I turned and looked at her. “When I turned, I lost all my powers.”
She stoked the fire again. “How do we fight this thing, Terra?”
I wished I had an answer for her. The reckoning had come more quickly than I had expected. The coven was not complete.
Abigail sat back down, tapping her foot rapidly. Then she gathered some kindling for the fire.
I had sensed our ninth Wiccan was in Asheville but I could not sense her. As dawn broke, I allowed my eyes to close, a quick catnap I thought, laughing to myself: Catnap. Seconds later I opened them to see Pixel an inch away from my face. He whispered, “Terra, look.” He turned around. A puff of white smoke rose from the fire and surrounded Mrs. Twiggs. Her eyes flew open. She sprang from the rocking chair and floated to the ceiling of the cabin, her arms outstretched. I smelled the bundle of ash, oak and thorn Abigail had thrown in the fire. Mrs. Twiggs floated down and stood in front of us. Her aura shone bright white and amethyst purple. I had never seen those two aura colors together. Mrs. Twiggs was a very powerful Wiccan. She smiled as though a shadow had passed from her. She put her hand on Abigail’s shoulder. I understood now what Abigail had figured out on her own. Black magic had kept Mrs. Twiggs from turning in Asheville. Our coven was complete.
Mrs. Twiggs
“Mrs. Twiggs, can you understand me?”
“Terra, your voice is as I had imagined it. The voice of a young woman.”
“I was 17 when I took this form.”
“I don’t understand. Why can I hear you now? Why do I feel so strange?”
“The night you drank the potion that should have made you turn, a spell was cast over you to prevent your turning. The black magic surrounding Asheville knew you would be our ninth Wiccan and allow us to close the coven. It had to stop you, but when Abigail burnt the oak, ash and thorn it revealed your true light and the good magic of this place allowed you to turn,” I told her.
“All these years I felt like there was something missing from my life. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve led a good life. I had a wonderful family and a wonderful husband but I felt there was more purpose to me. I feel that now.”
“The reckoning came for you last night in Biltmore Village. It came for all of us but I think you were its purpose. It wanted to stop the completion of the coven.”
Mrs. Twiggs warmed her hands by the fire. I noticed the snow-white streak in her raven black hair. She stepped lightly almost gliding as she walked. She stared into the dying embers. “Terra, there’s a black witch in Asheville.” She turned from the fire. Her eyes flashed brilliant opal white filled with milky clouds. She stared into the distance and spoke as if in a trance, “She walks among us yet we don’t see her. She helps the black magic. She wants to kill all us all.” Then her eyes cleared and filled with kindness. I knew she had the power of premonition but she had not learned how to use it or understand how far in the future she was seeing. It could be 100 years from now or the present. Until she learned how to control it, I couldn’t be sure of her prediction.
Mrs. Twiggs exhausted from the turning sat back down in the chair and Pixel jumped in her lap. “Mrs. Twiggs, you rest. I will fix us all some breakfast and we will come up with a game plan,” Abigail said.
I followed Abigail to the kitchen. She loaded the stove with firewood and put some salted bacon into a cast iron skillet. She waited for the sizzle. “Abigail, how did you know Mrs. Twiggs was a Wiccan and what to do?”
“I don’t know, Terra, I felt like I had to do something. I watched you burn the twigs for the other Wiccans.”
It was enough of an answer for now. I could tell how worried Abigail was. I felt responsible. I opened this world of magic to her. Maybe if we had never met the reckoning would never have come for her or maybe this was the time we were all meant to be brought together. Witches believe in fate. Each person, Wiccan or witch is responsible for his or her actions. Those actions determine our fate. We all walk a path to a conclusion but we can still vary from that path. We all arrive at our final destination. Abigail, Mrs. Twiggs, Pixel, Tracker and myself. We are pebbles tossed into the water, the ripples have been set into motion and cannot be called back.
We sat and ate our breakfast, each lost in our personal thoughts. After breakfast, we headed into the woods to gather herbs for the coven closing ceremony. Now that we were nine we would have to swear the oath of allegiance, the same I had recited with Elizabeth and my sisters. Wiccans are witches, what’s true for us is true for them. Some witches look down upon them, thought them half-breeds, mongrels but their magic can be just as powerful. Tonight I will recite the ritual Elizabeth taught me. We will close our ranks, latch our powers together. We will protect Asheville, and more than that, we will save Abigail’s life.
Mrs. Twiggs explained many of the herbs to Abigail as they collected them in their baskets. She was well versed in Appalachian folklore and understood the medicinal properties of the plants. Elizabeth had told me that the actual ceremony and reciting of the vows were steeped in tradition, more than actual magic. She said by all of us coming together it made us feel connected, a part of a sisterhood greater than ourselves. She said the only way to defeat black magic is through love and self-sacrifice, caring more about others than yourself, that’s the most powerful magic of all. On the surface, the ladies of the Biltmore Society did not seem to hold those values; they seemed quite self-absorbed. If we were to close the coven, they would have to let go of that thinking. The herbs we were collecting would help them with that process. There are only two ingredients that matter. Agatha Hollows had planted mushrooms for such an occasion, part of her Cherokee heritage—peyote--the only ingredient in the potion that actually worked besides a very rare tealeaf. The rest were placebo. Once the ladies drank they would lose their inhibitions. “Terra, come here,” I heard Mrs. Twiggs call from the meadow that ran alongside the stream.
She stood in a field of wilted milk thistle, black and decaying, rancid smelling. Agatha Hollows had planted this crop to treat liver problems. “No good, no good,” Pixel said. I climbed up the tree and looked out over the meadow, which ran for a good half mile into the valley. All I saw was destruction and decay. Finches and thistle, I thought. My dreams had been filled with songbirds. Mrs. Twiggs gathered up some of the dead thistle. She explained to Abigail, “It looks like all the nutrients have been drained out of them. Usually thistle grows in good soil unattended.”
I smelled the dirt. It smelled foul. I followed the path out of the meadow up the side of the mountain. There was black fungus on the birch trees, the elm showed sign of elm disease, all the trees surrounding the cabin were in distress. Scattered in the field lay hundreds of dead yellow finches. I ran back to Mrs. Twiggs and Abigail. “We must hurry. We must hurry the ceremony.”
Karen Owen
“Karen Owen, that’s her name but you must let me do all the talking,” Mrs. Twiggs said as we hurried down a back alley in the Montford district. I shivered as we passed through the cemetery. “On occasion, Mrs. Owen sources very rare exotic teas for my shop.”
“What do you mean?” Abigail asked.
“Karen had a shop of her own in Vancouver many years ago. She was what is known in the tea world as a tea sommelier. In fact one of the best in North America. But she’s a bit eccentric. She’s very temperamental when it comes to her tea talk.”
Abigail turned to me and asked. “And we need this tea for the ceremony?”
“Elizabeth was insistent,” I told her. “The ritual goes back thousands of years. It has changed through the centuries as it was passed down. The Celtics and then Druids believed that in order for the ceremony to work the potion needed to break through the blood brain barrier, the membrane that separates the brain from the blood flowing around it. It protects the brain from harmful substances but in this case to bind the coven we must break through that barrier to unite one mind, one body.”