Books by Maggie Shayne (265 page)

Laughing River pointed to the silver-haired elder. “Trees Speaking.”

“Trees Speaking,” I repeated. “Tis beautiful.“

“When Trees Speaking is born,” she told me, and waved a hand toward the towering pines around us, “wind in trees tell all he is Shaman.“

I tilted my head. “Shaman? What is a Shaman?”

Laughing River frowned hard. “Trees Speaking tell us you are Shaman, like he. He say you…” She moved her hands trying to express her words, and Trees Speaking spoke softly to her. She nodded hard, and translated. “He say you like him. You walk with spirits. You make powerful… medicine.”

I blinked, and glanced at Arianna. She lifted her brows and looked at the girl. “Magick?”

“Yes! Magick!” Laughing River said, nodding hard.

“Is that what a Shaman does?”

“Yes.”

She looked again at Trees Speaking, as I did. And then at those around him. They looked at him with respect, listened when he spoke, seemed to love the man.

“Then, I guess we are… Shamans… of a sort.” Arianna finally said. I heard the relief in her voice, for it seemed obvious a person of magick would be treated far differently here than among the whites.

“White man fear Shaman,” Laughing River said. And her eyes went sad. “Trees Speaking say white man try kill all who make magick.”

I nodded. “Trees Speaking is telling you the truth, I fear. They don’t understand us.”

The girl translated, and the old man nodded. Then he spoke again, and the girl smiled. “Trees Speaking say no one hurt you here. Magick sacred, even white woman’s magick. He say you stay.”

I glanced at Arianna. She swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I hate to drag them into this. Suppose Dearborne hurts them because of us?”

Laughing River quickly translated what was not meant to be shared, and to my surprise, the men around the fire burst into laughter. Our eyes must have registered our surprise, because the girl quickly explained. “They laugh because they know one white man no threat to them. They warriors, Crow-Woman.”

Crow-Woman?
I supposed it might be close to “Raven’ from her point of view, but…

“No white man harm you here. Our warriors fierce. Strong.” There was pride in her voice.

Trees Speaking rose from his cross-legged position on the ground and smiled down at us. “Show me,” he said, very slowly, eyes narrow as he struggled to put the words together properly in his deep, raspy voice, a voice like the wind he was named for. “Show me… your ways… your
…magick.”“
Then he touched his chest, patted it three times. ”I show you my ways… my magic.“

I looked at Arianna and blinked. A sparkle appeared in her eyes. “There are many, many kinds of Witches, Raven,” she whispered, “and not all of us use that particular word for what we are. Some call themselves Druids, some monks, some holy men.” She glanced at Trees Speaking. “Some Shaman. He could teach us a great deal, I think.”

Looking back at him, I recalled the way he’d watched me—perhaps, watched
over me!
—when I’d spent that lonely night in the woods so long ago. “Why not?” I replied. “We have nothing to lose.”

A flash of sadness clouded her eyes, but she turned to Trees Speaking and nodded. “Yes. We’ll stay.”

Trees Speaking smiled broadly. And so we stayed.

We spent well over a fortnight at that Iroquois village, sharing knowledge and esoteric wisdom with Trees Speaking. And I realized that Arianna had been right. There were many kinds of Witches. He was practicing virtually the same belief system we did ourselves. We only called it by different names. Trees Speaking told us of the sacred importance of the circle, and how he worked within one when doing magick. And we told him we did the same. He spoke of calling upon the Divine spirit residing in things like the wind, and the water, and the earth itself, and we marveled at that, for we had, as well. He told us how the basis of his power was his belief that all life is truly linked together through a common source, and again, we were awestruck.

But there was more Trees Speaking taught us. Things we hadn’t seen or practiced before. He taught us to hear what animals might be telling us by watching their movements and picking out signs and omens. He taught us the medicinal uses of many plants and herbs native to this land and growing wild within its forests. And perhaps, most amazingly of all, he taught us the secrets of invisibility.

I thought the man insane when he brought this up with us, but he only smiled, and, through Laughing River, explained. One doesn’t truly vanish. One simply becomes so attuned to his surroundings that he blends into them, and onlookers don’t see him there. He demonstrated this by hiding and asking us to search for him. When we did, we couldn’t find him anywhere. But then he spoke, and we turned and saw him clearly, standing with his back pressed to a tree trunk. He insisted he’d been there all along. So we listened and practiced and learned, and tested our newfound knowledge by games of hide-and-seek with the villagers.

