A Touch of Magic
21 Living a New Reality
22 September 1974, Carles Castlerigg Stone Circle
MAGDA, former high priestess of the coven, rose from the gathering and approached the northern gate of the circle. There she opened the wards enough so that her one-time lover and father of their daughter, Ryan McGuire, could stumble in.
“Who comes before the dread mighty ones?” she demanded, placing her Athamé against his chest. He looked at the knife and then at Magda.
“It is I,” he said. She did not waver and he felt the knife bite more deeply into his chest. “A… a child of earth,” he finished. This was an initiate’s greeting and the first sign to Ryan that he was no longer a part of this circle and would have to earn his way into it. He fell to his knees in front of Magda. “I come with perfect love and perfect trust.”
22 September 1974, West Virginia at dawn
Prometheus, the Bound, woke from his trance to cold ashes in the firepit and an aching back. He groaned as he struggled to his feet and looked out across the mountains and the rising sun. Hell of a night!
“Coffee. I’m too old for an all-night vigil without coffee,” he muttered. His mind set about reconciling the reality of a brisk September morning with the visions of his trance, wondering if the experiences of all the parties had been similar or if each wove the experience into a tapestry of understanding that could co-exist with their reality. He would need to investigate. Interview. Talk to the parties involved.
He would need to leave his rock.
A tattered spiral notebook he’d been using to record his visions lay on the table in his underground home and he sat with his cup of coffee to write.
The astral plane is not a single location or state of being. Rather it is a complex network of realities that can be accessed by both spirit and body. Distance is meaningless. Earthly miles dissolve. One may move from reality to reality with a simple turn of the head. The gateways between the worlds are many and the witch who casts a circle and raises her power may travel freely.
22 September 1974, Minneapolis
“Serepte! Phone!” Meaghan called through the closed bedroom door. Serepte moaned and rolled away from her lover. Pol lifted his head enough to kiss her before she grabbed her robe and ran to the living room.
“Serepte, it’s Mom.”
“Mom! Are you still in Greece?”
“Yes. Honey, I have him. Your father. I finally found him.”
“Mom! Really? That’s wonderful! When will you be home?”
“We’ll have to go to Athens and sort out some paperwork. He’s been missing for nineteen years.”
“I’m so happy for you, Mom. I can’t wait to meet him.”
“You don’t remember?” Rebecca sounded perplexed over the phone. Serepte couldn’t tell why.
“Remember what, Mom?”
“We’ll talk as soon as we return to Indy. You’ll come down, won’t you? And bring Pol.”
“How did you know about Pol?” Serepte asked. “Your information network is entirely too invasive! But, Mom, he’s sooo dreamy. I’m in love. Of course I’ll bring him with me to meet you and my father.”
“Honey, we’ll have a nice long talk when I get back. I love you.”
“Love you, too, Mom. See you soon!” Serepte hung up the phone and looked at it with a puzzled expression.
“I had the strangest dream last night,” Serepte said when she cuddled back in bed with Pol.
“Really? Tell me all about your dream, sweetheart.” He slowly stroked her arm, kissing her bare shoulder and sending shivers along her neck and spine.
“I dreamt I found my father. And then my mother just called and said she had him in Greece. And then I dreamt we had to negotiate with Zeus in order to get everything sorted out. I felt like a princess. No, a Goddess.”
“You are my Goddess and I will always worship you,” he said, pulling her to him for a kiss.
“Pol, I know something has changed. Like I know your real name now and that in some way we’ve known each other forever, even though it’s only been a couple of weeks. And, something inside me is different. I… I don’t feel people’s pain anymore. When I was on the phone, Elizabeth stubbed her toe in the kitchen and I couldn’t feel it at all. I couldn’t reach it. I’ve had this compulsion to heal people for the past five years or more, but now I reach out for it and there is nothing there.”
“A lot happened last night,” Pol said. “You healed me. I have all my memories back. I remember your mother and father, my father, even people you have mentioned like Doc Heinrich. I know him.”
“Do you know me, Pol?”
“Yes. I know that even if you don’t have the ability to take another person’s pain and heal it, you are still my Goddess of empathy and compassion. We, together… we released a lot of pain last night and sent it home. I’m not sure about everything that happened. Maybe your circle will remember more clearly. The things I remember have nothing to do with my show and performance. I can’t remember how I got you suspended in the air! But I remember being with you when we released your father. It wasn’t just a dream, Serepte.”
“I traded, didn’t I?” Serepte lay back looking blankly at the ceiling. “I fell truly and hopelessly in love with you. I didn’t heal you because I was compelled to. I healed you because I love you. It is almost as if my mission in life was fulfilled and I could move ahead. I heard it said once that the price of a rite of passage was to leave a part of yourself behind. I did that, didn’t I?”
