Ring of Light (16 page)

It was about me trying to help her,
Cooper thought.
It was about me trying to help her—and failing.

Maybe that was it. Maybe the dream wasn't really about Kate, at least not directly. Maybe it was about herself. In the dream she had been trying to help Kate as she walked along her path. But ultimately she had caused Kate to fall by calling out to her. She had distracted her friend, and as a result Kate had fallen from the cliff.

That's it,
she thought.
You're afraid that if you try to help Kate you'll end up hurting her instead.

That made sense. After all, Kate had called her asking for help. But she'd said no. And why? Because she was afraid she'd ruin things. She was afraid that if she got involved in anything having to do with witchcraft it would all go wrong, just like it had on Midsummer Eve.

So it had just been a simple nightmare. In a strange way that made her feel a little better. At least she could try to go back to sleep. She closed her eyes and put her head on the pillow.

But all she could see was Kate's face as she fell off the cliff and looked into Cooper's eyes. “Why?” she said again, and the word repeated itself over and over in Cooper's mind.

She sat up again. This time she turned on the light. She wasn't just having a nightmare. There was some other reason for her dream. Someone was trying to tell her something. She sighed.
I thought I was through with this kind of stuff,
she thought tiredly.

The question now was what she was going to do next. She could stay up all night trying to figure it out, but she knew that would just make her tired and irritable. There had to be something else, something that would help her focus and figure out what the dream was telling her.

Suddenly her eyes fell on the little table she'd once used as an altar. Now it held some books she was reading.

Oh, no,
she thought as an idea popped into her head.
I'm not going there.

She looked away from the table, but her gaze was drawn back to it. Could she really do what she was thinking? Could she do it again? She didn't want to. She knew it was just asking for trouble. But something was urging her to do it.

Reluctantly, she got out of bed and went to her closet. Inside she found the box where she'd packed away the things that had once been on her altar. She took the box out and sat on the bed, holding the box on her lap. She very much did not want to open it. She'd even sealed it with packing tape.

With a sigh she pulled on one end of the tape, ripping it off. Then she opened the box and looked inside. There, wrapped in newspaper, was the goddess statue Kate had given her on her birthday. Cooper took it out and gently unwrapped it. She held the image of Pele in her hand and looked at its face.

“Hi,” she said. “Remember me?”

She carried Pele to the table. After clearing the books from the top, she set the goddess on top of it. Then she went back to the box, retrieved the candle that was in it, and put that on the tabletop as well. Still not believing that she was doing what she was doing, she found some matches and lit the candle. Then she sat on the floor, watching the candle burn and staring at the statue of Pele behind it.

She sighed. What was she doing? She felt like an idiot sitting there in front of the table. She couldn't even think of it as an altar. That was too much. It was just a table with a statue and a candle on it. She hadn't even put the cloth on it first.

“This isn't anything permanent or anything,” she said quietly, looking at Pele. “I just want to talk to you for a minute.”

She placed her hands in her lap and looked down at them. She wasn't sure what she was doing. In the past she had always been able to use meditation to help her sort through her feelings. Many times she had sat like this, talking to Pele or just letting her thoughts settle as she worked on something that was bothering her.

“It's this Kate thing,” she said. “I know she wants me to help her. But I can't. I'd just screw everything up. I'm not doing that stuff anymore. This stuff either,” she added as she looked at the flickering candle. “But here I am doing it.”

It wasn't working. Her mind was racing, and she couldn't focus her thoughts. They kept running one way and then another, like mice being chased around by a cat. She would manage to grab one and then another would dash by, breaking her concentration so that the first thought escaped.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked Pele angrily, as if she expected the goddess to start talking. “You want something, or I wouldn't have had that dream.”

The Pele statue continued to stare back at her with empty eyes. She knew it wasn't going to speak to her. The only time she had received a message from the goddess was during a dream. If Pele wanted to tell her something, why hadn't she appeared in the dream?
Maybe it was just a nightmare after all,
she told herself. Maybe she was just being ridiculous and projecting her anxiety about her strained friendship with Kate into her subconscious.

“I knew this was a dumb idea,” she said, standing up. She blew out the candle. Then she picked up the statue of Pele and took it back to the box. Wrapping it up, she placed it inside. The candle she left out because the wax was still hot. She would put that away in the morning.

She put the box back in her closet and returned to bed. What had she been thinking? Why did she think she could just put a statue on a table and ask it to give her advice? That was an act of desperation, something to do because she couldn't think of anything else. But why should Pele give her any messages, especially after Cooper had decided not to be involved in Wicca anymore?

Just forget about it,
she told herself as she tried to get back to sleep.

It took some time, but she managed to get to sleep again. Much to her relief, she didn't have any further dreams, about Kate or about anything else. But she slept poorly, and when she opened her eyes and saw that it was morning, she groaned sleepily. Not only did she have to get up, but it was Monday. There was a tour coming that afternoon, and she had to show them around. It wasn't exactly what she felt like doing at the moment.

She forced herself to sit up. Yawning, she stretched her tired muscles and cracked her neck. Then she stood up and shuffled to the door to find her bathrobe before heading to the shower.

As she reached for her robe she paused. Turning her head, she looked at the table where she had placed the statue of Pele the night before. The candle was still sitting there. Only now it was burning again.

I know I blew that out last night,
she told herself. She remembered doing it, because she was always afraid that if she didn't something would catch fire. But if she had blown it out, how had it come to be flickering brightly now?

