"Aurora. She will be named for gold and most aptly, for she will make many choices because of her need for wealth. She will bear four surnames in this lifetime."
Fancy felt her throat constrict. Did that mean that Aurora would one day bear her father's name, or did it mean she would marry more than once? Magda's knowledge could be terrifying as well as useful.
"And will she be... "loved?"
Magda looked long and hard into Fancy's eyes before she finally spoke, her voice oddly flat and enigmatic.
"She will be loved... far more than she deserves."
"But Magda..." Fancy began, the strange prophecy unnerving her.
"No more."
"Magda!"
"No more!" Magda snapped, and turned away. "Only the gods can bear to know the future, child. We would burn and plummet like Icarus were we forced to know our fate."
"But you know . . v." Fancy persisted. The look of anguish Magda turned on her stayed her words. What agonies did Magda bear in payment for her great gifts? Fancy wondered suddenly. And what in God's name had she bargained for them in payment?
"I don't see why God lets sickness happen to people, Magda. It's downright sadistic for Him to let people suffer so much." Fancy tried to rise from the chair, but her belly imbalanced her and she sank back with a sigh. Magda knew the girl's condition had made her fretful. She sat back and let her sewing come to rest in her lap.
"Illness can be a hero's journey, Fancy," Magda answered. "What does that mean?"
"Sometimes illness offers us a roadblock with a signpost, child. The sign tells us what purpose the roadblock serves... how we struggle to clear the path can be heroic and full of dignity."
"But why on earth would anyone create illness as a roadblock?"
Magda's hands again ceased their motion and the needle came to rest. "There are many, many reasons one might do so, Fancy... to cry for help or love, perhaps. Or to prove that one has been hurt by life... even to design a lesson for oneself that must be learned."
Fancy looked unconvinced. "What causes us to get sick, then?" she asked.
"Many, many things can be the catalyst, Fancy. There are poisons and impurities all around us. And the mind is a powerful creator too—our thoughts can injure us, as surely as a runaway train. Too much attachment to the material and not enough to the spiritual... greed, envy, fanaticism. Fear of life, surrender to discouragement, frustration from unfulfilled goals..." Magda smiled. "Do you wish to know more?" Fancy nodded uncertainly and the Gypsy set her sewing aside.
"You believe that you are made of solid matter, Fancy, but in truth, you are made of the same energy as the stars. Trillions of tiny particles of energy... all brilliantly colored and all in ceaseless motion. Your physical body is merely the densest matter, the slowest-moving energy, if you will. As you sit before me, child, I see your energy bodies glimmering all around you. There are four to connect you to the earth and four to connect you to the Unseen. If these energy bodies of yours were to become unbalanced, the physical entity that is Fancy would become ill."
Magda saw that her pupil now listened carefully. "There is also karma to consider when illness strikes. We bring in debts from other incarnations, and we fall heir to the group karma of the times in which we live. There are inherited diseases of humanity, as well as those of individuals—you know them as epidemics, blights, wars.... The individual entity can be harmed by the karma of the group, as well as by his or her own.
"And, of course, Fancy, your soul's own desire to grow may cause it to choose illness as a testing ground. One may incarnate into any number of trials for the express purpose of learning from them."
"Are you saying I might have gotten born into my family, knowing Beau Rivage would burn and I would have to go through all that I've survived? That's monstrous, Magda."
"Not if you understand that the harder one's life, the more lessons one can learn from it—and the farther along one may progress on the path to spiritual enlightenment."
"That sounds to me like precious little to get in return for suffering," Fancy said indignantly, and Magda nearly smiled.
"Perhaps you had debts to pay back, Fancy... we pay the piper in eternity for what we escape in time. Have you not wondered why despots are allowed to live, or torturers are permitted to ply their evil trade? They may escape punishment in one lifetime, but they will not escape the wheel of karma. They will pay the price of their choices before they are done. It is the Law."
"All this sounds farfetched to me, Magda. And I don't see what any of it has to do with me."
