I

Tuesday, May Eve, 3D April-Wednesday, Beltaine 1 May 1991

Malachi Lucius Tyson

MALACHI CLOSED HIS EYES. MISS WINDLEMERE read the poem, surely the most boring poem in the English language, in her clear and precise and completely flat voice, draining any and all feeling out of the words, if there had been any in the first place, until only the moral was left. Malachi was convinced Miss Windlemere believed the only good stories or poems had to be little homilies, tiny sermons. It wasn’t that Miss Windlemere was opposed to fun in school—after all, Malachi thought, she had put up a May Pole just outside the classroom. Tomorrow they were all supposed to do some sort of dorky dance with crepe paper streamers around the pole and the boy and girl with the highest grades in spelling would be crowned May King and Queen. Just like the little statue of Mary at church, with her floral coronet that Mrs. Nowalski made every week out of the flowers in her garden: pansies, petunias, tiny yellow buttercups, daffodils, paperwhite narcissi. Malachi had asked if the girl had to be like the Virgin but Miss Windlemere didn’t think it was funny.

Would she ever finish? Malachi opened his eyes to look at the clock and its too slow second hand over the blackboard: 2:05. Another entire hour, sixty more minutes, three thousand six hundred seconds, before school was out for the day. And after that: four more weeks, four more weeks of Miss Windlemere and her flat voice and this classroom and Vandora Springs Elementary. Twenty days. Never mind the number of hours; it was too many. On the last day of school Malachi would walk out, never to come back. Fifth grade was going to be in a new school: Nottingham Heights Elementary. Malachi wondered if his next teacher would have the same posters placed neatly above each window: Truth is Beauty, Knowledge is Power, The Early Bird Gets The Worm, Variety is The Spice of Life. Posters, Malachi was sure, that had been up on the wall since the school was built, as Knowledge is Power and Truth is Beauty were getting frayed around the edges. Someone had left a spitball on the worm.

“Now, class, take out a piece of paper—don’t rip it out, Ellen, how many times do I have to tell you that?-name and date in the upper right hand corner. Danny, stop staring out the window. Thank you. Now, class, I want you to write your own May poem using your spelling words . . .”

Geez, another spelling word poem. Danny had the right idea—if Malachi could just get outside. He sniffed the breeze that had found its way into the classroom: warm, light, laced with the faint, faint fragrance of nameless flowers. And was that a cardinal—that flash of red taking flight? If he could just follow that bird—go whenever, wherever—Malachi sighed and got out a piece of paper and watched as the minute hand moved to 2:09. Could he? His wrist on his desk, Malachi raised his hand. His pencil slowly rolled out of its groove and up against his wrist. He had never tried a trick like this before, though. It had only been in the past month, since Malachi’s tenth birthday in March, that he had found out he could do these tricks on a regular basis. Pencils, though, were one thing, clocks were another. But still, if he could move the clock hands to 3:05 and trip the bell in the office, he’d be out of here. The very first trick, back in October, had been an accident. Malachi had dropped the kaleidoscope Uncle Jack had given him under his bed and it had rolled out of reach. Even lying flat on his stomach and stretching his arm as far as he could, Malachi had not been able to reach the metal tube, and there just wasn’t enough space between bed and floor for him to crawl under. Moving the bed wasn’t an option, as it folded out of the wall—the previous owners liked boats, his dad had explained once. He had closed his eyes and imagined the kaleidoscope rolling to him, and it did. Just a few inches, but the kaleidoscope had moved.

He pinched himself: yes, he was awake. Just because he was on the floor, dust bunnies around his ears, with his eyes closed, didn’t mean he was asleep. Maybe the floor was curved, or maybe the house was really a boat and had hit a big wave. Maybe there had been an earthquake. The second time Malachi tried, the kaleidoscope skittered across the floor into his hand, leaving a very faint, blue trail behind it. It had happened again, a few days later, on Halloween. Miss Windlemere, to everyone’s surprise, had worn a black witch’s dress and hat to school. She had even cackled a few times. Wasn’t she supposed to keep her true identity secret? She had just about been ready to sit down at reading group when Malachi pushed the chair back. Miss Windlemere had dropped straight to the floor, collapsing just like the Wicked Witch of the West.

But only in the past few weeks, since his birthday, had Malachi been able to count on the tricks. Kaleidoscopes, toy cars and trucks, stuffed animals, balled-up paper, pencils, books—all of them had flown about his bedroom, leaving fading smoke-blue trails in the air. And if he could move all those things, how hard could the clock hands and the office bell be? I can do this. Malachi bent low over his desk, so Miss Windlemere couldn’t see he was only pretending to write. He clenched his fist and tightened his chest. Focus, see the bell, the clock . . . There. The afternoon bell rang, shattering the class’s sleepy silence into a rush of voices and moving bodies. Miss Windlemere jumped up from her desk, looking first at the clock and then at the class as it surged up and out, moving around her like she was more furniture.

“Wait, that can’t be right, it’s not 3:05, wait, good-bye, good-bye. . .”

I did it, I did it, I did it. Okay, careful, don’t push them out of the way, but I bet I could; it wouldn’t take much. Blow them away, like the Big Bad Wolf. Just huff and puff, and blow them all down. Serve ’em right. Not now. Walk, run, shove, like everybody else. Maybe I ought to give Miss Windlemere another surprise—yeah, move her chair out, there, until it is right behind her and when she steps back—Yeessss. Malachi stopped at the door and looked back. He had never seen anybody so surprised in their life. He blew. Miss Windlemere took a quick step back, her hair suddenly loose about her head, and dropped heavily into her chair. When the chair started spinning in circles around the room, she froze, her hands in the air, her mouth open.

“Good-bye,” Malachi yelled and left, as the chair began to slow down. He didn’t want to hurt her, just shake the old lady up a little. If Miss Windlemere even suspected Malachi had anything to do with the moving chair and the early dismissal, she’d kill him. Then the principal would kill him. And after that, his dad.

Sailing paper airplanes around the classroom had been the last time they had called his dad. “You had everybody making planes?” his dad had asked, shaking his head. They were walking home from school after meeting with the principal. “Everybody? Why do you do this stuff? How do you think I feel when I get these calls from your teacher and the principal? Malachi? Are you listening to me? Look at me, Malachi.” His dad stopped walking and squatted down to face Malachi. They were a block from home on Vandora Springs Road, right in front of the Easy Eye Optometrist. A big eye stared down at them from the roof of the low, brick building. For a long moment his father said nothing, until Malachi finally looked away. He hated it when his dad did this. Go ahead and yell, get mad, not this. “I want you to be happy, son, and you have just gotten more and more miserable this entire year, doing more and more stupid stuff like this. Maybe asking you to tough out the teasing was a bad idea. Maybe that new school we talked about is the answer. I met the principal; she’s a really nice lady. What do you think? Can you hang on until school is out?”

That had surprised Malachi: he had been sure his dad wasn’t seeing him anymore, wasn’t seeing what was happening, didn’t want to see.

Once outside the classroom, he scooted, keeping close to the wall, and just beneath a row of crayon drawings of spring flowers hanging from a cork strip. The drawings brushed his head as he ran, heading for the exit as fast as he could. He didn’t want the principal to catch on that something wasn’t right—which wouldn’t take long, since there weren’t any buses outside, none being due for another hour.

The front door of Vandora Springs Elementary burst open, throwing out a crowd of ten or twelve boys and Malachi, all hooting and hollering. Keep going, just keep going, once I make those pine trees on the other side of the parking lot, I’m home free. Heck, there’s the principal. Go, go, go. The other boys ran out into the bus parking lot into a bigger crowd of kids, all looking for buses and parents’ cars that weren’t there. Malachi ran with them and then kept on running, even though a few other kids called after him. For a moment he thought he heard an adult voice calling him as well, but he kept running. He ran until he was inside the trees’ shadows and didn’t stop until all the voices faded and grew faint. It wasn’t much of a woods, just sort of a cul de sac between the school and a subdivision, mostly pines and cedars, some scraggly maples and sweetgums, a handful of big old oaks, honeysuckle and blackberry thickets. Too overgrown really, but it was sanctuary and Malachi was sure nobody would follow him. He rubbed his back against a thick pine and slowly slumped down to the pine needle-covered ground. There were bits of spider webs stuck to his face and his chest. Malachi kicked a few pinecones out of his way.

He shook his head. Dad was going to be furious. One of those kids would tell on him to the principal; they always did. The phone was probably already ringing at the public library. He could hear his father’s slow, careful, at-work voice: “Reference?” Then there would be the shift and his father would start talking faster, his words tumbling together. That was when his father changed from Benjamin P. Tyson, Head of Reference and Assistant Branch Librarian at the Southeast Regional Branch of the Wake County Public Library System to Malachi’s dad, Ben Tyson.

“I wish I had blown down everybody in the hall,” Malachi said as he tossed pinecones. He could have pretended he was a hurricane, with howling winds. Or a tornado that would pick them all up to be dropped into mud. Or maybe just move them, the way he had Miss Windlemere’s chair: pick them up and drop them in a dumpster.

