Rita being a witch, it seems a little obvious for her to have cats, but there you go. We can’t always fight against stereotypes no matter how much we want to be individual. Two black cats and a ginger. I pet the ginger and he rises to my touch with a curve of his back and a lifting of his behind.
I lift the brass knocker, and tap, tap, tap, on the door. Not too loud or too soft. The door flies open a second later, but it isn’t Rita who answers. For a moment I wonder if I’ve got the wrong house, but then I take a second glance at the guy in front of me and know he’s exactly the kind of person I’d find hanging out with Rita. He’s got a nose piercing and a slick of dyed black hair on top of his head that’s brushed to the side in a quiff. He’s wearing a long black velvet shirt with the first few buttons undone to reveal a pale and very birdlike chest.
“Well, well, well,” he chimes. “Rita never mentioned you were so purdy.” He’s barefoot and wearing a pair of dark red leather pants. Hmm, sexy. Or perhaps not.
“I’m Tegan, I’m here to see Rita,” I tell him as he gives me the once over.
He nods and introduces himself. “Pleased to meet ya, sweetie. I’m Alvie, come on in.” He leads me down to the end of the hallway and through a door that opens into a kitchen that might have been spacious once, but is now so full of things that it’s impossible to determine its original size. It seems as though shelves have been nailed to every available wall space, and they are packed to the brim with random items. Crockery, antiques, battered old children’s toys, dozens of yellowed paperbacks. I think I even spot the broken off rear view mirror of a car. Bizarre is too mild a word to describe this place.
The back door is open, leading out to the rear garden. Alvie slips out and I hear him call. “Reet! Tegan is here. Come on inside so we can get our spells on, girlfriend!”
From a small distance I hear Rita answer back, “We’ll be there in a minute, Alvie.” He comes back inside and shoves a stack of vinyls off one of the chairs by the kitchen table and gestures for me to sit down. “Take a seat m’love,” he says with grin and a flirty waggle of his eyebrows.
He leaps over to the stove where there’s a big dark green pot simmering on a low heat. He lifts the lid, takes a sniff of the rising steam, and gives the concoction a stir with a big wooden ladle, then replaces the lid.
At this Rita comes in the door. “Get your filthy paws off that,” she snaps, slapping Alvie’s hand away from the pot. A woman enters behind Rita, I judge her to be in her early fifties. She’s got long wavy chestnut hair, with a few greys peeking out at the temples, and she’s wearing a long blue and purple dress that pools around her bare feet. They aren’t fond of footwear in this house I see.
Rita grins at me when she sees me sitting at her kitchen table, and in her shining brown eyes I see a mixture of excitement and mischief. The mischief could be cause for concern, but I’m thinking that’s simply par for the course with this girl. At least I hope I’m right about that.
She sits down opposite me, and watches me for a minute before speaking. “You know, I was a bit wary of doing this when you suggested it earlier, but then I got to thinking and maybe this could turn out to be pretty cool.” She eyes me, but I don’t say anything.
“Anyway,” she continues, getting up and prancing over to the big green pot on the stove. “I spent all afternoon devising how I’m going to do it, and I came up with a clairvoyance spell uniquely designed with your situation in mind.” As she tells me this, the older woman grabs a coat and handbag from under the table. Rita pauses. “Oh. This is my Mum by the way.”
The woman smiles warmly, and I can see Rita in her, though she has a less hyper and more wise with age demeanour. “Noreen,” she says, by way of introduction, and shakes my hand. “And you must be Tegan,” I nod. “Rita told me all about your predicament, I would have liked to be able to take part in the casting but I have an appointment I need to keep,” she glances at the antique grandfather clock in the corner of the room, “which I’m already late for. Dammit, all right Reet, don’t make a mess, I’ll be back before midnight.” And at this she rushes out the door.
Rita rolls her eyes and shakes her head at her mother’s retreating figure, then she reaches up to one of the higher shelves and retrieves a wide but shallow grey pottery bowl.
“So I see you’ve met Alvie,” she says to me as she places the bowl on the counter then begins pulling various herbs from the cupboard above the stove. Alvie dips his head to me and grins.
