A Touch of Magic
19 Rescue
21 September 1974, Behind the Ivory Veil
TWINKLE, TWINKLE, little star. Wesley plinked out the notes, concentrating as he had at the old upright in his grandmother’s living room more than forty years ago. He cringed as he missed a note. Determined, he began again, his focus intent on only the keyboard in front of him.
In fact, the room around him was little more than a cartoon drawing. Gone were the bookshelves, paintings, instruments, leather furniture… His life existed of no more than the keyboard as he struggled to remember.
“Let it go. Be at peace.”
Wesley started at the voice and turned to see a naked woman standing beside the keyboard. The rest of the piano was a mere shadow.
“You’re here. Will I finally awaken from this nightmare?”
“You are awake.”
“Where have you been?”
“Within.”
“I… I can’t remember. My world is dissolving to nothing.”
“If you cannot accept what you have found, you will find nothing at all.”
“Nothing? Am I dead?”
“Life and death have no meaning here. What you desired you drew forth from yourself. When knowledge fails you, you have only faith to sustain you.”
“You are not going to leave me?”
“How can I forsake myself? Look.” She pointed to the line drawing of a window against a blank wall. Outside, Wesley could see flames.
“They are setting my world on fire,” he sighed.
“There is no they, Wesley. There is only one.”
“We must go. Go north to the Temple of Aurora Borealis.”
“We will go together.”
“Who are you? Really?”
“Wesley, my love. Did you think only the goddess Serepte was confined behind the veil? I am the goddess within you. Set me free.”
They walked.
North.
21 September 1974, Carles Castlerigg Stone Circle
Sixteen men and women chanted the Mabon ritual as they held hands around the fire at the great stone circle Carles Castlerigg. Autumnal Equinox. They were all who remained of the once vibrant coven. Four more were in America holding the four sacred tools of the coven as the circle awaited the forging of a new cauldron. None had expected the five years it had taken to get this far. Many fell away from the fellowship. Some of the aging members had passed over or were simply too frail to join the others in the outdoor rituals.
The lean times and the fat were not unknown to the circle. A millennium of history showed times when there were scarcely enough members to hold the sacred tools. When they battled the dark forces of Hitler, there had been nearly a hundred, many joining from other circles in Britain.
The Hart, their high priestess, was off in Greece and had sworn not to return until the veil between the worlds had been torn asunder and her husband returned to her.
They chanted the Mabon ritual, different coveners taking up different lines as they gathered power around them.
What was will be. What will be is.
All time comes together, here and now in this sacred space.
Dream of your rebirth.
I shall be here to greet thee on thy return.
Between the worlds we stand in this sacred space.
All time is now.
All places are here.
From whence we came, we shall return,
And come again.
And come again.
The circle continued to sway and hum, a word emerging from their toneless meditation.
North.
The circle opened and faced the great northern gate of Carles Castlerigg as if expecting someone new to enter.
21 September 1974, West Virginia
Prometheus, The Bound, emerged from his home secreted in an abandoned coal mine. He climbed slowly to the top of his little mountain, glad for the thermal underwear he had thought to wear beneath his black robe.
After forty years as a solitaire—a witch without a coven—and sometime hermit, he wondered if he should have stayed in the monastery in Greece. He did miss the presence of others at times, even if they seldom spoke. He maintained the rigid schedule and physical exercise in his retirement. Each week he walked the five miles to town for groceries. It was his opportunity to see people, pick up mail, and to be recognized.
But even in his isolation, Wayne’s great-uncle, Elbert Parker, had taken his vows seriously. To protect, help, and defend my sisters and brothers of the Art. The network had been carefully woven. All those who had a part to play were gathered together on this Autumnal Equinox, no matter where they were scattered. Whatever role was his to play, he would be ready on the astral plane.
He lit his little fire and settled in to wait as he meditated. Facing north.