There weren’t too many kids at school that Malachi liked. Or wanted to like. Ever since kindergarten he had tried and tried to fit in and make the others like and accept him, but no matter how hard he tried—bringing brownies to school, getting into trouble on a regular basis—nothing had quite worked. Some kids were okay, but no one was really his friend. Starting school had been something of a shock in the first place. Malachi hadn’t known how different he was until then. His world had been the kinder, gentler adult one of his father, the folks at the library, Uncle Jack, his father’s best friend, Father Mark. There had been Thomas, Jack’s son, but he had been so much older Malachi had never thought of the awkward teenager and now brooding young man as a friend. Besides, until he was sixteen, Thomas had lived with his mother most of the year, and only visited his dad a few weeks in the summer and some holidays. None of them had told him he was going to be the shortest, have the blondest hair, or that golden eyes were anything out of the ordinary. Most of the camouflage Malachi had tried hadn’t worked. He had blacked his hair with shoe polish in third grade. His father hadn’t punished him for that—going to school the next day with a shaved head had been punishment enough. All that had helped was not being smart. No end of earnest and long conversations with his teachers and his father and Uncle Jack made him waver from getting a succession of B’s and C’s.

“But you could get straight A’s, son. Remember those games Jack’s friend played with you? They were intelligence tests and—”

“B’s and C’s are safer, Dad.”

He knew his dad was convinced Malachi would give up the low grades at Nottingham Heights. Maybe.

Having Father Mark around had helped. The old priest had reassured Malachi again and again it was okay to be different, that it didn’t matter, and things would be better when Malachi was older, just wait and see. Malachi had been Father Mark’s unofficial helper since first grade: dumping the offering baskets, straightening the missalettes in the pews, collecting the old bulletins. When the old priest died the summer after second grade Malachi felt the world had become a more dangerous place and third grade proved him right. Some big fifth grade boys zeroed in on a tiny, towheaded kid with funny-colored golden-brown almost yellow eyes. Dog-eyes. Dog-boy, Old Yeller, Pee Wee, Shrimp, and Chihuahua Boy had followed him ever since. No amount of explaining his eyes were golden-brown and not yellow did any good.

Nor did asking his father for contacts.

“Contacts? You have perfect—better than perfect vision, son. You don’t need glasses, not like me, and you probably never will,” his father had said, not even looking up from the book he had been reading. The pair of cheap sunglasses Malachi bought at Kerr Drugs only lasted for a day. The music teacher wanted to know how he could see with them on inside. The other kids laughed, the glasses were put in the teacher’s June box, and she called his father.

Malachi hated it when his father got mad. And since the beginning of this school year it seemed like he made his father mad every other day. He could even name the day it started back in the fall, when he had pushed that chair out from under Miss Windlemere in her witch costume.

He hadn’t been able to wait to tell his dad about it. Malachi had run all the way from the school to the library. He hadn’t stopped running until he burst into his dad’s office, dodging three or four shelving carts, grumbling blue-haired library volunteers, and shouting hello at the desk clerk on the way.

“Dad, Dad, you’ll never guess what happened at school today. I can do—” Malachi said, as he brushed past the fake giant cobwebs strung across his dad’s office door. His father, who had been peering intently into a computer screen, held up one hand.

“Just a minute, son, let me finish this last paragraph of this report—have to send it in to the main branch tomorrow—just a little bit more.”

Malachi picked up a heavy, acrylic paperweight from his dad’s desk, and started tossing it back and forth, from one hand to the other. He wondered how they had gotten the butterflies inside. Maybe the butterflies—a red Monarch, a yellow one, a white one—weren’t real. Maybe the butterflies had been happily flying along, no, maybe it was magic—

“Okay, there, finished, and save, and print,” his father said and then wheeled his chair around to face Malachi. “Son, put that paperweight down before you drop it. Thanks. Something happened at school today?”

Malachi told his father what had happened, talking as fast as he could, his hands moving like excited birds. “... and then she just dropped to the floor. It’s magic, Dad; I can do magic, that has to be it. I moved her chair right out from under her just like this—”

“What? You did what? You moved your teacher’s chair and she fell. Magic? You can’t do magic. Your imagination has gotten way, way out of hand.”

“Dad! It has to be magic! You should have seen her face when she hit the floor, and that witch hat fell and—”

“Never ever do that again. Never. Do you understand me? Don’t. Malachi, are you listening to me?”

“Dad, I didn’t mean to, not really. Why are you getting mad at me? That old witch—sorry, Miss Windlemere, wasn’t really hurt. I’m talking about magic, Dad. It’s real. It’s true, I don’t know how it happened to me, but—”

“You heard me: Don’t. Ever. Do. That. Again. Pulling out your teacher’s chair—you could get expelled. Are you listening to me? And to make matters worse, you are making up a story about how you did it.”

“I’m not making it up and I didn’t pull out the chair—not with my hands. Are you listening to me? I made it happen—I pushed the air and—”

“I said: never again.”

His father was yelling. Malachi stepped back. He had never seen his father so mad or heard him so loud. People outside his office were trying not to listen or look.

“Do you hear—what am I doing?” His father, his face fast turning red, quickly sat down in his chair. “Malachi, I’m sorry. Go home. Just go home; we’ll talk later.”

 

It happened again at supper. Both Malachi and his father were out of sorts after what happened at the library, and mealtime conversation was mostly pass that, please, thanks, and not much else. When Malachi decided he wanted more bread he decided not to even bother asking. Let’s see if being magic was more than the chair and the kaleidoscope. For a moment nothing happened. Then, wobbling and dipping, rolls falling onto the table, the bread bowl drifted over the carrots and string beans and salad to drop with a bang in front of Malachi. His father stared at the floating bowl, transfixed, his hand and water glass frozen in midair.

“Dad? I know you saw that. See, I am magic; it’s real. I made the bread bowl float across the table. What’s happening to me?”

“I didn’t see anything. Nothing is happening to you, nothing at all. Next time you want some bread, just ask me and I will pass it to you, okay?” his father said, his face even harder and colder than he had been at the library.

“Dad, you were looking right at it. I made the bowl float. It’s magic, you saw it. What is wrong with you? All right—watch this.”

For a very long moment, nothing happened. Then, with a rush of air propelling them, the salt- and peppershakers launched into the air. Following them, but less steadily, were the mashed potatoes and the green beans. The potatoes fell first, potato-side up, the bowl splitting in two as it smacked the floor. The saltshaker made a soft landing in the potatoes, and the beans just drifted back to the table. The peppershaker exploding, showering the table, all the food, Malachi, and his dad. Moving things was harder than Malachi thought, especially so many things at one time. It made his head hurt. His father, who had sat very still during the entire display, finally moved when he started sneezing and brushing the pepper off.

“Magic is just for fairies, not for people. Stories. If you can’t behave, maybe you should go to your room,” his father finally gasped out, when he stopped sneezing.

“Dad, are you crazy—you saw, I know you saw—”

“Go to your room.”

“All right, I will,” Malachi had yelled. He slammed his bedroom door as hard as he could and threw himself on his bed, crying. What was wrong with Dad? Why was he so mad? Why was he pretending he couldn’t see what had happened? What’s wrong with me? I didn’t do anything bad ...

 

That had been in October. Neither Malachi nor his father had mentioned Miss Windlemere’s chair or the bread bowl since. It was as if the magic was happening in another room, a place different and secret from their everyday lives. Malachi was sure his father knew—there were times he would look up from doing his homework or reading a book or watching TV to see his dad staring at him. “What is it, Dad? What’s the matter?” Malachi had asked a few times. “Nothing,” his father had said. “Nothing’s the matter.” The secret had to stay secret, an invisible and offstage presence that haunted 1413 Beichler Road. Malachi wished, over and over again, that he knew why. He hated not being able to talk to his dad about it. Not talking about the magic didn’t make it any less real. Magic? Was that what it really was? In a lot of the stories and books he had read since he had moved Miss Windlemere’s chair the magic had something to do with spells and making strange things in huge bubbling cauldrons. Witches and wizards did magic like that. Fairies, on the other hand, were different. They were magic. When Malachi figured that out, he was almost satisfied. What about the other meaning of fairy? The one he wasn’t sure about, the one he had heard some older boys whispering and laughing about? Malachi wanted to ask his father if he thought that was right: witches did magic, fairies were magic, what the older boys meant. But he asked nothing.

But despite the silence, everything else was pretty much the same, which made the weird silence tolerable. Uncle Jack still came to dinner once or twice a week, although now he sometimes brought his new girl friend, Hilda. Malachi and his father still went to movies in Raleigh every now and then, and some Sundays they would make it to mass down the street at St. Mary’s. School, homework, the library, and the ghost safely in another room.

