The Fifth Sacred Thing (20 page)

The words sounded oddly familiar to Bird, but it took him a while to place them. With a shock, he realized what they were—an exercise out of one of Maya’s early books, the one they used to amuse themselves with as children, giggling over what they considered to be simpleminded instructions, teasing Maya until she would finally turn on them and chase them out.

“You brats don’t know how lucky you are,” she’d yell at them. “Do you know what it’s like to be raised your whole life not to feel, not to trust your intuition, not to notice if you see an aura or feel the energy move? And then try to turn around as an adult and try to learn it all? You put that book down!”

Now he realized that the woman was simply reading the directions for
grounding, somewhat expressionlessly. With a breath, he grounded himself, sending roots of energy down through his feet into the earth, making contact with the earth’s core fire and drawing in the moon’s light. The reading ended. Everyone in the circle looked serious, even solemn, but he didn’t see that their energy had significantly changed.

“Will you cast the circle now?” Rhea said.

He walked to the altar, still moving slowly and painfully, and considered the tools. They lay in their proper positions: in the east, the knife, the
athame
, tool of air, symbol of the mind’s power to make divisions and separations; in the south, the wand, tool of fire, symbol of energy and the power to channel and direct it; in the west, a clay cup holding the water that represented emotion, fertility, love; and in the north, a five-pointed pentacle carved on a stone slab, symbol of earth, of the body, the five senses, five fingers and toes, the four elements, the Four Sacred Things, linked with the fifth, spirit.

“Can I use this
athame
?” he asked.

“It’s mine,” Morton said. “Go ahead.”

Bird picked it up and held it for a moment, feeling its power and something of Morton in it. Stubborn strength. Determination to survive. He walked out to the center and stood by the fire. Taking a deep breath, he let his own energy extend out to include the whole circle, to link with their willingness and intention to come together. When he felt the energy of the circle become one whole, he grounded it, sending it down through his own body into the earth, then drawing it back up again. He looked around. Good. The patterns had changed, as he’d hoped, and they were all connected to the earth.

Starting in the north, he walked around the circle, using the knife to draw around them in the air a ring of protection that sprang up as a flickering blue flame. At each of the four quarters, he drew a pentacle. Behind him, he heard a murmur of surprise, as if they’d never before seen the circle manifest. Maybe they hadn’t, he reflected, as he returned the knife to the altar.

“By the earth that is her body, and by the air that is her breath, and by the fire of her bright spirit, and by the living waters of her womb, the circle is cast,” he said.

They called the four directions, the elements of the quarters, again by reading out of a book. People kept casting little glances toward him as if to say, Is this right? Are we really doing it right? He controlled his expression, but invoked secretly himself, sending his own energy out into the elemental realms to contact earth, air, fire, water. It had been a long, long time since he had stood in circle with others, and there was something touching about these halting, awkward attempts to keep the rites without really understanding how to raise and channel power.

Then several people picked up drums and began to beat a simple rhythm and sing an old chant that he recognized.

They were calling the moon, the Goddess in her aspect as Abundant One, the Mother, she who sustains life, and Bird threw up his arms and thanked her, remembering his prayer in the prison and feeling the tears flow down his face as he felt her light shine. They had survived, and they were free.

Someone handed him a drum, a carved wooden cylinder with a skin head. He held it to the fire until the head tightened from the warmth and then began to play. His hands were stiff and they hurt, but as the rhythm built he grew numb to the pain. Only some of the other drummers were in time to the rhythm of the chant; the others wandered vaguely in and out, hitting the rhythm sometimes and missing it more often. He began with a strong, solid beat to bring them all into alignment and then let himself play with it, adding syncopation and counter-rhythms. The guitar had been his instrument, not the drum, but like every child of the City, he’d learned to drum before he learned to count, adding and subtracting and dividing by changing beats before he was ever introduced to numbers. Now he made the beat come alive, even as his battered hands kept him to simpler patterns and prevented him from trying fast runs and rolls.

Rhythm was old, old as the rhythm of the moon, swelling to full and waning to dark. His hands told him he would never make music again the way he had before, on guitar or piano; what he heard in his heart would remain locked there because his fingers were no longer capable of evoking its power. He was broken, like the strange, wounded company that surrounded him with their broken beat. Maybe this was all that was left, this maimed circle on the edge of a poisoned world; maybe he had no more home, no family; maybe there were no more circles of powerful Witches who knew how to tell energy from form; maybe there were no rings of sweet lovers waiting to welcome him back, no ancient crones who could talk with the spirits, no one still willing to fight for the survival of the earth, no one left even to remember the dead.

The chant peaked and died.

“The Goddess is here,” Rhea said. “What chant shall we sing for the God?”

“I’ve got one,” Bird said.

He began a new beat on the drum and sang a calling chant, hearing the rough voices around him pick it up as he visualized the stag he’d seen on the hill, with the sun between its antlers, the sun that in this season was declining so the long nights could come, wounding itself to allow the rain to return. He sang until he could almost feel antlers sprout on his own head.

“He is here,” Rhea said.

They danced around the fire, making offerings, singing chants of healing and change. Bird pulled healing power down from the moon and spun it into a cone that could rise like a fountain and spill itself out over the land.

After the energy had been grounded, they sat silent, looking into the fire, listening to its messages. Couples began to steal away together, out of the circle, cutting through its fire and sealing it behind them. Bird lay on the earth, beside the fire, letting its warmth ease his sore muscles, drawing in energy to heal the breaks in his cells. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he looked into Rhea’s eyes.

