Shaman's Moon

by Sarah Dreher

  But what was she doing in this time? In her mind, she looked down at her lap. She was wearing a skirt and low pumps. The man in the seat ahead was reading a newspaper. Pretending to reach for a dropped magazine, she bent down and pressed the side of her face against the back of the seat, looking for the date on the paper. She’d only caught part of it before he turned and scowled at her. Wednesday, she’d read, and Nineteen Sixty-something.

  So there she’d been, on a Wednesday in Nineteen Sixty-something. On a train. She’d been, as Dory Previn once said, on her way to where?

  If there was anything like luck in this mess, Stoner thought as she ran a brush through her hair, she was having a bit of it now.

  Outside, on the back lawn, the coven was gathering. All of them. All at once, in one place. Perfect for her to check them out without arousing suspicion.

  Not that she had the slightest idea what she was looking for, but at least she didn’t have to track them down individually to look for it.

  Glancing out the window, she saw that they were firing up the grills. A bottle of red wine was making its way around the group.

  Please, Aunt Hermione, she thought, be careful what you eat or drink. Her aunt probably hadn’t slept last night. Stoner’d heard her get up and go into the bathroom, and was about to go see what was wrong when she heard the water running and the ‘thock’ of the plastic cup against the sink, then the sound of the doors opening and closing quietly as Aunt Hermione made her way back to her own room.

  Okay, no problem.

  If she was going to go on like this, alert to every little sound and worried about every move the older woman made, she was going to drive both of them insane.

  She slipped into a white shirt and jeans and took one last glance out the window.

  She’d met some of the women of the coven before. There was Ruby, an older woman who often gave Aunt Hermione a ride to gatherings. And Dorothy, who was about Stoner’s age and whom she’d run into from time to time in the Shelburne Falls market, the non-organic grocery store. She recognized Sabrina, who at twenty was a Maiden and the youngest member of the coven. Her mother, Sylvia, was due to be Croned in another two years. Sabrina had been born when Sylvia was thirty-five—not exactly ancient but older than the usual in those days. There were two older boys in the family, one a professor and one a computer nerd, who were alternately overprotective and disdainful of their baby sister. Probably because of this, Sabrina had a tendency to whine.

  The rest were mildly familiar or not at all. She counted. They were still short two. Not counting herself. She wondered if a coven considered fourteen an unlucky number, the way some people thought thirteen at the dinner table was unlucky.

  When Gwen got home from school, though, there’d be fifteen. Not knowing—as none of them had—that Aunt Hermione had planned to entertain on a weekday, she’d arranged to meet with parents whose son was barely passing Social Studies. It was to be her last parent conference of the school year, and had been scheduled for weeks. She didn’t think she should miss it.

  Marylou had stayed at work to cover the office. Later, she had a date with Cutter.

  So Stoner was on her own. She didn’t mind, really. It was easier to form her own impressions without hearing what her friends thought at the same time.

  She took one last look out the window. The charcoal was rebelling. Ruby was on her second book of matches. Sylvia was shaking a rattle and invoking the aid of the Goddess of Fire and Backyard Barbecues. Sabrina looked adolescent and mildly disgusted, but the rest of them seemed to be having a good time.

  Giving her hair one final push into place, she shoved her feet into her loafers and trotted down the stairs.

  One thing she had learned about witches in the six years Aunt Hermione had been practicing the Craft, they knew how to have a good time. And, contrary to popular belief, they could do it without taking their clothes off. She’d attended a number of open-to-friends-and-family Sabbats. The serious part was solemn and dignified, but there was always feasting and gift-giving and displays of affection afterward. Sometimes the afterward lasted longer than the ceremonies. But then, one of their tenets was that “all acts of joy and pleasure” were the Goddess’s rituals.

  Stoner had once asked Aunt Hermione if that included popcorn. Her aunt said that popcorn was sacred indeed.

  But this wasn’t a Sabbat, just a get-together. For no other reason than that they liked one another. The best reason of all.