“Yes, my love. But between your memories and mine, we will piece together our lives and our love.”
“I love you, Pol.”
“I’m not too old for you now, am I? I mean, my birthday—my real birthday is Friday and I’ll be thirty-two. You are…”
“Old enough to know I love you, Pol. I don’t think that adding thirteen years of childhood memories to you has aged you at all. I love you. I love you. I love you.” Serepte punctuated her words with kisses and soon the two were wrapped up in their lovemaking.
22 September 1974, Minneapolis, afternoon
“My mother called, too,” Judith said after Serepte shared the good news of her father’s recovery in Greece. “She wants the high priestess and the Fifth Circle present at Castlerigg for Samhain.”
“What’s the big deal?” Serepte asked.
“My father—The Blade—stumbled into the circle just before dawn this morning.”
“Oh, my Goddess! I thought we dealt with him last night!” Meaghan cried.
“Apparently, we gave him rebirth into the circle,” Judith said. “She wants a full circle to ensure that he is purified and ready to become an initiate. She says he has no standing in the circle and has come on bended knee.” Judith sighed and turned to Wayne. “Babycakes, that means you, too. We are only the cauldron when you pull us together.”
“Hmm. That might work well. I’ll be right back.” He left the room for his workshop.
“What about me? Am I supposed to be there, too?” Serepte asked. Her brow was furrowed and she looked near rebellion.
“Little one, you are our charge, not our captive,” Elizabeth said, embracing Serepte like a mother would. “You’ve been instructed, you have your tools, and you have us as your sponsors. You are ready for full initiation into the Great Circle. It has always been and still is up to you to decide if and when you will join us.”
“I… I think I’ll wait until Beltane,” Serepte said. “My nineteenth birthday. It’s just too cold to run around naked outdoors in Northern England before that!”
“There’s so much to be done in the next few weeks,” Judith sighed. “It’s like a new world has dawned and we don’t know what the day will bring.”
“This might help,” Wayne said as he re-entered the room with a small box. He called the four witches to him to sit in the middle of the floor, leaving Pol, Serepte, Mark, and Lil sitting on the sofa and chairs. The five focused on the box as Wayne pulled a brass brazier from the box. It was about eight inches across and stood ten inches high on three legs. The polished sides of the vessel were intricately engraved with symbols of the coven.
“It’s beautiful,” Lissa sighed.
“Shiny,” agreed Meaghan.
“Where did you get this?” Judith asked.
“I found the pot in a secondhand store in Indy a few years ago. You remember when we did Macbeth at Indiana Rep?”
“You didn’t use this on stage!”
“No. It was too small for the scene, but I found it while I was hunting up that oversize Dutch oven we used. Then, a couple of years ago, I started engraving it. I think it is time to dedicate a new tool for the coven. One that will replace the Fifth Circle,” Wayne said. All five reached out to touch the cauldron and close their eyes for a moment. They pulled back, nodding.
“Well, if you are done with all your freaky woo-woo stuff, I guess I’ll say goodbye, too,” Lil said. “I’m supposed to go to Chicago tomorrow. There’s some kind of exhibition at the convention center and I’ll be demonstrating various weapons.”
“Damn! I wish I could go with you!” Judith shouted.
“There’s no reason you couldn’t,” Wayne said softly. “I think that with the work we did last night, we don’t have any reason to hang around. I might go visit my uncle for a few days.”
“My show will close October 27,” Lissa said. “I’ll plan to head home after that and be there in time for Samhain.”
“What, no dramatic entrance?” Judith laughed.
“If I just show up and take my place in the circle, no one will recognize me,” Lissa responded.
“That’s true enough,” Meaghan said. “If we’re no longer needed here, I’ll plan to return to jolly old England sometime in the next few weeks. I met a guy over at campus who has asked me out a couple of times. If he asks again, I’ll say yes. I really enjoy our time together, Wayne, but I’m thinking I want a guy of my own.” The group agreed. Judith reached for Wayne’s hand.
“Got mine,” she said.
“What are your plans, Pol?” Serepte asked timidly.
“I’m supposed to tour the West Coast starting in three weeks. Would you consider coming with me?”
“With you?” she squeaked.
“With me. As in share my life and plan what we want together. We can visit your mom and dad before we go. I’d love to see them again now that I’m all grown up.”
“Yes!” Serepte shouted. She leapt into Pol’s lap and smothered him with kisses.
“Father?” Pol said when his lips were free. He turned to the taxi driver. “What about you?”
“I had a long chat with your mother last night—or early this morning. She’s been staying on the island at our retreat just in case you came back. I’ve asked her to arrange to come here to see you. And perhaps to renew some friendships. I thought perhaps you could use a driver. And a cook. We could get one of those motorized homes and all drive to the West Coast,” Mark said. “I promise we won’t cramp you and Serepte, but it would be less costly to drive than to buy train tickets.”
