Chapter 26
When they finally got themselves back out of bed, they made coffee over the fire and drank it with chunks of sourdough bread.
“Do you think it’ll stop soon?” she asked, pulling back a curtain to stare at the expanse of white outside.
A light snow fell, but it was nothing compared to what they’d seen over the last twenty-four hours.
Stephan came to stand just behind her, hovering close and inspiring a pleasant swirl in her belly.
“Maybe. Definitely slowed down, though.”
“Slow enough to plow?” Her anxiety to get going seeped into her words.
“Yes, but this won’t be the first road they plow, and I can’t get down the driveway right now even if they do. I’m sure they’ve got shovels, but…” His eyes strayed down the long driveway. “Gonna take a while.”
“I’ll help,” she blurted. “Just put me to work.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever shoveled snow before?”
“Can’t be too hard, right? Dip, lift, throw?”
“Mmm,” he said, eyes twinkling. “Come on—let’s see what we can find.”
The porch had been shielded by an overhang, which made it possible to open the front door, but after that, they were forced to wade their way through the feet of snow to get to the small shed at the side of the house.
Stephan went first, and she made use of the foot holes he left behind. Matching the big man’s gait was a stretch, but it was better than sinking every step.
They had to dig out the front of the shed with their hands, but the effort was rewarded with a snow shovel, as well as a particularly large garden shovel that Stephan looked at skeptically before shrugging. “Better than nothing, I guess.”
Instead of getting started on the driveway right away, he shoveled his way to his truck and pulled out a sack.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Making good on a debt,” he said, shoveling his way to the forest’s edge, where he cleared the front of a lodgepole pine.
“That wolf last night can’t be doing well, otherwise it would’ve steered clear of us.
I left out the meat, but I’m putting down a spell too.
Something that should help it get through the winter. ”
She trailed after and hovered a few feet back. Sensing her there, he rumbled, “Glad you decided to join me.”
When he cleared a decent-sized patch, he laid down a blue-and-black-patterned Falsa blanket and a much smaller green-and-white cotton square of fabric featuring a pentagram surrounded by Celtic knotwork.
Next, he placed a silver dollar and strips of dried meat alongside a green candle.
Finally, he pulled out a small vial of water with a crescent moon drawn on its label and sloshed it onto the blade of a carving knife, which he laid out on the cloth as well.
“Can I help somehow?”
He raised an eyebrow and looked back at her. “Really?”
She hesitated. Was she really going to do this? Was she going to help him cast a spell?
Apparently so, because she said, “Really.”
The smile on his face caused her heart to trip over itself. “Couldn’t hurt. Come here.”
Hayleigh settled onto the rough woven blanket across from Stephan, and he offered his hands, palms up. She placed hers atop them.
“So, what you want to do first is close your eyes,” he said, voice low. She did, blocking out all sensations but the sound of his voice, the roughness of his palms against hers, and the tickle of the light snowflakes falling on her face.
“Picture all the life in this tree, and everything else growing around us, like light. But not like individual lights, more like the way a city looks from way up high, where they all bleed together and become one big ball of light.”
“I wouldn’t say it looks like one. Roadways create breaks.”
He tickled her palms. “Close enough. You know what I’m trying to say.”
She tried to do as she had been told, but it was difficult to hold the picture. Whenever it slipped away, though, she’d re-create the image and refocus.
“That light’s energy,” he continued. “Energy that binds all of us. Energy we’re going to draw on. Breathe energy in and then breathe your own out. In and out, in and out. Pull it up from the ground and then push it back.”
This was even more difficult to follow, because it required holding the image and then engaging with it actively, but after a few breaths, she felt like she’d gotten into a rhythm.
Her body had been cold, especially where it met the earth, but the deeper they sank into the ritual, the warmer she became.
Heat gathered around them in a thickening aura. His palms were almost difficult to maintain contact with, feeling at first like the glow of a filament and then later like she was pressing her hand right to a stove.
It struck her then how all the things the other witches had identified magic with—light for Rowan, heat for Zaide—were there in what they felt, and how when she really sank into that breathing he’d told her to do, her in began to be matched by something else’s out, and vice versa.
The breath of the world.
“You’re so full of energy,” he said suddenly.
His comment startled her, almost causing her to lose the rhythm of the ritual. “What?”
“I’m done raising power, and that was the easiest it’s ever come outside the coven. You sure you don’t have a little witch in you?”
She choked on the question. Thankfully, he did not actually press her for a response, only continued with a grin, saying, “I’d say something like ‘do you want one,’ but we did that already.
” Her cheeks burned despite the not-actually-asking of it.
“Anyway, this final bit’s trickier, but important, so I’m doing it on my own. No offense.”
“None taken.”
Though he didn’t explain what happened next, she could sense the change. Some of the energy they’d gathered pulled away to form a circle around them, and then it spread and settled in place.
“Okay, ritual preparation done.” He pulled his hands off hers, fingertips grazing against her palms reluctantly.
Separating from him in that moment was like releasing Red’s reins in the middle of a gallop.
She wanted nothing more than to stay in that place where the boundaries between them had been blurred in their exchange of energy, and they’d joined, briefly, like one.
From the searching look in his eyes, she could sense he was feeling the same, and her heart drummed at the edge of her chest.
But then he broke the eye contact, cleared his throat, and leaned over his improvised altar, chanting,
“Though the winter be dark and deep,
You will find the sustenance you seek,
By the power of three by three,
As I do will it, so mote it be.”
The knife glowed as Stephan lifted it to the tree and carved three lines into an extended diamond split perfectly down the middle. The symbol flared before going flat black, and when it did, the blade lost its glow as well.
Every movement in their surroundings ceased. The forest went silent. Even the snow stopped falling. They were wrapped in a total stillness that hovered at the edge of impossibility, and Hayleigh didn’t even dare to breathe.
Until the lone howl of a wolf cut through the forest, releasing them.