Chapter 25
Virgil punches at the fire. Flames lick the air and die back down. The coals spark and crackle as he pounds his fire poker into their midst. Sparks light up the sky like lightning bugs on a summer’s evening.
“So, um, Laurie. You want to tell me what that was all about?”
I glance over my shoulder at the house where my mom, Pamela, and Dix are settled in to watch an old VHS tape of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” even though it’s mid-September. Initially, Mama had wanted to watch “Gaslight” or an old Jimmy Stewart movie, but Virgil convinced her to try a long-time favorite of hers that might remind her of happier times—or might remind her of the feeling she had in happier times if not the exact memories.
As for Virgil and me, everyone inside the house thinks that this is our time to do some “work” as I expressed it. They’ve all misinterpreted my words as putting out the fire, raking some stray limbs and leaves, and taking care of some physical labor around the farm in the cool of the early night. What I meant by “work” was that Virgil and I had magickal work to do.
“Laurie?”
I don’t look at him, still. “Mmmm?”
“I asked if you were going to tell me what your mom was talking about.”
“Nope.”
“At this point, it’s sometimes hard to tell if a dementia patient is remembering something real that still upsets them, if they’re just confused, or both. For all I know, your mom is ready to murder some bad guy she saw on TV last night. But if there’s something going on, then you need to tell me.” He pauses, waiting for me to turn to face him. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what it is. I could find out, but spying on you psychically might end our friendship.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. You sound terse and uncomfortable. Are you? Or is ‘I’m fine’ the answer trained into you by people who told you that your feelings didn’t matter or that having feelings at all was not appropriate? So you swallow them, put on a brave face.”
“Stop.”
“Why? Am I too close to the bone?”
“No. You missed entirely the part about putting on a brave face and not showing my emotions or else getting the shit beat out of me. “
Virgil flinches. “There’s that armor I remember so well.”
He’s right. I’m stiff all over, and my shields are raised against any chance of him seeing what I’m really feeling underneath. I am well-practiced at that.
I can still hear my dad growling at me, “You stop that crying right now or I’ll give you something to cry about!”
Or my mom shushing me, saying, “Stop whining about not wanting to go with your Uncle Bobby. You’ll make him mad, and he’ll tell your daddy, and then you’ll get ‘what for’ from your daddy, and I may, too. Do you want another whipping? ’Cause I can’t stop him.”
“Laurie.” Virgil caps my shoulders with his warm hands, then turns me to face him. “I used to watch you at church when I was a little kid. Before you started babysitting for me. You were maybe twelve? I think I was still in first grade. You only had eyes for my big brother, but I idolized you. I was little, but I was watching everything you did. You weren’t even a teenager yet, but to me, you were all grown up and so smart, and so pretty.
My cheeks twitch, wanting to smile. All I remember of Virgil at that age was a totally precocious kid who, when not trailing his big brother, was following me around. He wasn’t terribly good at minding his mom or older relatives and teachers at the time, but anything I told him to do, he was there in an instant. If I needed a glass of water. If I forgot my sweater. If I left my book across the room. I didn’t even have to tell or ask him. All I had to do was look in a certain direction, and the kid was right there, anticipating my needs and filling them as best he could in his clumsy little boy way.
My shoulders soften as I look at him now, a grown man with silver hair in his beard. A man who has lived a full life of fulfilling relationships, a mission in uniform that had left him wounded and hobbling for the rest of his life, and a sense of peace and purpose that comes with his bind rune tattoo and the stag-headed cane carefully leaning against the nearest oak tree. But if I remember him at six, then I must’ve been twelve, and in the clutches then of a pedophile who was so charismatic that his request for my company outweighed my pleas for help. Even before Virgil’s mom hired me as his sitter, I had occasionally used “playing with little Virgil” as an excuse to not be at home on Sunday afternoons. I wouldn’t be there when Bobby showed up, ready to slip his hands down my pants while I stood in full view of my parents with only the open door of his car blocking their view of his transgressions. No, my parents saw none of it, even though it had all happened directly in front of them.
“There they are again. Those shields of yours. Armor to keep anyone from hurting you. Or to keep anyone from seeing what’s going on in your head and heart. You don’t have to tell me anything right now. I’m not here tonight at this fire circle to do work for myself. I’m here to augment whatever work you need done. I’m here for you, Laurie. I always have been. If you feel vulnerable, just know that I’m safe to be around.”
