Seven of Wands

Yesterday fell into a crack, change in a car seat. As morning leaked through the blinds, I felt the wooden bedhead beneath my knees, my head resting altar-wise on the bundled comforter. My legs twined in a half-lotus, as I mixed contortionism with sleep and over-the-counter medication. The characteristic greenish-brown taste (and yes, color sometimes becomes a taste, in the case of phlegm) of sticky fluid clogged my tubes and the world sounded muffled, as if I were permanently housed in a cranial recording studio. The Niagara has slowed somewhat, but the snots still traveled in little wooden barrels, while the germs cheered from below, on board the Maid of the Mists. They had tropical vacation shirts with little Japanese cameras around their little microbial necks.

I was intimately aware of my gross corporeal nature. I flung a forearm over my eyes. The phone screeched, until Jill burst through my door with the handheld unit. "It's work," she said, forking it over as if it were the incarnation of telephonic leprosy. And of course, who else could it be?

"Jasmine, it's Brenda," the phone shrieked. "Are you still sick?"

"Yes," I hacked.

"Can you come in? Ruth Reilly died."

My eyebrows lifted groggily. "Yes, I'll come in."

And so, I somehow found myself under the steaming streams of the showerhead, and clothed, propelling a vehicle 60 miles per hour, while pondering Ruth Reilly. A feisty old lady, a councilwoman in one of my towns, known for both liquored-up tirades against political opponents and buying votes with kosher hot dogs and green beer. Barely five foot two, the gray-haired smiling schemer kept a fractured party in line; her picks come election time were better than racehorses down the track. But nearing eighty, she had begun to nod off during votes, forcing the councilman at her side to nudge her in the ribs and, on occasion, check her breath with a pocket mirror. Because one never knows.

"There's nothing a man can do that a woman can't do better," she once groused to the mayor. "We just let �em take the credit for the sake of the peace."

Ye Gods. I'm not supposed to love anyone; instead, my disembodied brain floats above the patchwork quilt of suburban lots, attached to the earth by a silken silver cord. The professional cyborg. But I loved that old lady, even though I swallowed it like bile. When I am old, I want to swig some Jack Daniels and wag my finger, telling codgers twice my natural size what intestinal parasites they are. She had been a seamstress and a factory girl in her day, giving them up for the gold ring. When her husband passed to the Happy Hunting Ground (nagged to death and drunk under the table, according to one opponent), she opened her own dress shop and hung out a shingle as a party boss. Only the Gods know how she managed that. But scratch the Irish, and you'll find Tamany Hall in their blood. Doesn't hurt if you're related to half the cops in town by blood or marriage.

And so. I settled down in my chair, rolling over the edge of my hippie skirt. The skirt struggled for liberation as I hacked up a portion of my lung lining in a diner napkin. And the calls began. Two council colleagues. The current mayor, of the opposite party. The previous mayor, on her team. A family friend. "Ruth lived life on her own terms," said a councilman. Another reminisced how the little old lady led sign-bearing protestors across a local street to stop the rumbling of trucks. Shreds of politics, land deals criticized. The woman of the year award.

"Well, she and I didn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues," the mayor conceded. "But Ruth was simply Ruth. She wasn't shy about telling you what she thought. You always knew where she stood." A pause. "It's the end of an age."

And the Pleistocene ended, bringing with the final curtain fall the wooly mammoth, the cave bear and Ruth Reilly. And as I typed the final strokes of her life in Times-Roman print, my mind flitted back to our last conversation, or its approximate equivalent. A few weeks ago, after James Sutton, former party boss, passed into the Happy Hunting Grounds. It took her a week to return my call, since she had been vacationing in Florida. She apologized gruffly on my voice mail, and said he was a "fine man." I never called her back, but saw her instead on the dais, nodding off until her colleague nervously poked her side.

