Neophyte / Adept (34 page)
Authors: T.D. McMichael
What to do about the Wiccan House that I had been selected
to attend?
And the fact that, if I didn’t go with them, I would have no
House.
I ran my hand over the notebook I had constructed. I had
built it by hand, with absolutely no help from the tracery of veins which
carried magic into my fingertips, out of binder’s needles, bees wax and thread,
sewing the signatures together, finishing the boards off in a plum-colored
cloth with the help of my PVA (polyvinyl acetate). I absolutely adored the
written word––I almost wrote Wiccan Word, wondering if there was
one, some all-powerful phrase which could point me to all the aforementioned
milestones––and had a very practical reason for keeping the Diary.
It helped me with all of the thinking of things. I could go back and look at
this, that, whathaveyou, and analyze trends.
Was it not like the book of magic, the codex given to new
practitioners, as they wrote down their discoveries? Except my Diaries were for
me alone. I would not be passing them on. Unless...
Only a second-degree or greater Wiccan could Initiate
someone. One of the ardanes, or rules, which governed all of Wicca.
I was not yet even able to do that––Initiate
someone––to say, “Hey, you should come check this out! I’ll show
you The Way!”
Which was kind of the point.
I did not yet know The Way.
I had been so adamant about following my principles I had
alienated myself from the only people who could instruct me in the Art of
becoming more than I was. And I had not yet told Ravenseal of my choice to
reject their invitation, so-called, which was obviously a summons. Veruschka, its
Head, had told me she would be sending someone from Ravenseal to fetch me.
Thinking about it made me shiver.
“Blessed
be. Or something,”
I wrote in my diary.
I couldn’t
think
.
I gave it up as a bad diary entry.
Was it Lux? Was that who was coming? Or I know. The Master
House. Was Veruschka already a part of them? It was said they coveted her.
Which, I couldn’t see why. She had candy-colored blue hair and was two-faced,
Veruschka: appearing friendly, charming, and then selfish and mean-spirited. I
still remembered the trick she had played on Vittoria. I had to stop right
there. I didn’t like thinking about Vittoria, especially as she had so
thoroughly, and awesomely, emancipated herself from any Wiccan Household. While
I––I was behaving like a coward. I couldn’t even make up my mind.
About Vittoria. About anything.
What I really needed was someone to talk to, a kind of
magical guide––someone who had been through all of the steps and
could instruct me as to how to avoid this or that false step, or whathaveyou.
Someone who could rhapsodize about Wicca, about what to expect; instead, there
was only me, and Lia, if I included her, but Lia was twenty-four going on
thirty-five and married with kids. You could see it in her eyes. She didn’t
need Wicca the way I did. And then I realized.
She was outgrowing me, she was outgrowing magic.
Of course, Lia was no stranger to losing things.
She had lost her animal. When she became Wiccan she could no
longer transform. Apparently being Wiccan precluded being a shape changer, and
vice-versa, one or the other. Witch- or Wizard-Shifters, those who could do
both, were very rare. So rare that there had not been one in over a century.
Rhea Silva, whoever she was, was the last. It was said she could transform into
the shape of a wolf and also do castings. Which I guessed meant her paw must’ve
had a Wiccan Mark on it, or something.
I sighed and watched the inflamed candles whip about in the
draft coming from my open French doors, half expecting to see Lennox standing
there. But he hadn’t shown.
Not that I had expected him to. After all, I was me, and he
was who he was––entirely out of my league,
vampire hottie person
.
What would he need with me when he had all the world, what
with his new superpowers and everything? All that I could offer would be to
hold him back.
Part of me wished for him to be standing there, to
experience the raw awesomeness of his presence, while the other, unknown part
of me, said:
whatevers. You have work to
do, kiddo.
And, yes, I did.
Moreover, I felt a kind of destiny, when I considered that
it was up to me to re-open––if that was even the right
word––my parents’ House.
