SHADOWS

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Selene turned to the others, sitting in a flattened oval at her feet. The brief flash of merriment had died away. "Obviously, I flew. At first it was like Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland, only more so. There was no there anywhere. I began to wonder whether I had died after all—I was nowhere, out of time, disembodied, frightened. I wanted to go back, I didn't want to have to leave my friends yet. I especially wasn't ready to leave Martha behind."

  She looked down at the girl, who had joined the circle on the floor. "And as soon as I thought of you, my darling, I saw you from above. Not too far above—a few yards, perhaps, but it was hard to tell—I had no body, no eyes, so there was no frame, no perspective. Wherever I was looking from, though, and wherever you moved, I could see through to you. I would have been above the roof of your porch, yet I could see you. When you went out the back door, then I could see the roof behind you. When you entered the shed, the shed roof disappeared, but I saw the smoke from your pipe flattening against it."

  Selene took Catherine's hand. "When I saw Martha, and was reminded of the Sabbat tonight, I thought of you, Cathy, and then I saw you. Seeing you, I thought of Sherman, and no sooner did I think of him then I saw him in his study."

  She leaned forward, still holding Catherine's hand, as if she were afraid she might float off again, and began looking around the circle, meeting each of the women's eyes in turn. "I visited most of the rest of you, too. I suppose it would have been between six and ten, your time. Or perhaps I should say, time time—there was no time where I had been. Then I went farther. I thought of…"

  She had started to say "Martha's mother" but thought better of it. She had indeed seen Moll Herrick, but in circumstances somewhere beyond compromising: the bed upon which the now heavy-set fifty-two-year-old woman was disporting nude with several other hefty older women was surrounded by a video crew, lights, booms, cameras and all; out of curiosity Selene glanced around the room to determine just where on earth she was, and saw a New York Post folded on a chair; a clapboard being wielded by one of the crew read "A-Mature Productions/Moll Montana Experience, Vol. III." But that would have been quite a load to dump on Martha.

  "… of a friend I hadn't seen in years, and no sooner had I thought of her, then I was there. Clearly distance didn't matter any more than time did. But just to be sure—no, just because I wanted to—no, because I couldn't help it… You all know me well enough to know what Jamey Whistler means to me…"

  Selene stopped, swallowed. Her throat was beginning to burn again. She asked for water, and waited for Martha to return from the kitchen with a bottle of Evian before going on. "He's been away for a year now—I suppose that's why I didn't think of him sooner—but at any rate, as soon as I did, I saw him. But it was far from what I would have expected. He was sitting in the hold of some sort of wooden ship, surrounded by what looked like burlap-wrapped hay bales. His head was between his knees and his shoulders were shaking, and it wasn't until he looked up that I realized he was crying. Crying!" Can you imagine that? her tone of voice implied. She took another sip of water.

  "I wanted to get closer, to try to contact him, but before I could, something pulled me back and I found myself floating high above my bed, watching a man in black bending over my body, pressing a pillow against my face.

  "I started to try to figure out where—and what—I'd been, and for how long, and what it all meant, but I had to force myself to stop—clearly there was no end to the muddle my mind could make of the infinite. Or vice versa. After a minute or two he removed the pillow and stooped to put his ear to my chest, then stood up and reached down toward my crotch. I thought for a moment he was going to molest me, but he only plucked out a pubic hair, and nodded like he was satisfied. That's when I first saw his face. He looked a little like the devil—not the God of the Underworld or anything—more like a ham actor made up to play the devil in Damn Yankees—a cheap road-show Damn Yankees at that.

