Ritual Reality
7 Innocence Lost
Saturday, 8 March 1969, Indianapolis City University
Wayne was puzzled. More than puzzled. He was a little pissed off. They were supposed to have a date. Judith canceled. She said she’d just started her period and felt crappy. Well, she’d certainly been acting crappy all week.
Not that he’d been great company to be around. There was all the excitement surrounding the cast being invited to England to perform, but people were just beginning to realize how much work was going to be involved. Wayne had to draw up plans for the set that the festival promised to replicate for them. They would take the props and costumes with them. Every prop and costume would have to be itemized for customs. Much of the work would be done while they were building and rehearsing Antigone. And Jim wanted to do that show with full masks. Carl, their technical consultant and designer, had already brought over a model of raked platforms for the set design. That was going to be a hassle to build, especially if Wayne was focused on mask-making.
Judith had walked with him to breakfast and classes, but had barely kissed him when they parted. In the evenings, he hadn’t seen her at all. He missed the gentle camaraderie as well as her enthusiastic loving. Well, loving without actually going all the way, Wayne reminded himself.
Damn it! It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t afford to fly to England with her for spring break. There was no way he could come up with that money and the money for the trip in June. Still… Maybe he should just do it anyway. He’d tell her he’d like to come with her and then let summer take care of itself.
Wayne shut down his motorcycle in the Donut World parking lot and headed inside. Lissa’s back was to him and he took a moment to appreciate her assets. Sometimes she didn’t look nearly as old as he thought she was. But, dammit, why was Judith being so standoffish after their beautiful time together last week. He’d never understand women.
“Why zee long face on my noble cavalier?” Lissa said without turning around. Wayne realized the back of the doughnut case was a mirror and she was watching him look at her rear. “Does monsieur not like what he sees?” So, this week she was a French courtesan? Unfortunately, Wayne’s French accent sounded exactly like his English accent.
“Oh, monsieur likes very much,” Wayne laughed. “But he is upset about his… how do you say?… mademoiselle.”
“Heere. Have café et un beignet and tell Madame Leeza all about it,” Lissa said, handing him a cup of coffee and creamers. She put his favorite old fashioned doughnuts next to the steamy drink.
“I don’t know, Lissa. I can’t seem to figure out what to do. I really love her and all, but we run hot and cold. At the moment, it looks like it’s cold.”
“Let me see if I can help,” she said as she reached across the counter and touched the charm beneath Wayne’s t-shirt. He stiffened slightly. “Relax and tell me what is really happening.”
Wayne kicked the motorcycle to life and felt its horsepower in his bloodstream. He was wide awake and knew exactly what he needed to do. He was careful driving down Shelby as there had been speed traps all along the way lately. He parked his bike at the dorm and ran in, scarcely acknowledging the monitor at the front desk. He ran to his room and grabbed his guitar. Everyone in the theatre played and sang, even though he was nowhere near as good as Glenn on the guitar. He knew the song he was going to play. He left by way of the back door. It was so weird that the women’s side door was alarmed, but the men’s wasn’t. He ran around the back of the dorm and counted the windows. Third down from the corner.
It was dark.
Wayne scrabbled around on the ground until he found a handful of pea-sized pebbles and started tossing them at the window eight feet overhead. Not too hard. He didn’t want to toss too hard and break anything, but he had to get them up there. The first pebble fell a foot short. He tossed the next one higher and it hit. Nothing happened. He kept tossing pebbles at the window, one after another, watching for a sign of life.
The curtain twitched.
Wayne dropped the pebbles and pulled his guitar around in front. The light didn’t come on, but the curtain moved again and the window slid open.
“What are you doing?” Judith whispered out the open window. Wayne answered in song.
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
He strummed. He couldn’t really do the riffs yet, but he’d learn them eventually. And he sang. He was no Paul McCartney, but it was such a simple, mournful tune that he didn’t need to be a great singer. The window opened wider and Judith leaned out over the edge. Wayne finished the song, “Oh I believe in yesterday,” and let the guitar trail of with a couple of hesitant chords. He stood there below her window looking up at Judith. She took a deep breath and he thought she was going to retreat.