Pol looked at Serepte, who beamed back and nodded her head. “That would be wonderful, Papákîs,” he said, reverting to the Greek endearment for his dad. “Perhaps we should spend some time this week looking for the right vehicle.”
A sniffle drew the group’s attention to Elizabeth, who had moved to a corner of the room. Wayne and Judith moved to comfort her as tears ran down the woman’s cheeks.
“What is it, Mamm?” Wayne whispered.
“Our family,” she sputtered. “We’re breaking up our family.” Elizabeth was the oldest of the circle and had been a surrogate mother for all of them. “I know… at least I think… that we fulfilled our commission. Last night was… intense. When we returned here afterward, I felt a glow of love that I thought would never end. I slept with Meaghan and Lissa. Wayne slept with Judith and Lil. Serepte and Pol slept together. I’m sorry you were left out, Mark. I should have thought of you when you brought us home so kindly and then left. But now, after the most intense and magical experience of my life, we are suddenly making plans to scatter. I’ll be alone again like I was when my children left home.”
“But we are like your children in other ways,” Serepte said. “We will always love you and you can be with us all the time if you want to. I am going to need a different kind of instruction than you’ve given me the past five years. I need to learn how to make breakfast for my…” She broke off and looked at Pol with a new sense of wonder in her eyes. He smiled at her.
“Husband,” he said. “Serepte Allen, will you marry me?”
“Pol? Really? I love you. Somehow, I’ve always known you were out here waiting for me… looking for me. Yes, my love, I will marry you. Let’s do it in Indianapolis when your mother gets here and my parents arrive.”
“Well, Elizabeth, that settles that. None of us are going anywhere until we’ve watched these two swap their vows. We have a wedding to plan!” Judith said.
1 May 1975, Carles Castlerigg
“It is I, Serepte, a child of earth and starry heaven. I come with perfect love and perfect trust.” The ritual moved forward. Serepte was led by a cord binding her hands and feet so that she had to shuffle around the circle following her mother, the high priestess of Coven Carles.
Having made the full circuit, Rebecca knelt before her daughter to release the bonds and give her the five-fold kiss. She could not help spending a moment to caress and kiss the rounding tummy being filled by her granddaughter growing inside. Serepte embraced her mother.
“As Demeter embraced Persephone and welcomed her in spring, so I embrace my daughter and welcome her to this circle,” Rebecca declared to the gathering.
“And embracing my mother, I also embrace my unborn daughter and welcome her to this world and the circle of friends,” Serepte responded.
Serepte knelt and placed one hand on her head and the other beneath her foot. Her circle, now officially dissolved, gathered around her and placed their hands in blessing on her head.
“All between my hands I dedicate to the service of the Goddess,” Serepte said. “I do of my own free will most solemnly swear to protect, help, and defend my sisters and brothers of the Art. I will always keep secret that which must not be revealed. This do I swear on my mother’s womb and on my hopes of future lives, mindful that my measure has been taken, and in the presence of the Mighty Ones.”
“So mote it be,” responded the circle.
“This is the time when sweet desire weds wild delight. When the Spring Maiden joins with the waxing god to dance in the fertile meadows. The shaft of life is twined in a spiral web and all of nature is renewed. Let us dance the dance of life.”
It was a ritual. Serepte laughed that her fertility had already been proven, but chose a bright yellow ribbon as she joined the Maypole dance. Yellow. Joy and light.
Joy and light were shared by her husband and her father in the sitting room of a small inn just two miles away in Keswick. There, J. Wesley Allen played the spinet as Pol Paris sang softly next to him.
“Like old times,” Wesley said.
“I like your guitar as well.”
“It is easier to transport. But the piano has always been my musical love.” Wesley paused his playing, listening as though he could hear the celebration in the circle. “Does she know, Pol?”
“No, though I tell her often enough that she is a Goddess.” They laughed together. “They, the ancients, were wise in this. Three thousand years of memory would be too much for a mortal to bear.”
“But the gift? Her healing power is gone.”
“Yes, but I have great hope for our children and their children. It may take generations for the gift to become fully realized among the masses,” Pol said. “But the gods said, the gift was carried in each of the people she touched. She touched me, Papa Wesley. I feel... a touch of magic in my hands.”
“And what will you name your little one?”
Pol smiled wistfully. “If Serepte agrees, Ariadne. She will keep and care for the labyrinth of mysteries.”
On a hill not far away, as dancers swayed and frolicked around the Maypole, there was a stirring in Serepte’s womb as Ariadne awoke.
sThe End
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