Cate Tiernan - Seeker

That afternoon Daniel lay down with a book, and I headed back to Justine’s. She greeted me cheerfully, and soon I was again sitting in her comfortable lounge, with cats appearing out of nowhere to take naps on me.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday,” she began. “About the council laws and why we have them. And I’m just not convinced. I mean, I obey all Canadian laws, and I recognize their right to have and enforce them. After all, I’m choosing to live here. If I don’t like their laws, I can decide to move somewhere else. But I have no choice about being a witch. I am one, by blood. It would be impossible for me not to be one. So why should I accept the council’s laws as valid over me? They set themselves up almost two hundred years ago. Nowadays they’re elected, but the entire council, in and of itself, wasn’t created by the Wiccan community or even by the Seven Clans. To me they seem arbitrary. Why should I subject myself to their laws?”

I leaned forward. “It’s true that the council created itself long ago. But the original members were witches, just as all members are today. The council wasn’t created by humans, who have nothing to do with witch affairs. The creation of the council signifies the intent of the witch community at large to be self-governing. And yes, we’re all subject to whatever human laws govern the places in which we live, but those laws don’t address the sum of our existence. Everyone who practices the craft, everyone who works with magick is a part of a different world. That world intersects with the human world but doesn’t overlap.” I adjusted one of the cats on my lap, whose claws were digging into my thigh. “We’re not talking about golf here, Justine. We’re talking about magick. You know as well as I do that magick can be incredibly powerful, life-altering, dangerous, misused, destructive. You don’t think it’s a good idea to have some sort of mutually agreed-upon guidelines for it? Do you really think it would be preferable to have no laws in place? So that every witch could make any kind of magick she or he wants, with no fear of reprisal?”

Her brows came down in a thoughtful V, and she pulled a corner of one lip into her mouth: she was thinking. “It’s just that the laws seem arbitrary,” she argued, crossing her legs under her. Today she wore faded jeans and a fuzzy pink sweater that showed the neck of a white T-shirt underneath. She looked very fresh and pretty. “I mean, look at the rules about uninitiated witches making certain kinds of magick. Why does someone need some stranger’s stamp of approval just to do what comes naturally? I hate that.”

“But what comes naturally, Justine?” I asked. I was enjoying this back-and-forth discussion. I hardly ever got to have this kind of interesting, stimulating conversation. Among the witches I knew, we all just accepted the council’s laws. And other people, like Morgan, don’t really know enough about Wiccan history or the witch community to be able to fully form an opinion. “What kind of magick did you make as a child? That was natural, wasn’t it? But was it always good?” I thought about my own spell on poor Mrs. Wilkie. “I don’t believe either people or witches are always born naturally good,” I went on. “I think that as people get older and more educated, they learn to channel their goodness, to identify it, and to express it. But I think witches, and people, too, are born with a capacity for light or dark. It’s up to their parents, their community, their teachers to educate them to see the consistent benefit of good and the consistent detriment of darkness. The council and its laws only serve to reinforce that, to provide guidelines, to help people learn where the boundaries are.”

“But is that all they do?” asked Justine, and we were off again. For the next hour we went back and forth, discussing the various merits of laws versus no laws, outer-determined behavior versus inner-determined behavior. It was really fun, though at times I was uncomfortably reminded of the scientists who had figured out how to make an atom bomb. They had seemed to divorce the idea of how to create it from the idea of what its natural consequences would be. They hadn’t wanted to see it. In a way, I felt that Justine was doing the same thing: closing her eyes to the potentially destructive effects of her actions.

But we talked on. Justine was sure of herself, sure of her own intelligence and attractiveness, and didn’t let insecurity get in the way of her speaking her mind. For a moment I wondered if I should be concerned that I was enjoying her company so much, but then thought, Nah. I knew I loved Morgan more than anything. I was doing my job, being a Seeker, finding out what made Justine tick. It was all for the report.

I had talked to Morgan the night before, but it had been kind of stilted. Hearing her voice had brought back my unhappiness about my parents, about how much I missed Morgan herself, about how much I didn’t want to be here. Widow’s Vale seemed so far away from here, both physically and emotionally.

“I was wondering—are you interested in seeing my library?” Justine asked.

“Yes,” I said immediately, aware that this was a show of trust on her part. For my part, a Seeker never turns down an invitation into someone’s private world. It’s often where I find the answers to my questions.

She led me through a tidy, well-stocked kitchen to a small door in a hallway. She passed her hands over the door frame: dispelling protection spells. Once opened, the door led to steps going downward. I immediately became alert and quickly cast my senses to see if anything unpleasant was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.

“It’s underground,” Justine explained, turning on the electric lights. She didn’t seem to pick up on my momentary suspicion, or maybe she was just being polite. “That helps keep it safe from fire. I think the people who owned this house before me used the cellar as storage, as a wine cellar. I enlarged it and waterproofed it.”

At the bottom of the stairs she flicked another light switch, and I blinked, looking around. Justine’s library was enormous. We were in one good-sized room, but doorways led to at least two other rooms I could see. The floor was made of rough wooden planks, and the walls were a crude stucco. But most bare surfaces had been painted with stylized designs of runes, hexes, words, and even some sigils I didn’t know the names of. I picked up on a general air of light, of comfort and pleasure and curiosity. If dark magick had been worked here, I couldn’t feel it.

“This is incredible,” I said, walking slowly into the room. Despite the lack of windows, the room looked open and inviting. A fireplace took up one wall, and by gauging the rooms above, I figured its chimney must run through the kitchen fireplace’s. Big, cozy armchairs were strewn here and there. There were closed glass cases, regular bookshelves, wooden tables piled with stacked books. Unlike Selene’s personal library, this one wasn’t cold or intimidating. It was all laid out neatly and beautifully organized.

“This is quite an accomplishment for someone so young,” I said, wandering into the next room. I saw that it led to another room, and that there was a lavatory off to one side.

“I’m twenty-four,” Justine said without artifice. “I inherited a lot of this from my mother when she moved into a smaller house. Most of what I’ve contributed myself are the books on the use of the stars’ positions to aid or hinder magick. It’s another interest of mine.”

I ran my fingers lightly over books’ spines, skimming titles. There were one or two books on the dark uses of magick, but that was to be expected of almost any witch’s library. The vast majority of the books were legitimate and nonthreatening. Or as nonthreatening as a manual of how to make magick can be. Just about anything can be misused.