He pulls me to him, and I melt into his embrace. My tears come, hot and fast.
“I came back for you, Laurie.”
Pulling back, I stare into his eyes, fire light dancing in his pupils. “What did you say?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t say anything.” I can feel his breath on my face.
“Yes, you did. What was that last thing you said?” Had I heard him right?
Again, he shakes his head. Squeezing my upper arms, he gives me a quick hug. “I said, I’ve always been here for you.”
“No, you said you came back for me.”
His jaw drops. Virgil takes another step backward and untangles himself from me. He glances around uneasily. “No, Laurie. I swear I didn’t say that.”
“Not out loud,” I hear in my head. Virgil’s voice. I know it when I hear it. Not his voice as a child though, but the voice of a man who’s come back home only months before I have returned.
He takes my hands in his, thumbs lightly smoothing my knuckles, and squeezes. He taps my hands together as if to say, “Break-break! New subject!”
“What is it, Laurie, that you want to manifest for yourself? We’ll work on it together tonight. I’ll give you a boost.”
What do I want? I’ve asked myself that a number of times in the last few years. I’ve been blessed to have love in my past. I have my health now. But what do I really want? What do I need help to manifest that I can’t manifest for myself? I’ve already manifested almost everything I can desire.
Somehow, I managed to leave a home and get the sale price I needed out of it literally hours before it sank into the earth.
I left behind a thriving community of magickal people, mostly seekers but a handful of gifted teachers to guide them.
I have all the powers and supernatural skill set that I dreamed of in my very first assignment within the Grand Coven, when I had to craft a spell that visualized the witch I wanted to be.
I have enough money in the bank and passive income that I don’t have to worry for months at a time, but of course I do, anyway. I have a steady cash flow, as long as I’m doing at least some work.
I have an exciting next phase of my life ready when I am, if only I can decide where I’d like to live next. Maybe close to my first grandchild?
My books and courses on various models of healing centers are popular throughout North America as well as Australia and the United Kingdom.
Sonnet and Christabel, now famously known as the duo, “Ravenz Legacy,” travel around the country. Christabel channels and Sonnet sings inspirational tunes. I suppose I could say that I have not yet manifested a trip to Scotland, a long-time dream of mine, but Edinburgh is on the girls’ to-do list for next year, and I’m thinking of joining them.
But what do I really want? Isn’t life more than a checklist or a bucket list? I’m at the point in my life where my rituals are no longer about begging the Old Gods to make me happy or wealthy or to fetch someone who’ll love me back. My rituals now are almost always about gratitude for what I do have in life.
I form the thought clearly in my head though I cannot yet give it substance because I can’t visualize what it looks like. “I want… to manifest peace in my heart and in my life. I want to lay the old shadows to rest.”
Virgil’s mouth twists into a smile. “I’m not sure you can ever lay shadows to rest. Shadows are dispersed by shining a light on them. You have to confront them.”
I cock my head. “Have you dispersed all of your shadows, Virgil?”
“Every last damned one of them I know of! Not that one doesn’t occasionally pop up and surprise me. I’ve aggressively done my shadow work so that they no longer drive me and, when a new one emerges, I’m able to deal with it—” he makes a thrust-and-parry gesture as if sword fighting— “deftly.”
I suck air through my teeth and make a half-groan, half-whimper sound. “Yeah, that’s been my problem, too. I thought when I went through my Second Degree phase with the Grand Coven and my world got turned upside down that I had gotten rid of most of my shadows, but I’m still finding them. And there’s one here that I thought I had buried.”
Bobby.
“But,” I continue as I ignore Virgil’s raised eyebrow, “it seems to want to confront me even if I don’t want to confront it. Shadows have a way of resurfacing. I thought I could deal with it, but the one person who can give me the closure I need, not only to disperse but destroy my shadows—” I glance over my shoulder at the house where my mom is being watched over for her own protection— “wouldn’t give me that, and now she can’t.”
He squeezes my hands again. “You can disperse your shadows with light and defeat them, but they’ll always be a part of you. That’s the mistake people make. You wouldn’t be the same person if inexplicably those shadows were removed from your foundation and from the cracks that make you who you are. Your whole foundation of who you are would crumble. So, it’s not that you ever exile your shadows, but that you figure out how to live with them and tame them and make them your partners in creating a better life for yourself.”
