Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

by Jonathan Strahan

  Because we swapped duty with Jena and Rellise, I’ll be doing breakfast in five hours, thought Mari. She sighed and was about to go and pick up her keys—before anyone in authority wondered exactly whose they were, she hoped—when she felt someone lightly touch her wrist, just next to her bracelet.

  She turned and saw Alicia Wasp, the young woman of the sizar portrait, not the older mistress of the college from the portrait in the Great Hall.

  “It is quite true that had I been born higher, I would not have striven to rise so high,” said Alicia Wasp. “However, I forgot to say that you have to make being a sizar an advantage. Never just accept your lot, Mari. And thank you, for my college.”

  Mari nodded, and then blinked, because Alicia Wasp wasn’t there anymore and, as no one else had noticed her, possibly hadn’t been there in the first place.

  “Never accept your lot,” whispered Mari to herself as she briskly walked over and picked up her keys. Then she positioned herself in front of the Chancellor and Professor Aiken and waited for a break in their conversation, which came quite soon as they both turned politely toward her.

  “I beg your pardon, Mistress Aiken,” said the Sizar Mari Garridge. “But I wondered if, on account of all that’s been done tonight, Francesca and I might have a holiday tomorrow … that is, today? I believe that Jena and Rellise will most happily fulfill our duties.”

  LITTLE GODS

  HOLLY BLACK

  WHEN ELLERY WAS little, her grandmother would take her to church on Sundays. Even though Ellery’s parents had long ago given up on religion, her grandmother said that was no excuse for raising their child to be a little heathen. It had probably been easier to give in than to argue. Ellery hadn’t minded going anyway, even though the sermons could get boring. She liked the songs and the hats; she liked the talk of water turning to wine and fishes turning into more fishes. Most of all she liked to listen to a bunch of grown-ups talk about eternal souls as though souls were real things that people could have and not pretend magic stuff, like rainbow-colored unicorns or webs that shot from your wrists.

  Ellery would look at the statues of saints and angels and imagine that they had souls. She imagined so hard that she could almost see them coming to life and stepping down from their pedestals. They would join in one of the songs, their voices soaring higher than human voices could. They would wade into the pews, and their eyes would be golden and their smiles would curl up at the corners. Their wings would spread so wide that everything would be shadowed in a canopy of feathers.

  Sometimes it seemed so real that she was tensed for it to happen. But it never did.

  Ellery looked out the window at the empty street. Then she kicked her duffel bag closer to her with the side of one sandaled foot, so that she could run her hand over the army green fabric and reassure herself that everything she needed was inside. Robes. Athame. Clean underwear. Body wash that doubled as shampoo. A couple of t-shirts and a cotton dress. Her Book of Shadows and a couple of gel pens.

  “They’re late,” Mom said. “Don’t you think you should call and make sure nothing happened?”

  “Bob operates on Pagan Standard Time,” Ellery said, telling a joke she’d heard many times at the Unitarian church where her coven met. No one arrived when they were supposed to, and then once they got there, everyone took another ten minutes to bring in cookies or make coffee in the church coffeepot. Then there would be gossip, and before you knew it, an hour had gone by, and then another. Finally, two hours after schedule, they would start to perform the ceremony.

  But once they did, they were witches. Real witches.

  Mom didn’t laugh. The joke probably didn’t even make sense to her.

  Ellery sighed. Everyone else in her coven was older than she was, so they could be late if they wanted. All their time was their own. They didn’t have to deal with parents asking a million questions about the farm they were headed out to, about the girl Ellery was going to be sharing a tent with, and about whether Ellery was sure she wasn’t going to accidentally join a cult.

  “I’m not saying Wicca is a cult,” her father had informed her as he pushed around his lima beans the night before. “I’m just saying that there are people in every religion eager to take advantage of the disenfranchised and discontented.”

  Ellery had groaned. “Bob and Cheryl aren’t disenfranchised. She’s a lawyer and he fixes computers.”

  “I didn’t mean them,” her father had said. “I meant strangers.”

