Shaman's Moon

by Sarah Dreher

  “I told her,” she said as she munched happily away on a morsel of roll, “that I was terribly grateful to her for seeing me again so soon. An emergency had arisen.”

  She looked around at her audience.

  “And?” Gwen said eagerly.

  “And… now this is the clever part.” Marylou broke a shred of meat loaf from the slab on her plate, dipped it in potatoes and then gravy.

  Stoner felt like grabbing the entire bowl of potatoes and building Devil’s Tower National Monument.

  “I told her,” Marylou went on, “that there’d been a sudden serious illness in my family. I think I said it was my father.” She paused for a moment, thoughtfully. “I hope I said it was my father. I mean, I hope I was consistent. Not saying ‘father’ one minute and ‘mother’ the next. You know.”

  “I’m sure you were fine,” Stoner said through clenched teeth.

  Marylou glanced at her. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. I just wish you’d… well, do you think you could speed things up a bit?” That sounded harsh. “Your dinner’s getting cold,” she added quickly.

  “Gosh, so it is. Okay. So. I was testing her to assess her reaction to illness. Would she offer suggestions? Give me a spell to cast or something? Ask whether he… or she... God, I hope I didn’t screw that up. Whether the victim had enemies. See what I’m getting at?”

  They all saw and nodded.

  “Well,” said Marylou, “she didn’t bat an eye. Just asked if the person were hospitalized, was I satisfied with the kind of care he/she was getting? What was the prognosis?” She spread her hands and shrugged. “Not a word about alternative methods of healing. What do you think of that? I think it proves she’s innocent.”

  “I think,” Stoner said, “she’s pulling a fast one.” Any witch of sincerity, or even a decent healer/clairvoyant would have suggested a white candle at the very least. And a prayer or two to the Goddess. Aunt Hermione would have suggested they offer one together right on the spot. “Visualize the person’s name,” she’d have said, “in great shining white letters. Concentrate. Pray that wholeness and harmony may be restored in their lives.” Then she’d have sat silently for a little while until the prayers had gone wherever prayers went.

  Marylou looked at her as if she were ungrateful.

  “Time will tell,” Aunt Hermione said.

  “All right, this is the important part,” Marylou moved on. “She completely opened up to me about herself. How her family had abused her as a baby. How she’d run away from home, taken up with a young man… just a child, really, like herself. Had a baby, which was taken from her by nuns in the home for unwed mothers she’d found refuge in.”

  “I believe the part about the nuns,” Gwen said hopefully.

  “Me, too,” Aunt Hermione agreed. “And look around this table. Gwen, you were mistreated as a child, and Stoner ran away from home. Marylou has taken up with a whole series of unsavory characters—present boyfriend excepted, of course. Each element of the story is believable.”

  Stoner couldn’t tell if her aunt meant it, or if she was being ironic. She nodded in agreement.

  “I think,” Aunt Hermione said, “until we know more, we should give her the benefit of the doubt. She hasn’t done anything except be an unpleasant person, and she probably has good reason for that.” She took a swallow of coffee. “And I still keep coming back to the fact that I haven’t sensed any strange energy coming from her toward me.”

  “But what about me?” Stoner broke in. “At the potluck. I know she was sending bad vibrations in my direction.”

  “That may well be,” her aunt said, “but we don’t have a clue as to why, do we? Maybe you offended her in some way.”

  “Those were heavy vibes. There aren’t too many people I’ve offended that badly.”

  “Actually,” Gwen said, “there are quite a few. My ex-husband, for one, then there was that psychologist Millicent Tunes, and...”

  “Okay, okay,” Stoner said. “I’ve made some enemies. But not without doing something. I’d never even met her before that night.”

  “There’s the matter of past...,” Aunt Hermione began.

  Stoner’s temper flared. “Please. Don’t start in on past lives. I can’t bear it.”She wanted something nice and concrete, with only three dimensions and easily visible on this very Earth plane.

