Chapter 6: Chapter Five

"Enough."

Holy shit. I forget sometimes that I'm a full-grown woman--how deep and resonant my voice can get if I just project, really use what I learned in music and theater. I sound like someone else. Someone ten years older. Someone who knows how the world works, and how to make the workings warp.

And they're just staring at me, thunderstruck… oh my god. For all their posturing, all the raging and wailing, they're still young at heart. A bunch of sheltered girls who fall into line and mumble "yes ma'am" if Mommy raises her voice.

I should probably feel bad about tapping that. I might be reinforcing someone's conditioning from her own abusers. But, on the other hand, Moonsilver has already established that I'm pure irredeemable evil, so--

"This wretched cabal," I say, "has no further sheen to offer. I do not know what you are. Of myself, it is enough to know my name is Carrie Rider. I'm working on a Bachelor's in Religion, with an emphasis on Ancient Religions. That's mostly because my mother told me a lot of fairy tales that got me fascinated in Gallic and Germanic Paganism, which tonight's trip was an excuse to study… and none of that is material, here."

Moonsilver's rigid. Eyes wide. She's angry, yes, but that particular kind of anger… it's so easy to act the immovable arch-witch when I know they can't read my face anyway, so it's easy to be as calm, confident, and full of insight that pierces the soul as a true arch-witch would be. It's so easy, outright comical, to see that every scrap of fury Moonsilver has is going into holding her ground.

Aww, look at that. Little miss biz-witch is scared of the genuine article.

"I have no interest in dictating to other women, nor other witches, what their way in the world is to be, nor how they will make it," I continue. I pace, shift, turn slowly to stare down each in turn. This is kiddie stuff. Speechmaking 101. But it works. Why? They have to have taken that course, a bunch of girls this politically active. What do I have that they don't?

Oh.

Oh, they can tell that I believe it's real. And now they're starting to doubt. At best, I'm a crazy person. And these stuck-up brats with all their denial, so drunk on the idea of their own purity that they can't even admit they might still have some fear of the other to work through… even a crazy person is an invincible terror to them.

Of course, they'd say "a person who struggles with mental health". Wouldn't want to use any problematic language. But their emotions are still screaming, "ew, a crazy person" so all that's really changed is that they've avoided facing their inner hag.

Worse than that, growing stronger each second they just sit there, fed by their own need to believe they wouldn't just keel over for any normal woman who takes a firm tone with them (of course they would, they're lesbians)--oh, they don't believe, but they do fear.

I want to laugh. There are nine of you and one of me. I'm not even the tallest girl here, and I’m definitely not the fittest. Just jump me, you idiots! Jump me and… and what? Destroy the most potent icon of feminine power they'll ever see in their miserable lives?

Oh, I'm going to milk this for all it's worth. This feels SO. FUCKING. RIGHT.

"I have no congress with the gods of Wicca, nor desire to leech from their esteem," I continue. I drift close to Morticia. Let the tilt of my head show her that my gaze is lingering on her childish toy pentagram.

"I am a witch, oh wayward daughters, of the old ways. Embody gods? Symbolize? This does not appeal. The ancient sisters did not barter with lazy divinities. We did not give ourselves to them as playthings, puppets, or petitioners. We commanded the heavens, the earth, and the dead. One and all they knelt before us from righteous adulation for our power: for the power of mortal women who could humble eternity by raw force of will. You have said to me, Moonsilver, that the new ways are better. May it be so that they are better to you."

I hold my hand over the fire. Stare straight at her. "Would that I could plunge my flesh into this inferno, and be naught but warmed by it. But the wages of the ancient witch in this faded, embittered, rotten age of yours--they are to burn by the very heat of her own desire." I step around. I'm so tempted to let my silks trail into the flame, to stand burning before her yet not be burned, but I know the surety in my head that I can do it exists in my head only.

"Wiccans you may be, or witches of another breed," I declare at last. "But witches such as I know, sisters of the ancient way… if ours should be the measure, then this much I will say."

A deep breath. A building. When I speak I want the words to land like the sundering drop of the guillotine's blade. And they do. Oh, they surely do.

"You are not witches," I hiss. "Activists, at least when it pays well, and I am sure the mortal world, shaped by the hand of man for the coin of man, will much esteem your striving. Verily, sisters of another's brood, art thou useful. But witches? A coven? No. And your empty promises have robbed me. You have torn open the eyes of my soul where I hoped for a gentle kiss upon each lid. Forced me to witness my desire for other women, and other women's flesh, long before I was ready. You have stolen from me in a way no man ever did.  Stolen the chance for a journey, a slow and sweet awakening--what woman might have been first, do you suppose, to awaken the love of a woman's touch in me?"

