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| November 1999 The council pronounced me not guilty of killing Linden. The vote of the seven elders of the Great Clans was not unanimous, though. The Vikroth representative and the Wyndenkell, my mother’s own clanswoman, voted against me. I had almost hoped they would condemn me, for then at least my life’s path would be certain. And in a way, I was guilty, was I not? I filled Linden’s head with my talk of vengeance, and opened his mind to the idea of calling on the darkness. If I had not actually killed my brother, then I knew he had found his way to his death along a path I had shown him. When I was found innocent, I felt lost. I knew only that I would spend the rest of my life atoning for Linden’s death. -Giomanach November 1999 Uncle Beck, Aunt Shelagh, and cousin Athar held a small celebration for me back at the house, after the trial. But my heart was full of pain. I sat at the kitchen table. Aunt Shelagh and Alwyn were swooping around, arranging food on plates. Then Uncle Beck came in. He told me that I’d been cleared of the blame and I must let it go. “How can I?” I asked. It was I who’d first tried to use dark magick to find our parents. Though Linden had acted alone in calling on the dark spectre that killed him, he wouldn’t have had the idea if I hadn’t put it into his head. Then Alwyn spoke up. She said I was wrong, that Linden had always liked the dark side. She said he like the power, and that he’d thought making herb mixtures was beneath him. Her halo of corkscrew curls, fiery red like our Mum’s, seemed to quiver as she spoke. “What are you on about?” I asked her. “Linden never mentioned any of this to me.” She said Linden had believed I wouldn’t understand. He’d told her he wanted to be the most powerful witch anyone had ever seen. Her words were like needles in my heart. Uncle Beck asked why she hadn’t told us sooner, and she said she had. I saw her jut her chin in that obstinate way she has. And Aunt Shelagh thought about it, and said, “You know, she did. She did tell me. I thought she was telling stories.” Alwyn said no one had believed her because she was just a kid. The she left the room, while Uncle Beck, Aunt Shelagh, and I sat in the kitchen and weighed our guilt. -Giomanach April 2000, Scrying doesn’t always mean you see a picture-it can be more like receiving impressions. I use my lueg, my scrying stone. It’s a big, thick chunk of obsidian, almost four inches at the widest and tapering to a point. It was my father’s. I found it under my pillow the morning he and Mum disappeared. Luegs are more reliable than either fire or water. Fire may show you pasts and possible futures, but it’s hard to work with. There’s an old Wiccan saying that goes: Fire is a fragile lover, court her well, neglect her not; her faith is like a misty smoke, her anger is destructive hot. Water is easier to use but very misleading. Once I heard Mum say that water is the Wiccan whore, spilling her secrets to any, lying to most, trusting few. Last night I took my lueg and went down to the kill that flows at the edge of my uncle’s property. This was where we swam in the summer, where Linden and I caught minnows, where Alwyn used to pick gooseberries. I sat at the water’s edge and scryed, looking deep into my obsidian, weaving spells of vision. After a long, long time, the rock’s face cleared, and in its depths I saw my mother. It was my mother of all those years ago, right before she disappeared. I remember the day clearly. An eight-year-old me ran up to where she knelt in the garden, pulling weeds. She looked up, saw me, and her face lit, as if I was the sun. Giomanach, she said, and looked at me with love, the sunlight glinting off her bright hair. Seeing her in the lueg, I was almost crushed with longing and a childish need to see her, have her hold me. When the stone went blank, I held it in my hand, then crumpled over and cried on the bank of the kill. -Giomanach May 2000 I remember it rained the day Mum and Dad disappeared. When I woke up that morning they were already gone. I had no idea what was going on. Uncle Beck called late that day, and I told him I couldn’t find Dad, or Mum either. Beck called around, to get a neighbor to stay overnight with us until he could get there, and he couldn’t find anyone still around. In the end, I was in charge all that long day and night, and the three of us-me, Linden, and Alwyn-stayed in our house alone, not knowing what was happening to us, to our world. Now I know that twenty-three other people besides my parents either died or disappeared that night. Years later, when I went back, I tried asking around. All I got were cautious mumbles about a dark wave, a cloud of fury and destruction. I’ve heard rumors of a dark wave destroying a Wyndenkell coven in Scotland. I’m on my way there. Goddess, give me strength. -Giomanach June 2000 Two covens in Scotland were wiped out: one