by Ruth Vincent
“Yeah, I see that now,” she said quietly. “It didn’t surprise me when a couple of the girls in the group became his lovers. I mean, here’s this being from another world, who happens to look gorgeous—who wouldn’t want to be with that? The thing that surprised me, though, and honestly was the first sign that made me question him, was whom he chose to be his lovers. It’s not that I’m jealous he didn’t choose me. I’ll admit, I flirted with him, and I was hurt when he never returned any of it. But it was okay. He was free to not choose me.”
“I would have chosen you, if I were him,” Eva said, and Tiffany playfully hit her on the arm.
“But what I didn’t understand,” Tiffany continued, “was why hadn’t he chosen any of the other priestesses? Nicole and Liz, they’ve dedicated themselves to the fairies; they’ve been making offerings to the Fey for over a decade, and when they met him, they were so honored. They just wanted to learn about him and the world that he came from. They’re really beautiful, strong, amazing women. But he never went for anyone like that. He always went for the new girls.”
“Like Quinn Sheffield?” I asked.
Tiffany nodded. “Yeah. I’m not knocking her. I remember when she came. She was sweet; she seemed like she was genuinely seeking something. But she was young, and she seemed really insecure. All the girls he went for were like that. The ones on the periphery. The ones who were still all uncomfortable and giggly about the ritual nudity. The ones who, I hate to say, seemed weak.”
“The ones nobody would miss?” I said.
And with a devastated expression on her face, Tiffany nodded.
“I noticed Quinn stopped showing up to the large rituals a few months back. Some of our other new members, who’d been Cory’s lover, did too. I didn’t question it at first. A lot of new people drop out. They haven’t made the commitment to it. But I saw one of them again, this girl Lauren, and she looked terrible. She was always smiling before, and the last time I saw her, she didn’t smile at all. Her eyes were just vacant, half-dead. I asked her if she was still seeing Cory, and all of a sudden she started crying, and asked me not to speak of him again.”
The look on Tiffany’s face was pained, guilty. “Cory didn’t show up at last month’s ritual. And honestly, at this point I’m not sure I’d want him to come back. But even if he’s not here, he could still be out there. He could still be involved in these other people’s lives. From what Eva told me about Quinn, that’s scary. She’s in danger. She could, goddess forbid, you know . . .”
I knew the words Tiffany didn’t want to say: “kill herself.”
“I feel responsible for all this,” Tiffany said, and I saw a weight of guilt in her eyes that I knew well, because I felt it myself. “I mean, I started this group. All these people are ultimately here because of me. They trusted me, and I let someone into this space that hurt them.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said softly. “Whoever it was could have come into this world anyway.”
Tiffany nodded, but she looked unconvinced, her own guilt clearly not assuaged.
“But I’m the one who summoned him,” she said quietly.
“If he comes to the ritual tonight,” I said, “I’d like to question him. I think I know the right questions to ask. We’ll find out who is behind this. We’ll figure out how to stop whatever he’s doing to these girls.”
I tried to sound more confident than I felt. I didn’t know if I’d be able to see the fairy behind the human disguise or how I’d make him give up whatever it was he was doing to these young women. But still, it was the best lead I had. Tiffany seemed heartened.
“He hasn’t come the last two rituals,” she said. “But maybe if you’re here . . .” Her voice trailed off, a hopeful look in her eyes. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “We appreciate your help.”
She glanced at the pocket watch clipped to her dress. “It’s almost time for the ritual. I can’t guarantee he’ll show up, but we can try it.”
Tiffany hopped off the love seat and began to assemble the ragtag group of people who had been milling around the room. It was a fairly diverse group, I noticed, looking around at the faces that were now making a circle. Though the average participant seemed to be a twenty-something-year-old white girl, there were men as well as women, as well as those to whom such labels needn’t apply, and different races, different ages. What all these people must have had in common is that they’d come here as seekers.
When I looked over at Tiffany, she was holding one of those Tibetan singing bowls, and with a practiced hand, she drew a long, sweet, ringing note from it. It had a hypnotic effect on the crowd. All the chatting conversations stilled, and everyone gathered around to form a circle in the center of the room as the note continued to reverberate through the space.
Tiffany spoke into the silence that engulfed the crowd.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said, smiling at the assembled faces. “We will now begin the ritual. Please turn off all your phones and electronic devices . . .” She then proceeded to do a perfect impression of an annoying cell phone ring with her mouth, and everyone laughed. The mood lightened, but became serious again when she held up her hand.
Tiffany’s voice sounded different as it rang out above the audience, and I could see why she was a leader here. Her presence made us all stand up straighter, stop chatting and be present.
“The ritual will now begin. Close your eyes.”
I did as I was bid.
She asked us to feel our feet touching the floor, touching the earth, way down deep below New York City. Together we took a long, slow inhale and exhale, and tension I didn’t know I was carrying around slipped from my body like a leaded vest shrugged off. I felt light but grounded. Eva whispered in my ear that this was the warm-up before the real ritual would begin.
The sound of a drum made me open my eyes, and I saw that a trio of drummers had assembled inside the circle, beating on skin drums and a battered djembe. The beat was steady, rhythmic, like a beating heart.
