the cabinets started to open up and the dishes came at us. We had to throw ourselves to the ground.

This can only mean one thing—Oona has returned.

I have already called Claire Findgoll and Patience Stamp. They are coming to help me cast spells of protection this afternoon. Patience has no one to watch her little daughter Kate, so I will be able to distract Somhairle and Sorcha with babysitting. My mind is racing, though. Will I be forced to reopen the dearc? And how is it possible that Oona would come back after so long, and why after this horrible storm?

I have a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

— Aoibheann

Sam was quiet as he drove me to Evelyn's. I could see that he was baffled by this sudden morning visit, and my brain was too addled for me to be able to explain. Evelyn met me at the door and took me directly to her study without saying a word. She indicated that I should sit.

"You left something very interesting for me to read," she said. "We need to discuss it."

I nodded stiffly. I wasn't even going to ask how she knew it was me. She crossed around to her desk and picked up Máirin's Book of Shadow's and her athame. She ran the athame over the cover and spine of the book, and it took on a faint fluorescent quality.

"I've examined this closely through the morning," she said, turning it over in her hands, covered every inch with the athama. "I see that there are quite a number of spells on this book. One of then is an attraction spell, designed to help those of us looking for an answer to our family difficulty find it. I'm sure it helped you. Where was it?"

"In your library," I said sheepishly. She didn't seem surprised that I'd been there, even though it mean that I'd broken into her house and snooped around. She nodded thoughtfully.

"Was it hidden?" she asked.

"Well" — I shook my head—"sort of. It was misfiled and mislabeled. That's all." I looked at the spine. The German writing was gone. "It had German on the spine," I said, confused. "It would appear and disappear."

That didn't seem to surprise her, either. "There are quite a few glamour's on this book," she said. I was waiting for her to start explaining the green writing, but she kept examining the cover, as if it was the most interesting thing imaginable.

"I found this book when I was a girl," she said, a trace of a strange smile appearing on her thin lips. "It vanished from my room before I had a chance to look over it thoroughly."

"What happened?" I asked.

"In all likelihood," she said, "my mother took it. She could see how agitated it had made me, so she decided it was best for me not to read it. But aside from Oona's story, which is very tragic there's nothing worth hiding. The fact that someone has torn out some pages, however, suggests a very serious problem. No Rowanwand destroys a book—especially not the Book of Shadows of an ancestor."

"Who do you think tore out the pages?" I said.

"I don't know," Evelyn replied. "The pages were torn when I located the book. It seems to be the same witch who wrote the spell in secret writing, but I don't know her identity. I see that the ink is smudged now. It wasn't when I first found it. Someone else was trying to make the book unreadable."

"No." I shook my head. "That was me, and it was an accident. Couldn't you see it?"

Her eyes narrowed in on me.

"See what?" she asked.

"The writing," I said. "The green writing."

She looked like I'd just giver her a shock of static electricity.

"What green writing?"

I got up and took the book from her, quickly flipping through the pages.

"It's gone," I said, speeding through. "It was here, and now it's gone."

She looked at me, demanding further explanation, and I told her about the water spilling onto the book and the mysterious writing that blossomed like creeping vines all over the page.

"I saw it," I promised her. "It's gone now."

"The spell could be old," she said, her eyes flashing. "It could be fragile. Or the spells may be counteracting one another. That could account for the fading. I'd say we should try dampening it again, but we might destroy it."

"That's what I was afraid of," I nodded.

"Did you get a good look at the pages?" she asked.

"Pretty good. But I didn't understand all of the words. Some of them were written in a different language."

"Then I have an idea. Have you ever heard of a ritual called a tàth meànma?"

"I've done one of those," I said. "I did a tàth meànma brach."

Evelyn looked up with knitted brows.

"Somehow I doubt that," she said. From Charlie's reaction, I knew that this probably did seem unlikely. But I guessed she would find out that I was telling the truth soon enough. "It's a very intense connection spell that can only be performed by…"

"I know what it is," I said, starting to feel a little annoyed. "I did one."

She looked a bit surprised, but she seemed to like the fact that I showed I actually had bits and pieces of spine every once in a while.

"All right," she replied, still skeptical, "how do you feel about doing a regular tàth meànma so that I can have a look at the pages?"

The idea of having Evelyn in my mind was more than a little scary, but I knew this was the only way we were going to get to the bottom of the story.

"Okay," I said.

