Chapter 6
According to Xiomara, we would have better luck contacting Asteria if we were in a place she was connected to.
“You mean Lightkeep?” I asked, my heart speeding up.
“I really don’t want to do this in front of my mom or my aunts.
” This would have been true even if I wasn’t trying to hide the fact that Asteria had been communicating with me.
Given how spotty our connection was, it would be humiliating to try to communicate with her in front of an audience—attempting it in front of Xiomara would be embarrassing enough.
“No, we don’t need to go that far. Any garden will do, as she channeled her magic through plants. We’ll walk up the block to Shadowkeep and use the garden there. Her presence will be closer there and therefore easier to manifest.”
Maricela watched us come out through the kitchen, her expression puzzled.
Xiomara waved an impatient hand at her with a muttered, “Regresaremos enseguida,” as though there was no time for such mundane things as explanations.
I managed a weak smile over my shoulder, hoping it reassured her, but Maricela looked troubled as I closed the door behind us.
We set off down the sidewalk in the gathering darkness.
There had barely been a cloud all day, and the cloudlessness continued now, so that the stars winked down at us in an uninterrupted display.
The moon was barely a sliver—the new moon would arrive the next night, and with it we would usher in Samhain.
I wondered what Sedgwick Cove tradition Eva and Zale had in store for me the following night.
I considered asking Xiomara as we walked, but then I realized I didn’t know if this tradition was sanctioned by the adults.
If this was going to be some rebellious teenage shenanigan, I didn’t want to blow our cover.
We arrived at Shadowkeep, and I let us in through the gate.
Instead of going up the porch steps, we cut around to the side garden, where a glamour hid the staircase up to the second level.
Even though I knew it was there, I couldn’t see it unless I looked at it just the right way, out of the corner of my eye.
Xiomara stopped in the middle of the garden and turned on the spot, considering.
Then she pointed over into the north corner of the garden.
“Asteria planted those hydrangeas herself. We should conduct our seance there,” she said firmly. “And if I remember correctly… yes, the birdbath is still here.”
I followed her into the clump of enormous hydrangea bushes.
They formed a rough circle around a wide stone birdbath so old and overtaken by moss and vines that it looked like it had sprung naturally up from its surroundings, instead of being placed there by human hands.
The water inside it was perfectly still, the sky above reflected in it like a mirror.
Xiomara pointed a finger over her shoulder and said, “Bring down one of those chairs from the porch, Wren. I’m on my feet too much as it is, and this could take some time.”
I hurried over to the porch, and dragged one of the rockers back to the hydrangea bushes.
Xiomara settled herself in it with a groan, and then gestured for me to stand on the opposite side of the birdbath.
I went and stood where she indicated, bouncing on the balls of my feet, and shivering slightly in the rapidly cooling breeze that was rolling in off the water.
Maybe the weather was starting to turn at last.
“What exactly are we doing?” I asked, after a few moments of quiet.
“We are scrying,” Xiomara said.
“We are?” I asked, swallowing hard against the anxiety now sitting in my throat, like an obstruction.
I had never attempted scrying, as Xiomara knew. It was not one of the methods of spirit magic we had yet tried in our lessons together, but that didn’t mean I was completely unfamiliar with it. In fact, scrying was one of the reasons I’d almost died in June.
When Bernadette Claire made contact with her ancestor Sarah Claire—the same Sarah Claire, incidentally, who had stolen the grimoire now sitting back at Lightkeep Cottage for the first time in centuries—she had strengthened that connection using a mirror that had once belonged to Sarah.
She had, in essence, bound Sarah to that mirror, and used it to communicate back and forth.
At the time, I had not realized there was a name for spirit communication through a reflective surface.
Now, I knew that it was a very old magical practice called scrying.
All the times as a kid I watched a fortune teller gaze into a crystal ball, or an evil queen demand answers from the “mirror, mirror on the wall,” I had actually been watching pop culture versions of scrying.
The real thing—watching Bernadette whisper brokenly into that haunted mirror—had been far more terrifying than any evil queen on a movie screen could ever be.
