The Magic Circle

by Katherine Neville

  At last Wolfgang stretched motionless across me where we lay on the soft Turkish rug before the fire, his face pressed against my stomach. Our skin was drenched in moisture, and the flickering glow of the coals burnished his tautly muscled body as if it had been dipped in bronze. I slid my hand along the curve of his back from his shoulders to his waist, and he shuddered.

  “Please, Ariel!” He lifted his shaggy head to grin at me. “You’d better be sure what you’re doing, my dear, if you begin that again. You’re a sorceress who’s put some sort of spell over me.”

  “You’re the one with the magic wand,” I said, laughing back.

  Wolfgang sat up on his haunches and pulled me to an upright position. The fire had died down to embers. Despite our recent exertions, the room was growing cool.

  “Someone has to use some sense for a moment,” Wolfgang told me, drawing the bathrobe around my shoulders again. “You need something to relax you.”

  “Whatever you were just doing seemed to be working fine,” I assured him.

  Wolfgang shook his head and smiled. He pulled me to my feet, scooped his arms beneath me, and carried me up to my room and through to the bathroom, where he set me down again and drew us a hot bath. He splashed in plenty of mineral salts, then he fetched us fresh clothes and laid them out near the tub. As we sank into the aromatic waters, Wolfgang soaked a thick sea sponge and drizzled warm water over my shoulders and breasts.

  “You’re the most desirable thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, kissing my shoulder from behind. “But I think we should be practical. It’s only just after nine, right now. Are you very hungry?”

  “Voracious,” I said, suddenly realizing it for the first time.

  So after we bathed and toweled off, we threw on the warm clothes and walked down through the vineyards to the little restaurant he’d spoken of, overlooking the river. When we got there, another fire was cheerily burning in the hearth.

  We had hot soup and a salad of fresh greens along with a raclette—that dish of melted cheese with its rich oaky flavor and steamed potatoes and tartly pickled gherkins. We dipped it from the plate with bits of crusty bread, licked the pickle juice from each other’s fingers, and washed everything down with an excellent dry Riesling.

  When we hiked back up though the vineyards it was just after ten o’clock. Mist was rising from the river; snatches of it slipped, wraithlike, between the rows of clipped-back vinestocks that were just getting their new shoots. Though the air was tinged with a chill, the earth smelled fresh and new with that special dank night scent that heralds the coming of spring. Wolfgang pulled off one of my gloves and took my bare hand in his, and I felt the heat move through me again that I felt whenever he touched me. He smiled down at me as we walked, but just at that moment a fog bank scudded across the moon, hurling us into darkness.

  I thought for an instant I heard the sound of a branch cracking, a footstep behind us not far down the hill. I felt a sudden cold pang of fear, though I couldn’t think why. I stopped in my tracks, drew my hand from his, and listened. Who could be coming this way so late at night?

  Wolfgang’s hand pressed my shoulder: he’d heard it, too. “Wait here, and don’t move,” he said quietly. “I’ll be right back.”

  Don’t move? I was in panic—but he’d been swallowed into the darkness.

  I crouched between two grape stocks and focused my ears on the night sounds as Sam had taught me. For instance, just now I could identify the separate calls of a dozen or more insects against the background of the slowly lapping waters of the river wafting from the valley floor. But beneath these sounds of nature I was able to pick out the whispers of two distinct male voices. I caught only fragments—someone said the word “she” and then I heard “tomorrow.”

  Just as my eyes had fully dilated in the dark, the scudding fog blew off and the hillside was drenched in silvery moonlight. About twenty yards below where I crouched, two men stood huddled together between the rows of vine. One was clearly Wolfgang; when I stood and he saw me, he raised his arm and waved, then turned away from the other figure and started back up the hill toward me. I glanced at the other man. His crumpled hat cast a shadow on his face so I couldn’t make it out in the moonlight, but when he turned back downhill to depart, there was something about the way his slightly shorter, wirier body moved away.…

  Just then Wolfgang reached me. Tossing his arms around me, he lifted me off my feet and swung me in a circle. Then he set me down and kissed me full on the lips.