Evelyn instructed me to sit down and meditate for a few minutes while she prepared some ritual tea. I sat cross-legged on the floor and did some breathing exercises that we'd been taught in circle. I would show her. Tàth meànma… bring it on!

She returned for me a few minutes later and indicated that I should come to the kitchen. I got up an followed her.

"Drink it all," she said, pointing at a huge cup of tea.

This stuff was nasty. Seriously nasty. It tasted like I was licking a slimy, insect-infested tree. But I gulped it back, determined to show no sign of weakness. She drank one herself, and I saw her grimace slightly. When we had gotten this down, we sat cross-legged on the polished wood floor, we took each other's hands, and put our foreheads together.

"Relax," she said. "Just breathe."

At first I just felt my butt getting sore and heard the hum of the refrigerator.

I became gradually aware that I wasn't in the kitchen anymore. I wasn't sure where we were. It might have been on the shore because I thought I could hear the sound of the ocean. The ground was soft, like cool, damp sand.

"Come, Alisa." Evelyn's voice was somewhere in my mind—not in sound. I could feel the words. I started walking along, not sure where to go. Then I saw that Evelyn was besides me. I could tell that she was somehow in control of the experience, that she was the guide.

What came next was a weird mix of images—a falling of furniture, the sound of splintering wood and ripping fabric. A storm. A baby. Evelyn—or both of us—was holding a baby. Sorcha was her name—Sorcha…Sarah…my mother. Evelyn led me away from this image. There was an overwhelming love of the Goddess. I could feel her power all around me, especially in the ocean. And I felt walls—anger, sadness, terrible loss—a father, a mother, a sister named Tioma, also named Jessica, killed in a car accident, a husband dying quietly in his sleep, a daughter gone forever… unbearable sadness…

We were leaving Evelyn, and Evelyn was coming into me. Evelyn drank up my life, taking in everything. She saw me, at three years old, trying to understand my father's explanation that my mother was gone and the she was never coming back. She saw my life in Texas—the long flatness of the land and the constant warmth of the sun. Then New York State, Widow's Vale, so cold and bleak and lonely.

I felt her close attention to the whirlwind of events that followed—discovering Wicca, my fears at seeing what my magick could do, my hospitalization. Finding my mother's Book of Shadows and realizing I was a blood witch. As we came to the point where I was standing alone as the dark wave approached, linked to Morgan through the brach, I felt her speeding, falling through my mind. This she couldn't take in enough of, and she could hardly believe what she was seeing. She couldn't get to everything I learned through Morgan, but the power she saw here was unlike anything she had ever encountered. She saw me finish the spell as the dark wave closed in, and I felt her pride.

There was an interested pause as she caught a flash of my strange dreams about Gloucester and the mermaid. I felt her mind hooking onto the images and processing them in some way. And I was telekinetic? Sparks of surprise as she saw objects falling, flying, breaking…

After that, her emotions changed, softened. I came to something raw within her. She felt for me as I returned to the house where no one understood what I had seen or been through. She was with me on the floor at Hunter's as I wept full of frustration and pain. Then she saw me running away, coming to her, and how rejected I felt. Her guilt was thick, smothering. Images of my mother flickered through our minds.

She was moving faster now, through the events of the last few days. We came to Charlie—my ripple of excitement at meeting him, our kiss in the library. I cringed—how embarrassing!

The book. That was what she wanted to see. Finally we faced the book with its strange green print. She pulled on close to it and read the pages. What was odd was that now I could see even more writing that had been invisible before, along with the passages that I had been able to uncover. Telekinesis… she was thinking again…. uncontrollable magick…uncontrollable… the word was making her uncomfortable.

Then she saw what I had concluded—what I had asked Hunter to look into—what Ardán Rourke had suggested… that she also suffered from telekinesis. There was no ghost. No Oona. No…

Everything was rushing back at me, a rush of gravity pressing on my head, making my stomach churn. I wanted to get up—to move around, to stretch and feel the blood flowing through my veins. But she put a hand on my shoulder.

"Sit," she said. "It catches up with you."

I sat. It caught up with me. I wondered if I was going to barf.

"You," she said, "you're telekinetic?"

I nodded and steadied myself.

"And the Seeker is trying to find out if it is hereditary?"

I nodded again. "He thinks it may be passed down by first born females. Like my mother, me… and you." I looked at Evelyn. "Think about it," I said softly. "When did you have the most problems with Oona? When something bad happened? When you were upset or confused? That's when it happens to me."