21 September 1974, The Showbox, Minneapolis
The audience was transfixed. Mark spared little thought as to what they were seeing. Or thought they saw. He and the strange girl dressed in black leather faced the direction in which the others had vanished as if they anchored the open gate so they could return.
Judith had called her friend Lil ‘The Iron Gate.’ In Mark’s mind he would have called her The Flaming Sword. She stood steadfastly with a sword of fire extending half in this world and half in the next. It had been many years since Mark had last witnessed the power of the ancient ones. They had spoken to him.
Go in peace. Leave this to your son. Go where your heart leads you.
Mark thought the command only referred to his marriage to Helen, but now his heart led him to extend his arm in reflection of Lil’s—to hold the gate open for his son.
A flaming sword appeared in his hand extending across the world divide.
Extending and pointing North.
21 September 1974, The City of the Gods
Paul Mansfield, The Great Paris. Apollo ‘Pol’ Pariskovopolis. How strange that his chosen names should be so close to his given name. Memories flooded his mind. He grew up in Greece, played in Athens and in The Metéora. He swam at their island retreat in the Aegean Sea. He climbed Mount Olympus, both the peak in Greece and the legendary home of the gods. His grandfather lived and died in The Metéora of Thessaly.
And he had been swept away in the flashflood of the stream that had been his gateway to other worlds.
When he awoke, he was a child with no past. His hands remembered the sleight of hand he practiced as a boy and the strange, otherworldly language that transported him to the edge of his memory before it fled.
He lived two lives, was two people wrapped in one, and now seemed on the brink of yet a third. His experience gave his memory meaning.
But most of all, he remembered meeting the Goddess on the mountain and her promise to be his when she was released.
Tightly in his arms, he held the reality of his dreams, promised in love on his twelfth birthday. She, too, would remember. She would know her past and her long wait for a mortal savior. She would recognize him. But the task now was to rejuvenate her with his song and deliver the deliverer.
Pol sang on, his voice cutting through the fog, relieving her suffering. Nothing ever disappears; it just moves from place to place. The demon had inflicted pain on Paul. Serepte had drained him of the pain so he could continue to fight the demon. But she had been too weakened to play the pipes, so Pol provided the music to move the pain from Serepte to the world where pain was a beauty of nature.
He sang as he walked, though at times, the silence around him was so deafening that he could not hear his own voice. The ground stabilized, though occasional tremors still threated to unbalance him.
His foot struck a ridge in front of him, almost over-balancing him as he struggled to protect Serepte. He wondered where the circle—Wayne and the four witches—had gone. He could not see them, but sensed their presence in the bubble that surrounded him, chasing the fog from immediately before him. He continued slowly, watching at his feet for more steps. Broken rocks littered his path as he continued, turning him from side to side. He could not see them from a distance, but once upon him, he could make out shape and size. Crumpled pillars in what had once been The City of the Gods. He stepped over and around them, navigating the maze toward what he knew was ahead.
A faint glow illuminated his destination. He took a circuitous route, dancing around the ruins, singing to the goddess in his arms. In the awareness of who she was and his own memories, his love was magnified and tears of joy fell from his eyes to her face. He held her tightly as he mounted the rostrum in the center of the city.
In contrast to the ruins of the city, the rostrum was smooth and clear, as if preserved against harm specifically for this day. As he stepped upon its surface, his fatigued legs stabilized and his pounding heart sent new energy to every part of his body. The power brought no new pain with it, but seemed to enhance the song he sang. His capacity to receive the energy from the rostrum expanded. The power brought fresh clarity to his mind that made him want to leap for joy. He bent his lips to Serepte’s and poured the purifying energy into her through their kiss. As she stirred in his arms and tightened her grip on him, he lifted his head once again in song. The rich language of antiquity that surpassed words by expressing complete images, surpassed images by attaching itself to a universal wholeness, and encompassed all of creation in its breath. This was how the God of the Hebrews spoke the world into existence. His song sang a welcome—to the light of the platform, to the newness of his own life, and to the dawning of a new age. And it was joined by the sweet counterpoint of Serepte in his arms.