  “If you could see yourself all in silver light like this,” he told me. “You’re so incredibly beautiful—I can’t believe you’re real, and that you’re mine.”

  “Who was that man who was following us?” I asked. “He looked familiar.”

  “Oh, not at all, it was only my groundskeeper, Hans,” he told me. “He works in the next village during the day, and he looks in here each night when he comes back. Often, like tonight, it’s rather late. But just now when he returned, someone told him they’d seen lights on earlier, up here at the castle. He was coming to check everything before he went to bed. I suppose I’d neglected to tell him I would be home, and he certainly isn’t used to finding houseguests here.”

  Wolfgang looked down at me and tossed his arm over my shoulder as we started up the hill once more. “And now, my dear little houseguest,” he added, squeezing me inside the circle of his arm, “I believe it’s time for us to go to bed as well—although not necessarily to sleep.”

  But sleep, at long last, we did—though not until well after midnight—among piles of fluffy goosedown comforters in Wolfgang’s bed, high at the top of the tower, beneath that vast tinseled canopy of stars. This one-night odyssey of tempestuous passion had certainly cleared my brain out—not to mention my pores. I was finally at peace despite the fact that I had no idea what the morning, much less the rest of my life, might bring.

  Wolfgang lay exhausted in the pillows, as well he might, one arm tossed diagonally across my rib cage, his hand caressing a lock of my hair that rested on my shoulder, as he drifted off into a seemingly untroubled sleep. I lay on my back and looked at the midnight sky spangled with stars. I saw the constellation Orion just overhead, Dacian’s “home of the Romani” in the sky, with those three bright stars at the center of the hourglass: Kaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior.

  The last thing I recall was gazing up into the sky at the enormous serpent of light that Sam said the ancients believed was created by milk spurting from the breasts of the primal goddess Rhea: the Milky Way. I recalled the first time I’d stayed up all night to see it—the night of Sam’s tiwa-titmas, so many years ago. And then, unconsciously, I slipped back once more into the dream.…

  It was well past midnight, but not yet dawn. Sam and I had maintained our vigil most of the night, keeping the fire stirred and fed as we waited for the totem spirits. This last hour we had remained very still, sitting crosslegged on the ground side by side, just our fingertips touching, hoping that before the night was over Sam would finally have the vision he’d waited for, over and over, these past five years. The moon was low on the western horizon and the embers of our fire were merely a glow.

  And then I heard it. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like the sound of breathing, and very nearby. I tensed, but Sam pressed my fingertips, warning me to stay still. I held my breath. Now it seemed even closer—just behind my ear—a rough, labored sound, followed by the warm, heady scent of something powerfully feral. An instant later, there was a flicker at the periphery of my eye. I kept my gaze frozen straight ahead, afraid to move even my lashes though my heart was beating wildly. When the blur of movement solidified within my field of vision, I nearly fainted from shock: it was a full-grown cougar—a mountain lion!—only a few feet away from me.

  Sam pressed my hand harder to be sure I didn’t move, but I was too rigid with fear to try. Even if I wanted to get to my feet, I wasn’t sure my legs would carry me—or what I should do if they could. The cat moved across the circle i
n slow motion, gliding soundlessly except for that even, guttural breathing, almost a purr. Then it stopped beside the dying fire and slowly, gracefully turned to look directly at me.

  Just then, a dozen things seemed to happen all at once. There was a loud crashing in the brush at the far side of the circle. The cougar looked quickly over its shoulder toward the sound and hesitated. As Sam gripped my fingers, a dark shadow suddenly crashed through the underbrush and stumbled into the circle: it was a baby bear cub!

  The cougar, snorting heavily, headed toward it. Suddenly, from the brush below, an enormous female bear catapulted after the small one into the open circle. With one circular swipe of her paw, she batted her cub behind her and reared on her hind legs—an enormous silhouette drowning out the moon. The astonished cougar whisked sideways, dropped over the rim of the hill, and was swallowed into the darkened forest. Sam and I sat frozen as the mother bear slowly came down from her hind legs and moved to the rim of our dying campfire. She sniffed a few times at my small backpack, and with her paws rummaged through it until she found my apple. She took it in her mouth, paced back, and gave it to her baby. Then with her nose she nudged him ahead of her, back down into the thick part of the wood.