“You idiot,” she said softly. He realized she was crying.
“I’m sorry, Judith.”
“How the hell are you going to get in here so I can fuck you senseless?”
“Stay right there! I’ll find a way,” he said. He spun back the way he’d come, then looked back. “Don’t go away!”
“Where would I go, you beautiful man?”
Wayne ran down to the end of the building and realized he hadn’t blocked the door open. It was locked tight.
“I need Glenn,” he whispered. “By all the powers that be, I need Glenn here, now!” Glenn’s window was on the third floor. There was no way to toss pebbles up that high.
A car careened around the corner into the parking lot and slid to a halt in the only remaining space. The door slammed and Wayne saw Glenn stumbling toward the side door. He ran to meet his friend.
“Wayne! Little buddy. I am so wasted. Can you get me into the dorm?”
“Glenn. Man! You shouldn’t be driving in this condition.”
“Couldn’t help it. I was there and bed was here. Damn! That was some good shit.”
“Amigo! I need your help. I need you to give me a boost into Judith’s room.”
“Sure… but what about me?”
“Jordan is at the front desk. He’ll never look twice.”
“Okay. But… I think I locked my keys in the car.”
“Here. Take mine. Crash in my room. But first come and give me a boost.”
“You’re a real friend, Wayne. Did I ever tell you that?”
A minute later they were back under Judith’s window.
“Are you still there?”
“I can’t go anywhere.”
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”
“Idiot. My hair is six inches long.”
“My buddy is six-and-a-half feet tall,” Wayne said as he stood up on Glenn’s shoulders. That got his chest above the window sill and Judith helped pull him into her room. He turned and waved to Glenn, who staggered off with Wayne’s guitar toward the dorm’s front entrance.
“Judith…” Wayne hesitated. He could feel his cock touching the moist warmth of her opening. “Honey… I’ve never actually done this before. Show me how to make love to you.”
“Oh, babe. You’ve got a good start. Just push forward slowly. If you don’t last the first time, I’ll make sure you have lots more opportunities.” Wayne slid into her, doing his best to hold back and worried that he would hurt her.
He didn’t disgrace himself, but didn’t last long enough to get Judith off the first time. The second was a different story. And the third.
“How did you know?” Judith whispered between kisses. They were naked in her narrow bed and he was sliding into her hot core again. Daylight was seeping through the curtains. “How did you know ‘Yesterday’ is my favorite Beatles song?”
“I just took a chance. Judith, I’ve missed you,” he panted. “I think I’ve fallen in love with you. I’m so sorry I can’t go with you next week.”
“Shh. Hush, baby. Just make me feel how much you love me.”
He pushed into her again and before long they were both convinced.
Thursday, 13 March 1969
The weekend together changed them. They weren’t swearing eternal faithfulness to each other, but holding hands as they crossed campus to class and stealing kisses in the shadows became second nature. And Judith began to open up to him about her life in England.
“I’m just going to buy a ticket and come with you. Hell with everything else,” he declared Thursday night. There hadn’t been a chance for a repeat of the events of the weekend and both were horny.
“You can’t do that. It was a bad idea in the first place. I have to take care of some business that would keep me away all night at least once.”
“Sounds like monkey-business. What keeps you out all night?”
“Darling, I belong to a group that meets just once every six or seven weeks. Lately, there have been no meetings and I’ve been here since September. I got a message that advised me to be present at the equinox. I don’t know how many others will be able to make it.”
“Do you always meet at celestial events?” Wayne asked. This reminded him of something in his uncle’s book. He couldn’t figure out why he could never recall things clearly when he talked to Judith. It was as if that part of his mind got shut off.
“You are a quick study, love, and so observant. We meet at a ‘cirque of druid stones upon a forlorn moor.’”
