by J. R. Mabry
“Charlie!” Kat called.
“Over there,” Terry pointed, “remember?” Kat nodded and hesitantly approached the cell that Charlie had called “home.” Grabbing the bars that made up the door, she leaned on them and looked in.
He was there. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he was weaving what looked like a placemat out of strands of scrub. He looked up and saw her. “Oh hi,” he said. Then he looked back down at his work.
Kat swung the door open and stepped inside. “Uh, Kat—” Mikael began to protest, but Terry touched his arm.
“It’s okay,” he said. “She’s not going anywhere.”
Kat laid her hand on Charlie’s shoulder and kissed the top of his head. He took no notice. She sat next to him. “Whatcha making?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “A beach ball, maybe?”
Kat laughed. “Yeah, that’s a great start on a beach ball. You keep going with that.”
Charlie smiled but didn’t stop working.
“We thought we’d come see how you’re doing. Bring a picnic. Is that okay?”
“Sure, why not?” he said, not looking up from his weaving.
“Will you come out and have some lunch?” she asked.
At this, he faltered. He looked up at the door, then he looked back down. He didn’t look at her, nor did he answer.
“Or…we can bring some food in here for you,” she said.
“Okay, that’s good,” he said, nodding. “What do you have?”
“I don’t know. But it’s Brian, so you know it’s going to be good.”
“Yeah, that’s true, huh?” he nodded, almost eagerly.
Kat stood up and touched him on the shoulder. Then she went back out. She must have looked troubled because Mikael nearly pounced on her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just…it’s disturbing to see him like that.”
Terry overheard and stepped over to them. “It’s like he’s autistic or something, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, exactly,” she nodded.
“It’s always the same. They just go deeper and deeper into themselves until…well, until they’re not there anymore.”
“Figuratively or literally?” Mikael asked.
“Both,” he said flatly.
Brian stood and dusted off his hands. He took one more item from the large basket and walked up to where Kat and Mikael were talking to Terry. Richard started toward them as well.
“How is he?” Richard asked.
“About like you’d expect,” Terry answered.
Brian entered the cell and spoke jovially. “Hey, Charlie. I’ve got a little something to spruce up your place, here.” He pulled a rolled-up poster from a cardboard tube and unrolled it, setting rocks on the corners to hold it flat. It showed a colorful Kabbalistic Tree of Life peppered with cards from the Rider-Waite tarot deck.
“It’s the Builders of the Adytum poster,” Brian said. “It’s always been a favorite of mine. I thought you’d like it.” From his jeans he pulled a plastic bag, from which he took a ball of putty. Tearing off bits from the ball, he hung the poster on the wall of the cell.
Charlie scowled at the poster and cocked his head as if he didn’t like it there but wanted to give it a fair shake before he said anything disparaging. But instead of speaking, he rose to his feet and walked over to the poster. He took it down—and tossed it outside.
Brian followed it and watched as the wind picked it up. It finally came to rest, stopped by a rock about thirty feet away. “Yeah, it definitely looks better over there,” Brian said. “For sure.”
Kat looked like she was about to cry. “There’s enough of us,” she said. “We can bring him back; we can make him come back.”
Terry turned to face her with his hands on his hips. “Haven’t you been paying attention? We can’t coerce him.”
“Can’t, or won’t?” Kat asked. There was bitterness in her voice.
“It’s okay,” Mikael said, putting his arm around her.
She buried her face in his shoulder. “No, it’s not.”
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s not okay, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“There are lots of things we just can’t fix,” Richard said, shaking his head sympathetically. “That’s why we need faith.”
“So, is God going to fix it?” Kat asked. “When?”
“God’s going to fix everything,” Richard said. “That’s the Christian hope. Clinging to that…it’s how we carry on every day, doing what we’re doing.”
Terry nodded gravely, looking at Charlie’s cell. “Everything is broken. And God’s going to fix everything broken. Someday.”
“Sounds like a fairy story that you tell yourself,” Kat said, crossing her arms.
“I prefer to think of it as the cause that I’ve dedicated my life to,” Richard answered.
“So, while we’re waiting for this miraculous…healing—what?” Kat cried. “We grieve?”
“And we work,” Richard said. “And we pray. And we hope.”
“It’s not enough,” Kat said.
“It’s enough,” Richard countered.
“I feel so helpless,” Kat said.
“Yeah,” Richard agreed.
“There’s talk,” Charlie’s voice wafted to them from the cell. Richard stepped up and ducked into the cell, with the others close behind, listening from the door.
“What do you mean, ‘there’s talk’?” Richard asked. “Who do you talk to here?”
“Guys. They come by. They talk.” Charlie had returned to working on the woven mat.
“What do they say?” Richard asked.
Charlie didn’t answer. He just kept folding grasses.