in 1974 and one in 1985. The first was in the north, the second, toward the southeast. Now the trail is leading into northern England, so I am making plans to go. I have to know. This started out being about my parents. Now it’s a much bigger picture. I’ve heard that the council is seeking new members. I’ve put my name in. If I were a council member, I would have access to things that are usually not publicized. It seems the fastest way to have my questions answered. When I come back from the north, I’ll learn of their decision. I applied to become a Seeker. With a name like mine, it seems almost inevitable. -Giomanach July 2000 The council called me to London upon my return from the North. I spent three days answering questions about everything from the causes of the Clan wars to the medicinal properties of mugwort. I wrote essays analyzing past decisions of the elders. I performed spells and rituals. And then they turned me down. Not because my power is weak or my knowledge scanty, nor yet because I am too young, but because they distrust my motives. They think I am after vengeance for Linden, for my parents. But that’s not it, not anymore. I spoke to Athar about it last night. She’s the only one who truly understands, I think. “You aren’t after vengeance. You’re after redemption,” she told me, and her black eyes measured me. “But, Giomanach, I’m not sure which is the more dangerous quest.” She’s a deep one, my cousin Athar. I don’t know when she grew to be so wise. I won’t give up. I will write to the council again today. I’ll make them understand. -Giomanach September 2000 I’m in Ireland. I went to the town of Ballynigel, where the Belwicket coven once was. It was wiped out around Imbolc in 1982, along with most of the town. So far it’s the only Woodbane coven I’ve found that the dark wave has destroyed. But everyone knows Belwicket renounced evil back in the 1800s and had kept to the council’s laws since the laws were first written. Did that have something to do with it? When I stood there and saw the bits of riven earth and charred stones that are all that’s left, it made my heart ache. Tonight I am meeting with Jeremy Mertwick, from the second ring of the council. I have written them a letter every week, appealing their decision. I still hope to make them see reason. I am strong and sure, and my pain has made me older than they know. -Giomanach October 2000 I came home from Ireland this week for Alwyn’s initiation. It’s hard to believe she’s fourteen: she seems both younger, with her knobby knees and tall, coltish prettiness, and somehow older-the wisdom in her eyes, life’s pain etched on her face. I brought her a russet silk robe from Connemara. She plans to embroider stars and moons around its neck and hem. Uncle Beck has carved her a beautiful wand and pounded in bits of malachite and bloodstone along the handle. I think she’ll be pleased when she sees it. I know my parents would want to be here if they could, as they would have wanted to see my initiation and Linden’s. I’m not sure if they’re still alive. I can’t sense them. Last year I met Dad’s first wife and his other son at one of the big coven meetings in Scotland. They seemed very Woodbane: cold and hateful toward me. I had wondered if perhaps Dad still kept in touch with Selene-she’s very beautiful, very magnetic. But his name seemed to set off a storm within them, which is not unreasonable, after all. I must go-Alwyn needs help in figuring the positions of the stars on Saturday night. -Giomanach October 2000, Alwyn’s initiation went well. I was so proud of her, giving her answers in her clear, high voice. She will grow up Wyndenkell and, we hope, marry within Vinneag, Uncle Beck’s coven. For one moment, as Uncle Beck pressed his athame to her eye and commanded her to step forward, I wondered if her life would be better had she not been born a witch. She would be just a fourteen-year-old girl, giggling with her friends, getting a crush on a boy. As it is, she’s spent the last six years memorizing the history of the clans, tables of correspondences, rituals and rites; going to spell-making classes; studying astronomy, astrology, herbs, and a thousand other things along with her regular schoolwork. She’s missed school functions and friends’ birthdays. And she lost her parents when she was only four. Is it better for her this way? Would Linden still be alive if he hadn’t been a witch? I know our lives would have held less pain if we had been born just human. But it’s pointless to consider. One cannot escape one’s destiny-if you hide from it, it will find out. If you deny it, it will kill you. A witch I was born, and my family, too, and witches we’ll always be, and give thanks for it. -Giomanach December 2000, My petition to become a Seeker has gone to the top. Yesterday I met with the seven elders of the council. They once again turned me down. What to do now? I must curb my anger. Anger cannot