Chapter 8
Sunday – New Moon in Leo, Waxing
I have never been so glad as I am tonight for my feet to touch the ground after a long plane ride. I have a thing for earth as an element. There’s something about it that calms me, grounds me—literally. I read somewhere that if we’re missing a particular element in our astrological charts, then we’re likely to have an affinity for it. We crave it, just as I crave having my feet in the grass to calm me down or to energize me. The fondness for the missing element adds balance, and in my chart, I have virtually no earth and very little fire, especially in my inner planets.
I’m a Pisces girl. Triple Pisces with lots and lots of air, almost exclusively in Aquarius. I guess that means I have lots of great ideas but, as a Pisces, I feel them deeply. Sometimes I wonder if “Triple Pisces” is a personality disorder, but I cannot change the stars I was born under.
The fire I have is mainly in my outer planets and asteroids, which relates back to the fire of my spirit and my fury for change and transformation. But earth? Almost none. Nothing much to ground me. I guess this is why my heart is always on my sleeve and my head in the air.
But since my divorce and now since my Third Degree, I’m becoming more and more okay with that. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with me. It’s the way I’m wired, and I would neither change it nor medicate it for anything in the world.
I’m driving home from the airport now, ten o’clock on a Sunday night with my lone suitcase in the backseat of my black Mercedes. I’m glad now that I didn’t drag all that camping equipment to Maryland and back home to Florida. It’s been a long day, given the threats of Hurricane Charley and not knowing whether my plane would make it back to Florida.
It’s been a long day, too, because of what’s happened over the weekend. Months ago, I had paid to camp for the whole weekend. I had paid for all of my meals, and yet, I was forced to leave early or face being escorted out by both park rangers and Dragon Hart’s security squad. That had meant I would have to sleep in a hotel and pay out even more money there amid my divorce when I don’t have money to pay out for spare expenses. Thankfully, my airfare to the Grand Coven meeting was paid for months ago. I’m also fortunate that Barbara offered Donna and me the guestrooms in her house.
Leo never came to say goodbye, but Tyler did, smelling strongly of dragon’s blood, his signature scent. I was sure when I hugged Tyler goodbye that, yes, he was the one who’d sent the package anonymously to my post office box. He couldn’t or wouldn’t leave Dragon Hart entirely—maybe because he feared losing Leo—but he’d done what he could to warn me. During our hug, he promised to send his gift basket when he could. Then he cried as he and everyone remaining with the Grand Coven turned their backs to me to let me know I was dead to them.
I’d not been able to change my airfare for an earlier flight home. Even if the airlines had been accommodating, the hurricanes had seen that I could not yet return home.
As I turn into my driveway, I’m bone-weary. I’ve already called the girls from my layover in Atlanta, and they’re to be home and waiting for me. They’re old enough to be alone for a few hours, so there’s no problem there. Quent was to have dropped them off at the house at seven o’clock and they were to have worked on their homework and gotten ready for me to come home. Yes, they could have been sent to bed, but I know they won’t stay there, and they won’t sleep. They’ll want to see me and know I’m back. Both are too frightened I might die, and they’ll be sent to live with their father permanently. I’m sure they’ll be awake, and I have missed them so much. I’d wanted to take them with me on this trip, but I couldn’t, and now in hindsight, it was good that I didn’t.
Quent’s car is sitting in the driveway. My stomach knots up. What’s he doing here? Yet, for the twist of nerves in my stomach, there’s something different about this. It’s… power. Anger, too. It’s anger, and it’s power. Armed with the energy of my newly Elevated Third Degree, I feel powerful, bright, shiny, like nothing can stop me. I like this feeling. A lot. I’ve put up with so much crap from him, and now he can’t touch me. I’m strong, and I’m much stronger than he is. He doesn’t know who he’s messing with here. He’s messing with a Child of the Old Ones, a Daughter of the Dark Goddess!
I exit my Mercedes and pause for just a second at the outdoor altar I’ve set up at the willow tree. It’s a simple pile of stones. A stranger or someone who didn’t know better might think a pet had been buried there. They are beautiful, flat stones acquired from mountain creeks. Some, the girls picked out for me. We had asked permission from the spirits of the land and streams, and they had seemed happy with my love for the stones and my connection to them.