Richard tried again. “These guys, what do they talk about?”
“You.”
“What do they say?” Richard asked again.
Again, Charlie didn’t answer. He held the mat up and considered it. Then he started sorting the grasses in a little pile beside him.
“Charlie,” Richard prodded him.
Charlie raised his head then, and looked Richard square in the eye. Richard blinked. “I hope you’re up on your sigils,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Terry asked.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” Richard said.
Brian called to them and waved them over. “Let’s eat!” Terry scampered over and joined Susan and Dylan already digging in.
“C’mon, I’m famished,” said Mikael. He touched Kat’s elbow.
Kat stood her ground, her fists clenched, staring back at Charlie’s cell.
“People have to make their own choices,” Mikael said. “Charlie can come back anytime he wants to.”
“No, he can’t. He’s…It’s like he’s psychologically damaged.”
“But he’s not,” Mikael said. “You’ve got to let him make his own choices. You can’t control everything. You can’t control him. You’ve got to let it go.” He paused and watched her for a moment. “Think of it as a spiritual practice…”
Summoning all her effort, she gritted her teeth and balled her fists. Then she turned away and willingly but resentfully relinquished her power.
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THE GLORY
Berkeley Blackfriars • Book III
Prelude 1
PALASTINE, 1878 BCE
“If we tell him Joseph is alive, it will kill him.” Rueben sighed.
It was after breakfast, and Serah the daughter of Asher was cleaning up after her uncles. They barely noticed her as she gathered their plates and carried them to the kitchen, but she took notice of them. Not a word escaped her.
“I agree. He won’t survive it. The strain on his heart will be too great,” Dan added.
“Then we will have the death of both our brother and our father on our souls,” Naphtali said, flicking a walnut shell across the room.
Serah dropped the plate she had just picked up. Her uncles looked up at her, their knotty eyebrows raised at her error.
“My Uncle Joseph is…alive?” Her eyes were wide.
The brothers glanced at each other, then looked down. None of them were giving her reproachful looks now.
“How could you have kept this from us? How could you have kept this from grandfather?”
“You don’t understand,” her father said, with more edge in his voice than usual. She understood his meaning. That edge in his voice meant, It is not for you to know, and it is not for you to question us.
“Then perhaps you should explain it,” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips. Cool evening air wafted in from the windows, stirring a hanging cluster of bells.
“Asher, control your daughter,” Reuben commanded.
Serah ignored him.
“Serah,” her father’s tone softened. “I will explain it to you…later.”
“You will explain it to me now.”
Her uncles gasped at her impertinence. Wives spoke to their husbands like this in private, but never in public. A daughter never spoke in such a way—not ever. The brothers looked at Asher, expecting him to discipline her. He looked at the rug below his chair. “Serah, I must speak to your uncles in private. Then I shall come and speak to you. Do not shame me in front of my brothers.”
Serah looked at her father, then at her ten uncles. Without a word she snatched up the last of the plates and turned, slamming the door to the kitchen behind her with her heel. She handed the plates gently to her mother and put her forefinger to her lips. “Shhhhh.” She leaned her head against the kitchen door and listened.
“—is shameful.” She couldn’t tell who the speaker was.
“Maybe,” her father said. “But no daughter could be more precious to me than her. She always tells the truth.”
“That is not always a good thing,” her Uncle Levi noted.
“It is when she does it.”
This made some of them laugh.
“No, I am serious. She’s normally a quiet girl, so you may not have noticed. But when she does speak, she says what is true—and when she tells the truth, it somehow…makes things better.”
“Is she touched by God, then?” Uncle Simeon asked.
“I believe she is,” her father affirmed.
Serah felt her chest swell. Her father had never complimented her that way before, certainly not in front of her. He’s not doing it in front of me now, she reminded herself. Serah watched her mother tiptoe to the basin, trying to carry on her work without making any noise.
“Asher, are you saying that whenever your daughter speaks what is true, good comes of it rather than evil?”
“That is exactly what I am saying.” There was a long silence.
Serah held her breath. She backed off the door a bit, worried that one of her uncles might burst through it and find her eavesdropping. She glanced at her mother and she smiled, unconcerned. It didn’t bother her mother one bit that Serah was listening—her mother did it all the time.
When no one opened the door, she leaned closer to it. Is what father said true? she wondered. She had always considered telling the truth to simply be a good idea. And in her experience, good always resulted when she did. But is that not true for everyone? She had never thought of herself as special in any way.
“This is news indeed,” Uncle Reuben finally spoke.
“Asher, your daughter might just prove to be our salvation,” her Uncle Zebulun said. He rarely spoke, but when he did, people tended to listen.
“What do you mean?” Uncle Reuben asked.
