The altar was heaped with fresh corn and even some wheat, almost completely concealing the yellow cloth. Silver and gold candles, almost completely encased in a glass bell to ward off any errant breeze, represented the generic Mother-Father Gods. Rock, a priest of one of our sister covens, was arguing with Olwen, gesticulating wildly.

"But we should do it with one cup! That's how we do it in circle. It binds the community together," he said, making vaguely cup-like configurations with his heavily ringed hands.

"But there's too many people. It will take all day." She crossed her arms.

"They can chant while it goes around. They should learn patience."

"But this is an open ritual. We attract a lot of new people, and a lot of new Witches. Maybe we don't want to bore them to death the first time around." Her arms remained anchored at the elbows, while his face slowly reddened. She continued, nonplused. "Let's use the little Dixie cups and pass them out with the cookies. That way we don't spread germs."

"I'm going to ask Olympia," he growled, and stalked off. A moment later, a heavyset woman in glitter-spangled black robes and enough silver jewelry to fund the Franklin Mint came jingling over to the tune of her ankle bells. Underneath a cloud of badly-permed black hair, she glowered.

"What's the problem? Rock told me there's a problem," she said in a needling tone.

"He wants to use one chalice to pass the juice. I thought it wiser to use the Dixie cups," Olwen replied serenely, her arms still crossed, forming some sort of strange bodily sigil.

"Dixie cups?" Olympia, the high priestess of the mother coven, let her voice inch up a few decibels. "Don't you think the Gods would be offended?"

"By a Dixie cup? What's so irreligious about a Dixie cup?" Olwen looked down her nose. In reply, Olympia stamped her foot, sending silver bells jingling, an irate Neo-Pagan Santa Claus without the gifts (but still with the list, checking naughty and nice).

"I'm the head of this tradition, and I say no Dixie cups!"

I wandered off to watch finches attack a riverside thistle as the argument continued, sometimes punctuated with the sound of stamping sleighbells. Slowly, I wandered over to the car to snatch my harp bag and a small stool stowed in the back seat, and then retraced my steps. The voices had long faded into the air as I scoped out the wide expanse of the circle, its boundary marked with flour, and looked for the East. Olwen's gray braid dangled as she bent to the storage space beneath the circular altar table. She rose slowly, grimacing as each vertebrae complained about the rolling motion.

"Where's east?" I asked when she turned, harp and stool in hand.

Smiling, she fished around in her skirt pocket, producing a small gold fob on a chain. Popping it open, she stared at the jittering silver arms until they still, and then pointed toward a maple.

"That way. Oh, you're using your harp? That's wonderful." She appeared at my side, to help me set up the stool. I asked about the outcome of the verbal hurricane.

"Oh, that? I finally persuaded her to at least use four chalices, one for each quarter, to pass the juice. It took a while, though." Her lipstick-free mouth curved into a grin. "Olympia can be an old battleaxe. I can too."

"Why are they so upset over Dixie cups?"

She sat on the stool as I unzipped the black bag, unsheathing the small harp. Kneeling on the sere yellow grass, I began to check the tuning of the nylon strings.

"They fancy themselves reconstructionists. And so people like us would be on the outs."

A chuckle gurgled in my vocal chords.

"What the hell are they reconstructing? Gardner made up this whole shebang in the 40s. And this is an eclectic tradition." My fingernail plucked a red string, which rang out, slightly off-pitch.

"Try telling them that. Maybe they're reconstructing something in Olympia's head." She yawned, revealing gold-capped molars, and then belatedly covered her mouth with a veined hand. "After this, I think the mother coven is going to come by to �inspect' us. I wouldn't be surprised."

Briefly, I looked up from my tuner.

"Should we be worried about that?"

"No. The worst that can happen is that we get kicked out of the trad and we just continue doing our own thing," she replied, no hint of tension on her lined face. "I've been at this for too long to be cowed by their likes." She winked and rose to sound the gong, calling the Pagans to the rite.