  “You’re right,” Aunt Hermione said. “I don’t know everything.” She gave Stoner an apologetic smile. “Even though I sometimes act as if I do.” She pushed her chair back from the table. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to listen to a new meditation tape Cecilia, one of the clairvoyants at P.A.R.A., gave me last night. She made it herself. And I need to start pulling together the plans for the soul retrieval. If you have nothing to add, Marylou?”

  “Only one thing. I thought it was kind of curious. She asked me if anyone had ever put a curse on me, because of all the jewelry I was wearing.”

  “Why would anyone curse you for your jewelry?” Gwen asked. “I could see cursing someone for their perfume, especially in a public place, but why jewelry?”

  “She said it’s commonplace—that was the word she used, ‘commonplace’— to wear jewelry to counteract a curse. Did you ever hear of that, Aunt Hermione?”

  The older woman thought for a moment. “I don’t believe I have. Unless she was referring to crystals. People often wear crystals to ward off negative energy. Tourmaline is supposed to be especially effective.”

  “I’m not wearing crystals, only silver, and she was definitely referring to me.”

  “In that case I have no idea what she meant. Was she wearing any?”

  “Not that I could tell.”

  “It certainly is curious,”Aunt Hermione said. “Call me when you’re ready for the dishes to be washed.”

  Stoner was about to tell her it wasn’t necessary, she’d be happy to do them. But the last time she’d done that Aunt Hermione had just about taken her head off, snapping that she was “still good for some things.”

  At the entrance to the living room, Hermione turned. “Marylou, I think it would be a good idea if you didn’t consult Mogwye again for a while. We don’t want to arouse her suspicion. Just in case.”

  “Fine,” Marylou said. “Though she still hasn’t really told me what to do about my sick father.”

  Aunt Hermione laughed. “Light a white candle.”

  “This is really confusing,” Marylou said at last. “One minute she says she doesn’t believe Mogwye means any harm, and the next she tells us to be on our guard. What does she really believe?”

  “Everything,” Gwen said.

  There was a brief silence around the table, the unspoken question in the air, “What do we do next?”

  Gwen yawned and stretched a little. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked Stoner.

  Stoner nodded. “Time for plan B.”

  Marylou looked at them questioningly.

  “Ask Cutter for help.”

  “Well!” said Marylou. “It’s about time.”

  “We need someone to observe Aunt Hermione and Mogwye at the Esbat,” Gwen explained, “and there’s no one we can think of who’s better at making himself invisible than Cutter.”

  “Obviously,” Marylou said, “you haven’t met some of my friends from the Big Y World Class Market.”

  “I didn’t know you’d made friends there,” Stoner said.

  “That just shows you how clever they are.”

  Gwen laughed. “Or you are.”

  “But we know Cutter,” Stoner went on. “And he has a way of...” she grimaced, hating to even acknowledge this part of it, “...seeing things the rest of us can’t.”

  “Stoner,” Marylou said seriously, “are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine. I just—these things happen.”

  “Not to you.”

  “Look,” she said with a flash of irritation, “I’m not saying I believe anything. But we don’t have much time. The
re’ll be a full moon on Monday night, and that’s when the soul retrieval’s coming down. I’d like to see what we’re dealing with before then, Mogwye-wise.”

  What she didn’t say was that what she really hoped was that it could be avoided if she could prove someone—all right, admit it, Mogwye—was behind this. She was, after all, their most logical, and only, suspect. She had motive—professional jealousy or something they hadn’t thought of. Means—access to various healing and not-so-healing herbs as well as knowledge of how to use them. Most witches had that, or access to it. And opportunity, lots of opportunity. Opportunity this weekend, as a matter of fact, since the coven had its weekly meetings on Sun- days.

  It would be cutting it close, but there might be time to gather enough evidence to call for a postponement… she almost called it a “stay of execution”...of the Journey.

  She still didn’t understand her reluctance, only that it was growing by the day. In fact, she had passed from simple reluctance to genuine fear. All she knew was that something terrible was going to happen if she went on that Journey, something that would change her life. Her life might not be quite perfection as it was, but it was satisfactory. She had no desire to change it.