The rock on the top, the Coven Stone, is one that the Elders of Dragon Hart blessed for me a year ago as a way of tying me back to the Grand Coven when I was physically so far away. It’s an odd-shaped rock from the State Park where Dragon Hart meets every year. If I use my imagination really hard, I can see five points to the rock, like a pentagonal star is built inside it. As I stand before it, it zings with energy as though it recognizes me. I touch the braided cords under my T-shirt—wrapped around me three times and well-hidden—and I feel safe.
I am not like other mortals. The affirmation repeated at my Initiation and Elevations rings in my mind.
I open the door and pass the Main Altar. Like the Coven Stone, it pulsates in greeting, recognizing me as I enter the foyer of my home. The altar is an old library table that Quent’s mom threw out, and then two months after she gave it to me, she discovered it was actually an antique, worth several thousand dollars. She’s never failed to remind me of this.
Over the past three or four years, I’ve done a lot of magickal work at this table. It’s definitely been infused with energies. I’ve done spells here for protection, for healing. Rituals that included facing the South and calling upon the Archangel Michael to wield his mighty sword and cleave truth from deception in the case of Quent. I have prayed at this altar many times, but tonight, after the girls go to bed and certainly after Quent is gone, will be the first time as a Third Degree. I’ll plan a gratitude spell.
No. Maybe it’s better if I do a protection ritual first. Dragon is angry, so angry that I could feel her all the way home from Maryland. Though I have wards of protection in the house, I’ve never had any against members of my coven.
“Mommy!”
I hear both girls squeal as they realize I’m home, then the patter of bare feet on the floor as they round the corner in pajamas and then throw their arms around me. They feel wonderful to hug. I’ve missed them so much.
“Wow,” Rhiannon whispers in my ear. “Mommy, you’re vibrating.”
Sonnet nods into my chest. “You’re warm all over. Like really hot. Like a fire.”
Quentin joins us in the foyer and lays a hand on each girl’s shoulder and rubs as if he’s claiming them for himself. Both girls simultaneously shrug off his grip and hug me harder. They’ve spent two school nights and a weekend with their dad, and it’s probably more time than he’s spent with them in the past two years. The judge says the minimum time he can spend with them is every Wednesday night for three hours and every other weekend. He complains that it’s not enough, that he’s an equal parent, and yet it’s more time than he realizes, more of their daily lives than he’s used to. Equal parenting sounds good in theory, and it’s important to his image, but in real life, it doesn’t work that way. It never has. Not with us.
“Girls,” he instructs, “why don’t you go to your mother’s car and get her bags out for her. Give us a chance to talk.”
The girls don’t let go of me. He presses his lips into a hard line of disapproval. I can feel the dark energy all around him. The weird-ass diet he found online two years ago, the one he’s tried to impose on the rest of the family, has left him emaciated, his eyes sunken, and he’s lost most of his hair. He takes a daily double handful of supplements he buys from the diet creator’s website, but they don’t seem to help. I get a good look at him now, both in the physical and in the spiritual sense, and I understand why Rhiannon asks over and over, “Mommy, what did you ever see in Daddy? How could you have ended up with him?”
He’s no longer the handsome gentleman-about-town: he looks like walking death. He’s still popular around town, but the private side of him at home is as opposite as possible of his public persona. There’s a sense of cancer or something dark all around him, eating away at him. Hepatitis crosses my mind. AIDS crosses my mind. Something’s wrong with him medically, and for as often as I’ve begged him to talk to Dr. Matthews about it, he’s blown me off or outright refused. He tells me there’s nothing wrong with him, yet he now weighs less than I do. Friends and acquaintances who haven’t seen him in several months often call and ask me what he’s dying of or if he’s terminally ill. They try to ask it gently, but they’re clearly concerned. To him, though, he’s perfectly healthy—physically, emotionally, spiritually—and it’s the rest of us who are ill. There is something deep inside him he is denying as surely as he is denying himself nourishment.
“Girls!” he says in a stern voice that makes all three of us shudder. “I said, go get your mother’s bags out of her car.”
The girls sigh and huff, then race out to the car to make the chore as quick as possible.
“How was your trip?” he asks, as careful as ever to make polite conversation. Polite conversation is important. It has to do with image.
“The trip was fine.”
I give him no more, no less. The previous two years when I’d called him from the camping trip at the Grand Coven meeting, he’d been light and airy whenever he’d talked about how things were at home, but the second I mentioned how things were going in Maryland or something about a workshop I’d attended on “Historical Astrology: Fixed Stars in the Middle Ages,” he’d immediately clammed up, sullen, punishing me for being gone, for defying him. If we didn’t talk about my Grand Coven meetings, then none of it existed. Except that I always felt like I didn’t exist when he gave me the silent treatment.