She walked over and stared at the candle. Was it possible that she hadn't really blown it out completely? No. But there it was, burning as if it had been going all night. Quite a bit of wax was gone, so she knew that it must have been burning for at least several hours.

She glanced at the closet, where she knew the Pele statue was sitting in the box. Walking over to it, she pulled the door open and pried the lid of the box off. She took the statue out and carried it back to the table, where she set it beside the candle.

She stood looking at the statue and the candle. What was she doing? She couldn't bring herself to say that she'd set the altar up again. But something was going on, and she needed to figure out what it was. As much as she didn't want to think that she was even thinking about being involved with her old practices, she knew that something had changed during the night.

“I'm going to take a shower,” she said out loud. “Try not to burn the place down while I'm gone.”

She went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and stepped inside. The warm water soothed her tired body, and she took her time lathering herself with soap and rinsing off. She poured shampoo into her palm and washed her hair, letting the water stream down her face. As she stood there, the steam rising up around her, she thought about what was happening.

Was Pele really sending her a message telling her that it was time to come back? That seemed implausible. But how else could she explain the candle relighting itself?
Maybe you got up and did it yourself,
she thought.

No, she had to accept that the goddess was telling her something. She just wasn't sure she wanted to hear it. What if Pele was suggesting that Cooper needed to return to Wicca? Was that it? She didn't think she could do that. No, she
knew
she couldn't do that. She'd promised herself that she was done with it.

Yeah,
she reminded herself,
just like you said you would never set up the altar again.

But she hadn't set up the altar. Not really. She'd just put the statue out for a little while, until she figured out what was happening.

That sounds like you're back to me,
the voice in her head mocked.

She turned off the water and grabbed a towel from the rack. As she dried herself she thought about what to do next. She had the tour at two. That gave her the whole morning to do something else.

She trotted back to her room, shut the door, and dressed. She pulled on jeans and an old Missing Persons T-shirt she'd found at a used clothing store. She left her hair alone, liking the way it dried naturally into an unruly rat's nest. Then she sat on the edge of her bed and looked at the candle, which was still burning on the table.

Since you've gone this far you might as well keep going,
she told herself. She went back to the closet and looked in the box. There was the box of Tarot cards she'd been using in class. She hadn't done a lot with them—Tarot was more Annie's thing than hers—but she had done readings from time to time.

She took the cards with her as she sat in front of the altar again. As she shuffled them she tried to clear her mind. She didn't want to affect the reading by forcing any of her worries onto the cards. It was hard enough for her to remember what everything meant. She didn't want to end up convincing herself of something just because she wanted to believe it.

When the cards were shuffled, she cut the deck into three piles. She selected the middle one and set it on top of the other two. Then she turned over the first three cards. It was the easiest kind of reading she knew how to do.

The first card was the Tower. It showed a tall brick turret. Storm clouds circled the top, and lightning was striking it. A fire burned in one of the windows, and a figure tumbled down through the clouds that surrounded the tower. Cooper knew that the card indicated an unexpected event that was difficult and perhaps painful. But it also suggested that the person would gain important knowledge because of what happened.

“I guess that's supposed to be me,” she said out loud. She thought about her ordeal in the woods a few weeks before. “That would definitely qualify as a catastrophe,” she said. And it had definitely changed her life. She'd learned that magic couldn't always be controlled, and it had caused her to end her study of Wicca.

She looked at the second card. “The Three of Swords,” she mused. It showed a large heart pierced by three wicked-looking swords. It was an ugly card, and it made her feel bad. It represented a relationship that had somehow gone bad. It disturbed her even more because she knew that the relationship in question was the one among herself, Annie, and Kate. The three swords could easily represent them. Looking at the card, she felt a sense of loneliness creep over her. Had her actions caused this separation? She knew that they had, and she felt terrible about that.

She quickly moved on to the last card. It too was from the suit of Swords. But it was the Ace. The single large sword was surrounded by two roses, one red and one white. The card indicated a power of some kind, a power that could be used for either great good or great destruction.

“So which one is it?” she asked herself.

The reading wasn't very helpful. She knew what all the cards meant. But how did they fit together? Clearly, her relationship with her friends had been disturbed by her behavior. And if her dream was really true, then she was afraid of trying to become involved with what was happening to Kate because she feared what would happen to her. But what was this great force? That's what she didn't know. And what was it going to do?

She was back at square one. She had a lot of clues, but no real answers. All she knew was that she didn't want to get involved but everything was pulling her in that direction anyway. She could keep running, or she could keep taking little steps forward and see what happened.

She looked up at the statue of Pele. “Okay,” she said as she put the Tarot cards back in their box. “Just remember—you started it this time.”

CHAPTER  13

On Tuesday morning Kate was more anxious than usual to get to the hospital. Aunt Netty had been undergoing treatment for almost a week, and surely they would be able to judge how well she was responding to it. There was also the matter of the ritual Kate and Annie had done on Saturday night. Kate had been watching her aunt carefully for any signs that she might be improving. Although it had only been two days, yesterday Aunt Netty had been hungry, and her nausea from the chemicals being used to attack her cancer had suddenly gone away. Everyone had been surprised to find her happily eating her supper and even asking for more, but Kate had secretly jumped for joy. Her spell seemed to be doing exactly what she'd hoped it would do.