T*Witches: Kindred Spirits (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

THE BEGINNING

Ileana, beloved child, here is the tale as it was passed down to me. This much is history:

The Salem madness erupted when two little girls, nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris and eleven-year-old Abigail Williams, began behaving oddly — screaming curses, having “fits” or seizures, and falling into “trances.” The girls and their friends, who began displaying similar behavior, had been listening to scary tales told by the Parris’s Indian-Caribbean slave, Tituba
.

Elizabeth, Abigail, and their friends were examined by local physicians — among them the eminent doctor Jacob DuBaer — and it was decided that they were under the influence of the devil
.

The children were then subjected to terrible pressure and disgusting concoctions meant to “help” them reveal the names of Satan’s followers, the witches who were causing their suffering. The terrified little girls named Tituba and two other women, one ill-tempered and disliked in the community, the other a helpless and possibly deranged beggar woman
.

Thus it began. Soon, other “witches” were revealed. They were imprisoned, tried, and with few exceptions, found guilty and executed. Many who were named as witches were women whose behavior or financial circumstances — in other words, their independence — marked them as different from what was expected of them in the 1600s
.

Our great ancestor Abigail Antayus Stetson was such a one
.

At least four things set Abigail apart from the other women of Salem. She was a brilliant physician, though only allowed to tend to women. Though married, she was known and called by her maiden name. Her husband, Samuel Stetson, a ship’s captain, treated her as an equal in all respects. And Abigail had a handsome dowry, which Captain Stetson allowed her to keep and spend as she wished
.

So she was educated, esteemed by her husband, and wealthy in her own right. All of which went
against what was considered right and proper in the Salem colony. There were many who believed that Samuel was too easygoing with his young wife, that he was too charmed by her beauty and brilliance. They grumbled that young Abigail, with her healing herbs and potions, had cast a spell over the admired captain. Why else would he let her wander the town at all hours tending to the sick and needy rather than keeping her at home where she belonged to care for her own family?

One who led the complaining chorus was Dr. Jacob DuBaer. This black-bearded bachelor used leeches, bloodletting, and harsh tonics in his practice. And was outraged that so many of Salem’s women — and too many of his male patients, as well — preferred Abigail Antayus’s methods to his own. In 1690, Samuel Stetson was killed during a storm at sea. Married at 17, widowed at 25, Abigail was left with three small children to care for and a tidy fortune, which many a man wished to share. Among those eager to wed the “poor widow woman” was Jacob DuBaer. But Abigail refused him
.

Like your own father, dear Ileana, your great ancestor Jacob was a jealous and unforgiving man. Two years later, in 1692, he took his revenge by naming Abigail as one of the witches of Salem
.

He wasn’t exactly wrong. Indeed, Abigail was a “witch.” Her creed, like ours, was to embrace and nurture
all the creatures of Gaia, or Mother Earth. She practiced her healing in keeping with our purpose: so that all things might grow to their most bountiful goodness
.

Of course, you will recognize those words as one of the principles inscribed upon the Dome …

Of course, Ileana thought, feeling unexplainably tired again, she had stared up at those words as a child sitting on Karsh’s lap, snuggling against his black velvet vest. The memory overwhelmed her. A river of unshed tears mounted inside her head, making it too heavy to hold up.

As Ileana drifted off to sleep, Karsh’s journal sliding gently from her lap, another young witch was hearing the saying for the first time.

“So that all things might grow to their most bountiful goodness,” Cam repeated, savoring the words.

“You never heard that?” Shane guided her over a fern-filled bog in the woods. “It’s one of the sayings carved into the Unity Dome.”

The grip of his firm hand, the intensity of his twinkling eyes, the obvious delight he took in teaching her about the island were more confusing than comforting.

Several times, Jason’s face, his loving, concerned expression, his distress at the airport, returned disturbingly to Cam’s mind. It was a handsomer face than Shane’s — but
no way had she ever felt
this way
around him. “The Unity Dome,” she repeated, bringing herself back to the present. “I haven’t been there yet,” she told Shane. “We’re going there for the … service.”

“Karsh’s funeral.”

Cam nodded. “So Coventry was settled in the 1700s.” She tried to get Shane back on track. He’d been telling her about the island.

“As a refuge from prejudice and bloodshed on the mainland,” he explained. “The first to arrive were escapees from the witchcraft trials. And some people of mixed African and Caribbean blood, slaves or free citizens who brought with them Chango rituals and Voodoo spells. Lord Karsh’s ancestors were among them.