Magda frowned at Fancy's resistance. "Have you not seen how your resentment and your unfulfilled love have affected your health?" she asked.
"Oh, Magda, don't be ridiculous—I'm just sick because I'm pregnant."
"You are sick because you are unhappy, child, and if you do not change your attitude, your milk will make your baby sick, too."
"Well, I simply don't believe any of this."
"Whether you believe the sun will rise tomorrow morning or you do not, Fancy my child, will have no affect whatsoever on the sunrise, I assure you."
"I've been thinking about what you told me last night, Magda," Fancy said tentatively as she watched the Gypsy studying a tarot lay, the following morning. "There's so much you know. I want to ask if you would teach me magic." Magda's ebony eyes rose above the cards to meet Fancy's, shadowed by intense emotion.
"You would learn what could destroy you, Fancy? Pandora's box held no more evil than this knowledge you seek."
"Don't tease me, Magda. I'd really like to learn, and life is so dull for me now. This would be the perfect time."
Magda folded up the deck with a practiced gesture. "To learn true magic, child, the road you must follow is arduous. A misstep can be more dangerous than you dream... even fatal. Few travel the Path without mishaps."
"Then how did you learn?" Fancy asked, hoping for a lengthy answer. The days were winter-long now, shut in and chafing.
The Gypsy faced the girl, studied her, deciding. Finally she sighed, her eyes veiled, as if she looked backward into darkness.
"I was born into this world with a caul covering my face... the gift or curse of second sight was mine from lifetimes past. In this incarnation my soul's purpose was clearly written, Fancy. My family saw the way I must go, from the beginning....
"When I was six years old, fate set my feet on a lonely road, for an old Gypsy appeared at the gates of my father's estate. She said she had been waiting for a child with my gifts to be sent as her apprentice, and that she had come to claim me. I was frightened and did not wish to go with her, but she was famous in our land for her prophecies, and my father was superstitious. I was born to a great house, you see—one with dark and ancient roots. My father feared the woman's magic."
"You weren't born a Gypsy?" Fancy asked, startled.
Magda smiled at her naivete. "I was born a countess... I was apprenticed to a Gypsy. Destiny, as our friend Wu would say." She shook her head at Fancy's surprise and laughed, quite mirthlessly.
"Tatiana trained me in herb craft and in divination. She taught me to read the runes and the tarot, showed me the future in the dark crystal. By night, with the old crone at my side, I would escape my earth body and fly to the astral plane, held only by the silver cord that binds us to the material world. I met the dead, who were mired between the worlds. I saw the past and a thousand probable futures. I conversed with angels." She laughed again, a hollow sound. "And devils. Oh, yes, child, demons are as real as angels, as real as you or me. The lower astral teems with them, reeks of their sulphur stench. It was hard to learn not to be afraid. For three years, when I was near puberty, it was my karma to rescue the ones who cried for help from the lower astral realms. By the Goddess, the terror of that time assails me still! Hideous demons, thought forms of the criminally insane, ancient devils assigned the duty of snaring souls too weak to flee—these were the monsters I battled nightly, while by day I was only a child."
&
nbsp; Fancy shuddered. There was no mistaking Magda's sincerity, or her pain. "But why, Magda? Why you?"
"Of those to whom much is given, much is expected, Fancy. It is the Law. My soul is old and full of arcane knowledge... the more one knows of the universe, the more complex the riddles one is set." She paused, and shook her head ruefully.
"And I was arrogant," she breathed, as if it hurt to speak. "Sweet Jesus, I was arrogant." Magda stared at Fancy to see if the girl could understand.
"But Magda, how could you not be proud of such amazing accomplishments?"
"But that is the test, of course, Fancy! To know greatness and to keep humility. Tatiana told me of the Right-Hand Path, which leads to Light and to Goodness, and of the Left-Hand Path, which leads to Darkness and to Evil, but in my vanity, I saw only the power that comes of knowing more than others know." Magda clutched herself tightly and rocked back and forth.
