"Are you sure this is the right herb? It looks like rosemary to me."

Lorna sighed. "Well if you'd take off the wrong glasses and put on the right ones, or better yet stick your nose in and take a good whiff, you'd be able to tell the difference."

Ainsley curled her besocked feet under her and smiled behind her cocoa mug. They were preparing to do a scry for the coming year, to make their plans. They'd all gotten up with the sun and started gathering ingredients and cleaning house to make a fresh start and to remind themselves that even getting a fresh start was work. And of course because they were them, they couldn't even get through that without offering sarcastic remarks in each others' direction. She'd vacated the kitchen in favor of the smaller sunroom towards the front of the house because of the bickering, where she'd be out of the line of fire of flailing cutlery but still could hear through the open archway.

"I'm still not sure this isn't rosemary," Ofelia grumbled, but she did change her glasses. "If this comes out tasting of cilantro..."

That went back further than Ainsley had been a part of the coven, but she'd heard the infamous story of the rough-dried cilantro mistaken for parsley and how the entire batch of potato salad had had to be thrown out. She set her cocoa down on a windowsill and went into the kitchen proper. "Then let me handle the lunch, and you can handle making sure we have enough places for them to sit and things to put their food on. They'll be here in a couple of hours, I'm not sure that's enough time to count all the forks."

Ofelia squinted at her young no-longer-apprentice. "Are you sassing me?"

"Of course she's sassing you, you taught her to sass back," Lorna took the cutting board out from under Ofelia's knife and passed it to their youngest sister. "Thank you. She refuses to admit she's going blind and should leave the fine work to others if she's not going to wear her glasses."

"I am not--" Ofelia said automatically, then squinted at the both of them and stomped off to the china hutch.

Ainsley glanced after her before picking up the knife, which wasn't even warm at the handle. She'd been waiting for her to pick up the task and grumping about it to defend herself in her own mind, and also as a test for Ainsley. Someday they would have a day without a test, but she didn't think that day would come soon.

It wasn't going to be a traditional New Year's as she'd known it so far. For one thing it was at the wrong time of year, everything was pumpkin spice and warm golds and browns instead of covered in a thin layer of murderous ice. The kind that snuck up out of nowhere and covered the streets before salt could be laid down. And she'd never had a family gathering, as they called it, that was this big before. She'd expected ten more women coming over; that was traditional, but the current headcount was more like eight women, two men, six small children, three teenagers. That had touched base and let them know they were coming. Lorna had said they should make for twenty five and have some of the bigger families bring one or two dishes as well.

The kitchen was boiling hot by the time they were ready to set everything on the table. There were two serving platters for each dish, an extra for the kids' table for anything they thought the youngest ones would eat. Condiments had three or more dishes, there were four different salt and pepper shakers. All of them woodland creatures.

"Is this some kind of hidden message about how we should get the field mice and chipmunks to sort our stones from our grain?" Ainsley called as she set them out.

She heard Ofelia snicker behind her. Lorna called around from the kitchen where she was starting some of the washing up. "Hidden message nothing, she thought they were cute."

Ainsley went into the linens room that separated the sunroom from the kitchen, and which she stubbornly maintained was too big to be a closet or an alcove and stared at Ofelia, who calmly folded up napkins into neat restaurant triangles. "... No, I don't know why I bothered," she said after a minute of no answer, and went back to finish setting the table. Cars started to pull up as she was setting out Ofelia's napkins.

"Hello, Alice!" Lorna greeted everyone at the door, introducing them to Ainsley on the way in. "Sal, you are looking amazing. Fran..."

"I don't want to hear it, Lorna. I have blisters on my feet and cuts on my arms because someone decided it was the perfect weather to go hiking." She glared over her shoulder at the young man who followed. "I want a chair, and I want a stiff drink, and I want food. In that order."

Her son sighed and caught her coat as she tossed it behind her, hanging it up where Ainsley indicated with waving and pointing. "Yes, she's always like that."

