Blue Moon (4 page)

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me out the day of the wedding. But there will be a ton of prep work over the next couple of weeks.

That’s where you come in.”

“Just tell me what to do,” Kate said cheerfully. “It’s all fun.”

Her mother snorted. “Let’s see if you feel the same way after you’ve peeled six hundred carrots for the

crudités,” she said.

When they reached the house they walked in and found Kate’s father in the kitchen. He was just putting

the phone back on the hook.

“You just missed Netty,” he told them.

“Should I call her back?” Mrs. Morgan asked.

Mr. Morgan shook his head. “She said she’d call you later tonight.”

“Is everything all right?” asked Kate worriedly.

Her father nodded. “She’s feeling great,” he said. “The doctors are apparently amazed at how well she’s

responded to her treatment.” He paused for a moment and then added, “She also was wondering if you

could put her in touch with those people. You know, the ones who did the ceremony.”

“The ritual?” Kate asked automatically. “Sure. I mean, I can ask Annie and Cooper. I’m sure they know

how to reach them. But why does she want to do that?”

Her father sighed. “She seems to think that what they did had a big effect on her getting better,” he said.

Kate nodded. She didn’t want to say anything because clearly her father thought that Aunt Netty was

crazy for wanting to talk to Sophia and the others. She was also worried because she wasn’t sure how

she
felt about her aunt’s talking to people from the group. She’d managed to keep her own involvement

with them out of their conversations so far, but that would be hard if Aunt Netty started talking to Sophia

more frequently.

She also noticed that her father was watching her as if there was something he wanted to ask her. She

guessed that it was about the ritual, and she prayed he wouldn’t ask her anything she couldn’t answer

honestly. Then she decided to distract him by asking a question of her own.

“So, who’s watching the store this afternoon?” she asked. “You’re not usually home on a weekend.”

“Andreoli is holding down the fort,” he answered.

“You left
Rick
in charge of the store?” Kate asked. “Isn’t he the one who accidentally inflated the rubber

raft and took out a whole display of fishing equipment?”

“I’m giving him a second chance,” her father said. “There’s some stuff I want to do around the house

today. And by the way, right before Netty called your boyfriend called.”

“Tyler?” Kate said. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“We didn’t chat, Kate,” her father answered. “Netty beeped in. He just asked you to call him.” He

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looked at Kate’s mother. “You know, maybe we should have Tyler’s parents over for dinner one of

these days. It would be nice to meet them.”

Kate felt a shiver run down her spine. Inviting Tyler’s parents over for dinner would
not
be a good idea

at all. For one thing, they were divorced. For another, his mother was one of the leaders of the Coven of

the Green Wood and his father was an ultraconservative who hated anything to do with Wicca. Having

either one of them meet her parents would mean letting her secret out of the bag. There was no way she

could let that happen.

“I’ll mention it to him,” she said as she left the room quickly, before anyone could start to make firm

plans. “Maybe after all this wedding stuff is over,” she added.

Great,
she thought as she went to her room.
Now both of them are acting weird.
Her parents were

definitely being more nosy than usual about her friends and her love life. Had they been talking about her?

Did they have any idea what she was doing? She really hoped not. But just in case, maybe it was time to

do a little damage control.

CHAPTER 4

Well, it’s not blue,
Annie thought as she looked out her window at the moon hanging full and round over

the back garden.
But it
is
beautiful.

She turned away and walked into the center of the room. She was mad. Even though Kate and Cooper

had told her that they couldn’t come over for a ritual, part of her had been hoping that they’d change their

minds and call her that afternoon to say they were coming after all. She’d even waited for them, telling

herself that they would manage to get there.

But they hadn’t, and she was up in her room all alone, pacing and feeling sorry for herself.
No,
she

thought.
I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m angry.
She was angry at her friends for bailing on her.

She was angry because there were things in their lives that were apparently more important than getting

together for a blue moon ritual.

True, blue moons weren’t the most unusual things. It wasn’t like they were missing one of the big

sabbats or anything. Still, a blue moon didn’t come around all that often, and it would have been nice to

mark the occasion with a little ritual, especially considering that they hadn’t done one together in quite a

while. But no, Cooper was with T.J. and Kate was at home helping her mother. Only Annie was

committed to making the time to do something.

The problem was that she didn’t know what to do. A special moon called for a special ritual, and she

wanted to do something that would make her feel better about being alone. She’d been thinking about it

all afternoon and hadn’t come up with anything. Now it was nine o’clock, the moon was waiting, and she

still didn’t have any ideas.

