~

 

 There he was, all six foot odd of pure beefcake detective, and he was standing on the edge of the Point cautiously looking down to the jagged rocks below. The wind was whistling, and the waves were crashing against those unforgiving rocks, and then he was falling, falling like a bird in flight with his arms stretched out at his sides and his back arched.

I almost screamed, almost, but not quite … because it wasn’t real, and I knew it wasn’t real, and yet the sweat covered my body, and my heart raced.

“It happened again, didn’t it?” Moira’s voice was soft but demanding.

The only times that my sister was ever really nice to me was when I was sick, when I was in real trouble, or when I’d had one of my – things – and I’d just had one of my things. Gran called it the sight. I called it a curse.

I nodded, not yet trusting my voice enough to speak.

I stepped back from the kitchen counter and took a moment while my heart slowed, the sound of my blood rushing in my ears eased, and I wiped my sweaty palms on my apron. The flour still stuck to my hands, and I hated that feeling, almost as much as I hated my vision of what was to come.

“Wanna talk about it?” She asked, and I shook my head. “Someone, we know?” She wondered out loud.

“Not kin,” I assured her as I hurried to undo the apron and get it off of me. My clothes already felt tight, constricting as I tried to draw in a normal breath, and I didn’t need another layer on my body.

“Go home – you’ve made the mixtures for the final batch. I’ve got this.” Moira offered me a sympathetic look, and I hated that almost as much as I hated this new vision.

Sometimes being a witch wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

“I just need…” I didn’t really know what I needed, except to see Jack walk in through the door.

Jack, I needed to know that he wasn’t at the Point or going there anytime soon. I needed to warn him … but how? I wasn’t a witch to Jack, and even if I came clean and told him the truth of it – he would never believe in me.

In me? Strange that I thought that. I meant to say; believe me.

 “Guess what?” Isla’s voice boomed out into the kitchen like she had a megaphone and I jumped in place, curse words a-many spewing from my lips as my cousin pulled up short and eyed me like I was a rabid dog. “You don’t look so good.” She stated the obvious and I shot her a death glare.

“She just had one of her things,” Moira offered the last word on a hissed whisper.

“Things?” Isla drew a blank, and I groaned inwardly as Moira tapped her index finger against her temple. “Oh. Oh! What about?” Isla gasped, and her nose twitched at the thought of the juicy gossip that she couldn’t tell to anyone but our kin.

“She doesn’t feel like discussing it,” Moira said.

There was a look on disappointment on Isla’s face that made me want to hit her with the sack of flour, but, instead, I decided that it probably was a good time to head home.

“So, talk about something else,” Moira urged our cousin on, and Isla didn’t wait for that invitation to be carved into stone.

“I just saw Jack on the way to his car…”

“Car?” My ears pricked up and my heart raced. If Jack was leaving Portree, then he could very well have been going to the scene of the crime-not-crime. That would be bad. “Where’s he going?”

“I was getting to that…” Isla lifted her hand and thought about it for a moment.

“Don’t think – talk – you don’t normally put your brain into gear before your lips start flapping, so spit it out!” Isla looked shocked by my outburst, and when I snapped a look at Moira, she didn’t look much better. “What? Talk!”

“The Point – I think…” Isla rushed out.

“You think?” I snapped back.

But I wasn’t about to wait around for her to get her brain into gear. I tossed the apron that I hadn’t realized I’d been trying to strangle, down on the counter and started for the back door, only just remembering to grab my car keys on the way out.

“Well, that’s…” Isla’s voice followed me out the door.

“Our Maggie for you.” I silenced Moira’s next words as I slammed the door behind me.

I needed to get to the point and see for myself if Jack was there. If he was, then I could bring him back from the edge before catastrophe struck, and if he wasn’t then it was a nice drive back.

But, what if I was already too late?

 

~

 

By the time I reached the Point night was starting to close in. I started the long walk from where I’d parked the car over the rugged land towards the cliffs.

Jack’s car had been nowhere to be seen, but I reasoned that he wasn’t a local and wouldn’t have known the closest place to park in order to get to the cliffs. He could have parked anywhere along a very long stretch of road from the Point where I’d seen him in my vision.

I noted the weather closing in. Those rain-filled, ominous clouds in the distance didn’t look right, not for my vision. It had been brighter, definitely more daytime than dusk. Perhaps now wasn’t the right time for my vision to come to be.

I should have turned back, but something kept pulling me onwards, a feeling, a strange sense of pins and needles that lightly brushed my skin and made the fine hairs on my body stand to attention, and the closer to the edge that I got, the more it tingled, the more it pulled at me.

Magic. I could feel it more strongly now. It clung to the earth and enticed me on. Here there be magic was a much-used phrase, but, oh, it was getting stronger with each step, pulling, enticing me towards the edge.

Mr. Croon was definitely not of the supernatural world because we would have sensed it like we sensed every other spiritual person on the Isle that had Fae within their blood, of which there were many because Skye was sacred land. No, it wasn’t his spirit that beckoned me, I was almost sure of that.

In truth, there was a little magic in all of us. The human race was born out of magic and had embraced the heritage, embraced the Elements that kept us all alive, fed the Earth with its vibrant pulsating energy that ran like veins beneath our feet.

