WITCHES KNOT

Amelia Charvez sat in the window seat of her New Orleans apartment and looked out over the courtyard below. The sounds of the water gurgling in the fountain floated up on the wind. She breathed deeply and took a sip of the red wine that her sister Emily had brought by earlier in the day.

"Lee, come in here and tell me what you think of this sauce," Em called out to her from the kitchen.

Lee stood up and sauntered into the kitchen and tasted the sauce for the redfish her sister was making them for dinner. "More garlic and black pepper, I think," she murmured.

"What's going on with you?" Em asked as she tossed in another clove of garlic and ground some pepper over the pan. "You seem distracted."

"I am. There's something up, something on the wind. I've been dreaming a lot."

"The tall, golden-haired man again?"

"Yeah." Lee shivered at the mention of the man who'd been haunting her dreams for the last two months straight.

"You need to have a reading. This sauce is gonna have to simmer for another half an hour anyway, go down to the shop and have Tante Lou give you one. Go on. I've never seen you so distracted before."

Lee started to argue but shrugged her shoulders, giving in to her sister's suggestion.

"Why not?" She put on her sandals and ran her fingers through her hair to try to tame the curly mass. "I'll be back," she called out as she walked out and down the steps into the lushly appointed courtyard. She breathed deeply of the sweet greenery and pushed through the black iron gate that led out to the street.

Lee walked from her apartment on the edge of the quarter the several blocks until she emerged into the heart of the French Quarter, with its music and magic in the air. She walked two more blocks to her grandmother's shop and went inside, feeling calmer immediately as the scent of incense hit her nose and the familiar surroundings came into view.

"Sugar! I knew you was coming in! You need a reading, yeah?" her Tante Lou called out as Lee walked through the black velvet curtains that separated the shop from where her aunt held readings in the back.

"You must be psychic," Lee joked and grinned at her aunt and dropped a kiss to her cheek. She sat down on the small loveseat, tucking her feet beneath her bottom. Tante Lou took her hand and ran her thumbs over the palm gently, soothing her.

"You been dreaming, yeah?" she asked, eyes closed. "Sug, you are facing some big changes. A man, golden-haired and powerful, he comes. He is part of you." Lou was quiet for a bit, breathing slowly. Lee waited patiently for her aunt to continue. "But that does not complete the circuit."

She opened her eyes and looked at Lee. "Lee, honey, this man, he is nothing to fear. But you do have some powerful things to face, some of them dark, very dark. I can't see a whole lot, watch yourself. Practice. You have a lot of power, you simply need to hone it, to use it. You know we've been feeling some rather disturbing energy lately. The energy your grandmere and I have been feeling is dark and cold. Threatening. You'll need to watch out."

Lee knew this, she'd had her dreams and also some conversations with her grandmere about it. New Orleans was a hotbed of magic, which made it a great place for her to be but it was a dangerous thing as well. There was so much old and powerful magic there, just waiting to be tapped into, it often attracted those who were less than responsible with it.

"So to cap up, I'm gonna meet a guy who is my other half and that's good, but there is some supernatural shit coming down the pike?" Lee asked bluntly.

"Not your other half exactly." Tante Lou hesitated, reaching for the proper words.

"He is part of you, you are part of him and you are meant to be with each other. But there's more, I can't say what. It is good though. The other, yes, bad doodoo."

Lee laughed and kissed her aunt's cheek and got up and went back out front. She greeted her cousin, grabbing a pack of spring rain incense and some tea and dropping money on the counter, and headed home.

* * * * *

After dinner with her sister, Lee sat in her window seat and stared out into the night. This dark power on the horizon posed a big threat to them all and she knew she had a responsibility to deal with it. Her power didn't come for free, she knew that as an inherent witch, she had a duty to use her gifts to protect those who needed them. Problem was, she knew what she had to do and it entailed swallowing her pride and calling her mother and restarting the training she'd set aside years before. It wasn't like she'd totally rejected her power, she did small magics from time to time, she knew she had the raw power. She needed help in using it effectively. Sighing resignedly, she picked up the phone and called home.

"Maman?"

"I've been waiting for you to call, cher. Tomorrow, eleven o'clock. Come out to the house, we will start. Lock your doors. Je t'aime," her mother said, sounding imperious, and hung up.

Lee looked at the phone and with a wry smile, hung up and checked the locks and went to bed. Her mother was a no-nonsense woman and a very no-nonsense witch. The women in the Charvez family were born with magical gifts. Some, like Tante Lou and her grandmere, could read the future. Some, like her sister Emily and her cousin, could read people, their intentions, their wants, hopes, dreams. And the most powerful and rare of all were the witch dreamers.

