Seeker

8. Answers

In the time I’ve been here, I’ve come to fully appreciate the pristine and harsh beauty of winter. Five years ago it was spring that made me feel alive, the unstoppable power and bursting rawness of life renewed. Now that seems so naïve. For me, winter is the culmination of nature’s beauty, winter that shows the perfection, the bare bones of the world I live in.

Today I walked for miles, up to Drandfather’s Knee. The air was sharp and cold, like a knife, and by the time I reached the top, every breath seared my lungs. I felt alive, completely connected to everybody around me. The sound of ice cracking in the sun, the rare, startled flight of a bird, the occasional wet drop of snow from a tree limb—all these things filled me, awoke my senses, until I felt almost painfully joyful, painfully ecstatic. I fell to my knees in the sun-softened snow and blessed the Goddess and the God. My entire life felt like a song, a song that was reaching a crescendo, right then.

through the crust to forage. As I knelt there, I was startled by a flash of dusty white-a winter hare, zigzagging crazily across the meadow, running so incredibly fast that I could hardly follow it with my eyes. It was beautiful, a slightly darker white than the snow, designed to run, its feet sure and strong. A second later I saw the reason for its flight: a red-tailed hawk, its wingspan more than four feet, was wooping toward it. In the time it took me to blink, the hawk had swung its feet down and up and was already beating the air with its wings, heading skyward with its prey.

I didn't think. There was no time. Instinctively I traced the sigil and cried, "srathtac! Srathtac!"

As if shot, the hawk faltered in midair, one shoulder dipping, its wings beating arrythmically. I sent the message, "Drop it. Release." And in the next moment the hare was falling like a soft-bodied stone toward the earth. I was already on my feet and running.

The hare lay stunned, near death, its eyes wide and yet unseeing. Its dusky fur was streaked with blood from the hawk's talons; I felt its labored breathing, its pain, the panic that went beyond fear. It blinked once, twice, and then its life began to ease away. "Sassen," I murmured, not touching it. Its little sides had quit heaving for breath. "Sassen," I said softly, tracing several sigils in the air above it, calling it back. "Sassen." I sang it coaxingly, and then the hare blinked, its eyes taking on a new awareness. It breathed deep, its velvet nose twitching. I watched as it rolled to its feet in a smooth movement and bounded, off to the brush.

I know that some would say that what I did today was wrong, that it is interfering with nature's will, which should be held sacred. But I believe that as witches we should have the ability to use our own judgement. Nothing I have done today will throw off the balance of the universe. The hawk will catch more prey, the hare will die sooner or later. Both will go on with their lives, unaware of what I've done.

Animals are innocent. People never are.

— J.C.

I told Da about helping the First Nation girl give birth. He seemed interested, his eyes on me, as he finished eating. I gave him the tiny piece of bread I had left, and he ate that, too, though it seemed to take effort.

“It sounds like you handled it well, son,” he said in his odd, raspy voice. “Good for you.”

My heart flared, and I became humiliatingly aware that part of me still longed to impress him. Impress him, this pale imitation of my father.

“Da,” I began, leaning forward. “I need to talk to you about how you’ve been helping people around here. I’m a Seeker, and you must know that some of the things I’ve seen and heard concern me. I need to understand what you do, what role you play, how you’ve made it safe to be known openly as a witch.”

For a moment I thought he might actually try to answer, but then he raised one hand in a defeated gesture and let it fall again. He glanced at me, gave a faintly embarrassed half smile, then stood and headed to his room, just like that.

I sat back in my chair, unreasonably stunned—why had I expected anything different? Maybe because when I was a child, my da had never turned away from answering a question, no matter how hard, how painful. He had given it to me straight, whether I really wanted the answer or not. I had to let go of that da—he was gone forever. In his place was this new man. He was what I had to work with.

That night I lay on the lumpy couch, unable to sleep and unwilling to do a calming spell until I had thought things through. I was a Seeker. Every instinct I had was on alert. I needed to find out what my father was up to. I needed some answers. If Da couldn’t give them to me, I would find their answers myself. Then I would have a decision to make: whether to notify the International Council of Witches or not.

On Wednesday, I awoke early with renewed determination. I was going to follow Da today. All I had to do was wait for him to get up, then track him, something I was particularly good at.

Within moments of waking up, however, my senses told me the cabin was empty except for me. I frowned and swung my legs off the couch. A stronger scan revealed no other human around. How could that be? It would have been impossible for Da to wake and leave without my knowing. I was a light sleeper to begin with, and the couch of torture had only increased that. Then it occurred to me: it was impossible for Da to have left without my knowing. Which meant that my father had spelled me to keep me asleep. I sprang up, my hands clenching with anger. How dare he? He’d spelled me without my knowledge. There was no excuse for that, and it only emphasized how shady his business must be.

Swearing to myself, I shoved my feet into my boots and tied them with jerky movements. I pulled on the flannel shirt I’d earned, grabbed my coat, and stomped outside.

Outside, I saw that it was still early, and the air smelled like coming snow. The big pile of black garbage bags filled a corner of the front yard, and the thin, half-melted snow was tracked with my footprints. There were no tracks leading away from the house; none headed into the woods. Obviously Da had covered his trail.

I stomped a small circle into the snow and stepped into it. It took several minutes for me to release my anger, to summon patience, to center myself and open myself to the universe. At last I was in a decent state, and I began to craft revealing spells.

I had to say this for him, Da still knew his spells. His concealing spells were in several layers and included some variations that took work and thought on my part to break through. Either he was a naturally gifted and innovative spellcrafter, or he had considered me a real threat. Or both.

