IT WAS AFTER FIVE in the evening by the time Veronica and I approached Anne’s campsite. There were no swirls of dripping fog, no gusts of wind. The trees stood still like monumental totem poles to commemorate what we were about to do. The birds made no sound. All of nature seemed to be holding its breath, big and silent, except for the steady flow of the Big Sur River. I drew my jacket more tightly around me, but couldn’t shake off the chill I felt inside. We were heading into strange and unmarked territory, about to ask Anne to guide us in a ritual that was foreign to us.
She had explained to me that witchcraft wasn’t anti-Christian or anti-religion. Wiccans, she assured me, believed in God and weren’t linked in any way with the Christian summation of evil. Unlike what Hollywood would have us believe, Wiccan rituals weren’t dangerous or evil. They, instead, sensed and used natural energies that weren’t recognized by mainstream science as available to us all.
So, why was I now so terrified?
Anne sat on her geometric-patterned yoga mat in front of the fire pit, skirt tails caught up between her legs and tucked into her waistband and a jacket draped over her shoulders.
I ran unsteady fingers through my hair. “Anne, Veronica and I would like to...” I looked at my sister, but she waved away my silent appeal for assistance. “Veronica and I are joining forces in reaching out to Antonia and decided we needed your help.”
Anne raised an eyebrow and patted the mat next to her. “Might as well sit down. Sounds like this may take a while.”
Veronica did a quick visual search for alternate seating, apparently not keen on joining us on what had the look and feel of a magic carpet.
“You’ll find a lounge chair and some pillows alongside my living quarters,” Anne said, pointing toward the yurt, currently topped with a colorful afghan throw. No ho-hum nylon tent and canvas chairs for Anne. More like boho décor bliss.
Veronica picked up a turquoise starburst lounge chair, unfolded it, and tested it for strength.
“It’s sturdier than it looks,” Anne said dryly.
“Where’d you get this thing,” Veronica asked, “at a Bohemian camp sale?”
“You can get just about anything online these days,” Anne said.
I concentrated on the popping campfire and the smell of burning wood in an attempt to calm my fraying nerves. When that didn’t work, I said a silent prayer. God, please understand what we’re about to do. “Anne,” I started again. “Could you help us contact our mother?”
Anne pulled in a relaxed diaphragmatic breath, followed by an extended exhalation. “I’m not a psychic, Marjorie, or a medium.”
Even in the cold, I felt beads of sweat form on my forehead. “Given your knowledge about Wiccan ritual and its use for spiritual attainment and positive change, I figured you’d know what to do.”
Anne glanced at Veronica before addressing me. “What have you told your sister about me?”
“That you’ve found the path on which your spirit is most content via the Wiccan religion,” I said, “and that you blend different forms of spirituality to come up with your own rituals.”
Anne blinked several times, and silence stretched like a rubber band chain. A breeze kicked in and the totem tree branches began to sway. A rustle in the bushes started me shaking, which I knew would soon become uncontrollable to the point of pain.
“Shocked the hell out of me,” Veronica said, accompanied by a fine imitation of a befuddled hair scratch. “Marjorie hanging out with a witch? Never thought I’d see the day.”
Anne bit her lip in what appeared to be a suppressed smile.
“Will we need bat’s wings, eye of newt, and a cauldron?” Veronica asked.
My face burned. I wished she would stop.
But Anne was sharper than I’d given her credit for and knew Veronica’s teasing for what it was, a breaking of ice, an easing of fear. “What we’ll need is courage and patience.”
“Do we have to cast a spell?” Veronica asked, but this time, I sensed a note of genuine interest.
“We’ll want to send our wishes into the universe, along with certain words and rituals—”
“Like in church,” I interjected, trying to add a touch of normalcy to what we planned to do. “In an ask-and-you-will-receive sort of way.”
“It’s okay, Sis,” Veronica said. “I think Anne’s telling us that witchcraft is like prayer that you don’t recite out of habit.”