“We will now perform the Mystery play,” Tiffany announced.
Somehow I knew she wasn’t talking about one of those silly murder mystery dinner theaters. This was Mystery with a capital M, like the sacred festival theater of Ancient Greece. I waited, wondering what I’d gotten myself into as several people entered the circle. They were dressed in an eclectic assortment of robes and flowing garments, with staves in their hands and crowns of leaves on their heads. Their clothing was like something out of a low-budget high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the looks on their faces as they entered the ring were deadly serious. The robes and crowns and sticks meant something to the wearers, and the cynical part of my brain shut up and listened.
A girl in a white dress, knotted with a golden tasseled rope that seemed like it had once held a curtain, stepped forward into the circle.
Tiffany spoke. “This is Kore, queen of summer. Her reign has ended. Soon she must go back to the underworld.”
“Welcome, Kore,” someone cried out, and the whole circle responded, “Kore, Kore!”
The girl playing Kore began to walk along the perimeter of the circle, stooping down to pick up several long stemmed red roses that someone had scattered across the floor. I looked over towards Tiffany, but she had disappeared from the circle, the place she’d occupied filled in by others. Kore continued “picking” these flowers as the crowd began to move in time to the drums, a slow rhythmic dance, and sang, “Hail Kore, queen of summer, your reign has ended, go in peace.”
Then suddenly, a figure dressed in long black robes, wearing a mask decorated with black crow’s feathers, broke through and entered the circle. It was impossible to tell whether the wearer was male or female.
The masked one began to slowly stalk the perimeter of the circle, following Kore as she blithely gathered her flowers. All around me the people began to chant: “Hail Hades, the unseen one, ruler of the underworld, come to take fair Kore home.”
At
that, the masked Hades seized Kore. She dropped her bundle of flowers, scattering them across the floor. But she made no move to resist, and it was she who extended her hand, and took Hades’ black glove, linking arms with the god of the underworld. They walked together, hand in hand, kicking away the rose petals from before their feet, walking to the perimeter of the circle, where two chairs draped in black had been set up, and took their seats. One of the drummers scurried over and placed transparent black veils over both their heads, shrouding them.
“Hail King and Queen of the Underworld,” someone cried out, and the crowd echoed them.
The heavyset blonde girl who had saged me entered the circle, now wearing a red robe and holding a husk of corn.
“Where is my daughter? Where is fair Kore?” She went around the ring, asking each of us, and I didn’t know if I was supposed to shout out, “Over there, under the veil!” or not. But she went on walking, round and round in a circle, as if lost. When she went by me, I could see real tears glistening on her cheeks.
A young man spoke up from the circle. “We will help you return her to the Light. Please teach us your gifts in return: how to grow the seed into the plant, how to make the barren earth bear fruit, how to make something out of nothing.”
The circle of people all began to dance and sing, and the refrain of the song was the password I’d heard Eva say at the door:
“The grain is reaped in silence. The grain is reaped in silence.”
Suddenly, the drumming and the singing stopped, and someone killed the lights. We all stood there in the darkness together, silent, and I closed my eyes, breathing into the stillness.
Then the lights came back on. The blond girl, “Demeter,” walked over to the two chairs, where Kore and Hades sat enthroned, and lifted up the veil from her daughter. The two embraced each other. But Hades drew something out from under the veil and gave it to Kore. She placed it in her mouth, then pulled the veil over herself again. Demeter sank back into the circle, dropping and scattering her sheaves of wheat upon the ground, while the crowd chanted, “Hail and welcome, King and Queen of Winter!”
The girl in the white dress rose from her throne. She came around to each of us, a wooden bowl in her hands. I could see when she drew near me that it was filled with glistening, red, pomegranate seeds. She made a motion to each of us to take one. As she offered up the blood-red droplets of fruit, I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, saying how any human who ate something from another world would be bound there, and for a moment, I hesitated as she offered the seed to me. But something deep within made me open my lips, and she placed the red seed on my tongue. I chewed it thoughtfully, savoring its bitter burst of sweetness.
Next, to my surprise, Eva entered the ring. I hadn’t known she was actively taking part in the group ritual tonight; I wondered if she’d kept it from me as a surprise. When she addressed the crowd, her eyes were bright and her voice, loud and steady, held a confidence I’d seldom heard from her: “We bid farewell to Kore as the maiden of summer and welcome her as the Queen of Winter. We thank the mother Demeter for teaching us these rites, and trusting in the knowledge of the return. Like the pomegranate seed that draws Kore back to the underworld, we will always be drawn back into the silence of the heart.”
The crowd began to dance and chant: “The grain is reaped in silence, the grain is reaped in silence,” and this time, I joined the chant with them.
Eva spoke again.
“Kore and Hades will remain enthroned as our oracles. Our friends have entered a trance state, and are now not speaking, but being spoken through. If any of you has something you wish to ask, you may speak with them.”
Two lines began to form, one leading to the white-clad Kore, the other to the black-clad Hades, as people left the circle, one by one. They knelt beside each of the oracles and whispered in their ears. Through the veils that covered their faces, I saw Kore and Hades were whispering something back.