  She looked across the lawn to where her aunt was talking to Sabrina and her mother. For the first time in days her posture was erect, her skin a healthy pink. Her gestures were sure, broad, animated. Even from where she stood at the edge of the back porch, Stoner could see the sparkle in her eyes. Happy to be among friends, among her own kind.

  Oh, God, she prayed, or Goddess or Whatever, don’t let it be one of these women.

  Time to mingle. She crossed the yard to give Ruby a hand with the matches.

  It was late by the time they sat down to dinner. The sun was already going down. It was too early for the major influx of mosquitoes, but the black flies were having themselves a rare old time. One of the women, who had spent all of her life in the woodlands of western Massachusetts, had brought a carton of citronella torches and candles. They set them out on and around the tables. It didn’t exactly get rid of the insects, but it slowed them down. When the breeze dropped, the sharp pennyroyal-like scent drifted through the evening air.

  Stoner found herself a place at the picnic table across from one of the women she hadn’t yet met. This was a short, rather nondescript woman of late middle age. Her hair was dark with a scattering of gray. It was cut several inches below shoulder length and hung straight. She wore a pastel print dress with tiny flowers and a round lacy collar, a powder blue cardigan with pearl buttons, and no make-up. Her nails were short, unpolished and filed. Stoner guessed she worked in an office, and sang in the church choir on Sundays. Like a right-wing Christian, in fact. Which was impossible. Born-again Fundamentalists were not the kind of people who joined covens.

  Now, that was stereotyping, she told herself roughly. Who’s to say what kind of person would choose to follow the Old Religion? Most of the psychics she’d met were the most ordinary, everyday-looking people you’d want to meet. There were pagans who were college professors or librarians or worked in factories.

  But probably not a lot of Fundamentalists.

  It was a little hard to imagine a witch pledging subservience to her husband.

  On the other hand, this woman across from her in the Wal-Mart dress definitely looked like the subservient type. The bitter subservient type.

  The woman suddenly looked up, straight into her eyes.

  Stoner smiled and introduced herself. A cold chill ran down the middle of her back from the nape of her neck to her legs to the ground and back up. They were the strangest eyes Stoner had ever seen. Black as ink, as if she had no irises at all but only dime-sized pupils resting in pencil thin white outlines. Like the eyes in a home-made doll.

  It would be impossible to see what went on behind those eyes.

  “Are you all right?” the woman asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah, fine.” She swung her leg over the bench and settled her plate on the table, glad there were people on either side of her. “I’m Stoner McTavish,” she said.

  “Hermione’s niece. Yes, I know.”

  Stoner held out her hand but the woman ignored it.

  Instead she smiled a quick, wooden smile. “My name is Mogwye.”

  For some reason, Stoner wanted to say, “I’m sorry about that.” It wasn’t the name. It was the way the woman said it, as if the very feel of the word were distasteful to her.

  “‘Mog’ as in ‘frog’, ‘wye’ as in ‘lie’.”

  “Interesting,” Stoner said.

  “You wouldn’t think so if it was yours.”

  Stoner poked at her potato salad. “You could change it,” she said at last, helpfully.

 
“Wouldn’t make much difference, would it? I’d still know.”

  “Yes,” Stoner said. “I suppose you would.” She stared at her plate. There was no way this conversation was going anywhere.

  She turned her head to introduce herself to the woman on her left.

  Suddenly the day went cold. As if a gust of wind from the Arctic had wrapped itself around her.

  It was more than cold. There was something dark and angry and evil in the air. The light seemed to dim as in the shadow of a thunder cloud. She looked around, but no one else looked as if they’d noticed. They should be racing for the house for warmth, or at least putting on sweaters and jackets...

  Stoner was filled with a kind of fear she’d seldom known. She felt dizzy. Her stomach churned. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood up stiffly. The back yard turned upside down.

  I’m fainting, she thought with amazement, and gripped the edge of the table.

  “Stoner.” Mogwye was leaning toward her. “Are you all right?”

