Cate Tiernan - Changeling

After Alyce had led us in prayer to Brigid—she pronounced it Breed—the Goddess of fire, we sat in a large circle. I gazed across at Hunter, thinking about how beautiful he looked in candlelight. He'd pretty much convinced me that after passing the test of choosing good over evil, I was probably safe for him to date. Now every time I looked at him, my heart went al fluttery and I wanted to hold him.

"Blessed be," Hunter said, and we repeated it. "This joyful occasion," he went in, "signifies the beginning of winter's end. The days are becoming longer, the sunlight brighter—it's a time of rebirth."

"Yes," said Eoife. "Many witches choose this time to spring clean their homes, performing purifying rituals and literally making a clean sweep of everything."

"It's also a time for spiritual rebirth," said Alyce, her wise face and blue-violet eyes serene. "I use this holiday to forgive anyone who wronged me in the past and to seek forgiveness from anyone I've wronged. To begin the new Wheel or the Year with a clean slate."

Alisa spoke. "I read there's a ritual where you write down things you wish to be free of in the coming year—flaws, problems, worries—and then you burn the paper."

"We will do that in a little while," Hunter said. "Right now let's stand again and call on the god and the goddess."

We all joined hands.

"May the circles of Starlocket and Kithic always be strong," Hunter said.

"Blessed be," I whispered. The other members murmured their response.

As we began to move widdershins in our circle, Hunter began to chant in a low voice. The chant was unfamiliar to me, but I understood it somehow: it was about new beginnings, casting the darkness behind you and living in light. Gradually Alyce and Sky joined in, and then the words came to me and I began to chant, too. Energy flowed through my body as we spun around the room. A joy began to fill me that cannot be put into words. We were all alive, safe. I caught Hunter's eye, and he smiled at me. He was mine again. My body filled with warmth and energy, and I smiled back.

On the other side of the circle Alyce's face was turned up in a mask of pure joy. I felt a rush of comfort. Alyce was still with me, and Starlocket intact. I had helped make it that way. In the time to come, the council would track Ciaran, and if he should ever come for me again, I was ready for him. For the first time in weeks I felt utterly safe and happy.

I stared into the candle flamed and felt my power rise.

Later that night, on my front porch, I fished my keyed out of my jeans. My shoe tapped something, and I looked down. As soon as I saw the small, lumpy bundle of purple silk, my heart dropped. I whipped my head around, looking for Ciaran. I knew this was from him as surely as I knew I was a witch. I cast my senses out strongly and felt nothing except Dagda on the other side of the front door. Slowly I knelt and picked it up. It was almost alive with tingling traces of magick. I untied the knot, and the bundle fell open. My mouth opened wordlessly as I stared down at the golden watch. It was the watch I had found in Maeve's old apartment in New York. Ciaran had taken it from me as he had tried to steal my powers. It was the watch that had first made him aware that I must be his daughter.

"Oh, Goddess," I muttered. A fluttering white note caught my eye, and I picked it up. You should have this, it said.

I stroked the watch, feeling the warmth of the gold, the fineness of the wrought chain. This was truly a family heirloom, something to be kept and handed down for generations.

Unfortunately, it was also from Ciaran, which meant I shouldn't even be holding it. When Cal and I had first gotten together, he'd given me a silver pentacle necklace that I had worn constantly. It had been spelled, of course, and he'd used it to help control me. Goddess only knew what Ciaran had done to this watch: I knew he had given it to me sincerely, out of love, and I knew also that he'd had some ulterior purpose in doing so, that it would somehow be to his advantage. That was Ciaran: light and dark. Like me, like the world, like everything.

I tied it back into its purple silk. I desperately wanted to go inside and sleep, but instead I found myself sliding behind the wheel of Das Boot. I drove well out of town, at least ten miles, to an old farm I had come to once with Maeve's tools. I walked through the tree buffer that separated the meadow from the highway and stepped into the clearing where Sky Eventide had found me, working magick on my own.

The ground was frozen, of course, but I'd come prepared and said a tiny spell that made digging easy. I dug a whole almost two feet deep and then with bittersweet feelings placed the purple silk bundle at the bottom of it. I filled in the hole. Then I knelt and said all the purifying spells I knew, all the ward-evil ones from Hunter and Eoife and Alyce. I stood up and made my way back to the car, feeling like I would be lucky to make it home without falling asleep at the wheel.

With time the earth's healing purity would work its own magick on the watch, purifying it and removing all traces of spells and evil. It would take a very long time. But one day I knew, I would reclaim it.