Each night Trees Speaking would whisper some of his beautiful words to me before I retired to a place of honor in his family’s longhouse. He would move his hands over me and chant. And he told me he was working to mend my broken heart, for he could see it clearly in my eyes. Truly, my time there helped me far more than anything else could have done. By immersing myself in learning about these people and their ways and their magick, I was able to go on living. But the pain of losing Duncan remained fresh and strong in me. I thought it likely always would.

Finally we had to move on. ’Twas not planned, nor even thought through. But we knew ”twas time to leave when one of the young men returned from a journey bearing meat and furs aplenty, and bringing news that shook me to the marrow. He spoke it to Laughing River, and her face paled, eyes widened. She turned to me, and I saw moisture spring into her shining eyes.

“Crow-Woman,” she said. “Bear Killer say white women… die. Many, many killed.”

I frowned. “I… don’t understand. What white women? How were they killed, and why?”

She lowered her head. “White man say they… like you. Shaman. Witches.“

My stomach convulsed, and my lips pressed tight as if to stop it.

Arianna’s face went stony. “Where?” she asked.

“If you go they kill you, too!” Laughing River cried.

“Where, Laughing River?”

She closed her eyes. “Place called… Salem Village.”

“Salem Village.” Arianna shook her head, closed her eyes. “I doubt there’s a genuine Witch in the bunch.”

“Does it make a difference?” I asked her.

“Of course not. They’re executing innocents either way. Innocent Witches, or innocent women who know nothing of magick, wrongly accused.”

I tipped my head back, searching the sky. “We have to go,” I said softly. “We’re stronger, more powerful, harder to kill—”

“
Much
harder to kill,” she said.

“We have an obligation, then.”

“We do,” she agreed.

We stared at each other, both of us wondering what turn life would bring to us next. Both of us afraid, and yet a bit excited. My losing Duncan had done one thing for me besides cause me unspeakable pain. It had made me lose my fear of dying.

For the next six months Arianna and I were shadows in the night. We’d slip into Salem by darkness, freeing women from the stocks, and from the locked rooms where they were imprisoned. Often with their children, even babies, locked up with them. Filthy, malnourished, and thirsting, no blankets. Many had been tortured. And none of them seemed to have a working knowledge of the Craft of the Wise. Perhaps some genuine Witches had been hanged or burned when the madness had first run wild in Salem. Perhaps… but not now. Now anyone with a grudge could cry accusations against her enemy, and see that enemy tried, her very life in the balance.

’Twas the purest form of evil I’d seen since the day I set eyes on Nathanial Dearborne. And ”twas only much later that I learned that Dark Witch himself had been in Salem Village only a short while before the madness began. No doubt the bastard had been instrumental in starting this fire that swept through the place, destroying everything it touched.

We rescued dozens, Arianna and I. Women and children whose fates had been sealed. We took them deep into the forests and hid them there. Some had families still alive and not yet accused. So we located those loved ones and brought them out as well. Our band of outcasts and refugees numbered fifty and more by the time the fury in Salem ran its course. And at last we led them all southward, into Pennsylvania Colony and a Quaker settlement there.

The journey took nearly two months. Alone, they’d have perished. But Arianna and I were able to find food, to fish the streams, and gather roots and greens thanks to all Trees Speaking and his people had taught us, and they survived.

In their new village, they used false names, just in case. But they’d be safe in this place. I sensed it, and felt good about something for the first time since I’d lost Duncan.

And yet those we hadn’t been able to save… how they haunted me. I knew their names, every one of them. Sarah Osborne. Bridget Bishop. Sarah Good and her tiny baby. Elizabeth How. Susannah Martin. Rebecca Nurse. Sarah Wildes. Martha Carrier. George Jacobs. John Proctor. John Willard. Ann Foster. Giles and Martha Corey. Mary Esty. Alice Parker. Mary Parker. Ann Pudeator. Wilmot Reed. Margaret Scott. Samuel Wardwell. Sarah Dastin. I knew not whether they had been of my own faith… nor did I care.

They’d been living, breathing sisters of the human race. My sisters. And brothers. And children. My dear mother’s face seemed to appear in my mind as I tried to imagine the faces of the women who’d died.

