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Words of the Witches
Yvonne Jocks, Maggie Shayne, Jen Sokoloski, Evelyn Vaughn
Excerpt
Excerpt from “A Solitary Path,” by Evelyn
Vaughn:
Tobi’s thought form would be a man,
envisioned and then asked to patrol the parking lot from
one full moon to the next. She tried considering a woman
instead--she knew of plenty warrior goddesses who set a
good example--but for some reason, her imagination kept
latching onto a man.
Maybe Judy’s concerns
about her not having enough male energy in her life were
having an effect.
He wouldn’t actually
materialize in front of her, of course. That was not how
magic worked. But if she envisioned him clearly enough, and
charged him powerfully enough, his very existence--even in
a separate if interpenetrating realm--might dissuade
predators.
She took several nights to plan
him, jotting thoughts into her Palm Pilot between calls at
work, deleting as many qualities as she kept. The last time
she'd tried listing the traits of the perfect man, even
before she’d become a magic-user, she’d nevertheless drawn
to herself a guy who possessed every ingredient. He'd been
handsome, charming, attentive, creative....
Unfortunately, since she’d been doing it blind, she
hadn't remembered to add such qualities
as "responsible," "loyal," or even "honest." Be careful
what you wish for....
"Responsible," she
decided firmly, the list off her PDA and into her leather-
bound Journal of Shadows. She sat on the floor again,
Sophie the cat stretched comfortably beside her, Enya music
surrounding her. Sometimes she remembered to turn off the
TV. "Honest. Alert.”
Wouldn't do to have
a guardian who didn't actually notice the mugger.
"Even-tempered." She didn't want the
police scraping the remains of the mugger off the asphalt,
either. Just in case.
Oh, and--duh. She
added something fairly important, pleased with how the milk-
colored gel-ink looked against the black pages of the
journal. "Protective.”
The next step was
to decide what he looked like. The more clearly she
pictured him, the more surely he would exist on the astral
plane. She knew he would have dark hair, cliched or not. He
would be tall, with wide shoulders and a broad chest
and....
She laughed. Unless he was
patrolling the parking lot topless, not to mention
corporeal, it wouldn't matter what his abs looked like.
Although if she put him in a tight shirt and well-worn
jeans, it couldn't hurt, either.
White T-
shirt, she decided. So that the mugger’s subconscious can
better see him.
Strangely, despite how
certain she felt about his hair-color and size, she
couldn’t envision the thought-form’s face. And normally she
had such a good imagination! She knew he would be
handsome, at least to her own eyes... one of the many
advantages of an imaginary man. Still, she felt as if she
were squinting her third-eye to get a good look at someone,
and he was ducking his face away from her. Frustrated, she
went through clippings from her “cute guy” file--where she
kept favorite pictures from magazines and catalogs--and
found an image that was, well...
Perfect.
The picture fit so well
that she wondered if she’d been subconsciously remembering
it all the time... a possibility that in no way invalidated
the effort she'd put into him so far.
The
magazine picture, an ad for some kind of dot-com company,
showed a dark-haired man from behind, standing in heavy
mist. He wore tight jeans and a tighter shirt, just a
little of his hard jaw visible over one broad shoulder, a
lock of dark hair hiding the rest of his face. The tagline
read, What do YOU Think is Out There?
He
had a cute butt, and she hadn't even ordered
that.
“It’s you,” she whispered, holding
the page, and her breath fell shallow even as CD music
swelled. She felt as if she knew this man, wholly and
instinctively... and as if everything she knew about him
pleased her.
Maybe it was a sign that
this working was meant to be.
One of the
many benefits to having her own place--along with keeping
her own hours and watching whatever she chose--was that
Tobi didn’t have to hide her tools from roommates or
parents or even disapproving spouses. She did, however,
keep her most sacred items in a carved oak cabinet, away
from dust and sunlight. On her night off, which she’d made
sure was the full-moon, she opened the cabinet’s doors to
release a delicious cloud of scent, from incense and herbs
and candles and oils, and retrieved four well-used jar
candles. They were in the standard quarter colors--green,
yellow, red, and blue--and she set them to four sides of
her living room to mark the directions of north, east,
south, and west, respectively.
Her coffee
table became her working altar. She lay a blue cloth with a
pattern of gold and silver stars over it, then set out her
athame, her bell, and her spirit-candle. Two artistically
faceless figurines in white ceramic, male and female,
represented the divine forces of God and Goddess. It had
taken her well over the standard year-and-a-day after she’d
discovered Wicca to move past the “collecting cool props”
phase of her individual study... by then, she’d collected
quite a few. She made sure now that the photograph model
for her thought-form lay on the altar, as well as the new
scarf, washed in salt-water to cleanse any clinging
energies.
She turned off the telephone
ringer, set her VCR for the shows she would miss, turned
her answering machine’s volume all the way down, and
lowered her halogen lamp to the barest of glows.
Pressing “repeat” and then “play” on her stereo released
the familiar, instrumental soundtrack to Conan the
Barbarian, one of her favorite working CD’s. She’d already
showered and now wore a sleeveless silk robe, which had
come off a peignoir set but which she reserved for magic.