“Yeah,” I reply, not doing very well in the conversation department tonight. But what can I say? I’m nervous. That’s only to be expected.
Rita laughs. “You don’t sound too happy, Tegan,” and raises a questioning eyebrow.
“I just – I don’t know what to expect with all of this. I’m just hoping everything turns out okay.”
“Believe me,” says Rita, and I could be mistaken, but she actually sounds like she’s making a conscious effort to be nice and reassure me. “I’ve worked it all out, I’m about 99.9% sure this is going to work. And, with the way I’m going to do this you’ll get to see everything that my casting reveals, whereas, if you’d gone along and allowed Marcel to do this, I can guarantee you’d only be given half the picture, the other half he’d keep for himself. As I said, it’s all about the power with the “families” and the Girards are notorious for their duplicity.”
“Really?” I ask, having a hard time picturing it. “I mean, I’ve never met any of his relations, but well, Marcel just seems like a jolly old hippy.”
“Sometimes deceptions can be even more believable than the truth,” Alvie interjects.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I agree. The more I think about it, the more Marcel’s actions seem to be self-serving. With Rita, I was the one who asked her to do this for me, whereas with Marcel it had been him trying to convince me to let him study me all the way. And when I really think back to it, his calm persuasion did contain just the tiniest note of greedy desperation. Gabriel, on the other hand, is slightly more difficult to read.
I just keep picturing him shaking his head ever so slightly at Marcel that first day we’d met. Shaking his head, as if to say, No Marcel, we should not invade this girl’s privacy in order to further our own agenda. And what is that agenda exactly? Is it all to do with the DOH and hunting down vampires? Or is it something far more dark and murky?
While Rita goes about gathering her implements and readying them for the casting, I turn to Alvie and ask, “So, has Rita told you everything about me?”
Alvie, happy to be involved, replies somewhat uncertainly, “Yes. I hope that’s okay with you. It’s just that I need to know all the details if I’m going to be the third member of the circle. You couldn’t have done it with just the two of you anyway, with magic, everything goes in threes. If you didn’t have three people to form the circle then you’d need six, if you didn’t have six you’d need nine.” He shrugs.
“Multiples of three, I get it.” I reply, smiling. “And don’t worry, I’m not bothered by her telling you, so long as I can trust you not to go blabbing about it to all and sundry.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that, anything we do for non-magic users is strictly confidential.” At this he makes a gesture, zipping his mouth shut.
I sigh in relief. “Thank you.”
“No problem, hun,” he replies, and then gets up to help Rita carry over the various bits and pieces required for her spell.
I sit silently and watch as they place the big grey bowl in the centre of the table and then use the wooden ladle to spoon a green coloured liquid from the pot that had been simmering on the stove into the bowl. The steam rises gently and bits of leaves float to the surface. Alvie places three smaller bowls in front of each of our place settings, in them is what looks like plain hot water.
Rita and Alvie sit down then and place their hands in the water, as though to wash. Then they each pick up a bunch of herbs and begin rubbing them into their palms.
&n
bsp; “Thyme,” says Rita, handing me a bunch of my own. “Rub it onto your hands, it’s purifying. We hold hands to form the circle, so there can’t be anything on our skin that will corrupt the casting.”
“Oh, right. Got it,” I reply, and then copy their movements. First placing my hands in the bowl of hot water as they did, and then rubbing in the thyme.
There are a further four smaller bowls in front of Rita, containing various herbs and berries. I eye them curiously. Alvie is to my left and Rita to my right. A slow, calming breeze flows in from the open back door. The air is sharp and almost addictive in its purity. A moment later, after several beats of silence, both Rita and Alvie take either of my hands into theirs.
Rita turns to me. “In the bowl is a neutral bath, it contains a precise mixture to allow for the perfect base for this spell. What we put into it after we begin determines the nature and function of the casting, do you understand?” she asks. I give her a curt nod and she continues. “All right then, we’ll take several moments to clear our minds of all conscious thought before we begin.” Her solemnity is a first.
I try my best not to think of anything at all as the quiet closes in around the three of us, and all I hear is the gentle swoosh of leaves being blown by the slow night wind out in Rita’s back garden.