What is the measure of life? Is it a stream of ink, a mere stroke of words? A ghost, I flit through council chambers and courtrooms, living rooms of grieving mothers, suburban yards in the footsteps of a giraffe. But I am only the watcher, the threshold-haunter, the harp-toting bard telling the tales of dead heroes, of those who dove into life with delicate appendages first. And I wish, for a moment, that I could step out of this skin, let it slide to the floor like a discarded raincoat, and step into the raw flesh-and-blood of life, penning my name in the book at Ruth's funeral, crying over her casket with the mourners, drinking a toast of good beer to her good name. But I can't. I chose to be a tale-teller, a word-seller, and so I float above it all in my weather balloon, free from the trapping power lines of sentiment and loss. I see them webbing below, but I adjust the thrust of my logic and sail above them, unscathed.

***

And somehow, I thought of the giraffe. After that day, I had never seen it again, although an urge tugged my footsoles to return to the site, to see that anomaly chewing hydrangeas. But two days after the story, Noor Ahmed had called, her accented voice quavering, a vibrating harp string. The first day after the story, the television news crew had come. The hostess was painted like a Broadway-strutting tart, all magenta lips and inch-thick foundation. Her burgundy suit absorbed light, and she tottered on thin stiletto heels that sank into the turf. She cursed. Talking to the woman in hijab, she raised her voice, nearly rolling her eyes under the fringe of mascara.

Wordless, a burly man toting a heavy news camera padded into backyards, sans permission, to film the giraffe. Another pointed his camera at Mrs. Ahmed, who sank back behind the glass door. "My husband's not home," she said softly, uncharacteristically. There were no rifles, but it felt like an invasion. The artillery had come for Sally, armed with celluloid. Sally, in turn, loped into the local woods, and even her long head disappeared in the net of branches.

The news aired and she saw herself, a dark veiled shadow behind the door, half-hidden in shadows. The reporter's magenta lips glowed and the heavy makeup mask seemed enlivened by the film reel. What seemed needling and confrontational seemed almost homely and questioning. Unseen: someone yelled cut. The woman cursed again, and whipped out a compact to check her makeup before clambering into the white truck, which sputtered black smoke as it left the cul-de-sac. As the block still, Sally dared return, trailing neighborhood children behind her splayed feet.

The next day, the wildlife rescuers had come, armed with tranquilizer darts. At their bee sting, the big yellow creature attempted an awkward gallop, only to crash down in a heap on top of the Patels' picnic table, which collapsed with an audible cheap pine crunch. A spindly yellow tower of impossibility, coalescing into a pile of pale pelted sticks, a long lolling neck. Residents lined their windows, clutching children. Some dared to wander out to the pristine white sidewalk, watching as the rescuers marched in with a long trailer in tow. The long legs were bound and the animal hoisted, her deep well eyes still blinking and open, into the trailer. Fringed and dark, the eyes had only a question: why? Somewhere, a child screamed, "No!"

Mrs. Ahmed dared the day. "Is she going to be alright?" she asked a man with a gun at his hip.

"Yep," he said, spitting a gob onto the clean white sidewalk.

"Where's she going? To a zoo?"

"Texas. Wildlife sanctuary," he grunted in Morse Code.

And thus, this anomaly that seemed to become part of the complex's normal routine of play dates and neighborhood walks, left in a wheeled trailer that disappeared down the cul-de-sac, and eventually down the highway. It left only piles of feces, a splintered picnic table and a decimated hydrangea bush. The township vowed to replace the table, jotting it on a to-do list that eventually was lost under a pile of dust. According to state officials, the sanctuary where Sally was bound had other giraffes in attendance, including a bachelor male. According to other state officials, the sanctuary where Sally was bound had a list of health violations as long as my forearm, although this tasty bit was off-the-record and I couldn't get it confirmed by the first set of suits.

"I just feel like crying," Mrs. Ahmed said over the tinny wires. "I'm not sure why."

***

I was out at town hall, talking to officials about Ruth Reilly, when the excitement struck the home office. Hacking, I pushed my way through the glass doors when Rachel grabbed my sleeve and slammed me into the chair next to her.

"You missed the excitement," she said.

A routine editors' meeting, arcane in purpose, was called behind a closed wooden door. Dan had abruptly resigned. Something was said as Brenda slurped down a triple shot of espresso and began her customary twitch. Oddly, no one remembered the comment after said incident. And then, she swung at one of the other city editors, screaming something incoherent. Her beet-red face throbbed with veins, as the coffee sloshed into a brown spill on the carpet. Frank nearly pissed his pants and cowered in the corner as two other editors restrained the raging fury.

