“Chloe said we had to get the candles here,” one of the girls says. The voice is familiar, but I can’t at first place it.
“If you ask me, Chloe’s gotten pretty damn bossy. Ever since she got picked to play the goddess, she thinks she is one. I think we should let someone else play the goddess for the equinox.”
The second voice is also familiar. I half turn, shielding my face with a copy of Seasons of the Witch to get a look at the two girls. It’s Hannah Weiss and Tori Pratt—an unlikely pairing even though I knew they hang out with Chloe. Tori is a type familiar to me from my years in Great Neck: a preening queen bee, groomed within an inch of her life from her artificially straightened hair to her pedicured toes (visible now in flip-flops). She’s the one complaining about not getting her turn to be goddess.
“I just don’t buy Chloe’s argument that it has to be the same goddess for the whole cycle.”
“You do have a point,” Hannah, who’s wearing a plaid flannel jumper, orange tights, and corduroy Mary Janes, says, “It is a cycle. That means it doesn’t have a beginning or an end.”
I have to give Hannah points for Geometry 101, but it still strikes me as passing strange that these girls are arguing not about a part in a play or getting to be prom queen but assuming the role of goddess in a pagan rite.
“Well, tell that to Chloe. She thinks that since Isabel died it means she was a real pagan sacrifice and so the cycle is really charged or something.”
“That’s sick, Tori.”
“Maybe, but I’m not going to be the one to tell Chloe that, especially now with her insisting we have the equinox thing on the ridge. She might push me off this time.”
“Don’t say that! Chloe didn’t push Isabel off the cliff.”
“How do you know? Were you there?” When Hannah shakes her head Tori goes on.
“You know how mad she was at Isabel for getting her in trouble with the Dean. And she always gets what she wants. Look at how she’s got Clyde wrapped around her little finger, and she’s got that new girl eating out of her hand. I do have an idea for cutting her down to size, though.” Tori bends down toward Hannah and lowers her voice. I lean forward in my alcove to hear her above the tinkling of wind chimes and recorded water music, but I miss whatever she says.
“No way!” Hannah replies. “I’m afraid she’d put a curse on me. Let’s just get this over with, okay?”
The girls approach the counter where the proprietor looks up at them placidly, seemingly oblivious to the girls’ conversation and my eavesdropping. “Um, excuse me?” Tori says. “We have a list of things we need. Can you help us?”
“We don’t sell curses,” the saleswoman replies. Apparently she had been listening after all.
“Well, good, because we don’t need any,” Tori snips back. “We’re supposed to get twelve candles, six brown and six white, each blessed for the …” She consults a folded sheet of notepaper. “… blessed for the ritual of the autumn equinox. Have you got any of those?”
The saleswoman turns wordlessly and disappears behind the Indian wall hanging. Something thuds, creaks, then crashes. I stay in my alcove, hoping the girls will continue their conversation. I suspect the “new girl” they mentioned is Sally and I’m also curious about Tori’s plans to cut Chloe “down to size.” I’m worried, too, that Chloe wants to have the equinox celebration on the ridge. It’s the first I’ve heard of that. But the girls wait in silence until the saleswoman returns with an armful of candles and glass canisters. “You’ll want these herbs to go with the candles,” she says.
“We don’t want any such thing,” Tori announces. “Here’s our list.” She holds the sheet of paper an inch from the saleswoman’s nose. “See, it says twelve candles. We’re not here to buy anything else.”
“The herbs are free,” the saleswoman says. “They come with the candles.”
“Oh, in that case, sure. We’ll take them.”
The saleswoman scoops out some dried yellow flowers into a brown paper bag. “Marigold petals,” she says, “to stand for the dying sun. Ring these around your white candles.” She scoops some dried seed pods into another bag. “Then strew these around the brown candles.” Hannah peers into the canister the seeds came from.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Poppy husks. That’s for the dark, which you’re welcoming.”
“Poppies? Isn’t that where opium comes from?”
“Yes,” the saleswoman replies, with a small smile. “Don’t eat them.”
