The forest as we knew it had been rearranged—the scene set for Cindy Bernstein’s wedding. I had never seen so many witches in one place in all my life. The air was sparkling with magic, and the laughter of the fey was in the ears of every living, breathing soul.
Appetizers were being flown around by witches on broomsticks and The Wicked Incantations were kicking it off. Derek had just chucked Ellie’s violin up into the air, and even with her recent glow, my sister didn’t hesitate to fly up and catch it just as she always did. Everything was running smoothly. Just as Cindy had requested, we were having the reception first and would be heading off to the marrying tree as soon as the moon appeared . . . only an hour before the Enrapture.
Cindy had been specific the day she’d come to me. My mother had sent to her a vision of her wedding night under the stars, or under the meteor shower to be exact. She would bring witches a plenty and together they would join around our family as we drew my mother back down to our circle. Since I hadn’t had any real clear revelations between that last day at the hospital and now, I could only hope that at some point in the next couple hours, I would gain the confidence I would need to face whatever was lying inside those magical circles Cindy had seen in her head.
In the end, this was all up to me. I was the one who had cursed that Freddie—an energy that had grown so strong that it would take all these witches to help me kill it. I was the only one out of us all who could truly stab this creature in its heart.
Exhausted from the long day I’d already had, I lowered my clipboard. All my assignments as wedding director had been checked off. The sun was beginning to set and since my job was done, I decided to take a walk.
I removed my shoes and I crept along the creek, the grass brushing through my naked toes. Before long I came upon Lana, who was camped out next to the trickling water, drinking a tea laced with whiskey and braiding together a handful of sage.
“Hey there,” I said, taking a seat next to her. “Did you get some food?” Outwardly, she’d been standing strong since Patty’s death, but her clothes were starting to look a bit looser.
“I did,” she answered, handing me a bundle of sage. Taking in my appearance, she stated, “My goodness, you look beautiful, Niece.”
“Thanks,” I replied. It was a black shimmery dress I’d bought while with Maddie the other day. She’d said it made me look powerful and I could use as much of that as I could muster.
I separated the plant Lana had handed to me and was preparing to braid it together, when I noticed she’d held out her drink and was waiting for me to take it.
“Oh. No, thank you,” I said.
“Don’t give me that. You used to drink plenty of whiskey by my side. I think you may need it tonight more than ever.”
I stared at her for a full minute before caving. “Fine. To Patrick,” I said, lifting it into the air. I took a sip and immediately winced, coughing as I lowered it into my lap. “Goddess, how do you drink this stuff and continue to stand up straight?”
Lana smiled and pulled out her wand.
“Right. Sobering spells.”
I took another swig before handing it back to her. “Too bad Joe isn’t a witch. Maybe if she could’ve spelled herself sober after a few drinks then she wouldn’t have had a problem.”
“Naw.” Lana shook her head as she finished with one smudge stick and went on to the next. “It still requires restraint to stop and spell oneself sober. We may have goddess light, Wachiwi, but we are still somewhat human. Even we have ailments.” She stopped what she was doing and gave me her full attention. “Are you ready for tonight, little witch? Do you know what it is you must do?”
To be honest, the only thing keeping me going was Lana’s fearless nature. Even in the way she posed the question, she made it seem as if my answer didn’t mean life or death.
I looked up into her stone cold, black eyes. “Truth?”
She remained still.
“I’ve no goddamned idea.”
She pursed her lips tighter together and nodded her head. “You will be fine.”
I studied the way she held herself—the way she still managed to hold her head up and carry herself around with those steel bones of hers. “You know already, what’s going to happen. Don’t you?”
I could almost feel her inside me, searching through my soul. Finally, she gathered the pile of smudge sticks she’d made into her lap and stood, the ice in her glass clinking. “The future is uncertain.” She gestured to the sage in my hands. “Continue to wrap them, it will clear your energy.” She winked as she said the next part. “Perhaps even show you how to open a door or three.”
I watched her as she walked away. Those words were familiar . . .
As her speech echoed in the back of my head, my surroundings begin to spin, and the world tilted on its side. “What the—” I started, but cut myself off, suddenly caught in an unwelcome epiphany.
