The Old

Enter Seth

Continued

“Teach me to be the witch. Teach me to live as the witch. Teach me to be the witch. Teach me to be the witch…” Seth hears himself whispering over and over again in the November cold.

Wrapped in this blanket and passing in and out of sleep, he does not know how long he has been doing this. He does not want to be aware of this, to ask how long this has been going on. He is sure that this is what magic is, that the moment he is conscious of it, asks too many questions, it will be gone from him. He keeps whispering:

“Teach me to be the witch.

Teach me to live as the witch.

Teach me to be the witch.

Teach me to be the witch.”

His eyes open, and there is sunlight touched with silver, and the dry grass growing up out of it, and now there is the shadow of a man. He can tell the man is not very tall, but he sees very little. As he squints, he sees the man has a warrior’s body. He wears great dark boots but the feet protrude bare from them, and though leather bounds his arms in the same away, he is naked otherwise save that white paint makes a rayed sun about his navel and across his eyes is painted a stripe of white paint. He is wearing hands, hands cut from who can say? The first reaches from between his thighs and cups his sex, shielding it obscenely. Next, long hands, reach from around his back and splay across his chest like a breastplate, and on their backs are painted, no…. are winking… eyes. Like Seth he is neither black nor white. He is deeply tanned or is he light of skin? He is the color of chocolate milk. The man’s actual eyes close under his spiky black hair. He is sharp nosed and sharp faced, and while Seth barely dares to look at him, suddenly His eyes flash open, and He and Seth both speak the word, the secret name that until then he never knew.

In the purple cold darkness, Seth blinks, aware that all before was a dream, and that now he is half frozen and the true morning is coming. As cold as it is, he dreads dressing again, dreads rising and the stiffness of joints after the night, the wetness of the clothes sitting in dewy grass. He blows out the candles, but cannot stand to wait for them to harden again. He will come back for them later. He limps home, aching, cold and tired, vowing to sleep for true all day.

While they sat almost casually watching the large blaze in the backyard, Lewis read the news from his phone and said, “They’re putting up a Satanic Temple about thirty miles away. Look at em. Smiling white folks in black with little pentagrams and upside down crosses.”

“They say they do good work,” Seth said. “They say they don’t believe in an actual devil or an actual god, that they are working for human improvement and enlightenment.”

“Well, then it would make more sense if they did that,” Loreal’s mother said, “and left the Devil alone.”

“They say there is no real devil, Morgan,” Seth repeated.

Lewis scrolled down and said, “Look at this.”

“Oh, Lewis! No.”

“Morgan, you don’t even know what it is.”

“If it’s something about Satan I don’t want to see it. “

“I do,” Owen held his hand out. “Good Lord,” he murmured.

“What?”

There was a loud crack and a pile of wood fell into the blaze. Sparks and whirls of fire rolled up from the burning wood.

Owen handed the phone to Loreal and she said, “Wow. Now I bet these people do believe in the Devil. Mom, you wanna see it?”

“Only because you want me to.”

“You know you want to.”

“Good grief.”

“That’s a Satanic temple in Colombia,” Loreal said, “and you know whatever white folks say up here, down there those fuckers are praying to the Devil. “

Loreal murmured, “I bet all sorts of shit goes on down there.”

“I think they’re both fools,” Owen said. “It’s the problem with white people, with Americans. They no longer really believe. The Wiccans who don’t actually practice the Craft, the Satanists, who think they’re being shocking. They don’t understand that when you call out to something long enough it will show up, regardless if you believe in it or not. And those people in South America, who willingly worship devils... They don’t understand a devil isn’t a thing to be worshiped. A devil never thanked you for your service. Or loved you.”

“Ethan said—”

“Ethan,” Morgan murmured,

“Ethan said,” Loreal continued, quoting her half brother, “that devils were to be commanded, not worshiped.”

“Devils are to be left alone,” Owen said. “There’s more than enough out there to speak to. They can be left to their own devices.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Loreal said. “I thought that witches didn’t really believe in God and Jesus and the Devil… you know, in Christianity.”

“Witches worship in many ways,” Owen said as the reflection of the fire played in his glasses, “and certainly no witch is an orthodox Christian. But all of those things you mentioned stand for something, and we all believe in the things for which they stand. The Gods are God. The Light of their presence in this world is Christ and low spirits, fallen spirits, creatures who produce evil are demons. They are wholly deceptive and meant to be left alone. Many witches and many old paths do not even deal with them. Christians and Jews have always loved their devils, so Christian magicians became obsessed with them, and that was a great mistake by far.”

“I think,” Morgan said, “we’ve had enough talk of devils.”

“Cousin, I wholly agree.” Owen rose. “Seth, Lewis. Shall we check the fire?”

Early in the morning they had risen, when most of the visitors were still there and begun to build the elaborate crossing and recrossing almost altar of wood in the clearing in the backyard. By late morning, in silence, they had borne Susanna Dunharrow down the stairs and placed her on it, and now, through late morning into the noon they watched it burn.

“Burn to the bones, burn to the bones,” Owen murmured, “just as in Roman times.”

When Loreal was off with her mother, Seth asked Lewis, “Are you a little grossed out by this?”

“Not really. The truth is I didn’t know her enough to be grossed out, and since we can’t have the funeral until the Ninth Day, and she didn’t want to be embalmed, this was the only way to do it.”

Then Lewis added, “And to tell you the truth, this is a lot better than a dead body sitting up on a bed like last night. That’s a thing I can’t really get used to.”

“When it comes my time,” Owen said, “just a crematorium and be done with it. None of this,” he waved a hand around the yard, “business.”

“Oh, that’s not poetic.”

“I’ve had enough of poetry,” Owen said. “Keep the Ninth Night, but everything else you can do quickly.”

On the porch, Loreal heard a knock at the door, and she got up while her mother wondered, “Who can that be?”

“Maybe Eve. Maybe Ethan.”

“Maybe,” Morgan said, but she didn’t sound particularly convinced.

She had passed through the kitchen and down the long hallway though the dining room before Loreal thought, “This is a much bigger house than I remember,” and opening the door she saw two men, both long and tall, long faced, fine cheek boned, cheeks nearly hollowed, removing shades from their pale eyes. Now that she had met the first one and knew what a vampire felt like, she could tell the dark haired one was a vampire as well.

“You must be Lewis’s friends,” Loreal said, bowing, and her aureole of cinnamon colored hair bobbed with her. “Come in.”

Chris was nearly as taken aback as Lewis by the way Laurie swooped down on him and embraced him.

“I am so sorry,” Laurie said, his eyes shining with… tears, “So terribly sorry about your loss.”

Lewis was not about to say that he had not been terribly close to Susanna, and that she had been very old and he was just about to retrieve her bones from a pile of ash. So he said, “The truth is; Loreal was her granddaughter, and it’s really she who deserves condolences.”

Laurie set his gaze on her and said, “Then you have them,” and there was something so comic about his sorrow that Loreal would have laughed except it was absolutely sincere and she said, “Thank you…”

“Lawrence Malone.” He held his hand out. “You can call me Laurie.”

“Laurie,” she said with a smile. “I am Loreal. We should be friends.”