Borrowers of the Moon
ഀഀഀ ഀThe sun borrows of the moon. -Wm. Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, V:1
ഀഀഀഀCHAPTER ONE:
ഀഀThe Merrikens had moved to Greencastle when Rowan was five. Before that they'd lived in an apartment in Chicago, and the shift to a small town in Indiana (or as small as things got in these days of Internet and Interstate, and with Greencastle being within an hour of Indianapolis) had been what Mom liked to call "a major lifestyle adjustment". Mom liked to use big buzz-words when she didn't want to talk about her feelings, which meant, as Rowan figured out when she got older, that Mom had actually liked living in Chicago.
ഀഀRowan didn't think she would have liked living in Chicago. They went back once a year to visit her grandparents, and for the occasional trade show -- Dad was a programmer, Mom was in retail, so there were a lot of those -- and so Rowan wasn't exactly a stranger to the big city. But she liked Greencastle better. You could see where all the edges were in a town this size, and she could walk from one end to the other in a couple of hours. One movie-theater. One post-office. One high school. Life was simple.
ഀഀWell, as simple as life got when you were Wiccan. Which Rowan wasn't, and which was a source of concern (as Mom would say) to her.
ഀഀBoth of Rowan's parents had been Wiccans since before Rowan had been born. Things had gotten a little more complicated when they'd decided to have her, because (as Dad said) how were they going to raise her? She couldn't be a Jew, and she couldn't be a Christian, but Wicca wasn't a religion for little kids, for more reasons than that you might say some really embarrassing things in school. The Wicca were the Hidden Children of the Goddess, and it was just as well not to drag some things out in front of a bunch of people who might think it gave them a license to meddle.
ഀഀSo Rowan had grown up pagan in a Wiccan household, which meant a lot of learning to keep her mouth shut in school about what her family did at home, and not correcting people when they went on about the witches in the Narnia books and the Wizard of Oz. Because people had the oddest ideas, sometimes, and words like "witch" or "coven" or "sabbat" tended to bring out the worst in bureaucrats and other child protection agencies, as Dad said. Rowan had spent a lot of time when she was younger getting the drill about "good secrets" and "bad secrets" and secrets it was all right to keep and secrets you really should tell to a trustworthy adult until sometimes she'd wanted to yell that she wasn't dumb or anything. There were just a lot of things that adults plain didn't need to hear about, and opening a long hypothetical discussion with some of them was asking for trouble.
ഀഀOf course, when Mom opened Charmed Life, the New Age bookstore downtown where the old stationery store used to be, Rowan heard a lot about that, careful or not: things like "loony" and "fruitcake" and "do you believe in UFOs too?"
ഀഀWhy people automatically lumped Unidentified Flying Objects of implied extraterrestrial origin in with New Age (now there was a vague label) had always mystified Rowan, but at least all the other kids did was laugh. Nobody threw bricks through the window of the bookstore or trashed Mom's car, the way people did in some other places, and the guys that started up with Rowan were the same guys who'd try to start up with anybody about anything, so she didn't feel singled out.
ഀഀNot because of the Wicca, anyway. She'd already been a marked woman by the time she left Penrod Elementary -- she got good grades and participated in class and her teachers thought of her as "sensible" and "mature", which was enough to brand a person for life, even if her folks didn't see it that way. So half the kids thought she sucked up to the teachers and the other half thought she was a freak, and the fact that she wore her pentacle openly -- for her first day of High School Mom had given her a tiny one on a silver chain that she wore constantly -- was lost in the shuffle. The rest was typical high school dynamics, Mom said, and great practice for Life. Greencastle High School was where the kids from six different elementary schools ended up. Depending on your luck, you might share Home Room with a bunch of people you'd known since kindergarten, or with a bunch of weird strangers. Either way, your previous reputation would make it all the way through the school by the second week of Freshman Year.