I had kept the knowledge of their Wiccan House absolutely
secret, telling no one of House Rookmaaker––for, so I thought,
Selwyn would have wanted it of me. He was a false mage. A roughly-fledged,
unschooled guy. Thinking about him was painful. I didn’t like not knowing where
he was. Selwyn was my only other Housemate. A fellow Rookmaaker. A fact which I
had not really thought about before.
Just then my hand began tingling. It had been doing this off
and on for the last few hours. It would burn with heat, like at its Forming,
and then the heat would subside; it wasn’t painful, just alarming. And I think
it meant something. But I couldn’t be sure.
That was like everything in my life that may have meant
something. I had been kept so in the dark about everything to do with my past,
I didn’t even know what was real anymore and what wasn’t.
I wasn’t delusional or anything. Just a bit confused.
I looked unwillingly at my writing desk I never used. It had
my laptop on it, but there was also an unopened letter given to me by my
indefatigable landlady who watched the comings and goings of all. She was as
steadfast as the alarm I felt every time I looked at the letter on my desktop.
I had been avoiding reading it for days. Mostly because I didn’t want to know
what was in it. But in a way I kind’ve already did know, or so I thought. If I
had learned one thing from Mistress Genevieve, people have a way of surprising
you––she certainly always did. I didn’t even know how she knew I
was even here. But she did.
She knew it as certainly as she knew everything else in this
uncertain world.
I was scared to read the letter she had sent me. Would she
be angry, upset, if she knew what I was up to? Had she just grown tired of the
other students at St. Martley’s, and so reached out to scold me one last time,
her most disappointing pupil ever?
It sat there, the letter, looking like the underbellies of
some spiders I have seen, warning me against it; but I had to know. I weighed
the likelihood of the letter containing anything good against the reality that
I had run off, quit St. Martley’s, and abandoned my mistress. Which was
Genevieve.
Coward
, I chided
myself.
Pick it up and read it.
I came to the letter, managing the first part.
Her letter felt like a paving stone in my hands. I felt the
weight of her judgment and it terrified me.
Something about it made me think she had written to me in
all caps, like she was screaming, or worse, like whatever she had to say was so
spot on I wouldn’t be able to countermand it. If she said come back, I would
come back. And then where would I be?
There were ten days left until the Turning. When invented
Time turned over and the world got to start over again. I lived surrounded by
change. The only one who stayed the same was me. Essentially, what had magic
accomplished for me? If I were being honest with myself:
not much
.
And still a part of me thought:
He didn’t come
...
The rest was busy with this letter, a letter which could
disillusion and disenchant, not to mention, disenfranchise, me––and
probably, though I didn’t like to admit it, perhaps pull me back from the
precipice; for so I was about to go over, cross a line, take a stand, announce
myself to European witchcraft and wizardry:
The
girl who was chosen has selected to be un-Chosen.
An anagram of Rome was More. And my struggle with wanting to
know more was at odds with a small part of me which missed St. Martley’s,
missed going on, matriculating, Graduating.
This letter
was
my
Graduation. I had to open it. To stare its contents down.
I slit it with my fingernail and gave myself a paper
cut––and I pulled out the letter, watching as my blood darkened and
stained the fibrous material.
Halsey girl
,
it said. And I knew I would be all right.
Your Mother and
Father––rest their souls––elected me your Guardian. We
go on, when we are through, we graduate––and so now you are
Eighteen. Something happens to a witch when she turns eighteen. It is said that
if she does the thing right, she will come into her inheritance, whatever that
may be. Oh, do not look for your inheritance in a letter, young girl. Do,
however, please find enclosed––and it’s long
overdue––something which (I almost wrote witch) you have earned,
which is Your Diploma. We go on. We graduate. We Come Into our Powers. Which
I’m sure you know, if this letter finds you well. I wonder what your band of
Wiccan purity and innocence looks like. For so I have struggled to keep you
Innocent and Pure.