  “They’re all people the rest of the coven knows,” Ellery had told him. “No strangers.”

  “Are there going to be any other kids?” her mother had asked. “Anyone your age?”

  Ellery had shrugged, trying to hide her nervous eagerness that she was going to be spending a weekend in a magical place, with magical people. “I think so.”

  Mom and Dad had shared a look. They prided themselves on being liberal parents, identifying with the free-range-kids movement. They allowed Ellery to read whatever books she wanted, to pick the movies she saw based on her own tastes. They trusted her. Or at least they said they trusted her, but she could tell that the only reason they didn’t forbid her to go to Beltane at Greenstone Farm was that it would make them look like total hypocrites.

  Ellery was tired of being a kid. Underneath her skin, a lot of the time, she felt ancient and mysterious and terrible—but on the outside she was only sixteen. Even at coven meetings, it was hard for her to prove her inner maturity. The other members talked about movies they’d seen and books they’d read, some of which she’d never even heard about. And they talked about people from festivals and workshops and Sabbats—people Ellery had never met. Silver Raven makes the best mead. Andrew gave such a great talk about chakras. Lorelei is getting so much better with the harp—and wasn’t it a beautiful instrument, carved for her by one of her sweeties, using wood from a tree that’d been struck by lightning?

  But this weekend would change all that. Ellery would get to know the same people; the next time they told stories, she’d have been there for the origins of them; she’d be able to laugh at the same jokes.

  “Maybe I should take my stuff to the porch,” Ellery said. She just wanted to do something. She felt restless, itchy with the urge to be in motion, to already be gone from the house and on her way to adventure. Her mother’s worrying just made everything worse.

  What if they’ve forgotten me? What if they don’t want me to come and they forget me accidentally on purpose? What if they decide not to go? What if the date was changed at the last minute and no one bothered to call?

  The dates couldn’t be changed, Ellery reminded herself sternly. The Sabbat was tonight. Tonight.

  “They’re here, sweetheart,” Mom said. She didn’t sound happy, but Ellery didn’t care. She looked out the window at the white van idling at the end of her lawn, just to be sure that it really was them. Then she sprang into motion, jumping up with a yelp of joy, throwing her duffel bag over her shoulder, and reaching for her purse.

  Her mother grabbed for the duffel, too. “Do you want me to carry anything?”

  “Nope. I’m good!” Ellery said it fast, a blur of movement, kissing her mother on the cheek and heading for the door. “Bye!”

  As Ellery crossed the lawn, she saw Dawn get out from the open van door, wearing a dress made from patchwork pieces of velvet. Her hair fell down her back in bright blond ribbons, with a couple of small braids bound with fringed leather pieces and a macaw feather.

  “Merry meet!” Dawn yelled, and threw her arms around Ellery.

  Dawn was twenty and attended community college, studying anthropology. She worked at a bird store part-time and seemed happier than anyone else Ellery knew. Sometimes Ellery wondered if that was because Dawn was also prettier than anyone else Ellery knew. She had bottle-green eyes, enviably long eyelashes, and a tiny mouth.

  Dawn hopped into the van and helped Ellery heave her duffel into an unoccupied space. Alastair was already in the back. He was abo
ut Dawn’s age and Scottish, with a hot accent. He was always dressed in a long leather trench coat—even in summer—and wore fake fangs constantly. Mostly he made snarky jokes, but from the way he looked at Dawn, Ellery could tell that he was thinking about her in the most nonsarcastic way.

  Jennifer Shadowdancer was there, too, way in the back, playing with her phone. She was a dental assistant, just out of school. She had a huge collection of Barbies that she’d shown the rest of the coven when they came over for a full-moon ritual. She wore a lot of t-shirts with cats or dolphins on them. Alastair called her Stepford Pagan under his breath when she was out of earshot. It made Ellery laugh when he did that, even though she was pretty sure he had an equally cruel name for her.