“When we threw Joseph into that well and left him for dead, we created a deep pool of evil that each one of us drinks from every day. And it is poisonous to us. I fear it will be poisonous to Jacob our father as well.”
Sarah’s breath caught in her throat. Her uncles had always told her that their brother Joseph had been killed by mountain lions. Is even my father guilty of this? It seemed he was. Her mother continued to smile. She was oblivious. Serah longed to tell her mother this awful truth. But…later—she didn’t want to miss anything. She kept her ear pressed to the door.
Uncle Zebulun continued: “Every day you send Serah to the well to draw water. This day let her draw healing forth from our poisoned well. Let her tell our father Jacob the truth about his son. Let her tell him, so that good and not evil will come of it.”
The sun was setting when she slipped into her grandfather’s bedchamber. He was standing at prayer, bobbing toward the window, his hands palms up before him, as if to catch the last rays of the sun. It was not unusual for one of his daughters or granddaughters to enter, tidy his room, or remove his soiled clothes from the pile in the corner. Serah gathered up his laundry and set it by the door. She hummed as she worked, as she often did. Her grandfather continued his bobbing, not disturbed by her presence or her song. When she finished humming a verse, she added lyrics.
“Joseph is in Egypt
And dangling on his knees
are two of Jacob’s grandsons
whom he has never seen.
Joseph is in Egypt,
living like a king.
His heart breaks for his father,
whom he would like to bring
to Egypt,
to Egypt land,
to Egypt,
to Egypt land.”
When she finished singing, she leaned against the wall and looked at her grandfather. He had stopped bobbing, his eyes were open, and tears streamed down his cheeks. “I cannot tell,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the darkening sky, “if you are the messenger of God or if you are simply a cruel, cruel child.”
“Grandfather, you know that I love you. Have you ever known me to be cruel?”
“No.”
“Have you ever known me to lie to you?”
“Not once.”
“Then believe me now, and be glad. Your son, my Uncle Joseph, is alive in Egypt. My father and his brothers met him when they went there for food last month. They were afraid to tell you.”
“But he is dead.”
She shook her head. “No. They lied to you.”
“Wicked children.” He turned his face away so she could not see it.
“Yes. They were wicked children. But as men they are contrite.”
His face was still turned away, but his fingers reached for her, trembling. “My son, the son of my heart, he is…alive?”
“He is alive.”
“He is well?”
“Yes. He is all but king, I hear.”
“Glory be to the God of my father, Isaac. Glory be to the God of my grandfather, Abraham. Glory…”
He sank to his knees and clutched at his heart. She rushed to him and held him up. His eyes traveled to the window again. “What is all the noise? What is happening?” he asked her.
“They are readying the wagons. They are going back to Egypt. They are going back to tell Joseph that you…that you know.”
Jacob staggered to his feet and clutched at the window for support. “I will go to Egypt.”
“Go and speak to your sons,” Serah told him. “Let them tell you with their own lips about their sin. Let them receive from your own hand their pardon. They have carried the weight of this for twenty years, and it has been heavy indeed.
”
“They have?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I have carried this grief for twenty years. Has it not been heavy?”
“I know it has, grandfather. I am so sorry.”
He looked at her then. He held his arms out to her and she went to him. He embraced her and rocked her as as his tears trickled down his face. “The mouth that sang this wonderful news will never taste death.”
Serah felt something catch in her chest. She hugged her grandfather close to her and wondered at his words.
Prelude 2
SAN FRANCISCO, PRESENT DAY
Consuela would never forget the look on her father’s face. “She’s a witch,” he’d said, and there was fear in his eyes. Consuela could never remember seeing fear in his eyes. Never. He was always the one in control, the one who held the power. The one who beat her. But when Mama’s mother had come to visit, Consuela saw so many things she’d never seen before—someone who stood up to her father, who gave as good as she got, who made him afraid.
It was a revelation. For the next twenty-four hours she felt like her world had turned upside down. Her Abuelita became her hero. She showed her what was possible in the world. She gave her hope.
And if Abuelita was a witch, then that was what Consuela wanted to be, too. She started by searching the web and was amazed at the wealth of information she found. She wondered if the nuns at school knew about the overwhelming abundance of witchery happening just out of sight, beneath their noses, and around, it seemed, every corner.
Obviously there was much to learn, but where to start? She thought about ordering Witchcraft for Dummies, but the truth was, she hated reading, especially in English. No, she needed a tutor, a mentor, a teacher.
She had so many questions, after all. What is Wicca? Is it just another word for witch? Did witches go to hell? That was important, because she definitely did not want to go to hell. It was in the middle of her third night of web-surfing about witchery that her laptop pinged at her, signifying she had a message. She did not recognize the person contacting her. Babylon1961? Who in the world was that? She clicked on the message to open it.