  "That's also when I understood that he had only been reassuring himself that I was dead, that he had been listening for a heartbeat and had found none. An intense fear washed over me—was it too late to go back? Would I be trapped in a corpse for all eternity? But then suddenly, with no sense of in-between, no rush through space or anything—just poof!—I was back in my body staring up at the skylight through my good old human eyes. Then came a thought: Welcome back, Selene. I barely had time to consider who or what was welcoming whom or what when I smelled the smoke. It didn't occur to me at first that this man I'd seen, this road-show devil, or whatever the hell he was—had set the fire. I wasn't even sure whether he was real or a hallucination. Then I heard the front door slam, and a car start up, and the smoke came billowing up over the edge of the loft, and I was coughing and choking, and the waterbed was rocking, and I couldn't think about anything but fighting for air. I rolled over the side of the bed and dropped down flat on the floor, started crawling towards the ladder. But the flames were already licking over the edge of the loft, so instead I crawled in the other direction, over to the bureau, reached an arm up, felt around for my sewing basket, grabbed the scissors out of it, crawled back to the bed, took a deep breath, climbed up onto it, and started stabbing like a maniac at the mattress, rocking on my knees to make the water come out faster, sawing away at the mattress until there was a beautiful silver waterfall spilling across the floor and over the edge of the loft. It sounded like the hissing of a thousand snakes down below; black smoke was billowing up so heavily I couldn't get any air, so I wrapped one of the wet bedsheets around me, felt under the bureau for my rubber thongs, and started down the ladder.

  "Halfway down, the rungs started collapsing under my weight;" I tell through them one after the other, clacketa clacketa clackcta, until whomp!, I hit the floor still wrapped in the sheet, teetering, trying not to fall on my face onto the floorboards, which are so hot they're starting to melt my rubber thongs." She turned to Catherine. "That's when I remembered the fire walkers."

  Catherine nodded in recognition. Walking on coals had been quite the rage in Marin County back in the late eighties. Sherman had conducted a one-day self-realization seminar with a troupe from Rishikesh; for three hundred bucks a head you got a box lunch, a secret mantra, and the sense of accomplishment and self-worth at having overcome your fears and performed the seemingly impossible feat of walking barefoot over a twelve-foot-long carpet of coals. Seemingly: as the always skeptical Jamey Whistler had pointed out afterward, the principle was the same as basting a turkey: anybody can stick a hand into a 450 degree oven without getting burned—the trick is not to leave it in too long.

  Selene continued. "By now the thongs were completely melted to the floor—I stepped out of them and started through the smoke—I couldn't remember the mantra the fire walk facilitator sold us, but it didn't matter—the next thing I knew I was standing on my front doorstep shivering and coughing.

  "All at once I remembered the Test of the Fair Lady, and wondered how much of this had been part of it? Had I conjured up this man? This devil? Then I remembered Whistler in the hold of the ship…"

  A pause followed. All this, from rejoining her body to standing on her doorstep, Selene recalled clearly enough, but after that the memories came in chunks, like icebergs floating across a black dream sea. Afraid for Jamey. Afraid for herself. Cold and wet. The white sheet puddled around her feet. The dark steps leading around the side of the house and up to the deck. Stumbling over a paper-wrapped parcel—the laundry—she'd never gotten around to taking it in that afternoon. Dressing in the dark. The A-frame groaning and creaking alarmingly, sounding almost human in its pain. Her hiking boots by the back door. Feeling around for the car keys hanging from a nail just inside the door.

  No memory of descending the path to the one-car garage built into the side of the hill, or of opening the overhead door, but a clear image of the long silver snout of Whistler's '58 Jaguar saloon gleaming in the darkness of the garage. A fervent prayer that the temperamental beast would start…

&nb
sp; The drive itself was a total blank. Had she been fleeing blindly? Honoring her witch's word to Martha? Impossible to say. The next thing she remembered clearly was standing in the doorway of Catherine's living room, looking at the circle of the coven from the outside, and understanding with an overwhelming sense of sadness that although the Test of the Fair Lady had indeed addressed the question that had been foremost in her mind—witch or ither?—the answer itself was virtually meaningless.

  Witches fly, ithers die. She had flown because she was a witch; she was a witch because she had flown. No larger question had been answered directly, but even her brief tour of therelessness had convinced her that whatever being a witch meant, beyond not dying from belladonna, it had fuck-all to do with a bunch of women standing naked in a circle in Mill Valley reciting the Lord's Prayer backward.