So much noise as everyone filed in, so many coats to hang on the rack that had been rolled into the linens room to keep it out of the way in case someone wanted some quiet and a smaller space. There wasn't enough room for everyone to move around as much as they wanted all at the same time, so several people took up positions on the couch or in the sunroom as the rest went around shepherding small children to the kids' table, hanging up coats and helping pick up in the kitchen while the last stragglers arrived.

One of those stragglers was Mama.

Dame Iris MacAllister was her name, but Ainsley had only ever heard them call her Mama. Ofelia gave her the woman's name that morning when she explained who would be coming over and how it was their turn. She was stooped and small, had an Irish name but an Indian face Ainsley recognized from one of the firm's clients, and she wore the traditional Deep South Sunday best. Ofelia thought she'd married Irish but was born in Goa. She wore a dress draped down to her ankles in solids and a generic kind of paisley, huge glasses, and a long, steely braid. Ainsley didn't know if she could call the woman Mama like the rest of them. She wondered if that would make her impolite or new.

They sat her at the head of the table and everyone started to take their seats at once, although it took some time to get all the limbs under the length of table and scoot the chairs back up.

"The wheel turns."

Even with her experiences with Lorna and in a Catholic church that might have been too much for Ainsley, except she heard someone muttering under their breath. "Sometimes right over your foot."

Dame Iris -- Mama -- ignored whoever had just got kicked under the table. "We welcome the new and we say goodbye, with some regret or relief, to the old."

Dinner started out feeling like ritual and quickly relaxed into discussing the year past, what everyone had done, how they had all changed. Ainsley told the story of how she had come to Ofelia and Lorna twice over, once to each side of the table, and heard about Frances' feet more times than she wanted to while eating. Her son Jordan made up for it with being charming and sweet and distracting her by starting an argument, or leading her into argument with Ofelia. Sara was her own age, and they talked about balancing career and life, discovering who they were amidst the messages that they should be ambitious women who knew what they wanted and how to get it.

"And I don't even know what I want!" Sara flung her hands out, almost hitting her girlfriend in the face. "Never mind figuring out how to get it."

Nearly an hour later, the flatware had stopped clanking against the plates, the conversation had died down as everyone tried not to loosen their belts, and they looked at each other in silent curiosity made slightly uncomfortable by the degree of overeating that had gone on.

"All right. Stand up, Ainsley, let's have a look at you."

Startled, she looked over at Lorna and Ofelia for guidance. They gestured for her to go up to Dame Iris at the head of the table, the great mother of their coven. But she had no idea what was going to happen.

The entire table was silent as she walked up to the head. Both tables, she hadn't heard anything coming from the kids' table in a while. Unless someone had taken them off to another part of the house. Ainsley had had her back to that part of the dining room, and she hoped that was why it felt as though everyone was holding their breath to see what the great mother had to say about their newest baby sister.

Up close, Dame Iris was less intimidating. She had giant coke-bottle glasses, which she adjusted on her nose for several seconds and squinted through them after that. Ainsley wasn't sure after all that that she could see her, so she sat down on the floor in front of her and touched her hand. "Dame Ir-- " She heard Ofelia suck in a disapproving breath across the room. "Mother. Did you enjoy the dinner?"

Dame Iris smiled, and several tense breaths were let out down the table. "I did. Dear girl, thank you for asking. And thank you for such a lovely spread. I think I detected your hand in the roast and the vegetable scramble?"

"That was me, yes. Lorna set it up and she did all the baking, but I did the rest of the dishes." Ainsley relaxed, talking about what she'd done with the food and how she cooked for herself at home. And with only a few questions worth of prompting to talk about other aspects of her life, she found herself discussing the ad agency, her work, her uncertainties and the feelings of isolation even though she got along well with her co-workers and had time to go out once or twice a week to make new friends. But none of the clubs advertised in the local venues appealed to her, no book club or knitting club, none of the events at the library, very few of the concerts. She felt lonely and adrift.