I lifted the herbs she’d handed me to my nostrils and sniffed at them. Immediately I recoiled, dropping the leaves to the ground as though I’d just realized the herbs were covered in maggots.
“Foul enchantress!” I cursed, snapping my head in the direction my aunt had just taken leave. But she was already gone, and the world was already beginning to fade in and out—the colors bleeding into one another as though it were all a work of oil splashed with paint thinner. “Lana—no!” I exclaimed, but no one could hear me. She’d made damn sure of that. “This is not the time or place!”
When we were children, Lana and my mother used to argue about our aunt rubbing a bit of what we called flying ointment on our skin. Witches used to use it to open their third eyes, to see beyond the veil directly before them. It was trippy. Lana had insisted it was a rite of passage for every young witch, to see clearly into the other world; but our mother hated the stuff. She thought it was a barbaric practice, as well as dangerous. However, that hadn’t stopped Lana from using it on both Ellie and I once upon a time.
Taking our little arms into her hands, she’d rubbed a very small amount into our skin, all the while saying, “And from this you will see . . . perhaps even open a door or three.”
Very carefully, pulling the herbs up by the stems, I inspected them. She’d fooled me, causing me to see it as sage, but it was not that. It was instead a small bouquet of plants, namely mandrake and belladonna—poisonous and known for their hallucinogenic properties. Cunning as she was, she’d rubbed them in flying ointment and ensured I handled them well.
I clenched my teeth together and threw the plant down to the ground, springing up to my feet—but as I rose, I couldn’t stop, and before I could gather what was happening, feathers sprung out from my skin and my arms lifted into the air—my body shrinking.
“No,” I whimpered. “Not the owl.”
It had happened the last time as well. I’d turned into an owl and Ellie had been a wolf. Just like our spirit helpers.
Gaining speed, I spotted Lana down below. She was making her way towards the food tents where Joe and Tyler were working relentlessly to keep the witches fed. I swooped down by her and prepared to shout at her, but all that erupted from my mouth were a series of hoots.
She smirked, glancing at me. “You gave me no choice; time is not on our side. I’ve had to ask someone else to help you lift that veil from over your eyes—someone I wasn’t quite sure you would allow yourself to see otherwise. Now off you go, little witch. Search out your truths.”
Truths! I prepared to counter, but my fierce argument remained as owl speak.
I was furious, but what could I do now? I’d been transformed by Lana’s magic and lost in a world of delusion. As the paint continued to swirl and drip, my aunt’s face changed from her own into Rowena’s; but it wasn’t the ghost I was looking at—this poor soul who was stuck in a separate dimension because of the Freddie’s curse. No, it was instead the beautiful young woman I had seen getting ready to open the door and greet her future love in the memory she’d shown me back at the hospital.
“Oh! there you are, Lilly Pad,” she said, looking up at me. “I’ve been searching for you.”
Her arm reached out as mine often did for Delila to take her perch, but I just continued to stare down at her while flapping my feathered wings out to the side.
“Come on now, don’t be silly.” Rowena smiled—a large toothy, happy smile.
I took a moment to adjust as the edges of the world straightened out. I was still an owl, and as I cocked my round, feathered head to the side, I saw that everything that had been there a second ago was gone. It was just Rowena and I and an empty retreat. Because of the wedding everything had been shifted around, the cabins magicked into the woods, but in this moment, everything was back in place—and as far as I could tell we were the only souls in sight.
My aunt’s speech reverberated through my head. It didn’t take me long to realize that I needed to follow whatever path was directly in front of me, because it was only down one road that I was going to find my truth. So, reaching for Rowena’s arm with my talons, I lowered my wings, consenting for her to take us wherever she intended to go.
“It’s pretty here, isn’t it, Lilly? Enchanted is this place . . . magical. I am unsure of how we slipped into this fold, but I suppose all that matters is that we return before the moon rises back at home.”
Fold . . . Rowena understood about the folds? I tried to speak, but still all that came out were hoots.
Rowena turned to me, her footsteps leading us inward of the forest. “What are you trying to say, Lilly? Are you afraid? Please don’t be. We will be back to our time very soon. It appears we’ve wandered sometime in the years that lay before us. It is very strange.”