Do not say NOTHING
HAPPENS, for Life is a gift. As is our Marks.
You are Marked by the
love of your family, and if, for whatever reason, you should ever find yourself
in a hard place, just think of them, and what they would do. The answer is in
your soul, Miss Rookmaaker, as I hope St. Martley’s is. You are with us, as we
are to you. And if your family won’t help you, then I will. Or maybe that’s
wrong. Maybe even Maximilian (whose name means “greatest,” btw) Marked you in
ways so innocent and profound, that your father knew would be
needed––he even saw fit to elect me
Your Godmother.
One last thing. I have
observed the Past comes back to us when we need it most. When you were under my
roof, you needed some sense put into your head. I foresee that good taste is
not your problem. Rather, you feel too much. Let go, Halsey girl. Be like the
satellite, which tumbles free from the confines of the earth. Magnetism pulls
us back to the beginning. You to yours is a powerful tug. Embolden your heart
and remember that I love you.
Genevieve
P.S. Becca is becoming
really problematical. I tried to show her how to make a proper Wiccan W and she
made a Q instead. Q for quiddity.
P.P.S. Don’t tear your
Wiccan diploma up. It may come in handy. It’s time you forgave me for being so
hard on you: when I see potential all I want to do is whip it into shape,
fledge it. You possess all the hallmarks of a truly great witch. Remember to
practice the four D’s: Desire, Dedication, Determination, and Discipline. And,
above all, follow your Mark. Some witches have road signs laid out for them.
Others do not. Open your eyes! Because... Those who remain Adept stay that way
forever. While the truly Fledged––well, hopefully, you’ll see.
This thing last.
Be
reckless in your affections.
Think what
you yourself would tell your younger self and listen to her.
Be external.
Create lots of yous. Life ends or it never
begins. G.
* * *
I turned to the diploma emblazoned with the St. Martley’s
crest. My name
and
my 18th birthday,
which was custom, said that on this day, I was ready to begin. But to begin
what?
Being a Neophyte, I felt, was like being a freshman in
college, a new beginning: but I was without campus or guidance, and I was on my
own. There was no ‘come back’ in Mistress Genevieve’s voice; only acceptance,
essentially, at what had been my choices.
Careful not to bleed on it, I inserted the diploma, and the
letter, back into the envelope, sticking the entirety into my desk drawer, my
mind like one of those mulchers, gobbling up the accrued wisdom of St.
Martley’s and, of course, Mistress Genevieve’s, fabulous wooden rings.
Standing in my room above my beloved Via dei Condotti, I
blew out the candles and let the nighttime consume me. No one had been in
contact with me for over a week, not since the Gathering.
He didn’t come...
Beyond shopping, I hadn’t been out of my apartment all week.
Even the werewolves had been keeping their distance, the familiar growls of
their motorcycles an all too distant memory. It was 6:00 a.m. The sky outside
the color of pitch. The sound of the rushing water was like rainfall, as I held
my hand under the bathroom faucet, which flopped and spattered dirt from the
shivering pipes, until they began to flow cool and clean, and I dabbed at my
forehead, which was the source of my problems.
You’ve been alone too long
, I thought. My three Wiccan fingertips
(thumb, middle, and index) looked like silver leaping fish. The intricate swirl
of lines culminated in a fingerprint––an ornate crosshatching at
the tip of my right index finger, which was unique. I wondered briefly if there
were southpaws, in the world, left-handed Wiccans... I figured there must’ve
been.
I read over Mistress Genevieve’s letter again, committing it
to memory, and carefully opened my codex––all while managing not to
get any of the pages wet, as I took a bath. I figured I would continue on with
my
practicing
. Lux had said there was
a correlation between Mark-development and hard work. I didn’t want to be left
behind just because I was lazy. Two things fell out of the codex.