“Later, from the frontier, white settlers with special gifts — healers, rainmakers, water dousers — and Native American shamans, or medicine men and women,” he added tactfully, “and immigrant Chinese soothsayers. Lady Fan’s family — she’s one of the Elders you’ll meet tomorrow. Her family arrived in the 1800s during the building of the intercontinental railway. They all found their way here. To freedom.”

“You know a lot about this place.” Cam was impressed.

“You will, too,” he assured her, “by the time you’re initiated.”

If I’m initiated
, Cam thought, then quickly changed the subject. “Is Crailmore near here?”

“Crailmore’s to the north and west, about as far as you can get from here and still be on Coventry.”

“My … Miranda’s there,” she told him.

“I know,” he said gently.

“Shane.” Cam stopped suddenly and touched his arm. “You would tell me if you thought she was in danger, right? If you thought Thantos was harming her?”

He looked at her strangely. “Of course. But you’re her daughter. You’d sense if she was in danger.”

Cam wanted to believe him.

Then she felt it again. The certainty that they were being followed. Or watched. She whirled around and zoomed her telescopic eyes as far through the heavily wooded area as she could. She was able to see a great distance, tunnel-visioning through the dense canopy of leaves.

Nothing.

“Stop,” she instructed him. “Just stay still for a second. And tell me you don’t sense someone watching.”

He hesitated, then let out a long sigh. “Sorry. But, no.”

“So I’m being … childish … paranoid?” Cam asked, though now she knew she wasn’t.

Shane leaned against the knotty bark of an oak tree. He was clearly trying to decide whether to tell her something or not. After a moment, he smiled — a signal that
he’d made up his mind not to—and slid down the rough trunk of the tree, motioning for her to sit with him.

Cam lost track of time as Shane chewed on a fallen pine needle and described how he’d grown up here among family, friends, teachers. He was a star, more gifted in the ways of the craft than his friends or relatives. His giftedness was noticed — and, he thought, rewarded — by one of the most powerful warlocks on the island, Lord Thantos DuBaer.

“He took me in and trained me,” Shane confessed. “I spent years learning from him, under his guidance.”

“You lived at Crailmore?” she ventured.

“No. But every afternoon I’d spend with Thantos’s trainers in the caves beneath Crailmore.”

“Caves?”

“Underground, miles of them.” Shane made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Sacred and secret caves. It’s said that spirits of the dead can be summoned from there, that the walls hold long-buried secrets.”

“Hmmm,” Cam mused. “If walls could talk —”

“On Coventry, sometimes they can,” Shane teased, flashing one of his disturbingly handsome, dimpled smiles at her.

“There’s a maze of interconnecting underground tunnels on the island,” he continued. “At one time, it was
an underground railroad, a safe harbor for witches and warlocks who feared they were being hunted.”

Ping!
She felt it again. The word “hunted” tripped her inner alarm. She could practically feel eyes boring into her back. Someone, or some
thing
, was watching.

Shane stood abruptly. “We’d better get you back. We promised your sister.”

They took a different path back, this one narrow, rocky, and dense with thick, jutting roots of ancient trees. Still, it was odd that Camryn-the-Coordinated should fall. One foot unexpectedly got caught under a half-buried plank of wood. She lost her balance and did an embarrassing face-plant into the dirt.

She wasn’t hurt. But that wasn’t the reason she refused Shane’s outstretched hand.

Wood was not a conductor of electricity, yet Cam had felt a slight shock, an electric tingle shoot up her leg as she’d tripped. It grew stronger now as she pulled the board out of the earth and examined it carefully.

“Are you going to set it on fire?” Shane teased. “Punish it for tripping you?”

Cam ignored his attempt at cute.

Covered with a decade’s worth of mold and dirt, the old plank could have been any random piece of wood in the forest.

Cam knew it wasn’t.

She squinted. Even with her extraordinary eyesight, she could barely make it out, but something — a sign, a symbol — had been carved into the wood. “Do you see this?” She stood up and handed it to Shane.

He turned it over a few times and shook his head. “See what?”

Using her fingernails, Cam tore away more layers of impacted dirt. The board was very faded, washed by years of moisture. Still, she could tell. Once, someone had lovingly carved a design into this worn plank. Once, it had been a sign, perhaps hung over the doorway of someone’s home.

Instinctively, her fingers felt for the necklace she always wore, a delicate gold chain bearing a sun charm. It fit precisely into Alex’s moon charm, forming a perfect circle. The linked images, sun and moon, were the same design she could see in the plank she’d tripped over. There were words carved under the design.
LunaSoleil
, French for moon and sun.

