“Witches all over the world have their traditions for celebrating Samhain, and Sedgwick Cove has its own special traditions that are unique to this place—kind of like the Litha Pageant.”
“I’d rather not think about the Litha Pageant,” I said.
“Right, yeah, sorry,” Zale said, color flaming in his cheeks. “Not the best example to bring up, I guess.” Zale himself had been the director of the pageant-gone-wrong and had been manipulated as thoroughly as I had been, so I imagined he’d like to forget about it, too.
“So what is the Shadow Tree, then?” I asked.
“As the new moon arrives—the same moon that will usher in Samhain, we gather at the Shadow Tree. A long time ago, the early witches to settle here discovered the tree in the woods. It is believed that Mary Vesper herself was the one to find it, and to declare that it was a special place.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“Mary Vesper was a spirit witch. She sensed a thinning of the veil there, and declared it an ideal place for communion with the dead, and consultation with spirit guides.”
“Yeah, so don’t feel bad if you don’t notice anything special about it,” Nova said over her shoulder with a wicked smirk. “What? Oh my goddess, I’m just kidding! Wren knows I’m just kidding, don’t you, Wren?” she added, as Eva glared at her on my behalf.
“Sure,” I said easily.
My relationship with Nova was… complicated. Our families had a long history of tension and competition, having been the first two covens to settle in Sedgwick Cove. In many ways, she resented me for being a Vesper and having the unstained legacy that came with the name. She resented her own family’s blotted past, and so she found satisfaction in the fact that I was such an outsider to the culture, the traditions, even to my own powers. Behind the little barbed comments and jabs of humor at my expense, I knew there was a lot of insecurity and even jealousy, though what the hell she had to be jealous about, I still couldn’t quite wrap my mind around. Nova was beautiful, rich, and a far more knowledgeable witch than I was. And yet, despite the resentment, we had come together to help each other. Nova had literally put her life on the line for me. Just a few months ago, we had faced down Veronica Meyers together, but she still acted like we were frenemies. As for me, I just tried to ignore the sarcasm and remember that, when it came down to it, Nova always seemed to have my back when it really counted.
“Anyway,” Zale said loudly, pouting a little that his story had been hijacked, “over the years, we’ve developed a tradition of sending the youngest generation of the covens to visit the Shadow Tree as a sort of invitation to our ancestors to come home for Samhain.”
My heart sped up a little. Why hadn’t Xiomara told me about this place? If it was meant to be a good place for spirit communication, why hadn’t we been there before? Would I be able to hear and see Asteria more clearly there? I sped up, falling into step right beside Zale.
“So it’s like… what, a big group seance?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Not exactly. Come on, we’ll show you.”
I officially gave up on further questions as we trudged into the tree line and down a well-worn dirt path. The sound of the ocean became a muted rumble in the distance. The scant light from the sky was quenched by the canopy of leaves still clinging on, their fall colors muted in the dark. In another week, those leaves would blanket the ground instead, and the night sky would be able to peek into corners of the forest that had been hidden since the spring. Someone had set up lanterns along the path—they dangled from tree branches and blinked like fireflies from behind curtains of foliage. I could hear voices in the woods as well—laughing young voices full of excitement, and the excitement began to infect me, too. The path curved around several dense copses of fir trees and up an incline, where it emptied us out into a clearing, at the center of which stood a single, enormous tree.
The rest of the forest seemed to have pulled back in deference to the dominance of the Shadow Tree. It twisted up from the ground like the gnarled form of an old but powerful woman. The trunk was covered in misshapen knots and bulges, and the branches snaked around each other, bending improbably into the oddest shapes. It looked like something out of a fairytale, I thought, and then remembered my life had recently become stranger than fiction. The leaves on the tree were an otherworldly orange color that seemed impervious to the darkness around it, and not a single one had dropped to the ground.
“Some say it’s the Crone, made manifest,” Eva whispered to me, and for once, I didn’t have to ask for further explanation. One of the very first lessons I’d had in the kitchen with Rhi, she had explained to me the symbolism of the Crone. She was one of three forms, the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, the three embodiments of the stages of a woman’s life cycle, and the representations of the three stages of a witch’s power. The Crone was the embodiment of the wise elder, a figure of deep knowledge and understanding that could only be attained by weathering the many storms of life, and embodying the lessons learned. She was a figure often overlooked or underestimated, when she ought to be listened to and revered. She was also the most deeply connected to ancestors who had gone before her.
On either side of me, Nova, Zale, and Eva had all stopped to stare in awe at the Shadow Tree, too. There was something more about it that drew the eye, apart from the shape of it. There was a magnetism there, a luring power, like it was whispering to us, calling us forward, and we were unable to ignore that call.
I was so entranced by the tree that I didn’t immediately notice the other people who were appearing on all sides. Like moths to a flame, people were drifting out from the tree line in twos and threes toward the Shadow Tree. As I finally dragged my eyes from the tree and focused in on the other people in the clearing, I realized that all of these people were young like me. In fact, it seemed like every teenager in Sedgwick Cove was arriving en masse. They organically began to form a loose circle around the tree, and we walked forward to fill in one of the gaps.
Now that we were closer to the tree, I could see that there was a strange glinting light here and there among the branches. By squinting, I made out dozens of round objects hanging from the branches. For one confusing moment, I thought they were some kind of magic fruit I’d never seen before—they were curved and cast in shades of yellow and orange. Then I realized they were?—
“Glass?” I muttered. “Are those made of glass?”
It was Nova who answered. “Lanterns.”
“But… they’re not lit,” I pointed out.
“Not yet.”
Slowly the circle filled in, until every gap disappeared naturally. It was like watching actors take their places for a play—everyone drifted perfectly into a pre-arranged spot, like they’d practiced it a hundred times before—which, I realized, everyone here had probably done, except for me. As the circle completed, an energy coursed through it like a current, making me shudder with a combination of anxiety and excitement. At the same time, the tree itself shuddered, waving its branches as though caught in a non-existent breeze. The lanterns made a gentle tinkling sound in the branches, like wind chimes. It was a warm, friendly sound, almost like an invitation.
The Shadow Tree was welcoming us.
“Now what happens?” I whispered, leaning into Eva. The clearing, already quiet, had now settled into a hushed silence.
“Just watch,” she muttered back.
At first, I thought a breeze was whispering around us, but the air was still. No, it was voices, I realized—the faint muttering of every voice around the edges of the clearing, speaking in unison in a ghost of a chant, the words of which I couldn’t understand at first. I turned my head to either side, to see that Nova, Zale, and Eva were all chanting along, lips barely moving, the words well-practiced and flowing like music. I watched and listened until, bit by bit, I was able to make sense of it. Before I knew what was happening, I had joined in, my voice disappearing into the shared susurration of the incantation.
“Crone, we call thy wisdom deep, shine your light to lead them home.”
