Bell, book, and murder

by Edghill, Rosemary

  "Well, you know. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations," I said. The First Church of Star Trek has a lot to answer for. "What did you think of Miriam's group when you met them?"

  I

  Speak Daggers to Her 43

  "I didn't meet them. She wouldn't take me. She said they weren't very out—of the broomcloset, you know—and real hetero. She was pretending she was straight."

  Lace's mouth made a shape you usually only see on tragedy masks —and no wonder, if her lover had decided to join a homophobic group. Miriam must have had to work like hell to find one, too; the trendy phobia on the New Aquarian Frontier is hetero.

  I made encouraging noises, but Lace wanted to forget the whole thing and I didn't get much. Miriam'd found her new group about three months ago. Lace didn't remember its name, but thought it was called "something like Baklava." Once she was in, Miriam dropped most of her other Community contacts. In the first flush of conversation she said some things about the group —and against some others—that got Tollah and Carrie's back haiir up. Some hard words about collaboration and pairty-Paganism were said.

  "I'm sure they'll want to know about the Crossing Over anyway," I said soothingly. I wondered what Miriam could possibly have said to make Carrie hold a grudge for three months. I'd probably have to die ignorant; Carrie'd never tell.

  Lace finished her second or maybe third spiked orange juice and had tea, and I wrote out all the information about the Crossing Over on a 3 X 5 card to post down at the Revel. I changed my mind and gave Lace one of the sets of Miriam's keys —how much trouble could she get into in an empty apartment?—and we made a date to get together about the stuff in Miriam's apartment— maybe next Saturday, the 23rd, before the rent that Miriam wasn't around to pay anjmiore was due. Then she left.

  After Lace was gone I made myself another cup of tea and got out the stuff I'd taken from Miriam's apartment. That reminded me about the little Goddess, so I got her out, too, and unwrapped her and put her on my own altar. She wasn't displacing anybody; I figured she'd get along with my thunders tone just fine.

  She looked a lot brighter here than she had at Miriam's, all gold and ivory (although considering where she came from, it was probably cast resin and gilt paint). Goddess of the Games, Lady of the Wild Things, Maid and Mother but never Bride.

  There are some people who think I have an overromantic imagination.

  I picked up the rest of the stuff and put it on the table.

  Ritual robe. Four 8x10 blank books that were Miriam's occult diaries. The Khazar prayer book. The chicken-foot necklace.

  44 Bell, Book, and Murder

  No athame. That still bothered me. And I didn't know why.

  Even assuming that Miriam had, as I was starting to think, gotten involved in a really coercive power-tripping occult group calling itself (with no justification) a Wiccan coven, what that was, was sad. Not a case for Denny Colt, aka The Spirit, superhero investigator.

  So why was 1 trying to make Miriam's death into a crime with a victim and a victor?

  Tidiness, probably. Man is the pattern-making animal; the idea that some things Just Happen offends us. If Miriam died, it had to be for cause. Even murder was better than a random cosmos.

  It is thinking like that which has led to most of the witch hunts of history. Sometimes things do Just Happen —if you're of a philosophical bent, call it a part of the Lady's pattern that's just too big for you to see. But stop looking for a villain. Bast.

  Right? Right. Good advice.

  And in order to take it I wanted to find out more about "Bak-lava," alias the Khazar Tradition. Maybe they didn't use athcunes. Maybe Miriam had broken hers, or lost it, or given it away.

  Sure.

  I glanced through the diaries just enough to put them in chronological order, then started going through them in good earnest. Accounts of dreams, bad poetry, artwork never meant for anyone else to see.

  Miriam wasn't a diligent archivist, but enough of the entries were dated for me to be able to figure out what was going on. Every few pages the same entry, some variation of: "This time I think I've found It, The Answer. ..." and then a flurry of pages done in the style of her newest find. Over and over, for three books and four years. Miricim never changed. She never stopped looking for an answer that came from outside, that she could lace on like a corset to make her life the right shape. She didn't learn anything from all the "The Answer"s that turned out not to be.