ഀഀBy Sophomore Year, everybody had finished sorting themselves out into new cliques -- freaks, geeks, mean-streaks, jocks, rah-rahs, losers, grinds, and the all-but-human -- and everybody had settled into preparing to grow up (no fear of that in some important cases, in Rowan's opinion) and point themselves toward college, or whatever else lay ahead. Meanwhile, there was the important business of not looking like a total jerk while doing it.
ഀഀIf the rest of life was going to be like Greencastle High, too many people were settling for less, in Rowan's opinion. On the other hand, 'sensible' had its up-side. Like tonight.
ഀഀHer parents had been High Priest and High Priestess of a Wiccan Circle in Chicago before Rowan was born. When they left Chicago, that Circle had passed to Mom's old Maiden and her High Priest, but they'd known they'd be starting another Circle when they came to Greencastle, although in a small town they had to keep things a lot quieter than they had in Chicago. Merryhill Circle had been meeting at Rowan's house for years, and so far, nobody'd noticed. For a while when she was a kid, Rowan had thought that everybody worshipped the Gods at home the way her folks did, and the Baptist church down the street had been a puzzling and impressive thing.
ഀഀRowan had always known what her parents believed, and they'd never exactly kept the Circle a secret from her either, but there was always this sort of Invisible Threshold that Rowan couldn't cross, the one that lay between being a member of the Circle and not. The bottom line was, Rowan wasn't old enough to join a working Wiccan circle, and so there was this one big part of her parents' life, and her own heritage, that she couldn't have.
ഀഀYet.
ഀഀIt wasn't that Mom and Dad didn't think she'd be a good Wiccan. It was just that "some things are better left until you're older, including initiation," and since they'd made a huge point of never lying to her -- Dad said he'd prefer to be known as pointless and arbitrary, Mom said if you couldn't explain things so that any reasonable person could understand them you ought to go back to first principles -- Rowan guessed they were right, but she hated being left out.
ഀഀIt might have been different if any of the other members of Merryhill'd had Pagan kids, but they didn't. Of the members who were married, Martina Davies had twin boys a few years younger than Rowan, but her husband wasn't interested in Wicca and didn't want her involving the kids in a lot of 'nonsense.' March and Kendall Rush didn't have kids. And Lorraine Kosciusko was divorced with joint custody, and one whiff of Wicca would have her husband back in court and she'd never see Gawaine and Diarmud again. Rowan knew that as well as anyone -- it had been one of the things her folks discussed with her as she got older.
ഀഀIt wasn't like she didn't know what they did on Full Moon Nights. There were enough books on How To Be a Witch In Ten Easy Lessons, after all -- Charmed Life stocked a lot of them, along with sage smudges, jewelry, scented candles, and a lot of other stuff -- so Rowan knew all the details of casting a Circle and calling on the Gods. She'd always had an altar in her room with representatives of the Four Elements on it, and Mom was cool about letting her burn candles and incense providing she never went off and left them unattended. She even did her own private rituals.
ഀഀBut it wasn't the same thing, and Rowan knew it.
ഀഀStill (and this was the Upside of being 'sensible') Rowan got to hang around on Circle nights, and not get packed off to bed, or her room, or somebody else's house. She got to help set up the stuff, and everybody in the Circle didn't stop talking in front of her like she was some kind of braindead social pariah. She was a full-scale Pagan.
ഀഀShe just wasn't a Wiccan.
ഀഀTonight was the first full moon after Candlemas, a work night, so everybody would be meeting early and probably out by ten. Dad was locked up in his office finishing a rush project, and this was Mom's late night at the store, which left Rowan pretty much on her own. She'd nuked a pizza and eaten in the kitchen, then went upstairs to get the temple ready around six.
ഀഀRowan walked into the room and flipped on the lights. The room the Circle used for meeting was the round room just underneath Rowan's bedroom. The molded-glass ceiling light fizzed a tiny bit as the light came on, but she was relieved to see the bulb didn't blow. The floor was bare wood, the walls were painted a soft blue, and the room was empty except for the altar -- an old marble-topped table Mom had bought at an auction -- standing in the middle of it. If a stranger came into the room, there'd be nothing in it to show that the Merrikens were Wiccan; just that they were a little weird in the matter of furniture. Mom and Dad were cautious, and she guessed they had a right to be, and Dad always said that you couldn't get into trouble from being cautious, but lately Rowan was starting to think that you lost a lot of chances to do good things that way.