"I could talk to the animals in their own tongues... I could traverse the universe in a heartbeat... I could change things, Fancy, can you conceive of it? If I could heal, I could also make ill. If I could see the future, why not change it to my own design? If I could bind things to me on the Inner Planes, why not money, jewels, nations, men? Oh, child, can you even dream of the temptation that attends such power? I was a sorceress, not a mere woman! I could harness nature with my spells, for I had been initiated in my thirteenth year and was consecrated to the Goddess as her priestess."
"Not to God?" Fancy asked, appalled.
Magda waved her hand dismissively. "God is the male force in the universe. He has dominion over worlds, but Isis is nature, and the Earth Mother... what good is one without the other?"
Fancy blinked at the reply. What tiger's cage had she opened with her unwitting questions?
Magda continued patiently, her throaty voice low and clear. "I went to Paris. I became a disciple of a certain Hermetic Order, which I must not name. The Magus of that order was powerful beyond even my wild ambitions, and he was beautiful, as only the few who can transcend nature are beautiful. His face was legendary . . r you would recognize it, if I were to show you his picture.
"I took the sacred oaths of the Order that bind me still upon the Inner Planes... and I accepted willingly the awesome penalty for betrayal, a penalty so odious it cannot be described in mortal terms. I rose through the grades of mastership with ease: Neophyte, Zelator, Theoreticus, Practicus, Philosophus... Christ! Even the names of the degrees still fill me with passion. I sucked up the knowledge greedily, and then, when I was seventeen, I passed the final portal... I crossed the Great Abyss, as had the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid. I died and was reborn, Fancy! It is a mystery few survive.
"And my arrogance swelled like a festering wound, poisoning my reason—for between me and absolutely unlimited power lay only three degrees of mastership, and only a handful of humans down all the ages had ever journeyed so far without disaster." Magda's eyes glittered in the dim light like a panther's, she licked her lips, an animal gesture that made Fancy's flesh tighten. This was a Magda she had never seen.
"I've relived my folly ten thousand times in search of redemption," the Gypsy said wearily. "I will do so one time more, so that you may know the price of jousting with the gods." She ran her long fingers through her hair, straightened her spine, and sighed.
"I was in love and lust with the Hierophant of that Order. I saw myself as Isis to his Osiris; I knew he traveled Right and Left Paths freely, Light and Darkness, as he willed. For this I did not condemn him, but merely admired his virtuosity.
" 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,' he told me, and I believed. 'We are beyond the constraints of mortals, my Magda. The road to enlightenment must lead us down dark highways. How can we understand good, if we have not tried evil?' Intellectual seductions, physical seductions... can you even guess at what a priestess knows of sexuality, Fancy? He seduced, and I seduced, and each of us had mastered sensual arts of unspeakable power. We made love, and our passions shook the earth! I wanted him for myself alone." She hung her head before speaking again and her dark hair fanned out around her shoulders like a nun's coif. Her voice was anguished.
"I bound him to me by rituals forbidden since the dawn of time. In doing so, I interfered with his karma and with my own. I failed the test of my initiation, by the sins of pride and lust combined. The Law will not be mocked, even by a Mage, Fancy. It has taken me a lifetime to loose the bonds I fastened with my great and arrogant will.
"He was evil, while I was merely a fool. He was the instigator, but it was I who forged the instrument of my own undoing." Fancy could barely breathe for the intensity of emotion in the small room.
"One night, I sought my beloved, in an obscure corner of the Astral Plane. He had warned me not to follow... when I found him it was apparent why he had forbidden me. Oh, Fancy! The unutterable evil of what I found shrieks inside me still!" Magda took a long deep breath before going on. "The little demons climbed upon his lap for comfort, and hideous serpents wound themselves about his cloven feet. He bore the Jackal's visage, and a funnel-shaped cone of blackness entered his body at the crown chakra and suffused his entire being. What arts he had used to conceal the consummate evil of his nature from me, I could but guess. He was a black magician of the highest degree attainable, not a seeker after truth as he had purported to be. He had lied, because lies are the logic of the Left-Hand Path, and I had bound myself to my own destruction.