And Duncan’s face hovered in my mind’s eye when I thought of the Reverend George Burroughs, a minister who’d suffered the same fate as my beloved Duncan. Not being pitched from the cliffs, no. Reverend Burroughs was hanged. Choked to death by a rope, and I knew that feeling all too well. But just like Duncan, the man had died at the hands of his own flock. Had I been a Puritan in Salem then, I’d have renounced my faith out of sheer shame for what had been done in its name.

I wept for all of them nightly for a long, long time after that. Sometimes, when it’s quiet and I’m alone, I still do. I cry for them… I cry for Duncan… I cry for myself, having lost him.

And my grief, it seems, is as immortal as my body, for it lives on still. Every bit as powerful, every bit as painful, as it was before… though three full centuries have come and gone.

1998

Three hundred years later, on the anniversary of Duncan’s death, I stood on the cliffs of Sanctuary, facing the sea. There was a lighthouse standing offshore now. It reached skyward from the tiny, lonely island where before there had been only seabirds and the occasional treasure hunter. Built a century ago, it had been used for a time, and then forgotten. Then it had been abandoned for the better part of five decades, its rounded glass looking like a lifeless, sightless eye. A sad reminder of the way time moved on all around me. The way the world grew and changed and evolved.

I did not.

There had been movement at the lighthouse a month or so ago. For a moment I’d felt an absurd hope spring up in my heart, a foolish joy the place seemed to be about to come back to life.

But I had not.

I was in limbo, living, but incomplete, waiting, always waiting for the return of my soulmate. My lover. I’d been many places in the endless years of my life. But wherever I roamed, I had but one purpose—to search for him. I scanned every sea of strange faces in search of the one I hoped to see.

In three hundred years that search had left me with nothing but disappointment.

I stood with my feet apart, arms spread wide, head tilted back. The sea wind whipped my hair behind me, and a soft glow painted my face as the full moon rose over the ocean. I knew, had always known, of the power in the moon. A physical tug, a pull. The waves felt it; the tides changed because of it. Animals felt it. Coyotes and wolves bayed in response. Lunatics felt it, stirring the sickness in their minds.

Witches felt it.

The surge of power within growing stronger and peaking with the moon. At the full moon I felt I could do anything. I was invulnerable, invincible, and as powerful as the Goddess herself. And I had only one focus for the immense power the full moon gave to me.

Duncan.

But something was different tonight. Perhaps it was only the endless longing in my heart—heaven knew it had been often enough before—but I felt more hopeful than usual. I felt as if… as if perhaps he were near.

And yet I couldn’t trust my own feelings where Duncan was concerned, for “wishful thinking” was real and powerful and sometimes too potent to distinguish from true intuition.

Standing at the eastern edge of the circle I had cast, I spread my arms and felt the wind on my face. “Mighty Energies of the East, Sacred Ones of Air, I call on you to attend this circle and empower these rites.” Immediately the wind in my face sharpened.

To my right, facing South, Arianna stood in the same position I had, arms spread outward and upward. She’d kept her blond hair short, and it ruffled in the breeze like the feathers of a golden bird preparing to take flight. Softly she intoned, “Ancient Energies of the South, Blessed Ones of Fire, I call on you to attend this circle and empower these rites.“

As I watched her, Arianna’s face glowed, just for a moment, as if someone held a candle before her, but no candle was there. Only the balefire we’d built, but that was behind her, in the circle’s center. Her huge brown eyes flicked open, and she tilted her head as if she’d felt that warmth on her face.

Solemnly, I crossed to the opposite side, the west. “Healing Energies of the West, Ancient Ones of Water, I call on you to attend this circle and empower these rites.”

Dampness… dotting my face, my forearms. I blinked at the mist that rose from the ground to leave its kiss of moisture on my skin. Truly some powerful magic would be worked here tonight.

Arianna had moved to the North now, and in a strong voice she called, “Powerful Energies of the North, Eternal Mother Earth, I call on you to attend this circle and empower these rites.”

And then I started, because I felt the earth herself rumble beneath me. A deep-throated vibration welled up from the ground, trembling against my feet and shaking my body so slightly I might have imagined it. When my wide-eyed gaze shot to Arianna’s, she met it, and nodded once. She’d felt it, too.

I moved to the center of the circle, then, to invoke the fifth element, that of spirit. And then together we said the words that would bring the presence of Divinity to our circle this night. When we finished it seemed that the circle pulsed more powerfully with unseen energies than it had ever done before.

