Bell, Book and Dyke - New Exploits of Magical Lesbians

by Barbara Johnson, Karin Kallmaker, Therese Szymanski

  "Sarah Lowell," Aurora read. "Oh look, so many children died, three, this one was two, oh, little Daniel was only two weeks. How sad."

  We walked the row of markers slowly. Many couldn't be read at all. Most were for children, she was right. The oldest Lowell at the time of her death was a Deborah Lowell, aged thirty eight.

  "No, wait," I corrected. "This one was in her sixties. This is the last marker, too."

  "Apple Lowell. Friend to All," Aurora read. "That's sweet." She bent closer, tracing a faded symbol above the name. "Is that a pentagram?"

  "In this cemetery? I seriously doubt it. Salem folk in that era were mightily afraid of witches."

  "I know. But it's not a cross."

  "So." I regarded her bent head. Sunlight on her hair made me think of ripe strawberries. "Worth getting your feet wet?"

  "Yes. My ancestors walked here and their bones are here."

  "I could have let you come here with Lexi."

  "Oh please." She regarded me with a teasing smile. "Never in a million—"

  "A million what?" I prodded, when she didn't go on.

  Finger trembling, she pointed at the grave marker next to Apple Lowell's.

  The name jumped out at me like lightning in a clear sky. I read, "Holly Carnegey, Friend to All."

  "It's the same symbol, whatever it is."

  "She died one year later, to the day. Also in her sixties."

  Aurora gave a funny gasp and pulled me close. A slightly shaking hand wrapped around my arm. She softly said, "These forty years were not enough."

  I shivered and we stood there for a few more minutes. Finally, I was able to say, "They weren't enough, sweetheart. All is a gift, so we get another dance."

  Her eyes shone in the light, glazed in pure green and shimmering with joyful tears. Looking deep I saw myself there in the depths of her grace and laughter. No endings, only beginnings. And in this new dance that I shared with her, I believed in magic.

  Skyclad

  Julia Watts

  Part 1

  Earth

  Chapter 1

  Chameleon and her coven were working skyclad. Naked except for the ritual jewelry that decorated their fingers, wrists, and necks, the six women stood in a circle in the meadow, moonlight shining silver on their skin.

  The high priestess, Chameleon, stood in front of the altar, her wavy honey-blonde hair topped with a silver crown, her arms spread before the members of the coven as if preparing to envelop them all in an embrace. Chameleon let her lips turn up in a slight smile as Iris stepped forward to face her.

  As always, Chameleon was struck by how beautiful Iris looked, her short, dark hair crowned with a vine wreath, her eyes aglow with the energy of the ritual, her hands shaking a little as they always did. This slight trembling was one reason Iris was such a great working partner. It was her job to play the human role in the coven's rituals, while Chameleon played the role of the goddess. Iris's trembling was perfect because what human in her right mind wouldn't tremble standing before the goddess?

  Yes, Iris was the perfect partner for ritual, Chameleon thought as Iris knelt before her. The two of them hadn't worked out as partners in life, but that was hardly surprising. Life wasn't as beautifully orchestrated and predictable as ritual. If it were, people wouldn't feel the need to invent rituals to bring them comfort.

  Chameleon pushed her personal thoughts away, concentrating on embodying the spirit of the goddess as Iris began the Five-Fold Kiss. Bending low, Iris pressed her lips to Chameleon's right foot, then her left, then raised her head to kiss Chameleon's right knee, then her left. For Chameleon, each kiss lit a fire—a sacred fire that burned not just within her but within all the coven members who were circled around them. Iris rose higher on her knees and kissed the spot on Chameleon that symbolized the goddess's womb—that slight swell of her belly below her navel but above her pubic hair. Iris rose higher, brushing her lips against Chameleon's right breast, then her left breast. Finally, standing face to face with the high priestess, Iris leaned in and pressed her lips to Chameleon's as Chameleon's arms opened in a gesture of blessing which included the whole coven. The Five-Fold Kiss was complete.

  As always when she enacted sacred rituals, Chameleon thought how much more meaningful these pagan rites were for her than the dreary Protestant rituals she was force-fed as a child and teenager. She remembered sitting in the church sanctuary, wearing a scratchy, freshly ironed pink dress and stiff, shiny Mary Janes, her little brother beside her, his unruly hair tamed with Dippety-Do, his little neck half-choked by the bow tie their mom had forced him to wear.