I press my cheek. Shift from side to side. "A quiet and insightful librarian? A raucous champion of the sporting field? A fencer or a dancer, a singer or an artist. A chance meeting, or perhaps the slow bond of working together, yes, even in studying such a shrine as that unearthed upon the ancient hill to the north… all this has gone. You have stolen from her the joy of being my awakening, and from me, the joy of praising her for it."

"I'm sorry," Morticia murmurs.

"Perhaps you are," I say, and nod. "Or perhaps you are only sorry that you have been made to feel the discomfort your actions have brought upon another. I care not. Of the insult your lies have given me this night, the slight upon my right to guide my own lust is by far the lesser. I know not whether I will ever mend the gouge your betrayal has made in my heart. To you, I entrusted my deepest beliefs as a witch. You scorned them for a child's trifles."

Jenuthra, or Jenna, rather, for her witch-name is taken falsely, inhales sharply. Ah. So my instincts sing true. She believed, once, and lost her belief in the breaking quiet of the Earth. I do sorrow for her, a little. But not more than I sorrow for myself--for, once more, I am alone. They shall have each other to sorrow for. I, alone, will stand to sorrow for me.

"Now," I say to the silent circle, "were there justice left in the world, what penance would a witch of the old ways exact for poisoning a piece of her soul?"

There should be a sickly green fog around us. The fleshless fingers of dead warriors should be clawing from the frost-kissed soil at my feet. I should have imps flying behind me to uphold the train of my gown, and with the sweep of my hand I should have dominion over a rain of black blood and red lightning from on high. We can all feel it: the nightmares I should be able to make real.

This is Earth, and Earth is garbage, so none of that happens.

But the feeling won't go away--like any second, something could just split wide open, and I would at last have the mastery I deserve over the fickle shapes of reality, and all the ghosts of broken saints would quail before the tempest of my rage. One more time, I draw a little closer to Moonsilver with each word.

"I do not acknowledge your goddess, nor any god," I finally murmur, halting just a foot away from her. She's shivering. If I jumped her right now, she'd just lie there screaming while I tore that stupid wealth-flaunting necklace off and broke her little wand… but I am not here to be cruel. I am here to make her witness to my power. Nothing more. "Usurpers on their marble thrones. Every pantheon, a feast of thieves. To one power alone do I give obeisance." I lean forward. Whisper in her ear.

I swear I can feel it just as she does--the nigh-scalding brush from each winding tendril of my breath, an infernal wind seeping into her. "Hail Satan, ruler of Earth and flesh and every mortal coil. Long may she reign."

I sweep to the fire's other side, a vision of black lace and quiet ire, and collect my bag. "I will return this relic to your keeping come the morning, when I have placed my own belongings in a sack more suitable to my spirit." I sling the obnoxious thing over my shoulder. Its corny logos look so out of place against the austere ruffles and netting of my attire.

I straighten. Turn neatly, hands still clasped before me like a grim matron of old. And, surrounded by moonlit seams on all sides from the shifting clouds above, yet somehow walking a path where the shadows lie undisturbed, I pace up the hill to the ancient shrine.

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"You… you can't go there!" Moonsilver calls. "That's off limits! They told us so!"

Oh my god, kid, are you five years old? I bet you would be falling over yourself to preach about how violating archaeological best practices is just rebellion against Patriarchy if you were the one who got to look cool to do it.

Which, I mean, is fair. Maybe in an alternate reality we both get to look cool, barging into the shrine side by side. Maybe in that reality we've reconciled our differences, and we celebrate by having spicy rivals-to-lovers sex on the altar.

But here and now, I'm the selfish evil girl who takes what she wants when she knows it belongs to her, so I get this all to myself. Here and now, Moonsilver is a hack. Her choice, her loss. Me? I'm always an honest-to-slaughter witch. Always have been, always will be.

I don't know what a "true" witch is or what "true" even means. The only witch I know is me, and this witch? She doesn't have to moralize.

Manifest power does not justify. It simply is.

But on the other hand, a good old-fashioned villainess deserves to have the final say in her own monologue, so…

"It is a mausoleum of my family," I call back. "The great sisterhood of proto-German witches, made in ancient days before the hand of empire was grown heavy on the foundations of the Earth! I will not be denied my rites of mourning. But you are most welcome to call the authorities, oh Moonsilver, if that is the extent of your witchcraft!"

That silence. The silence of a last word too ruinous to challenge. God damn me to Hell, it's as sweet as mulled wine. If I ever get a shred of real magic, I'll be unstoppable, because I can't do a speck right now but I'm still pretty sure I just managed to cast a curse.

And yeah, sure, this is already so ludicrous no one will ever believe it happened, not this way, but what do I care about that? I'm never going to hang out with those wretched girls again. I will know it's real.