  Sam and I were absolutely silent for the next half hour until the sky began to turn pale. He stirred at last and squeezed my hand, and he whispered,

  “I guess you’ve had your tiwa-titmas too, tonight, hotshot. Whoever that lion was hunting for, he sure found the right human—Ariel the Lionhearted.”

  “And they came for you, too—your totem bears!” I whispered back in excitement.

  Getting up and pulling me to my feet, Sam gave me a big bear hug.

  “We entered the magic circle together, Ariel, and we saw them—the Lion and the Big and Small Bears. You understand what it means? Our totems have come to show us they’re really ours. At dawn, we’ll tie the bond by mixing our juices together as blood brothers. After that, everything will be different for both of us,” he assured me. “You’ll see.”

  And everything truly had changed, just as Sam promised. But that was nearly eighteen years ago, and tonight in Wolfgang’s bed, beneath the rotating circle of sky, was the first time since childhood that my totem had come to me in a dream.

  Then just before slipping back into predawn sleep, I thought I glimpsed the connection I’d been hunting last night, with Saint Hieronymus and his wounded lion. As Dacian had pointed out yesterday, the zodiac sign opposite the “ruler” of each new aeon was considered by the ancients as the symbolic coruler of each coming age—just as the Virgin Mary had wielded equal symbolic clout along with the school of Christian fish. Since I knew that the sign in the zodiac opposite Aquarius was Leo the lion, maybe my dream signified that my totem lioness had come to me to draw me back once more into the magic circle.

  When I awoke in the morning, it didn’t take long to figure out I was no longer on a mountaintop with Sam watching the sun rise. I was alone in bed on the top floor of Wolfgang’s castle surrounded by pillows and down comforters—but the sun was already flooding into the room. What time was it? I sat up in panic.

  Wolfgang arrived just then, dressed in slacks and a soft grey cashmere turtleneck, bearing last night’s tray, now laden with cups and plates, a steaming pot of chocolate, a basket of rolls and hot croissants. I helped myself to a dark, crusty roll as Wolfgang sat on the bed and poured the cocoa.

  “So what’s today’s agenda?” I asked him. “We never actually got around to discussing it as we’d planned last night.”

  “Our flight to Leningrad departs at five this afternoon, and the monastery at Melk will open at ten A.M.—a bit more than an hour from now—which leaves us several hours of study there before we must head for the airport.”

  “Did Zoe give any clues about what we should be looking for?” I asked him.

  “A connection that will link the documents that were rescued and hoarded by your grandmother all those years,” said Wolfgang. “The monastery of Melk houses a large medieval collection that could provide us that missing thread.”

  “But if this monastery’s library has as many books as the one we visited yesterday, how will we ever find anything in just a few hours?” I asked.

  “Like your relatives, I’m hoping that you will find what we’re looking for.”

  That cryptic reply was all Wolfgang had time for, if I was to shower, dress, and get moving before the monastery opened. I was ready to leave when I suddenly recalled something: I asked if I could use the machine in his office to answer yesterday’s fax from the States.

  When I went down to the small office I tried to organize my thoughts. I wanted to communicate to Sam yesterday’s more important events, but I knew there was something I had to confront first. I felt pretty awkward even thinking of Sam, much less writing, given my surroundings and my recent activities. It might seem ridiculous, but I knew if anyone could pick up on my vibes, torrid or otherwise—even separated by thousands of miles of fiber-optics—it was Sam. It occurred to me that maybe he already had. It hadn’t been lost on me that that lioness wasn’t the only one who’d visited my dreams last night. Walking beside my moccasin tracks through the dream world were Sam and his animal totems too.