  But church wasn't about being comfortable or natural. It was about fighting off your natural desires—stifling every urge for comfort and pleasure, stripping away the layers of physicality and selfhood until there was nothing left but a clean white soul, pure enough to float up to heaven. And heaven was the whole point of that brand of religion, wasn't it? To reject the ugly ways of the earth so that after death you could stroll through heaven on streets of gold.

  Even as a little girl, Chameleon had thought that streets paved with gold sounded tacky. And she didn't think the earth was some ugly thing to be cast aside. Sure, the earth had its problems, but wasn't it people's responsibility to try to fix them? And so much of the earth was so beautiful. She'd take a field of wildflowers over streets paved with gold any day.

  And so it was no wonder she'd become a witch—had found a religion which embraced the natural instead of rejecting it. And now her little brother, who had never asked the same questions she had, was the youth minister at the same church they'd gone to as kids. Well, at least they'd both turned out religious, although in her parents' eyes, the religion they and her brother practiced was the only one that counted.

  As the coven looked on, Chameleon held up the wine-filled chalice. Iris held the ritual blade high, then dipped it in the wine. The wine consecrated, Chameleon and Iris shared a kiss and a drink. Then Chameleon turned to Graymalkin, the coven's oldest member and self-proclaimed "resident crone." Chameleon kissed Graymalkin's lips and passed her the chalice. Graymalkin drank, and then turned to kiss Belladonna, the coven's youngest and most heavily tattooed and pierced member. And so the cup was passed, with a kiss, to each member of the coven: Belladonna to spiky-haired, wiry Coyote; Coyote, to large, curvy Anansi, who enjoyed saying that unlike the coven's white members, she practiced black magic. Chameleon smiled, pleased, just as she was sure the Goddess was pleased, to see these women with the night sky above them and the soft ground below them, kissing and sharing, at peace with themselves, with nature, and with each other.

  It was always awkward the first few minutes after the magic circle was banished. The road from ritual to normal life was a bumpy one, and usually everybody stood around curelessly for a while until somebody—tonight, it was Coyote—finally said something about the chilly night air that made everybody start walking from the pasture to Graymalkin's farmhouse, where they could put on their clothes—the costumes which returned them to the mundane world.

  After a ritual, Graymalkin's bedroom always reminded Chameleon of the girls' locker room in high school: females in various states of undress, talking and laughing. But it was different from high school, too, in that none of the women were judging each other or feeling ashamed of their bodies. The women who, unlike Iris and Belladonna, did not possess what weight and youth-obsessed society defines as a "good" body, still seemed confident of their beauty. Anansi gloried in the sensuality of her soft, rounded fertility goddess's body; Graymalkin took pride in the experience symbolized by every wrinkle and stretch mark; and Coyote was confident in the lithe, ropy frame she shared with her animal namesake.

  Chameleon slipped on a long, dark blue dress batiked with dark clouds, moons, and stars.

  "Look at you," Graymalkin said, tying back her long, silver hair. "You've put on clothes, but you're still skyclad."

  Chameleon smiled. "Well, as a high priestess
, I feel I should be a woman of contrasts. Naked but clothed, wise but ignorant..."

  "Hot but single," Coyote interrupted, grinning as she adjusted her sports bra.

  Chameleon grinned back. For Coyote, flirtation and conversation were one and the same. Chameleon didn't mind the "hot but single" comment at all, until she looked away from Coyote and briefly made eye contact with Iris, the reason she was single.

  Anansi, seeming to sense the awkward moment, said, "Of course, 'hot but single' isn't really a contrast. It should be hot AND single. Some of us have got a little too much going on to be sharing it all with just one person."

  "Fuckin' A," Belladonna said, stomping into her Doc Martens. "Why does everything always have to be about being part of a couple? You know, when I first took up the craft, I was blown away by how much of it is about working in pairs. It looks like we could get beyond that limited pair-bonding idea. I mean, as much as Wicca emphasizes couples, we might as well all get husbands and be Baptists."