  Bob and Cheryl—the priest and priestess of the coven—were sitting in the front seat. Cheryl grinned at Ellery while Bob mumbled hello. Bob was a huge older guy with a big laugh and a bigger red beard. Right then he was wearing a green poet shirt with a piece of antler on a cord around his neck.

  The inside of the car smelled like cheese curls and feet. On the dashboard, underneath the GPS, was a Hot Wheels version of the same van they were in, but this one had googly eyes pasted over the headlights and multicolored gems stuck over the wheel hubs. A heavy-looking bag swung from the rearview mirror.

  “I’m so glad you could come,” Cheryl said, pushing her glasses high on her nose. “But are you sure that you’re ready for Beltane?”

  “Totally sure.” Ellery had never gone on a trip like this—and she had no idea what to expect. But she knew what she wanted. Magic.

  Alastair piped up from the backseat. “Afraid her tender eyes will alight on that which will scar her forever? A thing so horrifying that it’s practically indescribable? People have been struck blind. That’s right, I speak of Bob … skyclad.”

  “You can walk, you know. I leave you here and it’s only three hundred miles to the farm,” Bob said. Ellery thought he was kidding, but she couldn’t be totally sure.

  “What’s that?” She leaned halfway into the front seat and pointed to the dash, hoping to change the subject.

  “Salt.” He touched the bag. “Purifies. Keeps away the evil spirits that might want us to break down or get a flat tire.”

  “I mean the toy van,” Ellery said.

  “Oh, Blanche. That’s what I call her. She’s the spirit of the vehicle you’re in right now—a genius loci. And she’s all decked out to please Hermes, the god of the roads. There’s your little gods and your big gods, and a wise man pays tribute to both. Like, before I go on any big trip, I always burn a little bit of incense for Blanche.”

  Ellery nodded.

  Bob smiled. “Bonus that it covers up some of Alastair’s stink.”

  Alastair made a rude noise. Jennifer shushed him.

  “And I always leave out a bowl of milk for the spirits so they’ll look after my house,” Bob went on. “The local stray cats probably like it, too, but I don’t think that’s so bad. And when I get to a hotel room, I light a candle for the spirits that live there. There’s spirits in everything.”

  When Ellery first got into Wicca, she’d discovered the Buckland and Cunningham books. She’d pored over basic dedication and initiation rituals. She’d made an altar in her room with a pewter goblet from a yard sale, two white candles from her mother’s candle drawer, some incense, and a piece of quartz. She’d tried to meditate and concentrate and focus. It had reminded her of being in church with her grandmother, of holding her breath, waiting for something to happen. Except this time it had.

  There were spells. Spells to open her third eye and to take away her jealousy for girls at school whose clothes always looked perfectly pressed, spells to help her find her cell phone, and spells to bring new friends into her life.

  Three days after she cast the one about friends, she saw a sign hanging in the window of the New Age bookshop. A coven was looking for new members. They met on Wednesdays at the Unitarian church across town.

  Magic.

  The first time she’d gone, Ellery had felt skin-itchingly awkward. Everyone seemed to already know everyone else, except for her and Alastair. Alastair had just sulked near the coffeepot, so it wasn’t as if he made her feel any better. And when Bob finally called the coven to order and got her to introduce herself, he didn’t seem to know what to do with an underage member. Ellery wasn’t sure they wanted her to stay, but she stayed anyway.

  She stayed because sometimes, when they called the corners, she felt as though some power vast enough to ruffle the leaves of all the trees in a forest had for a moment paused to take notice of her. She stayed because on the walk home from Kingston High School she could look at the surface of the stream that ran behind it and remember a story that Jennifer told about seeing an actual water spirit leaping into the air off the coast of Block Island. She stayed because she didn’t know what she was doing and they all acted like they did.

  “Can we listen to something else? My ears are bleeding,” Alastair whined as Bob pulled onto the highway. He wasn’t a fan of world music, certainly not the kind currently blasting from the stereo—harp music accompanied by someone singing about faeries dancing.

  “It’s getting us in the mood to worship the goddess,” Jennifer Shadowdancer said, using her most lecture-y voice. “Beltane is the very middle of spring and sacred to the fey.”

