The Old

There are some who draw the Circle, but Lewis traces the Sphere, for magic and all things are round. There are some who think you can move out of the circle, but Lewis knows that the witch is always the center of his own sphere and magic is no good if it only lives in one place. Now everything is opened, now everything is heightened. He dresses. Gets his transit card. Discreetly slips the old resin wand into his messenger bag and puts the bag over his shoulder. Now he goes down the five flights of stairs and walks the two blocks to Warwick Avenue, and then up the platform, sticks in his card and sits on the platform waiting for the Brown Line train that will take him to Belmont. At Belmont the Red Line takes him to Loyola, and on this late summer evening, he leaves the platform, crosses Sheridan, and as darkness is falling, heads to the beach on his own.

 He stops in the middle of the street and thinks, “I’m not afraid.” Not afraid of muggers, but not afraid of anything.

 There was a time when I was always afraid. And now, it will all turn out well. Everything will turn out well. Even if my spells fail half the time and the magic doesn’t turn out right, there is something different in me. The power in the earth comes up through my feet. There is a friendship with this sky. This is a blessed night. 

 Under the white moon he walks to the beach. And on the beach already the fire is burning and the Gathering is beginning. But he has heard them before he sees them.

“Yemaya assessu; Assessu Yemaya
Yemaya Olodo; Olodo Yemaya

Kai kai kai Yemaya Olodo, Kai kai kai Assessu Olodo!”

The drums are thumping, and he can hear the rattling of the dried gourds. In linen pants and linen shirt, Owen his uncle, who looks more like his brother plays and sings accompanied by Seth, curly haired, and brown eyed, apparently Italian or maybe Portuguese, but definitely Lewis’s cousin.

“Yemaya assessu; Assessu Yemaya
Yemaya Olodo; Olodo Yemaya

Kai kai kai Yemaya Olodo, Kai kai kai Assessu Olodo!”

The Lake, black in the night, taking up all of the east is large as a sea and he can hear the waves suck away sand, and push themselves back to land again, breaking lazily on the shore. Sparks fly up into the night and Lewis hears his uncle Owen’s voice over al the others.

“MAMOU le le eh eh
Ko aniye
IMAMOU le le eh eh
Ko aniye
Agweta royo kap passe la,
Ko aniye IMAMOU le le eh eh
Ko aniye
Neg koti la mer kap passe la
Ko aniye IMAMOU le le eh eh aniye
Neg koki lan doree kap passe la
Ko aniye le le eh eh anyie

Ayibobo!

The fire was still steady, and by its light, many of the others were resting. On the concrete barrier blocks out on the water, Lewis said, “Does it ever occur to you how much of our time and our Craft is spent doing nothing?”

 Owen said. “You know, if we only do one thing, it is pay attention to the world around us and give it honor, and that’s certainly more than most. Getting in line with the way of things, refining your mind, going deeper, praising your Gods… This is not the stuff of the movies. No lightning out of your hands, no spells that shoot fire. No demons jumping out of portals. This is changing, it’s waiting, stewing, the reason the witch stands before the cauldron, stirring. It is slow work and hard to see. That’s why so few are fit for it.”

 Owen did not lecture tonight, but Lewis remembered being much younger, new to all of this. His uncle would take off his glasses and sit in the large old chair in the house on Morse Street and talk until he was finished. This was how Lewis learned.

 “You know why so much of what we do is returning power to the Earth, offering ourselves to the elements, honoring the Gods, refining our spirits, clearing our vision. Why so much of the ritual is ritual and not spell work.”

 “Because,” Lewis had remembered, smiling as Owen said it with him, “The world is already enchanted.”

 “It is,” Owen said, “only most men cannot see it. You don’t need a letter from a magic school. What you need is to be awake. Once you are in your place, the synchronicity of things, the wholeness, the power in you… it all comes.”

 “Even when our magic doesn’t work?”

 “Who told you that?” Owen said. “Spells do not always work. Spells are… just that. They are something said for a spell, for a small stretch in time, trying to make something happen at a certain time in a certain way. That may turn out and it may not. Magic is not a microwave. Most magic takes a long time the way that most things of this earth take a long time, and your blessing may depend on someone else’s dearth, and so, sometimes, you must accept that it is your turn for dearth on the great wheel. But rest assured, the magic always works. It never fails.”

 When Lewis nodded, Owen said, “Has it ever failed you?”

 “No,” Lewis said, thoughtfully, “though sometimes I wonder if I fail it.”

 Tonight, years later, while the waves crashed to shore and a breeze flapped his thin, white linen shirt, Owen was about to respond when, instead, he said, “Who is that man? That man who stands on the edge of the beach? He is… not natural.”

 Then Owen said, “Or rather, his nature has been changed.”

 Lewis looked up and said, “Oh, that’s Christopher.”

 Owen Dunharrow eyes his nephew and repeated: “Christopher?”

 “I meant to tell you about him. Only, he is new. But, yes, that’s Chris.”

