Authors: Kerry Greenwood
It was a flattish bun about the size of my palm. The crumb was perfect, moist but not soggy. I bit and chewed. Terrific. ‘Wonderful,’ I told him.
‘Rest of them along in a couple of hours,’ he said, and I left to seek out Daniel. He had gathered all his papers together into one heap and was looking as if what he really wanted was a flame-thrower.
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‘Fear not, I think I’ve worked most of it out,’ I said. ‘Has the lovely Ms Bray left me a message about the drugged cakes?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’re baking powder, not yeast.’
‘Good. Jason is making the soul cakes, the real ones,’ I said. ‘The ceremony for Samhain is tonight. I am going to see to a few other things—can you mind the phone? By the way, is mine tapped?’
‘No,’ he told me.
‘Right.’
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘To see Janelle.’
‘But she’s in Bendigo.’
‘I think she’ll be back by now.’
‘Ah,’ he said.
And, being Daniel, he didn’t ask me any questions. He just shuffled the papers, sighed, extracted his mobile from under Horatio, and began making calls.
I took a tram. I wasn’t in a hurry. The witches were all partaking of a picnic in the park when I found them. It was a beautiful, warm, smoky day. Perfect for lazing about on a suitable lawn and watching someone more energetic play.
The acolytes were engaged in a game which involved standing in a moving double ring and flinging a bean bag at someone on the other side. You then kissed the target person to massed giggles. Most of the players were girls, but I noticed the dark and dangerous Cypress there, with his slimmer, paler friend Cedar. All of them showed signs of recent illumination, a Celtic bracelet around one upper arm. It didn’t look too bad, actually. I wondered how much it hurt.
Lying in state under a tree was Barnabas, attended by three maidens. One was combing his beard. One was kissing his mouth. One was tickling his belly, and if that wasn’t what she
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was doing, I did not intend to carry my observation any further. He lifted his eyes and saw me. Beautiful brown eyes, soft as a deer’s. Sensitive eyes. I dragged myself out of them.
‘Hello, Barnabas,’ I said cheerily. ‘Preparing for the big event tonight?’
‘Indeed,’ he said, freeing one hand and reaching it out to me. ‘You will be there?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ I answered.
The maidens were dressed just as his website required: transparent blouses and short skirts. They looked curiously dated. And their eyes were not clear. They were dazed or fogged, drugged perhaps with real chemicals or else blissed out on Barnabas, and either way I did not envy them. He gave me a smile which hovered next to cruel as he contemplated them. Not a nice man, that Barnabas...
The dancers moved, throwing their bean bag. It whizzed through the ranks and I caught it by reflex.
‘Choose! Choose!’ they chorused, and Barnabas rose like a grampus on one elbow. I would rather have kissed that poor dead snake. I didn’t want to cause a scene and I needed some
one else to kiss. Male, for preference.
‘You,’ I said to Cedar, and he approached me. He was half naked. His bare chest was almost hairless and a little plasma trickled from his new tattoo. The boy surrendered his mouth willingly. It was soft and pliable and warm. He tasted very young. His eyes were brown and unfocused. I felt suddenly revolted, as though I had taken advantage of him. I pushed him gently away.
And flinched as I intercepted a full strength glare of hatred from Cypress which ought to have acid-etched his name on my retinas. I did not like these games.
I found Janelle, cut her out from the herd, and the interview went much as I expected. Then I caught a tram home.
Daniel was pacing. He did this very elegantly, but he was pacing nonetheless.
‘There you are! Jason says that all the soul cakes are made and Meroe is asking you to call.’
‘Then let’s call,’ I said, taking his hand. ‘Your Saba, he needs to know that the matter will come to a head tonight, on the foreshore. At the Samhain ceremony.’
‘I think he might have guessed that,’ said Daniel, ‘but I’ll convey the message.’
‘And you might have a few of your fellow raiders lounging around looking inconspicuous.’
‘That, too, can be managed.’
We were both preserving a straight face. I wasn’t going to share any information and neither was he.
‘Well, then,’ I said meaninglessly, and we went down the stairs to the Sibyl’s Cave.
There we met Selene, Celeste, Belladonna and Meroe, which was the full complement for such a small shop. They were all sampling soul cakes and seemed more cheerful.
‘Just tonight, then it will all be over,’ I heard Serena say, poking at her straggling bun. ‘And those idiots will be going back to their lairs, and we can go home to ours.’
