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“She didn’t?” I couldn’t imagine why my mother would feel that way—why she would want to deny me my heritage.
“No, she didn’t.” Aunt Dellie. shook her head. “I told her—I promised her—that she didn’t have to bind me. I told her I would never remind her or speak of it to you about magic if she didn’t want me to. But she said there would come a time in the future that I would be desperate to remind her and that she couldn’t risk it.” She looked at me sadly. “As it turned out, she was right.”
“The cancer,” I whispered. “The lung cancer—could it have been cured by magic?”
Aunt Dellie reached out and put a hand over mine.
“My dear sweet Meggie,” she said earnestly, looking into my eyes. “The lung cancer your sweet mother died of was caused by magic.”
50
“What?” I jumped up from the table, my wooden kitchen chair falling backwards to land with a flat smacking sound on the clean but faded linoleum floor. “Are you saying that someone put a spell on Mom that gave her cancer?” I demanded.
I was thinking of how it was lung cancer and yet she’d never smoked a day in her life. And I could also guess who might want to hurt her that way. Winifred Rattcliff’s face with her too-large mouth and small, mean eyes rose in my memory. Wouldn’t my mom have been next in line to head up the Windermere Coven? And wasn’t it clear that Winifred Rattcliff would have done anything to get that place for herself and keep it for her daughter?
But Aunt Dellie was waving her hands and trying to calm me down.
“No, no, Meggie!” she exclaimed. “No, I’m not saying someone put a spell on her to give her cancer. I’m saying her unused magic caused it. At least, that is what I believe.”
“You can get cancer if you don’t use your magic?” I asked blankly, reaching down to straighten my chair and sitting back down reluctantly.
“Cancer or any number of other diseases,” Aunt Dellie said seriously. “Bottling up magical power—especially power as formidable as your mother’s was—is very dangerous indeed.”
“But…she must have known that when she cast the forgetting spell on herself and the binding spell on you,” I protested. “So why would she do it?”
Aunt Dellie shook her head.
“I only wish I knew. It happened not long after your grandmother died of a stroke—Guinevere and I were both still in shock because she was only fifty, you know—and she passed so quickly! But your mother knew it was up to her to take over the leadership of the Coven. She was still so young—not even twenty yet. But she had the power and the leadership of the Coven was her birthright.”
“Windermere Coven, right?” I asked.
Aunt Dellie nodded.
“Yes—the same one your Great-great-great grandmother Corinne founded. Anyway, your mother and some of the stronger witches in the Coven went away on a kind of…retreat, I guess you could call it. They went to do cleansing rituals and seek the Goddess’s will. I expected that your mother would do the ceremony of transition and take over the leadership of the Coven when she returned but instead…” She shook her head, her voice failing.
“Instead she decided to swear off magic?” I asked, frowning.
Aunt Dellie nodded.
“She told me that she had seen things—terrible things—that had to be avoided at all costs. And she said the only way to avoid those things was for her to take herself out of the equation completely. So she ceded the leadership of the Windermere Coven to Winifred Rattcliff and worked the spell of forgetfulness on herself and the spell of binding on me. Then she moved away—all the way to Seattle, so she wouldn’t be reminded of her past in any way—married a Norm and had you. And that was that,” Aunt Dellie finished with a sigh.
“But…but when she got cancer. Surely you must have thought—” I began.
“Of course I thought it was probably her magic turning inwards—eating her from the inside out!” Aunt Dellie exclaimed passionately. “But I was bound and couldn’t say anything. And besides, your mother didn’t let me know about her cancer until it was well advanced—already metastasized.” She sighed unhappily and swiped at the tears welling up in her eyes. “I think some subconscious part of her knew that I would try to find a way to use magic to heal her, even though I have none of my own—that I would try to remind her of her past—a past she wanted desperately to forget.”
“But why?” I exclaimed. “What could she possibly have seen that was so bad it would make her abandon her heritage and raise me like a Norm? And live like a Norm herself, for that matter? What could it have been?”
Aunt Dellie shook her head.