She led us into the forest, her black boots crunching over pinecones and sticks—and that’s when one scene ended another began. The wind changed, sweeping across my face. I stood as myself once more, in the black dress that made me look like a witch and watched as Rowena and her owl began to disappear into thin air.
“Wait . . .” The word balanced over my tongue. I could’ve sworn she glanced back over her shoulder, but whether she saw me it didn’t matter—she was already transitioning back into her time.
I was just beginning to sort out why I’d been given such a strange and jolted experience—the sounds of the wedding party wafting back into this part of this forest, bringing with it my sister’s violin against Derek’s voice—when something happened that caused my heart to stand still.
His voice seeped out from the trees, and as it did, I was overcome by the feeling of a thousand needles poking from every inch of my skin; and my tongue, still laced with whiskey, felt swollen. Though it had aged since last I’d heard it, it was a voice I would know on any given day. And it was no longer a whisper in the wind.
“She actually did that—Rowena. She walked through time, following ghosts as they traveled here and there. What was it you used to say? That it was like an envelope? That you could bend your fingers into the folds of what was inside and reach for different dimensions. Rowena felt the same way, except she actually walked through those curtains from time to time.”
Shame washed over me—I was afraid to turn around and face him. “You’re not real . . . None of this is. It’s part of the delusion.”
“What is delusion really?” he questioned, sounding just like Tyler. “But that’s not what this is.”
My blood froze in my veins. “This is the Freddie messing with me. It wants me weak.”
There was a small rustle of leaves, as though someone was readjusting themselves over the forest floor. “Now that part is where you are wrong, Mom. Right now, the Freddie is nowhere in sight. It’s allergic to cedar, remember. It is why Grandma chose this patch of land for your work tonight, for there is not only pine trees, but cedar. The Freddie cannot stay in the trees for very long.”
A very soft heated breath exited my parted lips and I turned. He sat on a fallen tree; a stick made of beechwood lying over his lap. He wasn’t the young child the Freddie had robbed me of. He was now a young man.
“Thaden.” His name was shaky as it exited my mouth, and my throat tightened as tears sprung into production.
“We don’t have much time,” he said calmly.
His comment barely registered as I worked on moving my feet out from the cement they seemed to be encased in. As I neared him, my hand reached out to touch his. My chin quivered as I muttered the only word I could find. “How?”
He grasped my hand, the rest of his body unmoving from the log. I could feel the blood pumping in his palm, the magic I’d passed down to him. He gazed up to the tops of the trees towering over our heads. “I pulled from it—the extra magic in the forest. I don’t think there has ever been this many witches gathered in one place other than the planet where we were born.” Returning his attention to me, he pulled me down so that I was sitting next to him. “I have watched you struggle. Watched it play with you as it played with me.”
My heart sunk. “I know it was the Freddie who took you.”
“No. It was the Freddie who persuaded me to take myself.”
I tried to stifle it, but I couldn’t. A cry escaped my mouth. I just couldn’t believe I was really looking at my son. I shook my head as I said, “This is some kind of evil joke. You’re not here. It’s—it’s not real. It’s the poison—”
“The poison has worn off. Lana only gave you a sparse amount; enough to relax you, to help you let go of disbelief. I am here, Mother, as I always am. It’s just that now you can see me.”
He squeezed my hand. In his touch the strings of my heart came undone, and my lungs suddenly filled with the breath of the wind. My chest lifted, and he said very softly, “It’s okay. You can let go of it all. That’s what all this is about.” Dipping his chin and looking up at me with a pair of eyes that haunted me every time I looked in the mirror, he said, “You can do this, Mom.”
“Do what? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to let go of?”
Still squeezing my hand in his, he said, “The pain of the past.” When I didn’t reply, he continued, “Your Freddie is highly intelligent, you cannot go into that circle without the truth.”
I shook my head. “What truth?”
Thaden looked down at our entangled hands and took a beat before responding. “You know, I didn’t realize that my ghostly little friend was an imposter until it was much too late. Before the day she insisted that I recite Ellie’s spell, she was gaining my trust by showing me how to use the gifts I inherited from you.” My heart fell slightly in my chest. “She helped me see that I could unfold the curtains and look between them.” He pointed the wand in his lap towards the space where we’d just seen Rowena and her owl disappear. “Like your ghost used to do while she was alive, the Freddie showed me how to do the same. To time travel.”