“I’d like to meet your friends someday.”
“Somehow, I have a premonition that you will.”
Friday, 14 March 1969
On Friday afternoon, Wayne borrowed Glenn’s car to drive Judith to the airport and see her off for the holiday. They walked into the terminal in near silence. Wayne thought she seemed totally preoccupied. Still, there was a sort of sadness in their parting that they couldn’t deny. They walked to the gate where Judith checked in and received a boarding pass. Wayne was staring down the hallway when she returned to him.
“Damn!” he said and quickly turned away from the hall and embraced Judith.
“What is this all about?” she asked.
“Dr. Allen’s coming down the hall,” Wayne said. “You know, the one whose classes I slept through all last term. I don’t ever want to meet her again.” Judith looked down the hall to confirm that it was the illustrious Dr. Rebecca Allen, chair of the Sociology Department. She was checking in for the same flight, carrying her ever-present walking stick.
“Wouldn’t you know it,” she echoed Wayne in his ear. “We’re going to be flying companions.” She mashed her lips against Wayne’s and kissed him passionately as Dr. Allen passed by.
When the boarding announcement came over the speakers, they finally broke the kiss.
“Well, I’d better go,” Judith said. “Goodbye, lover.” She kissed him soundly. “Don’t get too involved with your doughnut lady late at night. I’m only going to be gone a week.” She exited down the ramp and Wayne watched her cross the field to the plane.
He’d wait.
Judith settled down in a seat in the back of the plane and watched, unnoticed, as Dr. Allen boarded and sat in the bulkhead. If she was lucky they would not meet on this flight at least. She decided to change her ticket in Boston to avoid a meeting over the Atlantic. In the meantime, she reached for her bag and pulled out the letter she received three weeks earlier.
Swordmaster
The Hart is moving. I trust you will not miss the hunt.
Blessings light and dark, The Barber.
Beneath the cryptic signature was the sigil of the High Priest of Carles.
Judith shuddered. The information was certainly correct. The Hart sat just twenty rows ahead of her as they flew east from Indiana. Why would The Barber be so interested in having Judith back for the event? If anything, her less than open-armed treatment of him over the past two years had alienated him. But she had, after all, inadvertently started this stupid hunt. Still, he gave her the creeps, inside the circle and out. He had designs, all right; and an idea that every woman in the circle should be part of his private harem. Possibly the men, too. It disturbed her further that he knew where she was and how to reach her. She hadn’t even told her mother where she’d be.
She put the letter back in her bag and settled back to sleep as much as possible before she arrived in England.
Rebecca Allen was, indeed, journeying to the stone circle called Carles Castlerigg, but she had no intentions of calling the cildru, or coven members. She would talk to the High Priestess and have herself released from this task. Something malevolent hung in the air about the whole thing. Since Samhain, her rituals were disquieted, and there was the discreet warning to her, concealed as it was in a student’s term paper. She was sure that came from one of her coven sisters or brothers. After that, her Yule ritual had seemed empty, even as she acknowledged the end of the sun’s downward journey and its impending return. At Imbolc, when she attempted to truly raise power for the first time in fifteen years, she was answered with cold silence. Now she was only thirteen weeks from the required completion of her task and she was no further than when she began. Rebecca was going to her priestess to confess her impotence and to resign her task.
She fought back tears as the BOAC Boeing 707 jet soared above the Atlantic. Resigning a task of the circle was no simple matter of saying that she quit. For all her reluctance to raise power in her rituals, Rebecca had built a life around the simple pagan festivals into which she had been initiated when a young woman. They fed her with hope and faith. They supported her through a world of trials. And she believed them.
At one time, she had experienced massive surges of power, had called down fire, had healed, and had let that power control her in an unexpected sealing of her husband’s fate. She swore to herself that she would not raise that kind of power again. And now when she had need of it, she found that she could not raise the power.