Slowly, they filtered in, toeing the white flour line. Hippie skirts and cargo pants, long robes and Guess jeans, patchouli and Deep Woods Off. They joked and elbowed each other, as laughter wafted over the circle. Silvermoon, who was to call the Harvest Goddess, stood at the circle's center, a wheat wreath on her flaming hair. Beside her stood Rock, his bald head now covered with a garland of ivy. A party of four walked around the flour boundary, one with a faux sword (this is, after all, a public park) drawing an unseen line, while the others sprinkled water and corn meal, or held a thurible of incense, wafting in a silvery scented cloud.

Chimes. Incense. A priestess speaking words. And then it was my turn. My fingers plucked and strummed an old air, as my voice, still oddly strong after my lapse from chorale, wove a chant to the spirits of the Air, the gossamer sylphs, the darting birds. I strummed the sunrise and sang the spring, bringing in the crocus and the robin's egg blue of the springtime sky in with my voice. And then I felt the cool spring win on my face and stilled the strings, completed.

The male voice of the South-invoker sounded, but my eyes remained closed. And then the West-caller turned his rainstick, chanting, until the North began beating her drum. My eyes flitted open to the ritual play, about the sacrificial king and his Lady, about dying to feed the land. Across the circle, I saw Christian, calmly watching with an unfathomable face. Catching my eye, he gave me a thumbs up and a cheesy white-toothed grin. I beamed, in spite of myself.

Silvermoon, having invoked the Lady of the harvest, stood with crossed arms and unsmiling silence, while Rock began his soliloquy. Cued, we chanted "Hoof and horn," and I let my voice spiral above, plumbing depths I had almost forgotten. Slightly entranced, I felt my mouth as full of harvest as a cornucopia: grapes, wheat, cranberries, tomatoes. And an Unseen One, perhaps golden Apollo, whispered from behind me in a warm ray of light: "This is what we want of you. We'll come calling soon." Filled with the light, my eyes cleared again to see Silvermoon whip out her athame and, mid-air, flip it, striking Rock in the chest with the pommel. He sank to the ground as some of the children, their faces still covered in peeling acrylic, wailed from the shock.

"Oh, he's not really dead," a mother hissed. "It's just playacting."

"The Lord has died for the life of the land!" Silvermoon raised her silver-ringed hands. "But he shall rise again like the grain!" And behold, Rock ungracefully clambered upright, his belly flopping over the cord of his robe. With the usual pomp and circumstance, he inserted his athame into her silver chalice, and flicked the lascivious grape juice on a pile of pecan cookies which four circle attendants then divided onto plates. Unsteady hands poured grape juice half in the chalices and half on the sere earth before the attendants brought them to the quarters with the usual interdiction not to hunger or thirst. My lips barely touched the glass as I downed a bit of the juice and bit into the sandy cookie. To pass the time, I began a Goddess chant and played with its tones.

And after the usual closing, I turned to the East again, and plucked a chord, bidding in firm tones that the Air go on its merry way. And then my role was done. Gabbling, the circle-goers stayed put for the raffle. Knowing the extent of my luck, I ignored the proceedings and began to thrust the harp into the bag. I glanced up to see Silvermoon, looking spaced and irritable, heading toward a tent with ribbons flying from its cloth turrets. A banner spelled the words: "Ground Central." Inside, the healer-in-residence unfurled the flap and pulled the trancing Witch inside for a dose of hard-nosed, gritty, non-glittery reality.

I looked up from my bag to see Christian looming above me, all lanky length and baby-blue eyes behind the wire John Lennon frames.

"Why don't we get some food and relax somewhere?" he asked. I nodded, giddy, but told him I had to safely stow the harp in the car trunk first. He nodded, and offered to get me a plate in the meantime, with a tad of every delicacy. I nodded, and told him to remember the vegetable biryani.

The mica-chips on the pavement filled my sandals with light as the hormones raced through my arteries, giving off showers of sparks. Aphrodite stood on her shell, half-unseen and smiling with a Cheshire cat grin. I galloped back to the green, where he beckoned me to a copse far from the gathering, plates in hand. We sat on a blanket, shielded by brambles and brush, ground-ivy beneath our feet. We kicked off our respective sandals, and let our feet glow bare on the green, secretly praying that the deer ticks would pass us by.

***

(to be continued...)