Anne and Veronica shared a look and appeared to come to a silent agreement—I’m in, if you’re in—before Anne eyed me with the studied attention of a busy mind.
Another pause in conversation, but more comfortable, more elastic than before. The rickety lounge chair squeaked as Veronica shifted her weight. She was watching Anne closely.
I recalled what Dr. Mendez had told me while trying to explain my psychic connection to Joshua. “We are not separated minds in isolated bodies, but part of a collective consciousness in which all minds are united.” He compared us to beings without borders and said that, according to the holistic theory of the universe, it may be possible to tap into the collective consciousness, of which the minds of the deceased are a part.
Anne slapped her knee. “We’ll form a circle.”
I thought of our group experience at the Esalen Institute, the way we’d formed our chairs into a circle, with me in the center.
“There’s a mental atmosphere that surrounds us, which is receptive to our thoughts,” Anne said. “It has the power to do anything and is meant to be used.”
I compared what I’d learned from Dr. Mendez’s holistic universe and quantum physics theories to my experience at the Esalen Institute. “And we can multiply our effect on this power through our united consciousness, right?”
The lighthouse beam of Anne’s eyes settled on me, and I swear I could feel its warmth. “Exactly. If we send thoughts into this spiritual intelligence, telling it what we want, we may be able to break through the veil.”
“And help our mother,” I said.
Anne frowned and stared into the leaping flames. “The Great Mind works in wondrous and mysterious ways.”
“Okey-dokey,” Veronica said under her breath.
Anne ignored her. “We’ll perform a ceremony.”
Veronica shifted in her chair.
An owl hooted.
“A sharing,” Anne said, “with ritual to help bypass the conscious mind. The mind of order—of the director.”
Even from a distance, I could see Veronica freeze, which made me nervous, afraid of what she might say or do if provoked. Her face twitched, but she said nothing.
Anne continued. “In ceremony, one reaches out mentally to the unknown, the unseen, and feels the power of inspiration.”
“I’m all for that,” I said, though to be honest, I was growing increasingly uneasy about the whole thing. More than once, I’d experienced inspiration from the unknown, but I’d never intentionally invoked it. Except, of course, while trying to contact Antonia.
And see where that got me.
“What kind of ceremony do you have in mind?” Veronica asked, her voice soft.
Darn, I hated it when she got that distant look in her eyes.
“We’ll make one up,” Anne said.
“Oh, wonderful.” Veronica’s sarcasm caused my uneasiness to turn into downright dread. Calm down, I told myself. You’ve done something similar with positive results using the Medicine Wheel. How is witchcraft any different? Maybe Antonia’s hopes, fears, and plans hadn’t vanished after she died, but had turned into thought forms that had somehow been recording in the cosmic airways and could be accessed by other minds. What other explanation was there, except that maybe my mother’s consciousness still existed in a parallel realm from which she was trying to reach us? Both theories sounded crazy. But the alternative was equally crazy, that the voices Veronica and I had been hearing were an illusion.
“It’s easy enough,” Anne said, “as long as we take it seriously and follow our instincts.”
I drew in a breath, always a comfort, but also a delaying tactic. I tend to judge and reject events before allowing them to unfold, often to regret my presuppositions later.
“If I understand correctly,” Anne said. “You’ve been hearing your mother cry, Marjorie. Can you remember what you were doing at the time?”
“I heard her cry for the first time after constructing my Medicine Wheel. I was sitting in the position of the East, concentrating on the initial step of the Medicine Wheel journey. Awareness.”
“And the second time?” Anne prodded.
“Sitting near a stream, looking into the water.”
“Where?”
“In the Los Padres National Forest near Carmel Valley.”
“Apparently both times you were in a tranquil, meditative mood,” Anne said, “during which you surrendered your conscious mind, allowing your subconscious to send out feelers.”
Anne turned to Veronica. “What about you? Have you heard your mother cry, too?”
