Jillian’s family was a bunch of nature-loving nudists pretending to be normal. Like werewolves, on certain nights they stripped down to the cashmere of skin and spun in circles; arms raised, mouths flung wide. They chanted made-up words jumbled together from decaying novels and sang them like they meant something. It was a sweet noise. Pleasant and absurd, too many altos. Jillian partook when they made her, grumbling her way through ceremony after ceremony, petulant and quiet.
It never made sense to her; spitting water and rocks, lighting incense and breathing it in like love, feeling “free” and “pure” and powerful because they were “sucking strength from the moon, Baby, the moon!” It was hippie bullshit that no one else in her school had found even remotely understandable. She started feeling an envious burn in her sternum when kids in social studies lamented their woes of rising early for mass or having to pray before bedtime. She wanted her family to be right, she wanted what they said to be true, but every Sabbat, turning “deosil” or clockwise, skyclad and cold with her mother and cousins, she never felt what they did or saw what they swore was in the air. That trickling warmth of honey-scented dust that the coven thought saturated the meadow when they lit the Beltane bonfires. It was absent for her. The velvet stroke of security, the brush of a deity’s fingers. None of it was real.
Yet here she was.
The train station was crowded with gray commuters in pinstriped skirts and dark umbrellas and Jillian wiped her sweating hands on the insides of her sleeves. She could hear the violent winds pounding on the walls of the lobby. Every time one of the automatic doors swished open torrential rains poured in and pushed the waiting travelers backwards; a giant hand. Poking her ear buds further into her ears, she started keeping time by tapping her heel on the tiled floor. Her backpack was heavy, dangling over one shoulder, packed to the brim with religious paraphernalia that would make those wary of the occult piss themselves dry.
Her mother claimed a “better safe than sorry, Darling” attitude when meeting a new coven, not that her mother had changed groups in the last twenty-plus years, so Jillian had brought everything they might possibly need for an altar. She had the cauldron, the dagger, the incense, the salt, eight candles (all white), a bottle of river water, a statue of Bast, the wand her mother had given her as a goodbye gift, and her best gown.
She had waited two hours after her roommate fell asleep to pack it all the night before, dragging her trunk out from under her dorm bed and loading her bag as if she were a criminal. She tended to keep the Wiccan side of herself a secret. Despite her parents’ belief that a liberal college would embrace her practices, she was pretty sure no one would think having a witch for a roommate was cool. More likely they would think she was mentally unstable and stop inviting her to club parties. Grinding bodies and the white noise of thumping techno felt close enough to certain rites she’d attended as a child that it was just as religious as traveling sixty miles to meet a strange coven seeking new members. Sure.
She would have to keep telling herself that this was not a weird thing to be doing. Normal as pie, normal as pie, she repeated. When they announced her train was now boarding she sprinted towards the gate and took a seat in the middle of the emptiest car. She watched it steadily fill around her and made a silent plea to anything listening that no one would sit beside her, no one would talk to her, ask her where she was headed, or why. Taking a vial of sandalwood oil out of her purse, Jillian rubbed it into her wrist, feeling it seep into her blood, hoping the comforting smell of home would relax her, and maybe scare people away. It was potent, like diesel fuel, and some people would get a headache from it while she had developed a solid tolerance.
When the train started moving she sighed in relief and pulled her backpack to rest on the faded blue space beside her to discourage any latecomers from asking to be her seat-buddy. She turned the volume up on her mp3 player, swaying her head with the alternative rock bliss she favored and pulled her witches’ diary onto her lap, flipping through thin, browning pages. It was encased in leather and sported a gold trim, sun and earth, the yellowed paper made the ink read like dried blood that would crinkle and chip, falling off the page under a fingernail or knife. It was her high school graduation present; her mother hoped she would practice more once she had the freedom to choose to do so. Choice being such a lovely, sweet pretense.
“College will be amazing sweetheart, you’ll see. Oh and when you find your own coven, meeting new people; it’ll be fantastic! You’ll have to give me all the details. I’d love to see how a city coven operates, I wonder if they have to wear clothes, oh wouldn’t that be so, just, uncomfortable?” Jillian nodded absentmindedly and turned her eyes back to whatever novel she had been escaping into at the time.