Malachi, of course, did not stop doing what he called little magics: sliding the chalk just ahead of Miss Windlemere’s fingers, pulling book markers out of all the books on her desk. Or, as he had done yesterday, nudging a softball in mid-air to pop the head of one of his tormentors. The boy had deserved it. He had been picking on Malachi on the bus, calling him Old Yeller and baby, and what was a little bitty baby doing in school, huh, cat got your tongue, little bitty feller? No, Malachi had thought when the ball smacked the boy’s head, but I just got you. And a week ago, he had found out he could raise the wind, be the Big Bad Wolf.

 

Malachi got up from the tree and brushed off leaves and pine needles. He had also practiced in his room at home, after his father thought he was asleep, or out in the woods, in places like this. He started walking deeper into the little grove. There was a clearing that he remembered from the last time he had gone exploring in these woods. Besides, he didn’t want the principal to find him; at least not right away.

“Dad’s going to be really mad when he finds out,” Malachi muttered to himself as he followed a winding dog-path. He was sure by now his father had been called and was probably on his way to the school. And no matter how hard his father was pretending, Malachi was sure his dad would figure out how the school bell had gone off so early.

This is a Good Place. He had come to the clearing, which was almost a perfect circle cut out of the trees, as if someone had lifted up everything with a huge cookie cutter. Weeds, tall grasses, leaves, and branches covered the ground. Tiny pine and cedar saplings, spindly oak and maple saplings. Small blue and white star-shaped flowers were scattered inside the circle like sprinkles tossed on a cake. Malachi’s feet crunched on acorns. He stood in the middle and looked up into a smaller circle of sky, its irregular rim made by tree branches.

He had been dreaming of this trick for as long as he could remember, and now, after the softball, the bowl, the chalk and the chair, and today, after the clock and the bell—well, could he do it—could he be like the wind?

Okay, here goes. One, two, three, up where the air is clear, up in the stratosphere, let’s send it soaring, let’s go fly a kite ...

At first, like with the dishes at the table, nothing happened. Then, Malachi pushed against the ground and shot straight up, one, two, three, four feet, then stopped, faltered, and dropped like a stone into the leaves. I can do this. just like the clock. The dinner bowls. I can do this. Malachi lifted more slowly the second time and stopped a yard up. It was as if something shifted in his brain, something clicked, and there, now he could see what to do. He dove up and out and into the breeze.

Malachi flew.

He swooped up to the top of the nearest tree and then down and up again, turning his body over and over as he did, making spirals in the air. He dove in the warm air and did somersaults all the way down, and then a sudden flip, and he was skimming the tops of the saplings, like a rock skipping on water. He plucked leaves from a big oak and then dodged them as they drifted to the ground. He floated on his back, on his stomach, on his side.

If he could just stay in the air and never come down. Nobody could come and get him, and any names they would call would just drop on the ground. It no longer mattered that he was smaller than everybody else, with funny eyes and hair, with a dad who was a librarian and with no mother at all. Valeria. That was her name, but all Malachi knew about her was that he looked just like her and that to ask his dad about her meant silence and sadness. Could she fly? Was she magic?

But never mind all that. He could fly.

Finally Malachi looked at his watch. 4:30. Better get going. Tuesdays his dad would be home from the library by five. He knew his dad was going to be mad because he had run away from school; that was a given. Making him madder by being late wasn’t worth it. Malachi let himself slowly float down to the ground, his feet landing lightly in a bed of moss.

He got home just before five, only minutes ahead of his father. Malachi was in the bedroom, changing out of his school clothes so his dad wouldn’t see the leaves and cobwebs, when he heard the front door open, then his father’s footsteps, and the thud of his father’s briefcase on the coffee table in the living room. Malachi quickly pulled a T-shirt over his head and ran to the bathroom to stuff his school clothes in the hamper.

“Malachi Lucius Tyson. Come here, please.”

All three names. He’s really mad. Malachi gulped and went down the hall.

“Dad? Dad? I’m sorry—it was an accident—I, uh—” Malachi stopped, staring at his father. Dad didn’t look three names-mad. He looked tired and sad; his eyes were red and wet. Dad had been crying. Malachi shuddered; he couldn’t believe it, he wouldn’t believe it. Was it this magic? No, it couldn’t be—anything that let you fly could not be bad—

“Go back to your room. You’ve scared me to death. I almost called the police. The principal called; he is furious. Miss Windlemere is even more furious. Go to your room. I can’t talk to you now. Go.”

“But, Dad, I have to tell you, I want to tell you—Dad, I flew today, in the air. Could my mother fly? Dad, please—”

“I said: go to your room.”

“Dad!”

“Not another word.”

Malachi went to his room.

Much later, after a miserable dinner, surrounded by a thick, sullen silence, Malachi lay on his bed, waiting for his dad to turn in. When he heard his father go into his bedroom across the hall and close the door, Malachi got up. Making as little noise as possible, he went to the back door and gently eased it open and slipped out onto the back porch. Two, three more steps and he was in the backyard. He glanced next door at Uncle Jack’s house—just one light on—Thomas, he guessed, house-sitting. Uncle Jack had gone to some conference or something. Malachi took a deep breath and shot straight up into the cool night air, a shooting star in reverse, blue-white light streaming behind him in a shimmering tail.

 

By the time Malachi came home the second time it was late, a little after eleven. Malachi knew he was going to be exhausted in school tomorrow, but he didn’t care. He could fly. He landed on the front stoop and standing beneath the outside light, fished his key out of his pocket and unlocked the front door. He stepped into a silent house. The lamp on the end table, beside the couch, was on, making a soft yellow circle on the rug.

After cutting off the lamp, he went down the hall. No light edged his father’s door. The bathroom night-light made a tiny white sphere, illuminating the linoleum and the bath mat. Malachi looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes weren’t just golden-brown anymore. They were becoming the color of the gold crayon in the Crayola box. For a brief moment, his eyes glowed and just as quickly the glow winked out. His hair—was it getting even lighter? And his ears—Malachi turned on the overhead light and turned his head to one side and then the other. Yes, his ears were getting pointed. Dad couldn’t ignore these things, could he? Like he ignored the floating bowls? He knew all that was happening wasn’t normal. Was he—no, not going crazy?

Dad, you know; I know you know. Why won’t you talk to me?

Before leaving the bathroom, Malachi pulled the night-light out of the socket. He had told his dad a hundred times he was too old for a night-light. He very slowly and carefully opened his bedroom door at the end of the hall. The lamps on his night table and his desk were on. His father lay on his back on Malachi’s bed, fast asleep and snoring.

 

April 30, 1991
The Technician

“Campus Magic”

Today is Beltaine or May Eve. Walpurgis Night. Uh? Like, so what? Walpurgis Night, the eve of May 1 or May Day, is, according to legend, the night when witches fly. Beltaine is one of the four most sacred days in the Celtic calendar, and at midnight the way between here and the Otherworld is open. And you are still going uh and so what, right?

A lot of your classmates aren’t. According to statistics just released from the Campus Ministries Office, there are at least 250 undergraduates and about 70 graduate students who list their religious affiliation as either Wiccan, Druid, Pagan or Neo-Pagan, or the Old Religion. A coven meets regularly at the McKimmon Center, every third Thursday.

 

The next time you take a seat in English 111 or Compsci 101, take a good look at the people around you. They probably look pretty normal to you, don’t they? Your typical NCSU students. Engineers, foresters, ag majors, pre-vets, teachers, right? Well, one of those civil engineer-wannabes or one of those pre-vets—anyone of your classmates—could be a real, live practicing witch. That’s right, you heard me: a witch, or warlock, a wizard. A practitioner of the occult ...

Russell Avery White

Russell slowly dried himself with a thick, orange towel. He wanted to stretch out the time in his bathroom sanctuary as long as possible. The steam from his shower had clouded the medicine cabinet mirror, the tiles on the wall, even the window. Russell sighed as he rubbed down his legs. He knew he couldn’t stay too long, or his stepmother would start complaining how he was monopolizing the room and didn’t he realize other people had to take showers and use the john? Didn’t the boy ever think of anybody but hisself? Larry? Can’t you make your son behave?

Better not push my luck, he thought, and wrapped the towel around his waist and picked up his clothes from the floor. As Russell turned to go, he stopped and looked back into the mirror. For a very brief moment, his eyes had seemed to be greener and brighter than they had ever been. Russell blinked and looked again. The extra-green brightness was gone—had it really been there? A trick of the early light? He rubbed his eyes and took his T-shirt and wiped the fog off the mirror. Nope, his eyes looked like they always did, a grass green, flecks of brown. Must have been seeing things, and feeling things, the fog on the mirror had been warm, Russell thought, and hurried out of the bathroom. He may have been imagining his eyes were turning greener, but he hadn’t imagined the noise he had just heard through the thin trailer wall. Somebody was up in his daddy and stepmama’s bedroom, and moving around.

Russell listened at the bedroom door for a second: his daddy was awake. He could tell by the heavy footsteps and the sounds of drawers being pulled out. Russell hurried even more quickly down the hall and into his bedroom, pulling the door closed behind him. Meeting his daddy early in the morning, being in between the man and the toilet or the shower, were things Russell avoided. Too many fat lips. Getting in Jeanie’s way wasn’t much better, although she never hit him. Jeanie just yelled or called his daddy, and then he would get hit anyway. Now that she was pregnant, he barely had to look at her before she started calling his daddy.

