Perigee Moon (22 page)

He stared motionless at the wall, refusing to answer.

“Tell me I’m not crazy.” I paused to get control of the anger building inside but it came bursting out regardless. “Damn it Alex, tell me the truth!”

“You’re not crazy,” he said. I waited for him to go on.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Rowan you are a witch.”

Something in me stirred at his words. My brain was telling me it was a lie. That such a thing didn’t even exist, but somewhere else deep inside of me it felt right.

“I don’t understand.”

“That book is spelled so that only a blood witch can read it, love. And your gift… the fact that you have clearly unleashed a spirit through those spells. These are things an average human cannot do. It’s the only explanation. Somewhere in your bloodline you are the descendant of a witch.”

I immediately thought of Grams, of my mother’s strange book. Could this possibly be true? If it was, how could she keep this big of a secret?

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“Because I’m a witch too,” he said. I let my senses stretch out and wrap around him. He opened himself to me and I felt nothing but sincerity and truth. I started to shake. I could barley breathe. Oh my God what was happening to me? Who was I? What was I?

In a flash Alex was at my side again pulling me to him. “Rowan, tell me what you’re thinking.”

I swallowed. Nothing in my world made sense anymore. The fact that Alex was a witch, now that actually explained a lot, but me? I didn’t know what to believe.

“I think that this is crazy. That I shouldn’t believe what you’re saying,” I said.

“But you feel it. Don’t you? You feel it’s true.” He stroked the side of my face and I nodded.

“I understand if you want me to go. If this is too much for you.” His eyes were tinged with sadness. He didn’t think I’d love him knowing what he was. I could feel the waves of insecurity coming from him. How could he feel this way if it was what I was too? There was more. I could feel it.

“So…we’re the same?” I placed my hand over his heart, feeling it pulse beneath my fingertips. I was going crazy. Crazy because a huge part of me wanted this to be true. To know that I wasn’t the only one out there like me. And to be able to share it with him…God was I crazy for wanting this to be true?

“Can you still love me?” he asked softly.

I cupped his face in my hands and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “How could I not love you Alex?”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell you the whole truth about me. Can you accept that? Can you be happy with this alone?” He motioned between us and I nodded.

We stared at each other for an immeasurable moment, not speaking. There was still so much to say and he wasn’t willing to give me the answers. None of it mattered. I would know soon enough. And the rest I’d already learned… God help me, I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to process it as reality.

I dreamed that night. When Alex’s arms had relaxed around me and his breathing had taken on a steady rhythm I drifted away despite my best efforts to stay awake. I was in the forest again, running and tripping over the gnarled roots that stuck up out of the ground. An urgency that I didn’t understand was surging through my legs, driving them deeper into the thicket of trees. I didn’t know what I was looking for but I knew I had to move. A branch caught me by my hair and it twisted ruthlessly to hold me back. I pulled and screamed out in pain as a clump of hair ripped away from my scalp. My fingers massaged the tender wound and found blood there but I kept moving. Above all, it was essential that I kept moving. The iron setting that held the jade stone around my neck was freezing. The cold so icy and severe that it burned against my skin. The toe of my boot caught on a stone protruding from the damp forest floor and I went spilling onto my hands and knees into the bracken below. As I scrambled to my feet the urgency faded away, leaving me awestruck and weak as I stared up a giant hemlock. It filled my vision and I knew at that moment that this is what I had been seeking. The wind screamed through the trees pushing me forward. A dark red liquid oozed from the strangely familiar symbol carved into the brittle bark. I moved my hand closer and laid my palm across the branded tree trunk. The red liquid bled through my fingers and poured down my arm and I gasped. Blood. I jerked my hand away instinctively checking myself for wounds. But before I could find any, the tree made a low groaning sound and burst into ash, a disorderly grey pile forming at my feet. A burst of chilly air surged forward and tossed the pile into the air and without understanding why, I was screaming.

I fear my days are numbered. My magic is weak and the stench of death hangs heavily in the air around me. Marion’s darkness is weaving my fate and I have little hope of fighting it. Soon I will join my beloved William. I can only pray that Alexander will find the strength to survive the evil here. Perhaps I was wrong all along. Perhaps my son does not belong in this time and place. Perhaps his destiny lies somewhere else altogether. I can only hope.

~ Rebecca Foster 1692

***

My eyes flew open and I gasped for air. It took a moment to realize where I was. Just a dream
.
I closed my eyes and repeated it to myself. I pushed the hair back from my face. It was damp with sweat and clung to my cheeks. God would these nightmares ever stop? Sitting up I reached for Alex across the bed but when a cool breeze caressed my face I stopped dead in my tracks. My eyes darted to the empty bed, where my searching fingers were painfully alone, the crumpled bed sheets, and then to the window. The yellow translucent curtains were flapping in the breeze. Alex was gone.

Damn!
I berated myself. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I ran to the window in time to see Alex walking across the street, running his hands through his disheveled hair. Without thinking, I pulled on the first pair of jeans I could find and a pair of hiking boots, slipped on a flannel shirt and went as quickly and quietly as I could manage to the stairs. I didn’t want to wake Grams and Grandpa. Having to explain to them why I was leaving the house at five in the morning would only kill my chances of catching up to him. When my feet hit the soft cushion of dewy grass outside I couldn’t help but smile triumphantly. I treaded carefully across the street and slipped into the tree line as smoothly as Alex had so many times before. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. The sun was slowly rising across the horizon and the sky was turning a light pink, tinged with traces of pastel purples and periwinkle blues. It gave off just enough light to illuminate my path.