When she got accepted into some small, country universities she almost took one of the offers out of spite. There were bound to be no Wiccans in Ohio or Iowa, and they wouldn’t be popular in most red states. She could escape the madness of her family’s religion and pretend to be an atheist, or someone with one god. Single gods must seem to be more trustworthy, she thought. They could not gang up on you. You could watch a god with your left eye and the road with your right, but then you run out of spare eyes if a god should have a spouse or a partner or a gay lover, all manner of relationships. She admitted to being the tiniest bit bitter about the way her family’s deities were perceived. Jillian ended up going for the city anyway. Boston had everything she wanted; a good chemistry program, outdoorsy places to lie in the sun, busy shops to keep her interest, plenty of clubs and places to eat. Surely being here was worth at least one try with the nearest coven to please her mother.
She started rereading the notes she had scrawled about magical aromatherapy, memorizing the uses for aromas like saffron, juniper, deerstongue, and lemongrass when she felt someone watching her. She looked at the seat across the aisle but the woman and her little girl were sucked into some electronic game they were sharing. She peeked over her shoulder. No one was paying her any attention. Turning back around in her seat, she saw him.
He was sitting a few rows in front of her, in a seat facing her direction. When he caught her looking he glanced sharply down at his phone, which he had lying limply in his hands on his lap. Jillian wondered if he was curious about the leather book, or if maybe he was checking her out. She was no troll, she knew that at least. Constantly being encouraged to dance naked with the rest of her family made her body image an important issue. Jillian had always been eager to keep her form in prime shape so that maybe she would feel less embarrassed about the whole skyclad business. She ran on the treadmill in their basement so much during high school that she started calling it Frank and spoke to it like a running partner who was going too fast. She had found a new treadmill at her collegiate gym and she felt sorry for cheating on Frank, but she named this one Francis and that seemed to help.
He might be looking at her for any number of reasons, but she preferred to think he was admiring her beauty. He was pretty sweet looking himself, with black, ruffled hair and a wide mouth, although his posture was a bit awkward and slumpy for her tastes.
Feeling brave and maybe a bit empowered by the fact she was heading to an unknown place to meet people she’d never directly spoken to (how audacious she was!), she willed him to look up. To match her gaze and give her a wink or a nod or a smile; she was a sucker for male attention, there was something addictive about it, like chocolate covered coffee beans.
When he finally looked back at her she smiled at him and he answered it. His neck turned a sly shade of salmon and he darted his gaze back down. Maybe he was a year younger than her, or maybe the color in his face gave him a boyish charm, but despite those things, or maybe because of them, she found herself momentarily smitten. On a whim, with a spark of daring, she opened up her book of spells and notes once more and thumbed through the pages until she found her section of attraction and love spells (that she had scribbled down one sad night when she got stood up by a jerk named Zachery when he found out her family’s Halloween traditions).
She browsed through the rhymes, knowing that these things never worked for her, but feeling a foolish giddiness, letting her inner child believe that words spoken in whispers could make things happen.
Focusing her sight on his hair and the tilt of his downward-facing head, she put on mental blinders, seeing him through a tunnel. She licked her lips and took a deep breath, picturing pink and red strands of light, like ribbons, snake out of the fingers of her right hands and drift lazily through the train car, wrapping around him, caressing him gently.
“By my will and moon and sun, my thoughts and actions be as one. Air and Earth, Fire and Sea, as I will so mode it be. Bring this boy’s desire to me. Love empowered, lust endowed, shower his attention on me. Let him neither break nor rest until he grants me this request.” Dark spots started spinning in her vision and she felt a moment of lightheadedness. She must have been staring a little too hard.
She watched the boy look up at her once more and she held her breath. He looked paler than she thought he had a moment ago. He nervously glanced from side to side and she was sure he was about to stand up and walk over to her seat, ask to sit down, and then request that she accompany him on a romantic dinner for two. The whole fantasy painted itself before her eyes. Beautiful pinks and blue starry nights. That was when he threw up.
Leaning into the aisle, with one hand on his stomach and one gripping the seat’s edge for support, he retched onto the floor. The sound made Jillian jump and people rapidly scrambled away from him or covered their mouths.
Jillian felt dizzy and wiped her forehead. There was no way she was the cause of that. He must have been looking at her while glancing around for a bathroom. Maybe he ate something bad just before the train ride. A conductor was now jogging down the aisle to get to him, a roll of paper towels and some bleach in hand. She got up before the boy could look for her and traveled to the next car, her breathing labored.