help me here. I will ask Uncle Beck to intercede on my behalf. In the meantime I am taking classes with Nera Bluenight, of Calstythe. With her guidance I can school my emotions more and petition the council once again. -Giomanach February 2001 They have accepted me at last. I am the council’s newest member-and its youngest, the most junior member of the third ring. I’m one of more than a thousand workers for Wiccan law. But my assigned role is that of Seeker, as I requested. I’ve been given my tools, the braigh and the books, and Kennet Muir has been assigned as my mentor. He and I have spent the past week going over my new duties. Now I have been giving my first task. There is a man in Cornwall who is accused of causing his neighbor’s milk cows to sicken and die. I’m going down there today to investigate. Athar has offered to come with me. I didn’t tell her how glad I was of her offer, but I could see that she understood it nonetheless. She is a good friend to me. _Giomanach February 2001 I did it. I put a witch under the braigh. The fellow in Cornwall was mad, there is no question of that. When I came to question him he first tried to evade me, then when he saw that I would not give up, he flew into a frenzy. He gibbered about how he would curse me and my whole family, that he was one of the Cwn Annwyn, the hounds of Hell. He began to shout out a spell and I had to wrestle him to the ground and put the braigh on him. Then he began to weep and plead. He told me how it burned him, and begged me to let him go. At last his eyes rolled back in his head and he lost consciousness. I put him in the car, and Athar drove us to London. I left him with Kennet Muir. Kennet told me I’d done well; the man might be mad but he also had true power and was therefore dangerous. He said my task was done, and now it was the seven elders’ job to determine the man’s future. I left, and then Athar and I went to a pub and got very drunk. Later, she held me while I wept. -Giomanach June 2001 Litha again. It’s now fully ten years since my parents disappeared. When they left, I was a boy, concerned only with building a working catapult and playing Behind Enemy Lines with Linden and my friends. At the time we were living in the Lake District, across Solway Firth from Isle of Man. For weeks before they left, they were in bad moods, barking at us children and then apologizing, not having the time to help us with our schoolwork. Even Alwyn started coming to me or Linden to help her dress or do her hair. I remember Mum complaining that she felt tired and ill all the time, and none of her usual potions seemed to help. And Dad said his scrying stone had stopped working. Yes, something was definitely oppressing them. But I’m sure they didn’t know what was really coming. If they had, maybe things would have turned out differently. Or maybe not. Maybe there is no way to fight an evil like that. -Giomanach June 2001 Here’s an interesting thing: I went today to Much Bencham, which is the little town in Ireland next to where Ballynigel used to be. No one there wanted to talk to me, and I for the feeling the whole village was anti-witch. Having seen their closest neighbors turned to dust all those years ago, I’m not surprised. But as I was leaving the town square, and old woman caught my eye. She was probably on the dole-making ends almost meet by selling homemade pasties. I bought one, and as I bit into it she said, very quietly, “you’re the lad’s been asking questions about the town next door.” She didn’t name Ballynigel, but of course that was what she meant. “Aye,” I said, taking another bite. I waited. “Odd things,” she murmured. :Odd doings in that town, sometimes. Whole town wiped off the face of the earth. It’s not natural.” “No,” I agreed. “Not natural at all. Did no one survive, then?” She shook her head, then frowned as if remembering something. “Though that woman last year said as how some did survive. Some escaped, she said.” “Oh?” I said, though inside my heart was pounding. “What woman was this?” “She were a beauty,” said the old woman, thinking back. “Dark and exotic. She had gold eyes, like a tiger. She came here asking about them next door, and someone-I think it was old Collins, at the pub-he told her they were dead, all of them, and she said no, she said that two made it away to America.” “Two people from Ballynigel went to America?” I said, to make certain. “After the disaster, or before?” “Don’t know, do I,” said the woman, starting to lose interest. “She just said that two from there had gone to New York years ago, and that’s in America, isn’t it.” I thanked her and walked away, thinking. Damn me if that tiger woman didn’t sound like Dad’s first wife, Selene. So now I am on my way to New York. Is it really possible two witches from Belwicket escaped the disaster? Could they be in New York? I won’t rest until I know. –Giomanach |
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