“Time travel? Wait—so you—you can travel through the folds? Even as you are? Forever banned to the elements?”
He nodded. “So can you. In fact, you have been doing just that through Grandma’s spell. That’s all she did. She pulled away the folds for you and Ellie to sink back into that past life.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “I never knew I could do that.”
“Correction. You never knew you could do that in this life.”
I lowered a single brow.
Changing gears, backing up, he said after a moment had passed us, “The Freddie showed itself to me as a little girl, and there was no way you would’ve sensed her. She hid whenever Maddie or you were around.”
“Why would it need to hide from Maddie? Maddie can’t see ghosts or Freddies.”
“Maddie can see everything.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he chose to leave it, the corners of his mouth curling up. As I considered his expression, Joe’s words from the other day suddenly rang through my head—then how can she fly?
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Thaden repeated, redirecting my attention. “We were given this moment for a reason, and before I have to go—”
“Wait—no! You can’t leave, you just got here!”
He shook his head. “I’m only here at all because you still refuse to see it, and I may be the only one who can shake the truth out of you.”
A small fire ignited in my chest. “Why does everyone keep speaking of my truth? I’ve seen what happened—I cursed a Freddie!”
“Yes, you did, but there’s more to it than that.”
“And why do you think you’re the one who can help me see past this fog?”
Without missing a beat, he replied, “Because I am like Rowena.”
A thick line appeared between my brows.
A small sigh escaped his lips. “I have been with you every day since I was taken into the elements. It was your pain that overshadowed my presence, that separated you from me. I was always there—in the wind, in the ocean, in the flame of every candle you lit. I wanted you to see me, just like your ghost wanted you to acknowledge her. The shadows over your heart, put there by the Freddie when you weren’t looking, they were so dark you couldn’t see through them. You couldn’t see either of us.”
With my eyes closed, a tear escaped as I whispered, “What does this have to do with my truth?”
“Your truth is what is left after you shake away the shadows. Once you push aside the barricade that the Freddie has been holding in place. Then you will see the origins of this pain and where the evil originated.”
I reopened my eyes to find him staring directly at me.
“I’ve been trying to find where the evil originated and where Rowena’s body is buried. I’ve been doing nothing else!”
“You’ve been scrying.”
“Yes!”
“You’ve been gazing into your ball because that’s what Lana said to do, but she was never told that you needed to scry.”
Puzzled, I retorted, “Yes she was. She said that my mother was trying to communicate with her, that she was given the image of a mirror.”
Thaden looked down into his lap, to the beechwood still within his grasp. “You’ve been scrying your whole life, so of course you would immediately associate that image with divination; but I’m afraid that’s never what Grandma meant.” His gaze raising back up, centering over the charm hanging from my neck, he said, “There is one door you have yet to unlock. One that has been waiting hundreds of years to be found and opened. The evil one who watches over you has done its job well, keeping you shrouded in emotional pain through every life—posing as someone you threw away. The answer, Mom—your truth—it lies in what you see in the mirror.”
“I told you—I see nothing—”
He jerked his head from side to side. “It’s not inside the reflection. It is the reflection itself.” He paused briefly. “Who is it that the Freddie tried to make you fear when this all began?”
I thought about it for only a moment. “Rowena.”
Thaden nodded. “And it makes sense that this is the form it took. It didn’t take on Rowena’s form because hers was the last body it wore, it did that because it knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Who is it we often fear more than anyone else?”
I shook my head. “I don’t—”
“Come on, Mom, I know you know. Deep down, there is a reason you never saw yourself in those past scenes Grandma opened for you. There is a reason.”
My mouth was quivering, my next line nothing more than a quibble. “I couldn’t see myself because I was a spirit."
“And how did your spirit get there?”
“I—I don’t know. Rowena or the Freddie—it killed me.”
“No, pain killed you.”
An explosion went off in my head. I couldn’t quite see what was waiting for me in the distance, but it was beginning to take shape. As it did, something heavy lifted from over my shoulders.
My lips began moving, but my words were a little late to the party. Whatever was readying to come out of me never made it, for all the sudden Thaden’s form fluttered between an image of himself and someone else’s.