It’s strange, because normally when somebody tells me to clear my mind all I can do is think about so many things that I end up cluttering my head rather than emptying it. But here, as I sit hand in hand with Rita and Alvie, two people I barely know, the clearing of my mind comes surprisingly easily.
I find myself falling into a meditative trance, and I’m only awoken from it when Rita begins to speak. In a soft, yet musical voice, very uncharacteristic, she says, “I call on the Goddess to watch over our proceedings here this night, and secure the success of our casting,” she lets go of mine and Alvie’s hands. “Into the formula I firstly add Aniseed,” she lifts some flowery green leafy herbs and throws them into the grey bowl, “to banish any negative energy and any negative thoughts and to ensure that no person within the circle is present for deceitful or insidious reasons, and that all three who form the circle have nothing but pure and unimpeachable reasons for performing this spell.”
Next she plucks another bunch of herbs from the second bowl in front of her and throws them in, these ones long leafed. “Secondly I add Bay leaf, for protection from the seeping in of the dark arts and for purification of our intentions. But most importantly for clairvoyance, so that we three may see that which has been hidden.”
Rita takes a breath, makes eye contact with me, and then with Alvie, before lifting up a stalk of little black berries. Then she speaks up. “Thirdly I add Elderberry so that it may release this spell cast upon my circle sister who sits to my left, but that it may also protect from the fall out of that which is released.” My heart gives a quick hard thump in my chest as I comprehend her words. Protect me from what fall out? My subconscious asks, but I push away the question and do my best to focus on the task at hand.
“Finally,” says Rita. “I add Euphrasia, more commonly known as Eyebright, for it will serve in pulling out lost and forgotten memories from within the depths of my circle sister’s mind, and it will seek the truth, which is our purpose here tonight.” She tosses a cluster of small white flowers with a dash of yellow in their centre into the bowl to finish the casting.
Unconsciously, I hold on tighter to Rita and Alvie’s hands as my eyes focus intently on the bowl in the centre of the table. The concoction of herbs swirls back and forth and a sliver of golden light shines through the water for a brief second and then it’s gone.
Even though I haven’t once taken my eyes off the bowl, I know instinctively that both Rita and Alvie are staring at it also. It would be a difficult task for anybody to drag their eyes away from it as the gold fades away and a rainbow of colours takes its place. The pretty colours are enchanting, but I can feel that it isn’t their beauty that is holding my eyes to the bowl. It’s the magic, pulling, dragging, and demanding my attention. All three of us combined could not resist its allure.
After an insurmountable number of minutes the colours begin to converge, and as they do my eyes draw closer, closer, ever closer to the colours within the water within the bowl. I drop. We all do. I’m no longer in Rita’s higgledy piggledy kitchen, I have fallen straight into the colours. I drift for a moment, and then the colours form a picture. A forest in the dark of night. A woman runs through the trees, weaving in and out, and I know exactly why she’s doing it. She’s being chased. He’s going to get you, honey, a disembodied voice speaks out from the darkness. No point in running. No point in hiding.
The woman comes into focus, a fountain of long dark hair streams down her back and she’s wearing a simple combination of jeans, t-shirt, and running shoes. She runs like her life depends on it. Like the entire world depends on it. My heart is in my throat as I watch her race for survival. I care so, so much. But why do I care?
The answer presents itself a second later as a long, pale, slender hand reaches out and grabs the woman’s shoulder. It breaks her run, and she tumbles backward into the person who’s caught her.
Her face flashes in my eyes just before she falls. A face I have only properly seen in old photographs, but I remember it vaguely in my own memory too. The face of my dead mother.
The scene goes black, and for a second, just before the next picture presents itself, I feel as though I have ceased to exist. I’m not in this world in those few moments within which one scene swirls and contorts itself into another.
Now I see a room. Light cream walls. Pine wood floors. A cot, above which hangs a fairy mobile, it twirls around and around, as the wings of many colours pass by, by, by. It glitters and twinkles and catches the eye with its wondrous sparkles. A little baby coos from the cot, stands up in her lemon coloured romper suit, falls down, stands up again and grabs for the mobile. But it’s up too high. She’ll never catch it as it turns around and around.