When I was done, I felt cold and drained and wanted nothing more than a cup of tea and a warm fire. Instead I got up and retraced my steps around the cabin. I saw the repeated tracks of my feet leading to the woodpile, but this time I also saw a set of new footprints, one that definitely hadn’t been there earlier: tracks leading from a corner of the porch into the woods. My mouth set in a firm line, I followed them.

How had my emaciated, malnourished father been able to hike this far the last couple of days, I wondered some forty minutes later. Granted, it was taking me longer because the tracks doubled back on themselves, I had to clear away other concealing and illusion spells, and I had to watch out for traps—but still, it had to be something desperately important to compel Da to trek this far every day in his weakened state.

A few minutes more and I became aware of a growing uneasiness, a bad taste in my mouth. I felt nervous; the back of my neck was tingling; all my senses were on alert. It was unnatural for the forest to be this quiet, this still. There were no animals, no birds, no movement or life of any kind. Instead, a feeling of dread and disturbing silence pervaded the area. If I hadn’t been on a mission, if I hadn’t known I was tracking a witch—my father—I would have fled. Again and again, every minute, my senses told me to bolt, to get the hell out of there, to run as fast as I could through the thick forest, to not stop until I was home. It took all my self-control to ignore them, to push those feelings ruthlessly down. Goddess, what had he done?

I pressed forward and came at last to a smallish clearing. To one side of the clearing stood an old, round-roofed hut, made of sticks and covered with big strips of birch bark, like an Indian house. A fire burned unenthusiastically outside the hut. It was surrounded by huge logs, easily two feet in diameter, that looked like benches.

I felt ill. Nausea rose in my throat; my skin felt clammy, cold, and damp with sweat. From the strong pulls on my senses I could tell I was at a huge power sink, much like the one in the cemetery in Widow’s Vale. But this one was made up of crossed lines, light and dark—it would be easy to work dark magick here, I realized, and my heart clenched.

I approached the hut. Every sense in me was screaming for me to get away from this place, to leave, that I was about to die, that I was suffocating. Dimly I was able to understand that these feelings were the effects of spells designed to ward off anyone who stumbled upon this place by accident, and I forced myself to ignore them. Taking a deep breath, I ducked down and pushed myself into the hut through its low doorway.

Immediately I was assaulted with feelings of out-and-out terror. My mouth went dry; my eyes were wild; my breath caught in my throat. Fighting for control, I looked around the hut with magesight. There was Da, crouched on the floor in a deep trance, his face alight with an unearthly eagerness. He was leaning over a dark. . hole? Then it came to me, and my throat closed as if a fist were squeezing my windpipe shut. Dear Goddess. I had never seen one of these before, though of course I had read about them. My father was in front of a bith dearc, a literal opening into the netherworld, the world of the dead. My brain scrambled to understand, but nothing came to me except a horrified recognition. A bith dearc. . if the council knew about this. .

Da was oblivious to my presence, deeply entrenched in the shadow world. The atmosphere inside the hut was wretched, oppressive. I was reeling from shock and horror, wondering with panic how the hell this had become part of my life. Then, vaguely, my tortured senses picked up on the presence of a person outside. I stumbled back out through the opening, toward the clearing, to see a woman sitting on one of the log benches. She was poking listlessly at the fire with a stick, apparently used to having to wait and not seeming to feel the same terror and dread that was shredding my self-control.

I must have looked crazy, with my face white, my eyes wild, but she didn’t seem to think anything of it, nor was she surprised to find someone here besides herself.

“Bonjour,” she said, after a quick glance at me.

I sat down on a log across from her, my head between my knees so I wouldn’t throw up. “Bonjour,” I muttered. I sucked in cold air, trying to clear my head, but the air here felt poisoned. How could my da be doing this? What to do, what to do?

"C’est ma troisième visite à le sorcier,” the woman confided. It took me a moment to translate. Her third visit to the witch. I wished I had thought to brush up on my French before I had come to this hateful place.

“Il m’aide de parler avec mon cher Jules,” she went on, a stranger chatting in a doctor’s waiting room. “Jules mourut l’année dernière.”

My stomach roiled as I took in this information. My father helped this woman talk to her dear Jules, who died last year. Bloody hell. My father was helping people talk to their dearly departed. He had opened a bith dearc into the netherworld and was selling this service to his neighbors. It was appalling on so many levels, I didn’t know what to react to first.

Apparently not bothered by my lack of response, the woman mused, “Le sorcier, il est très compatissant. Le dernier fois, moi, je ne peut pas payer. Mais aujourd’hui, pour lui j’ai deux poules grosses.”

Great. My father was a prince. She couldn’t pay last time, but today she had two nice chickens for him. My father was breaking some of the most seminal laws of the craft and being paid in chickens for it. I felt like I was losing my mind.

There had been times in history where it had been necessary, even imperative, to contact souls on the other side, times when it was sanctioned. But to commune with the dead on a regular basis, for payment—it was an affront to nature. It would never be allowed. This was exactly the kind of thing a Seeker would be sent to investigate, to shut down. This realization caused a sickening drop of my stomach.

Eventually, I wasn’t sure how much later, Daniel came out, ashen-faced. When he saw me sitting there, white with illness and misery, he staggered. His dull eyes went from me to the woman, who was still waiting patiently. Ignoring me, he went over to her and spoke gently to her in French, telling her today wasn’t a good day, that she must return at another time. The look of utter disappointment on her face was heartbreaking. But she dutifully stood, offered my father her chickens, which he refused, smiling, and left. Leaving us alone, father and son, witch and Seeker.