“Yes, soon after coming to Carmel Valley and finding my mouse totem.” She hesitated and looked at me.
I unzipped my pouch and dug out the small, smooth stone. “Veronica gave it to Joshua, and Joshua gave it to me.”
“It’s a long story,” Veronica said.
Anne nodded, then asked, “Did you hear her cry again?”
“The crying stopped after I gave away the totem,” Veronica said. “And to be quite honest, I was relieved. I didn’t know at the time that the person crying was Antonia. I also didn’t know that I had a twin.” Veronica looked at me and smiled, which altered the appearance of her face from mean girl to loving sister. “It started up again when I followed Marjorie to Tassajara.”
“What do you think your birth mother is trying to convey?” Anne asked.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Veronica said. “Maybe she’s lonely.”
“She spoke to me at the Esalen Institute,” I said, “in a way I could understand. Not that I could make sense of her message.”
Anne stilled and looked at me, her eyes wide.
“Our instructor said our minds are fields that interact with one another. In one of our workshops, he had the participants form a circle around me. Then he asked them to focus their attention on my goal of communicating with my mother. It worked, Anne. It really did. Antonia talked to me.”
“What did she say?” Anne asked.
“That she was sorry.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know, but she said our father knew.”
Veronica slid from the lounge onto a bed of needles. “Shit.”
“When I asked her where my father was, she told me to ask my sister.”
Veronica stood and dusted off her jeans, avoiding my eyes.
“She said my sister’s name wasn’t Veronica.”
The breeze rustled the lapels of Veronica’s leather jacket and lifted strands of her hair.
“But First Dawn.”
Veronica took a shaky breath and stared into the darkening sky.
“We’ve got to help her,” I said.
“She’s waited twenty-nine years to contact us,” Veronica said, her voice toneless. “What’s a few more days?”
“Days?” I said. “We can’t wait days.”
“We’re headed for a dark moon,” Anne said, “not a good time to practice magick. Instead we’ll meditate and relax in preparation.”
Meditate? Relax? “Till when?” I asked.
“To quote from the Wiccan Rede, ‘When the moon rides at her peak, then your heart’s desire seek.’”
“But that won’t be until—”
“Actually, the full moon energy is available three days before the date of the full moon and three days after,” Anne said, “which happens to be August first.”
I shook my head. “So glad you cleared that up.”
Anne’s eyes twinkled like the stars now visible through breaks in the redwoods. “Anytime.”
“I think I’ll start calling you Sister Anne,” I said.
She stiffened for a second, then quipped, “Oh dear, you’ve found me out.”
We both laughed, but Veronica appeared thoughtful, as though she’d just been handed a piece to an unsolved puzzle.
Anne stood. “Sorry, girls, but I need to stretch my legs.”
When neither of us spoke, Anne said, “I realize this is all new to you, but” —she dropped back her head and contemplated the misty heavens— “with practice, these new insights may become part of the way you think and act.”
Veronica eyed her with that piercing blue stare that had on more than one occasion caused me to feel like I’d just exited a freezing pool of water. I held my breath, waiting for her verdict. I couldn’t do this without her, but we needed Anne, too.
“It’s hardly that simple,” Veronica said. “I insist on the security of rules and regulations.”
Wow, Veronica and I have more in common than I thought. “She’s applying for a job with the DEA,” I said, as if that explained everything.
But Anne wasn’t buying it. “Rules and regulations are limiting.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” Veronica said, “considering I break the ones that don’t serve me all the time. Still, rules and regulations are made for our welfare and protection. They ensure our rights as citizens against abuses by other people, organizations, and the government.”
“Okay then,” Anne conceded, “maybe you’ll agree to take just a wee little peek to what’s on the other side.”
Veronica folded up the starburst lounger and leaned it against Anne’s yurt. Then she sat next to us on the yoga mat with its geometric angles and shapes, which, if you looked at them long enough, transcended language and the rational mind and produced visual and spiritual harmony.