Spellbound

complete and absolute. No breeze stirred, no bird sang. Frustrated, he shoved the hair out of his eyes, his breath becoming labored in the sudden stifling heat. His throat was parchment-dry, and thinking of the cold, clear water of the brook, he backtracked.
    The sun burned like a furnace through the sheltering leaves now. It surprised him that they didn’t singe and curl under the onslaught. Desperate for relief, he pulled off the sweater, laid it on the ground beside him as he knelt by the brook.
    He reached down to cup water in his hand. And pulled back a cup of coffee.
    “Do you good to get away for a few days, change of scene.”
    “What?” He stared down at the mug in his hand, then looked up into his mother’s concerned face.
    “Honey, are you all right? You’ve gone pale. Come sit down.”
    “I…Mom?”
    “Here, now, he needs some water, not caffeine.” Cal saw his father set down his fishing flies and rise quickly. Water ran out of the kitchen faucet into a glass. “Too much caffeine, if you ask me. Too many late nights in the darkroom. You’re wearing yourself out, Cal.”
    He sipped water, tasted it. Shuddered. “I—I had a dream.”
    “That’s all right.” Sylvia rubbed his shoulders. “Every-body has dreams. Don’t worry. Don’t think about them. We don’t want you to think about them.”
    “No—I thought it was, it wasn’t…” Wasn’t like before? he thought. It was more than before. “I went to Ireland.” He took a deep breath, tried to clear his hazy brain. Desperately, he wanted to turn, rest his head against his mother’s breast like a child. “Did I go to Ireland?”
    “You haven’t been out of New York in the last two months, slaving to get that exhibition ready.” His father’s brow creased. Cal saw the worry in his eyes, that old baffled look of concern. “You need a rest, boy.”
    “I’m not going crazy.”
    “Of course you’re not.” Sylvia murmured it, but Cal caught the faint uncertainty in her voice. “You’re just imagining things.”
    “No, it’s too real.” He took his mother’s hand, gripped it hard. He needed her to believe him, to trust him. “There’s a woman. Bryna.”
    “You’ve got a new girl and didn’t tell us.” Sylvia clucked her tongue. “That’s what this is about?”
    Was that relief in her voice, Cal wondered, or doubt?“Bryna—that’s an odd name, isn’t it, John? Pretty, though, and old-fashioned.”
    “She’s a witch.”
    John chuckled heartily. “They all are, son. Each and every one.” John picked up one of his fishing lures. The black fly fluttered in his fingers, its wings desperate for freedom. “Don’t you worry now.”
    “I—I need to get back.”
    “You need to sleep,” John said, toying with the fly. “Sleep and don’t give her a thought. One woman’s the same as another. She’s only trying to trap you. Remember?”
    “No.” The fly, alive in his father’s fingers. No, no, not his father’s hand. Too narrow, too long. His father had workingman’s hands, calloused, honest. “No,” Cal said again, and as he scraped back his chair, he saw cold fury light his father’s eyes.
    “Sit down.”
    “The hell with you.”
    “Calin! Don’t you speak to your father in that tone.”
    His mother’s voice was a shriek—a hawk’s call to prey—cutting through his head. “You’re not real.” He was suddenly calm, deadly calm. “I reject you.”
    He was running down a narrow road where the hedgerows towered and pressed close. He was breathless, his heart hammering. His eyes were focused on the ruined walls of the castle high on the cliff—and too far away.
    “Bryna.”
    “She waits for you.” The woman with the straw hat over her red hair looked up from her weeding and smiled sadly. “She always has, and always will.”
    His side burned from cramping muscles. Gasping for air, Cal pressed a hand against the pain. “Who are you?”
    “She has a mother who loves her, a father who fears for her. Do you think that those who hold magic need family less than you? Have hearts less fragile? Needs less great?”
    With a weary sigh, she rose, walked toward him and stepped into the break in the hedge. Her eyes were green, he saw, and filled with worry, but the mouth with its serious smile was Bryna’s.
    “You question what she is—and what she is bars you from giving your heart freely. Knowing this, and loving you, she has sent you away from danger and faces the night alone.”
    “Sent me