First was a map of the Gathering, which I crumpled up and
threw in a wastepaper basket, with some smaller lightbulbs from the bathroom
vanity: all exploded, naturally. Next was a letter from Veruschka Ravenseal, in
which she had threatened me. (“You have until New Years––and then I
will expect you at my home. Remember––I’m watching you. And keep a
lookout for my man. He will come to get you. VR. Veruschka Ravenseal.”)
Several things occurred to me.
First: Genevieve had said “lots of yous;” Veruschka
Ravenseal had once said
she
preferred
to talk to lots of herself. Maybe Genevieve and Veruschka were talking about
the same thing. This Wiccan concept of being in more places than one. But that
was a Half-Lighter thing, wasn’t it? According to craft ardanes, the use of
them (of the Ashers of the world; those who could scry) was illegal. Then how
was Veruschka
seeing
me? Unless she
could turn invisible, and had stalker tendencies, I didn’t see how she could be
watching me.
Keep a lookout for her man.
Was I supposed to be watching like they could? I gave up, confused. I also
threw her letter away. The bath was becoming lukewarm and I postponed my
magical education to get a soak.
Half-Lighters
are only illegal within the contexts of war
, I told myself.
Veruschka may be perfectly able to look at
you whenever she pleases.
I exhaled underwater.
So be it.
It was the 22nd. Not counting today, I had nine days to
prepare for the arrival of
her man
,
and to think up some excuse to placate them both. Maybe I would just tell
Veruschka and him to shove it. I could still feel her handprint from where she
had slapped me. It made me angry. Did I have any say-so or would I have to go
with them?
No––I was eighteen––I would do what
I pleased.
The water erupted from the tap in a rhythmic pattern.
It had been so long since I had seen Lennox, I had gotten
used to thinking of him as someone who was perpetually elsewhere.
Not having him was almost as bad as wanting him in the first
place. It made me ache all over. There was no cure.
I decided to put my mind to other uses. Such as what the
Dioscuri had meant when they told me to
find...
them
. But unlooked-for Lennox’s specter seemed to materialize before me.
This was silly.
I’m
not dreaming, am I?
I said to the Lennox-hallucination, who seemed to
glimmer before me. He vanished as if in response.
Had something inside of me broken?
Maybe I couldn’t see Lennox because there was nothing to
see. When I scried him there was just darkness, like the dark aether. Had
Lennox survived the Agonies?
Or had he been––killed?
I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t seen him in
months. I needed to get out. Something.
Ballard.
I needed Trastevere; the ancient cobblestones; the erratic
helter-skelter of the streets; the dirty laundry hanging in the sky, across
those streets; the oldness; the I-don’t-give-a-damn, and, of course, the smell
of the Tiber, the rich flow of the blood through the Old World.
The intrusion of reality left a sobering aftertaste in my
brain-mouth. Why had I not foreseen this? I had felt it. But it had come on so
gradually. Distance was never good in a relationship and Lennox and I had the ultimate
distance––being that we were separate species. Lennox a vampire, I
a witch. But, then, something was going on. After all, how many times did a
vampire fall in love with a witch? He was clearly older than I was.
World-savvy. He also didn’t seem to have a problem acquiring money. He could do
what he pleased. Would he leave Rome too?
I was already beginning to perceive of myself as a wanderer.
Like one of those eclectic witches or wizards––like Asher or
Selwyn; or, said a little part of me, Vittoria, wherever she was.
It was because I didn’t have a House––a
three-dimensional place where I could learn and train Wicca. I needed to find
it. House Rookmaaker.
It felt good thinking about other things.
We should do this more often
, I told
myself sarcastically, and then wondered if I would be like one of those old cat
ladies––the
gattare
, as
they were called, here in Rome––though if people realized there
were other
Cats
in the world, such as
I Gatti, I don’t think they would be so hasty to criticize
them––incapable of social intercourse with anyone but felines.
I felt slashed-up, woebegone. I had no recourse to St.