He smiles through gritted teeth and makes an earnest attempt to be pleasant. “I’m glad you had a good time. We made out here okay without you. The girls were very good. Maybe if you and I can work things out and get back together, then maybe I could attend your next camping trip with you.”
Yeah. Right. After all the times I’ve begged him? Now, when he thinks it’s the right thing to say to get back into my life, he’s willing to act like a loving partner? I don’t believe him.
“There won’t be any more camping trips to Maryland. I’ve left Dragon Hart.”
He jerks his head up and grins. This time, it’s genuine. “Really? You left? You’ve given up the whole witchcraft pretense?”
“No,” I answer firmly. “I’ve left Dragon Hart.”
“But… but why?”
He’s still happy. I can hear it in his voice. In a way, he blamed my magick for my decision to not be married to him anymore. He was right. Without my magick and without the training I had in Dragon Hart, I never would have had the courage or the insight to leave him.
“I’m still a witch,” I tell him, “whether or not you like it.” His smile fades just a little. “And I’m still Wiccan. I’m now a Third Degree High Priestess of Wicca. Again, whether or not you like it.” His smile fades a little more. “But I have left Dragon Hart. I’m no longer a part of that organization.”
He shrugs. “Wh-why? All this time that you’ve been with them. Why leave them now?”
“Plain and simple? I looked at Dragon and realized that she was a verbal and emotional abuser. Like you are.”
His gaze shifts downward but only for a split second. He doesn’t deny it.
“Well.” His tone is patronizing. “I know that was very hard for you, and I know it took a lot of courage for you to stand up to somebody like Lady Dragon.”
I’m not sure if he means it or not, but I shake my head. “Actually, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. You, Quent. You were the one who was hard to leave. After you, everything else has been a cakewalk.”
All he can do is blink. Then he gathers himself and leans against the door to keep the girls out. “We need to talk about finances.”
Yes. Of course. Finances. He moved out around the first day of the month, refusing to leave right up until then, even with my lawyer getting a court order to have him thrown out at midnight. He’d barely made the deadline and only then with his computer under one arm and a couple of changes of clothes under the other. He’d planned to come back. He was sure that I wouldn’t go through with the divorce. He still is. And with every attempt of his to control my life and to keep me in a marriage I don’t want to be in, I’ve become more and more sure that the divorce will happen and that I will never back down now.
“There’s a problem with our joint bank account,” he says.
The joint account we’ve had for most of our marriage. For the first years we were partnered up legally, we’d kept separate accounts and a household account that we paid expenses out of, and we’d each put in half of the needed cash, even though his income was two-thirds of our combined income, and I never had much of anything left over in those days. He’d insisted we combine the accounts. Not that he thought it was unfair that I put in the larger percentage of my salary but because he didn’t think it showed my proper trust in him by keeping a separate checking account. He was determined to have our money put together. I didn’t understand why then, but I am slowly coming to realize that we have lived off my salary for years, and I have no idea what he did with his.
“What’s wrong with our joint account?” I ask. “I told you I was no longer paying anything out of the joint account and that I’ve opened a new account at another bank. You said you were going to do the same.”
“Lauren, I haven’t started a separate account yet. I’ll do that later.” Meaning he hopes I’ll withdraw from the divorce before he has to change accounts. “And I know you have a separate account, too, but you need to put that money back into our account.”
I blink at him. “What money?”
“The money you took out of our joint checking account. I’ve already paid my security deposits and my first month’s rent. That was six thousand dollars right there.”
I swallow. Six thousand dollars? That was rent and a security deposit on one of the priciest apartments in our small town. He made a huge deal of not moving out of the house until he had no choice, then he’d made a big deal of not having a place to stay when he hadn’t looked. Even though his mother had offered her empty basement apartment for a few months—for free. And his brother had offered his spare bedroom for a few months—for free. And his other brother had offered his vacation house for a few months—for free. And his sister had offered her grown-and-gone daughter’s bedroom for a few months—for free. All within five miles of our house. He insisted it was incredibly difficult and extremely expensive to find any place he could rent on a month-to-month basis. He refused to rent any place longer than the minimum allowed, which was two months. He wanted to drive home the point that a physical separation, however temporary, would cost money, and money was important.