ഀഀShe pulled down the blinds and then pulled the heavy curtains shut, burying her face in them to smell the fragrance of smoke and frankincense that clung to them. Some days she'd just come in here to smell the incense that clung to the walls and imagine she could feel the surge of moon-called power that came when the Circle met. Sometimes when the Circle met Rowan thought she could feel it tugging at her through the walls, but then she grounded and centered the way she'd been taught, and made sure she was doing something else.
ഀഀNot for me. Not yet. And just when is 'someday' supposed to get here? Rowan wondered with a mix of wistfulness and rebellion. Tonight, however, was not the time to bring the subject up.
ഀഀShe opened the closet, where the Circle's equipment was stored. It smelled of the herbs and oils that were stored here -- a smell part earthy and part flowery that was different than that in the room outside. It was a big walk-in closet, and Mom had built extra shelves to hold what Dad called kipple and Mom called chazerai. Rowan started with the jar candles, taking down the red, yellow, blue, and green quarter-candles and setting them against the walls of the outer room in the proper directions. For the Wicca, each color had associations with the Four Elements, with the time of day, with the Four Tools, and dozens of other things.
ഀഀ"North for winter, air, midnight, the sword, the color blue," Rowan chanted under her breath. North for the Witches' Door, for the Horned God.
ഀഀ"East for spring, earth, sunrise, the shield, the color yellow--" For the Lady, coming back to the Earth bringing Spring. Another candle.
ഀഀ"South, summer, fire, noon, wand, red." The red candle, which always seemed to burn down faster than the other three. There'd be enough for tonight, though.
ഀഀ"East, fall, water, evening, the cup, green."
ഀഀAnd with that, the room became a temple of the Wicca, not just an empty room, though the real transformation would come later, when the Circle was cast.
ഀഀMoving more quickly now, Rowan brought out the shallow cups that held salt and water, the cup for the wine, the incense burner, the candlesticks for the Altar, the little statue to symbolize the Goddess and the antlers for Her Consort, and placed them all in readiness. None of these things were made for the Craft, the way the things in the church down the street were made for it. Until recently, Wicca had been a complete secret -- at least to merchandisers, Mom said -- and the things Wiccans used in their rituals were mostly borrowed or adapted from somewhere else.
ഀഀRowan unfolded the embroidered altar-cloth that Cathy'd made and flipped it out over the surface like a table-cloth, then set the other things on it, ready to be put in their proper places.
ഀഀ"Rowan? Are you up there?"
ഀഀ"Here, Mom!" Rowan called. She bounded to her feet and leaned out over the stairwell, her hair falling over her face.
ഀഀDiana Merriken stood in the foyer, a tote in each hand and her arms filled with bundles. Melting snow crystals starred her hat and her hair.
ഀഀRowan always wished she looked like her mother, with her vivid dark coloring. But she'd inherited Dad's looks -- dishwater blond and hazel eyes -- and probably (Mom said 'they'd see', just as if it were something someone could influence at this late date) his lean rangy height as well. She'd gotten her first growth spurt early. Fortunately the guys had been catching up, the last year or two.
ഀഀRowan took the stairs two at a time and swooped the bags out of her mother's hands. "Oooh, yum -- catalogues! Bread! And cookies?" she added, in what she hoped wasn't too hopeful a tone. Mom stopped at the bakery on Circle nights to pick up refreshments, and while neither of them thought that good behavior needed to be paid off -- more of being mature and sensible -- there was always the possibility . . . .
ഀഀ"The ones in the bag, not the box," Mom said, pulling off her gloves. "And you can go through the catalogues and see if there's anything you think I should order for the shop."