And then, she collapsed in a heap over the wet coffee-scented spill on the rug, blubbering tears as she pressed her forehead onto the carpet. Someone slipped out of the newsroom, unseen by Frank, and dialed the ambulance for a psychiatric emergency. Orange-coated EMTs led her into the back of the ambulance. Her head was bowed, covered by cleach-blonde perm like a robbery suspect avoid the cameras.

"What the hell . . . ?" My voice trailed into oblivion. What could one say?

Jo Ellen had walked over.

"Well, we all knew she was friggin' nuts."

My mind compiled its bulleted list of questions. "But what was it? Was it her husband? Did she screw up on a story? Start talking to aliens? What?"

Jo Ellen lowered her voice to a whisper of decibels. "Steve told me that Lisa saw her snorting coke off the toilet seat."

I wrinkled my nose. "Did Lisa say anything?"

"Beats the hell out of me. But they say she's the one she went for."

I nodded, parting the veils of germ-induced fog with my brain as I walked across the moon to my desk, haloed in strange light. My fingers tapped the measure of a life. A circle of black pepper and sage and bent finishing nails took the measure of another.

Did she deserve it? The answer echoed back from my heart's red chambers. Yes. The image flashed: summoning birds in the lot. Dumb pollack, dumb chink. The screamed conversations into the cell as she escaped the building, cheap coffee in hand.

I filed, and then checked my e-mail. There was one from Frank, noting that Brenda has resigned for "health reasons." "We wish the best for her and her family at this time," he said. Another from Christian, asking for a get-together this weekend: biking, walks through a cobblestoned local shopping district, a calm time. In spite of myself, my mind spun airy erotic fantasies. The echoing bathroom-tile laugh faded into that strange half-realm of dream; perhaps that whole scenario was merely a germ-inspired dream, or a supreme misunderstanding. Fuck, he's Pagan and good-looking, an impossible combination; I'll forgive him a few foibles. Writing back, I set the time for Saturday, but I was half-distracted by a queer silence.

A hush had settled over the rooms, although the police scanner still sported its usually crackling chatter. A soft popping noise caught my ear: Bob was throwing the horde of used styrofoam coffee cups in Brenda's trash can, one by one.

"Thank you, Lady," I whispered.

The Old Woman winked, unseen. Dark birds darted outside the window: starlings, white-speckled. And then it began to rain.

***

The sternum-rattling coughs and Niagara of mucus had largely subsided by time I straggled to the esbat, although the thick rainclouds still hid the moon's cratered face. Drizzle pattered as I walked near the porch, hidden by high yew bushes. Silvermoon's voice drifted above the green fronds of the yew; it impelled me to slink further back into the gloom and drizzle, a guerilla waiting for the convoy to pass the hill before striking. The words echoed past the ridge, midstream, and I crouched in the damp heat. Nearby, a streetlight buzzed, Dickinson's fly.

"-- don't think he's going to be coming back," she was saying, with a pinch of anger and a half-cup of smugness.

"I thought you two were going out?" The statement drifted into a question. A male lisp, quasi-effeminate although low in tone: Xeno. A cough also ricocheted off the porch posts, in neither register: likely Silvermoon's Sancho Panza sidekick, Bernadette. Bernadette's Craft name always evaded me, although it was likely some Gothic conglomeration of moon, silvery metal and/or raven-like animal. But with so many names of that caliber, one can't quite keep track. And so, I always default to the name I am given upon introduction, although I'm inclined to think of "Sancho Panza" as the woman's other name. After all, she was fat, squat and swarthy, and would likely look at home on the swaying back of a donkey, as mismatched as it may seem with her neo-medieval garments and long black skirts draped over its heaving sides. If the donkey didn't give out on the rocky path to the windmill, that is; one never knew that corsets came in such a size.