Usually a kitchen-witch, Tobi did not always go through all
this ritual to do magic, but tonight’s working felt far
bigger than her usual day-to-day charms.
Tonight felt momentous.
Standing
straight in front of her altar, she stretched her arms out
wide, her athame--a distressed replica of an antique dagger-
-in one hand, reaching up and up until it pointed to the
ceiling. “It’s showtime, folks,” she murmured softly, to
whoever and whatever might be listening.
The
athame seemed to quiver in her hand as she walked the
perimeter of her circle. Even as she set it back on the
altar, before she’d lit quarter candles, Tobi felt the air
inside her sacred place--between and of all space and time--
falling heavy and still. It wasn’t just because she’d cut
off the air-conditioner so it wouldn’t startle her or blow
out the candles.
“Element of earth, power
from the North, I call on you,” she stated clearly into the
shadowed room. “Be with me in my sacred circle.” Then she
lit the green candle, near the one houseplant that had ever
survived her, and envisioned the fertile energies of earth
power gathering around her to that side of the room. When
it felt proper, she stepped to her right, under the wind-
chimes that hung from her living-room ceiling, by the
yellow candle.
“Element of air, power from
the East, I call on you....”
And so on.
After the calling of the quarters, she requested her Lord
and Lady attend her circle as well. From the feel of the
energies that began to thrum around her and the delicious
shiver up her spine, she could not doubt they’d
assented.
Tobi had done group rituals before.
When they went well, the power was incredible... but one
fidgety or cynical group member could easily destroy the
night’s magic. A benefit to being a solitary practitioner
was not having to worry about anybody’s missteps but her
own. This private circle in her living room felt safe as
few places could. The candlelight, the scent of copal, the
gurgle of her table-fountain to the West side of the room,
the music--all combined with her breathing exercises to
ease her into a gentle alpha state... or, as she better
liked to envision it, to move into the world beyond worlds.
It was a place she went, after all... the same way somebody
got on the phone or went on the Internet.
Kneeling on the carpet before the altar, she let
the world outside her circle fade as she focused on the
picture, then on the empty space beyond it. If her guardian
were just over six feet, that would put him... yes. Tobi
could see exactly where he would come to, standing against
the opposite wall.
First she envisioned his
shape, slightly warping the reality around him like a
particularly good invisible-man effect in the movies. We
can rebuild him. Stronger. Faster....
She
repeated her breathing exercises, to better
concentrate.
Visualization was Tobi’s
forte. After tweaking the shape of her creation--widening
his shoulders, remembering that men tended to taper down
into their hips instead of flaring out again--she needed
only a few more breaths to lend him color and substance.
Dark hair. White shirt. Tanned arms. Tight
jeans....
She could picture the tight jeans
very nicely. If only he were real....
“But he’s not,” she reminded herself sternly, as if
Judy were watching over her shoulder--and knew her
stupidity even as her image of him vanished to reveal only
her wall, framed photographs, doorjamb.
Catching herself before she sent out any more
negativity by cursing, she calmly and firmly started over.
One, steady breathing. Two, alpha state. Three, hulking
male form in her living room. Despite the negation--out
loud, yet!--she recalled him with surprising ease.
Kneeling, she would have to look up to take him all in--so
she did. That made him seem even taller and more protective
in her mind’s eye.
It also gave her an
intriguing vantage on those imaginary jeans.
He is real, she kept telling herself to the beat of
barbarian drums, slowly perceiving the highlights of his
hair, the plane of his cheeks, five-o’clock shadow,
eyelashes. He is real. He may not be of my world, but here
and now he is real....
Soon, his shade
stood before her as surely as if she were watching him on
TV. Oh, she could also see the doorway beyond him, the
display of photographs through him. He hadn’t materialized
anywhere but in the astral realm and in her own perception
of it. But by focusing on his presence, not his absence,
she could “see” him clearly indeed. The way his dark eyes
stared silently back at her, she even felt his presence
with her, in this sacred circle. She imagined the scent of
him, a faint mix of soap and musky aftershave. For a
moment, it seemed almost as if she could reach out across
the altar and....
But no, she had a spell to
cast.
Claiming the scarf, she lay it on
the opposite side of the altar from herself, at his feet--
and saw that her thought-form wore brown cowboy boots. Who
would have thought? Then, sitting back, Tobi spoke what
she’d written:
“I ask thee, guardian, for a
boon--
from now until the next full
moon.
Protection, against
anyone
Who means me harm. Yet harming
none,
I bid thee, guardian, if you
will
Patrol these grounds against all
ill
As long as these, thy colors, fly--
Or if thou won’t, bid me goodbye.”
Then she waited. As her creation, he would probably
do as she asked... but as soon as something became real, it
got free will. He seemed so very real, she found herself
holding her breath--then releasing it, relieved, when he
shrugged one shoulder and took an easy step forward onto
the scarf. He had accepted.
“Then I bid
thee,” she said, “to fulfill thy duty with the following
virtues: Responsibility. Honor.
Protection....”