ഀഀYou ought to have more Wiccan stuff, Rowan thought. She didn't say so aloud. Angels sold better than pentacles in Greencastle, Indiana. "Shall I put these out?"
ഀഀ"No, put them in the kitchen. Where's Daddy?"
ഀഀ"Door's still closed," Rowan announced. It was a rule of the household that Artemus Merriken was left alone -- except for major emergencies -- when the door to the office was closed.
ഀഀ"Did you eat?"
ഀഀ"Pizza."
ഀഀ"And your father?"
ഀഀRowan shrugged. Diana Merriken sighed. "Once in the month, an' better it be when the moon is full, somebody has to have something with a crash deadline. I don't know how they know." She hung her coat up to dry and followed Rowan into the kitchen.
ഀഀIn the olden days, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, kitchens had been enormous places where most of the work of a modern supermarket took place, and the Merriken kitchen reflected this, with sweeping marble counters, a pierced-tin pie-safe, and even a butler's pantry. These days, the important things about a kitchen were a good big freezer and a microwave to match, at least in this family's opinion. Diana Merriken set down the last of the packages on the counter and started putting them away.
ഀഀ"Are you sure you still want to work in the store over the summer?" Mom asked.
ഀഀ"Uh, yeah," Rowan said, surprised. She'd be 16 in May, and a lot of the other sophomores were getting summer jobs.
ഀഀ"It'll be boring," Mom warned.
ഀഀ"Not as boring as working at Burger Death or House of Toast," Rowan countered. "And the library already has pages, and the Odeon probably isn't hiring, and you don't want me driving 40 minutes to the Mall each way, even if I did have my own car -- which I don't, and I won't be taking Driver's Ed until next Fall anyway even though I'm eligible for a Learner's Permit in May."
ഀഀ"Do I actually have to be here for this conversation?" her mother asked lightly.
ഀഀWell, no, but this isn't really the conversation we're having. We've already talked about all this. We're talking about something else, and if I guess what, I get a prize.
ഀഀ"It would be nice to be able to extend Charmed Life's hours and get away with paying you slave wages," Diana said, hugging her. She glanced at her watch, spoiling the gesture slightly. "Now I think it's probably time to knock."
ഀഀ"But wait! At the very last moment -- or the moment just before the last moment, which is much the same thing -- the daring young adventurer--" Artemus Merriken said, matching theatrical words to dramatic gesture as he strode into the kitchen. He kissed Diana while she tried to fend him off, and then swooped down on Rowan.
ഀഀ"And how's my littlest Witch this lovely full-moon night?"
ഀഀThe childhood endearment had used to make her giggle, but these days it bothered her, as if Dad couldn't see something everybody else could. You're the Witch, Daddy. I'm not.
ഀഀShe was saved from having to answer by Mom, who could be just as silly as Dad was but on a different clock. "Did you get the job finished?"
ഀഀArtemus turned away from Rowan, not noticing -- or not saying so -- that she'd gone all stiff.
ഀഀ"Patched, yes, but not finished," he said. "I'll have to put in a couple more hours tonight, but not until later. I thought I ought to take some time to wind down before everybody got here." He opened the refrigerator.
ഀഀThere were undercurrents swirling around the kitchen; it didn't take psychic powers to pick that up. Or maybe it was more like overcurrents; something going on that was supposed to be going over her head. But it wasn't. Not quite. Just enough that she knew she was supposed to pretend she didn't notice it. Bad enough at any time. Worse tonight with the full moon making her feel all charged up.
ഀഀAll charged up and no place to go. Maybe they'd be willing to talk about it once everybody left tonight.
ഀഀ#
ഀഀThe doorbell rang a little after that and Rowan ran to get it. Janet was first; she usually was, partly because she had the farthest to come and in February you had to make allowances for unplowed roads, but the rest of them arrived soon afterward -- Dad said that running a ritual on Pagan Standard Time was all very well, but people should make an effort. Pretty soon there were ten people sitting around the living room, catching up on things that had happened since the last Circle met.