"I cried out in my anguish and gave away my presence. He set his creatures of the night upon me and I had to do battle for my very soul! I would have lost the fight and been plunged into eternal slavery, for my own skills were meager next to his—but in my extremity I called upon the Goddess—called the sacred, never-spoken names and she appeared before me, her sullied priestess. The bearers of her fiery sword surrounded me, and led me to safety, through the Crack Between the Worlds."
Magda sat, still as a stone statue, legs wide and palms flat upon her knees, strong and fierce.
"My punishment was exquisite... I would remain a Priestess, in this world and in the next. All rituals to be due the Goddess, all payments to be exacted of me, just as if I had not failed the test of Eden. My gifts would remain, but only sporadically, and not entirely at my own command, so I could never again suffer pride. I, who had sought power, was doomed to exile, poverty, and the life of a wanderer. I, who could seduce any man living, was doomed to love one for whom power had no meaning.
"There were compensations, I suppose. I was not damned, as I might easily have been—my Priestesshood was not rescinded. I am quite mortal now, but age does not trouble me as it does the rest of humanity. You would be shocked and repelled, Fancy, if you knew how very old I am. If you knew of the men I have loved in successive generations, only to watch them wither and grow old and die. It would seem the Goddess will not let me easily off the hook of this incarnation. And how wry is Her humor that I keep my seductiveness, despite the years! Perhaps, She would remind me thus, of my great folly. The earth is the Mother's, sex is the Mother's, fecundity is the Mother's. I was allowed no child of my body, although I longed in my exile for one to comfort my loneliness. But it seems that now She has relented in sending you to me. I am grateful, and I count myself deserving of this boon, for I have followed Her dictates and accepted Her punishment without rancor. I still wrestle with the sin of Pride, you see." Magda laughed a little to shake herself loose from the dreadful history, then she sighed.
"And I am left with my staggering remorse, for I have passions to regret that other mortals do not even know exist." She paused, breathing deeply, as if coming out of a trance.
"So, child. Do you still seek to learn magic?"
"My God, Magda! I don't know what to say to you. What a wonderful, terrible story."
Magda stood up, unflinching as a gladiator.
"Learn from my life, Fancy! Learning is all there is." Then she was gone and the girl sat unmoving on the cushion, with
visions of angels and demons battling in her head.
Chapter 40
Magda shut the door gratefully on the last client of the day. Quite a number of women now made their way from town to seek her counsel and their money was more than welcome, but this one had drained her psychically. She made a mental note to cleanse her crystals carefully with the sound from a Tibetan bell before using them again, for the woman's illness was of the spirit and contaminating.
Moonlight on the new-fallen snow caught Magda's eye as she passed the small window that looked out toward Denver, several miles away. She stopped to admire the pristine blanket that had coated the hillside; the same moonlight that silvered and blued the woods would be turning Denver's buildings into palaces, shanties into fairyland. Thus are you able to clothe the soul in glory,
Mother, she thought reverently, despite the grime of life. The thought made her smile.
"Why do you grin like the Cheshire feline?" Gitalis asked sharply, seeing the Gypsy outlined in the moonlit window, shadowed by the glow of the hearth.
"Because I have gone soft in the head," she replied. "And because I have been admiring God's handiwork."
"We have handiwork of our own to show you," Gitalis said, pointing to the next room where Wes sat at the table working. Fancy looked up from the knitting in her lap, and stifled an amused smile.
Magda winked at Fancy as she passed, and followed Gitalis into their small bedroom. She reached her arms around Jarvis from behind and pressed the back of his head to her bosom as she peered over his shoulder.
Pleased by the caress, Jarvis laid down his pen and leaned back into the cradling arms.
" 'Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius,'" he announced, his voice affectionate, intimate.
"How so?"
"It has occurred to me that I may not tread the boards again, my wildcat, yet must I earn my keep." Magda released him from her embrace and sat down on the chair across from his to listen.
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