CHAPTER 1
There is nothing more unfortunate than to be a
witch with no powers--or perhaps more accurately, a witch whose powers have yet
to manifest.
This was not Summer’s fault. She wasn’t exactly
born into it—although her mother said that she had great power that lay just
beneath her skin waiting to come out. It made Summer think about an errant hair
or stray pimple; waiting to come out.
Mama and her sisters all had the talent—but they
were born into it. Mama wasn’t her real mama and Bethsheba, Ona and Marcelle
were not her real sisters. Sometimes people gazed upon her with her pale skin
and long black hair that cascaded down the center of her back. They would take
in her emerald green eyes and wonder why her mother and sisters were black when
she was so obviously white.
People were idiots, Summer would think. Why did
they think that family was only comprised of flesh and blood? Family was who
loved and took care of you when your own family was nowhere to be found.
Summer’s real mother had lived in a small little
house on St John’s Island amidst swamp alligators and raccoons that came right
up on the porch to eat the dog’s food. Summer remembered the pretty flowers and
the thick forest with the little scurrying squirrels and rabbits. What Summer
didn’t remember is going to school or having friends. She was six and then
seven and then eight and the only people she saw were her mother’s customers.
They would come at dusk with their money clutched
in their fist and determined expressions on their face because they knew that
the strange white woman that lived in a shack on the water’s edge had a knack
to make things happen.
She spoke the ‘gullah’ just like any of them, and
knew how to work the best gris gris—maybe because she was disconnected from the
rest of the community and didn’t allow her own prejudices to interfere--or
maybe her mysterious ways harkened to a darker magic that no one wanted to talk
about.
By the time Summer was eight she knew the plants
and the magic words and would help her mother with the most rudimentary spells.
One morning Summer woke up and her mother wasn’t home. She went to the river
and checked the traps and brought back the meat but her mother was still not
around. Summer cooked breakfast—at eight she was old enough to make most of the
meals.
Her mother did not return and for two terrifying
weeks Summer wandered their small house and the surroundings that she so loved.
She bathed in the river the way her mother would want her to and took care of
the animals. People came for her mother’s magic but Summer hid. But they kept
coming and then Mama showed up.
Mama called her little bird. Summer peeked at her
from where she was hiding from behind a tree. And Mama stood on the porch and
in a beautiful light voice called out for the whereabouts of the pretty little
bird. But mama was the pretty one. She was true Creole, a tantalizing mixture
of Kiawah Indian, French and African. Her long hair fell in waves down her back
and Summer remembered that she wore a long dress but was barefoot—yet no dirt
seemed to have settled on her feet.
The song Mama sang began to make Summer sleepy and
before she knew it her feet were carrying her to the strange woman that stood
singing on her porch. When Mama’s hazel eyes rested upon Summer a broad smile
touched her face. She lifted Summer into her arms as if she was a little baby
and Mama carried her home where she was to live from that moment forward.
Before that very day, she had never set eyes upon
the woman who would raise her. It was a full year later before Summer asked
where her real mother was and Mama said that she was with the one that she had
no right to call.
And that idea seethed inside of Summer for many
years—years in which all those around her were able to cast spells and work
magic while she wondered if she was destined to always be different. And then
the idea began to sprout from the seedlings of information that she had
gathered about her real mother—that the woman could call upon someone stronger
to work her magic, a minor demon, something that could easily be controlled.
~***~
Summer learned magic from mama—and not hoodoo—which
is what her real mother worked. Mama didn’t cotton to that kind of thing. Magic
was clean and white and Summer was taught the clear distinction between the
two. Her real mother had partaken in the dark rituals of conjuring and
root-working—in which it was common to call upon a demon to do ones bidding. When
Summer tried to question her mother about it, the topic was swiftly shut-down,
her mama snapping at her in uncharacteristic anger. Later mama came into the
bedroom that Summer shared with her little sister Ona and explained the best
way that she dared.
“You are a vessel, Summer, just waiting to be
filled.” And then mama touched her chin and lifted her head until their eyes
met. “One day it will be filled—be patient and only offer yourself purity and
cleanness. Anything less will darken your soul. Do you understand, little
bird?”
And Summer had understood. She had taken pangs to
keep her thoughts and actions pure. The boys did not come around—too afraid of
her white skin and her powerful Mama, but she didn’t care about boys or
physical attraction. She only cared about the
one that should not be called upon.
It was Ona who brought the idea to her mind. When
Summer was twelve and Ona ten years old, the younger girl had whispered the
things that no one dared say aloud.
“Your mother is the plaything of a demon.”
“My mother is your mother …” Summer said, nearly
forgetting that the two weren’t the same flesh and blood.
“No. Your white mother—the one who disappeared.”
Summer had looked at Ona with wide eyes. It was
not exactly forbidden to speak about Summer’s mother, but such discussions were
frowned upon by the family’s matriarch.
Ona continued, her dark eyes serious. “I heard
them talking.” Them meant many
different things depending on the context—But Summer knew that in this context
‘them’ meant the ladies of the circle; the witches group that they belonged to.
“They didn’t know I was home,” Ona continued. “I
was supposed to be outside collecting herbs but I got thirsty. Miss Genevieve
said that your mama got her goose cooked, dabbling in things she shouldn’t. And
then mama said that no one deserved to be the plaything of a demon…”
Summer frowned images in her head of the many
stray cats they sometime took care of that toyed with the captured mice or
birds before killing and devouring them.
“Do you think my mother is still alive?”
Ona looked stricken. “Mayhap she is. But if she
comes back will that mean you won’t be my sister anymore?”
“I don’t know,” Summer had answered honestly, tossing
back one thick black braid. “Can we be sisters even if we don’t live together?”
Ona nodded in relief but then another thought
struck her, “What if your mother is living in hell?”
Summer had never thought about that. An uneasy
fear began to crawl over her skin.
“What if the demon makes you come and live with
him and your mother?” Ona said--her small brown hands clutched in her lap.
Summer shook her head. “Mama won’t let that
happen.”
Ona sighed and the tension began to recede from
her small body. “You’re right. The circle won’t let anyone take you. But if
mama hadn’t come to your house that day, maybe the demon would have come back
for you.”
Coming in two days ...