ഀഀMarch and Kendall were there, looking like they expected to go on TV at any moment, or possibly run for Mayor. March wore a coat and tie, and Kendall was wearing a pastel suit with gold buttons -- in all the years she'd been coming to Circle, Rowan had never seen her in jeans.
ഀഀLorraine looked like a total flake, as usual. She was wearing a scarf tied around her head like she was hoping for a moon-crown, a huge pentacle around her neck, and one of those glittery sweaters that looked as if it were knitted out of scraps of ribbon. Her dyed-blonde hair crackled around her face in a fashion she'd describe as leonine, but Rowan just thought looked messy.
ഀഀEveryone else looked pretty normal, just as if they belonged here in Rowan's living room. Which they did, of course. They were all people Rowan had known for years. Jordan had taught her how to make candle-flames dance. Cathy had given her some of the best stones for her altar. The Circle was a kind of extended family. And she'd used to look forward to nights the Circle met and seeing all of them, but tonight seeing everybody here just made her feel cross and unreasonable.
ഀഀ"I'm going to go upstairs," Rowan said aloud. She stopped in the kitchen for the bag full of catalogues and her cookies and went up the narrow back steps.
ഀഀ#
ഀഀWhen she shut the door to her room it was as if a babble of background noise -- like people all talking at once in another room -- just stopped. Well, she had good wards in place. It was part of self-discipline and psychic hygiene, and her folks would know if she didn't keep them up. She dumped the catalogues on the bed and set the cookies down beside her computer. Its 'Scrolling Marquee' screen saver -- "Merry Meet and Merry Part and Merry Meet Again" -- rolled across the screen in ever changing colors. At least here, nobody could have any doubt of what Rowan believed in. There was a stoneware pentacle nailed up over the door, and a big poster of Stonehenge at dawn that her Dad had brought back from a business trip over her bed. Around the room were smaller posters of the Wheel of the Year and the Charge of the Goddess and the Wiccan Rede. A big calendar, covering half her closet door, showed the phases of the moon every day for the entire year, and Rowan had pasted stars on it for the quarter and cross-quarter days. The next one was the Vernal Equinox, March 21st.
ഀഀDirectly under the window, her altar was set up on top of an old trunk that was another of Mom's auction finds and held most of Rowan's magical tools and supplies, like her Tarot cards and scrying glass. Leaving everything out for someone to trip on was another example of undiscipline, showing that you didn't take your Path seriously. You always respected the power that you could raise, and took the responsibility for keeping it from hurting anyone else. Rowan had always lived by the Threefold Law of the Wicca ‑- that whatever you did for good or ill came back to you threefold -- and had seen its action both in her life and that of her friends. But unless you were looking for it carefully, you wouldn't see it, because all actions were constantly reverberating against each other, changing the consequences and outcome the way a handful of gravel thrown into a pond changed the surface. There was an old country saying that a Witch was one who could see further into a brick wall than most. Since nobody could see into a brick wall at all, it followed that Witches -- or Wiccans -- were just used to paying more attention to things than other people did.
ഀഀThe Circle was still milling around downstairs, getting ready to go up to the temple room. Rowan didn't need to open the door to look to know that. Growing up Pagan, her parents had taught her to pay attention to the subtle information the Universe was constantly offering, the things that people learned to shut out by the time they reached her age. It wasn't even so much a matter of psychic powers as of just learning how to pay attention -- to your feelings, to other people's feelings, to what they did and didn't say. It was the same kind of feeling that told you whether a street was safe to walk down or not, that told you whether it was okay to crack a joke or you'd better just be silent. And when you added that kind of paying attention to the awareness of the world -- they cycle of the moon, the cycle of the seasons, the idea of harmony and balance being better than just doing things because you could -- it was probably no wonder that other people looked at Wiccans a little funny. Because Wiccans and Pagans really didn't live in the same world as they did. For them, the world was alive and constantly communicating with them. And for Rowan, it was hard to imagine the world being any other way. It would be like being blinded and buried alive, cut off from everything.