“My parents’ house is around here, isn’t it? Can you … can we see it?” Trembling, Cam looked up into Shane’s now-shaded eyes.

He turned away from her. “It was torn down years ago.”

He was lying.

CHAPTER FIVE

A SAD GOOD-BYE

This much Ileana would do. She would take the twins to the Unity Dome to say a final farewell to the old warlock they all had loved.

For this she had bathed scrupulously. She had perfumed her scrubbed skin with rose water. Shampooed her hair with an infusion of flaxseed oil, aloe, and rosemary, then unknotted her tangled white-gold tresses with the wide-toothed comb Karsh had carved for her. Long ago. When Ileana was a child, younger than Alex and Camryn were now.

When she called the twins from the gate of her cottage, she could see in their eyes the wonder and approval she hadn’t allowed herself to feel.

“Ileanna,” Cam whispered, awed. “You look … beautiful.”

“Like a goddess,” Alex blurted.

Ileana’s jaw tightened as she fought back emotion. “Not half as good as Lord Karsh deserves.” She’d tried to sound crisp, matter-of-fact, but it had come out a weepy whisper. To pull herself together, she studied the twins severely. Cam was wearing a long, delicate dress that seemed familiar to Ileana, a gossamer gown of palest pink with slender shoulder straps.

“It’s yours,” Cam confessed, hoping her guardian witch would be okay with her choice. She really had no clue what was considered proper for a Coventry funeral. Everything she’d brought seemed beyond wrong.

And she could hardly look to Alex as an example.

Her born-to-offend sister was all about stark black. Tight black jeans, black work boots, and a black Spandex T-shirt. The only touch of color in Alex’s ensemble was the faded patchwork quilt she had tossed across her shoulders like a shawl and the pink spikes in her hair.

Ileana didn’t rage or rag on either of them. Sounding more like gentle Karsh than her perfectionist self, she merely sighed and said, “Oh, well, I suppose it’s what’s inside that counts.”

They started through the woods. Above the tree
line, Cam and Alex caught sight of strange fireworks flashing.

“It’s just sunlight bouncing off the glass panels of the Unity Dome,” Ileana informed them. “Close your mouths. The bees have more important places to explore. And, if it makes you feel any better,” she told them, “I, too, have never been to the funeral of someone who meant … so much to me … as Lord Karsh.” He’d been both mother and father to her.

“I have,” Alex murmured, thinking back again to the day her adoptive mother, Sara, had been buried.

That day, less than a year ago, griefstricken and alone, Alex had felt nothing but a deadly weariness. She hadn’t been able to cry. Or feel. Or think. She’d been in Crow Creek, Montana, with no idea how or where she’d live. Then the cheerful sprite who she’d called Doc had shown up.

Pasty-faced with what Alex now knew was the white herbal cream he used to preserve his ancient skin, Karsh had returned her half-moon charm and told her he knew just the place for her. Before nightfall, she was two thousand miles from Montana, on Camryn Barnes’s doorstep in Marble Bay, Massachusetts.

“Doc,” Alex whispered aloud, as if he could rescue her now as magically as he had then. “Karsh.”

“Will we have to see him?” Cam asked in a shaky voice. “I hope not. I don’t think I can —”

“He will be there,” Ileana said. “And those who wish to, will look upon the great tracker; those who prefer not to, won’t. You can decide once we’re in the hall. Have you thought yet of what you will say?”

Cam stopped abruptly. “Say?”

“About what?” Alex asked, although Ileana’s thoughts made it plain that they were expected to offer a eulogy, to speak of what Karsh had meant to them.

“Many of his devoted fledglings will be participating —”

“Oh, no.” Cam gasped. “I mean, he was
your
guardian —”

“I submitted your names to speak in my place. It’s a great honor,” Ileana assured them.

“We wouldn’t think of depriving you of it,” Alex shot back.

“Ungrateful fledglings!” the blond witch railed — sounding, Alex was glad to hear, like her irritable old self again. “Is my devastation not complete? After losing Lord Karsh, my dearest friend in the world, and now that grief has driven me nearly as mad and helpless as Miranda —”

“That’s our mother you’re talking about,” Alex felt compelled to remind her.

Ileana ignored the interruption. “You want to make
my misery and humiliation complete? I will not stand, weak and defeated, before all who have known and envied me since I was a child!”

