Cate Tiernan - Reckoning

"What happened?" I asked.

"In all likelihood," she said, "my mother took it. She could see how agitated it had made me, so she decided it was best for me not to read it. But aside from Oona's story, which is very tragic there's nothing worth hiding. The fact that someone has torn out some pages, however, suggests a very serious problem. No Rowanwand destroys a book—especially not the Book of Shadows of an ancestor."

"Who do you think tore out the pages?" I said.

"I don't know," Evelyn replied. "The pages were torn when I located the book. It seems to be the same witch who wrote the spell in secret writing, but I don't know her identity. I see that the ink is smudged now. It wasn't when I first found it. Someone else was trying to make the book unreadable."

"No." I shook my head. "That was me, and it was an accident. Couldn't you see it?"

Her eyes narrowed in on me.

"See what?" she asked.

"The writing," I said. "The green writing."

She looked like I'd just giver her a shock of static electricity.

"What green writing?"

I got up and took the book from her, quickly flipping through the pages.

"It's gone," I said, speeding through. "It was here, and now it's gone."

She looked at me, demanding further explanation, and I told her about the water spilling onto the book and the mysterious writing that blossomed like creeping vines all over the page.

"I saw it," I promised her. "It's gone now."

"The spell could be old," she said, her eyes flashing. "It could be fragile. Or the spells may be counteracting one another. That could account for the fading. I'd say we should try dampening it again, but we might destroy it."

"That's what I was afraid of," I nodded.

"Did you get a good look at the pages?" she asked.

"Pretty good. But I didn't understand all of the words. Some of them were written in a different language."

"Then I have an idea. Have you ever heard of a ritual called a tàth meànma ?"

"I've done one of those," I said. "I did a tàth meànma brach ."

Evelyn looked up with knitted brows.

"Somehow I doubt that," she said. From Charlie's reaction, I knew that this probably did seem unlikely. But I guessed she would find out that I was telling the truth soon enough. "It's a very intense connection spell that can only be performed by…"

"I know what it is," I said, starting to feel a little annoyed. "I did one."

She looked a bit surprised, but she seemed to like the fact that I showed I actually had bits and pieces of spine every once in a while.

"All right," she replied, still skeptical, "how do you feel about doing a regular tàth meànma so that I can have a look at the pages?"

The idea of having Evelyn in my mind was more than a little scary, but I knew this was the only way we were going to get to the bottom of the story.

"Okay," I said.

Evelyn instructed me to sit down and meditate for a few minutes while she prepared some ritual tea. I sat cross-legged on the floor and did some breathing exercises that we'd been taught in circle. I would show her. Tàth meànma … bring it on!

She returned for me a few minutes later and indicated that I should come to the kitchen. I got up an followed her.

"Drink it all," she said, pointing at a huge cup of tea.

This stuff was nasty. Seriously nasty. It tasted like I was licking a slimy, insect-infested tree. But I gulped it back, determined to show no sign of weakness. She drank one herself, and I saw her grimace slightly. When we had gotten this down, we sat cross-legged on the polished wood floor, we took each other's hands, and put our foreheads together.

"Relax," she said. "Just breathe."

At first I just felt my butt getting sore and heard the hum of the refrigerator.

I became gradually aware that I wasn't in the kitchen anymore. I wasn't sure where we were. It might have been on the shore because I thought I could hear the sound of the ocean. The ground was soft, like cool, damp sand.

"Come, Alisa." Evelyn's voice was somewhere in my mind—not in sound. I could feel the words. I started walking along, not sure where to go. Then I saw that Evelyn was besides me. I could tell that she was somehow in control of the experience, that she was the guide.

What came next was a weird mix of images—a falling of furniture, the sound of splintering wood and ripping fabric. A storm. A baby. Evelyn—or both of us—was holding a baby. Sorcha was her name—Sorcha…Sarah…my mother. Evelyn led me away from this image. There was an overwhelming love of the Goddess. I could feel her power all around me, especially in the ocean. And I felt walls—anger, sadness, terrible loss—a father, a mother, a sister named Tioma, also named Jessica, killed in a car accident, a husband dying quietly in his sleep, a daughter gone forever… unbearable sadness…

We were leaving Evelyn, and Evelyn was coming into me. Evelyn drank up my life, taking in everything. She saw me, at three years old, trying to understand my father's explanation that my mother was gone and the she was never coming back. She saw my life in Texas—the long flatness of the land and the constant warmth of the sun. Then New York State, Widow's Vale, so cold and bleak and lonely.

I felt her close attention to the whirlwind of events that followed—discovering Wicca, my fears at seeing what my magick could do, my hospitalization. Finding my mother's Book of Shadows and realizing I was a blood witch. As we came to the point where I was standing alone as the dark wave approached, linked to Morgan through the brach , I felt her speeding, falling through my mind. This she couldn't take in enough of, and she could hardly believe what she was seeing. She couldn't get to everything I learned through Morgan, but the power she saw here was unlike anything she had ever encountered. She saw me finish the spell as the dark wave closed in, and I felt her pride.

There was an interested pause as she caught a flash of my strange dreams about Gloucester and the mermaid. I felt her mind hooking onto the images and processing them in some way. And I was telekinetic ? Sparks of surprise as she saw objects falling, flying, breaking…

After that, her emotions changed, softened. I came to something raw within her. She felt for me as I returned to the house where no one understood what I had seen or been through. She was with me on the floor at Hunter's as I wept full of frustration and pain. Then she saw me running away, coming to her, and how rejected I felt. Her guilt was thick, smothering. Images of my mother flickered through our minds.

She was moving faster now, through the events of the last few days. We came to Charlie—my ripple of excitement at meeting him, our kiss in the library. I cringed—how embarrassing!

The book. That was what she wanted to see. Finally we faced the book with its strange green print. She pulled on close to it and read the pages. What was odd was that now I could see even more writing that had been invisible before, along with the passages that I had been able to uncover. Telekinesis… she was thinking again…. uncontrollable magick…uncontrollable… the word was making her uncomfortable.

Then she saw what I had concluded—what I had asked Hunter to look into—what Ardán Rourke had suggested… that she also suffered from telekinesis. There was no ghost. No Oona. No…

Everything was rushing back at me, a rush of gravity pressing on my head, making my stomach churn. I wanted to get up—to move around, to stretch and feel the blood flowing through my veins. But she put a hand on my shoulder.

"Sit," she said. "It catches up with you."

I sat. It caught up with me. I wondered if I was going to barf.

"You," she said, "you're telekinetic?"