His mother, on the other hand, had been magnanimous enough to recommend he stay in our house with the girls, and I could stay in her basement apartment while she “worked” on me and helped me see the error of my foolish ways so he and I could work things out. I got the same offer from all his siblings and two of his friends. I’d seen how my mother-in-law and her adult children and grandchildren had sidled up next to Quent’s sister’s estranged husband, wormed his secrets and fears out of him, and then used them against him. I’d seen her do the same with her neighbor. There was no way in hell I was going to let them do the same to me or leave my kids home alone with Quent while he’s online, making arrangements with his five-hundred-dollar-an-hour escorts and his webcam cuties.
“Anyway,” Quent tells me, “there’s no money left in our joint checking account. And your lawyer contacted mine about paying child support? The amount he quoted was absolutely ridiculous.”
“The amount my lawyer quoted to yours, Quent, was based on your income. There’s a formula for the State of Florida. It’s based on your salary and my salary and our joint income for the past year.”
His face darkens. “I don’t have the money to pay that! I don’t know where you think I’d get that kind of money. You already emptied our joint account—”
“No. No, I didn’t empty anything. I opened a new account with the paycheck I got after you moved out. And I’ve paid several big utility bills you neglected to pay during the summer so I could continue services. I didn’t take half of the money out of our joint account even though I was entitled to it by law. I left every penny in there, including my last full paycheck from before you moved out, which was far more than was required of me. If you’ve overspent it—”
“I haven’t overspent anything! I’m not the one who spends money like crazy. I’ve been going to a counselor. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? For me to get counseling? Well, I’ve been going to a counselor, and I’ve told him what’s been going on between us.”
Clearly, this isn’t the nice Presbyterian minister he’s speaking of. The minister had told him to get his arse out of the house and give me some time to work through the trauma and heal. That was the last time he saw the minister for counseling. He’s switched over to a therapist his employer pays for. I’m not sure what Quent’s told the new guy, but I have a feeling he’s left out some pertinent facts.
“My therapist says there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s all your problem. I’m tired of being the bad guy here, you know? I’m not a bad person. I am fine. I’ve looked at all my issues in the past couple of weeks, and I am fine. I’m fine! I’m emotionally healthy! And if there’s anything wrong with anybody, it’s you! You just need to grow up and forget about all this witchcraft shit you keep spouting and these… these shitty little books and courses you want to write that aren’t worth a hill of beans and get back to concentrating on your real career. You know, if you’d concentrated harder on your career over all these years, you would’ve been bringing in a better salary, and we’d have a better lifestyle than we do. Instead, you’re just trying to kick me out on the street!”
The veins in his forehead bulge. His cheeks are red… purple… darkening. What’s in his eyes is… hatred.
“Lauren, if we’re able to work things out, I’ll tell you one thing: things are going to change between us. It’s not going to be like it has been.”
I start to agree, but he cuts me off.
“We’ll get to do things that I want to do for a change. You’ll stop talking about witchcraft in public and stop writing about it and stop embarrassing me in front of my friends with it. You know, I didn’t even tell my parents and my family where you were these past few days and why I got stuck watching the girls. I had to tell my family you’d gone to a writers’ conference because at least then it was legitimate. There was no way I was going to tell them you were with your… your… cult! How much exactly did that trip cost? That money should have been in our joint account!”
I don’t remind him of his last tour of strip clubs across Canada with his boyfriends or the $13,195.27 hotel bill—in American dollars—I’d spotted before it vanished. Instead, I speak with a calm that I don’t quite understand. “My trip was paid for months ago with money that was a personal gift to me.” From the Elders.
He grits his teeth and shakes his head. He reminds me of a bulldog. “You just need to concentrate on business and grow up and stop playing around like you are and take life more seriously. You only live once.” Before I can say anything, he adds, “And I don’t want to hear any more of that reincarnation shit. You need to focus harder on making a living and having the kind of life that we want.”
“We?”
“Yeah. We. Instead of us being broke all the time. It’s all about you, Lauren. You, you, you! You want to quit work and stay home with the girls while you write your silly little courses and your worthless books. You’re still mad at me for that, aren’t you? You know we can’t afford it.”
I’m boiling inside, yet I don’t show it at all. I let it pass through me and over me. I remind myself for only a moment that no, we couldn’t afford for me to stay home with the girls and have my dreams of writing and coaching full-time, yet we’d paid more in taxes for each of the last five years than I’d grossed at a day job I found profoundly unfulfilling and often spent ninety hours a week trudging through. Quent readily paid for anything his buddies from high school wanted, often keeping it from me until one of them accidentally mentioned a new computer or expensive gifts while I was in the room. Yet, we never had the money for me to follow my dreams, even though I envisioned a richer, happier home life for us all. We could live the life that only he imagined.