‘Blessed be,’ sighed Meroe, and caught sight of me. ‘Corinna! These cakes are wonderful.’
‘Jason is a very good baker,’ I said. ‘Meroe, whose idea was it to hold the ceremony on the foreshore at Williamstown?’
‘Barnabas,’ she told me. ‘But it’s a good idea. It’s wilder there than any part of the bay nearer the city, and fewer houses overlook it. I don’t fancy taking off my clothes on Elwood beach.’
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‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Do you, in fact, have to take off your clothes?’
‘Not for Samhain, no,’ she said. ‘Stands to reason. Back in the old country, it’s autumn. No sense in having one’s whole coven contracting pneumonia. But here it’s spring.’
‘And there are midges. And sandflies. I’d keep my skirt on.’
‘A hint?’ she asked, eyes very bright.
‘Just a little one. What did you want with me? Daniel said you sent a message?’
‘Yes, I did. Have you solved the soul cake mystery?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, sort of solved.’
‘Is it safe to go on with the ceremony?’
‘Probably,’ I temporised.
‘Oh, very definite,’ said Daniel.
‘So you have done better?’ Meroe asked him.
He looked down through his fringed lashes. ‘No. Probably is the best I could say, too.’
‘Then we shall trust in the Goddess, and proceed,’ said Meroe.
‘See you tonight,’ I said, and we went out.
Then we put ourselves to bed and made love and slept and made love, because there was nothing else that the world needed us for, which was wonderful.
It was darkening and cooling and we put on dark warm garments. Whatever the witches did, I wasn’t going to be taking off any clothes unless I had to. Daniel and I both wore jeans and a dark blue pullover. I went down to the shop and noticed that the admirable Jason had cleaned up after his muffin making. The Mouse Police were asleep on their old flour sacks again. They had enjoyed their foray into gracious living but they clearly didn’t want to stay there. I stuffed a lot of things which might become useful into my backpack and we went out into the street where Timbo waited to convey us back to Williamstown.
‘Strange little place, Williamstown,’ commented Daniel. ‘It was the first settlement in Melbourne, you know, but they moved to the Yarra bank because there wasn’t enough fresh water here. It’s always been an odd backwater, very sure of itself, very superior. A little island of civilisation in the industrial west.’
‘Gentility, you mean. Civilisation is a lot to boast of, even for as pretty a place as this.’
‘So it is,’ he agreed amicably.
I was keyed up and snappy. Facts and semi-facts were whirling around in my head and I was grumpy with possibilities. We arrived far too soon at a park which ran down to a flattish rocky prominence. Through it ran a bicycle path. It was very plain and ordinary.
Except that it was populated with witches. I tried to recall what Meroe had told me about Samhain. Descent into darkness, she had said. The beginning of winter. A time to reflect, to consider, to put all things in order for the contemplations and endurance of the long cold. And a time to play games, sing songs, play tricks, the last light-hearted chaos before the sobriety of the cold. In this hemisphere, of course, it was spring, but I had enough to think about without bothering my head about philosophy. Time, also, to talk to the dead. So how was this picnic going to go?
‘Into rings!’ exclaimed one woman, and the crowd began to move, forming into fairy rings like I had when I had unwisely ventured on folk dancing. There was a drummer, a fiddle player and a harp, and they all began to play a jolly, bouncy tune.
And round and round and round they went, hand in
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hand, hair flying, skirts floating. Barnabas and his girls danced. Selene and Celeste danced. Old women danced. Even Cypress and Cedar danced. Daniel and I crept under a thrawn tree to be out of the way.
The music went on, the dances continued. It grew fully dark and a bonfire was lit, and the strings of women began to circle it. I was watching the sky for the rising moon when I became aware of a change in the music. It became slower, sadder, a dirge. A lone voice called out a name: Alice! Then another—Jeanette—and another. Eugenia. Bindi. Isabel. Lizbeth. Agnes. Running under the names was a prayer.
‘We commend unto the Goddess of many names these our sisters who have left us, and beg that they may speak one more time, here in the darkness before the descent, here on the grass by the sea which estranges us, here in the dark: speak, speak, speak.’