  Or did she? Satisfactory was one thing, but satisfied was another. There was something definitely unsatisfied. But maybe everyone’s life was like that. Not quite perfect. It was probably the human condition. It was just ridiculous American corporate advertising that made people think life should and could be perfect. That kind of thinking opened the door to all sorts of nonsense, from household cleaners that wrecked the environment to nursery schools where children were expected to choose a career track before the age of five. Big bucks for the fitness industry and the guys who made a fortune peddling self-improvement tapes over late-night television.

  She didn’t expect life to be perfect. She never had. The trouble was, no one could give you a good description of what it was supposed to be like. Nothing to compare it to, so you could sort of assess how you were doing every now and then. If you were making a mess, you could look around for what you were doing wrong, and if you were doing it okay, you could relax and get used to being unsatisfied because it didn’t mean anything, it was just a part of normal living.

  “You’re not happy,” Gwen said suddenly.

  “What?” Startled, she looked around. Marylou had left the room at some point. She hadn’t noticed. “No, I... I mean, everything’s fine.”

  “I don’t mean about us. You’re not happy in your life.”

  “Yeah, well, I am worried about Aunt Hermione.” She felt completely flustered, and knew she was hiding the truth and couldn’t stop herself.

  “No,” Gwen said, and leaned across the table toward her. “In your life. Something’s missing, isn’t it?”

  “I... I don’t know. I mean, what...?”

  “You haven’t really been right in months.”

  She hated and loved the way Gwen always saw through her. “Yeah, I guess... I don’t know. I feel as if I don’t know what to do with my life. I mean, it’s okay and all but… well, is this what I’m here for, to be a travel agent?”

  Gwen smiled. “I doubt it.”

  “But I don’t know what I want. I want something. I want to do something, to give something.” It embarrassed her to say that. “But I don’t know what.”

  “Yes,” Gwen said. “As my students would say, ‘bummer.’”

  Stoner had to smile at that. “I’m afraid it’s a little more serious than ‘bummer.’”

  “So is ‘bummer.’ It really means they’re so miserable they could die, but they want to appear cool.” She looked Stoner hard in the eye. “Sound familiar?”

  Stoner nodded.

  “Please, Stoner, when things like that are bothering you, talk to me. I know it without you telling me, and it makes me crazy when you don’t talk.”

  She smiled. “I’m like Aunt Hermione that way. It’s probably genetic.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Gwen said. “It’s Yankee.”

  “I know. But everyone else has things on their minds, too. Aunt Hermione, and your teaching, and Marylou with Cutter…”

  Gwen reached across the table and trapped Stoner’s hands beneath her own. “But this is you, love. You. My Stoner. I don’t care if it’s nothing more than a hangnail. I want you to share it with me. I want us to be ‘us.’ Do you understand?”

  Stoner nodded, feeling ashamed but loved at the same time.

  “Say it out loud.”

  She glanced up. “I understand, Miss Owens.”

  Gwen slapped her hand lightly. “Okay. Now let’s see what Cutter can do for us.”

  Chapter 9

  At last, a little time alone. Hermione breathed a sigh of relief that was—blessedly—audible in the empty house. Stoner and Marylou were at work, Marylou having convinced a group of tourists to let her plan a sight-seeing trip around the area ending with a night at Tanglewood. Not only was it a boost to their business, but it required a lot of arranging.

  Gwen had gone down to Greenfield to a teachers’ workshop on computers in the classroom.

  There’d been a good deal of secretive buzzing and a sudden stoppage of conversation when she entered the kitchen this morning. But there was no way to guess what they were up to. Besides, she really didn’t have the energy to question them or even talk to them beyond the amenities. She’d taken her coffee and some cold macaroni and cheese from Tuesday’s dinner, and gone into her sanctuary. Stoner didn’t even try to follow, which confirmed that they were plotting something.