“You know,” he says, “I’ve been thinking. I think we can get back together, and we can work this out. I know I said I would not contest the divorce, but I’ve changed my mind. I am going to contest it. I’m going to contest it on the grounds that our marriage is not irreconcilable because I believe we can get back together, and I believe we can make it as a couple.”
He must have forgotten he’s told me this twice already. Only, not this phony reason he’s contesting it. Maybe he does believe our marriage can be saved, but only at my expense.
His sunken eyes are bulging now. He’s yelling.
But I’m not cringing. I’m still okay, I’m still okay, I’m still okay.
“But Lauren, things are going to change. Things are most certainly going to change. And you’re the one who’s going to do the changing!” He pulls the door open and almost falls over the kids with my suitcase and then stomps off to his car. A few seconds later, he squeals out of the driveway while I’m still standing here, watching, dumbfounded.
“Mommy?” the girls are saying, hugging me. “Mommy, it’s okay. Mommy, don’t be upset.”
I’m trying not to show it, but I am upset. Quent couldn’t hold it together long enough to cajole me into borrowing money from Jan just to refurbish the bank account he’s depleted on God-knows-what. I’m trying to be calm—I’m okay, I’m okay—but the girls seem so worried about me. They won’t stop hugging me.
Then I realize that the air is coming out of my lungs in a wheezing sound. Sonnet runs to get me a glass of ice water.
I didn’t mean to, but I let him get to me, just that quickly. It isn’t as bad as usual, and standing up to him was easier. I’ll thank my Third Degree Elevation for that, but Third Degree or not, I can’t change overnight what’s been a part of my life for over two decades. I can’t stop cringing at the sight of him simply because I got my Third Degree a few days ago. It’s too ingrained, like the indention on my ring finger where I used to wear my wedding band. It’s been months since I’ve worn it, but the indention is so deep that it looks as though I took the band off only minutes ago. This history with Quent is a part of me, whether or not I like it, and it won’t fade overnight, and it won’t fade easily.
Even if Leo swears that a new man is going to be popping into my life any day now.
Gods.
Right now, I don’t want to be around any man at all. I just want to be left alone. I just want to be free. I just want to be by myself. I’m raw, and I’m wounded, and I need time to heal.
Gods, send me a healer. I send my silent prayer into the night air as I stand between my front door and my altar. And when I do fall in love again, make him a man with integrity who’ll love me exactly as I am, a man who’ll “get” my need to write and teach and who’ll understand my magickal nature and be my emotional support and let me be his.
I let Quent throw me off balance. Damn it. I did. I tried not to. I didn’t mean to. I was calm in front of him, but on the inside, I’m nothing but boiling jelly.
Sonnet hugs me even harder. She’s my little empath. She can feel the things I feel. It’s been that way with her for several years now. I knew it that first night she huddled in her bed, crying in pain because of what she felt, and what she felt was how I felt the night Quent was so angry he’d locked me out of our bedroom. I’d slept in bed with her, which wasn’t that unusual, given that she’s prone to nightmares. But on that night, while I’d semi-slept, she had curled up next to me, shaking all over, so tied into my third chakra that she knew every vibration I felt, no matter how I tried to hide it.
Sonnet is the one who said to me, even when she was a tiny girl, “Mommy, why is that when you’re smiling and everyone else thinks you’re happy, I’m the only one who knows how sad you really are?” She and I were connected that way. We always have been. Since her birth.
“Mommy,” Rhiannon tries to soothe me. “Come sit down. We’ve got some pillows on the floor in the family room, and they’re prepared just for you so you can get comfy and tell us all about your trip.”
Rhiannon isn’t an empath, but she is an intuitive. She knows what’s going on. Probably far better than anyone realizes.
The family room looks exactly the way it did when Quent lived here. He hasn’t picked up the furniture yet. So far, he’s refused to. He tells me there’s nothing in the house that has any sentimental value, including all the furniture that was a personal gift from me. There’s one ironic exception to his blanket refusal: he’s suddenly become attached to his mother’s old library table in the foyer, the table I use as my Main Altar and where I’ve done most of my magickal work.