Once, we were as one. As it was, so it should always have been, but some turned their back on the truth of it, and the magic lay dormant within them. But here, in the powerful realm of the faeries, that magic was still strong, and it still pulsed through the earth.

Stronger now with every uneven step that I took across the wild lands. I could feel that magic calling to me, pulling at me, and leading me towards its pulsating heart.

 There was a part of me that knew I should turn back, my magic was on full alert and crackling just below the surface of my skin. It was unnerving, I’d never felt it act like that before, and yet, my feet kept taking me closer and closer towards whatever was pulling me on, drawing me in, like a spider to the fly … I consciously pushed back.

It was wrong, and I finally realized it.

“Capture the darkness, fill with light, for mortal vessels, Hecate make right. Fear ye none while in her care, the Goddess walks beside ye, always there. Guardian of the veil between this life and the next, protector of the blessed, Mother of all, hear me now as I call to ye, protect this mortal vessel, with your powers be – if it harms none, blessed be.”

I pulled on my magic and felt its light, its love flow through my body, warming me like the Fire within us all. Magic crackled and twisted in the Air around me. The winds picked up and swirled, and as the clouds burst open and the rains fell, the Water drenching my body and it made the Earth squelch beneath my feet.

The Elements combined; Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and I felt the guiding hand of the Crone tug me back away from the edge of disaster.

I turned on fast feet and ran blindly back across the land. My shoes slipped on the wet grass, my heart raced, but I needed to escape.

Whatever it was on that bluff, those cliffs at the Point – I knew that old man Croon’s death had been no accident.

 

~

 

“Here there be magic,” Moira was the first to speak after my story was told.

The rest of my family sat in silent contemplation around the dinner table. The food on our plates was virtually untouched as I recounted what had happened in the hope of finding wisdom from my elders, and as a warning to my siblings to be on guard.

“That’s not funny,” I bit out as I offered Moira a dirty look.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Moira shot back with a frown. “We all know that Skye has a vibrant pulse, perhaps you just ran into something bad piggybacking on it.”

“I don’t like it,” Dad said, still half lost in thought as he stared at something unseen on the table in front of him.

“I hate it,” Eileen grumbled, and I was sure that I’d just given my little sister another reason to deny her heritage.

“What can we do?” Mother asked, looking way more lost than I felt.

I wasn’t shaking so hard anymore, inwardly or outwardly, but my skin still felt funny, as if I had something crawling on it. I needed to cleanse, and not in a beauty regime way.

I noted that Gran was uncharacteristically silent, and funnily enough, it had been her that I’d been looking to the most for something – I don’t know – profound, comforting, kick-butt, but she looked kind of green around the gills, and I wondered if she was alright. She always had something to add to a conversation – until now.

“Gran?” I said and watched her jump in her seat as if I’d shouted in her ear.

I shot a quick look at Moira to see if she’d noted Gran’s strange behaviour, Moira and I might have fought, or sparred, like cat and dog, guess which one of us was the dog, but she was always my go-to girl for kicking ideas around, and I found my sister staring back at me with questions written all over her face. I shrugged, and so did she.

“I need a moment,” Gran said, not sounding like herself at all.

She pushed up to her feet and walked away. I didn’t know if it was just me, but I thought she looked decidedly older right then.

“Dad?” I turned my attention toward him and found him still lost in thought. He gave a small shake of his head and gave me a questioning look. “I think there’s something wrong…”

“I know there’s something wrong. You were attacked by magic,” he said, looking at me with both sympathy and like I’d just announced I’d joined the church.

“With Gran,” I offered back.

Geez, had all of my elder's taken leave of their senses?

“Hmm?” he said, distracted once more.

“Donlan!” Mother snapped out, and that seemed to perk him up. “Your mother, now. Go fetch!” She pointed to the door, and he pushed up to his feet with a scowl.

“What did she do now?” he muttered to himself as he went after her.

“Gran’s not right,” I said to my mother.

“Gran hasn’t been right for a long time,” Moira mumbled back.

She had a point, but I didn’t think this was that – whatever that was – it felt different. Gran looked … weird.

“Can I be excused? I’ve lost my appetite,” Eileen said, skulking in her chair and practically pouting.

I know that Moira and I weren’t that much older than her, she was eighteen, Moira was twenty one, and I was twenty-three, but seriously, she still acted like a child, and there was Moira and I holding down a business and making it work.

“No, this is family business, suck it up,” Moira answered for my mother.

Eileen pouted some more. “I hate this witch stuff…” she grumbled. Well, she couldn’t exactly escape it unless she left home and never came back to the island.

Moira was right, our sister needed to suck it up.

“You what!?” Dad’s voice boomed through the downstairs of the house, and Moira and I shot surprised looks at each other.

My father very seldom raised his voice in anger, and I’d never heard him do it to Gran … except for the time that she’d almost burnt off his face by lighting the barbeque with her magic, but that was understandable, and warranted – I might have zapped her without thinking twice.

To say that a mad rush for the door ensued would have been an understatement – we were like cats in a sack at the log-jam at the doorway, elbowing each other to try to be the first out.