The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root) (47 page)

I read the spell aloud, looking into the starless night sky.

Oh, Winter Moon

Of darkest night

We call to you
 

To aid our fight

Against those

With hearts like coal

Who wish to garner

Dark Root’s soul

We call to you

Protect our home

Shield us with grace

In your Celestial Dome

When I had finished, my sisters clasped their hands around the base of their wands and lifted them to the heavens.
 

Their heads were thrown back. Eve and Merry’s hair grazed their waists, while Ruth Anne’s short hair barely hit her shoulders. I tilted my head back and aimed my empty, outstretched arms into the night.
 

The wind blew around us, stirring our dresses and hair. I was alive, connected to every living thing in the universe. The Magick of Dark Root trickled through me.

We held the stance. A light cracked above us, momentarily splitting the night in two. The light touched the tip of each of my sisters’ wands, setting their colorful gems aglow. It coursed directly into my fingertips, pulsing through my body, down into my feet. The ground around us became a sea of electric eels, cerulean zig-zagging lines that sizzled, then died.
 

My body trembled but I remained firm in my pose.

“Look!” Leo said.
 

The gems of the wands and the tips of my fingers shot clear blue light back into the sky. The beams merged together at a central point far above us and then expanded, casting four wide rays of light out in a canopy around us. The beams widened as they bound for earth, disappearing behind the horizon of trees that surrounded us.
 

We were cloaked in a dome of pale blue light. The spell was done.

Still trembling, I lowered my hands.
 

Leo ran for me, squeezing me in a tight bear hug. “Love Magg-eee,” he said.
 

“Love you too, Leo.”

“You girls did good,” Mother said, her eyes the same pale blue as fading dome. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”

I blushed at Mother’s compliment. Though her feet were small, her shoes were going to be large ones to fill.
 

“Are we done here?” Eve asked, putting away her wand and pulling out her smartphone. “I need to check my…hey!” She shook her phone then tapped it against the palm of her hand. “I can’t get online.”

Ruth Anne checked her phone as well. “Seems we lost the internet again. I knew it was too good to be true.” She shrugged, putting her phone away. “Maybe I’ll get some writing done now without the distractions.”

“I think we could all use a break from that,” Merry said, her eyes resting on June Bug. “Maybe just appreciate what we have here, instead of trying to look for it in the outside world.”

“Easy for you to say,” Eve said. “You don’t have nine pairs of shoes in a virtual shopping cart waiting for check out.”

“Its okay, Evie,” I laughed. “We’ll do it the old fashioned way. Go to Linsburg and buy them in a real store.”

“What? Oh, Maggie, that’s so 1997.”

“I don’t know about you, Eve. But I kinda miss the ‘90s.”

“Things were simpler then,” Ruth Anne agreed, as she and Merry helped Mother to the house. As we opened the front door, the smell of Aunt Dora’s blueberry scones greeted us, causing my mouth to water and my stomach to rumble.
 

“I guess we took those times for granted,” Merry said.

We gathered around the dining table. Aunt Dora appeared wearing an apron and carrying a tray of cider and candy canes. Behind her, the aluminum tree winked and blinked.
 

“You never know what you have when you are young,” Merry continued. “All you can think about is that there is something bigger and greater out there in the world and you’re missing out.”

“Amen,” I said.

“So, Maggie, I take it your wand is being prepared?” Mother looked at me from her spot at the end of the table, her hands folded and a white eyebrow raised. There was a twinkle in her eyes, an intelligence that said for tonight, at least, she was completely here with us.

“Yes. It will be done soon. I’m thinking it will be ready early next year. A new beginning, so to speak.”

“A new beginning.” Mother closed her eyes and rested her hands on her lap. “Yes. I’d very much like that.”

PART III

Thirty

RETURN TO INNOCENCE

January, 2014

Dark Root, Oregon

We made it through the holidays, mostly intact.
 

Paul confessed his secret to Eve: He was the father of a three-year-old little girl named Nova who currently lived in Seattle with his ex-girlfriend. Paul told Eve that although he was no longer involved with his ex, nor had any intention of becoming involved with her, he was leaving to be closer to his daughter.

