Page 29 of Solstice

“I don’t know.” He stared into her eyes. “But if you have any more tricks up your sleeve, now would be a good time to pull them out. Can’t you conjure up or something? Isn’t that what Witches do?”

“I haven’t been much of a Witch for a year now. And when I tried, my casting and conjuring didn’t amount to much.” She drew a breath. “Then again, maybe I wasn’t working for anything I really needed. I thought I was at the time. But with hindsight...”

He frowned at her. “Dori?”

“Stop the boat.”

He didn’t even question her. He just eased back on the throttle. “I can’t stop us entirely. The wind...”

“This is fine.”

She sat there a moment, grounding into herself, into her body, into the waters beneath them, all the way to the bottom and then into the Earth. She opened her senses, becoming one with the wind that blew around her, even with the frigid, piercing snow that tried to scrap the skin right off her face. One. One. She swore her body temperature dropped. She opened her arms wider, rose slowly from her seat.

“I am the wind,” she whispered. And she felt it. The wind moving through her, within her, her body, her mind. And she was the wind. “I am calming. I’m slowing. I’m easing.”

It was working. She felt it.

“I am the snow,” she said. “And I am fading, slowing, stopping. I am the lake, and I am calming, calming, calming. I am the Goddess, and all things are within me. By my power, I still the wind, and the water, and the snow.”

She opened her eyes slowly, brought her hands down to her sides with deliberation and intensity. “So mote it be!”

For a moment, just a moment, nothing happened. But she stood there, still, holding up a hand to the others for silence, her eyes straining in the darkness. And then, so gradually it might have been all in her mind, the winds began to die down. And then a little more, and a little more.

“Holy cow,” one of the boys muttered.

The snow fell, soft puffs instead of a blinding blizzard and the water lay calm. And still she stood, scanning the horizon. But it was Jason who pointed and said, “Look! What is that?”

A single tiny flare of light caught her eye, and she didn’t know how she knew it or why she knew it, but she knew without any doubt that it was the light of that magic candle. Her special solstice candle.

In an instant, it changed. It became another light and another, until it seemed a thousand stars twinkled in the distance. But they were not stars. They were candles, and lanterns, and flashlights, and lighters and anything else the people of Crescent Cove could find that would give off light. They were guiding them back, showing them the way home.

Jason clutched her hand, pulled her until she sat down, and guided the boat in the direction of the lights. As soon as she sat, her concentration broke. The wind picked up and the snow whipped again. But it didn’t matter. They had found their way.

“At the darkest moment of the darkest night,” she whispered, “comes the very instant when the light is reborn.”

She felt Jason’s eyes on her, felt something in them, but couldn’t quite tell what it was. And then they were at the dock, and men came running out to grip the sides of the boat, tug it farther in and tie it off. Jason handed the still-unconscious Kevin off to one of them. Others had helped his two companions out. Then Jason helped Dori out, as well, and climbed onto the dock.

“You’re nearly frozen yourself,” he told her.

“I could use some dry clothes,” she admitted. She watched the boys being taken to the ambulances that waited on the shore, amid what had to be a hundred people, all holding lights and candles.

Someone started to sing “Silent Night.” Dori thought it fitting, whether one was celebrating the birth of the son, or the rebirth of the sun, or the reuniting of these mothers and their sons. One by one, others joined in the song. Dori’s eyes filled with hot tears that she imagined were probably freezing on her cheeks even as they fell. Jason’s arm came around her, and he helped her away from the dock, toward his car.

As they moved through the crowd, people touched them, patting their shoulders, their backs. Voices broke off in their singing to thank them.

They stopped near the ambulance where the men had taken Kevin. He was already inside, bundled in blankets, and his mother was about to get in with him, when she paused and met Dori’s eyes. She didn’t say anything, just stared at her for a long moment. Then a sob broke free as if ripped from her lungs, and she flung her arms around Dori’s neck. It was a brief, fierce embrace. The woman turned away just as quickly and climbed into the back of the ambulance. The doors closed, and the vehicle trundled away.

A hand fell on Don’s shoulder. The husband. Dori had already forgotten his name. He smiled at her. “He’s going to be all right,” he said. “Thanks to you. Both of you,” he added. He reached out to clasp her hand, then Jason’s. Then he hurried off to his vehicle, a pickup truck, and took off to follow the ambulance. The other boys were wrapped in blankets and the arms of their families.

Jason asked one of his men to lock up the rec center and another to let the state police know the boys had been found. Then he led Dori to his car and put her inside. “Your place or mine?” he asked.

She stared at him blankly.

“For dry clothes, some heat and maybe something hot to drink,” he clarified. “And then a talk I think is long overdue.”

“My place is closer. And I’m sure there’s something of Uncle Gerald’s you could put on. Not to mention, I have cocoa.”

“No power.”

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