Cate Tiernan - The Coven

I pushed past Mary K. into the hallway, then thundered down the steps two at a time. I tore around the corner, hearing my parents on the steps behind me. In the family office I yanked open my dad's files, where he keeps things like insurance papers, our passports, their marriage license … birth certificates.

Breathing hard, I flipped through files on car insurance, the house's AC system, our new water heater. My file read Morgan. I pulled it out just as my parents came into the office.

"Morgan! Stop it!" said Dad.

Ignoring him, I rifled through immunization records, school reports, my social security card.

There it was. My birth certificate. I picked it up and scanned it Birthday, November 23. Correct Weight, eight pounds, ten ounces.

My mom reached around me and snatched the birth certificate out of my hand. As if in a slapstick movie, I snatched it back. She held tight with both hands, and the paper ripped.

Dropping to my knees, I hunched over my half on the floor, protecting it till I could read it. Age of mother: 23. No. That was wrong because Mom had been thirty before the had me.

Then the edges of the paper grew cloudy as my eyes locked onto four words: Mother's name: Maeve Riordan.

I blinked, reading it again and again at the speed of light Maeve Riordan. Mother's name: Maeve Riordan.

Mechanically I read down to the bottom of my torn page, expecting to see my mom's real name, Mary Grace Rowlands, somewhere. Anywhere.

Shocked, I looked up at my mother. She seemed to have aged ten years in the last half hour. My dad, behind her, was tight-lipped and silent.

I held up the paper, my brain misfiring. "What does this mean?" I asked stupidly.

My parents didn't answer, and I stared at them. My fears came crashing down on me in hard waves. Suddenly I couldn't bear to be with them. I had to get away. Scrambling to my feet I rushed from the room, colliding with Mary K., almost knocking her down. The torn scrap of paper fluttered from my fingers as I pushed through the kitchen door and grabbed the keys to my car. I raced outside as if the devil were chasing me.

May 14, 1977

Going to school is more a bother these days than anything else. It's spring, everything's blooming. I'm out gathering luibh—plants-for my spells, and then I have to get to school and learn English. What for? I live in Ireland. Anyway, I'm fifteen now, old enough to quit. Tonight's a full moon, so I'll do a scrying spell to see the future. I hope it will tell me whether I should stay in school or no. Scrying is hard to control, though.

There's something else I want to scry for: Angus. Is he my muirn beatha dan? On Beltane he pulled me behind the straw man and kissed me and said he loves me. I thought I liked David O'Hearn. But he's not one of us—not a blood witch—and Angus is. For each of us there's only one other they should be with: their muirn beatha dan. For Ma, it was Da. Who is mine? Angus says it's him. If it's him, I have no choice, do I?

To scry: I don't use water overmuch—water is the easiest but also the least reliable. You know, a shallow bowl of clear water, gaze at it under the open sky or near a window. You'll see things easily enough, but it's wrong so ofter, I think it's just asking for trouble.

The best way to scry is with an enchanted leug, like bloodstone or hematite, or a crystal, buy these are hard to lay your hands on. They give the most truth, but these are hard to lay your hands on. They give the most truth, but brace yourself for things you might not want to see or know. Stone scrying is good for seeing things you might not want to see or know. Stone scrying is good for seeing things as they are happening someplace else, like checking on a loved one or an enemy in battle.

I scry with fire, usually. Fire is unpredictable. But I'm made of fire, we are one, and so she speaks to me. With fire scrying. If I see something in can be past, present, or future. Of course the future stuff is only one possible future. But what I see in fire is true, as true as can be.

I love the fire.

— Bradhadair

I ran across the frost-stiffened grass, which crunched lightly under my slippers. The front door opened behind me, but I was already sliding onto the freezing vinyl front seat of my white 71 Valiant, Das Boot, and cranking the engine.

"Morgan!" my dad yelled as I squealed out of our driveway, the car lurching like a boat on rough waters. Then I roared forward, watching my parents on our front lawn in my rearview mirror. Mom was sinking to the ground; Dad was trying to hold her up. I burst into tears as I wheeled too fast onto Riverdale.

Sobbing, I dashed my tears away with one hand, then wiped my nose on my sleeve. I turned on Das Boots heater, but of course it took forever for the engine to warm up.

I was turning onto Bree's street before I remembered that we were no longer friends. If she hadn't left those books on my porch, I wouldn't know I was adopted. If Cal hadn't come between us, she would never have left the books on my porch.

I cried harder, shaking with sobs, and spun into a sloppy U-turn right before I reached her driveway. Then I hit the gas and drove, my only destination to be away, away.

The next time my vision cleared, I had managed to fish a battered box of tissues from beneath the front seat. Damp, crumpled ones littered the passenger side and covered the floor. I had ended up heading north, out of town. The road followed a low valley, and early fog clung heavily to the asphalt. Das Boot plowed through it like a brick thrown through clouds. In the distance I saw a large, dark shadow of to the side of the road. It was the willow oak that we had parked under just last night, for Samhain. Where I had parked the first time I did a circle with Cal, weeks before. When magick had come into my life.

Without thinking, I swung my car off the road and bumped across the field, rolling to a stop beneath the oak's low-hanging branches. Here I was hidden by fog; by the tree. I turned off my engine, leaned against the steering wheel, and tried to stop crying.

Adopted. Every instance, every example of my being different from my family reared up in my face and mocked me. Yesterday they had been only family jokes—how the three of them are larks and I'm a night owl, how they're unnaturally cheerful and I'm grumpy. How Mom and Mary K. are curvy and cute and I'm thin and intense. Today those jokes caused waves of pain as I remembered them one by one.

"Damn it! Damn iIt! Damn it!" I shouted, banging my fists against the hard metal steering wheel. "Damn it!" I whacked the wheel until my hands were numb, until I had gone through every curse I knew, until my throat was raw.

Then I wept again, lying down in the front seat. I don't know how long I was there, cocooned in my car in the mist. From time to time I turned on the heater to stay warm. The windows fogged and steamed with my tears.

Gradually my sobs degenerated into shaky hiccups and the occasional shudder. Oh, Cal, I thought. I need Cal. As soon as I thought that, a rhyme came into my head: In my mind I see you here. In my pain I need you near, find me, tract me, where I be. Come here, come here, now to me.

I didn't know where it came from, but by now I was getting used to the arrival of strange thoughts. I felt calmer hearing it, so I said it over and over again. I draped my arm over my eyes, praying desperately I would wake up In bed at home to find it had all been a nightmare.

Minutes later I jumped when someone tapped on the passenger-side window. My eyes snapped open, and I sat up, then cleared a space on the glass to see Cal, looking sleepy and rumpled and amazingly beautiful.