The Witches of Dark Root: Daughters of Dark Root: Book One (The Daughters of Dark Root) (4 page)

“I don’t need perspective,” I said, pushing my cart towards the van.
 

Michael didn’t hear me.

He was talking to the bag girl about the glories of God and the joys of communal life. “The only man you’ll be working for at Woodhaven is the big one,” he told her.

I unloaded the groceries while he finished his pitch.

“Any luck?” I asked, as we climbed inside. “Will she be joining our loving cult?”

“Maggie, you know I hate that word. It makes us sound weird.”

“I know, but it’s funny.”

“To answer your question, no, she will not be joining us.” He sighed, buckling up. “It’s hard these days, unless you have a website.”

I laughed and started up the engine.

“Let me think about it, Michael,” I said. “I know you’d like to think me leaving Dark Root was entirely because of you, but there were other reasons.” I stared out the window, watching as mothers and their children filed inside Grocery World.

My life at Woodhaven wasn’t ideal, but I was free here.

As free as I could be, anyway.

“I wished I had been given another chance to see my family,” he said. His fingers clawed at his knee as he struggled to keep his voice steady.

“Yeah,” was all I could say.

“We need you, Mags. Go see your family and come back stronger and recharged. If you can’t get it together, Woodhaven isn’t going to last much longer.”

I thought about his words as I drove us home.

Two: Stairway to Heaven

My mother has a disdain for warlocks.

Though she admits they have
some
power, she argues that a warlock’s capabilities will never match the creative, life-giving magic of his female counterpart. In order for a warlock to balance this upset in the spiritual scales, he must siphon energy from a woman, typically through sex.

A nice girl will do, for a while, but if her life force is weak she may crumble under the frequency of his need.

Bad girls provide him with a stronger manna but it can be a tainted energy, which may eventually destroy them both.

A dark warlock will continue down this path, seizing small bites of power through sexual vampirism, yet never knowing real power of his own. An enlightened warlock, however, will eventually seek out a more powerful woman––a witch.

It is through her that he will learn to submit, to both take
and
give, and consequently come into the full powers of his birthright.

Though the word
warlock
was banished from my vernacular soon after Michael recruited me––
there are no witches and warlocks Maggie, just energies, male and female, yin and yang––
old lessons die hard, and the message remains the same.
 

Men need women to accomplish great things.
 

And so I waited––perched restlessly in the window seat of my bedroom––for Michael to come for me.

Time moved miserably slow.

I fiddled my thumbs and tapped my bare feet against the bamboo floor
.

Where was he?

It was our Fall Revival, and Michael always spent the hour before each session with me, making love and going over his speech as he got dressed.

Then we’d make our way out to the assembly room––a converted grange hall––across the property. Arms intertwined, we’d enter the auditorium, finding our seats at the front of the room, the Prophet and Prophetess of Woodhaven. In the years since we had founded Woodhaven, the routine had always been the same; yet tonight, I sat alone, watching the sun go down and the shadows in my room grown longer.

I considered looking for him, but the thought of Leah’s smug, rodent face asking me if everything was ‘okay’ as I frantically searched for my boyfriend kept me in my room.

I slid from my window seat onto the floor, pushing my back against the wall and wrapping my arms around my knees. I had never been good at meditation––sitting still for long periods of time without having interesting thoughts was difficult––but Michael claimed it led to inner peace.
 

I tried to clear my mind, but my imagination was especially active this evening, so I decided to follow it along for the ride instead. I was engrossed in a fantasy about Leah and some alien probes, when a knock on the door brought me back.

“Mags? Can I come in? I’m supposed to make copies of your report for the Council Meeting,” Jason said, cautiously opening the door. When he saw me
meditating,
his face broke into a wide smile. “I know that look, Mags. You’re thinking of Leah and the evil aliens again, aren’t you?”

I loved Jason.

We had met the day Michael found me in Dark Root, the first two disciples of Michael’s
New World Religion
. Over the last seven years, we had developed a special friendship, listening to each other’s ideas and making fun of the strange new people Michael was forced to recruit to keep Woodhaven going. Jason got me, and didn’t chastise me the way Michael did when my mind went dark.
 

I smiled innocently at his Leah statement as I rummaged through a stack of notebook paper on my desk.

“Here it is,” I said, handing him the report. “Michael’s not going to like it.”

Jason looked over my report and nodded his head thoughtfully. “Well, he wanted the truth.” He gave me a quick wink and turned to go. “It’s starting to get dark, so be careful on the way to the meeting. I can come grab you, if you want?”

“I’ll be okay. You haven’t seen Michael, have you?” I steadied my face, hoping Jason wouldn’t see my anxiousness.

Jason licked his lips. “No, sorry Mags.”

I could feel the pity in his voice.

I gritted my teeth and pretended I was okay. “I was just wondering what he thought I should wear? I’m torn between two different dresses tonight.”

Jason was a gentleman and nodded as he left my room, but he knew that I was lying.

He also knew that I only had one good dress.

I played with a strand of my hair, looming the red curl through my fingers as I tried to puzzle things out.