Jillian’s hand was shaking when she handed her ticket to another conductor and when he asked her where she was headed, a sign of pure polite interest she was sure, she broke out in a fresh sweat.
“Lowell,” she answered. He punched a hole in her ticket and handed it back to her.
“Here ya go, Miss.” As he headed into the next car she sighed in liberation, wondering if the boy had stopped vomiting yet. She spent the rest of the ride clenching her diary in cold, sweating hands and watching the trees and fences and walls pass the train windows with blinding speed, making her nauseous. But she dared not look away.
After forty minutes in the same stiff pose her neck began to cramp and her feet were numb. A crisp, electronic voice announced their arrival at the Lowell station. When she stood the blood rushed through her body and made walking into a drunken mess. She wobbled out of the train as quickly as she could, eyes trained fiercely on the ground, hoping she would not see the boy and the accusing stare she imagined he would sport at her expense.
Not that he would know her intentions, or that she had anything to do with anything. Because she didn’t. Absolutely not. Besides, she had a sinking, indisputable feeling she would never see him again.
She shook her head a little and took the stairs from the platform two at a time to get onto the bus terminal. The concrete steps were cracked and dirty under her shoes as she attempted to avoid watery hollows and crevices filled with mud. Her first impression of Lowell was red. Brick roads, brick buildings, red cars and red paint stripes on walls. Pink graffiti on the train cars and on the sidewalks. A veritable warm and bloody feeling shrouded the entire street.
She had emailed one of the coven members, someone named Sandra who used a hotmail address called powersofmagickpath87, who said she would meet Jillian at bus terminal 4 to take her to the circle. She worried for a moment, as she scanned the dozen or so people lining the bus lane, that she wouldn’t recognize her and would wander aimlessly, drifting from suspicious traveler to the next like a pick-pocket. Spotting the woman ended up being easier than expected.
Sandra was draped with silver chains and pentacles and wore a flowing black dress with lace embellishments on the collar. In white it would have been a wedding dress. She had painted stars on her temples and her blonde hair was piled and twisted in an extravagant display. She seemed to glow.
No introduction was necessary. The woman spotted her and, with eyebrows raised in surprise, glided along the wet ground and was suddenly inches from Jillian’s face.
“You are going to fit lovely,” her smile was full of light, her emerald eyes iridescent.
Jillian smiled back, feeling small and fragile next to this woman who seemed so powerful in her skin. So bold and happy. A bus pulled up and Sandra spoke quietly to the driver as they stepped on board. Jillian pulled out her wallet and began counting quarters but Sandra grabbed her arm with soft fingers.
“It’s taken care of, sweetie. Markus knows us.” They sat towards the front and Jillian watched the brick buildings blur into an irresolute wall of red and yellow and brown. Her life seemed to be nothing but movement today, she thought. The streets were crowded with small groups of men and women, keeping to themselves, heads bent close, watching other groups warily through sideways glances. A bundle of teenagers sat on their stoops, counting passers-by as if cataloging them. A general sense of mistrust floated like fog above the sidewalks and busy roads.
“How long have you been with the coven?” Jillian asked after a few minutes, bracing herself against the window and the headrest of the seat in front of her as they flew over a large bump and her body rose several inches in the air. Sandra barely moved.
“Seven years now. I had a shot at high priestess you know. Turned it down though, too much drama and politics. Just like everywhere else, I guess. How long have you been practicing?” Her voice was energetic and sweet.
Jillian had to stop herself from rubbing her hands along her jeans to get rid of the sweat there. Every mile on the bus was another mile closer to this group of people she knew nothing about. Antsy pants, her mother would chide.
“Since I was born really. It was a family coven.”
“Ah, so you’re well-versed then! That’s excellent! Oh, here we go.”
Sandra winked at the bus driver, Markus apparently, as she led Jillian off the bus and into a small, densely populated neighborhood with scraggly trees and well-kept paint jobs.
“The circle is here?” Jillian pulled her backpack higher on her shoulder and realized that she had still been anticipating the deserted fields of home.
“Well, near here. We just have to go through a few yards. Grab a few people.” After looking at Jillian’s expressions she added, “Don’t worry sweetie, there are a lot of diverse neighborhoods here. Not all concrete and bricks, we’re heading somewhere a little closer to the earth. Just a minute.”