When Olwen introduced me to the girl last year, the latter promptly told me that I had infiltrated her personal space (a.k.a., the bit of sofa where I had settled to do the meditation) and requested that I promptly relocate. Her tone could have sunk the Titanic in and of itself; I was expecting to be issued a follow-up form letter, complete with municipal letter head and the seal of the township Personal Space Enforcement Officer. At the time, I merely bobbed my head and moved my buttocks to another seat. It only got worse from there.

Granted, Silvermoon and Bernadette seemed the only flag-waving detractors of mine in the Inner Court, and so I politely kept my distance, offering a few kind words to smooth the path, a virtual emery board. In a matriarchal religion, one would think that the women would give each other rib-crushing beer hugs, support each other in the mutual non-shaving of legs, and celebrate the big V in ritual. But alas, the mangrabbing has never fully been socialized out of some women, who forever cast a peripheral glare at fellow breast-bearers, whom they see as rivals racing up from behind, caught in the rearview. It's a spirited race for the checkered flag with the Man, hands on hips to accentuate his rippling Mr. Universe muscles, shining with a liberal application of grease, waiting on the finish line.

Oh, not always. And perhaps not often. But the Mangrabbers still drift to covens, in the name of the Goddess and personal empowerment, only drawing down the spirit of gold-appled Eris upon introduction to the Rival Womyn, who seems to embody her innermost nightmares. For the Rival Womyn is not only single and attractive according to conventional terms, she actually doesn't give a flying purple hoot whether she has a man, a quality which, as every Mangrabber knows, attracts every penis-bearing hominid within a five-mile radius. And the salt to the wound is that the Rival Womyn will not only offer the scowling Mangrabber hugs, chocolate chip cookies and feminocentric diatribe, she will, if informed of the liking of an eligible male, step aside for the designated Mangrabber, and even help arrange liaisons, a la a Victorian housemaid. And always, it seems, acquiring that selfsame eligible male for herself in the end, as she furrows her ethical Womyn's brow, and wonders how such a conundrum occured.

The Mangrabbers themselves come in two varieties: the diva with the glittering smile and the sour eyes, forever singing a mariner's ballad about her unfortunate journey to the realm of players and skirtchasers while she bitterly eyes the Rival Wimmin (plural of Womyn) and fellow Mangrabbers, and the haggard woman who screeches, schemes and points the bone at the masses, while bitterly lamenting the One Who Got Sway and the Bitch Who Stole Him. Type B says, "Fuck the love spells. Let's hex that manstealing bitch," and whips out the poppet and the bent pins. If the mangrabbing condition is left untreated, type A usually evolves into type B.

The graveyard scent of patchouli wafted over the yew bush. I bit my palm, stifling a cough.

"When did you last go out?" Xeno, again.

"Lammas."

"After the ritual? I didn't know you two came together that day."

"We didn't. I was going to, but he said, �Hey, let's not make a big deal of this back at circle,' so we came separately. After the ritual, I was tranced out so I went for some grounded. I was still drawing down, you know? And when I came out, he wasn't there. He just couldn't be found for a while. That night, we went out to dinner, and he was just, I don't know, he kept saying that I had been so unfriendly all day, that he couldn't find me after the ritual, blah blah blah. And I said, hey, I was drawing down the Goddess into my body; I was kind of preoccupied with that, you know? And then we go back to his place and his fucking friends came over." Her word-stream halted abruptly, for some reason. Something crunched.

"His friends?"

"Yeah, these guy-friends. And he whipped out this fucking beer pong table he had stowed in his apartment � beats the hell out of me where he kept it � and invited me to play beer pong." I could imagine the matching sneer: the painted lip pulled upward, showing the white expanse of teeth. "Imagine. He was asking me to play fucking beer pong with a bunch of guys that looked like they still lived in a frat. I walked out."

"Did he call you afterward?'

"Yeah. And he e-mailed more fucking porn. I mean, what's a guy like that doing at a Wiccan group? Who the hell wears a Brittany Spears t-shirt on a date with a covenmate? I didn't e-mail him back."

"So it's over, then."

"Yeah." Something darkened her voice, a misplaced sorrow that didn't match her words. "Yeah, but he had such a nice ass. And he was so good in the sack. Why are they always fucking skirt-chasers, John? Why don't they ever grow up?" A rustle, the sound of a probable hug, and then Xeno again.