Maybe Michael had already peeked at my report and wasn’t happy with me. If so, this wasn’t fair. Michael had charged me with the task of determining why we were losing so many members, and gaining even fewer. It took me several weeks but I did my best, collecting data from interviews, surveys, and CNN. We were supposed to go over it together before the meeting, and then review it with the other Council Members after the Fall Revival.

But if Michael had already seen it, maybe he wanted some time alone to digest it. He was never one to show real emotion in front of anyone, even me.

Suddenly, I felt bad for what I had written. Maybe I should have softened it a bit. I went to my desk and pulled out a piece of crumpled paper. It wasn’t the official report, just the notes I had made while conducting my research.

(1)
Too Many Men.
The male to female ratio at Woodhaven is approximately 3 to 1. Women are harder to recruit. It’s more difficult for them to give up friends, family, and community to start a new life with a group of strangers than it is for men. Add to that the bad press we were inadvertently getting from Nancy Grace––a few young women come up missing in the Caribbean, and the world thinks everyone is in the trafficking business. Without females, the guys at Woodhaven flee to pastures where the cows are more plentiful.

(2)
Family Member Retrieval (FTR).
We have little contact with the outside world. This includes letters, phone calls, and visitations. After extended time without contact, loved ones can freak out. Some even come to ‘break out’ their family members. This is especially true after some suicide cult makes the news. When that happens we get bombarded by panicky loved ones convinced we are hacking off genitalia and dressing our members up as chickens to sacrifice to the Thunder Gods.

(3)
Technological Impotence.
We don’t allow our members to use computers, cell phones, or even calculators. Not to mention watches or clocks. Most people are not willing to give up their gadgets just to get closer to God.

(4)
We just don’t care anymore.
A long time ago we had a vision: The old world would die, and a new one would be reborn. We were the chosen people, who would help others attain enlightenment after the cataclysm hit. But Michael’s dates have come and gone many times. We made excuses at first. Mixed up numbers. Misinterpreted prophecies. Leap Year. With each wrong Armageddon prediction, we lost a few members. And when the last date––the really big one, that Michael was so certain of he had even gone to the news to warn the rest of the world about it––left us still intact, we lost members in droves. We should have been happy that the world hadn’t ended. Instead, we became depressed. Or in my case, apathetic. I reminded Michael that time wasn’t relevant, but he didn’t see it that way. All he saw was his failures.

Ouch.
 

I grimaced when I read number four, and tried to remember how I had phrased it in my official report. Perhaps I had been more diplomatic, but tact wasn’t one of my strong suits. Oh, God! If Michael read this, of course he was going to avoid me.

I peeked out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Michael coming up the walkway.

There was no sign of him. Jason was right. Night was coming early.

I went to my closet and pushed aside the few clothes I owned, to reveal a shelving unit. It was my private world, probably the only place on the entire compound that no one else was privy to. Shoved in between my collection of Yankee Candles and Mr. Bubble, was my package of Oreos. The wrapper looked like it had been tinkered with and I counted cookies. There were four missing. My sugar-is-sin boyfriend had been dipping into my stash.

I ate three cookies and put the package back on the shelf. If Michael was going to be stealing from me, he had better not complain when I doubled up on my next trip.

I pushed my clothes back into place and shut the closet door.

The room had darkened and that meant that our meeting was about to begin. Michael always held revivals ‘at dusk.’

I slid out of my beige, knee-length skirt and large, blue T-shirt and dropped them to the floor, toying with the idea of leaving them there for Michael to pick up. Michael couldn’t stand for things to be out of place, and I enjoyed riling him up.
 

Then I remembered the last time I had left my clothes on the ground. Michael didn’t even scold me; he just gave me a disappointed look as he scooped them up and dropped them into the laundry basket. It was fun turning David Banner into The Hulk, but not so entertaining when he morphed into Eyore the Sad Donkey instead.

I kicked my clothes towards the hamper in the bathroom, catching site of my naked reflection in the mirror.

It had been a long time since I had really looked in a mirror.

Vanity was another in a long list of sins we were supposed to check at the door. But unlike junk food, giving up a mirror hadn’t been hard for me. I had never been one of those women who found themselves beautiful, had never been in love with her own reflection. My skin was pale, my hair red and unruly, and my cheeks were marred by a dusting of beige-brown freckles that could not be scrubbed away.
 

But seeing myself in the mirror now, under the unforgiving honesty of our new fluorescent light bulbs, I was surprised to see that the person staring back at me was no longer ‘interesting looking’ but plain. My face was fleshy, and my high cheekbones, once my best feature, had disappeared. There were dark circles beneath my eyes and my skin looked more like chalk than the butter cream Aunt Dora proclaimed it to be when I was a kid.

Worst of all, my belly, which had always been flat, protruded out an inch beyond my hips. Age and junk food were catching up to me, and I wanted to hide it all, before anyone else saw. I sucked in my gut as I slid my white dress over my head. It hugged my waist and hips a little too tightly, straining the material.

I would start dieting tomorrow, I promised myself.

And do more yoga. Maybe even take walks around the garden.

Both my mother and my Aunt Dora were large women, and I hoped it wasn’t genetic.