Single Witch's Survival Guide (30 page)

But David stepped back before I could use it. He lowered his blade, pointing it toward the sand. He inclined his head, patently accepting the authority of the Court. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Caleb and Tony following suit.

Pitt collapsed to his knees. His fleshy hands clutched at the sand. His breath came in short gasps, and his entire body trembled.

The baritone Watcher continued. “You will be confined to a chamber at Hecate’s Court until such time as the Court shall hear this matter. So mote it be.”

Seven other voices joined in. “So mote it be!”

There was a crack of thunder, louder than any my witches and I had ever raised as we practiced our weather working. A flash of golden light blinded me. I blinked hard, twice.

When my vision finally cleared, I could see that the dock was empty. There was no sign of the Allen Cask. Norville Pitt was gone as well, leaving behind only the smeared imprint of hands and knees in the sand. The eight Watchers remained at the top of the beach, still shrouded in their secrecy.

David looked to the left, then to the right, before he took his position beside me. Caleb and Tony returned to their witches. Raven and Emma looked stunned, utterly overwhelmed by all they had witnessed. Their familiars crouched nearby, equally aghast. Neko leaned in, sending a tendril of concerned energy.

“Now, magistrix of the Jane Madison Academy,” a voice rang out, and I believed it was the first woman who had spoken. “You may begin your Major Working. Let all who bear witness judge you fairly and with mercy. In the name of Hecate, so mote it be!”

CHAPTER 18

MY HEART POUNDED. I longed for a break, for the opportunity to reassure my students. The Watchers had spoken, though. We had no choice but to begin.

I strode to the east and began the Mabon ritual for the first Major Working of the Madison Academy. The words were woven in the fabric of my heart. My body knew precisely how many steps to take. My fingers knew how to curl over the candle, how to summon the flame, how to greet the elementals of Air.

We all did our parts flawlessly. Emma summoned Fire. Raven shed her midnight robe and, skyclad, called on Water. Together, the three of us sealed the circle by drawing on the strength of Earth. Our familiars moved with us in our magic dance, catching our power, reflecting it back to us. I leaned most heavily on Neko, of course, but I did not hesitate to mix my strength, to pull from Hani and Kopek.

The warders followed along, tracing our magical circle with the fire of their swords. Watching Caleb and Tony, I felt honored and protected. Watching David, I felt cherished.

We worked quickly, building the basic framework of our ritual. We Protected the Innocent, confining our working to spare all unsuspecting creatures, human and animal both. We Prepared the Earth, priming the land beneath our dome.

But this was the real Major Working, the actual ritual and not one of our endless preparatory studies. And so we expanded the Preparation beyond the etheric half-sphere of our warders. Carefully, in perfect balance, we stretched our powers to include the lake we had sworn to repair.

Only after we’d set our boundaries—stretched to include floating mats of duckweed, dead and blasted trees, the four dry streams that had once flowed with water—I strode to the massive woven basket in the center of our circle. It was time to activate our eastern quadrant, to harness the power of Air.

We started with a fist-size chunk of coral. Its orange-red arms branched like a tree, gaining strength from the empty space that vibrated between the stretches of its solid substance. Coral was a classic protectant, a charm against evil. But most importantly for our purposes, coral was a bond against natural disasters, against storms that rose with too much power.

With Raven’s help, I twined angelica flowers around its branches. The herb was highly protective, guarding against evil. It was particularly effective at the beginning of a ritual, when its awesome strength could spread over an entire working.

When we were satisfied with the twist of white flowers around vermilion coral, Raven and I stepped back. In unison, we reached for Emma, ready to bring her into the circle of our magic.

Our powers merged—violet, gold, silver. Our hands hovered over the coral and angelica. The space between our palms shimmered, and the outlines of our fingers blurred. Together, we lifted a carefully selected rune, one of the jade plaques that I counted among my most valuable magical possessions. Eihwaz. The yew tree. The rune resonated with strength, with defense and protection.

We planted the plaque at the root of the coral, taking care to lean it against several fronds of angelica. Once all three of us were satisfied with the jade’s placement, we chanted:

“Powers of the East, of Air,

Share with us your gifts so fair,

Wisdom, thought, perception shine,

Inspire us to be divine.”

Our familiars fed the energy of our spell among themselves, bouncing it within the confines of our circle. I knew the moment the warders felt the power we raised—Caleb took a step back, and Tony pinned Raven with a fiercely protective glare. David was facing away from us, scanning the perimeter of the beach for any danger that approached by land. I could sense his attention, though, his raptor-sharp awareness of all that we were doing. The warder-witch bond between us tightened, and the tug on my belly stopped just short of pain.

The spell worked. Air rose in response to our summons. Not a whirlwind, nothing as dangerous as that. Nothing like the storm we had unleashed on Lughnasadh. Rather, a solid breeze rippled from the eastern quadrant of our circle, drying away some of the omnipresent humidity, carrying the fresh scent of pine trees on an autumn night.

Of course, the raising cost us strength. My muscles felt ropy and stretched, as if I had completed an entire day of yoga. I knew immediately that this ritual was demanding more than any other we had practiced. That was the cost of bringing in all the lake, all the territory we sought to heal.

The expense was worth it, though. We were forging a new type of magic, a new bond between the disparate parts of our working. Stone, herb, and rune together; we were re-classifying magic, making it something new, something unique to the Madison Academy.

Proud of our success, I led my students to the southern point of our circle. I’d chosen garnet for the Fire quadrant. The blood red crystal enhanced strength and endurance, offering up healing energy.

My prize stone was the size of a pigeon egg. Its facets caught the sparkle of the magic arrayed around it, fracturing the light, sending it back upon us a thousand fold. We teamed garnet with lovage, nestling the stone in the bright green of the plant’s sharp-toothed leaves. Uruz was the rune for the southern point—a canted house sketched with three simple lines. Uruz was the symbol of strength.