  She swallowed hard. “Did you feel that?”

  “I didn’t feel anything.” The black eyes she couldn’t read looked into her. “What was it?”

  “Cold. And dark.”

  Mogwye smiled. This time her smile wasn’t just wooden. There was something wrong with it. “No, I didn’t. You might be coming down with a virus.”

  “I might.”

  “Here.” The woman got up and came around the table and took off her sweater and began to put it across Stoner’s shoulders.

  Panic flooded through her. She didn’t want that sweater touching her.

  “I have warmer clothes in the house.” She got up quickly, nearly knocking Mogwye down. “Excuse me,” she said as she brushed past.

  That smile again.

  Mogwye knew exactly what was happening.

  Chapter 6

  Mogwye.

  A strange name, Hermione thought. A stranger woman. Silent. Withdrawn. Seeming to disapprove of everything and everyone. But a hard worker, who could be counted on to do whatever she said she’d do for the coven, and then go a little bit beyond.

  In this day and age, that was a quality Hermione appreciated.

  She’d tried to get to know her at first, because of their mutual interests in the paranormal. But if Mogwye really was a practicing psychic, as she said, she wasn’t about to assume that as a basis for friendship. Hermione had approached her one evening after the coven meeting and invited her to coffee the next day. Mogwye had replied, pleasantly enough but firmly, that she “didn’t socialize.”

  Hermione took her at her word.

  But would she harm anyone? For whatever reason? For what reasons?

  She gave her Tarot cards a single shuffle, fanned them, thought of Mogwye and pulled a card that attracted her.

  Eight of Cups. Indolence.

  She had a good idea of what that felt like. Exhausted and depleted. In the current vernacular, burnout. If this was the way the woman felt, she didn’t represent a danger to anyone. She didn’t have the energy.

  “So what do you think?” Stoner was asking.

  “I don’t know,” Gwen said. “I didn’t exactly want to move into her house, but she didn’t scare me.”

  “She scared me.”

  “I’m telling you, Stoner, she’s harmless.” Hermione held up the card. “Eight of Cups.”

  Stoner flung herself out of her chair and came over to stare down at what her aunt was doing.

  “See?” Hermione said, offering her the card.

  Stoner’s face was very red. “This is crazy,” she said, her voice trembling a little. “You’re in serious trouble and you sit here looking answers in a deck of old cards.”

  “They’ve always served me well.”

  Stoner took the card and looked at it and slammed it down on the table.

  “This is peasant stuff,” she snapped.

  “Thank you,” Hermione said in spite of the fact that Stoner’s words hurt. “Peasant thinking is very old, and very intuitive.”

  “I agree,” Gwen said. “The cards have always worked for me.”

  Stoner stomped to the window. The lilacs were blooming. Hermione could tell Stoner hated it. “Everybody in this house has lost their minds.”

  “Her mind,” Gwen corrected gently.

  “Don’t start. Just don’t start.” She paced back to the couch and threw herself on it and dug her heels into the coffee table.

  “You know,” Gwen said, “I’m glad I’m here right now. I’ve always wondered what you were like as an adolescent.”

  Hermione caught Gwen’s eye and warned her to soft-pedal it.

  “Have you eaten?” Marylou asked Stoner.

  I don’t remember.”

  “Well,” said Marylou, “there you are.” She got up and started for the kitchen. “Do you want breakfast or lunch?”

  “It’s too early for lunch.”

  “And too late for breakfast, if we were forced to live by McDonalds’ outrageous schedule. If you present yourself as a public service, you should serve breakfast any time. I’ll come up with something.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Marylou rammed her fists on her hips. “And since when does eating have anything to do with hunger? We’re talking about nutrition.”

  “What kind of nutrition?” Gwen asked.

  “A bacon sandwich.”

  “I can’t resist that,” Gwen said with a laugh. “Make me one, too?”

  “Coming up.” Marylou turned back to Stoner. “And you’d better get dressed. It’s the end of the month. I need you before lunch.”