“Are you saying that I should stop wrestling with my demons and snuggle with them instead?” I try to make a joke of it, but my humor falls flat.
Virgil averts his eyes, then glances up at the full moon peeking out above a line of oaks to the east of us. Though it was probably orange when it first reached above the horizon, the Full Harvest Moon is now a pale yellow. “I’m saying that it’s not about getting rid of your shadows so much as it is integrating your shadows and light.”
So what do I want?
Within Virgil’s circle, the night air is cool enough to trigger chill bumps across my arms again. I cross my arms and rub in the warmth of my palms. A summer wind catches the clouds north of us and pushes them east, toward the waiting moon. The tension of a distant storm flickers in the sultry air outside of our circle.
I’ve made peace with losing Jesse. I’ve made peace with Jan. I’ve made as much peace as I care to with Dragon and her Grand Coven and with Donna and the Elders’ Coven. I made peace with my dad—or rather, his death gave me peace. I haven’t made peace with my mom yet. I’m not sure it’s possible. It’s a shame that everything between us from childhood until now has been sweet and close with one exception of her failure to protect me from Bobby. I’ve tried to make excuses that she did the best she could. That’s what all parents do—their best—but I can’t shake the truth: she could have done better. The best she could do wasn’t enough.
I’ve put everything else in my past to rest. As far as I can tell.
Sure, the whole Bobby situation is an exception in a long and loving relationship with my mom, but it’s a hell of an exception.
“I want… peace. That’s all. Just peace.”
One eyebrow shoots up. “Like, world peace? Because this should really be a tiny bit more personal. It’s okay for the big desires you want to manifest to be Laurie-centric.”
I laugh uneasily. “Yeah, sure, world peace is good, too.”
Great. Now I feel selfish for thinking of myself instead of the rest of the world.
“Okay, okay. Peace with my neighbors and community. Peace with my past. Peace of mind. And peace in my heart.”
“Is that all?” His voice is light, playful, but deceptively serious.
I think for a second, then nod. Somehow, asking for or even trying to manifest peace feels like the domain of the elderly. When I was a maiden, had I been a witch then, I would’ve asked for love and a home where I could raise a family and partnership and to be attractive and maybe great sex. When I was in the mother phase of the trinity, I might’ve asked for—and often did—protection for my children, a safe home for them, and for them not to endure what I did in my childhood. In hindsight, for all my efforts, I had failed Sonnet before I finally managed to get it right. As a crone, however, it’s peace that has become so important to me. Maybe it’s just that I’m tired of dealing with bullshit and the way I express that is by looking for peace. I vividly recall Jan, my dearest and best friend, who was some years older than me, desiring peace in her life. I hadn’t understood then. I was still young enough to equate peace with boredom.
“All right, then. Peace, it is. In any and all forms that you wish.” Virgil taps my fist with his. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t help it. I keep glancing over my shoulder at the field, where my cousins—or someone—followed Virgil and his platter of foil-wrapped brownies, and where I’ve had my own vision of someone chasing me across the same field toward a bonfire.
Virgil follows my gaze, and his face softens in understanding. “Ah, I understand now,” he says, his smile widening. “But if you’ve had a vision of someone following you at night across that field, then there’s a very simple risk mitigation plan.” He motions me closer with one finger and takes my hands. “You just don’t wander across that field after dark. That’s it.”
I laugh out loud. “Ha! I’ll remember that. Thanks.”
“Prophecies can be a curse if all you do is treat them as a preview of your future. That’s precisely why I never accepted the gift of omni-presence from my priesthood. On the other hand, as long as your timeline has some fluidity, prophecies can be a blessing. They allow you a chance to correct your course before you get there or to know that you’re on the right track. It’s the old argument between predestination and free will, though occasionally, they end up in the same place. You’ve been given a prophecy that shows you’re in danger at some point when you walk across that field at night. Free will says that you can change that by simply not putting yourself in that situation. Predestination says that no matter what you do, you’re gonna end up in that field, anyway. So, which do you believe?”
My fists relax in his hands. “I guess I believe in free will. If I didn’t, isn’t that what being a witch is all about? Change? Why else do a ritual to manifest anything at all if we already believe that our destiny is set in stone?”
Slowly, Virgil nods. “Then I guess you believe you can bring peace into your life. And I guess I believe I have the power to help you.”
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