“Will you make the Great Rite with me?” she asked.

He felt it again—the desire, the pull of energy to energy—but he hesitated, casting a glance around the circle for Littlejohn. He didn’t want to hurt him. But Littlejohn seemed to have disappeared. Maybe he too had found somebody.

Rhea’s eyes were on him, waiting. Her hand on his shoulder was warm, smoldering. This isn’t safe, he thought, even if his exhausted body still had strength left to rise. But it felt right. The power of the God still burned in him; his veins carried liquid fire. He could withhold nothing from these people, his people. Rhea led him outside the circle, into a small sheltered spot under the branches of a live oak, where she spread a blanket for them.

Bird looked into Rhea’s eyes. They were old and dark and luminous. Her face changed, no longer seeming grotesque but absolutely right, a mirror for the damaged land that like the face survived to harbor the possibility of growth and change.

Her body against his hands felt like soft loam as she lowered herself onto him, and he was the sun come down to earth at last. He opened to her fully and gave himself over to the power she harbored within her, and she opened to him, revealing pain and beauty that answered his own pain. She was broken as he was broken, as this land was broken but, thanks to him and to the others who had suffered and died for it, not destroyed. She was the bitter brew that nonetheless healed, like one of Sandy’s mixtures, the homeopathic drop of poison that cured, the tainted land that still fed life. He brought the sun to her, the dying, weakening, wounded sun that consumes itself as it gives light, as he had brought to the land his own life-sustaining willingness to give himself away. And so he received back the bittersweet gift of the land, and rained.

The sound of distant waves woke Bird in the morning. His bed was a pallet on a wood floor, covered with old blankets. Sun poured through a window. When he turned his head, he could glimpse the ocean. He yawned and stretched, feeling surprisingly good, or maybe not surprisingly. He had much to feel good about. His body had been fed, in every way, and he could reasonably look forward to being fed again. And they had done it—they had really and truly escaped. This was the first morning in nearly a decade when he could wake up without anticipating the likelihood of his own death before nightfall.

The door opened and Rhea entered, bearing a tray and two steaming cups of tea. Bird turned and smiled up at her. In the daylight, he could see her more clearly. She was no monster, only a woman with a cleft palate and a hesitant look in her eye, as if she expected him to turn away at the sight of her.

“Good morning,” he said. “I feel good this morning. It’s good to be here.”

She sat down next to him in a graceful motion, balancing the tray so as not to spill the drinks. He took his cup and cradled it in his hands.

“Thanks,” he said.

She gave him a long searching look, as if questioning what he was really feeling. He looked steadily into her eyes.

“Well,” she said at last. “You’re an unusual man. You still like me in the morning.”

“I like you,” Bird said. “You’re very powerful and very beautiful.”

“Now you tell lies.”

“I wouldn’t insult you by thinking I
could
lie to you. You’d see right through me. I’ve been so hungry for that. I wanted you the moment I saw you.”

“The
first
moment?”

“Well, maybe not the first moment,” Bird admitted. He waited, then grinned at her. “But after you put the gun down.”

She looked slightly confused.

“That’s a joke,” Bird said.

“Oh.”

“Never mind.”

“Will you stay here, then? And be our teacher?”

“I can’t, Rhea. I’ve got to go home. I’ve got to find my family—if they’re still alive. I’ve been away from them for ten years.”

“But you will stay for a while? Until you are stronger?”

“Sure.”

“We need a teacher here. We need a healer. You could help us.”

“I wish I could help you. I’ll do what I can. But I’ve got to go home. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“I understand. But I lay a
geis
on you—to come back. Or send us someone who can teach us.”

She put her hands on his shoulders. He felt something settle on him, like a weight. I don’t want it! he wanted to cry, but he held himself silent, and opened, and took it in. To carry a burden was to be alive.

“I accept,” he said. “If I make it home, I’ll be back. Or someone will.”

“We must work together,” Rhea said. “All of us, North and South and Center. We will work together, and we will survive.”

He stayed, luxuriating in rest and food and a sense of refuge. Their food was simple but to Bird it seemed wonderful just to eat when he was hungry, to chew real vegetables and real bread instead of the slimy pastes of the prison. He and Littlejohn spent days lying out on the beach, shaded under a muslin tarp from the harsh sun but able to drink in its healing warmth. They were warned not to go into the water; people who did emerged with strange rashes and sometimes lost their hair. But they could watch the waves, and the light dancing on its surface, and be soothed by its rhythmic sounds. Bird was tired, more tired than he wanted to admit. His mind was pushing him on toward home, but his body nestled into the sand and refused to move. After the first morning, he gave up trying to fight it.

Littlejohn had moved in with Morton. Bird remained at Rhea’s house. They lay next to each other in the long afternoons, in a silence edged with tension.

By the third day, Bird began to feel his energy returning. He sat up as the sun dipped into the water, laying a track of liquid gold at his feet. He wished he could walk that track to go home. And someday he would.

“Another day or two, and I think I’ll be ready to push on,” he said to Littlejohn. “How about you?”

Littlejohn shook his head. “I’m not going with you. I’m staying here.”

“Why?” Bird asked, although he was not, in his heart, surprised.

“You never told me your name.”

Bird had no answer. He couldn’t even honestly say he was sorry. “Littlejohn, no matter what they say, this place can’t be healthy to live in. I’m telling you, you’d be welcome at my home.”