Chapter 1: Behind the Veil

Saturday, 21 June 1969, Greenwich, Connecticut

SEREPTE PLAYED the flute as she sat in her room at her godparents’ house. The door was ajar. Her godfather’s butler, William, requested it because her playing meant so much to Doc. Doc and Margaret, her godparents, were sooo old. And Doc was sick. Dying, she’d heard Margaret whisper.

She’d been sent to Connecticut as soon as school was out in May. It was supposed to be so her mother could prepare for her trip to England with the college theater troupe. At least that was the cover. Serepte knew that her mother, Rebecca Allen, had been commissioned with an important task for the Great Circle and even tonight, on Litha, they would be celebrating the completion. Whatever it was, Serepte’s initiation, promised for her thirteenth birthday, was now delayed a second time.

Strange things had been going on around the campus her mother taught at and Rebecca wanted Serepte out of the way someplace safe. If all went well, Serepte would join the circle at Lughnasad. It was still six weeks away.

To top it all off, she started her first period. Life is so unfair! Margaret tried to help but she was old. More than fifty. William, the sweetheart, went to a store and bought a box of every different kind of feminine protection that was on the shelf. But it was so embarrassing! Thankfully, he also brought a bottle of Midol and a hot water bottle. That and playing the flute were the only relief she got from her first ever case of menstrual cramps.

“Serepte,” Margaret said softly. “How are you doing, dear?”

“Better. I guess.”

“I remember how badly I hurt the first time I got my monthly visitor. It isn’t something you’ll soon forget.”

“I’m just being a baby.”

“You hurt, dear. There is nothing babyish about that.” The two sat on the edge of the bed, Margaret’s arm awkwardly around Serepte’s shoulders. “I hate to ask this...”

“What?”

“Would you come and play for Phillip? He wants to give you his blessing and...” Tears filled Margaret’s eyes. “It will ease his passing,” she choked. I’m going to see him die. Dear Goddess, no.

Serepte carried her flute into the room and was shocked at how the disease had ravaged the old man’s body. This dear man who was so important to her mother for the past fourteen years was in real pain.

Anger flooded Serepte’s senses. The disease had no right to take Doc! She raised her flute to her lips and a long piercing note issued from her breath. She felt flooded with power as if she were lifted up by dozens of voices, her mother’s in the lead, chanting hope and power into her mind and body. She continued to play, looking at Doc as she blew passionately across the lip plate. Before Doc could speak, Serepte felt the ripping attack of the disease at his internal organs. Playing faltered under the overwhelming flood of pain that leapt from his body to hers.

Panic gripped the girl. She could not escape from the pain and disease. She screamed but the pain would not relent. Color returned to Doc’s face as if he’d been resurrected. She managed one more long, soulful note from her flute before she crumpled to the floor.

Rebecca arrived three days later to find her daughter comatose in the hospital. Next to her, Doc, Margaret, and William held vigil. She’d left the college group Sunday evening, as soon as she received word from Margaret. Getting to London and getting a flight to New York had seemed to take forever. She had to reach her daughter and no immigration officer or customs official was going to stop her.

Doc, though weak from his extended time bedridden, showed no sign of the cancer that had riddled him. His doctor was ready to call it a miraculous remission. But no one was celebrating. They sat next to Serepte’s bed, each lost in the memories of the goddess of Metéora as told to them in stories years before.

Rebecca flew into action. She asked Margaret and William to leave the room, closing the door firmly behind them.

“I know you are weak, my friend, but I ask you, Brand, one time the Flamekeeper of Coven Carles, watch over me while I work and pull me back should my control fail,” she said.

“Sadb, it has been many years, but I will do my best to watch over you,” the old man said. Having addressed each other by their most secret coven names, Rebecca went immediately to work. She stripped off her clothes and laid out her tools surrounding Serepte.

“Guardians of the watchtowers, I summon you to guard and protect your servants as we work a mighty work. Lend us your strength, protect us with your power. Shield us and defend us from all that would harm. I summon you by the names of Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel. Place your protection upon this place.”

A tangible wall of light sprang up around the room and Rebecca immediately reached for her star stone pentacles. She had not used the artifact from the City of the Gods for healing in many years, but focused through it on her daughter.

Physiologically, the doctors said, there was no sign of injury or illness, but symptomatically she appeared near death as if she were eaten by cancer. Her fingers kept flexing as if still playing the flute. But no matter how she struggled to focus her talisman, Rebecca was unable to search out the illness that was eating her daughter. After an hour and a half, Rebecca finally let her wards drop and collapsed into Doc’s arms.

“I can’t reach her,” she sobbed.

Serepte could still hear her flute. It echoed a thousand times in her mind as she struggled to find the next note. And then she awoke. Only she was no longer in her body.

The sun was brighter, birds sang songs she’d never heard, and she saw colors more vivid than any colors she’d seen before. The note she’d been holding since dropping her flute in Doc’s room burst into a whole song and she moved her fingers as if the flute was still in her hands. She heard a symphony. Heart-achingly beautiful beings floated from place to place. She saw pain and suffering as ... beautiful creatures, caught in ... or birthed in the wrong world.