“Have you got any eye of newt?” Tori asks, starting to laugh. A look from the saleswoman suddenly silences her. Hannah hands over the money for the candles and herbs, grabs Tori’s arm, and pulls her out of the shop. I can hear Tori’s shrill laughter exploding on the street and her clear exclamation: “Jeez, did you think she was going to turn us into toads?”
I approach the counter holding up a copy of The Meaning of Witchcraft by Gerald Gardner. “Would you recommend this book?” I ask the saleswoman as she closes the glass canisters and brushes some dried chaff from the countertop. An acrid smell rises to my nose and makes me sneeze.
“May the Goddess bless you,” she says, handing me a Kleenex. “And yes, I can recommend that book quite highly. Gerald Gardner is the father of modern Wicca.” She squints at me. “You’re a teacher,” she says—a statement, not a question.
I nod my head.
“So you’ll want to approach the subject in a rational, scholarly way.” She smiles at me as if she’d just identified an endearing but eccentric character trait in an old friend. “Come with me.”
When she comes out from behind the counter I see why there’d been so much noise in the back room. Her left leg is in a metal brace and she’s learning heavily on a carved wooden cane. “You’ll want Margaret Murray’s The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and Vivianne Crowley’s book on Wicca. Vivianne has a doctorate in psychology from the University of London. That should be enough scholarly cred for you.”
“Do you think I’m some academic snob who won’t listen to anyone who doesn’t possess a degree?”
The woman laughs, which makes the lines around her eyes crinkle. She’s older than I thought at first. In her thirties, not her twenties. Instead of answering my question she switches her cane to her left hand. I notice that the handle is carved into the shape of a leaping deer. She holds out her hand to shake. “I’m Fawn, by the way.”
“Meg Rosenthal,” I say, shaking her hand. I find myself grinning as if we were sharing some private joke. “How did you know I was a teacher?”
“The way you were hiding from those girls,” she says, limping back to the counter with the books she’s chosen for me. “You didn’t want them to see you, and I think you were interested in what they were talking about.” She lifts one tawny eyebrow.
“I was,” I admit. I have a feeling that lying to this woman would be pointless. “There was a death at the school last month.”
“I know. That poor girl. She had come in here a few times.”
“Really? I wouldn’t have pegged Isabel Cheney as being interested in witchcraft.”
“I doubt anyone would peg you for that, either,” she says, ringing up my books and taking the bills I offer. I’m about to tell her that my interest is purely scholarly, but that would only confirm her initial impression of me as a snob.
“So what was she interested in, then?” I ask.
“She started coming in last year for charms to help her in school. She was very ambitious but sadly unsure of herself under her confident pose. When she came back to school this term, though, she had a lot of questions about local traditions. She told me it was for a paper she was writing.”
“What kind of traditions was she interested in?”
“She wanted to know about the legends surrounding the clove and the woods above it, specifically about the wittewieven—who’s supposed to haunt those woods.”
Callum Reade had told me about the wittewieven the first night I met him
. I wonder if he learned of it through Fawn … maybe he and Fawn … I silence the next thought and ask Fawn what she had told Isabel.
“It was a very old legend that went back to the days of the first Kingston settlement. A woman named Martha Drury was accused of being a witch. Rather than be hanged, she fled Kingston into the mountains. She settled in the clove, where she gained a reputation for being a healer—or, as some might say, a witch. After she died, people claimed to see a white shape hovering over the falls and said it was the ghost of Martha Drury. That’s how the clove got to be called Witte Clove. Wittewieven means ‘white woman,’ but it also means ‘wisewoman’—a healer, an herbalist—and as I told Isabel many people around here believe that if you enter the clove with a pure heart you will be protected and healed. I think she must have run there because I told her that.”
I’m silent for a moment, then say, “It doesn’t seem like the spirit of the white woman was able to protect her.”
“No,” Fawn says, handing me my bag. “Which makes me wonder what she was running from.”
Fawn’s question haunts me all week. Who—or what—had Isabel been running from? Could she have been running from Chloe? But why? And how could a tiny girl like Chloe force a bigger girl like Isabel off a cliff? As ridiculous as it seems, I call Callum Reade to tell him what I overheard.