The door opens, and in walks the woman who I now recognise as my mother. Am I that baby? I ask. Though the answer is quite obvious. I’d recognise that jet black hair anywhere. “Ma-Ma!” I call as my mother comes and sets a variety of objects down on the carpet in the middle of the floor.
“Hush, baby, hush,” she answers my call, in a voice so full of tender love and fierce protection that it makes me want to cry. Cry and cry and cry, until I’m a baby again and I can be with her. Stay with her. Never grow up.
She organises the objects into a circle on the carpet. A wide bowl containing a broth. Several smaller bowls containing different varieties of herbs. So similar to Rita’s spell. Wait a minute, is this the spell? The one that had been cast upon me all those years ago? Gabriel had been right. It had been my mother who’d cast it. Only her assortment of objects is different to Rita’s in some way. It takes me a moment to figure it out. There’s a small antique silver knife to the left of the bowl. To the right lies a glassy red stone. I wonder what the additions must mean. Also, she doesn’t have three people to form a circle, it’s just her all by herself.
After she’s finished setting out the components of her spell, my mother rises to her feet and walks over to my cot, lifts me out, then puts me down on the carpet with her magical ingredients. It shakes me to my bones. To see myself there, so small and vulnerable, amid things I don’t understand. I almost laugh, not much has changed. Even now that I’m grown I’ve found myself in a world of things I don’t understand.
My mother speaks, and hearing her voice is like all I’ve ever wanted. It flows and enunciates and entwines itself around me. Burns into my soul. I’ll never forget the sound of it. Somehow I know I’ll never hear it again. At least not in the world of the living. She invokes the Goddess, just like Rita had done. She asks her to watch over the proceedings, to shelter them from dark intrusions, and to be sure that her child is protected once she has finished her casting.
Unlike Rita, my mother doesn’t name and
explain each of the ingredients that she places into the bowl in front of her. Perhaps it isn’t necessary. Perhaps Rita only did it because I’m new to all this and need things spelled out for me. Or perhaps – well, perhaps my mother’s magic is unlike that which Rita uses. She picks up bits of leaves and flowers and berries and sprinkles them all in, with a kind of finesse found only in people so used to an art it has become second nature to them.
Then she lifts the silver knife, holds it to a blue vein that runs along the inside of her wrist. She presses down, hesitates a moment as though anticipating the pain, then with a violent quickness, she cuts. Long and deep, from her inner wrist to midway down the inside of her arm. She watches blood drip from the incision, holds it over the bowl, and lets it mix in with the ingredients. The greenish broth instantly turns a shocking shade of red as the first drop hits the liquid. Strange. One single drop is so potent it colours the entire bowl in a deep and all-encompassing scarlet.
She holds it there for a long minute, longer than necessary, as if questioning her reasons for carrying out the spell. Soon she withdraws her arm and presses down on it with a cloth to stop the bleeding. Then she picks me up, places me on her lap, and plucks something shiny up from beside the bowl. Something almost invisible, that I hadn’t noticed before. A little silver pin, or a sewing needle perhaps.
My mother takes my little baby hand in her big mother’s hand. Strokes her fingertips over the soft pudgy centre, then she grips the needle in her other hand, and pricks the centre of my palm with it. I let out a small squeal and a pause before I begin to cry. My mother rocks me and soon I fall silent again. She lifts my hand, holds it over the bowl, and allows just one drop of blood to fall into the mixture.
A flash. Like lightning. My mother’s voice booms within the small room. “I bequeath you Goddess! Take this blood curse from my child and hide it deep, deep within her so that no nosferatu will ever find it. Let them never hunt her like they hunt me. Let die Äußerste Macht in her blood be concealed forever so that she may live a life of freedom, without running and hiding from the nosferatu. Make it so that she never knows the suffering of her mother,” her voice is weak now, no longer strong and booming, and a white light shines down upon the bowl containing her potion. It shines so brightly that it bleaches out the red, until it is no longer a thick, viscous liquid, but a clear, see-through fluid. My God. It’s suddenly turned to water.