“What about me?” Eve screamed, throwing brushes and shoes at him, as Aunt Dora and I tried to make ourselves scarce.
 

Paul retreated into the attic, showing his face only at Christmas when he presented Eve with a photo album he had made, pictures of the two of them over the last year, first as friends, then as lovers. Eve said she didn't want it, but after he left the room she sat down on the sofa and looked at each photo, intermittently laughing and crying.
 

“He’s the love of my life,” she said, with her head in her hands as I joined her on the couch. “How will I live without him?”

I thought about Mother and Robbie. If the dates on the pictures were right, Mother had lost him almost a century ago, and had lived a long, full life on just those memories.
 

“I don’t know, Eve. But you have us. You
will
be okay.”

Michael continued to call and I continued to ignore him, but on Christmas I finally answered the phone.
 

“Oh Maggie, I know I haven't been there for you like I should have, but please let me be there for the baby. I’ll do anything.”

I looked at my family in the living room as they gathered around the tree, telling stories of Christmas pasts. And I thought about Paul, who was leaving everything and everyone he loved to be a part of his child’s life, and Leo, whose own father had disappeared, leaving him with a mother who held him in nothing but contempt…and June Bug, who eagerly awaited her father’s call each night.
 

A child needed as much love as he could get in this world, and though I might never forgive Michael for what he did, my baby––our baby––deserved the chance to know him.
 

“Okay,” I finally said.

“Okay?” There was crazy laughter on the other end of the phone. “You mean you’ll let me see the baby?”

“Holidays, at first. You can come here and spend time with us. No taking the baby out of Dark Root. We’ll figure it out from there. That’s all I can give you at the moment.”

“That’s enough, Maggie. I just want to say thank you and apologize again. I am so…”

“Please don’t, Michael. I’ve heard enough sorries to last me a lifetime. Just show up, okay? I’m due in late Spring. Maybe you could come for that.”

“I’ll be there. I know how to drive now.”

I smiled. Michael the driver. What was the world coming to?

There were many changes in that month between the Winter Solstice and the first full moon of the New Year, but some things remained the same, like Mother’s dementia and Leo’s steady deterioration. Neither of them showed signs of getting better. With each passing day they looked weaker, sadder, and dimmer.
 

It wasn’t just their bodies that were dying, it was the spark of life inside them.

On a bitterly cold January morning, I stared at the wand in my lap. It was shiny and sleek, and had been equipped with a ruby red gem at the end. Mother, in one of her rare lucid moments, confessed that it was the most beautiful wand she’d ever seen.

I lifted my wand, turning it over in my hands. It was indeed beautiful.

But I hadn’t taken my wand from the Willow’s Daughter. As I had lifted my hand to cut the branch, I stopped short. Mother and The Council had cut down the tree because they realized that without an end, time is meaningless. It is only because life is short, that it also important. Whoever, or whatever, had created this balance eons ago knew what they were doing.
 

It was now time to let things run their natural course. With a little help from me.

I walked out to the porch and dialed Jillian’s number.
 

The unenlightened, as Mother referred to “non-witches,” often believe that all spells are cast beneath the light of a full moon, in an open meadow, at precisely midnight. And while this may be true in some cases, those of us within the inner circle know that there are some spells that can only be cast behind closed bedroom doors.
 

These are the powerful spells, that give heartbeat to the craft.
 

“Okay,” Merry said, opening the door to Mother’s bedroom to let Jillian and I inside.
 

Merry dabbed a Kleenex at her eyes. June Bug, Ruth Anne, and Eve stood near the foot of the canopied bed. They had come early at my request. Once I began the incantation, there would be no further time for words.
 

Jillian lit a white candle.
 

I opened a bookmarked page in Mother’s spell book and looked solemnly around the bedroom.
 
Mother had not taken her duties lightly and neither would I. I was my mother’s daughter, blessed, or cursed, with these
abilities
. The next generation of magick would fall to me.

“This spell looks different from the others,” I said, reading the words for perhaps the tenth time that day.

“It’s an old Celtic spell,” Jillian said. “Translated, of course.”