The family room is in the process of being reborn. It’s the room that the girls renamed a year ago as the “TV Room” because there was no “family” to it anymore. Instead, this room is where Quent spent fifteen hours a day on the weekends, watching episode after episode of some old comedy or asshole detective show he’d chosen to binge, refusing to go anywhere with the girls and me as a family and, at the same time, angry if we went anywhere without him. The rest of us ended up tiptoeing around the house and trying not to disturb him while he watched episode after episode after episode after episode. He’d bought a new TV, bigger and better than ever before to go with multiple streaming subscriptions and nine hundred channels.
The girls had merely shaken their heads and asked why we needed so many channels. They knew the only time that they would get with him would be in front of the TV with him. The rest of the time he would spend supposedly at work or at the frisbee field or on the basketball court with his male friends. He replaced his multiple hours per day of porn addiction with TV and let me know constantly what a terrible sacrifice it was but that he was, after all, at home and not doing anything wrong. Physically, he might have been home, but emotionally? He’d never been farther away.
I sit on the pillows with the girls and think about how I want to change this room. I want to make it different, make it mine. I want to get rid of this furniture that reeks of nothing but TV-watching. I want to throw it all out.
But that assumes, of course, that I will go through with the divorce. I’m pretty sure now that I will.
I know, I know.
My friends think I’m stupid for having second thoughts, but I’ve invested so much into this marriage. The hope that Quent really will change is so seductive. Shiny. A glimmer. The times when things were good between us, they were really good. At least, I think they were. But those had been only crumbs, and I’m still waiting for the feast.
The sadness I have is not for what we once had but for what was never there, no matter how much I wanted it to be or how much I tried to make it be there.
If he doesn’t come back, if I go through with the divorce, then I want to get rid of all this old furniture that belonged to his mother and various distant relatives. It will have to go back to her. I never wanted it. She just needed a place to store her unwanted old furniture, and somehow it became ours, and then I couldn’t get rid of it or replace it or send it back or give it away or throw it away. Because it belonged to his mom, and she didn’t want it back, and we didn’t have room for furniture that was any nicer. It wasn’t antique. It was just junk that she was too sentimental about to get rid of when she got new furniture, and our house was big enough to store it in. It wasn’t my style, wasn’t my taste, wasn’t me. Hell, it wasn’t even Quent.
If I have a chance to re-do this room, I’ll do it in greens for growth and purple for magick, and I’ll have walls that have color to them. None of this brown-carpet-white-wall crap Quent had insisted on year after year after year. Something in this house will finally reflect me. But first, first I should re-do the master bedroom. If I go through with the divorce, that is.
I recline on the floor pillows with the girls, and I tell them all about my trip, every detail. They cheer when I tell them how I left Dragon. They want to touch the cords around my waist, under my T-shirt. They tell me they feel the vibrations from the cords and the glow from me. I still can’t quite calm down after the confrontation with Quent, but I give the girls hugs and slip off to bed, anyway. I’ll get some sleep and then tomorrow, I’ll do some protection rituals against both Dragon and Quent.
Quent slept in my bed last night and let the girls sleep in their beds. He didn’t have my permission to be back in the house, but he took advantage of the situation. Nothing new there. I don’t want to sleep in the bed after him. His energy is still there. I’ll purge it tomorrow but for now, I’ll sleep in one of the twin beds I’ve pushed together in the guest room. The girls crawl in beside me.
They fall asleep first. The rhythm of their breathing gentle and steady. Soothing.
Home. I’m home.
I’ve started my new life. I’m still in the glow of my Third Degree. Life will be good now. Lady Zephyr had predicted that one’s Third Degree is a series of Second and Third Degree moments, little trials to get you on track and teach you things and then moments of great joy and freedom and connection to the Old Gods. At the moment, I just feel fantastic, and I want to feel fantastic, and I like feeling fantastic. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt good.
I close my eyes and open them, close my eyes and open them. Close my eyes and open…
There’s something in the room with me.
The girls sprawl at my back, with Sonnet pressed close against my spine and Rhiannon flailed against the wall where the twin beds have been pushed together and into the corner of the room. This is the room that feels good, the one where the fairies live. We feed them every day from a little bowl of milk. Ever since we invited them into the house at Solstice last winter, we’ve offered them food and shelter.
It’s strange what happens with the milk. Under normal circumstances, it would sour within several days, but when fed to the fairies, left out for their energies to feed off, strange things happen with the milk. It doesn’t smell or stink up the room. When the negativity in the house is worst, the energy in this room is still good. This is the best-feeling place in the entire house. Then the milk instead turns hard as a rock and sits in the glass. It turns hard fast. Within hours. It doesn’t sour over a period of days. It’s as if all the nutrients and energies are sucked out of it almost immediately. The more negativity in the house, the faster it happens. Sometimes, when Quent lived here, the milk was changed twice a day.
