Cate Tiernan: Spellbound

"There it is," I said, pointing suddenly. I recognized a twisted spruce as one that I'd seen in my mind's eye. "In there."

Hunter pulled the car to the side of the road and peered skeptically past the tree line. We got out, and I quickly jumped the old-fashioned slat fence. Hunter followed. I strode forward through the dead clumps of frozen grass, sending out my senses and looking alertly at everything. There was almost nothing alive around here, no birds, no animals hibernating in nests or trees, no deer or rabbits watching quietly nearby.

"Hmmm," said Hunter, slowing down and scanning the area. "What do you feel?"

I swallowed. "I feel like we're close to something really bad."

I slowed my pace and started looking more closely at the ground. Suddenly I halted, as if an invisible hand had pressed my chest and stopped me cold. I looked closer, focusing sharply on the ground between the clumps of grass. I didn't even know what to look for, but then I saw it the rippled, broken backbone of a large brick foundation. The barn had once stood here.

I stepped back, as if it were poison ivy. Hunter came up next to me, looking uncomfortable and edgy.

"Now what?" he asked.

"I get my tools," I said.

I made Hunter turn around while I wiggled out of my clothes and put on Maeve's robe. No one but my mother, my sister, and my gynecologist had seen me naked, and I was going to keep it that way. At least for the immediately foreseeable future.

"Okay, I'm ready," I said, and Hunter turned to look at me.

"How do you want to do this?" he said. "I don't have my robe or tools with me."

"I'm thinking meditation," I answered. "Together, the two lives of us, with my tools."

Hunter thought about it and nodded. By picking our way through the years of overgrowth, we found two walls of the former foundation. Gauging our position from the angle of the crumbling bricks, we sat in what had been the center of the barn. I held Maeve's athame in my left hand, her wand in my right. Between Hunter and me I placed several crystals and two bloodstones. We drew a circle of power around us with a stick and then closed our eyes. I took a deep breath, tried to release tension, and lost myself in nothingness.

The inside of the barn was dark. Angus and I stood in the middle of the building, hearing running footsteps around the outside. I was muttering spells under my breath, spells I hadn't used in two years. My magick felt dull, blunted, an unhoned blade no longer useful beside me I felt Angus's fear, his hopelessness. Why are you wasting energy on feelings? I wanted to scream.

My eyes adjusted to the blackness inside the barn. The scents of old hay, animals from long ago, ancient leather filled my nose, and I wanted to sneeze. Still I chanted, drawing power to me: "An di allaigh an di aigh. ." I reached out with my senses, probing, but they recoiled on me. It was as if we were trapped in a cage made of crystal—a cage that reflected our power back at us rather than letting it out to do its work.

The first sharp scent of smoke came to me. Angus gripped my hand tightly, and I shook him off, feeling sudden anger at the way he'd loved me all these years—years when he'd known that I didn't love him. Why hadn't he demanded more from me? Why hadn't he left me? Then maybe he wouldn't be here now, dying with me.

Smoke. I heard the hungry crackling of the fire as it lapped the base of the barn, as it whipped down the sides, hurrying to meet itself, to make a full circle of flames. The barn was old, dry, the wood half rotted: perfect kindling. Ciaran had known.

"Our child." Angus's voice was full of pain.

"She's safe," I said, feeling guilt weighing on me, further weakening my powers. "She will always be safe." The small windows, high on the barn walls, glowed pinkly, and I knew it was from fire, not from dawn. No one would find us. Ciaran's magick would make sure of that No one would call the fire department until it was much too late. Already the building was piling with smoke, hovering by the ceiling, swirling on itself, thickening.

Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe I could find a way out I still had my power, rusty though it might be. "An di allaigh an di aigh began once again.

But at my words, the cage of magick around us seemed to tighten, to contract glittering as it pressed in on us. I coughed and inhaled smoke. And then I knew there was no hope.

It had come to this. Ciaran was going to be my death. He had shown me what love was, what it could be, and now he would show me my death. I felt sharp regret that Angus would die here, too. I tried to console myself with the fact that it had been his choice. He had always chosen to be with me.

I wondered what Ciaran was doing outside: if he was still watching making sure we didn't escape; if he was weaving magick all around us, spells of death and binding panic and fear. I felt panic's claws scraping at my mind, but I refused to let it in. I tried to keep calm, to call power to me. I thought about my baby, my beautiful baby, with her fine, fuzzy infant hair the color of my mother's. Her tilted, brown eyes, so like her father's. The most perfect baby ever born, with a thousand years of Belwicket magick in her veins, in her blood.

She would be safe from this kind of danger. Safe from her heritage. I had made sure of that. It was hard to breathe, and I dropped to my knees. Angus was coughing, trying to breathe through his shin, pulled up to cover his nose and mouth. I had mended that shirt this morning sewed on a button.

Ciaran. Even here, now, I couldn't help remembering how he'd made me feel when we'd first met. It had been so clear we were meant to be together. So clear that we were muirn beatha dan. But he was married to another and a father. And I chose Angus. Poor Angus. Then Ciaran chose the darkness, over me.

I felt light-headed. Sweat was beading on my forehead, in my hair; soot was stinging my eyes. Angus was coughing nonstop. I took his hand as I sank into the fine dust on the barn floor, feeling the heat pressing in from all sides. I no longer chanted. It was no use. Ciaran had always been stronger then me—he had gone through the Great Trial.

I had never had a chance.

November 1987

I'm pregnant. It's a bizarre physiological experience, like being take over by an alien that I can't control. Every cell in my body is changing. It's thrilling and terrifying: much like being part of Amyrenth.

Daniel, of course, is furious. These past six months he's always furious with me, so there's nothing new there. We'd agreed not to have children because our marriage has seemed so rocky. By myself, I decided I wanted to have part of Daniel always, wanted to have something permanent that was partly me and partly him. So I used magick to override his conception block. It was easy.

So Daniel's thrown a fit and hightailed it back to England. I've settled in San Francisco because of the strong Amyranth presence here. What is it about England that pulls him back so strongly? This is the third time in three months that he's gone back. For me, my home is where Amyranth is. Daniel's sentimental loyalty seems naïve and misplaced.

He'll be back soon. He always comes back. And the mirror shows my that pregnant, I am more beautiful than ever. When he sees me glowing, carrying our child, it will be a new start for us. I can feel it.

— SB

When I opened my eyes, tears were streaming down my I face. Hunter was watching me, looking calm and alert. He reached toward me and brushed some tears away with his hand.

"Did you see any of that?" I asked, my throat tight and full of pain.

"Some," he said, helping me stand. We were both chilled through, and I wanted to be gone from this place, far away from these feelings. I looked down at the broken foundations and could still smell the ancient ash, the charred boards. I could hear the snap of the windows as they broke one by one from the heat. The smell of skin and hair, burning. They had been dead by then.