"Don't cry, honey. Good riddance. As you said, he's probably never coming back."

The words almost sank in but bobbed on the surface, the petticoats of a drowning Victorian. But Lammas was when . . . . The ethereal words of thought faded into the black of the yew shadow, into the unseen cloud of patchouli wafting from Silvermoon or Bernadette's essential-oiled breasts. But the dread stuck close to the myocardium, a black sticky tar of shame, the shame that springs from an unknowing sin, the kind of malfeasance left behind when you forget the oblation, or inadvertently thrust an arm through the invisible boundaries of the cast circle, or leave the sacred temple mid-ritual to take a tinkle in the little girls' room. You know the Gods forgive you with a wink and a nudge in the ribs; they're much acquainted with the senile minds of humans, and the comic physical needs that interrupt the smooth flow of mystic transaction. But still, a metal weight clanks in the gut; you've failed yourself, and limboed under the bar of your own high self-expectations. The feeling is akin to a morning after hangover, when you awaken with an unseen drillbit in your skull and your panties around your ankles.

Ye Gods. I didn't like her; I won't pretend that. But I never meant to hurt her, just the same.

And so, I did what any self-respecting Rival Womyn would do: I tiptoed back into the shadows, about a block from the house, and then lifted my head high, striding toward the porch as if I had just rounded the corner. As my sandals slapped the steps, I offered a small wave and a warm grin.

"Am I late?" I asked in a pleasant lilt, rustling a bag of garden vegetables I had brought for Otter and Olwen.

"Nope," Xeno said, returning the grin and unraveling his long legs, which had been knotted in the chair. But the look that Silvermoon and Bernadette gave me nearly froze my blood. Their lashes brimmed orbs of pure hate.

Ye Gods. They knew. But I smiled anyway and pushed my way through the screen door, only to witness the true source of the patchouli-cloud: Olympia, clanking her ankle bells and swishing her heavy black skirt as she followed Otter, who was setting up the temple altar. My eye caught Olwen, standing on the far side, arranging bowls of assorted crunchy objects. I waved the bag, a white flag, and waltzed over.

"She's here to watch the ritual," she whispered in my ear. "Don't worry; just be yourself." A pause, a chuckle under her breath. "The narc from the Mother Coven."

***

A cloud of myrrh spiraled around the primal images on the altar: the obese curves of Willendorf's unnamed Goddess, her face hidden under a braided cap. Above, Hecate's three faces shown from the plaque, alongside a Greenman, roaring vines from his leaf-bearded mouth. A crosslegged nameless God held serpents and sported antlers, an image from the Gundestrop cauldron. And the others: yellow ten-armed Durga, laying her spear into the buffalo-demon. A dancing Shiva Nataraj, wreathed in a flame halo. A brass Brigid, whose three-faced poppycrowned image was a dead-ringer for the one of Hecate. Artemis with her slender moon-bow, and Poseidon with his trident. So many Gods, gracing three tiers. And more than the three tiers; virtually every flat surface in the house sported doilies, a bowl of dried flowers or shining glass "stones" or feathers, and a God. Kwan Yin graced the bathroom, because sitting on the bowl can inspire one to wisdom.

Don't laugh. Why shouldn't defecation be a learning experience? They say Martin Luther had quite a bit of time to think up his theses, since he was forever in the monastery outhouse, suffering from bouts of intense constipation. This would be inclined to make one incensed at the mere idea of Purgatory � after all, limbo was, for Luther, located firmly in the ouhouse. It was also likely to make one intensely cranky and judgmental. Frankly, I'd go for Kwan Yin in such circumstances. Don't hold back, she'd counsel; let it go. And sage advice it is, even outside the confines of the lavatory.

