Chapter 28 #2
Caitlin dropped her head forward so her hair covered her face, biting back her frustration.
Back then, no one had realised the wheeze she had developed was anything serious, but the exertion of the performance to the song ‘A Windmill in Old Amsterdam’, including her show-stopping turning triple-time step had been the catalyst that had changed her life.
Once she had recovered and a treatment regime had been issued, her parents had told her, with as much gentleness as possible, she could no longer dance and it might be safer for her to step away from performing too.
‘Why?’ she had sobbed.
‘It’s too dangerous, Moonbeam,’ Miranda had said, hugging her, and Caitlin was banished backstage, where, with Lee, she had gradually worked her way up to stage manager.
‘Tell me what this is really about,’ said Sindy. ‘We’ve done summer and winter solstice rituals before but never the equinoxes.’
Caitlin sat beside her and stared out over the Golden Valley as it disappeared into the shadows of the autumn twilight. A breeze rustled the remaining leaves on the trees further down the hill, lifting her hair as it danced past, a hint of summer remaining in its breath.
‘This is going to sound very strange…’ she began.
‘We’ve known each other most of our lives, nothing you say will seem strange,’ Sindy replied. ‘We’ve always been odd, it’s why we’re friends.’
‘True,’ said Caitlin. ‘The Odd Squad – wasn’t that what Gilly and Rache called us?’
‘Yes, although that’s nothing to what we called them,’ she replied and they shared a grin of remembrance.
‘For the past few months, I’ve been having intense dreams,’ Caitlin confessed, and in a low voice, she described all she had seen of the quest of the three sisters, ‘but even more peculiar, in Mum’s last boxes of notebooks, which I found shoved in a wardrobe in the spare room when we were clearing Dad’s house, there was a story, copied out in Mum’s writing, which told the dream in detail. ’
‘The same dream?’ said Sindy.
‘Yes, the three sisters on a quest, but with a few variations.’
‘You and your mum have shared a dream?’ said Sindy but she was curious rather than disbelieving.
‘Grandma, too, and women whose names date back to the seventeenth century. I joined a genealogy website and each of these women are my ancestors through Mum’s side.’
‘That’s mad,’ said Sindy. ‘What do you think it means?’
‘I don’t know, but that isn’t all,’ she said.
The first stars twinkled overhead as Caitlin told Sindy about her visions of the woman with the antler headdress, of the way she kept appearing in the dream of the three sisters and of the drawing in Miranda’s notebook dated a few days after Caitlin’s birth.
‘I think I’m being told the same story that has been passed down through the women in my family for centuries but my dreams have taken me further than any of the accounts in Mum’s journal.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All the other dreams stop in the cherry orchard, but last night, I travelled further,’ Caitlin said and described the room and the chanting.
‘Can you remember what they said?’ asked Sindy.
‘Yes, I wrote it down as soon as I woke up.’ Reaching into the rucksack she had brought with her, she pulled out a new notebook, which she handed to Sindy.
‘“One becomes two; two becomes three; and out of the third comes the fourth, the One. The fourth is the Charmed One who will heal the curse”,’ Sindy read.
‘“The triple goddess of the bees cursed you. Three by three by three by three by three, the third daughter of the third daughter of the third daughter from the time of shadows and fear, until one shall come, a youngest child of a youngest child of a youngest child who is both third and fourth. She shall have the power to heal this curse.”’
‘What do you think it means?’ asked Caitlin.
‘I have no idea,’ she replied. ‘Is this why you want to use the henbane?’
‘Yes, Mum’s notes said it was shamanic and the other woman who I’ve seen – the one with the headdress – she was a shaman,’ said Caitlin.
‘Caity, this is dangerous,’ warned Sindy. ‘Who knows what this tea might do to you. Why are you so determined?’
‘From the way the diaries were written, it looks as though the henbane tea recipe has been handed down for centuries,’ said Caitlin.
‘Mum copied it for a reason and she even wrote about the two of us solving this puzzle together. I believe the women of my family are connected to this curse. In the past few years, my family has fallen apart and I want to repair it. This might be the way to heal thousands of years of pain, to break the curse and to stop my family tearing itself apart any further. Please, Sindy, you have to help me.’ Caitlin’s voice quavered as she finished speaking, her eyes wide with despair.
Sindy stared out over the valley, it had disappeared into the creeping night, with only lights from houses and cars on the distant road flashing like fairy magic in the blackness.
‘There is one condition,’ Sindy said.
‘What?’
‘We call Lee,’ Sindy replied. ‘If you’re planning to put yourself in a trance, I want a doctor nearby in case I can’t revive you. Otherwise, I’m going home.’
With great reluctance, Caitlin nodded and Sindy reached into her pocket for her phone.