Sage's Eyes (38 page)

“You're not saying that just to get rid of me, are you?”

“I'll come. Go,” I said.

He moved to the door. I opened it very slightly again. He still wasn't wearing his shoes, which I thought was smart.

“Kiss me,” he said. “Or I won't go. But kiss me like you mean it.”

“Blackmail again?”

“Whatever gets me there,” he replied.

I kissed him. I tried to kiss him the way he wanted me to, but it was either because I was standing in a pool of cold fear or something else, something that began reviving that twirling in my stomach again, but whatever it was, I couldn't kiss him the way he had hoped I would. I knew he wasn't satisfied the moment my lips lifted away from his. “I'm sorry. I'm too nervous.”

“Naw. You just need more practice, that's all,” he said. “I'm an expert. Lessons begin tomorrow.”

I stepped back. He slipped through the door and did move amazingly quietly, sliding through the shadows to the stairway. I kept the door open to listen, expecting one or more of those old steps to creak. They always did, but for some reason, somehow, they didn't. At first, I was afraid he might not have even begun to descend. Maybe he had changed his mind and was going to return to continue to blackmail me into being passionate. I waited and waited and finally felt confident that he had gone down and left the house.

I released a hot held breath of trepidation and closed the door. For a moment or two, I stood there reliving it all. It still felt more like a dream. Had he really been here?
Had we almost made love? All my life, I had distrusted things I saw, because too often my powerful imagination was able to conjure up things, people, places no one else would see or remember. Why couldn't this have been another example of that? I half hoped it was.

But when I returned to bed, that doubt died a quick death. It wasn't simply the sense of him having been there. It wasn't the scent of his aftershave or his hair. It wasn't the creases in the pillows or the warmth still under the blanket.

It was hard, metallic.

I felt it and then put on my lamp to look at what I had in my right hand. I had his pendant. He had left it behind. He wanted me to be sure he had been here and that I had almost given more to him than I had to any other boy. I thought it was his way of telling me I would, and not because he blackmailed me into it. The pendant left behind was another symbol of his confidence, his often annoying arrogance.

But that didn't make it any less true.

I had wanted to give myself to him. What kept me from doing so was not the fear of my parents overhearing us and finding him in my room. It was something else, something inside me, a shrill voice coming from a place I had never been. It was quiet now, for the moment satisfied, but it was no longer asleep. To be sure, it wasn't simply every girl's guardian of her virginity, her natural reluctance to be too easily won. It was more.

And as I lay there thinking about it, I realized that it wouldn't
be long before I understood completely. It was a thought that should have brought me comfort, should have helped me ease myself into a restful sleep, but it wasn't doing that. It was sending me back through time to a place I had no reason to recollect, a place somewhere in some eastern European village, where the church bells were being sounded with an intense sense of alarm. Candles were being lit in every house. Parents were checking on their children. Door locks were being rechecked. Something terrible was sweeping down from the cold, dark north. There was a parade of villagers carrying torches through the main street of the village and singing hymns. They formed a wall of light and stopped whatever it was from entering their world, their hearts, and their souls.

Children slept peacefully. Dawn was never more welcomed.

I saw and heard it all before I could feel my body soften and accept the embrace of welcomed sleep, a dreamless sleep. I had no idea where the images of those frightened people had come from and where they had gone, but I was grateful they had left.

When the morning light pushed the darkness aside, I rose slowly and took longer than usual to dress. I gazed at myself in the mirror, thinking I still looked half-asleep. It was as though I had traveled for days through endless nights to get to the new morning. Cold water on my face helped, but every muscle in my body was complaining. I started down the stairway like someone descending into a dark pit, and when I stepped into the kitchen, my feelings didn't change very much.
Of course, my parents were up and waiting, as usual.

From the way my mother was looking at me when I moved to the table, I half expected her to say, “I know he was in your room.” There was so much accusation in her eyes. My father glanced at me and then looked down at his newspaper. I was surprised he didn't say good morning.

“Why didn't either his father or he call you to tell you anything last night?” my mother asked the moment I sat. “And don't tell me he was too embarrassed. His father knew about our concern. You called to see how he was. They don't sound like very reliable people. I'm hoping you will open your eyes and avoid this boy now.”

“Avoid him? Why?”

“He's not right for you.”

“That's not true. How could you know that from looking at him once? You just don't want me to have any sort of social life,” I countered. “Maybe you want to turn me into a nun.”

My father raised his eyes from the newspaper, looking just as surprised as my mother at how aggressively I had come back at her. “Sage,” he said.

“I'm sorry, Dad. She's so eager to have my blossoming relationship with Summer die on the vine.”

“I gave you permission to go out on the date, didn't I?” she said.

“Reluctantly,” I muttered. “And no, you couldn't wait to restrict me to in-house arrest for a month.”

“It's what any good parent would do. You should
appreciate our concern for your welfare. Too many parents are too self-absorbed to concern themselves with their children and then wonder why they go wrong.”

“I've always been wrong,” I said, almost in a whisper. “I don't know why, but in your eyes, I've always been a bad seed. Why didn't you fulfill the threat you always used to frighten me, that you would return me to the orphanage? Maybe you wouldn't be as miserable as you are.”

“Stop it, Sage. This isn't like you at all,” my father said.