The thing that’s in the room with me now is not a fairy, and it’s not of the fairies. I can feel it. It’s not that light, flitty, fairy energy. This is different. Dark. Ominous. I see it forming in front of me, across the room, as I lie with my cheek against the pillow, eyes open, watching it.
I’m not asleep. I have not slept yet.
It forms in profile. Stylized. A metallic, silvery gray. Its outlined curls coil this way and that. Somehow it looks Transylvanian to me. It’s Old World. Romanian? Maybe Germanic. Definitely not Celtic… or Egyptian… or Norse… or Greek…. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, but out of dark vapor, it takes shape. Solid. Metallic.
From where I stretch out in my bed, I see its head and chest. I hold my breath. I don’t move. I’m not asleep, and this is real.
It’s a dragon. A metallic, silver-gray, Transylvanian dragon sitting in profile in front of me, its eyes looking straight out, jaws open, teeth sharp, steamy drool dripping over the dark gums.
Its eyes angle straight toward the North, then its gaze cuts toward me, toward the West, and it sees me in my bed. It says nothing, but I know its purpose. Its purpose is to scare me to death. Anything short of that would be a failure.
Nevertheless, I don’t move. I know what it is. I know who it is. It’s Dragon.
Lady Dragon, I hear her correct me.
I’ve heard about this. I’ve heard from Donna and the other now-former Elders about how Dragon learned to use astral projection to visit her students, usually coming to them to let them know to contact her in the days before texting was so popular. It’s a conscious ability she has, and while it started as a way of getting messages to her loved ones, I’ve also heard that she’s used this to frighten people when she’s angry.
It made little sense to me before. I couldn’t imagine it. But now it… she… stands in front of me, a dragon preparing to eat me alive!
I should have done a protection ritual. I should have made preparations. I should have finished warding the house. But I’d been too tired, too off-balance from my confrontation with Quent.
Help me, Gods, I think to myself. Help me, Lord Herne, Cernunnos. I’m not sure why I call on Him instead of the Goddess, but it feels right. Herne, Great Hunter, protect me.
I call upon the God, something I haven’t done so very often since I became a witch seven years ago. I rarely called upon Him in my First Degree, though a little more in my Second Degree when I immersed myself in those masculine energies. I haven’t thought as much about Him as I need to. Calling on Him now comes instinctively, but He is not the God of my Baptist childhood. This is something much more primal.
I cannot move. My body has turned to lead. No matter how hard I try, I cannot lift even my head from my pillow. All I can do is lie here, poisoned and paralyzed, and just watch as the dragon turns, razor-sharp teeth, acid-hot drool seeping from the gums, eyes gleaming with anger and betrayal.
Help me, Herne! The words do not even escape my throat. The best I can do is think them. I haven’t even the strength of my own to raise my voice to the Old Gods to save me like I did as a girl running from a predator in the woods.
I feel the breath of the dragon on my bare feet where they stick out from under the edge of the covers to stave off hot flashes. I feel the weight of the dragon on the floor as it crosses the room toward me, the joints of its legs bending deliberately, heavily, moving forward, mouth leaning in close, teeth above my throat.
Help me, Herne!
A black vapor forms between the dragon and me and swirls around, taking form. A stag! Mighty and angry and boasting antlers like I’ve never seen on this earthly plane!
I blink. Herne. The Stag is Herne, my Hunter God.
He lowers His head to make sure the dragon can see the sharp points of His antlers, but all she does is snarl back at Him, blowing steam through her nostrils. He is not amused. He shakes the mighty rack on His head and then lunges, skewering the dragon in the throat. He pulls back and lunges again, this time in the heart. Blood seeps and covers her. She does not die. She merely fades to curls of smoke… and is gone. The Stag looks over His shoulder, back to me. Scarlet drips from His antlers. He lowers His head and gives it a little nod as if to acknowledge me, to let me know He is here if I should ever need Him. And then He, too, is gone.
“Mommy!” Rhiannon screams for me.
Suddenly I can move. I fling myself in the other direction, rolling over in bed and reaching across my sleeping Sonnet to shake Rhiannon awake. But she’s already awake, awake and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, terror still painted on her young face.
“Are you okay?” I whisper. I’m calmer than I expect to be.
She hesitates, then nods and cuddles closer to Sonnet and me. “I had a bad dream,” she tells me.
“It’s okay. It’s all gone now.”
