The Motherwalk

Page 4

"Foul crust of a man's breath, we should have been expecting such a one on this night. I am sorry, Aurora. We have grown complacent, to be taken thus." She reaches out for my hand. "Damn, my head hurts. I imagine I'll have a nice knot to show for this." Raising her to her feet, Elspeth and I help Vanya to a chair. "But this is good, sisters--I can be glad for this desecration. Our enemy has warned us of his revival, and now we may take steps we might otherwise have deemed unnecessary." She and Elspeth have begun exchanging measured glances now, as Elspeth probes at her injured skull; much may pass between two witches' eyes in such circumstances.

Before either can speak more, I declaim in my best light-hearted voice, "Indeed you have it, Vanya my love, for now is my Motherwalk truly safe, as I know and may prepare for my foes. Fool of a man-beast, to attack our very walls--'neath a High Moon still! If this be the pinnacle of our ancient nemesis' potency this night, I fear my greatest danger may lie in over-exercising my vaunted sobriety."

Unfortunately, my sisters are having none of my casual airs.

Wearing her best older sister mask, Elspeth takes the initiative and begins sneaking past me toward the door, most unobtrusively brushing herself off and mumbling the while about witches with delusions of demonic strength. As if on cue, Vanya releases a tiny moan and falls back to the floor. And what is there to be done for that? I go to Vanya and cradle her head in my lap; when I turn my head again, Elspeth has the door locked and has replaced, or rather added to, her elder facade with a look of grim determination. I hate it when she wears that look. I won't postpone my Motherwalk. This is the time of a making.

"Aurora. Surely you realize what this means. It's not now, child. It's not auspicious now. This. . . disturbance. . . calls for investigation--surely you see the extreme danger posed by such an unexpected outburst from our long-dormant adversary? Vanya, you must talk some sense into our willful sister, she's looking at me the way she always does just before she casts me a cantrip." She's right again, of course. I am.

"Aurora. . ." I don't know how well I would have stood up to my beloved Vanya's persuasion, and now I never will, because the second wave of demonic Iblings has chosen that moment to attack. The exploratorium is somehow abruptly filled with howling bat-things and no-longer-polite Wardens loosing their energies right and left in the frighteningly small space available to them. In the instantaneous confusion which descends upon us all, one fact cries out in the chaotic void my mind has become: This is not a "normal" episode in the annals of the coven. There is anguish and death at work here, a terrible fecundity quickening in the night--ranged against my own sacred purpose, it threatens and slavers and now attacks us in our own citadel; I feel a cold rage begin to build within me at the though of such a violation.

. . . I will fear no evil, for the Goddess is within me.

There is just time for this thought before I feel a blow upon the back of my head and the whole mad, babbling cacophony is switched off.

. . . and then switched back on--how much later I haven't any idea--essentially unchanged; so my ears tell me. But when I slowly and painfully open my eyes and manage to obtain a rudimentary focus, I find one essential detail very much changed--at which time a piercing surge of anxiety envaginates me, for I find myself no longer in the exploratorium.

I am in a clearing near the landfill that serves the city. I think. There is a raging bonfire crackling and rushing before me, casting strobic shadows into the midst of what I can only slowly perceive as a Festival of the Father. It is an ugly and terrifying spectacle.

Mostly naked and uniformly begrimed and sweaty, a throng of savage men dance and frenzy about the fire. One of them is a truck driver. One is a doctor, a gynecologist. Two of them work for the local Post Office. The lot of them are not, however, alone. They are not even the key players here. They are the muscle--thugs, and carrion-eaters, with very little spirit left in them.