ഀഀStop being morbidly self-dramatizing, she told herself firmly. She opened the bag and inspected its contents. Two of the big chocolate-chip cookies she liked -- the ones made with regular and white chocolate chips, one of the bakery specialties, and one of the little round sugary ones that Mom bought for the Circle at this time of year. Rowan plucked it out and put it on the offering-plate on her altar. She rummaged around the bookcase for her matches, and lit the red jar-candle that stood in the center of her altar, surrounded by a ring of shells and stones, each of which held a special memory for her. From her window she could see the way the moonlight washed out the black of the sky, even though she couldn't see the moon from here until much later. Lady Moon was riding the sky tonight, drawing everyone's eyes to her.
ഀഀRowan glanced back at her altar, shaking her head as she got a feeling as if she were being summoned to attention, and a moment later she heard the faint sound of a bunch of people all coming up the stairs at once. She reached over to the bookcase and punched a button on her CD player to cover it up and give herself something else to focus on.
ഀഀ"What to do, what to do?" Rowan muttered. She'd gotten her Algebra homework out of the way first because she hated it, but that left the reading assignments and her English Comp paper, which wasn't due till the end of the month. So she had things to do there, if she wanted to. And there was always the batch of New Age catalogues Mom had brought home, where she could peruse Insta-Voodoo kits that came with a little customizable stuffed doll and Oriel Shadowfox's latest Pre-pubescent Wicca Self-Initiation Package. Not tonight, thanks. At least Mom didn't stock complete garbage at Charmed Life, but she carried a lot more New Age and Wicca Lite stuff than Rowan thought she should. There was, Mom said, a fine line between irresponsible pandering and making a living.
ഀഀShe sat down on the bed, considering her options.
ഀഀRowan had her own phone-line (subject to monthly review by her parents and discussion of the charges), so she could go on-line and chat with her friends on Indiana Pagan Net, or phone Lizbet or Sarah. They knew she was into this sort of stuff -- Lizbet had been her best friend since fourth grade -- but she wasn't out of the broomcloset to them. How could she explain about wanting to join Merryhill Circle when she'd first have to explain what a Circle was and what it did? Lately there seemed to be so many things she wanted to talk about and couldn't to her friends that sometimes Rowan just thought she'd stay in her room and not come out until she was 21. It was only six years, right? Piece of cake.
ഀഀThere was always television. She could go downstairs and watch TV, or videos, and make popcorn or mull some cider. She could do a lot of things. Anything, in fact, but what she wanted to do.
ഀഀ#
ഀഀA couple of hours later, Dad knocked on the door of her room. He was still in his red ritual robe with the embroidered sun on the front and he smelled like incense -- a comforting, familiar smell.
ഀഀ"I was just wondering if there was anything you wanted to talk about," he asked. "You seemed a little distracted earlier." He came all the way into the room and sat down on the edge of her bed.
ഀഀTrust Dad to notice things like that while still running off in six other directions -- and to want to bring it up at the first conceivable moment. If she closed her eyes right now, Rowan could probably still see the ghostly shadow of the horns upon his brow. If you acted for the God in Circle, it influenced the rest of your life as well.
ഀഀ"Just normal teenage heartbreak," Rowan said, trying to head him off before he figured out what was bothering her. Why can't I-- I want--
ഀഀHe took her hand. It was warm and dry, and she ran her thumb over the braided gold of his wedding ring.
ഀഀ"I know it's hard to see a bunch of other people getting what you can't have--" he said.
ഀഀRowan flinched at the accuracy, at the same time making a frantic grab to call back the words that suddenly spilled out.
ഀഀToo late.
ഀഀ"Why can't I have it? Why can't I work with you? I know as much as the candidates you do take; I spent my whole life learning everything you and Mom could teach me; I was born Pagan!" Rowan burst out.
ഀഀShe wished she hadn't said anything, no matter how much right she had to say it. She hated to put that look on Dad's face -- not that he was disappointed in her, but more as if he had to choose his next words carefully because they had to be right, no margin for error.
