“Don’t you threaten me, Rose!” Diarmuid lunged at me, backing me against the wall. “For despite your powers with the Goddess, I have the physical power to overcome you, and aye, I am stirring at the very touch of you, wench!” His eyes sparkled deviously. I felt stunned, unable to move. Was it possible that this boy—this boy I had seen as the answer to all of my prayers—would ravish me by force?
I struggled to get away, but he only tightened his grip.
“I will have you, Rose, for who will stop me? You are locked in prison, completely alone. Do you think the guards will answer your cries? The pleas of a witch sentenced to die?” He pressed his hips against me, pushing me into the cold stone wall.
I felt sickened by his touch, furious at his determination to overcome me. And I had loved him! How had I ever loved this cruel, conniving beast? Feeling it was hopeless to fight him, I collapsed against the wall. He was stronger than I. I knew I had to summon magick, but my mind was wild and scattered.
Seeing me relax, he released my hands and lifted my skirts. “Come on, Rose,” he said, fingering my thighs. “I shall make it painful if you fight me.”
Seizing the freedom of my hands, I grasped his face and pressed my nails in, hoping to scratch his pretty blue eyes out. “Aye, then let’s make it painful!”
He gasped as my fingers penetrated his skin. His hands quickly encircled my wrists and pried me off, but not before I’d managed to scratch his cheeks. “Are you mad?”
“So they say!” I wrenched my hands free of him and backed away, rubbing my wrists. “But I’ll not spend my last night on earth being defiled by the lust of a lying coward.”
He pressed his fingers to his cheek and saw the crimson smear there. “You drew blood,” he said in horror. For a moment I thought he would weep with despair.
Focusing my mind, I held up my hands to ward him off. “Next time I’ll use dealan-dé,” I told him. “And if I had an athame, I would plunge it right through your festering heart.”
Holding a hand against his cheek, he sucked in his breath. “I cannot wait till the morrow.” His face was hollow and angular in the candlelight, a hideous, hateful specter. “I will relish the moment of your death.”
Before I could respond, he fled from the cell, leaving only a lit candle behind.
A lit candle. Fire of the Goddess.
Diarmuid had left behind the one element I needed to balance out my circle. I had earth, wind, water, air. and now, despite all the attempts of the guards to keep it away from me, I had fire.
My fists clenched, I stared at the flame as fury raged within me. I burned for all the Wodebaynes who had suffered injustice at the hands of rival witches. Fire raged within me for Diarmuid—not the fires of passion, but the fires of hatred and fury. I burned with vengeance for Siobhan, who had stolen my place as Diarmuid’s wife and sentenced me to death, who had tried to take my mother’s life, too. And above all I was afire with love and sorrow for the babe in my belly, the child who had been condemned before she’d had a chance to take her first breath.
Sweat beaded on my forehead and dripped down my neck. What was happening? Pressing my hands to my cheeks, I found that my skin was sizzling hot to the touch, feverish despite the cool night air.
A fire raged within me, a fire from the Goddess, and I realized she was summoning me to a mystickal destiny. What? I asked. Where shall I go? Which way to turn? I felt pent up and trapped, unable to commune with her. I needed to see the moon.
Glancing up at the thatched roof, I realized that I could probably reach it with the help of the one chair in my prison. I pulled the chair to the highest spot and climbed up. Aye, my fingertips pressed against the thatching. I pulled at the straw, tugging it loose. I would claw and scrape until my fingers bled if it meant reaching out to the Goddess on my last night upon this earth.
As I plucked at the straw, I thought of my purpose. I could not see my way to escape from my death or to save my child. But what of my legacy. my destiny before the Goddess? Would I be known only as a young witch who had feuded with a Vykrothe girl?
I recalled what my mother had said about Da, about his feud with the Vykrothes. Now, so many years later, I had become entangled with the same clan. Was that part of the Goddess’s plan? Perhaps my very purpose was to dismantle the Vykrothes’ power once and for all. I could not actively go after Siobhan, but I could place a curse upon her from behind these prison walls. One last spell, one final wave of revenge before she had me killed.
Bit by bit, the straw tumbled down to the earth. Then I yanked on a thick piece, and a fat section of thatching fell to the floor of the stone hut, making a crumbling sound that might have been heard by the guard if he had not been still asleep and snoring thanks to Diarmuid’s spell. When the dust cleared, I was gazing upon a dark patch of sky with a virgin crescent moon.
I came down from the chair and stood, arms up, in the sliver of pale moonlight. ’Twas but a dim patch, but I could feel its power lifting me to the sky. I no longer felt trapped. I was communing with the Goddess, opening myself up to my own destiny.
The air seemed to crackle with magick as I held my hands open to the Goddess. “Show me the tools and how to use them,” I begged.
In the candlelight the tips of my fingernails seemed black. Examining them, I realized it was blood. Blood and skin scraped from Siobhan and Diarmuid. ’Twas a powerful beginning, to have a piece of their body to place upon my makeshift altar. I scraped the dried crust from under my nails and placed it carefully on a clean tin plate left to me by the guards.
Staring at the scraps of Diarmuid and Siobhan, I began to feel the way clearly. ’Twas the Goddess’s will, this spell, and she lit my path.
“Sweep the circle,”came the Goddess’s voice. Or was I remembering Ma’s voice from one of the coven circles? “Sweep… sweep,” it called out to me, stirring my powers.
I gathered straw from my sleeping pallet and wove it into a small broom, which I used to sweep a circle inside the springhouse. Then I lit my makeshift broom afire and swept my circle with flames. The smoke burned my throat, but I breathed it gladly, wanting to cense my hair and skin with this powerful spell. Finally I left the broom to burn in the center and turned to the candle.
Carefully, so as not to extinguish the flame, I carved runes into the single candle that Diarmuid had brought. I spelled out the Vykrothe name, then wrote the runes for death beside it. Then I added runes for Diarmuid’s name, for truly he deserved the wrath of the Goddess for his betrayal of Her, his betrayal of me and my child.
As I set the candle down, I noticed Diarmuid’s pentagram on the ground. I picked up the gold coin and blew off the dust. ’Twould make a fine brand upon my body. If I was to go to the gallows, I would want to have the mark of the Goddess upon me and my child.
I built up the center fire with twigs and straw of the thatching. Blowing on the flames until the embers glowed, I knew what I had to do.
A spell to put an end to treachery.
A spell to destroy Siobhan and Diarmuid. To punish their evil. Mayhap this was the Goddess’s will for me—my destiny.
A spell to set the balance among the clans aright once again.
Casting Diarmuid’s pentagram into the flames, I felt the fever within me rise. Gasping, I threw back my head and cast my eyes upon the crescent in the sky. The fire within me was raging, my skin dripping, my cheeks burning. I slipped off my gown and stood naked in the square of light.
“I draw the power of generations of Wodebaynes into myself, merging with her power, the pure essence of the Goddess.”
Gazing down into the crusty blood, I said: “I have cast this circle to perform the act of vengeance that the Vykrothes have truly earned. I place a curse upon their feet, that they may stumble along the path of light and fall into darkness. Cursed be their wombs, that they shall fail to produce new offspring. Cursed be their warmongering hearts, that they will no longer beat steady and true. Cursed be their sight, that they shall never again see through the Goddess’s veil to her true beauty.”