Meeting Arianna’s eyes, I saw that she knew what I did. Something had changed. Something was happening. I’d planned to recite an incantation, to cast and to conjure this night, just as I had on every Esbat night for the past three hundred years. I used every power I possessed to ensure that when Duncan returned, as I knew he would one day, he would come here. To Sanctuary. To me. Over and over I’d willed the elements and every force of the astral plane to bring Duncan back here, to the place where I’d lost him. I could not hasten his return; it would have been wrong of me to try. His soul would incarnate again only when it was ready, when the time was right. But my greatest fear was that when he did live again, I’d never find him. The world was a big place, after all.

And though I sought him everywhere I went, I always returned here, where I waited. Endlessly waited, for his return.

But tonight was not the same as all those other nights when I’d worked my magick. As I stood in the center of my circle this night, with the large flat stone before me and the tools of my craft spread out upon it—cauldron and blade, wand and pentacle, censers and candles—I felt something different.

The winds of the four directions seemed to spin and whirl about the two of us as Arianna and I knelt before the altar, and she looked up into my eyes.

“No conjuring tonight, Raven,” she whispered. “Something’s not right here,
I feel
it.”

Blinking, I lowered my head. “Perhaps the Universe is angry with me… Plotting to make Duncan come here even if it’s against his wishes is not exactly ethical.”

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen the elements react this way to a tiny bit of arguably manipulative magick before.” She moved closer to me as the whirlwind swept around us, around the balefire and the altar stone at the circle’s center. The swirling action of the wind on the flames was something to see, for they narrowed and lengthened as if the fire reached toward the heavens. A loud cry made me look up fast, gripping Arianna’s hand as I did, only to see a large raven land upon the stone altar. It looked at me, tilted its shiny black head, and looked at me again. The balefire’s flames leaped with a snap and a hiss, and I gasped as in the brighter light of the fire, I saw more clearly.

“Look! He’s injured!”

Arianna squinted, leaning closer, and saw the tiny droplet of blood that clung, quivering, to the bird’s gleaming breast. It trembled as if in time with the tiny rapid heartbeat. I reached out very slowly. “Come, namesake. Let me tend that for you.”

But the bird only squawked once more and, lifting its great wings, pumped them mightily and flew away.

Still staring at the spot where the bird had been, I whispered, “What does it mean?”

Arianna squeezed my hand. “The Druids said Ravens brought warnings. I don’t know, Raven, it was as if he were trying to tell you something.”

“But what?” I saw the blankness in her eyes, and rubbed my hands over my chilled arms. She wouldn’t speak it, but I knew what she was thinking. A raven—with a wound over his heart. It could well portend my death. Even now there might be a Dark One lurking, waiting to…

“You’ve survived their attempts before, Raven,” Arianna whispered, as if reading my thoughts. “You’re as good with your blade as I am now. You can defend yourself.”

I nodded, but the chill of fear still danced barefoot over my spine. “Let’s close the circle, Arianna. Something feels… wrong.”

“All right.” Quietly then, we performed the closing rites, and then gathered up our tools and turned our backs to the sea, facing the giant of a house.

It had begun as a simple home built on the site of my dear aunt Eleanor’s cabin. But it had… grown. We had money enough. Two talented Witches with several centuries to accumulate wealth would always have money enough to do whatever they wanted. Adding on to the house had become a bit of a hobby. A tradition. Almost an inside joke. The rambling structure was so utterly outrageous now it would no doubt have drawn curious sightseers from town in droves… under normal circumstances.

But we were
Witches.
We cast spells over the place, and wove astral shields to protect it. It wasn’t invisible, of course. But it blended in with the woods if one viewed it from the east, with the sea if one viewed it from the west, the sky if one looked at it from below. There were ways to avoid notice. There was magick.

Of course, we came and went often… and sometimes were forced to let years pass between visits, just to make sure the locals never became suspicious.

It was easier now, though. Sanctuary boasted few actual residents. Oh, there were the lobster men on the north shore, and the shop owners on the south. Innkeepers scattered hither and yon, and a handful of restaurateurs. But most of the people who came here today were vacationers in search of a coastal getaway and some autumn foliage. That log village with its mud tracks that I’d ridden into so long ago was long forgotten now. A tourist-trap had emerged in its place. It was no longer even part of Massachusetts, but of Maine, which itself had been a part of Massachusetts Bay Colony three hundred years ago.