“Oh? And what, it’s easier for us to face a mob of strangers and make fools of ourselves?” Cam asked.

“Exactly!” Ileana was relieved that they understood. “Far easier —”

“For
you
,” Cam groused.

“Get over yourselves,” Ileana commanded. “What difference will it make to you? No one here really knows you —”

Shane
, Cam thought.

They were emerging from the woods, trekking toward the south gate into the village. “Shane?” Ileana had read that thought, loud and clear. “You care more about what one of Thantos’s ex-lackeys thinks than about saving your guardian from disgrace,” she accused.

“She said,’shame,’” Alex quickly intervened, staring dumbfounded at the eruption of color around them. The buildings of Coventry Village were of every vivid hue. Small shops and houses, none more than three stories tall — except, still in the distance, the soaring Unity Dome — were painted purple and green, orange and turquoise, and decorated with rainbow pentagons, brightly striped awnings, and painted flower boxes overflowing with unseasonable blooms. There were café tables surrounding
a pleasant village square, which was usually bustling. This morning, however, only waiters lounged there — and even they, Alex discovered by reading Ileana’s mind, would leave their posts shortly to attend Karsh’s funeral.

Soon they were caught up in the crowd flowing toward the Dome. Trembling at what she would see and say there, Cam took Alex’s hand. Instantly, she felt again, as she had in the woods, watchers … eyes focused on her, heating her back, neck, and face.

What’s going on?
Alex asked silently as a racket of girls’ voices assaulted her ears and Cam’s hand grew hot and sticky in her own.
There they are. Not Spike-haired Blackie, the other one, Pasty-in-Pink. But, Sers, they look so … ordinary!

I don’t know
, Cam answered.
It happened before. When I was with Shane
.

“Save your gossipy little secrets,” Ileana said, hurt and anger mingled in her voice. “Try to remember why we’re here.” She stepped behind them and, with an arm on each of their shoulders, shepherded them swiftly through the slow-moving throng.

The big amphitheater already seemed full. Sunlight streamed through the dome down onto a plain pine coffin at the center of the arena. Three people bathed in light sat behind the raised casket.

“The little one is Lady Fan,” Ileana whispered to them. “She’s one hundred and two, if she’s a day. The dotty old codger blowing his nose is Lord Grivveniss.”

As she looked at the large, strangely beautiful brown woman in the center chair, Cam’s eyes stung with tears.

“And that’s Lady Rhianna,” Ileana said, suddenly misty-eyed herself, “one of Karsh’s oldest friends.”

The regal woman’s face was placid, but Alex could hear her inner grief, and the sorrow and love in Rhianna’s silent sobbing shook Alex to her core.

Look, they’re crying
. She heard the sarcastic girl’s voice again.
They are sooo mainland
.

People were filing past Karsh’s coffin. Some of them paused silently, some merely looked, then moved on, and some laid flowers, herbs, crystals, or amulets in the pine box.

Ileana started down the aisle to the center of the arena. “No,” Cam whispered, “I … I can’t do it.”

“I’m going,” Alex said, following Ileana. Cam hesitated, looked over her shoulder at the seated, stricken strangers, then quickly scampered after her sister.

Ileana waited for them at the bottom of the stairs. With an arm around each, she led them behind the casket to introduce them to the three Exalted Elders. Lady Fan and Lord Grivveniss merely nodded. But Lady Rhianna rose as they approached.

“Apolla.” She took Cam’s hand, then Alex’s. “And Artemis. I’ve waited so long to meet you.” They felt the electric charge of her grip. It reminded Alex of the tingling sensation she’d gotten the first time she’d brushed against Karsh, when she’d mistaken him for a doctor at the hospital where Sara lay dying.

Holding onto their hands, studying their eyes, boring into their thoughts, the wild-haired witch smiled sadly. “As always, Lord Karsh was right.”

Right?
Cam tried to say aloud, but her mouth had gone dry and the word stuck in her throat.

“Right about what?” Alex asked.

But Lady Rhianna had turned to Ileana. “You have done well, reckless child. They will yet lead a dynasty.”

As Rhianna embraced their guardian, Alex looked away and found herself staring at Karsh.

The sight drew a gasp from her, which was followed by all the tears she hadn’t been able to shed for Sara. Awash in sorrow, hiccupping back sobs, Alex shut her eyes and pressed a fist to her mouth, trying to hold back the wild flood of emotion.