Eva nudged me. “Do you want to go?”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure I believed. But I had nothing to lose, I supposed. And so I got up awkwardly, and walked over. I hesitated for a moment about which line to join, looking back and forth between the two, light and dark sitting side by side like the two halves of a yin yang. Kore was more approachable. Hades I couldn’t see through the feathered mask; I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if it was Tiffany under there or someone else. At last, I chose the mystery of the oracle clad all in black, and walked over to stand in line, the little voice in my head telling me all the while that this was silly. But I was curious, and there was something sincere about their vibe, which made me inclined to think this was the genuine article, if there was such a thing.
At last it was my turn.
Feeling shy and awkward, I squatted on the floor next to the chair. Silently, Hades motioned me closer. I scooted forward across the hard floorboards. I was so close that I could hear Hades breathing under the veil. It had to be Tiffany. Her face was covered by the raven feather mask, and over that had been laid a translucent black gauze veil since she became the oracle, but I could still see her eyes, two bright glimmers amidst all the darkness. She didn’t look at me. She was staring straight ahead but it was like she wasn’t seeing the room. Her gaze was fixed on something simultaneously here and far away.
“Speak, my child,” she whispered.
I gulped nervously, but she waited.
“Um, I’ve never done this before,” I started. I felt silly and stupid, and like I should just leave this line, leave all these nice people to their slightly odd but nonthreatening way of spending a Saturday evening, and go home to my apartment with a good book and a glass of wine.
But then Hades looked at me.
“Your heart is full of questions, I can feel. Ask.”
I gulped at that. It was true; I was full of questions, questions I could barely articulate to myself sometimes.
“I’m trying to find someone,” I said. “The one who hurt Quinn Sheffield, and maybe others. He was here.”
Why was I telling Tiffany what she already knew? But somehow, it didn’t feel like Tiffany. When she spoke, she didn’t sound like Tiffany anymore either, and a shiver tingled through me.
“You have not yet asked your true question,” she said in that not-her voice.
I realized what I’d said before wasn’t really a question, more of a comment. I tried again.
“Who is he?” I said. “And how do I find him?”
I couldn’t believe I had just said all that. What was I expecting? That this girl draped in black Halloween gauze and feathers would somehow psychically know the answer to all these questions? I didn’t believe that.
I looked up at her. I could see her eyes through the darkly translucent fabric.
They were staring right at me.
My breath caught in my throat as I realized her eyes were glowing.
Tiffany’s eyes were glowing a strange, otherworldly light beneath the veil.
What the . . . ?
“Ask the question again,” she said in a voice that was not-her voice. “Say what you wish to know clearly and I will answer.”
I gulped.
“I wish to know the real identity of the fairy known as Cory.”
When she spoke, I didn’t see her lips move under the gauze.
I felt like she was talking directly to my soul.
“He is already known to you,” she said.
My heart froze at her words.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
But the oracle was silent.
I guess that wasn’t the kind of question she answered.
What did she mean I knew him already? My mind whirled frantically through all the male Fey I knew. There was really only Obadiah . . . and it couldn’t be him.
I could feel the people behind me in line growing impatient.
I asked the oracle another question, my heart still hammering nervously.
“Where do I find him?”
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“You do not have to look far to find him. But you must go home. You have dallied too long here already.”
I stared at her open-mouthed, waiting to see if she had more to say.
But her eyes were distant now; she was no longer seeing me.
She placed her hand on my forehead and muttered a blessing I couldn’t quite hear. I knew my time was up, and I had to leave now.
I got up, my legs shaking from squatting on the floor before her chair for so long, my mind and heart shaken from the eerie sight of those glowing eyes.
Cory was someone I already knew? Who could that possibly be?
Of course, the cynical part of my brain chided me, I was assuming that Tiffany was telling the truth, that she really had an ability to know these things. And yet, the way she’d looked at me, the way her eyes had glowed that otherworldly blue, the way she’d spoken in that voice not her own—she knew. She had become a real oracle.
I shivered.
I stepped back into the circle, but I had more questions than answers.
I was very quiet as the people began filing back in from their lines and slowly reforming the circle.
Tiffany appeared in the circle again. But she was wearing her purple dress now. Her face was glowing, but in her own hearty, joyful way—whatever I’d glimpsed under the black gauze veil was gone. “Place your intention at the center of our circle,” Tiffany instructed us. “Our hearts are open, our hearths are open, we welcome all beings with good intent who wish to visit us.”
Tiffany’s voice called out above the chanting and the drums.
“If there is a spirit of Nature who is Good, who wishes to bless us with their presence, let them enter our circle.”
“Let it come,” cried the crowd.
And I cried out too, somehow not feeling afraid anymore.
This was how the group had summoned Cory last time, I thought as the circle of people began to move in a kind of walk-dance around the drummers, in time to the beat. Feet drummed on the wooden floor, echoing the rhythm, making me feel it deep within my bones. My heart was beating fast. Would he come tonight? Would I recognize him when I saw him? Was this what the oracle meant?
