:Dedication:
None
:First Sentence:
I had been to Sharon Goodfine's house once before, with Bree Warren, back when Bree and I were best friends.
:Last Sentence:
Every version I could think of started with "it's because I'm a witch."
:Journals:
Chapter 4, Selene Belltower's Journal
"My skin is shriveled, and my hair is sticky and stiff with salt. I soaked in the purifying bath for two hours, with handfuls of sea salt and surrounded by crystals and sage candles. But though I can dispell the negative energy from my body, I can't erase the images from my mind.
Last night I saw my first taibhs, and when I think of it, I start shaking. Everys Catspaq child hears of them, of course, and we're told scray stories about evil taibhs that steal the souls of Wiccan children who don't listen to the parents and teachers. I never thought they really existed. I guess I thought they were just holdovers from the Dark Ages, along with witches riding brooms, black cats, warts on noses: nothing to do with us today, really.
But Turneval taught me differently last night. I had dressed so carefully for the rite, wanting to outwitch, outbeauty, outpower every other woman there. They had promised me something special, something I deserved after my months of training and apprenticeship. Something I needed to go through before I could join Turneval as a full member.
Now, thinking back, I'm ahamed of how naive I was. I strode in, secure in my beauty, my strength and ruthlessness, only to find by the ned of the evening I was wear, untaught, and unworthy of Turneval's offering.
What happened wasn't my fault. I was just a witness. The ones leading the rite made mistakes in their limitation, in the writing of the spells, the circles of protection - it was the first time Timothy Cornell had called a taibhs, and he called it badly. And it killed him.
A taibhs! I still can't belive it. It was a being and not a being, a spirit and not a spirit: a dark gathering of power and hunger with a human face and hands and the appetite of a demon. I was standing there in the circle, all eager anticipation, and suddenly the room went cold, icy, like the North wind had joined us. Shrivering, I looked around and saw the others had their heads bowed, their eyes closed. Then I saw it, taking form in the corner. It was like a miniature tornado, vapor and smoke boiling and coiling in on itself, becoming more solid. It wasn't supposed to do anything: we were just calling it for practice. But Timothy had done it wrong, and then thing turned on him, broke through our circles of protection, and there was nothing any of us could do.
Death by a taibhs is horrible to watch and sickening to remember. I just want to blank it all out: Tim's screams, the wrenching of this soul from his body. I'm shaking now, just thinking of it. That idiot! He wasn't worthy to weild the power he was offered.
For the first time I understand why my parents, limited and dull as they were, chose to work the gentle kind of magick they did. They couldn't have controlled the dark forces any more than a child can hold back a flood by stuffing a rag in a dike.
Now I'm curled up on my bed, my wet hair flowing down my back like rain, and wondering which I will choose: the safe, gentle, boring way of my parents or the way of Turneval, with it's power and evil twined together like a cord. Which path holds more terror for me?