 Lewis kissed his uncle on the head quickly, “I’m going now. I think he needs me, and I think he would not come into the circle.”

 “No,” Owen said, looking on him, “I do not think he would. Doubtless you know what you are doing. I will see you soon. I would speak to that young man of yours as well.”

 Young man!

 “Come to dinner Sunday?”

 “In that apartment? Why don’t you all come to dine with me?”

 Lewis nodded. “Certainly, Uncle. Yes Uncle.”

 He kissed him on the cheek and crossed the beach, stopping now and again to embrace some of the others before heading to the grass where Chris stood, hands jammed in his pockets, his blond hair blowing a little in the night breeze.

 “So that is a witch’s coven,” Chris said.

 “Gathering,” Lewis said. “Some people have covens. We have a gathering. Every clan or family or coven or… what have you, is different.”

 “Are there many witches?”

 “I suppose there are many who call themselves such.”

 “But of the real ones?”

 Lewis shrugged and said, “Real is as real does, and it really depends on what you think magic is. But you are taking me off of something. You look different. You look…” Lewis’s hands on Chris’s face traced his contours and he said, “Healthier. You haven’t looked healthy in a couple of days. Only I couldn’t put my finger on it. Your skin is... there is a glow to you. You’re warmer. You…”

 Lewis parted from him and Chris winced, but the look on Lewis’s face was considering more than horrified. He whispered, “You’ve just killed, haven’t you?”

 “I made myself do it,” Chris said. “Because for days I’d been making myself not do it. I thought I couldn’t bear to see the look in your eyes when you realized, really realized what I was, and… but I knew I had to tonight. I’ve been out hunting. I have fed.”

 Lewis drew Chris’s face to him, and he could smell the blood on his mouth, the iron of it.

 “I thought I told you I knew you. I thought I told you I would stand by you. Even if it scared me. And it does. A little. I thought I told you I trusted you.”

 “Do you want to know about it?”

 “Only if you want to tell me.”

 “Take my hand,” Chris said.

 They walked up the street together.

 “I didn’t go to work tonight. I walked the streets and heard men’s thoughts and the hunger was on me so any excuse would do, fratboys talking about raping girls, a man who beat his wife. Just listen to peoples thoughts and it will give you grounds to kill any of them.

 “But a thought is just a thought. You can’t really kill over a thought. Not by the rules of my clan. And then, nearly two hours ago, I heard the heartbeat of a boy going to murder his mother. He was getting the mallet ready to hit her in the head, and he had already prepared the lime that would dissolve her body. He had dug the pit.”

 “But how… How did you hear?”

 “It’s like,” Chris tried, tiredly, “like a police scanner almost, where you hear the most awful thoughts. It is not on all the time, or at least not so powerfully except for on nights like this, nights of hunger and maybe the full moon helps too. It took me straight to that boy, the way Laurie could find your building without directions. And then… and then the deed was done.”

 Part of Lewis wanted to know how it was done, but the other part thought that as he would not reveal all that had taken place at the Gathering, Chris  could not reveal this.

 “I did it in my right mind,” Chris said as they approached the lights os Sheridan Street and were walking toward the El.

 “Lewis. Look at me a moment.”

 “Yes,”

 “I’ve tried to not do it,” Chris said, “to not be a killer, to resist the urge until it is far too late. And when I’ve done that, bad things happen. “

 “You mean you’ve killed people.”

 “No, I kill people on a regular basis, and they’re sort of the scum of the earth who are about to kill someone else so I don’r really feel bad about it. I’m a killer, and I’m pretty much over that. I just…” Chris stopped talking.

 “What?”

 “Goddamn, that’s it. Not that I do it, but that I’m not weepy about it. I’m a killer, Lewis, and I’m scared that when you finally understand that, when you understand that I’m a killer and Lawrence is a killer and we don’t feel bad about it, that we really are monsters, you will leave.

 “But what I am talking about, that bad things happen… That’s when people who should not have died were in the way. When I went mad and killed people who would not have killed, who had lives to build, who should never ever have died. When you stop feeding you don’t just get hungry, you go mad and kill with no reason. That sits with me every day. Every day that I keep living. And because I don’t want that to ever happen again I find the murderers and the monsters and feast on them. And I do enjoy it. You… I can’t hide that from you. I can’t hide what I am. Not from you.”

 “We need to go home,” Lewis said.

 “You think I’m a good man.”

 “No,” Lewis said. “You’re beyond that. You are a monster, you know? You’re a terror. You’re terrible. I wake up next to you, and you are sweet and beautiful and I want to hold you and protect you from yourself and from everything in your head. You are an immortal, killing monster the same way I am a witch. You are what you are, but what you are loves me. You never lied to me. You give your whole self to me. And so… And so I love you. The rest of it doesn’t matter.”

 They walked down the street in silence, and finally Chris said, “I’m devoted to you, you know that? I am a monster. That is so. But I’m your monster.”