She walked straight up to a house with a bright orange paint job which burned Jillian’s eyes and rang a door-bell that sounded suspiciously like the theme from Beetlejuice. A woman with blue hair and two nose rings answered the door. Her face looked like it belonged on a 50’s pin-up girl. All sweet, white dimples. The curly blue hair somehow fit her.
“Sandra darling, blessed be. This is Jillian?” The woman said. Sandra nodded and hugged her, their smiles holding the sun, arms strong.
“Yes. Jillian, this is Arlene. She’s going to lead the circle today.”
Jillian shook her hand, which was cool and dry, unlike her own clammy, warm palms, and tried to give her best smile.
“You’re the high priestess?” Jillian asked.
“What? No! No, no, no, no, no. Thank you though. Do I really look that important?” She looked down at her light purple dress that swayed at her knees. “It’s the dress, right? I look gorgeous. Impressive, even?” She smiled.
“Oh, um, well of course, but it’s just that back home the high priestess leads the circle every Esbat.”
“The same woman leads the circle every week?” Arlene looked taken aback. “Doesn’t that get awfully tedious?”
Jillian shrugged, feeling out of place, and the discussion was dropped. Sandra, Arlene, and Jillian headed across the street and the same experience played itself over and over. Introductions, shaking hands, names she knew she would probably not remember for long. No one else had blue hair, and most of the other coven members looked normal. Not normal, blended, she thought. There were no visible tattoos of the moon goddess or crazily dyed hair or extraneous piercings. They headed into a nicer neighborhood with larger yards and high fences and Jillian wished she had worn more comfortable shoes. Her flats were covered in glitter and bows and had a small heel, despite the term “flat,” and were more form than function. She could feel a blister developing on the side of her foot.
After they had gathered four people plus Arlene, Sandra announced that the rest would meet them at the circle location. They walked down an empty street and Jillian could see a stretch of murky woods at the end of the drive. When they all climbed over a low guard-rail Jillian’s fears about her shoes were realized. Many members of the group were wearing boots under their dresses, none of which were floor-length except for Sandra’s which she clutched high around her waist.
“There’s a stream up ahead,” Sandra spoke to her quietly, “walk barefoot for now and you can wash them off there.” Jillian held her shoes in her hands and rolled up her jeans.
“Is there somewhere I can put on my dress? I didn’t want to mess it up in the city, since it was still drizzling.”
“Sure darling, when we get to the circle you can change nearby and I’ll make sure James and Gabe aren’t watching.”
“You have men in the coven?” The coven at home had been women-only. There was a separate coven for the men, and the two only ever comingled on special holidays.
“Only the two, and they are perfect gentlemen believe me. Although it was a big decision to let them in. We don’t dance butt-naked anymore, that’s for sure. Hence the gowns. It’s good you remembered to bring one. Now, come on honey move those legs!”
Normally Jillian wouldn’t appreciate the “sweetie” and “honey” business, but it suited Sandra perfectly. The woman radiated bubbles and sweets and seemed to pull energy from the air.
After they passed the stream the ground was solid and green. Leaves, grass, tree nuts and pinecones littered the floor like so much confetti after a rave. Sandra stayed back with Jillian and let her change into her dress when they had gotten close. Barefoot, but with her green gown on, glittered with small stars and lined with silver, she was reassured by a sense of ritual, with all its parts and pieces, being the same no matter where the ceremony would be.
The circle location was a small break in the trees, about thirty feet wide. People were chatting and mingling like they were attending a cocktail party, even though they were now all barefoot. Jillian took this time to offer Arlene any of the supplies that she had brought. The blue-haired sprite was impressed by her Bast statue as well as her wand, which had been encrusted with a small ruby, opal and amethyst, so they were chosen to be used.
When the others showed up the air of excitement grew. There were now twelve people. Jillian found it hard to convince herself that she didn’t, in some small part, miss this. The gathering, the sense of family among the members, the camaraderie. People were already setting up a food table for afterwards; two plastic crates with a solid slab of wood precariously balanced on top. Arlene began drawing most of a large circle using a container of salt, her feet sliding surely over the grass as if she were figure-skating. She left an opening about two-feet wide for people to enter and she clapped her hands over her head and announced “two minute warning, gird your loins!” Everyone laughed and certain members started assembling candles around the interior of the circle. Jillian was surprised they were using multiple colors, instead of the all-white or all-black set that her home coven favored. What else would be different, she worried.