“M-maybe we should try a method we’ve tried before,” I suggested, trying to sound robustly practical and logical. “We’re not likely to have much success with something I’ve never even—”
“Wren.” Xiomara’s voice, as she spoke my name, was unusually gentle. “You cannot judge scrying on what you saw in the lighthouse.”
Damn it. I really was a terrible actress.
“Bernadette abused the practice, and the hold Sarah had over her was already toxic,” Xiomara went on. “It festered into something twisted. That is not scrying as it is meant to be practiced.”
The knot of tension in my stomach loosened up. I felt my shoulders drop and let out a sigh.
“Promise?”
“I do.”
“Okay, fine.”
I stood on the other side of the birdbath. An owl hooted in a tree nearby. The wind whipped my hair around my face, and I brushed it impatiently away.
“The key to scrying,” Xiomara said, “is to have no expectation. You must allow yourself to be open to whatever images present themselves to you.”
“But we do have expectations,” I said, frowning. “We’re trying to get a message from Asteria.”
“Yes, but a message will only come through if we put that aside,” Xiomara explained.
“Think of a person trying to cross a crowded room. If the path is junked up with obstacles, there is less of a chance that the person will come close enough for a message to come through. We must clear it all away, Wren, like we did in your first lesson.”
I thought back to that day. I had imagined my mind as an empty stage with a single spotlight shining down on it, waiting for someone to step into the light. I looked down at the smooth, unruffled surface of the birdbath, and tried to think of it the same way—a blank slate, an empty stage.
“Now we light a candle,” Xiomara said, and started digging around in the pockets of her house dress.
After a bit of grumbling, she produced a lighter and the stub of a white candle.
“White is preferable. Purple will also work in a pinch.” She lit it and balanced it carefully on the lip of the birdbath, casting her own face in an eerie glow that made her look much older than she was.
“This must always be done in the dark,” Xiomara said. “The candle should be the only source of light. We are far enough from the streetlight on this side of the house, and there’s no moon to speak of. Conditions are favorable for a connection. Let’s see if we can make one.”
She placed her hands on either side of the birdbath’s wide stone bowl. I did the same from the other side, pressing my palms firmly against the smooth, aged stone to hide the fact that my hands were shaking. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Xiomara. I didn’t trust myself.
“What do we do now?” I whispered.
“Close your eyes and clear your mind, just as we have done before. When you feel that you have cleansed and freed your mental space, open your eyes again and simply look. You don’t need to search—keep your gaze relaxed, try not to force anything.”
“And then?”
“And then we’ll see what the spirit world has to say to us, if anything at all,” Xiomara said.
“But if… if we’re just looking for any message at all, inviting any contact… doesn’t that mean that any spirit could try to speak to us?” I asked. My voice cracked, betraying my fear.
“Perhaps. But that is the risk we take when we open ourselves in this manner. Do you wish to stop?”
I stared at her, indecisive. Yes, part of me did want to stop. I was scared. But greater than my fear was my curiosity. I wasn’t content to grope around in the dark, allowing my mother and my aunts to look for answers that I felt belonged to me. I couldn’t be a coward.
“No.”
“Very well then. Let us clear our minds. We are empty vessels waiting to be filled. Let us see what we can see.”
For the first few moments of concentrating, all I could think about was the way my heart was absolutely thundering in my chest. But as the seconds passed and I deepened my breathing, my heart settled into a more relaxed rhythm.
I began to hear the sounds around me, rather than my own blood pumping in my ears.
I tried to reduce myself to my breathing, to the in and out, the ebb and flow, like the waves undulating in the ocean nearby.
I started matching my breaths to the ocean, feeling like I was lulling myself into a kind of trance.
Deciding I was relaxed enough, I leaned forward over the birdbath and opened my eyes.
I was looking into the sky, as though the birdbath was a mirror or a window right into the stars.
The reflection was so clear that I gasped, and then closed my mouth so that I wouldn’t startle Xiomara into thinking I’d seen something spirit induced.
I focused on the patch of sky, counting the stars, examining the color, trying to decide if it was truly black or if there was a hint of navy blue.