  Iris, who was standing behind Belladonna, rolled her eyes, but Chameleon could see the younger witch's point. Sure, Belladonna's view was a little extreme, but she was a twenty-year-old theatre arts major at the university and so was prone to making dramatic proclamations. Chameleon knew that Belladonna got on Iris's nerves—Iris had said that Belladonna wasn't mature enough to take the craft seriously—but Chameleon also thought it was important to have at least one very young woman in the coven. Except for Graymalkin, all the other witches were in their thirties, and while everybody agreed it was great to have Graymalkin as an older member, not all of them were as sure about Belladonna's value. To Chameleon, though, the young woman—the maiden— was as important an incarnation of the goddess as the crone. She was happy for Belladonna to be their resident maiden, even if the hickeys that frequently marked Belladonna's neck and breasts made it clear that she did not possess the virginal qualities which the term "maiden" implied.

  "I know what you mean," Chameleon said to Belladonna, moving behind the young witch to help her with the zipper of her dress which, like all of Belladonna's dresses, was very short and very black. "Sometimes I get kind of fed up reading about all the pairing off that happens in Wicca. And when you read the older texts it's even more heinous because the assumption is that the pairings will always be male-female."

  "Yeah, I hate all that old-school bullshit," Belladonna said.

  "But," Chameleon added, as Belladonna turned to face her, "all gender issues aside, there's still something powerful about two people merging..."

  "No doubt about that," Coyote snickered, wiggling her eyebrows at Anansi, who play-slapped her on the arm.

  "Well, sex is one way to merge, but symbolic ritual can do it, too," Chameleon said. "However it happens, though, a lot of magic is created when two people come together as one—like the yin and yang symbols that form a full circle when joined together, and yet even as they merge, each symbol maintains its own identity."

  Graymalkin, dressed in a flowing purple caftan, draped her arm around Chameleon's shoulders. "No offense to the High Priestess, but this conversation is getting a little heavy to process on an empty stomach. Who wants to throw the tofu kebabs on the grill while I get the plates and drinks?"

  "All hail the grill goddess," Coyote called, raising her arms high.

  Everyone filed out of the bedroom to help Graymalkin. Iris, then Chameleon, were the last in the procession. Before Iris walked out the door, she turned around, kissed Chameleon's cheek, and whispered "beautiful" into her ear.

  Iris left Chameleon standing in the doorway, her heart and mind racing. Iris had dumped Chameleon two months before, and Chameleon had promised Iris that their ended romantic relationship would have no impact on Iris's status in the coven. But what in the name of Gaia was she supposed to make of that word—"beautiful"—and that kiss?

  After the coven got through the few awkward minutes after the ritual, the gathering always turned into a party. The food was spread out on a folding table in Graymalkin's front yard. Seeing the dishes lined up and the women lined up to fill their plates always reminded Chameleon of the Wednesday night potlucks she'd grown up with at the Cartersville Baptist Church. The food was different, of course. The Baptists' Campbell's Soup-based casseroles, Jell-O salads, Bundt cakes, and iced tea had been replaced by the witches' tofu kebabs; hummus; gluten-free, dairy-free-chocolate-free brownies; and a box of cheap red wine. Still, whether the potluck was Baptist or pagan, in some ways they were both the same. Both were opportunities for relaxation and fellowship after a religious service, and at both, the quality of the food was decidedly hit-or-miss.

  Chameleon sat down on the ground and nibbled her tofu and sipped her wine. It was the same brand of wine that she and Iris had consecrated in the ritual, but somehow it had tasted better in the chalice than it did in a waxy paper cup. Chameleon thought of Iris penetrating the chalice with her dagger and of the other kind of penetration which that ritual symbolized. Iris had been good at that kind of penetration, too. Think about something else,

  Chameleon ordered herself. She focused on her plate, trying not to look at Iris and trying not to look like she was trying not to look at Iris.

  "Hey, are you okay?" Graymalkin had sat down on the ground next to her. "You seem a little distracted tonight."

  "Oh," Chameleon said. "I hope that doesn't mean that the ritual didn't go well."

  "No, it was beautiful." Graymalkin patted Chameleon's hand. "You always make it beautiful. I wasn't talking about you the high priestess. I was talking about you the person."