  We bring the answer with us. All the traditions, all the paths, teach us to see what is already here. That is the central Mystery of our Mystery that I had never convinced Miriam of. The secret is that there is no secret.

  The fourth book started in spring of this year. Miriam was still using the dating style of her last fling, so the year appeared to be seven thousand something and the date was 28 Inanna, but after that she started talking about the vernal equinox, so I knew

  it was March 21. It started out as a series of dreams —ice and snow images —and then, rare for Miriam, an actual diary entry:

  "Dark Moon Waxing." (That would make it around March 28. I consulted my pocket ephemeris to be sure.) 'Tonight 1 met a Man of Great Power. He was at The Snake, and he says that he was looking for me because he heard me calling him —"

  The trouble with lines like these, that were old when snake oil was new, is that they are also literally true. The urge that makes you pick up the phone and call a long-lost friend who, it turns out, was thinking about you—what is that, if not what Miriam was describing?

  Coincidence? Thank you, no. If I believed in magic as hard as some people believe in random chance and coincidence, by now I would have walked off a building thinking I could fly. But you don't have to believe in something to use it. No one ever had to believe in a chair, you'll notice. Some things are, some things aren't. Use your five sound senses and any more you may have been given, can develop, or encourage. And make up your own mind, not somebody else's.

  Here endeth the lecture. So far the only thing wrong with the Mysterious Stranger was that it's bad manners to say these things (even if true) to total strangers. I went on with my reading.

  He knew, wrote Miriam, that she had Power, but that it flowed in different channels from that of her peers aind so they didn't understand her. He, while not presuming to understand her, had been working with the energy she was attuned to for quite some time. He had a group. Would she care to come to one of their meetings?

  Of course she would—who wouldn't, with a sell like that? And Miriam, bless her heart, had written the directions he gave her into her magical notebook.

  I copied them—it involved taking the F train to Queens and a bunch of other things. She hadn't written the address, just something on the order of "third building on the left, seventh floor, ring bell." But I could find the place if I had to. If I wanted to. If I was stupid.

  The next couple of pages were lists of godnames, herbs, the Cyrillic alphabet copied out with its English equivalents next to it. Do you know that the Cyrillic alphabet has thirty-three letters, of which three are double consonants? I thought you didn't. Apparently her first meeting with the group had gone well, and

  46 Bell, Book, and Murder

  Miriam was working on learning all the in-group trivia of yet another spiritual pathway.

  Then there was a shopping list of sorts. It looked like Miriam was going to a ritual and had a list of things to bring. Probably a dedication. Innocent enough. Most groups have them—they give the seeker something to hold on to emotionally while s/he's being trained for initiation. Moon in Pisces; we were in April now.

  One of the items on the list was a good recent photo. I thought of the likeness in the front of the "prayer book." Somebody had taken Miriam's measure in more ways tham one.

  Another was an athame. Or any double-edged knife. Miricmi would have taken them the best she had. Her Ironshadow blade.

  So where was it now?

  The next several pages were rituads, probably copi
ed out from typed Xeroxes they'd given her once they decided she was trustable. It was pretty standard stuff, based heavily on the Gard-nerian model with a lot of Crowley thrown in, and gaimished with heavy pseudo-Russian Old Gods.

  There was certainly a pre-Christian religion in Russia—in fact several of them, since the now-defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (which everybody calls Russia and which isn't) covered one-quarter of the Earth's land mass. This religion was probably nasty, brutish, and shamanic, as so many of the subsistence-level cold-climate Paganisms are.

  But we don't know. And probably never will. And anything calling itself a reconstruction is going to be nine-tenths fantasy and one-tenth plagiarism. Miriam's group's stuff was just Russian-flavored pseudo-Gardnerianism with a ritual magic chaser. Miriam probably would have moved on from this, too.

