Sunlight and her sheer strength of will had held it at bay for a while.
But eventually over the passing months, Death had grown bolder and less patient.
Now, sometimes late at night when she lay sleeping, it slipped into her old Victorian farmhouse, into her bedroom, and sat upon her shallowly rising and falling chest, peering down impenetrably into her slumbering face, as though to steal away her last breath finally and forever.
No doubt, with these tactics, Death hoped to frighten her, as it did so many others.
But unlike them, Henrietta was not afraid. She had lived too long and seen too much for that. She knew Death was but the guide to another dimension, another plane of existence not yet fully understood by those who dwelled in the physical realm.
When she passed beyond the door through which Death would lead her, she would see her parents and Jotham and Rowan again, and she would be glad of that.
But before then, she must do everything in her power to protect those she would be leaving behind—especially her namesake and granddaughter, Hallie.
That was the reason for the ritual Henrietta was undertaking tonight and why she had gone to such great lengths to prepare for it.
For months, she had befriended the huge wild black wolf around which her ceremony would center, gradually gaining its trust and confidence. For weeks, she had gathered the herbs and other plants she intended to employ, neatly cutting them with her bone-handled boline, then drying and preparing them for grinding with her mortar and pestle. For days, she had consulted her almanacs and correspondence tables to ensure that her timing would prove auspicious and her tools appropriate to her spellwork. Earlier this evening she had bathed in the nearby creek in order to cleanse and purify herself, then carefully dressed in her best witching clothes and flowing cloak.
Now Henrietta was ready.
Above the sweet meadow in which she stood—and for which her farm had been named—the moon shone bright and full, a gleaming silver orb in the black-velvet night sky. From the creek that wound through the woods encompassing the meadow, wisps of mist drifted ghostily, enshrouding the gnarled old trees and blanketing the gentle hollows of the land.
With her black-handled, double-edged, singing arthame and the carefully knotted cingulum she took from around her waist, Henrietta began the casting of the magic circle she required for this night’s work, marking the perimeter with small stones she had collected some days before and set to one side for just this purpose.
When she had finished, she approached the round wooden table she had set up as her altar. There, she took up a little bowl of finely ground sea salt and, walking deiseil or clockwise, scattered it along the circle’s boundary, chanting as she did so. Next she lit a cone of incense in her thurible and waved the smoke from the ornate brass burner around the circumference, continuing to chant softly. Then she set a candle aflame, anointed it with oil and bore it clockwise along the ring’s edge. Last but not least, she uncorked a small bottle of holy water and sprinkled that around the periphery, so the magic circle had been cleansed and consecrated with all four elements: earth, wind, fire and water.
After that, Henrietta ignited the bonfire she had laid earlier beneath the large iron cauldron that hung from a tripod she had placed at the heart of the meadow, inside the circle she had cast. Then she called the Quarters and welcomed the God and Goddess she had worshiped for many long years now.
Finally, taking a deep breath, she beckoned to the great wolf, which had been watching her curiously, intently, from the bank of the misted creek. As he loped toward her, she used her arthame to cut a metaphysical door into the circle for him to pass through, then closed it securely behind him.
No more than she feared Death did Henrietta fear the wolf. He was a creature of nature, and she had always shared a special affinity with those, frequently finding them far preferable to people. Indeed, the older she had grown, the less tolerant she had become of the latter, until, now, with the exception of a chosen few, she was virtually a recluse.
Still, Henrietta never felt a lack. Her life at the farm was rich and full in all the ways that mattered to her. She knew what was important—and what was not. It seemed to her that the world was an increasingly cruel, vicious place, of which she no longer wanted any part. For her, life began and ended at Meadowsweet—which was why it must be protected.
As the massive wolf prowled restlessly around the magic circle, Henrietta determinedly set to work, lighting several more candles and, with her mortar and pestle, grinding the herbs and other plants she needed for her powerful spell. She knew what she hoped to achieve this night would take every ounce of her strength, will and faith.
Still, in the end—the God and Goddess willing—she would succeed.
Once she had all the necessary ingredients together, Henrietta put them into the cauldron over the blazing bonfire. As the big kettle began to bubble and smoke, she rang the pewter bell that sat upon the altar. Then, with her left hand, she took up her bejeweled pewter wand and, with her right hand, drew her arthame from the cingulum now wrapped around her waist.
With the wand, she struck the arthame just so, making it sing—pure, sweet notes that echoed melodiously across the meadow into the swirling mist and caused the wolf’s ears to prick forward attentively.
Then, starting once more to chant and summoning her vast power born of the blessed Earth Mother, Henrietta began to work her elaborate spell of enchantment, calling the immense wolf to her side and touching him lightly with her wand….
Chapter 1
The Storm and the Wolf
A Two-Lane Highway, The Present
There was a storm coming on.
Hallie Muldoon could see it ahead in the distance, where leaden thunderclouds seethed and roiled on the horizon, blotting out the westering sun. At the sight, the strange, nebulous sense of anxiety and urgency she had felt ever since learning of her grandmother’s unexpected death last month heightened within her, and she pressed her foot even harder against the accelerator of the car she drove.
In response, the sporty red Mini Cooper S shot down the narrow two-lane highway that was a patchwork of macadam bounded on either side by long, sweeping green verges abloom with a profusion of wildflowers, beyond which lay checkerboard fields of ripening grain.
Under other circumstances, it would have been a picturesque scene. But at the moment, beneath the lowering sky, it was somehow reminiscent of Van Gogh’s painting Starry Night, and Hallie suffered the disturbing sensation that she was journeying into the distorted realm of an unquiet mind instead of toward the small town of Wolf Creek, her childhood home.
She had not been there since her mother, Rowan Muldoon, had passed away and Gram had sent her back East to live with her two great-aunts, Gram’s spinster sisters, Agatha and Edith. That had been many years ago now, and the beginning of an entirely new life for Hallie, the old one—the one she would have lived had her mother survived—having died along with the only parent she had ever known.
Hallie thought that in some respects, nothing had gone right in her life since that moment.
In sharp contrast to Meadowsweet, the quiet, relatively isolated farm where Gram had lived, Great-Aunts Agatha and Edith had resided in a crowded, noisy big city, in a dark old gloomy town house wherein the sunshine, freedom and laughter to which the then seven-year-old Hallie had been accustomed had been painfully taboo. In the great-aunts’ town house, the long heavy curtains were always drawn against the sun that would otherwise have faded the furniture and carpets, and little girls were to obey the rules, the primary of which had been to be seen and not heard. Natural childhood curiosity and chatter had brought severe frowns and censure.
As a result, back East, Hallie had quickly learned to keep her mouth shut and her thoughts to herself, to slip like a wraith through