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How is this possible?
I glance around the circle, but no one else seems to notice. Or, if they do, they don’t react.
Hell, maybe it’s normal for a witch to make one last appearance during these ceremonies. I wouldn’t know. All of this is new to me.
In sync, the witches of the circle raise their faces to the ceiling, their entwined hands rising as if pointing the way for her spirit, sending her off on her next journey.
My gaze remains locked on the ghostly vision before me, unable to do anything but stare. Finally, she turns in my direction, and we lock eyes for a moment.
There is an understanding there.
She says something, but I can’t hear over the chanting that fills the small space. She mouths my name.
I open my mouth to call to her, but as I do, the flames of the candles flare up as if someone is dousing them in gasoline. The chanting reaches a crescendo and then everything comes to an abrupt stop, the last echoes bouncing off the stone walls and tapering into an empty silence.
The High Priestess says a few more words in Latin, but I barely register any of it, my focus still on my grandmother. As I watch, the image grows more and more transparent, and then she’s gone, leaving me with only the faint scent of lemon balm that clings to me like a hug.
I don’t want to let it go. Selfishly, I want to keep a piece of her with me on the earthly plane.
“Are you coming, Josie?” Elara asks.
Glancing around, I realize everyone else is leaving the mausoleum, ready to go on with the rest of their day. Adelaide told me the ancestor ceremony was simple, but it’s over so quickly I’m caught unprepared.
My grandmother lived a long and colorful life… how can it be summed up in ten minutes?
Seemingly unaware of my moral turmoil, Elara gathers her basket of flowers and grins up at me. “I’ll show you the cafe that brews the best espresso in all the ten parishes.”
The promise of caffeine is tempting, but I can’t bring myself to leave. “If it’s all right, I’d like to stay with Grand-Mère for a while longer.”
She offers me a sympathetic smile, her thick blonde curls bouncing with the movement. “Maybe the next time you’re in town, then.”
“I’d like that,” I say, knowing that once the wheels of my return flight lift off the New Orleans tarmac, I won’t be coming back.
It’s too bad, too. It would’ve been nice to have a friend. Who knows, maybe we can have a long-distance friendship.
I stand beneath the mausoleum entrance and watch Elara leave with the rest of the coven, her ferret familiar bounding after her. What would my life look like had I grown up here with my Sun Witch sisters? It isn’t the first time I’ve wondered, but it is the first time I’ve felt a sense of loss, of what could have been.
I follow them out of the mausoleum and meander between the headstones. My mind is filled with everything and nothing, memories and moments we never had. I let my mind wander and go blank, walking on autopilot through the dirt path worn into the grass.
Is it strange that I feel more at home in this cemetery than back in Leeds? It’s like being here charges my very soul and boosts my connection to Gaia.
Grand-Mère taught me the importance of ancestral land, but feeling it is something that could never be taught.
Maybe my foremothers are here, drawn to me through our familial connection and watching over me while I’m in New Orleans. And maybe they’ve now been joined by the most recent of the Dumont ancestral protectors.
“Grand-Mère?” I ask softly, pausing in front of a marble monument with fresh flowers at its base. “Are you there?”
I can’t get the image of her ghostly figure out of my mind. Maybe her spirit is angry that I’m back here.
“You’re not allowed to be pissed about this,” I say out loud, spinning in a slow circle and scanning the rows of headstones as if she might jump out from behind one of them. “Bringing you home was the right thing to do, and we both know it. What else was I supposed to do?”
The question hangs in the air and falls flat.
“What am I supposed to do now? What am I supposed to do without you?”
I pause, but the only response is the shrill call of a huge raven perched on the roof of the mausoleum. Whatever advice it’s giving me is lost in translation. It spreads its wings and caws at me once more before taking flight. Shading my eyes from the blazing sun, I watch it soar through the air and wonder what it must feel like to be a bird and have the entire world at your fingertips–er, wingtips?
If reincarnation exists, I hope to return as a bird. But not a flightless bird like a penguin or an emu, I note, just in case Gaia is listening.