His real mama would treat him better, Russell thought. He picked up her picture from his dresser and touched her face with the tips of his fingers. He remembered she had cried a lot before she left; she had cried so much she stayed home from work and wouldn’t get out of bed. He had tried to cheer her up, make her laugh, tell her dumb jokes, but nothing had worked. This fall would make two years since he had seen her. She had left when they lived in Lawton County, Oklahoma, near his daddy’s folks. Russell had been in the second grade. His little brother, Adam, was starting kindergarten. Adam was having a good year; Russell wasn’t. They had been in Tulsa the year before and Russell knew nobody in the rural Lawton County elementary school and he couldn’t seem to figure out how to please his teacher. It didn’t help that Russell had repeated kindergarten and first grade and was two years older and a head taller than the rest of the class. The second week of school the teacher had told him he didn’t know how to be anybody’s friend.

“You’re like some great big, clumsy dog. Knocking people this way and that and then expect everyone to like you and you’re surprised when they don’t. It doesn’t work that way, Russell. To have friends, you have to be a friend.”

Russell had gone up to her desk later to ask her to tell him how to be a friend. He had waited patiently, watching her until she looked up. He wished he could write as pretty as she was doing.

“About how to have friends, I just wanted to ask you to please tell me—”

“Go. Sit. Down.”

Three weeks later, the day before Halloween, Russell had come home to an empty house. No mama, no little brother, no daddy. No note on the refrigerator beneath the teapot magnet. No note on the pad by the phone on the kitchen counter. His daddy finally came home, hours later, to find Russell asleep on the couch, in front of the 6 o’clock local news.

“So that’s why she kept the baby home today. Took every dime in the place. Bet she cleaned out the bank accounts, too,” his daddy had said, after searching the house, Russell trailing behind him, sniffling. “Hell, don’t cry, boy. I ain’t got time for it. C’mon. Guess I can take that construction job in Texas—get yer things. Going to my daddy’s.”

“Daddy, where’d Mama go? Why’d she leave? I didn’t do nothing; I didn’t get in trouble at schoooool—” Russell started crying louder.

“Go on, Russell, get yer stuff. Stop crying ’fore I give you something to really cry about. She just left, that’s all.”

His granddaddy told Russell he thought it was the medicine she’d been taking. Anti-depressants. Made her act funny.

A card came at Christmas, with a Tucson return address on one side, and a yellow cartoon map of Arizona on the other. Merry Christmas from Mama and Adam scrawled beside the return address. Russell’s granddaddy helped him write back, but Russell never got a reply and he never saw his mama or his little brother again. He didn’t see his daddy again, except for infrequent visits, until the next summer. Larry White showed up one hot July afternoon with a new wife, Lizzie, and a new pickup, and took Russell to Kansas. They only went back to Oklahoma, once, to bury Russell’s granddaddy. Lizzie left, in a flurry of overturned chairs and broken lamps, shortly afterward. Jeanie was next and a move to North Carolina to be near her folks and, as his daddy said, one construction job is as good as another.

“Hurry up and get dressed, Russell. You don’t wanna miss the bus. Ain’t got the time to give you a ride this morning. You hear me, boy? And don’t take such long damn showers—hardly any hot water left.” His daddy’s voice came through Russell’s bedroom door loud and clear.

“Boy?”

“I hear you,” Russell said, frozen by his dresser, his mama’s picture in his hands. When he heard his daddy walk off to the bathroom, he set her picture down and got dressed as quickly as he could, jamming his feet into his tennis shoes. He could tie them on the bus. Before he ran to the kitchen, Russell took one last look at his eyes in the mirror. It must be the light in the glass, he thought, and ran out the door. For a second his eyes had seemed to be glowing with a green light.

Behind Russell, one thin curl of smoke drifted up and out of the wastebasket by his dresser.

Jeffrey Arthur Gates

Ellen Clark looked at the clock on top of the refrigerator. Ten till eight. Twenty minutes to Jeff’s school, then another ten or fifteen more in rush hour traffic on the Beltline to work. Where was the boy? Ellen sighed and set her purse down on the kitchen table. She wished Fred were here so she could ask him to get the boy, but he had had to go to work early and Jeff had promised the night before to get up when his alarm went off, get dressed without dawdling, eat, and be ready to go when she was ready. And the boy had gotten up, washed, dressed, and ate with no dawdling, daydreaming, or malingering. Then half-an-hour ago he had disappeared into his bedroom, saying he was only going to be a minute.

This is silly, Ellen thought, glancing again at her watch. I know the boy’s had a rough time and that he’s only been here a few weeks, I know that. And I also know that getting up and going back to school is just what he needs, to start going on, putting what happened in the past. If only he was going to Nottingham Heights now, instead of Brewer. There was no good way to get to Brewer without the Beltline and Ellen hated the Beltline. She had tried to convince Jeffs social worker and his therapist to let her enroll the boy at Nottingham Heights, but both women had refused.

“Mrs. Clark, you have had how many foster children? Then you know how temporary placements can be. The boy’s father hasn’t even been tried yet, and we’re still trying to find the mother. We like to avoid any more changes in the boy’s life than necessary. If Jeff is still with you this fall, then we’ll see about putting him in Nottingham,” the social worker had said, looking over her glasses and past her paper-strewn desk.

Ellen knew the social worker was right. Still, it was a nuisance, and now the boy was late.

“Jeff! Come on, it’s time to go. We have to leave right now. Jeff!”

 

Jeff sat in the middle of his bed, surrounded by an apatosaurus, a tyrannosaurus, and a pterodactyl. He sighed. He didn’t want to make Mrs. Clark mad, but he didn’t want to go back to Brewer Elementary, either. He picked up the pterodactyl and started making dinosaur noises as he swooped it down to attack the tyrannosaurus, who was busily trying to chew on the apatosaurus at the same time. What would he say to the other kids? Did they know? Those looks the teacher had given him. And the counselor: he should never have told her. Never. If Jeff hadn’t told her, everything would still be the same. He’d be in his own house, in his own bedroom, and all of his dinosaurs would be there, instead of only the half he had managed to take with him when the social worker had come for him. His father would never have looked at him that way and called him a bastard son-of-a-bitch, a traitor—instead his father would—Jeff shook his head, shattering that thought into as many pieces as he could manage.

The bedroom door opened and Mrs. Clark stuck her head in.

“It’s time to go to school. Come on. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

Jeff swooped the pterodactyl down again, to shoo the rex off the apatosaurus. “You all say that. It’ll be all right. What am I supposed to say to everybody? About where I was, about what happened.”

“Jeff, you don’t have to say anything. Remember, I told you the social worker and I both talked to your teachers? It really will be all right. Really. Come on,” Mrs. Clark said and walked over to take his hand.

“Okay,” Jeff said and let her lead him out of the room. “Oh, wait a see, I still have the pterodactyl.” He threw it over his shoulder and then followed Mrs. Clark. Neither one of them saw the faint blue trail the pterodactyl left in the air, like the fading contrail of a jet.

Hazel Guinevere Richards

Hazel skipped first grade against her kindergarten teacher’s wishes.

“Yes, Dr. Richards, Mrs. Richards, your granddaughter is reading on a third-grade level and doing math at a sixth-grade level, but she doesn’t play well with the other children. No—she doesn’t play much at all with the other children. She isn’t socially mature,” Miss Kowalski had said, steepling her hands together over her desk.

“But why should Hazel waste her time in first grade?” Mrs. Richards asked. “Once I learn how to make a certain kind of pot, I don’t need to relearn it.”

“She would be bored in first grade, Miss Kowalski. She might even be bored in second grade,” Dr. Richards said.

“There are gifted and talented programs which will compensate, but that’s not my point. Hazel will be in GT whatever grade she is in. My point is that Hazel doesn’t have any friends. None,” Miss Kowalski said, giving up on her carefully selected ed psych terminology.

Dr. Richards and Mrs. Richards looked at each other. “Well,” Dr. Richards said, after clearing his throat, “we don’t think of that as a great handicap. I’m very involved in my research and my teaching and my wife is involved with her art and her teaching. I have colleagues at NC State and IBM, and my wife has artist colleagues, but we don’t see these people socially, not very often anyway. A social life is not something we feel a great need for. When Hazel’s parents were alive, they were the same way, busy with their careers and little time for social amenities. We think Hazel should skip first grade, Miss Kowalski. It will be easier for all of us if she does. She will be happier if she is busier in school, and we will be happier.”

Miss Kowalski sighed.

 

Alexander and computers came into Hazel’s life not long after Miss Kowalski and the school had given in and agreed to let Hazel skip first grade to second. Her grandfather brought home a computer for Hazel one bright, May afternoon, lugging the boxes up the stairs to her bedroom himself, not trusting the deliverymen not to drop everything. There were already assorted computers, modems, and printers of one kind or another all over the house. Diskettes lay around like old magazines.