And now, as I start to understand how much power I already have purely by virtue of being the woman I've grown into, as I shed my worries about the opinions of others like a white-scaled snake shedding her skin, it makes the unseen world feel strangely tangible. Weighty enough I wouldn't need to be able to prove it to other people if I knew it was real.

I mean, hellfire and adultery, if I really could cast magic, I wouldn't need to show it to anyone. I would just go out by myself, cast magic, and giggle about my secret.

For all I know, that's where all the real witches are--hidden away after finally tapping the real magic again, just having a grand old time. And here, in the too-warm summer air, walking away from a bunch of performative, catty, lying workaday assholes… it makes me happy to think that. I'm just glad my real sisters took care of themselves, and hopefully got hurt less than me.

Still… it is really lonely out here. I bend under the vines at the shrine's entrance. Listen to the irregular echoes of my footsteps on the time-worn rock. And the words just start to flow out of me on their own--tears, too.

"Are you there, sisters?" I ask of the shadows. "Do the ripples of my whispers reach you in the far night? Can you hear the ether stirring when it stirs the ether of me?"

I pull my phone out--then, smiling despite my sniffles, I fish the candles out of my club bag. I'd meant to present these, ones I made myself with lavender and an infusion of my own blood, to really wow the coven when we got to the main ritual. Thank goodness I didn't waste them on that--this is a million times better. Flint and tinder, just as I practiced. Light one with the burning tuft, then use it to light the others as I place them about the shrine.

"First from the darkness came the tide of the far skies, and in it every star of heaven was given form," I mutter, with the urgent cadence and sharp consonants of a monk praying over his rosary. "The first were of light and shadow interwoven, and in them the forsaken fire burned fiercest of all, but it brought no warmth. And the void was cold. And they wailed long into the darkness and the deep for the succor of a fond heart's sigh…"

As I light the candles, their glow catches in the ancient carvings: robed and hooded, long-haired with torcs and circlets and bead-bracelets on their arms. My gaze settles on the etching on the old altar's base: a circle of six witches chanting around a seventh laid out on the altar. An open gate in the far wall of the shrine, the one that lies due north: opposite of the entrance. Rays and smoke and lightning-bolts flow out of the stylized aperture.

There's a figure standing in it, but this is one of the few damaged spots in the carvings. I can see lines that might've been meant to show horns, or antlers, or ears, or even some really weird kind of crown. Are those digitigrade legs or just jagged gouges? The outlines that remain are too broken to see clearly.

God, the real world can be as on the nose as any story, sometimes.

I feel a twinge of sadness: in the real, physical shrine those carvings depict there's a kind of protrusion like the corner of a pyramid right where that door should be. Someone must have built this later. The stone still looks the same. Good of them to at least use the same quarry to end the shrine's purpose that was used to begin it.

Maybe there really was a gate to the other world, here. Maybe they were all sealed up, one by one, and covered over with stonework like this until none were left open. And now, with all the magic shut out of the world, there's just no way to open a new one ever again.

Whatever the answer is, I kneel at the altar and let my incantations fall away. I start by clasping my hands, but that seems too Christian. A witch should act in her own spirit, so… I cross my arms on the dusty stone and rest my head on them while I talk.

"I'm so alone, and… and tonight I am a witch, and secure in it," I say, "but tomorrow I will be a woman of flesh and blood in a world of flesh and blood." I don't bother speaking in German. Proto-Germanic is a very different language and I don't know how to speak it. English and German are probably equally far from it, and… and I hope if there are spirits listening that maybe it's the spirit of the words they'll hear, not the sounds.

"Please show me a way," I whisper. "The life this Earth offers me is no life I can live. I cannot bear the hollowing. If you can hear me, show me a way, I beg you. Anything--a candle's flicker, a single whisper too clear to deny. I've never hallucinated in my whole life. It doesn't have to be anything much with me. It's all…"

I peer about. For just a moment the room feels so solid. Expectant. I want to believe there will really be an answer. No, I don't want to believe. I'm sure of it!

I crush down the voice that whispers, "and you were sure of it all the other times, too."

"It's all so empty," I say at last. "There's nothing in the way. You don't have anything to compete with. I have no standard to hold you to. Please, kindred…" I white-knuckle. My wrists shake with opposing forces, held in agonizing balance. "Please. Anything is better than nothing." And I go silent. And silence answers me. For one second, then two, then three, I keep my eyes wide and bright and hopeful. I can feel it. There's going to be an answer this time, I just know it! My premonition was right! This is the night!

It has to be!

Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. My eyes begin to ache. My glances feel forced. And still, only silence.

I don't know how long I wait after that. One minute? Ten? Twenty? I only know that when I stand up I feel a thousand years old. My muscles are as numb as my heart. I drop my hands to my side. And then, clenching them, I scream at the ceiling with all the rage of a woman who has the power to change nothing.

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