Nora Roberts - Dance Upon the Air

"This is where you were the night of the solstice, before you came out to stand on the cliffs."

"This ground is hallowed," Mia told her. "It's said the sisters stood here, three hundred years and more past, and worked their spell to create their haven. Whether they did or not, I've always been drawn here. We'll cast the circle together. It's a basic ritual."

Mia drew her ritual knife from her pocket and began. Fascinated, Nell repeated the words, the gestures, and found herself unsurprised when a thin ring of light glowed through the smoke of the mist.

"We call on Air, on Earth, on Water and Fire to guard our circle and grant our desire. Here protect and witness this rite. Open our minds to the magic of night."

Mia laid down her knife, her wand, nodded to Nell after her chant was repeated. "You can cast your own circle in your own way, with your own words when you're ready. I hope you don't mind, but I prefer working skyclad when weather permits."

With this Mia slipped off her dress and folded it neatly while Nell gaped. "Oh, well, I don't really-"

"It's not required." At ease with her nakedness, Mia picked up her wand again. "I generally prefer it, particularly for this ritual."

There was a tattoo-a birthmark? Nell wondered. A small pentagram shape against the milk-white skin of her thigh.

"What ritual?"

"We'll draw down the moon. Some-most-usually do this when there's serious work to be done, but I sometimes need, or like, the extra burst of energy. To begin, open yourself. Mind, breath, heart, loin. Trust yourself. Every woman is ruled by the moon, just as the sea is. Hold your wand in your right hand."

Mirroring Mia's gestures, Nell lifted her arms, slowly raising them high, then clasping her wand with both hands.

"On this night, in this hour, we call upon Luna's power. Merge with us light into light." Slowly, the wands were turned, aimed at hearts. "Woman and goddess glowing bright. Power and joy pour down from thee. As we will, so mote it be."

She felt it, cool and fluid and strong, a flood of energy and light inside her. Pulsing, as that white ball of moon seemed to pulse as it rose gracefully above the trees. She could all but see it, blue-edged silver spurts of light that spun down and into her.

With the power came a rush of joy. It came out of Nell in a laughing gasp as Mia lowered her wand.

"Sometimes it's just lovely being a girl, isn't it? We'll close the circle now. I believe, little sister, you'll find an appropriate outlet for all that fresh energy."

When she was alone, Mia put her own energy to use working a protective spell. Nell had a great deal of natural power, largely untapped. She could and would help her explore it, control it, and refine it. But there was something more immediate preying on her mind now.

Within the circle, within the woods, she'd seen something Nell had not. She'd watched the single, dark cloud slide over the heart of the moon.

The last weeks of summer passed in a blur. Days were filled with work, with plans for the jobs she'd won and proposals for more.

Once the weather turned she would lose the summer-people aspect of her business. So she would be the clever ant, Nell decided, who carefully prepared for winter.

She'd solicit jobs for holiday parties, for Super Bowl Sunday, for cabin fever victims. The islanders were growing so accustomed to calling her for their events, small and large, it would become strange to do otherwise.

Nights were nearly always spent with Zack-taking advantage of the final burst of warmth with candlelight dinners alfresco, evening sails made brisk from the chill rising from the water, long, luxurious lovemaking in the cozy nest of her bed.

Once she lit red candles for passion. They seemed to work exceptionally well.

At least two evenings a week she worked with Mia on what she thought of as her ritual lessons.

And at dawn she was baking in her kitchen.

The life she'd always looked for was all around her, and more. She had a power inside her that ran like silver. And love that glowed warm gold.

There were times she caught him watching her, quietly, patiently. The waiting look. Each time she did, there was a tug of guilt, a ripple of unease. And each time that she took the coward's way and ignored it, she disappointed both of them.

She could rationalize it. She was happy, and entitled to a time of peace and pleasure. Only a year before, she'd risked her life, and would have forfeited it, rather than live trapped and afraid.

For so many months following, she'd been alone, constantly on the move, wary of every sound. She awakened night after night in cold sweats from dreams she couldn't face even in the dark.

If she'd locked that time in a box and buried the key, who had a better right?

It was the now that mattered, and she was giving Zack all she could of the now.

As summer slipped into fall she was convinced of it, and of the solidity of her haven on Three Sisters.

With her latest kitchen catalogs and her new subscription to Saveur under her arm, Nell walked out of the post office and headed down High Street toward the market. The summer people had been replaced by tourists eager to view New England foliage at its peak.

She couldn't blame them. Wedges of the island were covered with a brilliant patchwork of flaming color. Every morning she studied the changes from her own kitchen window, dreaming into her own woods as the leaves took on fire. There were times she walked the beach in the evening just to see the slow roll of fog tumble in, swallow water, cloak the buoys, and muffle the long, monotonous bongs.

Mornings, a fine, glassy frost might glitter on the ground only to melt under the strengthening sun until it beaded on the grass like tears on lashes.

Rains swept in, pounded the beaches, the cliffs, then swept out again until it seemed to her that the whole of the world sparkled like something under a glass dome.

She was under that dome, Nell thought. Safe and secure and away from the world that raged beyond sea and inlet.

With the brisk wind sneaking up her sweater, she waved at familiar faces, paused briefly at the crosswalk to check traffic, then jogged carelessly into the market for the pork chops she intended to make for dinner.

Pamela Stevens, on an impromptu visit to the island with her husband, Donald, gave a little cry of surprise and rolled down the window of their rented BMW sedan.

"I'm not stopping at any of these shops, Pamela, no matter how quaint they are, until I find the right place to park."

"I've just seen a ghost." Pamela dropped back on the seat, laid a hand over her heart.

"It's witches around here, Pamela, not ghosts."

"No, no, Donald. Helen Remington. Evan Remington's wife. I'd swear I've just seen her ghost."

"Don't know why in God's name she would come all the way out here to haunt anybody. Can't even find a damn parking lot."

"I'm not joking. The woman could've been her double, except for the hair and the clothes. Helen wouldn't have been caught dead in that frightful sweater." She craned her neck to try to keep the market in sight. "Pull over, Donald. I've just got to go back and get a closer look."

"As soon as I find a parking place."

"It looked just like her," Pamela repeated. "So odd, and it gave me such a jolt. Poor Helen. I was one of the last people who spoke to her before that terrible accident."

"And so you said, a hundred times for six months after she drove off the cliff."

"Something like that stays with you." Bristling, Pamela straightened in her seat, sent her nose in the air. "I was very fond of her. She and Evan were a beautiful couple. She was so young and pretty, with everything to live for. When something tragic like that happens, it reminds you that lives can change with the snap of a finger."