“Hey, I’m Gabe.” The voice startled her and she jumped. She had been entranced by the soft swaying dance Arlene was perfecting along the edges of the circle, bending and touching the tips of her fingers to each candle. She was softly singing but Jillian couldn’t hear what it was.
“Um, hi. Jillian.” She shook his hand and noticed that he was wearing slacks and a button-up shirt (mostly unbuttoned), and his light brown hair matched the dusting of chest hair trailing in a thin line toward his navel. He was probably in his late twenties. A little too old for her. It was a shame.
“Well, you don’t expect Jim and me to be wearing dresses, do you?” Her eyes flashed to his face and she felt ashamed for so obviously scanning him up and down.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
“That’s alright. You new to this whole kind of thing?” Great, she thought, she was coming off like an anxious newbie.
“No. Um, actually I’ve been doing this all my life, just never in a city. I go to college in Boston and the Wiccan scene there is really…um, twisted.”
He laughed, and it was deep and throaty and for a moment she was struck by the timbre and how she could feel his voice echoed in the vibrations of the ground under her raspberry painted toenails.
“I have no problem believing that. I work near the city, but I don’t think it would be real over there, you know what I mean?”
“Where are you from?” Jillian couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Her brain had dissolved into cheese. Her pulse was racing. She couldn’t figure out why her body suddenly felt like ice.
“I’m from Lawrence. Had to take a train in. We’re all from local cities. Some commute more than others and it got a little tiring, so we shrank a bit. Hence the message board, which is where I’m assuming you found out we were looking. Are you here to try us on or will you just be watching?” He was twisting a ring on his middle finger. A gold dragon with sapphire eyes. Jillian watched it with avid attention, eyes locked. Was he twisting it out of nerves? Excitement?
“Oh I’ll be dancing. I’m not a spectator kind of girl.” She found herself feeding on his attention. Each time he looked at her she felt a little more sure. She could do this. She’d been doing it forever. Simple steps, simple rhythm, the glow of candlelight. She turned to look at Arlene in the circle, a spark in the air warning her that the time was now.
“Alright!” Arlene shouted, “Get in this hole with me!” A few members of the coven smiled and rolled their eyes and Jillian tried to picture how she would look after the rite, when members of her family would usually blaze euphoric and crave chocolate and wine. Arlene should be a hoot, she thought.
When everyone was in the circle, they spaced out evenly and Arlene closed the ring of salt. She took an antique lighter from a small pocket in her dress and lit the colored candles one by one, invoking spirits to watch over them. She lit a large cone of incense and the breeze carried the familiar sandalwood odor into Jillian’s nose. She let it fill her up.
Arlene’s blue hair looked green in the flickering candlelight as she called to the elements, raising her arms at the four corners of the circle, the four corners of their world, using a clear, rich voice that carried far beyond the trees that shrouded the group. The ritual began to blend and fade through Jillian’s vision and instinct and practice took over. She repeated sacred words with the rest of the group, chanting and singing and swaying. Her body warmed as it never had in the circle back home. Must be the clothes, she thought. She wasn’t used to the fabric saving her skin from moonlight and gazing looks.
Her cheeks felt flushed and her temples damp with sweat as she sang loudly the song of the goddess. Arlene’s voice carried through them all and Jillian imagined she could feel the light of the flames dancing behind them, in tune with their voices. She felt strokes of heat brush against her face and her upraised arms. Blanketed in warmth. Energy. Life.
This was new. This was incredible. It rushed into her lungs and made her chest expand, her throat held authority and her words were law. It was power. She looked around the circle and saw Gabe’s face, reflecting a euphoria that mirrored the rest of the group. Sandra seemed in bliss, her high voice a tinkling soprano. When the song changed beat Jillian was excited for the part to come. She held her arms forward, almost touching the hands of the others. Arlene was standing still in the middle and Jillian visualized the magic she was to send out into the world, through the high priestess. She imagined her energy to be a pure white, when usually she pictured it as green, but it was burning too hot, too powerful inside her to be anything but pure lightning. It came from her core, where it blazed and flew from her fingers, beams charitable to the ground and the moon and the people in the coven. This feeling was forever, she decided, and this would be her coven, her new family. The power erased any doubt.
