‘Yes. I didn’t know what it was for.’
‘It is the sacred symbol of water activation. Which any fae in Murias knows, but apparently you do not. Humans are ignorant, but witches should know better,’ she said disapprovingly.
‘Once activated, and the words read aloud, the sigil cast’ – she repeated the Gaelic phrase again – ‘the wand just needs your intention. If your powers of visualisation are clear and focused, you will find many uses for the wand.’
‘What does that mean?’ Faye frowned.
‘Imagine it and it will happen.’ Levantiana rolled her eyes. ‘I wonder exactly what your mother taught you at all.’
‘She taught me a lot of things,’ Faye argued, protective of the memory of Moddie.
‘Not the right things, it would seem,’ Levantiana replied archly. ‘Try it.’ She nodded at the wand. ‘Summon the element. Not difficult to do, in the heart of the elemental kingdom.’
‘Fine.’ Feeling like an errant child, Faye took the wand in her left hand as instructed and read aloud the words on it.
She felt the wand humming in her hand, a subtle but definite vibration. She dipped the wand into the large chalice that sat on the altar, then, looking at the copper disc, copied its shape in the air in front of her. Then, she closed her eyes.
Summon the element.
Faye didn’t know exactly what to do, but she thought of a stream of water. A pretty, countryside stream, trickling itsway through a beautiful forest. It was gentle and tranquil. She concentrated as hard as she could on the image. She thought about what the stream would sound like, smell like, even.
She opened her eyes and looked down. She felt as though she had stepped in a puddle. But what she saw under her feet made her exclaim out loud. ‘Oh!’
A stream flowed through Levantiana’s chamber, gurgling over their feet. The water glittered in the lamplight, and Faye knelt down to touch it with her fingertips to see if it was real, or an illusion.
It was real. Tiny, gleaming fish and fronds of green weeds inhabited its flow.
‘Oh my…wow.’ Faye looked up at Levantiana, who stood with her arms crossed, her expression unreadable. ‘I did it!’
‘You did,sidhe-leth.’ The faerie queen inclined her head delicately. ‘It looks as if you are not quite as ignorant or talentless as I assumed.’
30
‘In the castle of Murias, the cup is its magical symbol and greatest treasure,’ Levantiana said, watching Faye’s face as she admired its beauty.
Now, she waved a censer of sweet-smelling incense over the top of the chalice. ‘Pay attention.’
It was two weeks later and Faye’s second magic lesson, and she was keen to learn more. What Levantiana had already taught her was incredible. She’d had no idea that the wand was capable of so much. As soon as she’d returned home, she’d taken the Morgan wand out of the locked cabinet and practised summoning water. It was more difficult, outside Murias, as Faye was literallyoutof the element. But it still worked. Faye had managed to make it rain inside the shop, though she had stopped it almost immediately when she’d realised it was going to ruin all of the shop stock.
As Faye gazed obediently into the chalice, where images formed and bled into each other as the candlelight flickered on the water, Levantiana chanted strange words in Scots Gaelic and something shifted. The perspective in the room changed, yet, as she looked around, the room was at normal proportions; it wasthe chalice that had grown and was suddenly impossibly large, and she found herself inside it as if she was in a deep golden pool. It made Faye think ofAlice in Wonderlandfor a moment. The water was cold but not freezing; her clothes had disappeared and the water covered her naked shoulders as she stood with her feet on the bottom of the…cup? pool? – she didn’t know.
Levantiana stood outside of the chalice and stretched into it, pulling her wand over the surface of the water.
‘Mar sin tha deuchainn an uisge cuideachd na leigheas air; mar sin tha draoidheachd an uisge.So is the test of water also the healing of it; so is the magic of water,’ she intoned, in Gaelic and then English, and drew a seven-pointed star on the top of the water. As she did so, the star lit up in blue and Faye felt the temperature of the water change, warming to something more pleasant than the initial cold.
‘See your power on the surface of the water,’ Levantiana instructed, as images and sequences, symbols and faces came up as if from the bottom of the chalice, breaking onto the skin of the water like drowning faces fighting for air. Faye stepped back, horrified at the effect, but Levantiana held her shoulders and forced her to stay where she was.
‘No,’ she said, firm but not unkind. ‘You must do this. To have the power of Murias, you must accept your shadow and heal it. Our power is different to that which you have been taught, but you must welcome it in. You must integrate your fae and human selves to have the power you desire. You have already met some of your shadow in Murias. You know of what I speak.’ Levantiana gave her a meaningful stare, and Faye felt herself blush. She knew what the faerie queen meant: her behaviour with Finn. Playing the slut. The whore. The concubine.
Faye’s relationship with Finn was complicated. It was not consensual. He had abducted her to faerie and kept her druggedwith the magic of his touch, so that she forgot the outside world and wanted only to submit to him. The sexual things they had done together were outside the frame of her usual experience. But she had enjoyed it. She had derived a dark thrill of joy in letting go and allowing him to pleasure her.
On the surface of the water the faces were becoming familiar. They were women’s faces, and, Faye realised, they bore a common resemblance to hers. She watched as the features morphed from one woman to another: sometimes a longer nose, sometimes the hair a different colour or style, but all of them somehow similar. She recoiled from them, feeling haunted, but she took a deep breath and gave herself over to it.
It wasn’t until Grandmother’s face blended into Moddie’s and then hers that she realised she was seeing her ancestors, an unbroken line of Morgan women, stretching through the years like a ribbon unrolled. Her voice caught in her throat.
‘Oh…I…’ She didn’t know what to say, and felt tears welling up in her eyes.
‘Don’t fight it. This is your magic. Take it.’ Levantiana’s hands on her shoulders felt more like support rather than restriction now, and Faye was grateful for them.