A small crowd gathered in the confines, as Otter rang the temple bell, secreted behind the Brigid statue. Perhaps ten of us at the very most. I closed my eyes, and dropped my snaking roots into the unseen earth, twining amid stone and pebble and tectonic plate. And once again, I volunteered to invoke the Air element, although I had left my harp at home. I bid the others to follow me, as I undulated my arms, feigning a bird in flight. They mirrored me, some unwilling and wooden, such as Olympia. Her anklets clashed. And then, someone rattled in the South, mimicking the snapping quickness of fire. And so the circle went round: a strong-voiced invocation for water, drumming for the heart of Earth. We called the Corn Mother and the Corn King, sharing blessings. Otter led us in a trance to the Earth, from the seed to the golden-bearded stalk of wheat, to the sharp-edged sickle that cuts it, and finally to bread.

An athame pierced the chalice juice, and cornbread made its rounds. We nixed the energy-raising, keeping it a simple rite of Thanksgiving. And then, the myrrh fading, we opened and draped ourselves on couches and futons, after hoarding various comestibles on paper plates. And while the post-ritual energy coursed down our limbs like a languid oil, there was a certain unease, a sense of fear. The ritual wasn't as ecstatic, as heartfelt, as usual. Olympia had made her presence felt.

As we ate, she quizzed us. How many rites do you do a year? Do you perform initiations? Who gives the authority for such? Do you take turns priestessing, as you did tonight? How do you coordinate? Do you have degrees?

Still ill, I drifted off, uncaring of the answers. Olwen patted my hand and thrust a hot cup of tea at me. Although sweating under the hippie dress, I took it, and wrinkled my nose at the strange smell. Medicinal tea. At that point, Olympia had taken to te-a-te conversations with each member of the Inner Court. With a curled lip, Xeno stalked out the screen door, slamming it behind him like an airlock. And Linda, small white-haired woman ("call me a hag," she'd always say with a wink) slipped out the back, her forefinger rubbing the saltwater from under her eye.

And then Olympia sat next to me, a cloud of black hair and the crushing scent of patchouli. Her ample derriere sunk into the cherry-red cushions. She asked me how long I had been in the Craft, and I told her since childhood; my mother was a Witch.

"Oh, a fam trad," she sniffed. "I bet your grandmother initiated you, too."

"Well, no," I said. "Grandma was the typical rosary-bearing Polish Catholic. Not that I'd know; she died when I was pretty young. Mom wasn't initiated or anything; she learned the stuff out of books and then started her own group. I learned it growing up."

Her dark eyes narrowed, doing a strange algebra in her head.

"So you weren't initiated?"

"No. I don't really believe in it, I guess. I've always figured that the Gods are the ones who initiate you, by giving you certain experiences."

"They say only a Witch can make a Witch."

I shrugged, hacked into my palm, and sipped my tea. "Well, sometimes they are wrong. Why should we doubt the Gods? I'd think they'd know best."

She shifted her buttocks, and her gears in the process.

"I'm told that you work for the corporate media," she said, enunciated each syllable as if she were a suited prosecuting attorney trying me for sex crimes.

"Well, I'm a reporter for a community newspaper," I threw out, as diffidently as possible. "I've worked there for four years. But I've been coming to this group before that, when I was still starting out in the field."

"Are you a plant?" Her dark eyebrows raised. "Are you trying to infiltrate the group?"

I couldn't help myself. My spontaneous guffaw devolved into a spontaneous choking-upon-hairballs. After the coughing and laughing subsided, I wiped the tears from my eyes.

"Oh merde, that's good." Another swipe of tears; my mouth was tilted in a crazy smile. "I cover planning board meetings, for crying out loud. I chase giraffes down friggin' suburban streets. I chase down grieving parents. My paycheck is pathetic and I can barely cover my rent." The guffaws reappeared. "What kind of power do you think I really have?"

She straightened her black skirt with the flats of her palms.

"I don't think that the values � or lack thereof � of the corporate media" � the same excessive enunciation � "are really compatible with those of Wicca." She raised her head. Still grinning maniacally, I set down the tea cup and leaned forward.

"So," I said conversationally, "what do you do for a living, Olympia? That isn't your real name, is it?"

"I hardly think that's pertinent," she said, pulling back in a subtle gesture of warding.

