Seeker

4. The Journey

February 1992

Today the world seems like a different place than it did yesterday. I’ve always loved the winters here, but now the sky seems cold an pitiless. The beauty of our world seems to have dimmed a little. Yesterday Mama and I were calm and sage, secure in our lives and mist especially in our magick. But last night Mama got a witch message from Aunt Celine. A Seeker had come to «investigate» her library, and he found some dark spells she had written-a weather spell and a spell for bending another's will, spells Mama says she never even used. But according to the council-the idiot council, Mama calls them-just writing these spells shows a leaning toward dark magick that can't be tolerated. And Aunt Celine committed what Mama calls the cardinal sin: she argued with the Seeker, tried to make it seem like the spells aren't all that dangerous. Mama says the Seeker couldn't accept another point of views, he thought it was dangerous. And Aunt Celine was stripped of her powers today.

Oh, Goddess, it is such a horrible ceremony, but Mama insisted that we scry to watch it all. She says that I am old enough to see such things, that I have a duty to make myself aware of abuses of power that are committed in our world. Aunt Celine cried and shook, and when she was finally stripped, she looked like a broken bird: no longer able to fly, only half the person that she was before. Mama says that the council is corrupt and stupid, that they don’t understand the value of knowledge. I don't know what to believe. I only know that what happened to Celine was terrifying. I can't imagine anything she could have done to deserve such a terrible fate.

— J.C.

After Morgan left, I felt sad and wished I could have the whole evening to live over again. When would I ever learn?

I awoke at six in the morning, in the dark and inhospitable dawn. The house seemed empty and too quiet, and once again I missed Sky’s presence. I hoped she was feeling better in France.

A hot shower revived me, and I finished loading the car, seeing my breath come out in dragon puffs. I decided to have breakfast on the road and set off for the highway. Just before leaving Widow’s Vale, I pulled over and performed one last spell, sending it out into the world, knowing it would come to fruition about twenty-four hours from now.

Then I headed north, toward Canada and my parents.

“A room!” I bellowed into the barely functional intercom. “Do you have a room!”

I rubbed my bleary eyes and waited for the crackly response, hoping they spoke English. For the last sixty miles every sign had been in French. I don’t speak French—not well, anyway. I was forty minutes away from Quebec City, had been driving for hours, and was starting to nod with tiredness, though it wasn’t much past seven. I needed food, another hot shower, and a bed.

My parents’ town, Saint Jérôme du Lac, was only about four hours away, and the temptation to press on was strong. But that would involve crafting wake-up spells for myself or drinking a hell of a lot of coffee, and it meant I would get to my parents’ house after ten o’clock at night. A worrying thing—I had been unable to reach them by phone or scrying or witch message. I doubted they knew I was coming. If I was going to show up unannounced after eleven years, it should probably be in the daytime.

The intercom crackled back at me, and I took the garbled response to be an affirmative. Twenty minutes later I was tucking into some jambon and oeufs, washing them down with bière, in the tiny restaurant next door. Half an hour after that, I was facedown on the bedspread in my small, cinder-block room, dead out. I didn’t wake up till nine the next morning.

On Sunday the first thought I had, after “Where the hell am I?” was about Morgan. I pictured her slowly coming to recognize the spell I’d crafted before I left. I pictured her eyes widening, a smile softening her mouth. It had been hardly more than a day, but I missed her, ached for her, and felt lonely without her.

But today was the day. I was within four hours of seeing my parents, and the thought shook me to my very bones. This was the day I had been waiting for for more than eleven years. My heart sped up in anticipation.

I leaped up, showered, and hit the road by ten. I’d bought a road map of Quebec Province back in New York. Now it led me up Highway 40, around Quebec City, then off to a smaller, two-lane highway, number 175, that would take me north to Lac Saint Jean, a big lake. Saint Jérôme du Lac was about forty minutes from there, from what I could tell.

This far north, any signs of approaching spring were wiped out. Trees were still bare and skeletal, patches of crusted snow lay everywhere in shade; no crocuses or snowdrops bloomed anywhere. Spring’s warm tendrils had not yet touched this country and wouldn’t for some weeks, it appeared.

Following my map carefully, I turned off onto Highway 169, still heading north. I knew I had to go about 120 kilometers to reach Saint Jérôme du Lac and, with any luck, could do it in about an hour. Now that I was so close to my parents’ home, a strange, quivery feeling was beginning in my stomach. My hands felt sweaty on the steering wheel; my pulse quickened; my gaze darted around the scenery surrounding me, attuned to any movement. I was nervous. I hadn’t seen my parents in eleven years. What would they be like?

Eleven years ago, I had barely come up to my da’s breastbone. Now I was probably as tall as he. The last image I had of my father was that he was big, stern, and invincible. He hadn’t been scared of anything. Sometimes I had seen a deep sadness in his eyes, and when I had asked about it, he’d replied that he’d been thinking about the past. I didn’t understand it then but now knew that he’d probably been thinking about his life before he married Fiona, my mum. He’d been married before, to Selene Belltower, a fact that still stunned me. He’d had another son, a few months older than I, whom he’d abandoned. That had been Cal Blaire. Now both Cal and Selene were dead, and people were glad of it. I wondered if Da knew. Probably not.