As we approached the sprawling home we’d created, I felt Arianna nudge my ribs. “Shall we add a new wing this visit? Georgian this time?”

She was attempting to cheer me, I knew. “We did that in thirty-seven, love,” I said, pointing to the stately brick section that housed our overflowing library, our favorite sitting room, and a small alcove for… for whatever purpose we could think of. I’d thought as we’d built it how Duncan would love it. How we could sit there together, in that alcove, and reminisce, and…

Tears welled up in my eyes. I rarely spent a day when they didn’t.

“Oh,” Arianna said. “Well, Victorian, then? Or Gothic? Gothic would be so poetic for a pair of Witches, don’t you think?”

“You’re forgetting the west wing, Arianna. With the gargoyles we imported from France in eighteen-ninety-nine lining the roof.”

“Right, that slipped my mind.” She pouted. “Do we have a colonial wing?”

“Complete with a cobblestone hearth,” I said, smiling, letting my friend draw me out of my contemplative state. “Face it, Arianna, we have everything except a log cabin sprouting from this house of ours.”

“A log cabin…” Arianna said, clasping her chin and tilting her head as she studied the many roofs, some steep, some shallow, some flat, some slate, some steel, some shingled, all sporting chimneys—cobblestone, brick, block, and steel. “No,” Arianna said thoughtfully. “Logs would simply clash.”

The laughter burst from me just as she’d intended it to. And she smiled at my reaction as she reached for the back door. “It’s good to see you laugh, Raven,” she said softly, pulling our door open, smiling back at me. “It’s so seldom that you do.” Then her smile died as she stared past me, out toward the sea, and a curious frown creased her brow. “Oh, look.”

“What is it?” I turned to follow her gaze and saw that the old lighthouse standing dark and lonely on its tiny island was coming alive again. A light came on in one of the lower windows. Why it should thrill me so, I had no idea. Seeing a light in formerly dead eyes… perhaps somewhere inside it reminded me of my long wait, and my hope that my dead lover would be restored to me one day soon. Another light came on, followed by another. And for just an instant I felt a shiver as an icy finger trailed a path up my spine.

“Just what we need,” I muttered. “A new neighbor— and so close.” A reaction that made far more sense than the one I truly felt.

“Raven,” Arianna whispered. “Raven, look…”

She pointed to a dark shape moving in the sky, and as I squinted and it moved into the moonlight, I realized it wasn’t one shape but several; a dozen or more ravens, flying toward the lighthouse. One by one they landed atop it, or around it. And then in chorus they began to shout.

Drawn by invisible hands, I walked toward them, until Arianna clasped my shoulders, drawing me to a halt.

“Come inside, Raven.”

“I should go there,” I whispered. “They’re telling me something, don’t you see?”

“Yes. And what if what they’re telling you is ”Stay away from here, Raven St. James!“ What then, hmm?”

I blinked, shaking my head. “I don’t think—”

“The Celts used to say that when evil preachers died, they were transformed into ravens,” she blurted.

And I blinked, my stomach clenching. The only evil preacher I knew—had ever known—was Nathanial Dearborne. The bastard who’d killed my mother and hunted me all my days. How many times had I barely escaped his blade? How many more would there be before one of us paid the ultimate price?

Perhaps it was he the birds warned me of. Perhaps he’d caught up to me again after all these years. He was long overdue for another attempt. And maybe he’d finally found our haven, the place we’d kept so secret we’d hoped no other immortal would ever know we came here.

“Why is that bastard so determined to have my heart?” I whispered.

“You know why, Raven.”

I closed my eyes. “Because of Duncan.”

“Yes. Because of Duncan. And because of your magickal power—you’ve always known how special it is, Raven. You have a healing gift like no other, and you’re able to draw luck and good fortune to you like no Witch I’ve known.”

I closed my eyes. “I’ve lived three hundred years without the man I love. You call that luck or good fortune?”

“You know what I mean. The wealth, Raven. The way you and your aunt prospered back then, and the way we do now.”

“Any Witch could do that.”

“I lived two hundred years before I found you again, Raven. And I never managed it.”

“You got by.”

“Getting by is irrelevant. Have you looked at our bank statements lately?”

I sighed. Making good financial decisions had always come as naturally to me as breathing. It wasn’t something I was overly proud of, but I doubted I could help it if I tried. If I bought a stock, it skyrocketed. If I opened a bank account, the interest rate went up. If I bought so much as a lottery ticket…