  Whatever it was, she hoped it wouldn’t require much activity on her part. But no one said anything about it, and she heard them leave—first Gwen, then Stoner and Marylou together—for their various activities.

  At last she could dance her Spider.

  She’d done a little tentative dancing right after the journey, but the house was always occupied, and she frankly felt a little self-conscious waving her arms around and scuttling back and forth across the bedroom floor.

  Naked was out of the question, of course, and so were hanging ropes. But she was willing to try to dance like a Spider. She only hoped Travis wouldn’t decide to drop around to see how she was doing. He’d done it last week, just to report that there was no bad news, only good, from the neurologicals and other lab tests. She’d been about to slip into the tub, and had to open the door dressed only in her bathrobe. She could have just let him stand there, of course, but curiosity had gotten the better of her.

  “Everything’s normal,” he’d said cheerily. “All the tests came back negative.”

  Hermione had felt a bit negative, herself. Pulling her robe together where it threatened to slip and expose breasts, she had politely informed him that he could have called in that information. And that “good” news is not necessarily good when you know there’s something wrong with you but you don’t know what it is. She was tempted to tell him in addition not to contact her again until he had a diagnosis in mind, but he looked pitiful. Like a puppy that bounds up to greet you, and all you do is complain about its muddy feet.

  To make up for her lack of appreciation, she offered him a glass of iced tea. He accepted. Then she realized they were out of iced tea, and had to make some from scratch and then drink it and chat with him, and by the time he left, her one precious hour of silent alone time was gone.

  Maybe she should spend a lifetime or two working on her problem of spinelessness, Hermione thought as she combed through their collections of CD’s and tapes looking for music to dance a Spider by. But the thought of the trials she’d have to put herself through on the way to learning were daunting. Of course, that was from her current perspective. Somehow, when you got to the Between, everything seemed easy.

  That was because you weren’t lugging around a human body and coarse human emotions and a perspective on life that ended at the tip of your nose.

  Ah, a tarantella! Perfect. She slipped it into the player, locked the fr
ont door, pulled the shades, and stood in the center of the room, eyes closed, as she let the music take her.

  At first she didn’t move at all. Then she found herself spinning slowly, toward each corner of the room and back to the table that marked the center. Out and back, out and back, each time returning to the center, spinning threads of light. The music invited her to link the arms of the cobweb and she began to circle the table, each circle a little wider, circling, circling until the whole room shimmered with threads of silver light and droplets of stars.

  Hermione stood and gazed at it, her heart pounding with the beauty of it, her lungs swelling with pride. A slight breeze came up and shook the web, setting the star drops to winking.

  “Swinging breeze!” she heard herself shout, and let the wind take her. She soared high over the room, her web a net to support her if she fell. Higher, higher until she was through the ceiling, through the roof, over the town. The river below, sepia with runoff from the snow states to the north, threaded its way between hills of springtime green, beneath a sky of thin, pale blue.

  “Glorious,” she whispered to the wind.

  “Yes,” the wind answered.

  Other creatures were afloat. A red-tailed hawk circling for its dinner. Insects as small as atoms. Dust from comets and meteors. An eagle. Pollen. A single snow flake, a raindrop holding a tiny rainbow.

  She wondered where the smoke was, the polluting exhale of factories. Looking down, she saw nothing of people and their industry.

  We’ve flown outside of time, she thought.

  And then she was back, sliding to earth on a thin silver thread, trailing behind her a golden rope that glistened in the sunlight. Down through clouds and treetops and finally into her home, where her net caught her and eased her to the ground and back to herself.

  “Thank you,” she said to Spider, invisible but there in spirit. “It must be very wonderful to be you.”

  Cutter raised his head and froze, a snake caught in a sudden flash of light or movement, testing the air with only the tip of its tongue. Something was wrong. Or at least changed. Different. Not necessarily danger, he reminded himself. Changed didn’t always mean danger. He could remember when it didn’t, before he went to war. Before he went crazy. He remembered what it felt like to be sane. He wished he didn’t. It hurt.