No answer. She stared at some tiny birds that had come to eat at a bird feeder outside her window.

"What you saw in the book," Evelyn said, "I understood what it was saying. The passage suggests that Oona performed a spell—probably a bit of magick. The result brought telekinesis into our family, starting with Máirin."

"What else did it say?" I asked, my voice hoarse.

"There is no cure—at least, not that the writer knows of. The attacks are caused by repressed emotions, so the only solution is not to bottle them up. The more they are kept under pressure, the greater the explosions."

"What about the missing pages?"

"The spellwriter admits to ripping out any pages relating to a description of telekinesis. Later in life she regretted it. She spent many years investigating the problem, with only some success."

"But why did she destroy them?" I asked, shaking my head. "I don't get it."

"All good witches pride themselves on control." Evelyn sighed. "Rowanwand especially. We rely on the power that our knowledge gives us and the control we have over it. When a witch's control is in question, his or her power may be reined in. Most of us will do anything to avoid that fate, even lie when we are ill or weak. The woman who wrote these words was smart enough to know that if her own fear and pride could actually cause her to tear out pages in a book that described a family affliction, there was a good chance that one of her descendants might do the same. So she hid her writing and spelled the book so that it could be found by the right people—people ready to face the truth, to admit that they didn't have the control that they thought they had."

She leaned her back against the refrigerator, legs akimbo, looking more like a stunned teenager than the imposing, matronly woman I had known. "That's why I couldn't see that book for years," she added. "I was open to ideas the first time I found it. When my mind closed up, the book became invisible to me. All these years…" She shook her head as realization lit her eyes. "I could have done something about these problems. Oh, Goddess, Sorcha…"

Suddenly Evelyn's composure completely abandoned her, and her face crumpled into a sob. "Sarah, your mother," she whimpered as her age finally seemed to show, "she had it, too. She stripped herself because she was frightened by her powers. Her telekinesis." Evelyn closed her eyes and sobbed again. "Oh, Goddess, I could have saved her…"

I shook my head, reaching out to take her hand. "You didn't know," I said.

"I should have," she whispered. "It was all there for me to put together. If I had been honest with her, if I had told her about what was happening to me instead of just pushing her away…"

"You couldn't have known what she was planning," I said, squeezing her hand. "She was frightened, and she didn't tell you how deep her fears went."

Evelyn sighed wearily. "I could see how frightened she was, I thought I could take care of Oona on my own." She looked me in the eye. "I pushed my daughter away," she concluded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "And I lost her."

She looked over at me, slowly regaining her composure. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I was suddenly profoundly aware that I could pass on telekinesis to my daughter, if I ever had one. Looking at Evelyn's tearstained face, I swore to myself that I would always be honest with my children. And open.

"I'll have to tell them the truth," she said, sitting up straight again. "There is no Oona."

"No," I said. "You were right. She was real, and she cast the spell that is affecting us."

"I suppose," she replied. "All these years, I thought it was something entirely outside myself, something I could eventually control. But it was coming through me. It was always me."

I could tell it was more than she could bear.

"The Seeker," she said, "he's working with a chaos specialist in London to find a remedy?"

"A chaos speicalist?"

"That's what someone who specializes in uncontrollable magick is called." She smiled wryly.

"Yes," I answered, slightly chilled by the term chaos specialist. That had a really bad sound to it. Hunter had obviously been trying to be delicate. "He is."

"Well, then," she said. "I suppose we'll have to see what he comes up with." She pulled herself off the floor, moving stiffly.

"I'm not going to tell anyone up here about this," I said as I watched her. "I'm only going to tell some people in my coven and that man Ardán. This can just be between us. We'll tell them that we found something to bring Oona partially under control."

Evelyn's eyes looked pale and red rimmed in the sunlight from the window. She turned to me. For the first time I felt something coming from her, something warm.

"Thank you," she said simply.

"I should go," I said, gathering up my things. "I mean… I should rest before the circle."

Evelyn nodded and put her hand on my shoulder as she walked me to the front door. "Have a good rest, Alisa. And thank you." She looked me in the eye. "I am very lucky you chose to visit."

"You're welcome," I whispered, and walked slowly down the front steps and along the road to Sam's house. I wasn't very tired. I just thought Evelyn needed some time alone. She's just learned some serious things about my mother and her leaving, and I knew it would take her a long time to come to terms with them.

If she ever did.