  Ellery decided it must be Jennifer’s iPod they were listening to.

  They argued some more as Ellery looked out the window and let her eyes unfocus, so it was all a blur of bright green grass and new leaves. Spring made the air sweet. She let happiness wash over her. She was going to Beltane! She, plain old regular Ellery, who once won the spelling bee by knowing the word taupe. Who still mailed long letters in purple ink to her best friend, Claire, even though Claire had moved away a year ago and didn’t always write back. Whose favorite food was tacos. She was going to Beltane, and she was going to transform into the person she’d always thought she could be. She would come home changed.

  They drove for half an hour with Dawn and Cheryl debating which version of the Doctor from Doctor Who was the best, before Bob pulled the van into a rest stop.

  Ellery climbed out, stretching her arms over her head and yawning. She wanted to ask if they were almost there, but it seemed like something a little kid would ask and she wanted to seem grown-up, so she didn’t say anything.

  The parking lot was washed in a sea of pink dogwood blossoms.

  “It’s springtime, motherfuckers,” Alastair said, and everyone but Jennifer laughed. She made a face.

  As everyone got in line to buy burgers at McDonald’s or pizza at Sbarro, Ellery realized she only had twenty-three dollars for the whole weekend and probably couldn’t afford to eat. Cheryl had told her there would be food at Greenstone Farm, which she was counting on. But given how overpriced everything was, if she ate now and then had to pay for dinner later, she would be broke. A rest-stop apple cost two bucks. Ellery bought a single cup of coffee, added three creamers, and drank it slowly. She’d read in some teen magazine that coffee would kill hunger—it was on a list of dieting tricks—but she didn’t think it was working. She just felt hungry and jumpy.

  Then they climbed back into the van.

  After a couple of hours, despite the caffeine, Ellery fell asleep listening to a ballad about a witch who lived by a winding mere and rose from a lake half woman and half jet-black mare. Ellery woke when her head knocked against the glass window. They must have hit a pothole.

  It was dark outside.

  Dawn and Cheryl were asleep in the seats behind her. Alastair was playing on his DS, its glow giving an eerie cast to his face, and Jennifer was knitting in the dark, her needles shining as they clacked together as if she were a fairy-tale witch. The kind who made houses out of candy. The kind who ate you up.

  The van pulled onto a dirt road with forest on either side.

  “Are we there?” Ellery whispered, leaning forward.

  “Yep,” Bob sa
id in a low voice. “This is it. Greenstone Farm.” He pointed vaguely out into the night. “The place is owned by Thomas Holden, who used to be a big-shot music executive. But after he hooked up with Dragonsong, he let us throw Sabbat parties. Apparently a local coven even comes here for the Esbats.”

  “Who’s Dragonsong?” Ellery asked him. Her stomach growled.

  He gave her a crooked smile. “My ex. A real piece of work, but she’s got something.” He laughed. “Pheromones. Love spells. I don’t know. Men fall head over heels in love with her. Give her whatever she wants.”

  Ellery had no idea what to say to that, but before she figured it out, they came to a stretch of dirt with a lot of other cars parked there. Everyone started waking up and rummaging around for their stuff. A bonfire burned off in the distance, and she could hear some off-key singing.

  “I have to pee so bad,” said Dawn, jumping out.

  Yawning, Ellery and the rest of them got out more slowly and started unloading the tents and other stuff. There were already a dozen or more tents—a few medieval-looking, most nylon—erected outside an old red barn, light glowing from its windows. The other covens were obviously ahead of them. Ellery’s stomach growled.

  “We can come back and finish unpacking later,” Cheryl said, checking her watch. “Let’s go inside and say hello.”

  “You go ahead,” Bob told her, struggling with pushing a spike into the dirt. “Take the kids.”

  Ellery wanted to go inside so badly that she didn’t even mind that he’d called her a kid. She grinned over at Alastair and he smiled back, leaning close enough to whisper to her in accented tones, “You won’t believe some of the characters you’re about to meet.”