I dropped his hand and reached for his shoulders, trying to hold him still—to keep him with me. “Wait! Thaden, what’s happening?”
He looked up through the trees, at the darkness falling over our shoulders. “My time is running out. I’ve got to go.”
“NO!” Pulling at his arms, pulling him into me, I continued to shout, “You can’t go! You’ve only just arrived!”
The gentleness that I’d seen in him when he was just a little boy was still there as he returned his gaze to mine. “Don’t be sad for me. Ellie’s intention has come through in this spell. It is a dance that never ends. It’s a beautiful life.”
“It’s a curse! You are as good as gone!”
He laid a finger over my lips. “You know that I am not. And I know that you know that. For now, promise me that you will embrace the ones you have before you instead of dancing away. Remember, the Freddie feeds on your pain; do not give it reason to do so. Do not show it fear, do not let it win. Tell me you forgive this curse. Tell me you will let it go. And instead of feeling pain for me, feel me in the wind.”
Choking on the tears running down my throat, I struggled to get my words out. “It’s just—if I can’t see you how am I supposed to know that you’re okay?”
Cupping his hands around my head, my son answered while pressing his forehead into mine. “I am in every tear you cry; in every creek or river you pass by. When you light a candle, I am the flame that dances in the dark. I am the whisper in the wind, and I’m with you always.”
“How do I know?” I repeated.
“You will know. You always have.”
I closed my eyes and bit down over my lip.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I believe you . . . I will let go of this curse, of the pain. I will let it go.”
When I lifted my eyelids, I found myself in the company of my other child. She was dressed in her waitress’s uniform from the wedding. A witch’s hat on her head, and in her hand the same wand that Thaden had been holding.
“Maddie?” I questioned, blinking away thick droplets of moisture. “Oh my god . . . it was a dream. And I’m still hallucinating.”
Her typical dry look fastened securely into place, and she answered simply, “No, Mom, it wasn’t.”
“What?”
She jumped off the log before offering me a hand to get to my feet. “Come on, we’ve got stuff to do.”
It wasn’t until then that I realized it was a lot darker outside than it had been just moments ago. Somewhere, not too far away, were the many footsteps of witches entering into the forest. The music had changed from the band to wooden flutes. A ceremonial march; one our kind often did on our way to a celebration.
“I don’t understand,” I said, looking up at my daughter, still too dazed to move from the log. “Was he real?”
Maddie popped her hip out and shot me an annoyed look. “Of course he was. Now come on, the ceremony is about to start, then after that we have circle.”
I stared stupidly at the wand in her hand. It was charged . . . I could tell. Suddenly, I spit out an array of discombobulated words. “What? But it can’t be. You’re not a—are you? No. How?”
Maddie rolled her eyes, then pulled me to my feet. “Come on, we have to go.”
“Does it work?” I asked of the beechwood.
Maddie sighed, then flicked her new wand at a pinecone, turning it into a tiny house fit for a faery or a very small gnome. “Thaden activated it for me.”
“Thaden turned that into a wand for you?”
She nodded.
“But the person using it has to have magic too.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Maddie Jean, what aren’t you telling me?”
She spun the wand in her hand and clicked her tongue. “We’re not the same, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t come from the same place. Now come on, we have to go.”
“Wait—so Thaden used your body to show himself to me?”
She grabbed my elbow and led me towards the commotion of witches pouring into the woods. “It takes a lot of energy for him to do so. He could only do it because there was enough magic in the forest tonight. You know, with all the added witches. It was Lana’s idea.”
“Right,” I muttered. “The witches.”
“Yeah,” Maddie chirped, an impish quality peeking through the glint in her eyes. “It was important for him to see you, so I’m glad we could make it work.”
“You sound as if you and he have been communicating. Have you?”
Maddie shot me a funny look. “Of course we have, Mom.”
“Since when?”
“Since forever. Anyway, did he get to say everything he wanted to? I couldn’t really hear.”
“I—I don’t know. I think so.” My thoughts were deviating in about four different directions.
“Good, I’m glad,” was all she said.
I don’t know whether it was a residual effect from the flying ointment, but I could have sworn just then, in the beginnings of the moonlight, that I saw a pair of translucent wings flutter out from behind my daughter’s back.