Hawthorne Richards talked to Hazel as he slit open the boxes with a Swiss army knife. “If your father was alive, he’d tell you I was never very good with children. Your mother would probably agree. Haze, they’d be right. Your grandmama and I are thinking this computer will make it easier for all of us. And no granddaughter of mine is going to start second grade without a computer. I know you had one in your kindergarten class and there will be one, maybe two or three, in your second grade class, but I want you to have one right here, right on your desk. I want you to be able to use one like you use a pencil. And it will keep you busy. Your father would have told you that neither of us ever had much time for children.”

Hazel had just sat in the middle of the bed and nodded while her grandfather talked and opened boxes. Hazel could barely remember her father and mother. They had been killed in a car wreck when she was two, coming home on I-40 from a reception in Chapel Hill. Her father was the designated driver and had been as sober as a stone. The driver who tried to pass them wasn’t. Hazel’s memories of her parents were nebulous at best: the smell of cigarette smoke for her father and a white blur with a husky voice for her mother. The two people in the photograph on her grandmother’s dresser were strangers.

Hazel’s grandmother gave her Alexander the day after the computer arrived. Anne Richards called Hazel down to her basement studio, which next to her bedroom, was Hazel’s favorite room in the house. There was a kiln in one corner and racks and tables were piled with pots, bowls, pitchers, vases, and curious sculptures of animals and people’s heads. Sacks of clay and jars of glaze were neatly arranged on shelves facing the finished pottery. Hazel loved to come down early on weekend mornings and watch her grandmother work. The sun would slowly come in through tiny windows at the top of the walls and brush across the pottery, gilding the earthen hues with yellow and white fire.

Her grandmother looked up from where she was sitting on the floor and shushed Hazel with her finger as she came down the stairs.

“Come look in the box,” she whispered and pointed to a small, cardboard box right beside her. Hazel knelt down and peered inside. There was a tiny, grey ball of fur inside, a sleeping grey ball of fur; Hazel could see its back rise and fall.

“The vet said he’s a lilac-point—see, he’s just a bit darker on his face and his feet and his tail, sort of a blue-grey. Blue eyes. He’s just part Siamese, though—see those ghost stripes on his haunches and his tail and how big his paws are? Some alley cat tainted his royal blood. But the vet said a mix would probably have a better personality than a purebred. This is my congratulations-on-skipping-first-grade present and my not-so-good-with-children present. I sometimes wonder how we managed to raise your father,” her grandmother said absently. She carefully scooped up the yawning fur ball and put the kitten in Hazel’s hands.

“But never mind that. Your grandfather wanted me to get a puppy, but I like cats better. They don’t require as much time or attention as a dog. There was a brown kitten that I thought might match your hair, but there was something about this one. I think his eyes will match yours—see how blue they are?”

At five-going-on-six, Hazel didn’t quite understand her grandparents’ concerns with their parenting skills. They were her parents. At eight-almost-nine, when Hazel was in the fourth grade, and her grandfather brought home a new computer for her and gave the same speech again, Hazel paid no attention. Background noise, just things they seemed to like to say, she thought as her grandfather unpacked the new computer and explained why he wanted her to have it and that he and her grandmother hoped she would be self sufficient, as her father had been, and not need them so much. Hazel had already learned how to be invisible in the house when either of her grandparents was busy. She could be invisible for days, she thought, as she leafed through the computer manual and the manual for the new software game her grandfather had brought home with the computer, Worldmaker. Alexander drowsed in an open window and a breeze came in from the warm, late April afternoon. She couldn’t wait to play the game.

“You’re supposed to take them through their history, up to modern times, without losing them to disease, invasion, a natural disaster, whatever,” her grandfather said as he pushed in the last plug and flicked on the monitor and the hard drive. “Supposed to be for eighth or ninth grade, but I think you can handle it. Should be a lot of fun, Haze. Let’s see what happens when we boot the game up. Okay, here’s the first menu. You have to set up the valley the tribe will live in first—see, here are your choices for the valley.”

Hazel slid into the chair facing the monitor. A long wide valley with a slow, meandering old river? Or a short, narrow valley with a quick, young river cutting a gorge down the middle? Or ... Hazel looked up. Her grandfather was gone. Alexander had curled up on the edge of the bed, just close enough for her to reach over and pat his head from time to time. The valley needed a name. A blank square blinked on the screen.

“Alexzel, the Valley of Alexzel,” Hazel said, liking the sound made when she blurred her and Alex’s names. She typed in the letters and pressed enter. When she did there was a sudden sharp pop and a blue light flashed, as if a camera had gone off right behind Hazel’s head. For a brief moment the room seemed bathed in the blue light, a light that was so bright and intense that Hazel covered her face and squeezed her eyes shut. Alexander yowled and jumped off the bed to hide beneath it.

Hazel opened her eyes. The blue light was gone. Everything in the room looked to be just the same. The name Alexzel glowed in the middle of the screen. An electrical charge? Lightning? Hazel had never heard of blue lightning and outside the sky was clear and fair.

“Alex—what do you think we should do?” Hazel asked softly. To her surprise, Alexander came out from under the bed, dust clinging to his whiskers. He shook himself and jumped up into Hazel’s chair. He sat up and peered into the screen and then gently tapped the keyboard with his right paw. For another brief moment, his eyes glowed an intense blue.

Thomas John Ruggles

Thomas backed out of his father’s driveway at exactly 10:45 P.M. They had told him to be punctual and arrive not a minute before or a minute late. He had timed the trip to Clemmons State Forest twice before. He should be at the forest entrance at 11:35. He would sit in the car until 11:42 and then walk down the path to the fire. He glanced over at the Tyson’s. Front light on, the living room. Awful late for Ben to be expecting company, he thought as he drove off.

Thomas shook his head. How could he have been so blind all these years? The Ruggles had moved next door to the Tysons when Thomas was fourteen and he had never suspected, never even guessed just who and what Malachi was. Or who and what Valeria was. Or where she had gone. No, he hadn’t really spent much time with his father from thirteen to sixteen—just a few weeks during the summer, every other Christmas and Thanksgiving. While his parents had their custody fights, Thomas had been forced to live with his mother. He shook, trying to get rid of those memories. But he had babysat for Malachi more than once when he had moved back after his mother’s suicide, and he had never guessed. Sat right beside Valeria once—she had even touched him. But I was just a kid then, he thought. His father knew, and, Ben, of course. But they hadn’t seen fit to tell him. No matter. His eyes had been opened; he knew.

He had felt the first twinge at Samhain, a brief spark, a rush of energy in the ether. It was his first time with the Glenwood coven and he had thought it was just the excitement of being there with the others, naked before the God and the Goddess. But then he had felt the energy rush a few days later, when he had gone home to retrieve some more of his books and ran into Malachi Tyson. In fact he had surprised Malachi in the backyard and Thomas was sure if he had surprised the boy a few minutes earlier, he would have seen magic in action.

“Hey, Malachi, what are you doing?” Thomas had yelled over the chain-link fence separating his father’s and the Tysons’ backyards. Malachi had jumped, startled, and then had run over to the fence to shake Thomas’s hand. In that touch he had felt the charge again—almost like touching an electric fence. And he remembered: when he was thirteen and home for the summer and Valeria had touched him—the same charge.

There was no doubt now, Thomas knew: here was a tool provided for him, a way to access power, power that he had only dreamed of. That had been the only good thing he had gotten from the three years he had lived with his mother: power was essential.

Thomas pulled into the parking lot at the entrance to Clemmons State Forest at 11:36. Tonight was the Third Challenge. Once passed, Thomas would be a full initiate in the coven. He would be a high priest of the mysteries of the Old Religion, the hidden knowledge of the God and the Goddess, knowledge older than Christ, knowledge those weakling Christians had suppressed and then denied ever existed. Fools. Now, tonight, the power that had been surging in him, simmering like water almost ready to boil, would be finally and fully awake; Thomas was sure of it. And with this power, taking Malachi and the greater power should be easy.

11:42.

Thomas got out of the car and walked across the graveled lot, the blue stones crunching beneath his shoes. He had timed this walk twice before as well. It was exactly 11:50 when he could see the flames flickering through the trees. The air was redolent with incense and smoke. He could smell the heat, as he inhaled, drawing fire into his nostrils. When Thomas could see the others, their bodies white and dark shadows around the fire, he stopped and looked for the shelter someone had told him would be nearby. Thomas undressed carefully, neatly folding his pants and shirt, then his underwear and socks, and everything in a tidy pile at the end of a picnic bench. Then he took the binding cord he had been given and wrapped the braided and knotted red cord around his waist, just as he had been taught, so that he could pull the frayed end through the loop.

There. He was ready.

Now he could feel the heat of the fire all over his naked skin. The fire’s shadows bathed the bodies of the others and he could feel them, at the periphery of his aura, which shimmered all around him. The others were waiting for him, waiting for the high priestess to call Thomas for the Third Challenge.