  Pushing these thoughts to the back of my mind, I tried to come up with a double-entendre note—something short, sweet, and to the point, yet conveying as much as possible. Recalling that Sam was calling himself Sir Richard Francis Burton these days, I came up with the following:

  Dear Dr. Burton,

  Thanks for your memo. Your team seems on target. I too am ahead of schedule established as of our last meeting: a whale of a job accomplished. If problems arise in my absence, contact me directly via IAEA. I depart for Russia, 5pm Vienna time today.

  Best regards, Ariel Behn

  Most of this should be pretty clear to Sam, I thought: I’d received his fax and had understood it. The only thing we’d “established” at our last meeting—since we didn’t know yet where Pandora’s papers were—was that I would personally try to reach Dacian Bassarides and pump him for information. So the statement that I was ahead of schedule would convey that I’d managed to do so. The whale reference—the whale being the floating repository of clan totem memory—should tell Sam I’d safely stashed the “gift” that my last fax said I was now in possession of.

  Much as I’d have liked to share more, when I contemplated trying to encode in this brief time the complexities of what I’d learned about the rest of my family—not to mention sacred hallows and vanished cities and zodiacal constellations—I confess I foundered. But at least now Sam would know this much: that the game was afoot. After shredding and burning my original memo in the fireplace and scattering it among the cold ashes—better to be safe than sorry—I went outside and found Wolfgang just coming across the lawn to find me.

  “We’re ready to go,” he told me. “I’ve put our luggage in the car, so we needn’t come back to the castle. We can leave directly from Melk for the airport. Claus has a key and will tidy up here when we’ve gone.”

  “Who’s Claus?” I asked.

  “My groundskeeper,” Wolfgang replied, opening the passenger door and handing me in. He went around back and locked the trunk, then got behind the wheel.

  “I thought his name was Hans,” I said as he turned the key in the ignition and adjusted the choke.

  “Whose name?” said Wolfgang. He pulled the car out from beneath the tree and crossed the lawn, navigating the drawbridge carefully.

  “The guy you just called Claus,” I said. “Last night, when your groundskeeper followed us up the hill in the dark, you told me his name was Hans.” I didn’t feel it necessary to mention that all along I’d felt there was something suspicious about the fellow, anyway.

  “That’s right: Hans Claus,” Wolfgang said. “It’s more customary in these parts to call such people by their family names. But perhaps last night I did otherwise.”

  “You’re sure it’s not Claus Hans?” I sug
gested.

  Wolfgang glanced over at me with one lifted eyebrow and a puzzled smile. “Is this an interrogation? I’m afraid I’m not used to that, though I may safely assure you I do know the names of my own servants.”

  “Okay,” I conceded. “Then what about your own name? You never mentioned to me that there was a real person named Kaspar Hauser.”

  “But I thought you already knew of him,” he said as we navigated downhill through the vineyards. “The Wild Boy of Nürnberg, as they called him. The legend of Kaspar Hauser has been a very famous one in Germany.”

  “I know about it now; I’ve read up on him,” I said. “Instead, you implied you were named for one of the biblical Magi. Maybe you know more about this Kaspar Hauser than I do, but it appears his main claims to fame were his shadowy past and his unexplained murder. It seems strange that anyone would want to saddle a child with either of those associations.”

  Wolfgang laughed. “But I’ve been thinking of him myself! I was astounded yesterday by Dacian Bassarides’s story of those seven hidden cities of Solomon. I suspect both Kaspar Hauser and the town of Nürnberg are related to those cities, as perhaps too are Adolf Hitler and the sacred hallows he researched at Melk. I was going to speak of it last night, but I was—somewhat distracted.” He smiled. “After listening to Dacian, what I think may connect all these things is the Hagalrune.”

  “Hagalrune?” I said.

  “Hagal in old German meant hail—you know, pellets of ice—one of the two important symbols of Aryan power: fire and ice,” said Wolfgang. “The swastika has since ancient times symbolized the power of fire. It was carved on many Eastern fire temples like the one Dacian mentioned. More important, Nürnberg, the town where Kaspar Hauser first appeared, is considered the absolute geomantic center of Germany: the three lines forming the Hagal rune cross from other parts of Europe and Asia, meeting at Nürnberg to form a cauldron of power.”