“You requested that I inform you of any information I might have,” I say formally when I reach him at the police station. I describe the girls’ conversation as best as I can recall it.
“And where were you when this conversation transpired?” he says, picking up my tone.
“Uh … behind a bamboo curtain in an alcove,” I say, instantly realizing how silly it sounds.
He makes a noise that is something between a bark and a cough.
“If you’re not going to take what I say seriously, I won’t bother you again—”
“No, no, I just got something stuck in my throat. This is very useful. You were right to call. I’ll question Chloe again. In the meantime, I’m concerned about this ceremony the kids are planning above the clove. Perhaps you ought to speak to your dean about it.”
Dean St. Clare is the last person I want to talk to, but I realize he’s right. I make an appointment to see her the next day.
“I appreciate your concern,” she tells me, leaning forward with her hands clasped together on her desk. “I had my doubts as well when the students asked my permission, but then I realized that it would provide just the closure they need after such a senseless tragedy.”
“But can’t they reach that closure someplace safer?” I ask. “Someplace on flat ground instead of the edge of a precipice?”
Ivy St. Clare tilts her little birdlike head at me quizzically. “I suppose it’s being a mother that makes you so … paranoid. Why don’t I put you in charge of overseeing the event? That should channel your energies constructively. I believe the club is meeting upstairs in the Reading Room right now. Why don’t you drop in on them to discuss security measures?”
Dismissed, I head upstairs to the Reading Room, wondering if the dean always responds to criticism by handing out extra work. It would be an effective deterrent.
As I approach the library, I hear a girl’s voice raised in anger. “I think the whole thing is just wrong. I don’t want anything to do with it!” As I reach the doorway, Haruko comes out in such a hurry that she collides with me. She apologizes somewhat cursorily—though she’s always been cheerful and polite with me—and hurries down the stairs. I consider going after her, but then I look at the circle of guilty faces in the library and decide that these are the people I need to talk to.
“What was that all about?” I ask Sally, who’s curled up in a window seat, bent over her sketchpad. She shrugs but doesn’t reply. Instead Chloe answers from the depths of a velvet wingback chair in the center of the circle. “I’m afraid she’s one of those girls who doesn’t want to play if she can’t have things her own way.”
Justin Clay, who’s lolling on a love seat with Tori Pratt, straightens up and untangles his legs from Tori’s. “Yeah, she’s kind of a drama queen.”
“She is a bit sensitive,” Hannah Weiss concedes from her perch on the hassock next to Chloe’s chair. I almost laugh at this sentiment coming from Hannah, who’s about the most sensitive kid I’ve ever met.
I turn from student to student as each one dismisses Haruko’s outburst. “That doesn’t sound like Haruko at all,” I say to Sally.
“How would you know?” Sally asks without lifting her head from her drawing pad. “She’s not even in any of your classes.”
Looking from face to face I feel as if I am watching a carefully orchestrated chamber piece: an arrangement for five voices. But the fifth member of the circle, sitting cross-legged on the floor, remains silent. I turn to him.
“Clyde? What was Haruko upset about? What did she think was ‘wrong?”
Clyde blanches and squirms uneasily on the floor, as if he could dig himself a hole to hide in. “The rite of the autumn equinox is all about facing the dark,” he says finally. “It’s about accepting death as a natural part of the life cycle….”
Someone in the room—I can’t tell who—begins to hum the theme from The Lion King: “The Circle of Life.” Tori and Chloe giggle. Clyde blushes. “Anyway. I guess that’s what Haruko thought was wrong.”
“And how exactly do you intend to ‘face the dark’ during this equinox ceremony?” I ask. I have a vision of the clove at sunset, the dark gash in the earth gathering the shadows into its folds. If their idea of facing the dark means going down into the clove, then I will to put an end to the ceremony right now.
“It’s just a candle-lighting ceremony,” Chloe says, her voice sweetly lilting. “You’ll see, it will be very pretty.”
“The dean has put me in charge of safety,” I tell Chloe. “So pretty or not, I want your assurance that no one will go within five—make that ten—feet of the ridge.”