  So, in the face of two revelations, one a tautology and the other unutterable, she had stripped off her clothes, entered the circle through the portal of the Barbaras, taken a ring from the right index finger of Ariadne, the most recently initiated witch, approached Martha standing blind, naked, and vulnerable in the center of the circle, shoulders squared, breasts thrust bravely forward, and then, just before everything went black, she had bestowed the Ring of Power upon Moll and Jamey's daughter…

  * * *

  Selene looked down at the seated witches. How long the pause had lasted she could not have said. "Where was I?"

  "You remembered Whistler in the hold of the ship," somebody said.

  "Oh yes." Selene was parched again. As she took a last slug of Evian and looked down at the upturned ring of faces she realized that while she still had no idea what her path was to be, the task the Fair Lady had set for her was pretty obvious: Jamey Whistler was in trouble—he needed her.

  She rose too abruptly and found herself swaying dizzily, colored stars exploding across her field of vision. Catherine's strong arms steadied her as her knees began to buckle; Catherine and Martha eased her gently down to the couch.

  "Where do you think you're going?" asked Catherine.

  Where indeed? thought Selene. Then it came to her: "The island of Santa Luz," she replied. "U.S. Virgins. Anybody know how the hell I get there?"

  CHAPTER 7

  « ^ »

  Seven hours later Selene found herself staring at a wild-haired witch in the dim mirror of an airplane bathroom, wondering just what in the name of the Great Horned God she thought she was doing. Was this only some sort of delayed midlife crisis after all? It wouldn't be uncommon; even if she weren't officially premenopausal (which she was, according to her nurse-practitioner: her mood swings were stronger and her periods weaker; she'd missed one entirely two months ago, and not because she was pregnant), clerics of all description were inclined toward midlife crises—the Catholic Church had spawned a whole cottage industry of retreats for vocationally troubled priests.

  Wicca, though—a witch with doubts was on her own. Though she had flown; Catherine and Martha had confirmed that. And if she had flown, then Whistler was indeed in trouble. And that roadshow devil: he'd been real enough. Apparitions didn't start fires. Although—

  But there were only two coach bathrooms on the nearly full connecting flight to Denver; this was neither the place nor the time. She splashed some water on her face, retwisted her braid and pinned it up again, then returned to her seat in time for breakfast. Her first solid food in twenty-four hours, not counting the belladonna tart. No sleep, either. After canceling the post-Sabbat orgy—a first, as far as Selene could remember—the coven had departed in convoy for Selene's house, where the witches set to work cleaning up the ground floor with all the energy they'd been saving for the orgy, while Selene took a cold shower to cool herself down, shampooing repeatedly to get the smell of smoke out of her hair.

  They had to bring a ladder up from Martha's A-frame to get to the loft. There was some question about the supporting pillars, which were badly scorched. In the end they decided that it would be safe for Selene to climb up there alone, but only for as long as it took her to pack. When she reached the top of the ladder she saw that while the fire damage was minimal, the smoke had rendered her best clothes unwearable. Fortunately, the gems of her T-shirt collection had been out on the deck in the bundles of clean laundry, along with her favorite shorts, jeans, panties, and socks, so she had no trouble finding enough casual clothes to fill the suitcase. But she'd definitely have to do some serious shopping in Miami. Or better still on St. Thomas, where she'd have to change planes again—Charlotte Amalie was a duty-free port, according to Catherine's year-old Caribbean guidebook.

  Choosing which of her tools to take along proved more difficult. Alone in the loft, she knelt in front of her altar, threw back the black damask cover, and opened the wicker doors. One at a time, with a reverence that came of long habit, but that she no longer particularly felt, she removed her white-hiked, steel-bladed athame, her stag's-horn chalice, her shallow enameled thurible, her red silk cingulum and red velvet garter, and her loose-leaf Book of Shadows, placing them carefully atop the altar. None of them had been damaged, except by smoke, but all of them seemed somehow tainted, diminished by her recent loss of faith.