After a few minutes of hiking blindly into the forest, I stopped. The quiet sounds of the forest surrounded me with the absence of the crunch of my footsteps. A squirrel rustled the leaves as it sprang across the treetops. A bird sang a chipper tune from somewhere behind me.  I could see Alex in the distance, stopped too as if he’d heard me. I ducked behind a tree and waited. When I peeked back around he was gone again. I bit my lip, suddenly feeling very nervous and second-guessing my plan. He was going to be furious with me if he found out about this, but I was too far in to care. After a few seconds of indecision I crept forwards. Hopping over fallen trees and dodging low hanging limbs, avoiding the thorny briar patches that popped up along the way. I wrapped my arms around myself as I walked. It was chilly this morning and I was thankful I’d chosen the flannel shirt I was wearing. It helped to hold in the heat. It was becoming obvious that Alex was gone, but this far in how hard could it be to find a house or a small community. I really wasn’t sure what I was looking for but it couldn’t be much farther if he was nowhere in sight.  

That’s when I saw it. I froze in my tracks, stumbling over a log. The hemlock tree from my dream. The same gnarled trunk twisting into a complicated weave of branches. It towered over the rest of the forest, stealing the lemony sunlight, yet somehow still looking like something fed from darkness. There was a symbol carved into the bark and as I studied it more closely it hit me. I frantically pulled the necklace out of my shirt and flipped it over to match up the symbols. They were the same. I let the necklace fall back into my shirt and took a step towards the mammoth tree looming over me, its shadow enveloping me like an ominous warning. I was shaking but I didn’t let it stop me. I didn’t know what I was doing but something was forcing me forward. Something cold. Pushing and pulling on me in every direction, but especially forward. I reached my hand out and laid it across the symbol like I had in my dream. No blood this time, just dry brittle bark that looked as if someone had burned a symbol into it. The familiar cold sensation whispered around me and before I knew it, words that were not my own were spilling out of my mouth.

“Mother of Earth, Goddess of great, part the winds of time and fate.

We offer the fire, the salt, the power. Aid me on my quest this hour.”

I pressed each of my fingertips against the symbol and froze. The necklace burned on my chest, white hot against my skin. I whimpered in pain but I couldn’t move to tear it off. It was getting hotter. So hot. I couldn’t stand it. What was happening? I felt dizzy and my breaths were coming in too shallow. The only part of my body I seemed to have control of was my fingertips, so I pushed them deep into the bark, but instead of the resistance I was expecting, they kept moving forward, sending me tumbling, not in to the tree, but into emptiness. I was falling. I opened my mouth to scream but the roaring sound around me quickly stole it away. It screamed against my ears like a freight train. A hurricane-strength wind. The entire ocean crashing over me again and again. The whirlwind of air twirled and spun, kicking my hair into my face, the scent of salt water and moss and lavender invading my senses. I finally managed to pull my hands up over my ears and scream.

“Stop, stop, stop!” I screamed until my voice was the only sound ringing in my ears. The air rippled like water and then everything went black.

When I finally came to, every part of me was shivering with tremors that I couldn’t begin to control. I peeled my eyes open and looked around the forest. The only sound besides my own panicked breathing was the trickling of water somewhere nearby. I pulled myself up to stand and stumbled into a tree, trying to process what had just happened. A hallucination maybe? It had to be. I stretched out my arms and legs, extending my joints to find I felt like I’d been thrown from a three-story building onto a concrete slab. The pain was horrendous and my head was throbbing. I glanced around to try to get my bearings but nothing looked right. The air even smelled different. Fresh. Clean. I was still standing in front of the giant hemlock tree, but nothing else looked familiar. The trees were scattered in different spots. Some much larger. Some smaller. The dirt path that had been carved into the forest floor was nowhere to be found. Something smoky like a left-over campfire tinged the air with a woodsy scent. The light was even coming in at a different angle. I squinted up at the sun. It seemed more like late afternoon than five in the morning. How long had I been out? I was never going to find my way home. What a stupid plan this was. I quickly decided my best bet was to move forward and try to find Alex. He’d be mad, but at least he would help me get home. And maybe if I was lucky he’d go ahead and show me where he lived anyway since we were this far.

I trudged forward, skimming from tree to tree to keep my balance. I still felt dizzy. No. More than dizzy. I didn’t feel right at all and I was starting to get scared. So, needless to say, when I heard a pair of voices quickly approaching through the trees, a wave of relief washed over me like cool water on a hot summer day. I stumbled towards the voices that were getting louder by the second. They were moving quicker than me. I stopped and listened. The echo of hooves galloping filled the hollow silence. Horses. I took a few more steps and opened my mouth to call for help, but instead of the sturdy hello that was building in my throat, a yelp slipped out.

I squeezed my eyes shut as an arm shot out from the brush and wrapped around my waist, pulling me to the ground in one swift movement. A man’s body crashed down on top of me and I tried to scream but his fingers were locked tightly over my mouth. My eyes flew open and Alex’s eyes were wide and frightened and just an inch from mine. The tips of our noses touched lightly and we were both breathing hard. I stared back at him, confused. What was going on? As if to answer my question he held one finger up to his lips as he pulled his other hand away from my mouth. I nodded and let my eyes drift down. His chest pumped erratically. He was scared. And if Alex was scared that meant I should be too. The panic closed off my throat and my body grew still beneath him. My eyes darted to the sound of two men laughing just a few feet from where we were hiding as they glided by on their horses. I couldn’t make out what they were saying but they had accents like Alex’s. We both stopped breathing as their voices faded through the dense foliage. I inhaled the overpowering aroma of honeysuckle. Not just from Alex’s skin. No this was stronger. I suddenly realized we were lying in a mound of it. No wonder he always smelled like that. I closed my eyes, hypnotized by the steady throb of pain that echoed through every inch of my body.