My job was to watch, and I watched, but I felt the longing pulling at me, the loss, the desire to hear just once more a loved voice which was now stilled forever. On the light salt wind they pleaded, the witches, for one word, one breath, from beyond, and called the names of the dead into the gathering darkness, their words going up like showers of sparks from the bonfire. Now, just on the cusp of the year, when the veils between the worlds were thin, the ghosts might reach through with their cold fingers and touch the world of the living once more.
‘Hear now the names of the Goddess, she who is all, Hecate Queen of Witches, Great Mother, Isis, Artemis, Aphrodite, Diana, Melusine, Arianrhod,’ announced Meroe. ‘We gather here to dance and sing in her honour and remember our dead. If there is a spirit here, speak to your sisters! For now we dance the great circle, and any who will may come to us.’
She followed the next witch, and they snaked into a circle around the fire, and as they moved they shed garments and took hands again. Firelight glinted on their sweating skin, hot on shoulders, gilding breasts and arms. Daniel gasped and drew back under the tree. I leaned forward, fascinated. I was being dragged into the dance. He put a hand on my thigh, and it seemed as heavy and cold as a toad.
There were my sisters, free in the darkness, and I could feel their power building. Between the dancers and the fire two figures now appeared. One was crowned with the moon, tall and masked, bare breasted and female. The other was huge and male and he wore a horned mask.
‘Cernunnos!’ the witches named him. ‘Hail Cernunnos! Hail the horned man!’
The music stopped. The dancers slumped down in their circle. Around them came servers carrying baskets of soul cakes and cups of wine. I took one of each. The wine was good red chateau collapseau. The soul cakes were just as Jason had made them. The witches feasted and wiped their faces with their flying hair. The circle was, however, unbroken. No one left it. They rested and feasted for perhaps half an hour while the figures in the centre stood unmoving.
They were dressed, I noted, as witches, with the witch’s tools: cup, wand, cords and athame. I knew that this was a knife, though it was customarily blunt, used for ceremonial cutting only. Cernunnos was Barnabas. I knew that belly. He was very dominant with his horn-crowned head and jutting beard. If anything else was jutting, I didn’t care to discover. Beside him the Goddess was masked in silver paint. Her breasts were perfect, neither a girl’s nor a woman’s, beautiful
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and somehow unreal. The music continued, thumping and ringing, as the witches feasted and their gods stood motionless, awaiting their worship.
The witches then got up, shaking off sand and crumbs, and the circle began to move again. The moment I had been expecting came. The Goddess turned to the God and they, too, began to dance around each other. It was awful in the proper sense: creating awe. But there was something wrong. I strained my eyes. That knife—wasn’t it rather shiny for an athame? Shiny not as to the jewelled hilt, but as to the flame along the blade? Wasn’t it, rather, as sharp as a razor? And wasn’t this the culmination of the ceremony? A dreadful premonition hit me like a blow. I shook Daniel’s hand off my thigh and leapt to my feet. I wanted to scream but I didn’t seem to have any breath and no one would have heard me over the music and the chanting. I was about to see murder done and I had to prevent it. There was death on the wind tonight.
I saw the flash of steel, dived through the dance and brought the Queen of Witches down with as good a rugby tackle as any All Black could have boasted of. We hit the ground hard, fighting.
The dance halted. I knelt on the woman and pried at the knife in her hands, and she fought like a maddened beast. Meroe came to us, wrenched the knife from her and threw it away, then slung her by main force of outrage out of the circle, harvesting her crown and mask as the assailant flew. Then she put them on and grabbed the horned man by the shoulders and shook him.
‘Dance!’ she ordered in a penetrating voice. I was still struggling with a shrieking, scratching fury. ‘The rite shall not be broken by unbelievers. We call on our dead to protect us, our Goddess to stand by us, her law is love of all things! We shall sing and dance and make music, for all is joy in the presence of the Mother, and her power is in the earth and the sea!’
And the music started again, and the great circle moved, and Meroe stood proud as Queen of Witches, her crown on her shiny black hair, her face transformed by the rising moon into a silver mask of uncommon beauty and power.
Meanwhile I had managed to drag my captive to the tree, where Daniel sat on her and I searched her for any more weapons. Black clad figures had flitted through the servers, arresting various persons. We put our prisoner into a hard armlock and stumbled her away to the waiting house where all was to be revealed, and as I went I was pleased that it had worked, and that I had been right, but oh, the music and the singing and the dance, it dragged at my heart.