I suppose I could just cast a circle and meditate,
she thought dully. But she could do that any time.

This occasion called for something really interesting. Even if Kate and Cooper couldn’t be there, she

wanted to do a ritual she could remember, and maybe even tell them about to make them wish that

they’d been there to experience it with her.

Only nothing was coming to her. She paced the floor for a while, walking in circles and thinking about

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what might be appropriate. They were between sabbats, so there was no particular theme to focus on.

She didn’t really feel like doing a spell. What else was there to do?

Frustrated, she went to her bookshelf and took out one of the books she’d been reading recently about

different kinds of rituals and exercises people could do to strengthen their Wiccan practice. She flipped

through the book, looking at pages at random and hoping something might catch her attention. But it all

looked pretty boring at the moment.

Then, toward the back of the book, she saw an exercise called “Living with a Goddess.” The title was

intriguing, so she stopped and read some more.

One of the most useful and fascinating exercises anyone interested in learning more about the different

goddesses (or gods) can do is to live with one for a while. No, you don’t have to move to Mount

Olympus or ascend to Valhalla. You can invite them to come to you. You do this by performing a ritual in

which you ask your chosen deity to “stay” with you for a period of time—a week, a month, one cycle of

the moon, etc. During this time you ask the goddess (or god) you’ve invited for a visit to lend her (or his)

particular gifts to you.

For example, say you’re feeling like your life is stuck in a rut and you want some help shaking things up a

bit. You might consider calling on the Yoruban goddess Oya, who has been known to clean out more

than one house by turning it upside down and forcing the inhabitants to spring into action. Ask Oya to

come to your house and work her magic, lending you her powers of change and sweeping your life clean

with her broom. Do a ritual in which you invoke her and ask her to give you some of her strength and

determination. But be careful—make sure you really want her help or she might sweep you out along

with the dust!

This ritual can be done whenever you need a little help from a particular deity, or simply when you want

to learn more about a particular one in more detail. Many people say that by inviting different

“houseguests” to share their homes and lives for a time they learn a lot about the various goddesses and

gods and what gifts they have to offer. Just be sure that when it’s time for the visit to end you send her

(or him) away with your thanks.

Annie read a little more of the exercise. Although she’d been at rituals where different deities were

invoked, she’d never thought about doing anything quite this elaborate before. It appealed to her. It

would be interesting to learn more about one particular goddess or god, and it was something she could

do on her own, without Kate and Cooper.

But which deity did she want to try out? There were a lot of them that interested her. The Russian witch

figure Baba Yaga had always intrigued her, as had the Irish goddess Brigid, who was said to inspire

artists of all kinds. Then there was Astarte, Rhiannon, and Ixchel. She’d read about all of them and had

wondered how she could find out more about the goddesses behind the interesting names.

None of them seemed right, though. She wanted to choose a goddess who meant something to her, who

had gifts that Annie wished she herself had. Who would that be? She thought for a few minutes, running

through a list of names in her head. And then one leapt out at her. Freya.
Yes,
she thought happily.
That’s

it.

Freya, the Norse goddess of love, had intrigued Annie ever since she was a little girl and someone had

given her a picture book about the Norse gods and goddesses. Freya was beautiful, but she was also sad

because her husband had disappeared. She often went looking for him in her chariot, drawn by cats, or

by flying around in a suit made of feathers. When she wasn’t doing that she held huge parties in her home,

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which was always filled with laughter and joy.

Annie had been intrigued by Freya’s story. Now she seemed like a perfect candidate for Annie’s first

attempt at invoking a deity. She wasn’t one of the more challenging goddesses, and Annie thought it

would be fun to see what happened when she called on Freya.

Besides,
she thought,
maybe she’ll give me some of that famous beauty of hers.

Now that she’d decided on a goddess to invite to spend time with her, she had to figure out how to do

it. Turning back to the book, she read the instructions. They directed her to decorate the ritual area in a

way that the deity being called on would like.

What would Freya like?
she wondered. She tried to remember details about the goddess. She couldn’t

remember a lot, but she recalled that Freya liked roses—pink and white roses. There had been

something in the storybook about her having a garden of roses that she walked in.

I certainly have those,
Annie thought as she smelled the sweet scent of roses drifting through her open

window from the garden. There were a lot of roses in the garden. It would be easy to cut some of them

and bring them inside. And she knew that somewhere she had some pink and white candles. All she had

to do was get organized.

She jumped up, slipped on her shoes, and went downstairs. Her aunt was in the kitchen making herself

some tea when Annie came in.