Martley’s, or to Mistress Genevieve. I would write to no one, I would interact
with no one. I stopped short at ripping my four-poster apart, lest my landlady
think I had gone completely off my head, and refrained from kicking in the
slats of my closet door. Neither would I smash the Iron Roses, or break my
laptop. Lennox inspired no desire to rearrange my room. But I felt his absence
heavily, and wondered why he had so effectively booted me from his brain. As
Infester had said:
they will have a
Power... A Power of Sight.
Maybe the prophecy meant two others––that Lennox
and I weren’t meant for this... existence... or to be together...
The House, the House...
Rome for me was poisoned. I had nowhere to go. I wouldn’t
just rush off, but I wouldn’t stay either. Admittedly, I was in a terrifying
place, a place I had not been in for ages, since I came to
Rome––and worse, my visa was running out. Somehow I had been so
overwhelmed by this unbelievable inclusion in an as-yet un-understood magical
world that I forgot I was also part of the hopelessly mortal, mundane world,
where things such as ninety-day stays existed, and there was a EU (European
Union) and a Schengen Agreement. People could pass to-and-fro across relatively
open borders. I did not have carte blanche like I did within the spectral
community of werewolves, whom I realized I had never fundamentally seen alter
their shapes. Ballard was Ballard, and Lia moreso. I had only their words and
the fact that Il Gatto, who was Gaven, had ordered his werewolf boys and girls
to fight back revenants and bloodsuckers––a werewolfy thing to do.
A very long daymare whipped through my head like a satellite on the periphery
of House Ravenseal, which would be squashed, destroyed, especially as I was
only officially a Neophyte and couldn’t conjure my way out of a paper bag, but
even more officially, because I somehow recognized that whereas Ravenseal was
good for giving face time to things such as
band
together
and
work for the common good
,
etc., etc., and
striving to prevent the
past
, in reality they were headed up by a tenacious she-bitch who wouldn’t
for a second pause in destroying my parents’ House. Especially as you needed
someone third-degree or higher to run your own autonomous coven. And as has
been said, I was not. More on that later.
Selwyn.
I didn’t
know why I had not been thinking about him. It was my fault he was gone. But to
go, I would need something more; to get him, I would need something more. After
all, I didn’t speak Czech. And then there was the fact that the Dioscuri and
the Master House seemed to be connected––and that meant the twins
and who knew what else? I couldn’t go up against all of them. I couldn’t go up
against
any
of them! I needed help.
Selwyn was in Prague, in the Districts of Magic, which was located northeast,
past the Alps, through Slovenia, Austria. It was landlocked. It was called
Praha. Prague. The Czech Republic. It was winter there, which would mean snow,
but I didn’t give a damn. I would take my Gambalunga, the motorcycle Ballard
had built for me. But what about Ballard? Would he want to go with me? Would
Lia let him go with me? After all, he was the only reliable mechanic good enough
to run his Uncle Risky’s motorcycle shop. I felt an itch––a
dangerous itch, in my fingertips, which I could not ignore––and
then the heat rush happened again; I gave myself over to it, like a dull
throbbing, wondering if this was it for me. If all I would ever be was some
pulsating freak monster all by herself. The intoxicating stirring spread to the
remainder of my limbs––to the very core of my being. Where it raced
through my Mark, I could feel a surge of Power. I was suddenly so lonesome I
could howl. Would Lia take kindly to me rapping on the door this early in the
morning? She was still living at home.
I couldn’t help it. I needed to get away.
To hell with the Diary.
I grabbed my
helmet from out of the closet: fire-red to match my bike. And then I stopped,
because something red was poking out of the detritus.
Embossed with the number six, it was the red marker Selwyn
(and House Rookmaaker) had been awarded, but hadn’t been able to use, prior to
the Gathering. The marker I didn’t even know I had. It must’ve fallen out of my
pocket or something. Selwyn must’ve slipped it in there
before––when I was busy, when I wasn’t looking.
Unbeknownst.