  The rest of the pages were blank, I thought, but I flipped through to be sure. In the last few pages toward the end I found that Miriam had taken up her diarizing again.

  Unlike her usual flowing hand these were written tiny and crabbed, as if Miriam didn't want to see them herself. None of them was dated, but after a few minutes I realized the earliest one was the last—which meant you had to start at the end and work backwards — and after that it was fairly easy.

  But oh, what they said. My heart hurt for Miriam, and at the same time I was so mad at her that if she'd been here right now I would have strangled her. How could anyone be that stupid? I asked myself. How could she stay when they did that to her?

  I

  Speak Daggers to Her 47

  The people at the battered women's shelters ask that every day. And the ones in Children's Services. And the cops. How could he-she-they-it let anyone do that?

  Miriam (I guessed) was dedicated into the Queens coven. The next thing they asked for was her blood and bone. I don't know where she got the bone. Baby teeth probably, if she'd saved any of hers. The blood had been drawn at a covenmeet. The site had become infected. She'd started having nightmares.

  Put it on paper and it sounds laughable—the "Saturday Night Live" version of Rosemary's Baby. But the fear came through even in the crjrptic notes that were the only thing Miriam allowed herself to write.

  That, and her justifications for what the coven did. How she was stupid to make a fuss. Stupid to be afraid.

  They asked for more and more, but what they asked for didn't niEike it onto paper—only Miriam's anger with how afraid they made her, her triumph each time she managed to do something against all her better instincts. Her statements about how her fear was the last barrier between her and Power. How it would pass. Soon.

  Oh please Goddess soon she wrote. And started to cross it out. And didn't.

  How could she let them do that to her?

  Easy.

  She forgot she was a grown-up.

  Our childhood is spent doing things against our will. Against our instincts, our desires, our judgment (such as it is) we're compelled to do things we don't want to do. Eat our vegetables. Wash. Go to school. And usually we look back on those things later and realize they were the right things to do at the time.

  Childhood is about trust. And somewhere in most of us the trusting child lives on. And sometimes, years later, it can be lured into horror, step by step, by the voice that says: Just do it I know whaVs best You need to do this. It's best for you.

  TTie icons of Manson and Jonestown are never far from us, and sometimes adulthood is the easiest thing to give away when people ask us to give them things. Some people thrust their adulthood into any hands even halfway willing to take it. I didn't know where to assign the blame. I only knew my chest hurt.

  I tucked my extended museum collection of Miriam's life in a safe place and hit the streets, burying anger in motion. I spent the

  48 Bell, Book, and Murder

  rest of the day making the rounds—Aphrodisia, Weiser's, The Snake —and telling people about Miriam's death and Changing's open circle.

  I should have stopped in at the Revel, too, but then I would have had to admit to Carrie that I'd known about Miriam's being dead when I'd been there Friday and hadn't told her.

  Actually, social cowardice can be a rewarding, self-affirming life path.

  Chores done and social outrage put away, I picked up a six-pack of Tsingtao I couldn't really afford and headed home to shaire it with the little Goddess. Work in the morning. So much for a wild weekend in the earthly paradise.

  But if the Khazar coven was so goddamn medieval in its arts and graces, where was Miriam's athame?

  Raymond was pleased with the work I'd done on the poetry spreads—which was nice, but what really matters is what the client thinks. Most of them have an annoying ability to expect the impossible and see what isn't there.

  As a reward for my yeoman service, Ray gave me a mammoth job that'd just come in from Flatiron Press —one of the last great independent New York publishers, down on 23rd Street. It really was a reward, even though it looked like a bitch of a job, because it meant I'd have no trouble working enough hours to pay my rent for the foreseeable future.

  I carted it back to my table and looked it over. It was unusual for us to get a job from Flatiron. Flatiron still does most of their stuff in-house, unless they get something like this. My life's partner for about the next three months: weight about ten pounds, aW found. It was a huge, messy manuscript—and stats, and boards— that seemed to be about "how to build your own Victorian house from granite rocks." It had twelve million pictures and drawings that all had to fall on the same spread as their call-outs, no exception.