Instead of feeling drained or even calm as the chanting quieted, arms lowered, she felt like she had swallowed all of creation. A rush unlike any other swept her from head to toe and she could run from here to Boston in ten seconds flat, or fly to the tops of the trees, or break buildings in two. She closed her eyes and imagined that her hair would be flying behind her in a wind of her own making. She could surely call the wind now.
A gasp sounded through the circle, and a faint crack was followed by a thump. A small scream. Jillian opened her eyes, knowing they must be blooming.
Half of the circle was on the floor. Arlene was lying in a heap in the center of the ring, her arms splayed away from her body, like she had been making a snow angel in the wet grass. Sandra and a few others were shakily getting to their feet, wobbling and trembling, their faces gray.
“I feel… I don’t feel well, you guys,” Sandra muttered, a hand to her head. She sat back down and Jillian heard the breath rush out of her. Arlene was stirring, but slowly. Everyone looked weak, Jillian thought. Not the glowing rapture that her family always seemed to experience. Then she noticed why there had been a scream. A few members were huddled around a body on the ground. She saw slacks and bare feet. Gabe. He was half outside the circle. As she moved to get a better look she saw that he had landed on the crates holding the snacks for after the ritual. The wooden board lay beside him. Blood seeped onto the ground in a lean stream. It looked like a red ponytail, but in the hazy yellow glow of what candles remained lit, it could have been mud. She told herself it was mud.
Sandra crawled closer to him and cradled Gabe’s head in her lap.
“I can’t do anything!” she shouted weakly a moment later, panic lacing her words. The other man in the group, James, tore off his shirt and bundled it under Gabe’s bleeding scalp.
“Sandra, come on, you can do this. You’re the best,” said James.
“No, I’m trying! I can’t feel anything, I have nothing left…” she shook and leaned to the side like she might fall but righted herself at the last moment, shaking her head free of invisible cobwebs. She placed her hand on Gabe’s chest and closed her eyes. Jillian caught snatches of a common healing rhyme that she had learned in middle school. Some spells were seen as universal.
When nothing seemed to happen she turned towards the group, eyes now searching the circle. Her eyes stopped on Jillian. “You. What did you do?”
All eyes were now on her. These weak, quivering people, half of them still on the floor, the others looking like they might join at any moment, watched her with dark eyes. What was happening, she wondered. Whatever it was, she could fix it. She could do anything. The rush hadn’t left her. If anything, it had grown. She could feel sparks at her fingertips, could feel her toes indenting the earth with the weight of so much feeling, so much vitality. The scene around her froze as she navigated the ins and outs of the night, looking for an answer.
Their energy, their power, magic, was gone. She had it. That was easy enough to figure out. But why? Why had she taken it? She hadn’t tried to. She had been giving, not taking. Giving. Not taking. She got the opposite of what she wanted. The boy from the train flashed into her mind, wide mouth twisted in a grimace before he leaned over into the aisle, clutching his stomach. She wanted him enamored. Was it possible he had been repulsed instead? So much so that he threw up? It felt like a stretch. And why now? Her mind was sizzling with all the moments she had said a spell, imagined magic and nothing happened at all. No opposite effect, no warmth, no ice. Her mother’s voice always explained away her lack of magic as “give it time dear, you’re a late bloomer that’s all. You just wait. You’ll be so different when it happens. You’ll feel different. You’ll see colors you never knew were there.” Jillian had waved her words away like the rest of the hippie mumbo-jumbo that she spouted post-circle, but maybe this time… maybe it was true.
Maybe she had magic. It was unfair that it suddenly seemed to be working against her, hurting the people she had to thank for getting her to be in this world again. This world she had missed without knowing it. She looked down at her foot, a small raised blister on its side, pink against her skin, courtesy of her fashionable shoes. Time started again.
“Jillian! Tell me what you did,” Sandra yelled again, gently placing Gabe’s head on the floor and getting to her feet, “you’re practically on fire. How did you do this to us?” She swayed but stood her ground. How was she going to fix this?