"Well, you've done quite a lot in your last year," Dame Iris said, patting her hand. "You can't expect to have all your bits settle down at once. Give it some time. Give yourself a bit of room to breathe, and you'll see where your interests lie."

Ainsley bit back asking for a timeframe on that. Ad agency Ainsley would ask that question, but witch Ainsley knew that things happened when it was time for them to happen. Openings presented themselves and you could walk through them at that time but not before.

"You're not happy in your job, but that's all right. There'll be room for you to find another after you've built up your layers of security around you, like a hermit crab sticking things to its shell. And you do seem to like the design parts of your job."

She smiled shyly. "I like to draw, I like to make things pretty."

"Of course you do. You might try carrying around a sketchbook with you and drawing some of those ideas you have in that pretty head of yours. It might jog something loose about the things you want out of your future."

She hadn't thought of that. But she'd also been so busy. But what Dame Iris was suggesting, she thought, was to take a quiet moment here and there and do her own designs, and to keep the sketchbook handy in case. "I can do that, mother." She pressed her lips together to avoid calling her Mom, which would have had a touch of sarcasm in it. Her own Mom was the only mom for her, Dame Iris could be mother.

"Good." She looked up and over Ainsley's shoulder. "Sara. Why don't you come here and tell me what you and your lovely wife have been up to."

Ainsley could breathe again when she got back to her seat, sinking into it and letting out so much tension she hadn't noticed she'd been holding. Including a couple rather embarrassing gas bubbles. "Scuse."

Lorna shook her head and belched too. "She's always like that. You get used to it, but it takes several years. Watch the others, that will help."

Ainsley pushed her plate away and leaned her forearms on the table to watch Dame Iris take sister after sister, brother and child, and talk to them. She asked questions and listened to the answers, nodding and humming before giving her considered reply. Dame Iris paid attention and told them in some cases what they needed to hear, and in other cases things that would help them in the year to come, always adjusting her thick lenses like clearing a browser cache. Everyone got their turn, even the children, who did not get the same kind of intensive life advice she gave the adults, but something about a surprise in their future and broad-strokes instruction that would gain more nuance as they grew up.

By the time she got to the children, several of the adults had gotten up to clear the plates. Ainsley tried to join them and was pushed back into her seat by a friendly and firm hand. "No, you made the feast, it's our task to clean up," said one of the men, a six foot four giant with a bass voice to match who she did not intend to argue with on her first New Year's feast.

"And we brought dessert!" Jordan gleefully ducked into the linens room and brought out two cake carriers, deposited them in the center of the now-cleared tables and went back for two more.

Despite everyone having protested that they were too full, they'd eaten too much, everyone reached for the stack of dessert plates. One after the other, with some wrist-slapping and a lot of pointing and gesticulating, they got the desserts portioned out, cakes and cupcakes and fruit tarts, something for everyone. Jordan did the cutting and his mother did the distributing of the smaller goods when folks requested them with no complaining whatsoever, which surprised Ainsley a little. Then again she'd only known Fran for a couple of hours; they might not have been the best hours of Fran's life.

Someone started to sing. Someone else joined in, she could have put names to faces but not to voices when she didn't see the singers, and it started in the kitchen. No one had brought instruments and not everyone was the best of singers, but the enthusiasm was catching. In this company singing went with a thin layer of buttered crumbs on your lips and fingers sticky from fruit tarts. And it cleared the mind after the heaviness of their year's predictions, like a glass of water between courses.

"I didn't expect to be like this," she told Ofelia later. "I don't know what I expected, but nothing like this."

"Well, we do it every year, so you'll have plenty of time to adjust your expectations," she said waspishly, nursing a couple of papercuts that had gotten covered in lemon curd. Then she looked over at Ainsley and grinned. "But you're glad you came, aren't you?"

"Shut up. No one likes a smart-ass," she grinned back.