ഀഀ"It's not that you're not qualified, Rowan. You are, in everything that can be learned out of books and a lot of things that can't. It's that you're too young. I know parents aren't supposed to say things like that for fear of traumatizing impressionable young minds, but it's true. Initiation isn't just a matter of what you know and what you can do. It changes your life in ways you can't even imagine until it happens. It shouldn't happen until you're ready."
ഀഀ"I don't have a life," Rowan grumbled. "How can it change?"
ഀഀ"My point," her father said. "These things tend to work out better if you do have a life to begin with. 'You cannot be a Witch alone,' doesn't just refer to the fact that Wiccans do best in Circles. It means there has to be more to your life than a few hours every month at the full of the moon."
ഀഀThe same arguments, and they didn't make any more sense to her now than they had the first time. Being Pagan wasn't a part-time thing, like sitting in a church on Sunday. It was something she was, not something she did.
ഀഀ"Then what do I do?" she said. How do I stop wanting what I want just because you say I shouldn't have it?
ഀഀ"Trust in the gods. If they want you, they'll let you know," Dad said. The tone of his voice told Rowan that he already knew this wasn't world-class advice that she would leap on with a whoop and a holler, but that he knew she couldn't get into trouble following it. She forced herself to smile.
ഀഀ"I know, Dad. Nobody ever got into trouble being cautious," she said, squeezing his hand. The trouble is, nobody ever gets anything done being cautious, either.
ഀഀ#
ഀഀAfter Dad left, Rowan sat thinking about things some more. She heard the banging in the pipes that meant that someone was taking a shower -- probably Dad, before going back to work. In the end, she took her athame out from under her pillow, got her jacket, and went outside.
ഀഀThe cold bit her skin as if she'd just been dipped in a vat of tingling, minty-fresh mouthwash, and Rowan could smell coming snow on the air. The back yard was fenced, so it wasn't overlooked from any of the neighbors' houses, and their upstairs windows were all dark anyway. It hadn't snowed for the last week, so there were bare melted patches mixed with the snow. Rowan walked out into the middle of the yard, careful of the patches of ice beneath her shoes.
ഀഀThe full moon was visible above the housetops, its disc ringed in faint auroras of blue and gold and red from the ice-crystals in the air. She drew her athame -- a double-edged, black-hilted dagger with a six-inch blade, with a moonstone set in the pommel -- and saluted the moon, then saluted each of the Quarters in their proper order -- sunwise in a circle, East to East -- before turning back to the Moon again.
ഀഀThe Moon Goddess and the Horned God were the duality who governed the lives of the Wicca. In Merryhill Circle, Artemus wore the horned crown that was the God's symbol, and Diana wore the moon crown of the Lady. Rowan's parents had always taught Rowan to see the Divine in the material world, so even if NASA had put a man on the moon 30 years ago, Lady Moon still symbolized the Goddess to the Wicca to her.
ഀഀ"Moon, Moon, Lady Moon. Mother of all, Queen of the Wicca, grant me my desire--" Rowan petitioned under her breath, holding her athame high so that its blade caught the light. But what did she want? Mom always said that good magic began with summoning a positive presence, not simply desiring an absence ("Something more specific than 'no frogs'."). So Rowan had to want something more positive than just not to feel left out.
ഀഀThen it came to her. "I want to worship You and serve You in the ways of old. Only not just in the ways of old, but in the ways of Now, too. The world is changing for the Wicca. We have to do new things. What should I do?"
ഀഀThe full moon burned overhead, bright and serene, and Rowan felt the light filling her up the way a pitcher filled with water, filling her with joy and hope just as Aradia, whose Italian myth named her the first Witch, had promised all her children it would. In that moment Rowan knew, invincibly, that everything would turn out all right, and she would find a way, though just now she didn't know what it would be. After a long moment she lowered her arm, sheathed her athame, and went indoors.
ഀഀ#
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