“I don't care. I can't help it,” I said, and started to cry. The tears surprised me, too. Usually, I was good at keeping things locked up, tears falling inside me and not streaming down my cheeks. “I'm not hungry,” I said, and shot up and out of my seat.

“Sage!” my father called after me as I charged up the stairway. I didn't turn back.

Something had changed in me. It wasn't only my courage to be defiant. I wasn't running up to my room to sulk like any other teenager. Something bigger had exploded within me, something that had been pent up and building for a while now. Oddly, I didn't feel like a mop soaked with self-pity. I felt stronger. It was as if my tears had unlocked someone else inside me. Everything felt different; my vision, my hearing, all of my senses were sharper, stronger. I was like someone hallucinating after taking a mind-altering drug. I seemed to grow taller, giving me a different perspective about everything around me. I had awoken in a dollhouse and would soon crash through the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

After another moment, the room began to spin around me. I realized that I was falling into the same sort of swoon I had experienced when I first confronted the large pentacle in my father's office. I was having trouble breathing. I gasped and then managed a cry, before I felt myself sinking to the floor. It was odd. I wasn't falling. I was oozing down onto it, forming a puddle of myself. I was grateful to lose consciousness.

When I awoke, I was lying in my bed. For a few moments, I stared up at the ceiling. The room wasn't spinning, but my mind was fumbling with thoughts, stumbling through a fog. It all began to clear, and I realized I had passed out again. I turned and started to sit up, expecting to see my parents standing there.

They were.

But they weren't alone.

Moving toward me on the right was Uncle Wade, and moving up on my left were my great-uncle Alexis and my great-aunt Suzume. All of them seemed to have the same eyes, black, the pupils swirling. My parents stepped forward to the foot of the bed. They were all staring at me as if I had metamorphosed into a giant butterfly or something.

“What happened? Why is everyone here?” I asked.

“Because it's time you knew who you are,” my father said.

“Who am I?” I asked in a deep whisper.

My heart was pounding. All my life, I had been anticipating this day. Even though I never fully expressed it to myself or anyone else, I knew it would happen. What I didn't know was whether it would result in my being sent away. I had grown up under a cloud, a threat that thundered in my mother's every angry glare or comment and my father's suspicions and disappointments, from the first day I could talk and tell stories about my dreams and visions. Having been adopted provided trepidation and insecurity enough. I didn't need that added layer of doubt and fear.

“You're one of us, the Belladonnas,” Uncle Alexis said. “Not full-blooded, but nevertheless one of us. We know that now.”

One of them? That sounded like more than just being in a normal family. Who were they? I looked from face to face and stopped on Uncle Wade's. He smiled and stepped forward to take my right hand into his.

“I think,” he said, “in
your heart you always knew.”

I shook my head and looked again at my parents, who did seem different. They seemed more mellow, like two people who had come a long way and now could relax. The tension I had always seen and felt wasn't there. What did all this really mean? I turned back to Uncle Alexis.

“Is your uncle right?” he asked.

“Yes. I felt something. I've always felt different, but I don't know what it means exactly when you say I'm one of you. Am I now an accepted member of this family for some reason?”

“Yes, you're an accepted member, but we're not just any family, Sage. We are all Wiccans. We were all born into it. You were born of a mother who wasn't one of us, but your father was. You're not the first who was born this way. Some have joined us; some have not. Your parents had the responsibility of bringing you up to determine if you would be one of us or not.”

“Wiccans?”

“We're often referred to as witches, but that belies our true meaning and purpose because of how the word ‘witch' was used to denigrate people with spiritual power and vision. Religious leaders thought we were heretics, children of the devil, when we have always been just the opposite. We do no harm, and those few of us who do evil know that they eventually will suffer three times as much,” he said.

“We tried to bring you along slowly, a step at a time. Your parents already have introduced you to our spiritual beliefs,”
Aunt Suzume continued. “In our religion, our god and goddess complement each other. Think of yin and yang.”

“Our doorbell,” I said, looking at my mother. She smiled and nodded.

“We will teach you more about us, about yourself, now,” Uncle Alexis said, “but we've always known you have inherited much of what we are. Those visions and memories you've had are real. We believe the soul is reincarnated over many lives in order to learn and advance spiritually.”

“They weren't simply mad dreams?”

“Oh, no. They were paths leading you back to your true heritage, your true self. The powers that you've observed in your uncle Wade and have begun to experience yourself are what we call white magic. Wade uses it to make a living,” Aunt Suzume said, smiling at him, “but, like us, he uses it to heal, to protect, and to fight negative powers. You have never used your visions to harm anyone, but you have used white magic to help someone, haven't you?”

“Yes,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “I told you about this girl. Her name is Cassie Marlowe. She was being abused by her father. I used the pen Uncle Wade had given me to alert the school nurse,” I said, looking at him. “More white magic?”

Uncle Wade nodded and smiled.

“I suspected the resulting handwriting style was the style of the man who first owned it. It was clearly not mine, a perfect disguise enabling me to remain anonymous.”

“Exactly,”
Uncle Wade said. “I knew you would use it for a good purpose one day.”

“You've always tried to help others, to make them happy. You've demonstrated humility, concern, and compassion,” Aunt Suzume said.

“How do you know all this, know that I've done more?”

“We know the way you know things that are beyond others,” Uncle Alexis said. “We have never been very far from you.”

I looked at my father. “You told me Uncle Alexis was away and you hadn't seen him for a very long time, when he was always nearby.”