I picked it up and thinking better tucked it into my new
Diary, Volume III. I grabbed a black hoodie, throwing it on the bed, and
fetched out my riding boots. In moments I was dressed in a pair of old
Levi’s-brand jeans, and my book, with the marker in it, tucked inside my
helmet. I put my hood up. My landlady said nothing as I walked past her. I
didn’t even look at her. If anything, we had come to an understanding, the two
of us.
I was damaged goods and it was
good that I was on my way out.
I supplied the “I hope I never see you
again,” and got out. Deranged. Damaged. Dead. In my soul and in my mind. But so
what? I was over it. I didn’t care anymore. Lennox was a
free agent
––he could see whomever he pleased.
Camille’s ghost-face looked reproachfully at me as I
imagined what she would say. Breaking up meant more than never seeing Lennox
again.
Sigh. Blank face. Sigh.
It meant losing an anchor, without which I was adrift,
alone, and in dire need of companionship.
Do
nothing to yourself
, I told myself.
My blood would not abate; instead a recklessness overwhelmed
me. I found my Gambalunga in the park and started it. It was so cold out my
breath fogged. Pretty soon both I and the Gambalunga were snorting, and running
under the power of our own resolve. For I needed it now, that resolve, and the
reassurance of my Gambalunga, more than ever. Ballard was my
true
anchor. The only one who was,
quote-unquote,
always there for me.
* * *
I spent the remainder of the early morning cruising, in
spite of my so-called resolve. This involved veering wildly through alleyways
(vicoli)
, cutting through traffic, which
never seemed to let up, racing traffic lights, just in general trying to lose
myself. The second-guessing, which had plagued my spirit, was over.
Lennox––was gone.
He was
free.
The muffled fits of my Gambalunga sounded silent in the
muffled globe surrounding my head case––I mean headspace. Even the
old stick of the throttle was gone. I watched as the last of the stars raced
across the sky, and the moon (some would call it a supermoon) wheeled over the
many monuments whose names I had never bothered to learn.
The torre dell’Orologio (I had looked that one up) was the
name of the watchtower I had seen in Venice. But then a mental block appeared.
Thinking about Venice was off-limits. Everything to do with––him
was. I would have to create new thoughts, a new persona; I would have to be
somebody else, yes. I decided I would start immediately.
Lots of mes.
The old me was gone. The new me was chilled to the
bone, teeth rattling, yet faster, faster––almost as though I could
facilitate the change by speed alone. Why weren’t they wheeling fast enough,
those stars? I wanted the morning. The sunlight unto tomorrow. Not to have to
think about nasty, depressing yesterday. Or what the future would hold for me.
But sun. And a blazing star. Because then I could forget. Because then I needed
to. Yes. I needed to.
* * *
I was a wet dog. A bedraggled old soul stuck in a young
soul. I needed a Ballard “in his own sauce,” so to speak––the
lemony-fresh scent of his small ho-vel. And then it hit me, the pitiful state
of my whatevers. Literally I had a diary and a motorcycle. Nagging me was the
realization that I had lineage––a name, a birthright. My own House.
But that Wiccans were supposed to be
lin-e-aged
.
Literally produced through a factory-like process to become Fledged; which I
would not be, and, therefore, checks and balances, there must be a higher
authority, mustn’t there, The Master House, for instance, who looked over
Wiccan Initiates and made sure they were progressing correctly? But I would not
be subservient to them. It wasn’t what my parents had wanted. I had failed in
my faithfulness to––him. (The whole Lux thing came to mind.) I
would
not
in my charge to them. House
Rookmaaker had to become my priority––but first Ballard, and then
Selwyn, if I could. But I had one advantage, with regards to the black
cat––Selwyn was sneaky, a virtuoso. And who knew? Just because I
had seen him go, didn’t mean they had grabbed him. Maybe he knew exactly what
he was doing. Maybe, in that moment, he had been protecting
me
––à la the prophecy of
sorts––and had been willing to face
whatever
on my behalf. Would I let him?