  Chameleon smiled. Graymalkin's greatest gift as a witch and a woman was her ability to see right into a person's feelings. "Yeah, well," Chameleon said, "I guess I'm just tired. It was crazy at the cafe today." Chameleon felt the intensity of Graymalkin's gaze and knew she wasn't buying that tiredness was the whole story. "Plus, there's a little E.L.W. going on here tonight."

  "E.L.W?" Graymalkin knit her brow. "I don't think I'm familiar with that term. Is it from some special pagan tradition?"

  "Yes," Chameleon said. "It's from the lesbian tradition. It stands for Ex-Lover Weirdness." She leaned closer to Graymalkin and lowered her voice. "Iris kissed me tonight—not just as part of the ritual, but back in your bedroom after we got dressed. She kissed me and said 'beautiful' and then just left me standing there with my mouth hanging open."

  "Well," Graymalkin said as she picked a piece of bell pepper off her skewer, "maybe she's having regrets. I mean, seeing you standing in front of the altar, looking all beautiful, embodying the goddess, how could she not have regrets?"

  "Well..." Chameleon began. She had been going to say, "Keeping the me who embodies the goddess separate from the me you wake up beside in the morning was never a speciality of Iris's." But she didn't say it because Iris was standing right in front of them.

  "Is it okay if I butt in?" Iris said, smiling. Chameleon had always been a sucker for Iris's smile. She smiled all over, the corners of her eyes crinkling, the dark centers of her eyes twinkling. It was an endearing, mischievous grin—part of the reason, along with the keen features and small frame—that Iris had an elfin quality.

  "Sure," Chameleon said, smiling back against her better judgment.

  "Well, actually, I should probably butt out," Graymalkin said, rising. "I need to run to the freezer and get some Tofutti to go with the brownies."

  Still sitting on the ground, Chameleon was sorely tempted to grab Graymalkin's ankles to stop her from leaving.

  Iris sat down next to Chameleon and gulped back half a cup of wine. "Uh, Cham ..." she said, "There was something I wanted to ask you."

  Chameleon managed to choke out, "Okay."

  "Urn... the thing is, I had kind of a rough day today, and I'm hitting the wine harder than I probably ought to be. Do you think you can drive me home tonight?"

  "Sure. No problem. Um... Iris, if you'll excuse me for a minute, I've got an announcement I need to make."

>   Chameleon got up and walked away, not sure why she felt like she'd just been kicked in the stomach. She didn't know what she'd expected Iris to ask her, but she did know that "Will you be my designated driver?" wasn't it.

  Okay, enough of this, Chameleon told herself. It's time to act like a high priestess, not a girl at her first middle school dance. She picked up a serving spoon and clanged it against a metal bowl to get everyone's attention. "Before everybody drinks so much that they become irresponsible for their actions," she said, "I'd like to remind you that we will be meeting to do our Adopt-a-Highway project on Saturday morning. We'll meet at the Quick-E Mart near the site at nine a.m. As I've said before, this is a great opportunity to do some good for our earth and our community. So even though I know there aren't many natural early risers among us, I urge you to overcome your nocturnal instincts and drag your butts out of bed to help us on Saturday morning."

  Once the box of wine and the coven members were exhausted and good night hugs were exchanged, Iris sidled up to Chameleon. "Can I still get that ride?" Her East Tennessee accent was exacerbated by wine.

  "Hey, it's part of my job as a member of Witches Against Drunk Driving." Chameleon was trying to be casual and funny, but as she well knew, when people tried to be casual and funny, they were usually neither, and she was no exception. The truth was she was a wreck. As she and Iris walked to her ancient, battered Toyota with its "My other car is a broom" and "My Goddess gave birth to your God" bumper stickers, she realized the alcohol she smelled wasn't just on Iris's breath. It was also a full paper cup of something harder than wine that Iris had grabbed for the road. "You'd better get rid of that open container," Chameleon said. "If we get pulled over, we don't want to be violating any other taboos besides being dykes and witches."

  "Good point," Iris said, chugging the contents of the cup. "The open container is now an empty container."

  Chameleon was a bit taken aback by Iris's drinking. Iris had been known to tie one on occasionally, but she didn't usually knock it back this hard. "Are you okay?" Chameleon asked, turning the key in the ignition.