At one point during this
recitation, angling her gaze upward and imagining his face,
she thought she saw a hint of smile. She liked it, liked
the lips she’d envisioned for him. If this weren’t the
middle of a fairly hefty spell, she might even smile
back....
Tobi suddenly felt glad that she’d
limited his existence to a 28-day cycle... and anxious to
bind the spell!
“If this working be
correct," she cautioned, "and allows others to be free, so
I Will it, so I Shape it, and So Mote it Be.”
And in the blink of an eye--poof?--she was alone
again. Well, alone except for the masculine and feminine
faces of God and the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water,
and Spirit. But no tall, broad-shouldered, fictitious hunk
stood before her.
She couldn't shake the idea
that, just before vanishing into the standard, he'd winked
at her.
Wow!
She took
extra time to ground herself before thanking and bidding
farewell to the Lord and Lady, as well as the elements--“Go
if you must, stay if you will.” As she walked the circle
again, envisioning the bubble of protective light receding
back into her athame, the air seemed to move again, to drop
several degrees. It had been warm in-circle. She’d been
there awhile.
“My circle is open yet ever
it remains, within me and without.” Putting down the
athame, she allowed herself to stretch a bit, then gathered
the scarf from where she’d imagined her guardian stepping
onto it. Into it.
It was such soft silk. The
stylized knight painted on it was dashing, and the faint,
geometric design behind him... was it a labyrinth? She
almost hated to set it out where it could fade. But that,
too, was part of the spell, and a small cost indeed. She’d
asked the guardian to be with her one moon’s cycle, and
that was that.
So she went out onto her
apartment terrace, into the quiet, summer night, and tied
the scarf to the wrought-iron railing, where it moved
slightly in the warm breeze, in the cloud-shrouded
moonlight. It was a romantic night, soft and heavy. “As
long as this standard flies,” she whispered, trailing her
fingers across it, “So may you walk.”
Good spell, she thought, then shivered--her magic
shiver.
A motion from below her caught her
attention.
For a moment, Tobi felt self-
conscious... maybe nobody could have heard her, but they
might wonder what she was doing on her balcony, well after
midnight, in a peignoir! But then she looked closer, and
felt a different self consciousness--
--
at the glimpse of white T-shirt as a tall, dark-haired man
rounded the corner of the apartments beyond hers!
“Ho-ly crap,” she whispered.....
Excerpt from "The Spelling Error" by Jen Sokoloski
Mira Taggert finished packing Jeremy's things into the
last box, the final evidence that she'd shared her life
with someone for the past two years. Cradling the phone in
the crook of her shoulder, she dragged it into the yard to
join eight others. "He dumped me, Mom. Just like that. In
the middle of Hawaii."
"Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry. Do you want me to turn him
into a toad?"
"It'd be redundant." She almost laughed until she
remembered that the whole occult thing was what was
responsible for their breakup. Faced with the truth on a
sunny beach, they'd had it out.
"You're telling me that my religion--my faith--is
childish nonsense?"
He sighed. "That's not what I meant. Look, I'm about
to make partner in my firm. I can't have a flaky wife who
talks to ghosts and believes in witchcraft. I need a wife
my partners will respect. Someone who won't make waves."
He flicked her tiny crescent moon earrings. "Why can't you
just wear some simple pearls?"
If he thought her tiny pentagrams and tasteful earrings
were flaky, he had no clue. She'd left most of the
trappings of her religion behind when she was old enough to
realize that faith came from the soul and not the jewelry
around one's neck.
She turned from him and laughed, feeling the power of
the ocean, the sand beneath her feet, the clear air, and
the volcanic energy that pulsed through the islands like a
great heartbeat. She longed to call on those waves and that
power and lash out at him with a nice big typhoon.
Not that she really could--that kind of great, mystical
power only existed where very skilled special-effects
people got paid lots of money to do it. Nevertheless, as
she stalked away dignity shredded but somewhat intact, she
liked to imagine that the sky had grown flatter, and the
waves wilder.
Her mother's voice drew her back to the
present. "Honey, you sound drained. Join me for a while at
the center. Besides, there's a favor I needed to ask you
anyway."
Her mother's favors always made her nervous and she
began to pace back and forth between the living room and
the kitchen. "I've told you, Mom. I can't help your
friends' stores. My business consulting wouldn't get them
anywhere they'd want to go." The Psychic Mall was more
like a haphazard hybrid between flea market and charity
than a group of businesses. Palm readers, aura readers,
mediums, and crystal sellers came and went as they pleased,
no advertising, and gave their services away if the mood
struck them.
"Not the Mall. A man, new in town, just opened a
coffee shop, and he needs your help to make it work."
"A coffee shop, huh?"
"Yes. He has the most charming twelve year-old
daughter, Lucy. She visits me quite a bit and she's worried
about things. Her father's raising her alone, you know."
Kendra tsked. " And Paul--Lucy's father--is Atlantean
royalty and not used to working for a living."
Mira stopped in her pacing tracks. "Mom, you know I
don't believe in that Atlantis junk. Besides, it doesn't
matter what people were in their past lives. It's this one
that counts."
"Yes, dear. And in this one, he's Atlantean royalty
who needs your help."
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