Testing her hypothesis she muttered a quick healing chant under her breath, picturing blue energy enveloping her foot, erasing the blister, easing the pain from her not-so-flat flats. “Deep in my blood, through tissue and bone, Goddess erase the ill that has been sown, heal me, heal me, heal me, as I will so mode it be.” The blister split open, ooze and blood dripping onto the ground. The pain intensified and suddenly it was like someone was digging a knife slowly into her flesh. She cried out and held her foot, blowing on it, now knowing what else to do.
It was true. She was doing the opposite. Her magic was doing the opposite. She gingerly placed her foot back on the ground and waited for the pain to recede. Sandra and the others were looking at her like she might be viably insane. She didn’t blame them.
“Jillian, answer me!” Sandra took a step forward. Jillian took one back and raised her hands.
“It’s okay, it’s okay I figured it out! Yes, I took your energy, but only because I was trying to give! I was trying to give a lot, because I felt it this time, and so I took more than you would normally give, but anyway, it’s like my foot! It’s okay. I can heal Gabe, I know I can.”
“You aren’t coming anywhere near him!” Sandra yelled.
“I can do this.” Jillian felt the power, warm and sweet, stretching itself through her limbs, like unfurling wings, and raised her arms, her eyes closed. She widened her stance, feeling the earth below her feet, the air twisting the strands of her hair, the water in the sky, the small fires still flickering in the night, the stars shining only for her. She thought of the harshest spell she knew. The one Wiccans kept only to balance all the healing and goodness they tried to spread every circle. Harm ye none, the rede said, but she knew this would do no harm. To heal she had to try to hurt. She was sure of it.
“Harm beget this foe, pain and loss to grow, bleed him, let his mind grow weak, body break and ––” A hand grabbed her arm with hard fingers, biting into her skin.
“Stop this!” cried Sandra.
Caught in the trance of her own power, Jillian could care less about this woman, who was more bug than human. She was standing in the way. Jillian would do this. The magic was starting already. She would not be interrupted.
She took a second to picture bright energy bringing Sandra closer, pulling her into Jillian’s embrace. Sandra flew backwards, her blond hair tangling itself around her eyes, her black dress dancing through the air. She landed ten or so feet away and Jillian could hear her heavy breathing as she tried and failed to use her last reserves of energy to get up once again.
Eyes locked on Gabe’s body, she continued.
“…body break and fail, be meek. Aching, anguish and torture thee. By my power I will thee ruin, as I will so mode it be.” She repeated the chant three times, red and black vines of energy wrapping around Gabe, pulsing with intent. He opened his eyes, and looked over at Sandra, who had begun to cry as she inched closer to him. She smiled through her watery face and wept into his neck. He raised a hand to cup her head through her hair. Jillian felt like an intruder.
Arlene was sitting up now, eyes wide, mouth thin and pale, having watched the whole thing with a quiet horror. She didn’t speak. No one did. The clearing was silent; the only sounds were Sandra’s sniffles. Jillian felt normal again. Most of the excess energy was gone, like it had never been. She hoped it was a dream, and she hoped it was real. She didn’t know what to hope.
It became obvious that they were scared of her now. They looked with gaunt faces, huddled together on the floor in small groups, as if against the cold.
Magic had always been a mystery to Jillian. Her parents flew under its influence like hallucinogenic mushrooms, their bodies on strings dropped by deities from the clouds. She had never understood the worship, the way that power could feel like love when you dressed it up right. She saw now why her mother would smile and sway her naked figure. Tonight had been like that for her. She would have stripped down into the cashmere of her skin, would have spit water and rocks and sang jumbled words from decaying novels for days. They did mean something. She would give almost anything for that feeling again, but the faces gazing fearfully at her glow moved her. She would not use magic again until she was sure she could control it. She didn’t know why her powers were backwards, she had no answers, but there had to be some way to get herself in order. She would ask her parents, read their books, call on any coven she could find. Until then, though she had found something lost here, she would not come back. Not until she understood herself, and not until she deserved it.
She found her wand on the grass near the altar and felt it hum in her hands in a way it never had before. Holding it tight in her cool, sweat-free fingers, she walked out of the circle and glided through the woods, speeding away from the people she had hurt, tasting the word “witch” in her mouth.
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Previously published in The Supernatural is Natural: A Collection of Stories, published through lulu.com, available for purchase here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/cassandra-mortimer/the-supernatural-is-natural-a-collection-of-stories/paperback/product-15345913.html
Cassandra Mortimer 