My mum was Da’s perfect counterpart: soft, smiling, feminine, with a ready laugh, a sense of mischief that delighted us kids, and an easy, immediate ability to show emotion. It was Mum who explained Da’s moods, Mum who comforted us, cheered us on, encouraged us, loved us openly. I had been desperate to please both of them, for different reasons. Childishly, as I drove closer to them with every mile, I felt a barrage of different emotions—loss, anger that they had been gone, a quickening sense of anticipation. Would I, when I saw them, be once again able to lean on my da, to rely on his strength? Would I feel that he would protect me still, though I was now grown and come into my full powers? Hell, I was a Seeker for the council—the youngest ever. Yet I was still a nineteen-year-old kid, and the thought that I could abandon the weight of being a Seeker, even if just for a short while, was very seductive.

They would have changed in the past eleven years, I knew. Of course I knew it. I had changed, too. But we were still family, blood family, still father and mother and son. Somehow we would make those relationships fit us once more. And soon I would contact Alwyn, too, and the four of us could be a true family again.

The small turnoff road to Saint Jérôme du Lac was clearly marked. Suddenly I was bumping down a road that hadn’t been retarmacked in what looked like twenty years. Huge potholes caught me off guard, and I bottomed out twice before I wised up, dropped down to about twenty miles an hour, and drove like an old lady.

The farther off the main road I got, the less prosperous the land felt. I went through several tiny, poor-looking towns, each with a petrol station that might or might not function. I also saw a lot of Canadian Indians, who called themselves First Nations people, and signs for First Nations crafts and displays.

I had no idea how far down this road I was supposed to go; after that first sign, I hadn’t seen any more indications that I was heading in the right direction. Finally, when it seemed that I had gone impossibly far, I gave up and pulled over to get petrol. After I had filled the tank, I went into the small store attached to the station to pay. The storekeeper had his back to me; he was on a small wooden ladder, stocking packages of sandpaper. I hoped he spoke English.

“Excuse me,” I said, and, when he turned around, I saw that he must be part Indian.

“Yes?”

“I put in ten dollars of regular petrol,” I said, laying the Canadian money on the counter.

“Okay.” The cash register was beautiful: an old, manually operated one.

A sudden thought struck me, and in desperation I said, “Do you by any chance know of any English or Irish people who live around here?”

He thought for a moment. “You mean the witch?” he said, and I gaped at him.

"Uh. .”

“The only English I know around here is the witch,” he said helpfully. “He moved here two, three months ago.”

“Um, all right.” My mind was spinning. It was unheard of to be known so casually in a community. Even witches who weren’t hiding from Amyranth were always very circumspect, very private. We never would have identified ourselves as witches to anyone. Why did this man know? What did that mean? And why did he only mention a “he”?

“Could you tell me where they live?” I asked, with a sense of dread. Surely if this man knew about them, knew where they lived, then Amyranth did, too. What would I find when I got there?

“Sure. Let me draw you a map.”

I watched in a daze as the man quickly sketched a rough map. I thanked him and headed back to my car. I didn’t know what to think, so I started the engine and set off. The crude but accurate map led me down back roads that were even more bumpy and ill kept than the access road had been. I wished I had rented an SUV and hated the thought of what my car’s undercarriage must look like.

I was hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. I began to wonder if this whole trip had been an unworkable spell. Then I came upon a little wooden shack, the first building I’d seen in ten minutes, set back from the road. A battered Ford Escort minus its wheels stood on cinder blocks in the yard. Dead ivy vines clung to it. The yard was a wintry mess—untidy, overgrown, littered with trash. It didn’t look like anyone lived here. Obviously this wasn’t my parents’ house, though it seemed to be in the correct place on the map. I must have gotten it wrong. No witch would live in a house in this condition, with this kind of general air of neglect and poverty. A glance around the back confirmed my suspicions: Even in Canada, in winter, I should have been able to detect a cleared plot for an herb garden. But there was nothing, no sign of one. I sighed and rubbed my cold hands together.

Finally I decided to at least knock and try to get directions. I climbed up onto the porch, pulling my coat around me. This close, I felt I could detect the presence of a person, though it wasn’t strong or clear, which was unusual. I knocked on the rough, unpainted door, wincing as my cold bare knuckles rasped the wood.

Inside, there was a slight shuffling, then silence, and I knocked again. Come on, I thought. I just want directions. With no warning I felt something touch my presence, as if someone had cast their senses to identify me. My eyes widened in surprise, and then the door slowly creaked open, admitting dim light into the dark interior. My eyes instantly adjusted, and I saw that I was standing before Daniel Niall, my father, for the first time in eleven years.