As they sang, a blinding flash of light dissolved the remaining wisps of fog as the sun—closer than any sun he had seen before—aligned to the rostrum. And the dawn responded to their song. The voice of dawn surrounded them with welcome that rang throughout the air and brought him to the presence of the ancients.
As the voices faded in the full light of day, Pol surveyed the ruins of what had been the great City of the Gods. How the mighty have fallen. Not one of the massive pillars remained standing. The orchestra itself on which he stood no longer bore the inscriptions that he and Wesley had labored so hard to record and interpret. It was polished smooth beneath his feet. A tear for the destroyed city fell from his eye and Serepte lifted her lips to kiss it away. The expression of absolute devotion in her eyes filled him with joy even amidst the ruins.
“Ta hagia hagion,” he whispered. “The holy of holies is in ruins. My memories are in ruins.”
“Pol, it is your memory that gave this place beauty. Remember that it was the beauty of this place that kept me imprisoned. Do not curse the memory. Don’t be sorrowful that I have been freed. I, too, have such memories that I cannot fully grasp. I’ve lived eighteen years as a mortal and now my memories tell me I am not mortal. I have known for five years that I was a healer, but now my memories tell me that skill was ingrained in me thousands of years ago. I… Pol, I remember my promise to you. I do not want to return to the gods. I want to stay with you.”
He held her close. Beauty had two meanings, like the pain she carried from one world to another. In breaking the barrier, the beauty had also been broken.
“I will never leave your side, my beloved,” he answered. They became lost in a kiss as he set her feet on the rostrum and they embraced.
“I felt the power of my circle surround us. Where are they?” she asked.
“I don’t know. There were many paths in the fog—many voices—but I sensed them near as if they were opening the way in front of us. I don’t know what happened at the dawning.”
Surveying the surrounding rubble, they turned again at last to the rising sun.
“My father had a saying. ‘North is safety. North is the temple. North is where I will reside.’ I believe we must go north,” Serepte said. “Wherever that is.”
Facing the rising sun, Pol stretched his left arm out at his side.
“That way. North is that way.”
Pol and Serepte left the rostrum filled with its energy, and made their way along the rubble-strewn northward avenue. Sometimes they had to climb over, and sometimes walk around, the monoliths.
“Everything looks so familiar and yet so different,” Serepte said. “Pol, I lived here. No. I was imprisoned here. It was only in my dreams that it could be a home.”
Pol paused and embraced her. “You are a Goddess, you know.”
“Is this what your awaking memories are like? They suddenly rush in upon me and I think, ‘That can’t be. It’s a myth.’ Am I a myth, Pol?”
“Myths, my love, are only stories. There are many stories about you… about us. But you and I are real—flesh and blood. We are not just stories.” Pol stopped where a column had been ripped out of the ground by the chaos. He stood over a gaping hole in the city, filled with fog.
“It is not fog,” Serepte said tearfully. “It is the spirit of this fallen ancient one. It still struggles to hold open a path.”
“The pillars were gateways?”
“It’s part of the ancient secrets that the keepers lost over the centuries. These pillars lived. They were made of the night and held open pathways between the worlds as long as they stood. In daylight, they looked as solid and sure as any marble column. Even now, we can touch their dead remains and feel them. But in the night, they were one with all that was around them and formed a constant place where all worlds came together. This ancient one struggles to maintain at least its shadow to mark the entry to the path.”
As Pol and Serepte continued—north—the ruins became scarcer. Some pillars seemed to have faded from sight, leaving no trace of the pathways they once guarded. A gray stillness settled over them. The silence filled their ears and their eyes saw a colorless and featureless plain. Only the touch of their hands made them aware of each other.
Their feet hit a step.
They mounted it without their own volition and continued to another step and then another.
