"Okay, green," Diana said, retrieving the bag.
"Me," said Melanie, and took the dark green candle. She was sitting right beside Cassie and Cassie leaned in to smell the wax when Melanie did. It was scented with something woodsy: pine, Cassie decided. Like a Christmas tree.
"Wisdom," said Melanie, her cool gray eyes steady as she lit the wick. She breathed in the scent for a moment, then placed the green candle on the road. The four burning candles formed a semicircle.
"Now blue," said Diana. Cassie felt a jolt of nervousness and excitement. Blue was her favorite color, and she wanted it, but she wasn't quite sure she ought to speak out. Still, Diana and Laurel weren't saying anything, and she remembered that Laurel liked amethysts and often wore purple. Cassie cleared her throat.
"I'll take it," she said, and reached for the pale blue candle Diana offered. She was very pleased to have it, to represent blue in the coven's rainbow - but she hadn't thought of anything to say. What's blue like? she asked herself, sniffing at the candle to gain time. What virtue do girls have that I want to celebrate?
She couldn't quite identify the scent, which was sweet but sharp. "It's bayberry," Melanie told her, as Cassie kept sniffing. "A smell with a history. The colonists all used to make bayberry candles."
"Oh." Maybe that was why it smelled familiar. Maybe her grandmother had burned bayberry candles - her grandmother had done a lot of old-fashioned things. Cassie knew what virtue she wanted to celebrate now.
"Inspiration," she said. "That's imagination - or like the flash of an idea, you know. When my grandmother was helping make my muse outfit for Halloween, she said that's what the muses were for: They gave people inspiration, the ability to think of new things, to have brilliant ideas. And they were female, the muses."
Cassie hadn't meant to make a speech, and she looked down, embarrassed. I didn't get the matches, she realized - and then she had an inspiration. Cupping her hand around the candlewick as Faye had, she concentrated hard, thinking of fire, bright leaping fire - then she pushed with her mind, the way she had with the doberman and with Sean. She felt the power leave her like a blast of heat and focus on the wick and suddenly a flame shot up, so high that she had to jerk her hand away to keep from getting burned.
"An idea - just like that," she said, a little shaken, and she dripped wax on the road to stick the blue candle in. The other girls were looking at her wide-eyed, except Faye, whose eyes were narrow and hooded.
Deborah grinned. "I guess we've got more than one fire-handler around here," she said. Faye looked even less amused.
"Ah - purple," Diana said, giving herself a little shake and taking a lavender candle from the bag.
"That's me. How did you do that, Cassie? All right; I'm going on with the ceremony. I just wanted to know," Laurel said. She looked at her candle. "I don't know how to get mine into one word," she said. "I wanted to do environmental awareness - sort of like, connectedness to all things. We're a part of the earth and we should care about all the other things that live here with us."
"What about 'compassion'?" Melanie said quietly. "That would cover it, I think."
"That's good; compassion." Laurel lit the purple candle.
"What's it smell like?" Suzan whispered as Laurel stuck the candle in the road between Cassie's blue candle and Faye's red one, completing the rainbow circle.
"It's sweet and floral; I think it's supposed to be hyacinth," Laurel whispered back.
"Wait," Cassie said. "If it goes there, what about Diana? Don't you get a candle, Diana?" She felt jealous on Diana's behalf, she wanted the blond girl to have a turn too.
"Yes: white goes in the middle, and I'm the only one left to do it." And it's perfect, Cassie thought, watching Diana take out the vanilla-scented white candle and hold it up. Diana represented white as surely as Faye did red.
It showed in the virtue Diana named, too. "Purity," she said simply, lighting the white candle with a match and reaching into the circle of candles to place it in the center. Anybody else would have sounded ridiculous saying it, but Diana looked like the embodiment of purity sitting there, her beautiful face lit by the candles, her silky straight hair of that impossible color falling down her back. Her expression was serious and unself-conscious. When Diana said purity she meant purity, and not even Faye dared to snicker.
The circle of candles was pretty; seven tongues of flame leaping and dancing in the night air; seven scents mingling into one delicious composite fragrance. Eddies in the breeze seemed to bring the smell of cinnamon to Cassie, then a whiff of pine, then the sharpness of lemon.
"Passion, beauty, courage, wisdom, inspiration, compassion, and purity," Laurel ticked off, pointing to the candles that represented each.
"Let us all . . ." Diana prompted, nudging Faye.
"Let us all have all of them," Faye said. "Earth, Water, Fire, Air, witness. Not that we don't have them already," she added, regarding the glowing circle with a satisfied smile. Laurel's eyes twinkled at Cassie from across the flames and Cassie let her own eyes twinkle back.
"Well, anyway, we have all of them if you count all of us," Deborah said, and grinned. Diana smiled her gentle smile. For a moment, all the girls were smiling at each other over the candles, and Cassie felt as if they were a part of . something bigger. Each of them contributed something important, and together they were more than just the sum of the parts.
"Now we're supposed to let them burn all night," Melanie said, nodding at the candles.