On Oester evening, when dark and light were equal, she would walk as a solitary to the great stone circle. There, she would lay down her staff, her knife, her cup, and her pentacles. She would bring the one tool of Cobhan Carles that she did have, the Cup—Cottus, the Third Face of Carles—to the center of the circle and drain its salty water on the ground. She would remove her ritual robe, the robe of her quest, and lay it with the other artifacts. Last, she would lay the string, the measure of her height, heart, and head, marked with a drop of her own blood, in the center of the pile. And naked, as she had first entered the circle, she would leave through the great northern gate, never to return.
Rebecca wept silently, even in her sleep, until the jet landed in London.
Saturday, 15 March 1969, The Lake District, England
Judith slid the key into the latch of her cottage near Bassenthwaite Lake in Northern England. She had hoped to be home for Yule, but because of her unexpected attachment to Wayne Hamel, had spent the holiday in a cheap motel room waiting for the dormitories to re-open. She had to admit, it had been worth the wait, but it was still good to be home.
Her hand froze as the door moved unexpectedly, opening a crack. It was unlocked, and as Judith listened, she could hear voices coming from inside.
“This is my daughter’s cottage,” said the first. “She’s away, following her own quest. I’m sure she would not mind that you stayed here.”
“Thank you,” said the second. “But after I have finished my Oester ritual, I fear that no one in this valley will welcome me again.”
“I beg you,” said Judith’s mother. “Reconsider what you are doing. Go to the circle if you must, but use its power to augment your own. Call the tools from there. It is their home. Daughter of my heart, please don’t resign your task.”
Judith winced at the endearment and fought her own tears back. Twice her mother had placed Rebecca Allen ahead of their own relationship, and this time had opened Judith’s own home to her. She paused, poised between the desire to break in and declare herself, chase them both out of her home, and the desire to run away and never come back. Eventually the remainder of what was being said also sank in.
“I simply don’t have the power,” Rebecca was saying. “It would be better for the circle to go on without me.”
“You don’t know what it means to all of us,” Judith’s mother continued. “Cobhan Carles is slowly disintegrating. There has been an underlying power struggle for five years now, ever since The Barber became high priest. If he consolidates his power, the coven will disintegrate. If you can bring the tools back to the circle, you will break his power and unite us with a spirit of love and commitment. I didn’t want this task placed on you. I thought that the time would come when my daughter would take the task on herself and lead the coven. But for all her independence, she is too young. It wasn’t a kindness to you to choose you as my successor, but I can’t stand the thought of her testing her strength against The Barber’s.”
“For your sake, I’ll try,” Rebecca finished.
And so will I, Judith thought, surprising herself at her defense of the mother that had slighted her. I’ll be damned if you’ll let my mother down now. And I’ll be damned if you stand in that circle alone on Oester night.
She turned from the door and made her way back toward town. So, what’s one more holiday in a hotel room?
Thursday, 20 March 1969
Equinox night was crisp and clear in northern England. There would likely be a frost on the ground by morning. Rebecca shivered at the thought as she drove slowly down the narrow lane approaching Castlerigg stone circle. She remembered her first trip here, bouncing along in a bus that was almost too wide for the track fourteen years ago. It had been as if the earth shifted.
Tuesday, 21 June 1955
She was in a trance, the bus fumes, motion sickness, Mrs. Weed’s perfume, the power she felt when she entered the stone circle in the company of the tourists, had all combined to leave her disoriented. She followed Mrs. Weed like a lamb to the creek and found herself swimming naked there with the old lady. Rebecca had studied occult societies while working on her thesis. She had been told she would be contacted in Edinburgh, but hadn’t expected her sightseeing tour to be interrupted.
Mrs. Weed looped a soft rope around Rebecca’s right wrist and left ankle, loose enough to walk, but not so long as to trip her. “Thus are all brought to stand before the mighty ones,” Mrs. Weed said.