Thomas.

Thomas walked down the last stretch of the path leading to the clearing and the fire and the coven. This time he could feel the sharp gravel on his feet. He took deep breaths as he walked; Thomas had never felt more alive in his life, more aware. The hot, perfumed air, heavy with incense, the insane insect chirping, the sweaty smell of all the bodies, and yes, even the trees, he could feel their awareness, old, profound, slow.

Thomas stopped walking three paces outside the circle. He felt the air shift when the others stepped aside and let him in to face the priestess and the stone altar.

The priestess’s face was hidden behind a white mask; all Thomas could see were her dark, dark blue eyes, watching him, her black hair loose and curling with sweat. He focused on her and her alone, her body shining in the firelight and candlelight, a single pale shadow. Everything on the altar between Thomas and the priestess had become different-colored shadows: the pentacle, the bell, and the cups were copper; the athame knife silver-white, and each of the black candles seemed to have disappeared except for their flames. Thomas inhaled and exhaled, filling himself with incense and nothing but incense, and with each breath, it seemed his skin was dissolving, his aura expanding to merge, one glowing filament at a time with all the others. And there were so many others, bits and fragments of their thoughts, feelings darting about and through him—needs, hungers, wants, desires. Behind the priestess the cauldron bubbled and boiled. Thomas heard footsteps behind him, but he didn’t turn and look; he remained as still as possible. He felt fingers on his back, his neck, then a blindfold covered his eyes. His hands were pulled behind him and tied together, and then a cord was passed around his neck. His feet were tied together and then whoever was behind him stepped away. Thomas could see through the blindfold the red of the fire.

Then the priestess spoke:

May the Most Powerful,
the great root of existence;
all-pervasive, omnipotent, eternal;
may the Goddess,
the Queen of the Moon;
may the God,
Homed Hunter, Lord of the Night,
may all the unseen Powers:
the stones, the elements,
the stars in the sky, the earth beneath our feet,
bless this place, this time
and Ilwelhe who are/am/is with Thee.

Thomas answered, words he had practiced over and over and over again:

O Most Powerful,
O Queen of the Night,
O Lord of the Night,
O Most Mysterious, dark, unseen, hidden,
I stand in this place,
open to You.
Open to the changes
in my body, mind, and spirit.
I am Yours,
I am Yours forever, O Mother Goddess, O Father God.

Your energy fills me,
it fills my body, my mind, my spirit,
O Great Goddess, O Great God,
I am one with Your Being.
I am one with Your Being.
I am one with Your Being.

Somewhere a temple singing bowl was stroked and almost simultaneously the others began todrone:“Aaaaaaaaaooooooooouuuuuuuuuiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee .” A drum began to beat. Thomas heard, barely, other footsteps in front of him, and then something cold and metallic and sharp pricked his skin between his navel and his groin, his erect penis.

“Thomas, you stand on the boundaries between the known world and the world of the Dark Ones, the Dread Lords, the world of power. Are you ready? Are you prepared? Are you brave?”

“I am ready. I am prepared. I have the courage.”

Thomas felt pressure then, first above his heart, then on the opposite side of his chest, then to the right and left of his navel. With each touch the high priestess spoke: “We mark you, then, with Air, with Fire, with Water, with Earth. You are ours.”

Behind him Thomas could hear the others moving, their breathing fast and hard. The weaving dance began and someone drew Thomas in and everyone was touching, being touched, everywhere. His blindfold was taken away, and there was no part of his skin that was not touched, caressed, felt by hands and mouths. And Thomas touched and stroked and caressed with his hands and his mouth. The high priestess sang:

O Most Powerful,
O Great Goddess, O Great God,
As you are One,
So, we become one with our brother, Thomas.
O Great Goddess, O Great God,
Let us celebrate the Oneness ...

Thomas ran, trees all around him, close, dark, green, black. A full moon marked his path as he ran, his feet slapping the earth, cobwebs catching his skin, snagging his hair, branches slapping his chest, cutting his skin. He was bleeding; he could feel his own warm blood on his chest, his arms, his face. The trees moved in a rhythm that matched his heart, the pulsing of his blood. Finally, his chest burning, Thomas came to a bramble of thick, close branches, with thorns that pricked and drew more blood. He cupped one hand over his genitals and pushed his way through the bramble into an open glade. He stood still, panting and bleeding, the warm air tingling his skin. He could still smell the cinnamon of the altar incense, the aroma of the cauldron, the body of the priestess. She stood in the middle of the glade, Aradia, the Goddess, and soon everything, every smell, every echoing touch, was gone: only the Goddess remained. He was Thomas, he was Herne, the Horned God, and he took her there in the tall grass, the earth, the moonlight and the starlight.

 

The first witch Thomas met was Donald, the roommate with whom Thomas shared a North Raleigh apartment. He had met Donald at the Central Carolina Bank, after reading a note on a bulletin board advertising for a roommate. Donald was from a small mountain hollow deep in the Smokies and he was different from anybody Thomas had ever met. Donald spoke differently, moved differently, and he even smelled differently. A faint touch of spice, of cinnamon, sometimes clove, lingered in any room in the apartment after Donald had been there.

Thomas learned Donald was a witch the second day after he had moved in. He came home after work and walked into an aromatic spicy cloud. The odor led him back to Donald’s room where he found his roommate busily arranging things on a small table covered with a midnight-blue cloth. Incense burned on the dresser and the night table. Thomas stood behind Donald, watching as the other man took two white candles out of a leather bag and set one on either side of a curiously carved silver cup. Then he pulled out a silver disk inscribed with a five-pointed star and placed it before the cup.

“What are you doing? What’s all this stuff?” Thomas asked as Donald next pulled out two knives from the bag, one black-handled, the other white-handled.

“Setting up the altar,” Donald said, sounding surprised. He laid the two knives on the table and turned to face Thomas. “You really don’t know?”

“Altar? Know what? Are you in some sort of weird cult?” Thomas asked and sat down on Donald’s bed.

Donald pulled out of his bag a slender stick of light-colored wood. “You really don’t know? I don’t believe it. When we first met, when we shook hands, I could feel you’d been around magic. The stuff is all over you; your aura is so charged with magic that you glow. You’re pulling my leg, right? This,” Donald said and waved his stick at the table, “is a Wiccan personal altar. This stick is a wand. I’m a Wiccan, a witch. Aren’t you?”

Thomas shook his head. “The closest I’ve ever come to magic was Dungeons and Dragons in high school and college. And I quit playing because it was just a game; it wasn’t real. All this is the real stuff? Are you crazy or what?”

Donald said nothing for a long moment. Then he tucked his dark hair behind his ears and took two small, silver bowls out of his bag. “You’ve been near magic for a very long time; you didn’t know it, but you have been near it. And I’m not crazy and this is real. I’ll prove it to you. My coven meets tonight. Come with me. Hey, you’ve got nothing to lose, right? And everybody’s naked,” Donald added, grinning.

“Everybody?”

“Everybody.”

Thomas shrugged. What did he have to lose? Hanging out with naked women couldn’t be so bad, now, could it? And if this was real—well. Thomas had liked playing Dungeons and Dragons the most when he was the gamemaster, when he was the one telling the others what to do and when and where to do it. It had been the power Thomas had liked the most. But it wasn’t real; it was only a game. Thomas wanted real power, power he could touch, move, taste. He wanted to be filled with power. He wanted never again to be as powerless as he had been when he had lived with his mother. And as for the magic Thomas was supposed to have been near—what was Donald talking about? His aura glowed with magic? And why did all this make him think of Valeria, the long-gone wife of his father’s best friend, Ben. Valeria? Power? Maybe going to Donald’s coven could help him figure it all out.

Donald’s coven met in a large, open room at the NC State McKimmon Center. Thomas was amazed. “You mean the university lets witches meet on campus?” he whispered to Donald as they entered the building.

“Sure. They have to. Freedom of religion, you know. State university, paid for by public funds. Other religious groups meet on campus. C’mon, I want you to meet some people, then I’ll show you where to leave your clothes.”

Donald introduced Thomas to an engineering professor, her husband, and their teenaged daughter and son. An English professor who wrote poetry. Two graduate students in crop science, who were working on a joint dissertation on the effects of the moon on the growing season of corn. A couple of undergraduates—one from Durham, the other from Salisbury.

“Everybody here seems so—so normal, Don,” Thomas said, still whispering as they undressed in a smaller side room. Donald stepped out of his underwear and laughed.

“What did you expect? Old men and women with warts on their noses?”

“Well, yeah,” Thomas said. “I did.”

“There are a few of those back home in the hills. Not too many here in Raleigh,” Donald said, laughing. “C’mon.”

All the ritual Thomas had expected and wanted was there: the incense, the cauldron, flickering candles everywhere, and naked bodies. But something was missing, something he had wanted—yes, there was power, of a sorts, but it, it—it just didn’t.

