Cate Tiernan: Spellbound

"How about Hunter?" Mary K. asked, looking down at me thoughtfully from her ladder.

"What about him?" I tried to sound careless, but I couldn't quite pull it off.

"Do you think you'll go to bed with him?"

"Mary K.," I said, feeling my cheeks heat up. "We're not even dating. Sometimes we don't even get along.”

“That's the way it always starts," Mary K. said with fourteen-year-old wisdom.

We'd started early; so we finished the walls around lunchtime. While I cleaned up the painting equipment, Mary k. went down to the kitchen and made us some sandwiches. Recently she'd gotten into eating healthy food, so the sandwiches were peanut-butter and banana on seven-grain bread. Surprisingly, they were good.

I polished off my sandwich, then took a sip of Diet Coke. "Ah, that hits the spot," I said.

"All that artificial stuff is bad for you," Mary K. said, but her voice was listless. I regarded her with concern. It really was taking her a while to come out of her depression over Bakker.

"Hey. What are you doing this afternoon?" I asked, thinking maybe we could hit the mall, or go to a matinee movie, or do some other sisterly activity.

"Not much. I thought maybe I'd go to the three o'clock mass," she said.

I laughed, startled. "Church on a Monday? What's going on?" I asked. "You becoming a nun?"

Mary K. smiled slightly. "I just feel. . you know, with everything going on—I just need extra help. Extra support. I can get that at church. I want to be more in touch with my faith."

I sipped my Diet Coke and couldn't think of anything constructive to say. In the silence I suddenly thought, Hunter, and then the phone rang.

I lunged for it. "Hey, Hunter," I said.

"I want to see you," Hunter said with his usual lack of greeting. "There's an antiques fair half an hour from here. I was wondering if you wanted to go."

Mary K. was looking at me, and I raised my eyebrows at her. "An antiques fair?" was my scintillating reply.

"Yes. It could be interesting. It's nearby, in Kaaterskill."

Mary K. was watching the expressions cross my face, and I pantomimed my jaw dropping. "Hunter, is this a date?" I asked for Mary K.'s benefit, and she sat up straighten looking intrigued.

Silence. I smiled into the phone. "You know, this sort of sounds like a date," I pressed him. "I mean, are we meeting for business reasons?"

Mary K. started snickering quietly. "We're two friends getting together," Hunter said, sounding very British. "I don't know why you feel compelled to label it."

"Anyone else coming?"

"Well, no."

"And you're not calling it a date?"

"Would you like to come or not?" he asked stiffly. I bit my lip to keep from laughing.

"I'll come," I said, and hung up. "I think Hunter just asked me out." I told Mary K.

"Wow," she said, grinning.

I skipped upstairs to take a shower, wondering how, when my life was so stressful and scary, I could feel so happy.

Hunter picked me up in Sky's car twenty minutes later. My wet hair hung in a long, heavy braid down my back. I offered him a Diet Coke and he shuddered; then we were on our way to Kaaterskill.

"Why did you care if this was a date or not?" he asked suddenly.

I was startled into an honest reply. "I wanted to know where we stand."

He glanced at me. He was really good-looking, and my brain was suddenly bombarded with images of how he had been when we were kissing, how intense and passionate he'd seemed. I looked out my window.

"And where do we stand?" he asked softly. "Do you want this to be a date?"

Now I was embarrassed. "Oh, I don't know."

Then Hunter took my hand in his and brought it to his mouth and kissed it, and my breathing went shallow.

"I want it to be what you want," he said, driving with one hand and not looking at me.

“I'll let you know when I figure it out," I said shakily.

The antiques fair took place in a huge warehouse-like barn in the middle of rural New York. There weren't many people there—it was the last day. Everything looked kind of picked through, but still, I enjoyed the time with Hunter, the time without magick involved. My mood got even better when I found a little carved box that would be perfect for my mom and an old brass barometer that my dad would love. Two Christmas gifts that I could cross off my list. I was woefully behind on my holiday shopping. Christmas was coming up fast and I'd barely thought about it. Our coven was planning a Yule celebration, too, but fortunately that didn't involve any gift-giving.

I was engrossed in the contents of an old dentist's cabinet when Hunter called me over. "Look at these," he said, pointing to a selection of Amish-type quilts. I'd always liked Amish quilts, with their bright, solid colors and comforting geometry of design. The one Hunter was pointing to was unusual in that it had a circular motif.

"It's a pentacle," I said softly, touching the cotton with my fingertips. "A circle with a star inside." The background was black, with a nine-patch design in each corner in shades of teal, red, and purple. The large circle touched each of the four sides and was of purple cotton. A red five-pointed star filled the circle, and a nine-patch square was centered in the star. It was gorgeous.

I glanced at the middle-aged woman selling the quilts and cast my senses quickly to see if she was a witch. I picked up nothing. "Is it Wiccan?" I asked so only Hunter could hear.

He shook his head. "More likely just a Pennsylvania Dutch hex design. It's pretty, though."

"Beautiful." Again I ran my fingers gently across the cotton. The next thing I knew, Hunter had pulled out his wallet and was counting out bills into the woman's hand, and she was smiling and thanking him. She took the small quilt, barely more than four feet square, and wrapped it in tissue before putting it into a brown paper bag.

We headed back to Hunter's car. "That's really beautiful," I said. "I'm glad you bought it. Where will you put it?"

We climbed into his car, and he turned to me and handed me the bag. "It's for you," he said. "I bought it because I wanted you to have it."

The air around us crackled, and I wondered if it was I magick or attraction or something else. I took the bag and I reached my hand inside to feel the cool folds of the quilt "Are you sure?" I knew neither he nor Sky had much income—this quilt must have put a huge dent in his budget

"Yes," he said. "I'm quite sure."

"Thank you," I said softly.

He started the car's engine, and we didn't say anything until he dropped me at my house. I climbed out of the car, feeling uncertain all over again. He got out, too, and coming around to the sidewalk, he kissed me, a soft, quick meeting of the lips. Then he climbed back in Sky's car and drove off before I could say good-bye.

May 17, 1970

Spring has finally sprung in Wales. Here in Albertswyth the hills are a new bright green. The women of the village are in their hands and knees, setting plants in their gardens. Clyda and I have been walking over the hills and among the rocks, and she's been teaching me the local herb lore and the properties of the local stone, earth, water, and air. I've been here six months now, on one of life's detours.

Since I found out about Clyda Rockpel from one of Patrick's spelled books, I was determined to find her, to learn from her. It took two weeks of camping on her doorstep, eating bread and cheese, sleeping with my coat pulled over my head before she would speak to me. Now I'm her student, taking knowledge from her like a sea sponge absorbs ocean water.

She's deep, dark, terrifying sometimes, yet the glimmers of her power, the breadth of her learning, her strength and guile in dealing with the dark forces fill me with a giddy exhilaration. I want to know what she knows, have the power to do what she does, have control over what she controls. I want to become her.