The Lost Enchantress

Table of Contents

 

 

 

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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / January 2010

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Coughlin, Patricia.
The lost enchantress / Patricia Coughlin.—Berkley Sensation trade paperback ed.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-15981-1

1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Talismans—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.O7755L67 2010
813’.54—dc22
2009039321

 

 

—NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

I
n summer, when Grand’s roses spilled like scarlet blankets over the high stone walls, filling the air with their unique, almost unbearably beautiful scent, our yard was the talk of the neighborhood. As opposed to the house itself, which was year-round fodder for gossip and speculation of a far less complimentary nature.

Cars slowed when they passed the ramshackle yet somehow still regal old Victorian where my parents, my younger sister, Chloe, and I lived with my grandmother. Time and nature had conspired to batter the once brightly painted clapboards to the color of faded orchids and turn the ornate trim smoky rose. In another place and time, Oz perhaps, the house might have blended in, but in a sea of homes wearing staid coats of white or gray, it was a beacon of weirdness. Kids would pedal their bikes for blocks to check out the moat of prickly, overgrown shrubs, gargoyle-crowned downspouts and the portentous weather vane—a black iron raven with red-jeweled eyes and outspread wings—perched atop the turret. They were careful to restrict their ogling to the other side of the street, not even the bravest daring to venture too close to what was commonly known as “the witch’s house.” Of all the crazy rumors that circulated about my grandmother, that was the most ridiculous of all. As anyone who bothered to research the Celtic protection symbols set in paving stones at each entrance could have told you, 128 Sycamore was clearly the house of an enchantress.

Few people have heard of, much less understand, the power of enchantment. Say the word “enchanted” and most folks think of a favorite Disney movie; say “enchantress” and it’s likely that one of two visions will dance in their heads: the first, pure slinky evil, dressed in black spandex; the second, an ethereal beauty with long golden tresses and a swirling rainbow of gossamer veils.

I’m not evil. I’m also not a blonde, and the only time I wore a gossamer veil was when I was seven and the veil was lime green and attached to my fairy princess Halloween costume. And sadly, while I like to think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I’m sure whatever beauty I might possess doesn’t come close to the “ethereal” classification. I am, however, an enchantress. A genuine, honest-to-goodness, nonpracticing enchantress . . . emphasis on the “nonpracticing.”

The power of enchantment isn’t something you learn or acquire . . . or, I might add, ask for. It’s a blood right, meaning you’re either born with it or you’re not. In the case of my family, this rare power has been passed in T’airna blood from mother to daughter since . . . well, brace yourself because as incredible as it sounds, since forever, also known as “the time before time
.
” Of course, I can’t prove any of this with legal documents or carbon dating or historical accounts, but then, I don’t have to. Those who know the truth know, and those who don’t are better off that way.

An enchantress’s power is pure and inimitable, rooted not in witchcraft but in ancient magic now very nearly extinct. It comes from within. You’re probably wondering if there are spells involved. Sometimes. There’s also an assortment of other magical trappings to call on: crystals and talismans and amulets, special incantations and rituals; but all these are mere tools designed to enhance and channel the power that flows from deep within. And then there is the Book of Enchantment, the magical equivalent of a family Bible. It’s there that I first encountered the Winter Rose Spell, one of my family’s oldest and most treasured.

The spell is said to have inspired the romantic folk legend, which in turn inspired poet John Keats to write
The Eve of Saint Agnes
. According to legend, if a maiden performs a certain painstaking ritual she will be granted a vision of the man destined to be her one true love. The particulars of the ritual varied with time and place, everything from fasting and glancing backwards into a looking glass at bedtime, to weaving a lover’s knot and sleeping with it tucked beneath a silken pillow. In time the folklore came to be associated with Saint Agnes’ Eve, but never did it come close to matching the power of the spell itself.

The actual spell calls on the four elements of nature to fuse spheres of positive and negative energy into a single, seamless and very potent flow of time and space. Like I said, I can’t prove it. Hell, I can’t even explain it. All I can tell you is that it’s not something that happens every day. In fact, it’s only possible on a single night, and then only if the spell is executed flawlessly, down to the most miniscule detail. That night is January 20, Saint Agnes’ Eve and, according to family legend, the coldest night of the year.

I came across the spell by chance, if you believe in such a thing, written in a flowing, ornate hand on yellowed parchment and tucked deep inside the Book of Enchantment. Back then I loved everything about the heavy, oversized book with its worn-soft leather binding and the mysterious, heady aroma that wafted from its delicate pages; most of all I loved the solid comforting weight of it in my lap when I curled up in the overstuffed chair in Grand’s turret hideaway.

The only time I got to pore through it to my heart’s content was when my parents weren’t around. My mother wanted no part of what Grand insisted was our sacred birthright. She’d spent her entire life hiding the truth from others, desperate to fit in, to be “normal.” She even managed to keep my father in the dark until after their whirlwind courtship and elopement. They were married nearly a year before she ran out of plausible explanations for Grand’s sometimes, shall we say, unorthodox behavior and was forced to come clean.

In my mother’s mind, being normal meant having normal children, and she made it clear she didn’t want Chloe and me contaminated by magic, insisting it would only lead to trouble and ruin our lives. My father was even more irrational about what he referred to as Grand’s “wacky hocus-pocus crap.” Magic was a constant source of arguments and stress, and so for the sake of household harmony all things magical were kept pretty much under wraps when he was around. Which, for one reason or another, wasn’t always that much. To be honest, my folks were usually too caught up in the drama of their own lives to pay much attention to ours.

That was a good thing, since it wasn’t easy for Grand to censor herself, especially under her own roof; she was an extremely strong-willed woman who would have greatly preferred to turn her irksome son-in-law into a cocktail olive and drive a plastic toothpick through his heart. Grand and my father shared what you might call a mutual disdain society. It was only his frequent threats to move out—or more accurately, to move out taking my mother, my sister and me with him—that forced her to reluctantly walk a fine line between pacifying him and doing whatever she damn well pleased.

On the day I found the spell, my folks had taken Chloe, who was nine, to see
Cinderella
, which meant I had Grand and the Book of Enchantment all to myself for the afternoon. Even before I finished reading it, I knew the spell was going to change my life forever. It was as if the simple act of unfolding the fragile parchment permitted the words to float free and become part of me, like a promise written on my heart.

The path of passion twined with fate
. . . The words set fire to my fifteen-year-old imagination. It wasn’t hard to persuade Grand to help me with the spell. It broke her heart that her only daughter had turned her back on magic, and it was no secret she had high hopes for me. She was convinced my birthmark, a Celtic cross over my heart, was a sign of destiny and foretold great things for my future.

I found the spell in late November, which meant I had only seven weeks to master it. Grand and I spent hours secreted away in the turret while she taught me to cast a sacred circle and to weave an infinity knot from twigs of willow and red ribbon so fine it slipped through my fingers like warm honey. In spite of my parents’ efforts to “protect” me from Grand’s magic, I’d seen her float teacups across the room, start fires in the hearth or change the color of the clothes on my back with no more than a glance and a few musical phrases. Now, for the first time, she actually spoke to me about magic and what it meant to be an enchantress.

I was like a dry sponge tossed into the ocean; I absorbed every word, and the more I learned and understood, the more mystified I was about my parents’ opposition to something so utterly, amazingly cool. And the more convinced I became that they were dead wrong about magic, the more eager I was to embrace it with a vengeance.
I
would make up for their shortsightedness. In fact, I would single-handedly prove to them how wrong they were about magic and our family heritage and everything. Who knows? That might even be one of the great deeds Grand was so certain I was destined to perform.