“Do you understand, Don? The coven lacked something I expected. It’s all real, just like you said, but, still. I don’t know; I don’t think I am making sense,” Thomas said the next morning as he spooned more sugar into his coffee. He liked it with lots of sugar and lots of milk.

Donald didn’t say anything as he stared hard at Thomas. The pause grew even longer as he scraped butter across his pumpernickel bagel. He finally spoke, “I think I know what you are talking about. We’re Brethren of the Right-Hand Path, practitioners of theurgy; you’re looking for the Brethren of the Left-Hand Path, goetia.”

“What?” Thomas said, trying to sound casual, but he understood what Donald was saying. He knew what Donald was going to say. He could feel the next words coming, almost as if they were hovering next to his ear.

“I’m a White Witch. You’re looking for Black Witches.”

Donald refused to help Thomas find a black coven, insisting there were none in Raleigh or anywhere in Wake County. Thomas knew he was lying. Donald finally moved out and Thomas started looking for himself. First in libraries and bookstores for anything and everything on witchcraft, the occult, astrology, necromancy, Satanism, demonology, ceremonial magic, invocations, conjurations, planetary magic, spell casting and the making of charms, talismans, and amulets, curses, candles, and all forms of divination. He exhausted the Cameron Village branch of the Wake County Library quickly, but Walden’s and B. Dalton’s seemed to have an endless supply: The Modern Witch’s Spellbook, Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, The Complete Book of Spells, Ceremonies, & Magic. Gardner, Crowley, Nostradamus.

“Can’t keep ’em on the shelves,” the manager at the Crabtree Valley B. Dalton’s told him. “People can’t just get enough of this occult stuff.”

Thomas understood. He gave up the North Raleigh Wake Forest Road apartment and found a tiny studio downtown, in Boylan Heights and read and read and read, black candles burning all around him. He was close; Thomas knew that, but not close enough.

His father tried to stop him.

“Tom, Tom, what is all this? All these books, these candles, and the place reeks. What are you doing?” Jack Ruggles had said, picking up and putting down the various things on Thomas’s altar. “This is witchcraft. Are you crazy? Your apartment feels bad, son—this isn’t dabbling in love charms. Son, you’ve got to stop, before it’s too late. Why are you doing this?”

Thomas looked coldly at his father from behind his altar, his books on the occult in disordered stacks behind him. There was little else in the apartment: his bed stuck in one corner beneath a window, the kitchen nook, the bathroom next to that. One couch, a chair, another table, and shelves. Thomas had built two walls of shelves for his books and the herbs and stones and dried flowers he was accumulating. “Do you think my mortal soul is in danger?”

Jack laid down the pentacle and looked at his son. “Yes, I do. I think your soul is in danger. You have absolutely no idea what you are playing with here—”

“I’m not playing; I’m serious.”

“You have no idea. This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons, Tom. This is real. Magic is real—”

“Oh, and how do you know? What secrets have you been hiding from me? Tell me.” He waited, counting off seconds in his head, one one thousand, two two thousand, one full minute. “I knew you wouldn’t; keep little Thomas in the dark. Well, it’s in the dark I’m looking. I need this,” he said and gestured to include everything in his apartment. “I need—I want all that this means. I won’t be weak or afraid anymore. Nobody will be able to hurt me ever again. You left me, Dad, with Mama when I was thirteen. You let her take me, that crazy woman.”

“I lost the custody fight, Thomas. You know that. And you got to come home in the summer—”

“Just for a few weeks out of three long, long years. You didn’t try hard enough,” Thomas said, enjoying the pain in his father’s face.

“By the time she finally offed herself, I had lived with her for three years. Three fucking years. Don’t tell me about all the different lawyers you tried. That you got me therapy after Mama’s suicide. Don’t tell me anything. Get out.”

Thomas hadn’t spoken to his father since.

It was only a few weeks later, one Saturday morning, that Thomas met a sister of the Left-Hand Path. He was browsing in the New Age Bookstore at Little Five Points. Except for the clerk at the register, the store was empty. Behind the clerk were crystals and gemstones, stones for healing and charms. Trays with amethysts for protection from sickness and danger, iolite to deflect hexes, garnets to increase endurance and vigor. Rose quartz to stimulate love, promote fidelity. Blue topazes to enhance sexual energy. Citrine, peridot, moonstones. Then candles, candles, candles, and more candles. Lemon-scented, rose, jasmine, ginger. Rings, charms, amulets. Runes. Books of spells, divination, Celtic lore and magic, yoga, shamanic magic, but none, to Thomas’s sharp disappointment, on black magic. He was leafing through a Tarot guide and didn’t look up when the door opened and closed, the door chimes ringing.

“This is the book you need to read now,” someone said, and Thomas looked up, startled, at the small, fair woman who stood there and the book she was holding out to him. Her hair was silver-white and her eyes—almost a white-blue. But young, Thomas thought, despite the hair, young, maybe his age. “This is The Gospel of the Witches. It’s what you’re looking for. I came here this morning knowing I would meet someone like you. Your aura is charged with magic; I felt you a mile away. You won’t need that Tarot book.”

“You felt me, here, and came to give me this book?”

“Yes. Now take it, I promise you won’t regret it,” she said.

Thomas reached for the book and when he touched it, his body shook, as if he had a sudden, quick fever.

“Read the book and then call the number written on the inside cover.

Thomas nodded, hugging the book to his chest, holding himself to keep from shaking, from crying out. The small woman nodded, touched his arm briefly—a sudden quick shock of current—and left the store.

 

When Thomas woke up the morning after Beltaine he didn’t know where he was or what had happened. Everything around him seemed unfamiliar, brand new and unknown. He closed his eyes, reopened them, and looked again: he was in his own apartment, he was in his own bed. How did he get here? He had been in the forest, around the fire and the cauldron. The others had been there as well, and the priestess, and he and she, and the others—

Thomas got out of bed and stood up. He was still naked except for the binding cord, but his body was different. Scratches, cuts, bruises, dirt, and dried blood were all over his legs, his torso, his arms. There was dried blood and dirt on the sheets in his bed.

Everything had really happened. And not just fucking the priestess in the woods. The others—men and women, fucking, being fucked, mouths, hands—God, it was no wonder his dick and his ass were so sore. Thomas went into the bathroom and stared into the medicine cabinet mirror. His eyes—they were different, weren’t they? Yes, darker and redder. And just barely visible, at the edges of his skin, a shimmering, a flicker like a candle flame in wind, his aura? He was hard again and his skin was flushed, warm. He touched himself—a crackling of electricity—and his entire body shuddered in a sudden orgasm. For a long moment, he leaned into the mirror, breathing hard, his hands pressing into the wall. Finally Thomas stepped into the shower, not caring if the cuts and scratches stung from the hot water. He soaped and rinsed, soaped and rinsed, soaped and rinsed, with one thought a litany in his head: I have tasted real power.

His mother had been crazy, but still the judge had given her custody over his father. How could the judge do that? Because he had power. He just had to slap that gavel on wood and everybody had to do just what he said. Thomas’s father had cried out when the judge read his decision: no, no, no, nooooooooooo. But the judge had ordered Jack Ruggles to be silent and Thomas had watched his father be silent. Thomas’s mother had the same power and control over Thomas the judge had. She made all the rules and all the consequences for breaking them and she changed the rules and the consequences whenever she felt like it. Sometimes being late from school meant no TV. Or sweeping a sidewalk with a whiskbroom. Or sitting perfectly still for hours—any movement meant the time had to start all over again. Thomas ran away, once, twice, three times. The mother the police met was someone he only saw in public: sweet, charming, beautiful, oozing sex. Sometimes he had to do that for her, too. There were other games—the ones with sex and death as the prize, with ropes, with chairs, a tree in the backyard, and Thomas touching her, the rope on her neck until the last possible minute—

God, how he hated her. He hated even more being weak, defenseless, afraid.

Thomas watched her die. He was sixteen and finally taller and stronger and she played the death-and-sex game one last time, a game she hadn’t played in over a year, and he let her die. He watched her die hanging from the tree. It was the first time he had ever won the game—that he had ever had enough power. And it tasted sweet and sharp and with a bitter tang and it filled him up, making him hard and strong and powerful.

Finally Thomas cut off the water and stepped out of the tub and wrapped himself in a towel. He stared in the mirror again: yes, his eyes were darker and redder—the iris—not his cornea. His aura still burned in a faint, cold flame around him. I am a black witch. I can do magic, cast spells, incantations.

He went and dug out The Gospel of the Witches from a stack near his bed. Thomas opened the book to a place he had marked some time ago and sat down on his bed to reread the passage he had highlighted in bright blue. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand: half-past ten. Thomas shrugged; he would call in sick in a little while; tell his supervisor he had turned off his alarm. Something. Ah, yes. It was all so clear. The passage Thomas reread was an allegory of some kind and a prophecy, or so the priestess had told him. Of what, no one had yet been able to figure out, although sign after sign was being fulfilled: the return of magic, increased worship of the horned god and the goddess, the manifestation of power. The Change was near; its fulcrum had taken human form. If Thomas could control the fulcrum, well, now ...