A witch dreamer was able to work magic both awake and in her dreams. They also had a touch of clairvoyance, could see snatches of future events occurring as waking dreams or while unconscious. The witch dreamer could dream walk, she could project herself into the subconscious of others and work her magic there. There were only three living witch dreamers, it was an exceptionally rare gift. It seemed to be singular to the Charvez women-Lee, her mother and her great-aunt Elise-just one woman a generation.

Lee had accepted that but hadn't done a whole lot to hone her power. Against her family's wishes she'd gone off to college at Tulane, refusing to believe that she had only one path for her life. As conciliation to the family, she'd planned to go to graduate school, to get her MBA so she could help run the shop, but she'd gotten distracted. Distracted by art, something she never thought she'd have the talent for. But now, two years later, she'd built up a steady customer base and two shops on Royal Street had her paintings in the front windows. It was a good living, enough to pay her rent and allow for a nest egg, and she could still do her part in the running of the shop.

* * * * *

Lee thought about all of this on her way over to her parents' home. Thought about her responsibility, the legacy of the Charvez magic. And she realized that she had a lot to learn, a lot to be taught and she felt a twinge of guilt for waiting so long to truly figure that out.

Still, all of that worry fell away when she caught sight of the house. The house on First Street was the house Lee grew up in, the place she and her siblings were born. Before that, her grandparents had lived there. It generally passed down from oldest daughter to oldest daughter and would be hers someday but she had no plans to kick her parents out, she quite enjoyed the privacy of her two-bedroom apartment in the French Quarter. She loved her mother but it was easier to love her from a bit of a distance.

She breathed deeply and took in the heady smells of New Orleans in the early summer. It was hot and moist and burgeoning with the heady, fecund scent of flowers and trees, grass and dirt. Nature was tangible, it hung in the air. As always, there was the underlying scent of power and death from Lafayette Cemetery just a few blocks away. No place on earth smelled as heavenly, as magical and heady, as New Orleans did.

Lee parked in the driveway and walked around the back and in through the kitchen. She called out a greeting and kissed Georgie, the woman who managed the household and had since before Lee was born. Georgie was a cook, a maid, a social planner and a member of the family. She murmured her greetings to Lee and stuffed a plum into her hand. "Eat it, girl, you getting too skinny."

Lee smiled wryly and bit into the juicy plum and her eyes slid shut at the pleasure of the sweet juice bursting over her tongue and sliding down her throat. "Oh good lord, this is so good."

"Off my tree. Stop by before you go, I'll make sure you get a few jars of my jam and one of the tarts I made this morning."

"You are too good to me," Lee said with a grin.

"Your mama is in the front room. She's waiting for you."

Lee winked at Georgie and walked through after tossing the plum pit into the trash and wiping off her hands and chin. The house was cool and calm as she walked through to the front room where she saw her mother sitting in a wingback chair near the windows overlooking the front lawn and garden.

She bent and kissed her mother's cheeks and flopped on the floor at her feet and rested her head on her mother's knees. Her relationship with her mother had always been complicated. Marie Charvez was a powerful woman, a powerful witch, and she knew that her daughter was as well. She took a great deal of pride from the fact that she'd birthed a witch dreamer with so much potential and she'd pushed Lee hard for most of her young life. So hard that at times Lee felt more like a project than a daughter. Things had come to a head when Lee had decided to go off to college rather than pursue her training. She and her mother hadn't spoken for nearly six months and it had been the most difficult time of her life. Slowly, with the steadfast urging of her father and Tante Elise, she and her mother had come back together with a better understanding of each other. Years later, Lee felt that the time spent apart and then struggling to meet each other as mother and daughter had made them closer than they would have been had she stayed and been obedient to her mother's master plan.

"Good morning, Maman."

"Good morning, cher. You look lovely today. The humidity is making your hair curl up even more than it usually does. You look wild and tousled," her mother said quietly, with amusement in her voice. She sat up, her tone turning businesslike. "You will come to me, each day at eleven. We have a lot of work to do. I feel something in the air. I've been dreaming a lot. Something powerful is..." she broke off, trying to define what she meant.

"Surging. No, surfacing," Lee said hesitantly, searching for the right words to describe what she'd been feeling.

"Yes. As always, there are currents of power here. We all recognize each other, the white path is stronger than the dark one but we keep to our places and behave, it is the order of things. Lately, the dark, it is rising, yes, surfacing is a good enough word. You must work to harness your power. I've spent a lot of energy over the last ten years, shielding you from things. I cannot any longer. Your power is like a spotlight, Lee, it is blinding, it attracts the eye. You are the strongest of us in generations but you must learn to handle it, to wield it. I fear that you will have to."