As one, we chanted over our trio of symbols:

“Powers of the South, of Fire,

Wrap us in your magic gyre,

Energy and strength of will,

Passion with our hearts do fill.”

Fire gathered around us—the dangerous flicker of electricity. The charge crackled against the silk of my gown.

Kopek flinched as the first bolt of lightning struck the ground. Emma reached out to him, comforting him, gentling him. Neko added to the wash of safety, confirming that the Fire was controlled, was ours to command.

Outside our circle, Caleb raised a hand. I recognized the lines of concern on his face, his worry about those he had sworn to protect. Emma raised her own palm to match his across the circle, across the coruscating bands of magic light. The warder settled back on his heels, accepting his witch’s command, even as he tightened his grip on his sword.

We moved to the west, to Water. This time, it took more of my energy to walk away. I needed to spare more of my strength to control the Fire, to tame the lightning that wanted to reach out across the half-sphere of our working. My fingertips tingled, and I recognized the danger of fatigue.

I steeled myself and concentrated on building our bond with Water. Sodalite for confidence, for wisdom and the calming of inner conflicts. The stone was the color of deepest, clearest water, echoing its quadrant’s core. We added Solomon’s seal, with its simple oval leaves and bells of white flowers. The plant radiated wisdom, the following of hunches, the achievement of dreams. We anchored the corner with Ansuz, the slanted F that resonated with the power of the oldest gods rising from primordial seas. Ansuz whispered of wisdom and harmony and truth, and we drew upon its strength as we spoke our spell.

“Powers of the West, of Water,

Reach out to your questing daughters,

Show us paths to joy, to pleasure,

Fill us in unstinted measure.”

I stumbled over the opening rhyme, and it took Raven and Emma’s combined voices to bring me back on track. For a heartbeat, I thought we had failed, that we had neglected something, overlooked some vital part of our ritual.

But then I sensed the water hovering around us. It teased me, like a scent I could barely follow across a meadow, like the memory of a dream. There was no water in the ground, no water that flowed—that was the cost of four summers of drought. But water was layered in the air, in the humidity that pressed against our flesh.

We needed more power to extract that water for our spell. I reached for Neko, silently demanding his assistance. He braced himself against my pull, digging in his physical heels, as if to avoid the crumbling edge of a cliff. I pushed again, demanding more, reaching past my own familiar to Hani, to Kopek. After an endless moment, an epoch outside of time and space, Raven and Emma bolstered my claim. Their familiars responded to my need, reflecting power toward me. I collected it all—the energy of the familiars and the strength of my students, my sisters in this working.

Finally, we were able to pull Water into the ritual. It started like the finest of mists, the faintest haze. Encouraged by our success, I poured more of my core strength into our summoning. I repeated the last two lines of the spell like a child’s incantation against monsters that lived beneath her bed, and the mist turned to drizzle, to a fine, steady rain.

And then it was time to drag myself to the last quadrant, to Earth. Each step felt like an epic journey. I realized I was clutching my students’ hands; Emma stood on my right and Raven on my left. We supported each other as we moved, lending strength that none of us could remember possessing.

Moldavite was the last stone for our working, green and glistening. The mineral was extracted from the core of the earth, from the dying breath of a meteorite that had plunged into our world eons before. Its crystals represented our higher selves, the heights to which we could aspire from our earth-bound base.

We added frankincense, that ancient gift, the essence of meditation and spiritual devotion. We anchored the corner with the Inguz rune, a stylized diamond, the archaic symbol of Earth.

It was hard to remember the words of the spell, almost impossible to recall the specific order of the rhymes. Raven stammered as we started, and all three of us stopped, blinking with stupid exhaustion. Emma took the lead, then, starting our incantation, and we finally joined in like a ragtag band of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

“Powers of the north, of Earth,

Recognize our humble worth,

Bring us patience, strength, and wealth

That we might turn this lake to health.”

I knew before we finished the words that we had not sparked the working. Earth was beneath us, of course. Our feet were anchored in the sand of the beach. Nothing we said, though, nothing we did, made anything come alive. Nothing turned the ordinary world to magic.

Pushing down a whisper of despair, I started to recite the spell again. I reached out for the combined strength of our familiars, tugging on Hani and Kopek, bringing them into a tighter circle with Neko. But as I reached the last words, I knew we had failed.

Raven and Emma understood the same. Raven was shivering; I could practically see her heart beating through the pale skin of her chest. Emma’s face was drawn; the circles beneath her eyes looked bruised.

I looked through the dome, trying to measure what the Court members were making of our failure. Was there partial credit on this exam? The eight observers, though, were lost to me. I could not sense them directly.

For the first time since arriving at the beach, I started to panic.

Our careful balance over the elements we’d already summoned began to fray. A gust of wind swept toward us from our right, from the east, where we had confined the power of Air. The blow surprised me; I’d taken for granted our ability to maintain the control we’d already invested in our working.

As if to mock my over-confidence, a bolt of lightning broke free from the south. Fire branched from the apex of our protective arch to the ground, flashing bright enough to blind us. The steady rain of the west surged with strength, pelting the ground beneath it, splashing us with energy that burned like acid.

Each magical surge ate away at the little power we still maintained. The summoned elements danced to a symphony we no longer controlled. They were out of balance, spinning without harmony. We needed Earth to settle them, to bind them, but Earth was the one thing we no longer possessed the strength to summon.

Raven and Emma tried. I felt them slip back into their age-old bonds, the twinned power they had shared as infants. They plumbed the depths of their familiars, swept through to include Neko in one final, desperate bid. I tried to offer up my own strength, tried to give them the raw force they needed, but I was too weak, too bound up in the spells we had already cast.