The bus and their fellow tourists had long since gone. The July night was warm against Rebecca’s bare skin. As they walked up the hill she could see the stones silhouetted against firelight and the figures of people dancing. It was her first experience of Litha. She passed between two stones on the north side of the circle and a man with a black hood stepped in front of her pressing a long-bladed knife between her breasts. Her heart stopped in panic and she began to retreat, but Mrs. Weed was behind her.
“Who comes to the gate?” demanded the guardian.
Not an assault, Rebecca reminded herself. It was ritual. Perhaps the hood over his face prevented him from seeing her naked in front of him, but she had no difficulty seeing him as he was naked below the hood.
“It is I, The Hart, a child of earth and starry heaven,” Rebecca said. Her voice quaked. The noise of her heart in her ears almost drowned his next words.
“Who speaks for you?”
“It is I, The Water Maiden of Carles, who vouches for her,” said Rebecca’s companion. The challenge, however, was not yet over and the sword’s point nearly forced Rebecca back a step.
“You are about to enter a vortex of power, a place beyond imagining, where birth and death, dark and light, joy and pain, meet and make one. You are about to step between the worlds, beyond time, outside the realm of your human life. You who stand on the threshold of the dread Mighty Ones, have you the courage to make the assay? For know that it is better to fall on my blade and perish than to make the attempt with fear in thy heart!”
In spite of the ritual phrasing, Rebecca felt the guardian was in deadly earnest. But this was what she had been seeking. It was part of the purpose for her visit to England and Scotland. This was who she was meant to be.
“I enter the circle with perfect love and perfect trust,” she intoned with her head held high. Her subtle straightening pressed the knife more firmly between her breasts and she could feel a drop of blood trickle down her abdomen.
“Gatekeeper!” a voice beyond the man snapped. He turned to face the woman who wore only a crescent moon-shaped headdress. Rebecca gasped as his hand darted out and the point of the knife pricked the skin between the priestess’s breasts before he stepped away. The priestess stepped forward and embraced Rebecca, mingling the blood between them.
“My blood in your veins and your blood in mine make you ever inseparable as you are bound to us. Welcome to Cobhan Carles. Tonight will be your initiation.”
Thursday, 20 March 1969
Fourteen years later, Rebecca dressed in her deep red ritual robe before leaving the cottage, convinced it would be her last visit to the sacred circle. It was all she wore and her bare toes curled around the pedals of the little car. In her satchel were the things she needed—her sacred tools, a small kettle, water, dry wood and leaves gathered that afternoon. On the car seat, there was a change of clothes—just in case she left the circle naked.
She stepped out beneath the quiet starlit sky. A scarce sliver of the new moon hung low in the west. It was so dark out that Rebecca could barely discern the shadows of the great stones as she climbed the fence and made her way in their general direction. She was in the circle before she realized it.
Standing alone in this ancient shrine was unlike joining her brothers and sisters here. It took on a feeling of vastness, like standing on a mountaintop. She could faintly see the shapes of the stones around her and they were more like the living beings of the legends than their monolithic counterparts. Yes, what Keats had said about the circle was true.
Scarce images of life, one here one there,
Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque
Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor…
The Titans surrounded her, waiting for her to awaken them.
Rebecca shuddered, feeling the living presence of ancient powers within the circle. She hurriedly set up a small brazier and lit the kindling in it. On this she placed her kettle and filled it with water. She began a long sweeping invocation to the powers of Carles, beginning by standing facing east, her walking stick outstretched as she summoned her wards.
“Eastern Guardian, Titan Creüs, power of the air, arise. Arise, I bid you come and set your watch on this the eastern quarter of my circle. Let no ill influence pass your gaze, but like the stones of this sanctuary, surround me with your presence.”
The hardest part of ritual magic was giving voice to the words. It was like talking to herself loudly—embarrassed to be making statements to the empty air. But the words could not be mumbled and expect any true raising of power. And she was alone, so who was to tell her that she couldn’t speak to the empty circle.