  A call-out is book-design jargon for the reference in the text. When the text says: 'The Adam-style fireplace, with ornamental liripipe and ruched gonfanons, represents — " the picture or drawing it cites has to be on the same spread—which is design jargon for any two facing pages. Even-numbered pages are always on the left side of a spread, because page one always starts on the right and has a blank facing page.

  It didn't take me long to lesim that. Anyone could. But then, nobody wants my job.

  So I spread it out aind settled in to a nice, peaceful, noncreative fug, which should carry me safely into the fall, when there are more interesting things to think about than work. At lunch I deposited Miriam's last paycheck, emptied her account as far as the ATM would let me, bought a money order, and dropped my package for Shelbyville off at the UPS.

  On Tuesday Rachel Seabrook called, to tell me the UPS package containing Miriam's personal effects had gotten there and to tell me what the police had said when they called. There would be an autopsy of Miriam's body, as in all cases of accidental death. It was a routine procedure. On the other hand, Rachel couldn't expect to see results, death certificate, or body until the end of August.

  "What am 1 going to do? I can't just pretend she's still alive!" I recommended a lawyer and a memorial service. I told Rachel there would be a memorial service here on Friday. I told her she could almost certainly get Miriam cremated and scattered without having to fly her home. I got off the phone before I promised to arrange any of these things.

  Maybe it wasn't going to be such a quiet week after all.

  Thursday, June 21, was the surmner solstice—the longest day of the year. It was also the last day before the dark moon, which probably explained my mood. It's a little-known fact that human craziness shows a measurable upswing on the dark, or new, moon as well as on the full, but I didn't feel crazy. I just felt depressed. It was a real effort to leave Houston Graphics right at five and catch the Uptown train for Bellflower's.

  Belle lives mostly by herself in a rambling apartment in Washington Heights and does not believe in spending money on furniture. The elevator was broken again, so I walked up the five flights of stairs and leaned on the bell. This week it was wired up to a recording of a kazoo playing Ode to Joy.

  "We ordered Indian take-away," Dorje saiid, once I finished hugging Belle hello. "You want to go in on it?"

  "Sure," I said.

&nbs
p; I looked around the living room, counting heads. Since this was a weekday, and Changing has frequently been accused of being a

  50 Bell, Book, and Murder

  yuppie coven (meaning most of us have nine-to-five jobs that prefer we show up for them), anybody who couldn't afford a late night was doing private ritual at home to mark Longest Day and would gather here tomorrow for Miriam's Crossing.

  Counting Belle and me we were five so far (Changing is an actual thirteen-member coven, when we all show up). The Cat was here, of course — she's a student who lives, none too happily, with her parents and appreciates any chance to get away from them. Sundance has a car and a night job out on the Island Thursday through Monday, and Dorje lives two blocks away, so they were here, and Glitter and Beaner might make it later, dea volente.

  These are their Craft names —the names they took when they decided to become Witches. Their "real" names are none of your business —or mine, although I know most of them. Their Craft names are them, and a lot more vivid than John, James, Jane, or Heather.

  Glitter is Glitter because she wears purple lame to work. She's an NYC probation officer, which means Civil Service, vested with a pension, and just try to fire her for violation of dress code. She gets a lot more fun out of life than she would if she worked somewhere they approved of her. She also carries the world's only— thank god —purple-rhinestone-hilted athame.

  The Cat looks like one —a brown tabby, say, with all those fingerprint-swirls of black through her fur. It's caused by interlocking dye jobs that make her the sole support of Lady Clairol. The Cat goes to City College. She's been going for years. Her hobby is Making Things Work—the kazoo doorbell was her creation. She's been trying to get me to let her record a tape for my answering machine, but I've heard the one she did for Dorje.