“Do you mind if I cut some roses from the garden?” Annie asked her.

“Not at all,” Aunt Sarah replied. “Mind if I ask what for?”

“They’re for a friend,” Annie answered, grinning. She knew her aunt wouldn’t ask any further questions,

and she liked leaving her wondering who the friend might be. Suddenly she was feeling slightly

mischievous, and she was looking forward to her ritual.

She took the clippers from their place inside a terra-cotta pot by the back porch and went into the

garden. The night was warm and bright, and she had no trouble seeing as she went from bush to bush,

cutting a few roses from each and placing them into the little basket she’d brought with her from the

house. Soon the basket was filled with the beautiful flowers, and Annie went back inside.

“That’s quite a haul,” her aunt remarked as Annie walked through the kitchen with the flowers.

“It’s a special occasion,” said Annie teasingly as she went upstairs to her room.

She decided that the best thing to do was to just strew the floor with the flowers where she was going to

do her ritual. She scattered them over the boards in a roughly circular shape. Their scent filled the room,

perfuming the air, and delighting Annie’s nose with the delicious smell.

Next she got the candles and placed them all around the room. She had almost twenty of them, and they

covered all of the bare places. Annie lit them and watched as her bedroom glowed with their

honey-colored light. The candles made everything feel very dreamlike, especially when the flames

flickered in the gentle breeze and caused shadows to dance crazily across the walls and floor. Standing in

the middle of the room, Annie felt as if she were in a magic forest. It was the perfect setting for what she

was about to do.

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She stood in the center of the ring of roses. Closing her eyes, she imagined herself surrounded by a circle

of white light. In her mind she created a safe space where nothing bad could reach her and where she

was surrounded by warmth and power. She pictured it filling her body until she was glowing with light.

Then she held up her hands to the sky and said, “By East and West, by North and South, I cast this

circle three times round. By Air and Water, Earth and Fire, I consecrate this sacred ground.”

As she said the words she turned to each of the directions. She imagined the light in her flowing out

through her hands, strengthening the circle as she spun slowly three times, each time seeing the circle in

her mind grow brighter and brighter with the power of her energy and her words. After the third time she

stopped and drew in a deep breath. She really did feel as if she were between the worlds, in a place

where magic could flower and she could speak with whichever deity she called upon. It was a wonderful

feeling, and she smiled to herself as she sat cross-legged on the floor in her sacred circle.

Okay,
she thought,
now what do I do?
She hadn’t thought much beyond casting the circle. Now she’d

set the stage for her ritual and she had to come up with something for the main event. How exactly did

you invoke a goddess? The book had said to call on her. Maybe it was that simple. She’d heard Sophia,

Rowan, and other members of the covens she worked with do it before. What had they said? Suddenly it

seemed harder than it had when someone else had been doing it.

She decided that the easiest thing to do would be to talk to Freya as if they were friends. After all, isn’t

that what she wanted to happen? She wanted Freya to come stay with her for a while and be her friend,

so she might as well just invite her. She knew that while a lot of witches used elaborate invocations and

flowery language, you didn’t have to do any of that. Sophia had told them repeatedly that the gods and

goddesses weren’t some far-off entities hiding in remote placs. They were all around, waiting for people

to speak to them. Annie had always liked that idea, and she herself had had several run-ins with Hecate,

the Greek goddess of death and magic, when she was learning how to use the Tarot cards properly.

But that had been different. Hecate had appeared to her unbidden. Annie hadn’t really called on her.

This time she was actually asking a goddess to show up. Would she come? Or was Annie about to make

a fool of herself? There was only one way to find out.

Here goes nothing,
she thought. She had placed a single unlit pink candle in the ring with her. Now she

lit a match and held it to the candle’s wick, watching as it burst into flame. Gently blowing out the match,

she laid it aside and gazed into the candle’s center. She cleared her mind and thought about what she

wanted to say. Then she began to speak.

“Freya,” she said aloud, her voice almost a whisper. “Goddess of love, I ask that you come to my circle

on this special night. Join me as I sit beneath the light of the blue moon. Talk to me. Answer my

questions.”

She paused, looking into the flames. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what Freya would look

like. There had been several pictures of her in the book Annie had read, and those came to mind. She

saw Freya standing in a garden of roses. Her long golden hair fell around her shoulders and streamed

down her back. Her skin was pink, with rosy spots on her cheeks. Around her neck was her famous

necklace, forged from the brightest gold and sparkling with emeralds, diamonds, and rubies. She was

beautiful.

“Freya,” Annie called again. “Come to me. Be with me now.”