She took a deep breath and continued a clockwise rotation, her staff outstretched, her eyes focused inward, summoning the powers of each of the quarters as she passed. Creüs, Iäpetus, Cottus, Enceladus. At last she faced east once more.
“O Goddess, be with me now in your aspect as Maiden of the forest—the fair one who brings joy and new life—to break the winter’s stillness and silence.” There was an almost imperceptible stirring in the eastern quarter of her circle. A stone that seemed to move slightly in the breeze. Rebecca continued. “O laughing God of the Greenwood with your pipes and cloven hooves—shepherd of creatures free and wild—come nearby, and with your warmth let life be born anew.”
Rebecca stared eastward across her cauldron and was more certain than ever that something moved and took shape in the shadows of the great stones. She began to hum, an old habit from her childhood that cropped up from time to time. She swayed before her cauldron, focusing on the shape, willing it to materialize and come forward. It did, with wand outstretched, swaying as she walked—a perfect mirror of Rebecca seen across the fire.
A moment of doubt sent chills down her spine. This was a deserted moor, a mile from help, and Rebecca was alone to face whatever had materialized in her circle. But the thought was suddenly comforting as well. This was her circle, protected from malevolent forces by the very presence of the stones and her invocation. Her breathing calmed. She would accept the visitor as part of her ritual.
Rebecca stretched a closed hand above the fire and opened it to deposit her handful of leaves in the heated kettle. The figure opposite, shrouded in a red robe matching Rebecca’s, mimicked the gesture, dropping a handful of leaves in the cauldron. Yes, Rebecca thought. This is a co-celebrant at least, perhaps the goddess herself. All things are possible. She bowed to the apparition and the being returned the gesture.
“May the strength of the old enter into the new and life arise once more. O Great Ones of the forest, make this potion strong and giving of new life,” Rebecca chanted over the brewing mixture.
“So mote it be,” responded the figure from the opposite side. Yes, a woman, Rebecca thought to herself in confirmation. Not unlike the High Priestess. That must be it. She opened her mouth to call her by name but was motioned to silence by the figure before the syllable had been emitted. Rebecca bowed. Her priestess was to be trusted.
The two began to dance, slowly at first, then faster and faster around the brazier opposite each other. Rebecca kept trying to catch a glimpse of the face of her companion, but darkness ruled and only the shape was visible, carefully beyond the range of firelight. Soon, both were too enrapt in their dancing to strain for any other contact. They laughed and sang wordlessly. As they neared exhaustion, both collapsed to the ground with a shout.
Rebecca, now fully The Huntress of Carles, The Hart, could feel the infinite surges of power returning to her over the vast distance she had placed between it and herself. She was caught in the feeling. She had danced for power before, spun the cone of it over her head and called fire into her wand. She tasted the power as it returned into her once more. Perhaps there was a chance that she could recall the tools after all.
When Rebecca looked up from her reverie, her co-celebrant was removing the pot carefully from the brazier and pouring cups of the tea to share. Then she stepped back to wait patiently as they sipped the heady potion. How would she begin to call together the Four Faces of Carles?
Rebecca removed the silver chalice from her bag and set it near the brazier. She did not fill it with its accustomed salt water. If she was to call together the Four Faces of Carles, she would begin by calling them to life. For the first time since this task had fallen to her, she felt capable. She was being fed energy from her companion, stoking the fires within her. She would begin by requiring that the cup fill itself. Then that the fire wand, Iäpetus, would spark. Then she would call for the pentacles, Enceladus, to shake the earth. Finally, she would stretch out and call Creüs, the Athamé of the circle to raise the winds. Wherever it was, even if beneath the sea, he would be blown toward her.
Her partner in the circle seemed to understand what was required and Rebecca did not speak to her as they began raising a cone of power around the cup. For the first time, they touched, and Rebecca knew that whoever had joined her in this circle was skilled and powerful, and that she was lending that power to Rebecca to reinforce her. Soon they would know if that power—even combined—was enough.
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