The Chamber of the Dodecagon, The Library Tower, The White City, Faerie

Larissa, the Second arrived at the council chambers first, wanting to be alone before the others arrived. There was nothing special the Second wanted to do there; she just wanted to sit in the ancient, long-unused room and be quiet. She knew that when all the others came, this sweet, calm aether, free of crackling auric energy, thoughts, needs, worries, fears, would be gone, and she would be surrounded by a maelstrom. She rubbed the palm of her hand over the table. It was as smooth as ever, polished and oiled. How many years had it been since anyone had sat at this table, sat in this room? Since before the War, of course. But longer than that, she thought, before the Great Revolt, and even before that. The air was so empty of presence—just the indistinct echoes of long-gone ghosts. The room was small, and there was just enough space for the twelve-sided table and twelve chairs, the thick, blue carpet covering the stone floor, and a smaller table by the window. How many times, she wondered, had the magic holding the white stones together been renewed? Or whose hands had made the door out of a blond-colored wood? The door was plain and unadorned and its surface was unbroken by any window. Outside she could see the roofs of the city and the city walls, and just barely, a flicker of sunlight on the sea. But she could smell the sea and the salt, and hear the gulls.

Once, millennia ago, the Council of the Twelve, the Dodecagon, had met in the city that shared its name, the capital. But this was the Third Era and that city and its fair and green continent was long beneath the sea. She supposed the librarians came to this old reading room, to polish the table, oil the wood, sweep the stones, beat the carpet. Did anyone still come here to just read? She had chosen the room because of a dream, of everyone standing at the table. The Second shook her head; it was as good a reason as any. After all, dreams were real, they revealed and explained the second life that everyone lived beneath their waking lives.

May the Good God and the Goddess be with us. The Second had seen the other councilors praying in the Temple of the Three before she had gone into the library. She lifted her right hand in the Sign of the Three, remembering her mother had told her that to make the sign was to say a little prayer with your hands. She then lifted her left hand to make the sign of the Four Teachers, another nonverbal prayer. Today, someone will suggest I take the chair, the Prime Mover’s seat, Valeria is never coming back. It’s been too long. You are the Prime Mover in all but name. We are twelve again. Larissa knew the someone would be right. But—not yet. I don’t want to officially make her dead just yet.

The door opened then, and another councilor came into the room, smiled at her and sat down at the table. The door opened again and again, and by ones and twos, the rest of the Dodecagon came in and took their seats, until nine chairs were filled. Larissa was not surprised at whom the tenth was; even after much practice, stairs were hard for the four-footed, and the ramps took twice as long. His hooves clip-clopped on the last flight of stairs and then were muffled on the blue carpet. He stood at his place at the table, his arms across his chest, his tail lazily swishing back and forth.

Now the room was bright and the gloom of disuse that had depressed Larissa was gone. Auras shimmered and sparkled, winking in and out of sight. It was as if someone had hung a faceted jewel in a window and the reflected light was splashing the room in pale blues, pinks, greens, yellows, golds, reds. The Second ran her fingers through her grey-streaked hair and her own aura glowed brighter, a rich purple flame. Violet shadows played around her. It was time, she thought, and stood.

“The Dodecagon is in session. Who speaks for the swimmers?” she asked.

The centaur raised his hand.

“For the dolphins?”

The councilor to the centaur’s left raised her hand. A leaf dropped to the table. She brushed it aside and raised her hand again. The second leaf was ignored.

“We are all here, then, the Firstborn,” the Second said and nodded to the five at her left. “The Secondborn and the Thirdborn.” She nodded to the four at her right. “We are in common accord; we have reached consensus. The Straight Road must be reopened; those of our blood must be awakened; they must be called home.” She waited as the others nodded and murmured their agreement. All the councilors then joined hands, making a living circle, making the Dodecagon.

“Then, let us begin. In the Names of the Good God and the Goddess. In the Names of the Three, Triton, Pan, and Oberon. The Four Teachers: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.”

For a moment there was nothing, but the sound of people breathing. Then each individual aura grew brighter and brighter, turning the room into the inside of a kaleidoscope, the interior of a rainbow, the colors bouncing off each other, merging, reforming. Blue flame-tongues coursed down the Second’s arms and then, with a quick rush, around the circle, consuming each aura, until everyone and everything in the room burned with the blue fire.

Benjamin Paul Tyson’s journal, Wednesday morning, 1 May 1991

I don’t have to be at the library until noon and I am on my second cup of coffee. There is a stack of books for me to look through and recommend to acquisitions—science fiction, fantasy, mostly. Somebody has to, Mrs. Carmichael had said, so you do it, Ben, dear. I used to wrap them in brown paper books; I mean, it’s science fiction—and fantasy. Emma always told me I was rotting my brain ...

Never mind.

I’m rambling and I need to write this down so I can make sense of it all and remember. Writing, for me, is thinking, a way of giving my thoughts shapes and form. And by articulating them I can know them and understand, be conscious of the meanings I am trying to make.

 

Malachi is still asleep. I didn’t wake him up this morning to catch the bus; I waved it on. My boy needs to sleep; school can wait. And some - how it was a comfort this morning to know he was down the hall, as I shaved, showered, ate, read the paper. I could get up and open the door and there he was—and there he is—asleep, on his back, one hand by his head, the other across his chest. My Gorgon son, with snakes of light rippling through his hair. And sparks popping and crackling off his finger tips, a few of them floating like glowing thistle - down in the air.

Valeria slept the same way—with the light-snakes weaving in and out of her fair hair, little bubbles oozing out to float away. I used to lie there and pop the floaters, making a little shower of glowing fairy dust. She said most fairies manifested light when they slept: children all the time, adults the deeper the sleep and the farther they traveled from the conscious mind.

When Malachi woke me last night, he looked just like his mother. And I knew he had been flying, as I always knew she had been. The luminosity was there, plain and visible, layers of light like more layers of skin, sparking, crackling. A cool white, auric fire.

And I remembered when she took me flying with her—

“Dad? Wake up, Dad; I’m home,” he said and touched me and I jumped awake, from the shock. “Dad? Why are you mad at me? Dad?”

I rubbed my eyes awake and sat up and hugged him hard. “Mal, I’m not mad at you; I’m scared. I made myself believe this would never happen—and here it is happening. Just look at you.”

“But what is happening?” Malachi asked, his voice muffled against my chest. Then he pulled back and waved with his arms, throwing light around the room. “Why can I do this? Why can I fly? Why am I magic? Am I a fairy?”

“Yes, you are a fairy—half-fairy, and that’s why you are magic. That’s why you can fly.”

“But doesn’t fairy mean something else? I heard some boys at school making jokes about fairies.”

That question. He’s just ten. Valeria said he would start puberty at about ten, early for a human, but it would last longer than for a human. As for sexuality, we didn’t talk much about that, but she seemed surprised. we worried about it so much. People are people, love is love, flesh is flesh. What did it matter? I remember trying to explain why it mattered so much to some people, but I don’t think I got her to understand.

I think I got Malachi to understand, but I’m not sure.

“Some people. use fairy to mean something else, to mean gay—to mean people who fall in love with people who are the same sex.”

“Are fairies like those people? Is being a fairy—a human fairy—a bad thing? The way those boys were talking it was.”

“Some are. That doesn’t mean you are and it doesn’t mean you aren’t. And, no, it’s not a bad thing, those boys are wrong. There are people. like them who do think so, but they are wrong, too.” Please don’t ask me any more questions.

“When will I know?” Malachi asked, yawning.

I sighed, and gave him the only answer I could think of. “When you fall in love, you’ll know. But don’t worry about that. Right now I need to tell you a story,” I said, “about your mother.”

 

Malachi fell asleep. I will have to finish the story later.

I am going to have to take him to Faerie. I can’t teach him how to handle this, use what his genes gave him. God help me. I have no idea how to get him there. Not yet, anyway.

 

May 1, 1991
The News and Observer

Early Halloween in Raleigh?

If the calendar didn’t say yesterday was the last day of April, Raleigh police would have sworn it was the last day of October instead. Police report a rash of minor vandalism, fires without permits, indecent exposure, and drunk driving throughout the city. The Wake County Sheriff’s department, and other municipalities, including Cary, Fuquay-Varina, and Wake Forest, all reported similar incidents. According to Raleigh police sergeant Malcolm Stone, the vandalism reported seemed to be on the order of pranks usually perpetrated at Halloween: mailboxes blown up by firecrackers, eggs on doorsteps, and so on.

 

“Maybe it’s spring fever. There just seemed to be something in the air last night. A whole crowd of folks at Bennigan’s, over on Six Forks, just took off their clothes. And some of them hadn’t even been drinking,” the sergeant said.

 

Stone had no comment on the more serious acts of vandalism reported in Clemmons State Forest and Umstead State Park. Park rangers found evidence of large bonfires... Stone did say NCSU campus police prevented a bonfire in the Brick Yard....