"Really? Are you employed by somebody? Do you work for a, um, corporation, per chance? You know, something with an SEC filing?" She rose wordlessly; her ankle bracelets clanked on her way to the kitchen. I followed my quarry, half-skipping. "You ask me what I do for a living, I think I have a right to question you about yours. What's your name? What do you do?" No answer. My voice raised. "My name is Jasmine Potoczek. I'm a newspaper reporter. And I'm so out of the goddamned broom closet that I'm not afraid to use my real name!"

She went out the back door, where Olwen sat, under an awning woven of faded roses. Her low voice finally raised, fairly shouting in an angry growl. Returning to my tea, I heard little of it, save for what seemed to be the words "media plant." Soon after, a car engine sounded. The Inner Court drifted back in. Linda, her eyes tear-red, blew her nose in a pink handkerchief. Olwen and Otter settled on a sofa, wearing grim smiles and sipping their own mugs of tea. I caught the faint scent of chamomile.

"So, we've been kicked out of the tradition," Olwen said. The reasoning behind the exile seemed dubious. Some sort of ceremonial differences, evidenced by our quarter-calling techniques and the mixture of eclectic divinities on the altar. "Irreconcilable differences" with the caliber of members attracted by said coven.

Bernadette heaved, and glared. Pointing her finger about a foot from my nose, her voice quavered with alto anger.

"It's you and your fucking mouth! It's always fucking you with your fucking Wiccan mother this and why-don't-we-try-calling-quarters-this-way." Her overlarge breasts heaved under the black t-shirt. "Maybe you should fucking leave and we could go back." A pause, barely a half-second, that marked the shifting of tectonic plates. Someone, Silvermoon by tone, shouted support. "Any maybe you should stop fucking Christian, too."

Maybe it was the tea. Maybe I was punchdrunk from my mid-August catarrh. But I only offered a mild sunny smile and said, "You forgot a �fucking.'"

And perhaps the burly troll would have hit me � her fist was balled at her side by that point � if Otter hadn't stepped in between, with a sharp admonishment to Bernadette. Somewhere, Silvermoon was echoing, "It's her fault!' Taking a final sip of tea, I slipped on my sandals and walked out the door, jangling my car keys. Olwen sped after me, barefoot on the porch.

"They're out of line," she said, giving me a hug. "You can stay, you know."

Silently, I shook my head, and hacked into a Kleenex.

"I don't blame you for leaving early tonight," she said, settling back on her heels.

"Are we still operational?" I asked.

"Yep." She shrugged. "Olympia never liked me, and I knew this was going to happen when she took over the mother coven. Now, we're just independent. We're our own mother coven."

"Why wouldn't anybody like you?" I was perplexed; while it may seem kitschy, Olwen was honestly the wise gray owl, patience and far-sight embodied, at least in my experience of her through the years. About as political as a slab of granite, as well. Like the Earth, she simply was, and gave, of her time, her home, her stockpile of good incense.

She glanced back at the parlor where Otter stood, talking to Bernadette. Her gray braid swung as she turned back to me.

"Oh. Well, you know." She winked. "I married a former lover of hers." A ripple of laughter, a stream over stones. "That was years and years ago."

The human heart: a foreign land without passports. My sandals slapped the steps on the way down. She waved, the light from the buzzing streetlamp catching on her hair as I slipped into my car.

***

He only holds a leafy branch as the staffs come toward him, held upright by unseen hands. He grips his tightly across the body, his brows drawn down like black clouds as he advances against the horde. Not afraid � merely angry. His heels dig into the green sod on which he stands: his home, his field, which he will defend to the point of bludgeoning. Six against one, the odds still seem good.

This peasant isn't going to take it anymore. Just try to take him down. Watch the bruises that will tattoo your skin in blue-black, if you do. His scowl would make the average mob piss its collective pants. "You want a piece of me? I'll give you a piece of me!" And then the hard clunk of the wood against someone's cranium.

Maybe he gets taken down in the end, and rigged to the stake, but I'll not imagine that. At least he went down with the adrenaline sweet in his blood, and with at least some of his enemies rubbing their broken limbs and bruised tailbones. Six against one, the odds still seem good. "Don't fuck with me, man," he growls as the wands march toward him.