“No problem. The main ceremony will be held in the clearing as you approach the ridge.”
“You remember, Ms. Rosenthal,” Hannah adds. “Right by that fallen tree where we found that piece of Isabel’s dress.”
“Yes, I suppose that would be far enough away from the edge,” I say. “But you said the ‘main ceremony’ will take place there. Is there a sideshow?”
Chloe winces at my choice of words, as if I’d just turned her sacred rite into a circus act. “The culmination of the rite requires the goddess—that would be me—to approach the ridge with a candle. But I can assure you, Ms. Rosenthal, I have no intention of following Isabel into the clove.”
“I’m sure you don’t, but just to be safe I will go up with you.”
Chloe inclines her head, for all the world like a benignant deity accepting an offering from a supplicant. Tori was right; I think, Chloe is beginning to think she is the goddess she’s playing. “That will be fine,” Chloe says. “As long as you are quiet and respectful.”
“And then I want an orderly procession down the hill,” I add.
“All arranged, Ms. Rosenthal. That’s part of the ceremony. Then we all reconvene in the Lodge for cider and doughnuts. You can do a head count. I promise you, no one will be wandering in the woods on the eve of the autumn equinox. Not when the dark is rising.”
Chloe’s words follow me for the rest of the week. The coming of fall back on Long Island meant new school clothes for Sally, the migration of the elderly to Florida, and the annual PTA debate over whether to ban Halloween. Here in the mountains and farmlands, the cast of late-September light already threatens cold and darkness. The sycamore leaves have turned the greenish gold of tarnished brass. The air in the morning is sharp and smells like woodsmoke. Lying in bed at night I hear geese flying overhead and the wind thrashing in the pine trees as if it wants to fly away with them. When I drive into town I see that someone has put a peaked witch’s hat on the tin White Witch sign. Outside the houses I pass in town, woodpiles climb higher a
nd higher, as if the residents are preparing for the next ice age. It’s easy to see why the arts colony was originally only meant to last during the summer. According to Lily, the artists began to flee at the first sign of cold.
Mimi announced tonight at dinner that she’d been offered a job painting murals at a convent called St. Lucy’s in the western Catskills. “I’m not sure exactly where it is. Some little town called Easton.”
“But aren’t you Jewish?” Gertrude had asked, askance.
“Yes, but don’t tell the nuns. I told them that I knew the lives of the saints intimately. I’d better start boning up.”
“I think St. Lucy is the one who plucked her eyes out,” Vera said. “I’ve seen many representations of her on my travels in Italy.”
“Ugh,” Mimi said, making a face. “I don’t want to have to paint that! But I think it might be a different St. Lucy. This one is Irish and is the patron saint of unwed mothers. St. Lucy’s is an orphanage and home for unwed mothers.”
Mimi’s confession unleashed a torrent of winter obligations. Dora and Ada were afraid that they’d lose their lease on their apartment in Manhattan if they didn’t get back soon. Mike Walsh was going out west to sketch Indians. The Zarkov brothers had been invited by a cousin to winter in Palm Beach. Virgil announced that he’d been offered a fellowship to paint at the American Academy in Rome. Last of all, Gertrude mentioned that she had agreed to go to Europe with her husband. “Of course he’s a ninny, but in exchange for my agreeing to take some preposterous fertility cure at Baden-Baden, he has agreed to let me start a little art museum in the city. And I can use the trip to collect art.”
“Well, I guess Lily and I will have to keep the hearth fires burning by ourselves,” Vera said, glancing toward me with a proprietary smile that warmed me. Some might have rebelled under that possessiveness, but I knew where it came from and it made my heart swell to see her look at me as if I were hers.
It had taken half the summer to breach Vera’s delicate sense of decorum. After May Eve, we had continued to leave the door open between our rooms. We called our goodnights across the threshold but then we would speak long into the night. I’m afraid I didn’t pay attention to all she said—her talk was full of pragmatic details of running the estate and her plans for expanding the summer colony—but I loved to lie in the dark, listening to the sound of her voice. I did pay attention, though, when she spoke of purchasing a printing press.