“All roads lead back to the rostrum,” Pol recited from his new-found memories. The steps were closer together now with scarcely a pace between them. “I don’t remember steps anywhere in the City, though.”
“It is a construct of my father’s mind,” Serepte sighed. “The last place of refuge. He must have emptied himself of all else.”
A glow lit the summit of their ascent, reflecting off the distant sky and bounding off a dais. Five points were illuminated and they could vaguely identify figures within the points—idealized images of the five members of the fifth circle. The women each held the symbol of her office. Judith was more recognizable by the dancing wind at the tip of her Athamé than by her own elongated and ethereal form. To her left, Meaghan held out a flaming staff. Next, Lissa presented an overflowing cup held in both hands. The pentacles that Elizabeth held reshaped itself into a ball, a globe. She held the Earth in her hands. Finally, Wayne stood with arms outstretched, a protective presence around the other four.
“They’ve created the cauldron of rebirth,” Serepte whispered. “They succeeded.”
At the center of the circle sat a man… or almost a man. Pol recognized him at once as his old and dear friend, Wesley. But he sat… was in a sitting position… a yard above the floor with no apparent support, glowing more brightly even than the five witches. The only apparent sign of twenty years in isolation, Wesley’s white hair seemed to be the source of this celestial illumination.
As they mounted the final step to the platform, a passage between Lissa and Meaghan opened and they stepped into the circle.
“Father!” Serepte cried.
The man’s concentration wavered and for a moment Pol saw a woman separate from him then merge again, as if Wesley held body and soul together by sheer force of will. Wesley waved his hand dismissively. “I have not thought you,” he said.
“Nor can you think me away, Father,” she spoke. “I am not of your imagination.”
“I am within where I can be one,” he answered. “Everything is pure and clean. My sins are forgotten. I have reconciled with my soul.”
“We have come to take you home,” Pol intruded.
“I am home. All else is illusion.”
Serepte laid a hand on Pol’s arm and the two knelt in front of the man. Pol found himself flooded with the love he felt for the man in childhood.
“Father Wesley,” he spoke. “Are these walls and this temple not illusion also?” Wesley looked at the young man as if puzzling out his identity.
“Pol? Pol for whom I wished only good, and robbed of that which was within reach. Forgive my sins. These walls—this temple—they are but the trappings of the soul. She lives in peace within me. She is pure.”
“You deceive yourself, Wesley,” Pol responded. “You have built a wall between your soul and your corruption. It is not accepted. You fail to embrace the corrupt and now, behind your wall, you smother your incorruptness.”
“Are you real?”
“All things are real, Father,” Serepte answered. “Our shapes—our forms—are joined to the universal consciousness of all. We are of you, only as you are of us.”
As Wesley struggled with the concept, the female form pulled away from him once more and solidified beside him. Wesley shook with the battle raging within as he strained toward the woman next to him. He wept and the foundations of his temple began to shake.
“Must I be guilty again of my own sin?” Wesley screamed.
“Yes!” spoke the woman next to him. That one word echoed as though the wall of light were solid. “Yes, you must be corrupt. Yes, you must be pure. To embrace me, whom you call pure, you must embrace yourself and your corruption.”
“Who are you?” Serepte demanded. “In your greatest strength, you cannot claim greater age than mine, nor can you disclaim the love I unwillingly bear you.”
“I claim the right that love permits me. I claim the right that power demands,” the woman said. “I am those that surrounded you in your captivity. I am those that loved you on both sides of the ivory veil. I am those that suffered most when you were torn from us and left us wandering the abyss. I am Hecate of the dark, Selene the waning moon, Demeter of the earth and corn. I am the faces that give light and life on earth. I’m am the pillars of night, crumbled in your flight. I am the possessor of this man, for I am the goddess that dwells within. I am what was left behind to pay for your passage.”
“You cannot claim that which you do not own,” a soft voice filled the tiny temple.
“Mother!” Serepte gasped.
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