Chapter Eleven
From the start, this dream was clearer than the others. Or maybe it was Cassie that was clearer; more calm, more aware of what was happening. Saltwater slapped her face; she swallowed some. It was so cold she couldn't feel her hands or feet.
Going down. She was going to drown . . . but not die. With the last of her will she sent her spirit to the place prepared for it... to the skull on the island. Some of her power had been left in the skull already; now she herself would go to join it. And someday, when the time was right, when enough of her body diffused through the sea and washed up on the island, she would live again.
Good dreams, I wanted good dreams, Cassie thought frantically as the water closed over her head.
A shifting ...
Sunlight blinded her.
"You and Kate may go play in the garden," the kind voice said.
Yes. She'd made it. She was here.
The garden was in back. Cassie turned to the back door.
"Jacinth! What have you forgotten?"
Cassie paused, confused. She had no idea. The tall woman in Puritan dress was looking down at the floor. There, on the clean pine boards, lay the red leather Book of Shadows. Cassie remembered now; it had dropped off her lap when she stood up.
"I'm sorry, Mother." The word came so naturally to her lips. And her eyes had adjusted - but she couldn't figure out where the book was supposed to go. Somewhere special . . . where? Then she saw the loose brick in the fireplace.
"Much better," the tall woman said, as Cassie slid the book into the hole and plugged it up with the brick. "Always remember, Jacinth: we must never grow careless. Not even here in New Salem, where all our neighbors are our own kind. Now run along to the garden."
Kate was already going out the door. In the sunshine outside, Cassie noticed that Kate's hair was just the color of Diana's: not really gold, but a paler color like pure light. Kate's eyes were golden too, like sunshine. She was altogether a golden girl.
"Sky and sea, keep harm from me," she laughed, twirling, looking over the herb bushes to the blue expanse of the ocean beyond the cliff. There was no wall in this time - it hadn't been built yet. Then she darted forward to pick something.
"Just smell this lavender," she said, holding out a bunch to Cassie. "Isn't it sweet?"
But Cassie was hovering by the open door. Two other people had come into the kitchen; Kate's mother and father, she guessed. They were talking in low, urgent voices.
"... news just came. The ship went down," the man was saying.
There was an exclamation of joy and surprise from Jacinth's mother. "Then he is dead!"
The man shook his head, but Cassie didn't hear the next few words. She was afraid to be caught listening and sent away. ". . . the skull . . ." she heard, and "... can never tell. . . come back ..."
"And this jasmine," Kate was singing. "Isn't it wonderful?" Cassie wanted to tell her to shut up.
Then she heard words that raised the hair on her arms, even in the hot sunshine. ". . . hide them," Kate's mother was saying. "But where?"
That was it. Where, where? If this dream had any meaning, it was to tell Cassie this. Kate was trying to put an arm around her waist, to get her to smell the jasmine, but Cassie grabbed her hand to hold her still and strained to listen.
The adults were arguing softly: exclamations of worry and disagreement came to Cassie's ears. "Could we not ... ?" "No, not there . . ." "But where, then?" "Oh, mercy, my bread is burning!"
And then, soft laughter. "Of course! We should have thought of it earlier."
Where? Fending Kate off, Cassie twisted to try and look into the kitchen.
"Jacinth, what's wrong with you?" Kate cried. "You're not listening to a word I'm saying. Jacinth, look at me!"
Desperately, Cassie stared into the dark kitchen. It was too dark. The dream was fading.
No. She had to hang on to it. She had to see the end. Grandmother, help me, she thought. Help me see ...
"Jacinth!"
Darker and darker -
Long skirts rustling, moving out of the way. And just a glimpse ...
"The old hiding place," Jacinth's mother said in a satisfied voice. "Until they are needed again."
Darkness took Cassie.
She woke confused.
At first, she couldn't remember what she'd been looking for in the dream. She remembered the dream, though. Who was Jacinth? An ancestress? One of her great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, she supposed. And Kate?
Then she remembered her purpose.
The Master Tools. The members of the first coven had hidden them from Black John, because they'd known he might come back. Cassie had gone into the dream to find out where, and she had succeeded.
She'd wondered why Black John had come after her grandmother the night he was released. Not just for the Book of Shadows, she realized now; not just because he'd known her mother and grandmother before. He'd wanted something else from her grandmother. He'd wanted the Master Tools.
But her grandmother hadn't known where they were. Cassie felt sure that if she had, the old woman would have told Cassie. All her grandmother had known was that her own grandmother, Cassie's great-great-grandmother, had told her the fireplace was a good place to hide things. And now, because of the dream, Cassie knew that the loose brick had already been a hiding place in Jacinth's time.
But there had only been one loose brick, and nothing but the Book of Shadows had been stored behind it. Cassie knew that, and she knew that the original coven had been looking for a long-term solution, a place to put the Master Tools "until they were needed" by some future generation. Not just a loose brick, then. Cassie thought about the glimpse of the hearth she'd gotten between the women's skirts in the last second of her dream. The fireplace had been a different shape than it was in modern days.