Lee felt a frisson of fear but a certainty that her mother was right. "Okay. I'll be here."

"Let's get started. You know rudimentary spells, the basics. What I want to do is show you how to unleash your power, to slowly let out the reins and then harness it and reel it back in. It's a lot like making you play scales, yes? Necessary. You need to feel your power under your hands, you need to feel it so you can learn to manipulate it, how to control it, how to unleash it."

Her mother pulled the curtains closed and lit some incense. "You know it isn't necessary to do all of this, your power is there without ritual, but it's nice to give a bit of respect to it when you can," she said in her rich melodic tones. "I want you to draw a circle of protection around us, always use one if you have the time. When your power has been dormant for so long and you unleash it you will attract some-how do you say?-onlookers. Most are harmless but never forget where you are, cher." Her mother handed her the pouch of sand and watched while Lee said the words and drew a circle around them. Lee felt the hair on her arms raise and a chill run down her spine as she closed it and her mother looked at her, eyebrows raised.

Lee sat down cross-legged before her mother and listened carefully to her instructions. She exhaled slowly and sank into herself, pulling away the shields she normally had up between her power and her daily life. She reached down and connected with her power, with the earth, and felt it surge up, her soul would be the conduit. An electric hum filled her ears and subsided as she let the power roll over her, through her. She reached down and grasped the energy and pulled it out of herself. It flooded out, wave after wave until she felt as if she were floating in it. She opened her eyes and saw her mother's face, eyes wide, and realized she was floating in it. She was about half a foot off the ground.

"Cast yourself out, Lee, I want you to sense what's going on around you. Leave this house on your power."

Lee let go of her metaphysical self and it poured out through the house, where she saw Georgie in the kitchen, humming, wearing an amulet of protection, then out of the house and through the neighborhood. She touched some other spots of power, nothing overwhelming. Minor psychics, though many of them probably didn't even know it. She edged around the cemetery and saw more clearly the things she felt as she passed through normally. There were dark spots, someone was practicing some dark magic, there were light spots there too. The place was a city of the dead but it was also a place of power.

As she flowed outward she felt a tugging. Lee focused on it but it felt sticky like a spider web. Alarmed, she circled back and headed back into herself, reining her power back in. As she did she felt a presence, someone was watching her. Some thing was watching her. It chilled her. She felt like someone was taking her measure, examining her. Instinctively, she lashed out at it and sent it reeling. She came back to herself and saw her mother's worried face.

"What was that?" Lee asked in a whisper.

Her mother held up a hand to silence her. Her lips were moving. She was working a spell. A dark shadow fell over the house. Lee's hands joined with her mother's and she lent her mother power. She felt her mother pull it into herself and felt it build as she continued with the words. Lee could feel the presence of something truly evil, dark and malevolent. Its manifestation was like oil, sticky and toxic. She sent more power to her mother and at the same time lashed out at the encroaching presence like a whip. She felt her power strike the dark power and only just kept herself from recoiling in repulsion as her power touched the darkness. But it was enough and the malevolence receded. Moments later her mother's eyes opened and she looked at Lee, worried. "We held it off." This time was the unspoken end of the sentence.

"What was it?"

"I've felt a lot of black magic in my life, but I haven't felt anything remotely like this since I was very young and my Tante Elise was training me. It knows you now, it knows me. I'm going to call Tante Elise and have her help you ward your apartment and reward the shop and this house. We must be vigilant, and, Lee, you must continue to train because I fear you will have to deal with this, whatever it is."

Her mother looked toward the door where just down the hall they could hear Georgie working and she looked back to Lee. "Perhaps we shouldn't train here. Georgie's amulet might work for run-of-the-mill dark magic but what I felt earlier, I was glad to be in the circle. We can't count on the source of this power to obey the rules about innocents."

Lee shuddered at the idea of their friend being harmed. "You're right. We can train in the shop. It would be better anyway to have that many powerful women close at hand."

They worked on some protection spells for another few hours and enjoyed some tea and gossip in the kitchen. Lee felt a bit better armed when she got up to leave. "I need to go. Tante Elise is meeting me at my apartment in a bit to help with the wards. I'll see you at the shop tomorrow." Lee bent to kiss her mother and Georgie and left them both, still sitting at the table, drinking sweet tea.

* * * * *

Her Tante Elise was waiting for her, sitting on the stone bench in the courtyard. She was looking down at the wool in her hands, knitting like a fiend, her still-dark hair held back in the neat bun she habitually wore at the back of her head. The birds had clustered close by. It had been like that for as long as Lee could remember. Tante Elise called to the wild things wherever she went. Birds, butterflies, dogs, cats, whatever was around.