  But it was not the loss of faith that kept her from taking them along; rather it was the dust mote of faith that remained to her. She was no longer sure that all the rituals of Wicca were worth more than the empty promises of her childhood Christianity—but she wasn't sure they weren't, either, or she wouldn't have been leaving for the Caribbean. All she knew was that using the tools and performing the rites out of superstition or habit would be a form of sacrilege, if indeed there was such a thing as sacrilege. And if not, then why lug them around?

  In the end, she took only her goat-bladder sack of runestones, and that more for comfort than guidance. Selene had carved the tiles herself, so long ago that ivory had still been legally obtainable; her own fingers had worn them smooth. As to whether she would cast them tomorrow morning, as she had every morning of her life for over a quarter of a century, or cast them into the Caribbean instead, she didn't have the slightest idea. But they were as familiar to her as her own toes, and they didn't take up much room in her suitcase, so what the hell.

  Saying good-bye to Martha was difficult too—and Martha hadn't made it any easier. A brisk handshake, eyes averted, had been the girl's farewell of choice as Selene tossed her suitcase into the trunk of the Jaguar. Then, pointedly. "I'll say good-bye to Daddy Don for you. Please take care of yourself, Selene."

  Selene sensed that Martha's capacity for denial was stretched to the breaking point. This was as close as the girl could come to reminding Selene that she and Daddy Don were the closest thing to parents she had, and that she understood that she might be in the process of losing both of them.

  "I will, dearie," Selene had replied gently.

  "You shouldn't be driving, you know. Or flying, not until your temperature comes down."

  "I know."

  "Do you have your passport?"

  "Don't need it for Santa Luz—it's a U.S. territory. But yes, I packed it anyway, just in case."

  "Okay. See y'around." Martha had turned her back and started walking away.

  "Hey you!" Selene grabbed her from behind by her sausage-length blond dreadlocks.

  "Hey! Ow! What?" Martha turned to face Selene; the tears in her lovely gray eyes were not from the pain of having her hair gently tugged. They embraced. Selene took Martha's head between her hands and kissed her tears, then her forehead. "Bless you, baby. I'll call you—Witch's Word."

  "I'll keep an eye on your place—Witch's Word."

  "And the cat! I almost forgot Dunstan."

  "And the cat."

  Selene had opened the door of the Jag, then turned back one last time. "If I'd had a daughter of my own, I'd have wanted her to turn out just like you."

  But Martha had the last word: "And if I'd had a mother…" she began, and they had both laughed tearfully.

  * * *

  It was as
good a parting as any they could have engineered, given the circumstances, thought Selene as the stewardess set her breakfast down. It proved to be a Mexican omelette, with which Selene set some sort of speed record: ten minutes from tray to barf bag. It would have been five, but for the sake of her fellow passengers she managed to delay the inevitable until she reached the fortuitously unoccupied John.

  One of the stewardesses was in the galley when Selene emerged from the bathroom for the second time. Selene asked her for some crackers and a glass of water; this second breakfast stayed down. They were an hour into the flight when Selene managed to doze off. Her dreams took her back to Whistler. This time she was with him in the hold of the boat, but he could not see her; when she tapped him on the shoulder her fingers went right through him, as if he were the disembodied soul.

  Then she was awake again. The businessman by the window had leaned across the empty middle seat and was tugging firmly at the sleeve of her old black cardigan, staring at her in some alarm.

  "I'm sorry. Was I babbling?"

  "The babbling wasn't so bad, but the way you were flailing your arms I was afraid I'd get my nose broken." He was a jowly, lawyerly-looking man in his mid-fifties, with a laptop computer propped up on the seat tray in front of him. "Can I offer you a Valium?"

  "Oh dear. No thank you." Selene apologized again. "I'm afraid I'm the seatmate from hell this morning."

  He shrugged a polite disclaimer and turned back to his laptop. Selene reclined her seatback, folded her hands across her lap—under the seat belt, for the sake of her neighbor—and tried to go back to her dream. She wanted to see if she could pick up any clues as to Whistler's whereabouts. She wasn't expecting much—Selene had never been particularly strong on dream magic, having found the subconscious to be a powerful but largely unreliable ally. She succeeded in dozing off briefly, though, and when she did she dreamed up a powerfully evocative image.