Her eyes flew open at the unexpected feel of something brushing her cheek. But it was a gentle caress. Soft as a first kiss, light as a summer breeze, it filled her with golden warmth. She turned to see who had touched her. Cam was still staring at Rhianna; Ileana gazed skyward at
the great glass dome, her face bathed in streaming sunlight. If not them, who had tried to comfort her?

And then she knew. The one who had always reassured her …

Ashamed of her outburst, Alex blinked away her tears and looked, really looked at the adored old warlock in the plain pine coffin. “Cam, it’s all right,” she whispered. Karsh’s face, warm brown and unlined as a boy’s, was smiling contentedly beneath the worn halo of his nappy white hair. There was no scar left from the rocks that had cut him down, the rocks their terrible cousins, Tsuris and Vey, had thrown.

“No,” Cam whispered. “I can’t. I’ll —” Her shoulder tingled suddenly, hummed with a strangely soothing vibration. She glanced up at Rhianna, who murmured to her softly, “You can, child. You must.” Then, nodding with compassion, the majestic witch turned Cam gently toward Karsh’s casket.

Like Alex, Cam was taken aback by how peaceful the beloved tracker looked, and by the smile suffused with love that seemed directed at her. His golden shroud glittered beneath a bounty of mourners’ gifts. Before she knew what she was doing — and oblivious to the fact that Alex had the same thought — Cam began to unhook her sun charm as her sister unlatched her hammered-gold moon.

A cry from the front row of the amphitheater stopped them. They looked up into Miranda’s alarmed gray eyes.

Cam blushed. Alex reddened, too, but her heightened color came from anger, not embarrassment or guilt. The mother they barely knew was sitting beside their uncle and old enemy, Thantos. And she hadn’t even gotten up to come to them, to hug them. What spell had Thantos cast on her, or did she simply care more about him than her own children?

“Hold onto your amulets,” Ileana advised them both. “You have no idea how Karsh schemed to make sure you won and wore them.”

“But what can we give him?” Cam asked.

“Your heart in words,” Ileana said.

Seven speakers, including Lady Rhianna, the most eloquent of all, had given their eulogies when Ileana signaled the twins that it was their turn.

“It’s okay,” Alex said, feeling Cam’s hand begin to tremble again in hers. “I’ll go first.”

She had no idea what she would say. But as she walked past Karsh’s casket and glanced at his still comforting face, she found herself silently asking him to speak through her … to help her find words, the right words that would please him. It was a crazy thought, she
knew, and yet she could almost hear him — imagine him, anyway — saying yes.

A murmur started through the assembly as she mounted the podium and cleared her throat.

“Aron’s daughter,” she heard. “Which one?”“The impetuous one whose wildness Karsh loved.” “Artemis, the moon child.”

Alex laughed. Which quickly silenced the crowd. “I guess I don’t have to tell you who I am,” she said. “But I want to tell you that I myself didn’t know … until Karsh — Lord Karsh — in all his black-velvet splendor … in clothing way cooler than my grotty tribute …” She plucked at her T-shirt, explaining her costume. “His face smeared in that ‘white fright’ concoction he wore …”

There were appreciative chuckles from the audience. And one caustic snort, which Alex traced to a trio of girls about her age, midway up the amphitheater, girls she’d never seen before. There was a vacant seat among them, which she only noticed because it was probably the only one left in the arena.

Clearing her throat, she continued. “Until he … until Karsh came to me in dreams. Gently and gradually, he let me know that I was not the geek, mutant, weirdo the kids at school called me — but someone … something … special. That what I had been frightened by and ashamed of were really magical gifts. Gifts to be respected
and cherished, because they were capable of helping me do great good. Karsh revealed to me that I was … one of you. A witch. And that a girl I’d seen with a frightening likeness to me was actually my sister, my long-lost twin.”

She smiled at Cam then, seated between Lady Rhianna and Ileana, her eyes on Alex, glowing with pride.
You go, girl
, Cam telegraphed. Some of the spectators burst into laughter — those who were mind readers intercepted the message.

Alex laughed, too. “You have no idea how good it feels, how freeing to be among you, to not have to hide who and what I am, to know that though most of us have never met before, we know all about one another … I mean, I definitely get the feeling that you know all about me —”

“Bet on it, T’Witch girl,” she heard. She turned toward the trio of young witches again. This time, the empty seat was filled. By Shane. Alex was about to nod at him when the girl to his right, a striking young witch whose glaring face was framed with long, wild, dark curls, suddenly wrapped her arms possessively around him and slithered her cheek against his.