  Stoner groaned. “Not the books. Already?”

  “Yes, already.”

  “Do it without me.”

  “I can’t. I need you to find those crumpled receipts you keep stuffed in your clothes and in corners of your desk drawers, and probably in your socks as far as I know.”

  “Let’s do it after work.”

  “We have softball practice after work.”

  “I can’t do softball today.”

  “You don’t have to,” Marylou said. “I can. But we still have to do the books, and there’s no way you’re going to do them alone. We’ll go bankrupt.” She flounced from the room.

  Hermione thought about her predicament and what she could do about it herself and drew another card.

  The Hanged Man. For now, there was nothing she could do.

  “Gwen, I really feel stuck,” Stoner was saying. “I know there’s something about that Mogwye woman, but…”

  She decided to pull two cards for Stoner. What she was doing. What she should do.

  “I know,” Gwen said.

  “If there were some way to… well, get a handle on her.”

  The Devil. Capricorn. Good at taking action in the external environment. That was true enough. She pulled the second card.

  “I don’t think you should approach her yourself,” Gwen said. “From your reaction last night, if she is up to anything, she knows you’re onto her.”

  The Hermit. Turning inward. Seeking answers from one’s spirit. That was good. Stoner could always profit from answers from her spirit. “Perhaps you should meditate,” she said aloud.

  Stoner looked at her as if she were totally deranged. “Sure,” she said. “And where were you when your aunt lost her mind? Contemplating my navel.”

  “Stop it,” Gwen said.

  She decided to take a chance, and pulled an outcome card. She didn’t usually do that in a formal reading. As soon as you did, the clients immediately forgot everything you’d said up to that time. She’d warn them it only hinted at how the future would be if things continued on the path they were on now. But they didn’t care. They wanted to know what the future would be, not whether it was set or not. For them, it was always set.

  The future. Everyone was afraid of the future.

  It was the past they should really be afraid of. When the past came back to haunt you, that was true haunting.
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  She turned over the card.

  The Tower.

  A frightening card to the uninitiated. A tower being destroyed by lightning. Fire and chaos all around. Falling bodies. A rain of embers. But the symbolism was deceiving. The Tower was about change. Getting rid of old, calcified beliefs, burning out the unnecessary, clearing the way for new ideas and fresh air. Change inside the psyche.

  The question was, to whom did this particular Tower refer? Herself? Or Stoner?

  Because she’d had the feeling for a long time now that Stoner’s restlessness grew out of a deep hunger, a longing for something that didn’t exist. It was tearing her apart, even though she’d denied it many times. You could see it in her eyes. Feel it in her aura.

  Maybe that was what the card was saying. Maybe this crisis would bring it to the surface.

  If it could do that, Hermione thought, I’d gladly die or go mad.

  But I won’t go mad for nothing. I’ll be damned if I will.

  She swept the cards into a pile and wrapped the square of red silk around them.

  “I could try to talk to her,” Gwen was saying.

  Stoner shook her head. “She knows you’re part of the household. She’d be on guard against you.”

  “Well,” Gwen said, “I guess that leaves...” She took a deep breath. “Marylou.”

  “Marylou,” Stoner said thoughtfully. “Marylou.” She broke into a grin that lit up her whole face. “It’s perfect.”

  “It is?”

  “Mogwye’s never seen her, so she wouldn’t connect her with us. She could just make an appointment. And you know how it is to be around her. She tells you so much about herself that before you know it you’re telling her about yourself just to keep up with the conversation.” She turned to Hermione. “What do you think?”

  “It might work,” Hermione said. She reached for her cards but stopped herself.

  You didn’t need to read the Tarot to know what was going on for Marylou. If she was heading into danger, you could see its gaping mouth with your own two eyes.

  Once in the travel agency, Stoner’s good mood faded quickly. Marylou had been delighted to be sent on a mission, and had phoned Mogwye immediately to set up an appointment. She claimed it was a dire emergency, and Mogwye put her down for this afternoon.