This was so effingfrustrating. If I clenched my jaws any tighter, my face would snap.
My grandmother sat across from me, serenity emanating from her like perfume, a scent she dabbed behind her ears in the morning that carried her smoothly through her day.
Well, I had forgotten to dab on my freaking serenity this morning, and now I was holding this piece of copper in my left fist, my fingernails making angry half-moons in my palm. Another minute of this and I would throw the copper across the room, sweep the candle over with my hand, and just go.
But I wanted this so bad.
So bad I could taste it. And now, looking into my grandmothers eyes, calm and blue over the candles flame, I felt like she was reading every thought that flitted through my brain. And that she was amused.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, all the way down to my belly ring. Then I released it slowly, willing it to take tension, doubt, ignorance, impatience with it.
Cuivre, orientez ma force. Copper, direct my power, I thought. Actually, not even thought-lighter than that.
Expressing the idea so lightly that it wasn't even a thought or words. Just pure feeling, as slight as a ribbon of smoke, weaving into the power of Bonne Magie.
Montrez-moi, I breathed. Show me.
You have to walk before you can run. You have to crawl before you can walk,
Montrez-moi.
Quartz crystals and rough chunks of emerald surrounded me and my grandmother in twelve points, A white candle burned on the ground between us. My butt had gone numb, like, yesterday. Breathe,
Montrez-moi
It wasn't working, it wasn't working, je nai pas de la force, rim du tout. I opened my eyes, ready to scream.
And saw a huge cypress tree before me.
No grandmother. An enormous cypress tree almost blocked out the sky, the heavy gray clouds, I looked down: I still held the copper, hot now from my hand, I was in woods somewhere-I didn't recognize where. Une cypriere. A woodsy swamp-cypress knees pushing up through still, brown-green water. But I was standing on land, something solid, moss-covered.
The clouds grew darker, roiling with an internal storm. Leaves whipped past me, landed on the water, brushed my face. I heard thunder, a deep rumbling that fluttered in my chest and filled my ears. Fat raindrops spattered the ground, ran down my cheeks like tears. Then an enormous cracki shook me where I stood, and a simultaneous stroke of lightning blinded me. Almost instantly, I heard a shuddering, splintering sound, like a wooden boat grinding against rocks. I blinked, trying to look through brilliant red-and-orange afterimages in my eyes. Right in front of me, the huge cypress tree was split in two, its halves bending precariously outward, already cracking, pulled down by their weight.
At the base, between two thick roots that were slowly being tugged from the earth, I saw a sudden upsurging of-what? I squinted. Was it water? Oil? It was dark like oil, thick-but the next lightning flash revealed the opaque dark red of blood. The rivulet of blood also split into two and ran across the ground, seeping slowly into the sodden moss, the red startling against the greenish gray. I looked down and saw the blood swelling, running faster, gushing heavily from between the tree roots. My feetl My feet were being splashed with blood, my shins flecked with it. I lost it then, covered my mouth and screamed into my tight palm, trying to move but finding myself more firmly rooted than the tree itself.
"Clio! Clio!"
A cool hand took my chin in a no-nonsense grip. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear rain out of my eyes. My grandmother was holding my chin in one hand and had her other under my elbow.
"Stand up, child," Nan instructed calmly. The candle between us had been knocked over, its wax running on the wooden floor. My knees felt wobbly and I was gulp' ing air, looking around wildly, orienting myself.
" Nan," I gasped, swallowing air like a fish. "' Nan, oh, deesse, that sucked."
"Tell me what you saw," she said, leading me out of the workroom and into our somewhat shabby kitchen.
I didn't want to talk about it, as if the words would recall the vision, putting me back into it, "I saw a tree" I said reluctantly, "A cypress, I was in a swamp kind of place. There was a storm, and then-the tree got hit by lightning. It got split in two. And then-blood gushed out of its roots."
"Blood?" Her gaze was sharp.
I nodded, feeling shivery and kind of sick, "Blood, a river of blood. And it split in two and started running over my feet, and then I yelled, Yuck," I trembled and couldn't help looking at my bare feet. Not bloody. Tan feet, purple painted toenails. Fine,
'A tree split by lightning," my grandmother mused, pouring hot water into a pot. The steamy, wet smell of herbs filled the room, and my shivering eased, "A river of blood from its roots. And the river split in two."
"Yeah" I said, holding my mug in my cold hands, inhaling the steam, "That pretty much sums it up, Man," I shook my head and sipped. "What?" I said, noticing that my grandmother was watching me.
"Its interesting," she said in that way that meant there were a thousand other words inside her that weren't coming out, "Interesting vision. Looks like copper's good for you. Well work on it again tomorrow."
"Not if I see you first." I muttered into my mug.