She shakes her head frantically. “No, it’s… it’s still here. It was awful.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Sometimes a little catharsis is good for the dreamer.
Rhiannon snuggles closer. She curls in against my arm, drawing it to her and holding on. “There was this thing,” she says. “It started at my feet.” Her voice trembles. “It was eating me alive!”
“It’s okay, sweetheart.”
“It was big and mean and metal, and it had these really sharp teeth. It was eating me!” Her gaze locks with mine. “It was some kind of animal, like a wolf or a… a—” her eyes widen—“a dragon.”
Damn it. Damn her!
I bolt upright out of bed and head toward my Main Altar while Rhiannon snuggles next to her little sister. It’s one thing to mess with me, but to mess with my kids? Oh, hell, no! Dragon met Rhiannon once, at last year’s Grand Coven meeting. They’d met on the physical plane and a connection had been made, so Dragon could reach her on the astral. Sonnet, on the other hand, was safe. They’d never met. Dragon could establish that connection only through me, and I now visualize my protective shields around my babies.
I lean against the Main Altar, relish its solidity. I should have warded before going to bed. I should not have let Quent throw me off balance. I can’t take it back, but I can stop it now.
I grab a pen and small square of notepaper, then draw a pentagram on it. In the middle of the pentagram, I write Dragon’s names, both her magickal name and her mundane name. I put the names I know of her cronies, her bodyguards, the ones she was drawing energy from. I write the name, too, of the two Vodoun priests she’s become associated with. There’s something about this magick she’s using that feels different from the energies of The Morrigan and Herne. Dark, like the Old Gods are dark, but dark in a different way.
A different flavor of dark. She’s pulling bits and pieces from various magickal systems and piecing them together. She’s gone far beyond Eclectic Wicca to build her own practice and make sure no one else knows all the tools she can use against them.
My stomach twists in knots. I pull my cords under my T-shirt tighter around me. I am not like other mortals….
I place a picture atop the altar, face up. A ceramic tile of The Morrigan. A beautiful Celtic piece of artwork given to me by a Dragon Hart Initiate as a thank-you for playing the part of the Western Gate at her Initiation. On top of it, I place the square of names on the paper, and on top of that, a mirror, face down. It’s a simple ward, but it’s been effective in the past. I invoke The Morrigan and Herne to watch over me and mine, over my house and over my family and to protect this property and keep it safe from all intrusion but especially from the intrusion of Dragon and her ilk.
That ecstatic connection with the Old Gods tingles down my spine once again, and I feel the mantle around me like a giant raven’s wings folded over me and around my house like a shield. I feel something pinging off it. Dragon. Still trying to get through to me. But my shields are up. She can’t get through now. I won’t let her.
By the power of The Morrigan and Herne, I won’t let her.
I tiptoe through the house quietly, so I won’t wake the girls. The two of them are still cuddled into the warm spot I left behind. I open a dresser drawer and begin pulling out things. I extract my wedding album and ignore the photos of Quent and me in happier times. One picture strikes at me. Cheeks red because I’d cried throughout the ceremony for some unknown reason.
I flip past and find a photo of Granddaddy and me, him in his best Sunday suit and me in my wedding dress. He’d been in his seventies then and quite dapper. I pull the photo from the plastic insert. It sticks for a second and then releases to me.
I open another album, one filled with baby pictures of the girls. I find a photo of my grandfather holding Rhiannon when she was two weeks old, a proud smile on his face but looking much older than in the wedding photo with me.
And then I find one last photo of him, this time holding Sonnet on his lap. He was old and feeble and only months from dying when this picture was taken. Sonnet had been two years old at most. My mom had held her discreetly on his lap while I snapped the photo. He hadn’t been able to hold her. He’d been through two major heart attacks, the funerals of two wives, and a lifetime of hard work. He’d wanted to hold her but hadn’t had the strength. He’d fretted to me while I took that picture that Rhiannon was five and might remember something of him, but this baby was too young. Sonnet would never remember him, he’d said. His voice had cracked.
Now I gather all three pictures and take them back to the Main Altar. I arrange them on the altar, close to the front door, close to my threshold where nothing can pass.
“Granddaddy,” I say. “I know you’ve been here ever since Quent moved out. I’ve felt you in my home from the minute he left and sometimes even before. You’re welcome to stay. But I need your help now. I need you to keep this place safe for my girls and me. Both from Quent and from… other things.”
I feel his presence. Between the altar and the front door. It’s like a force field.
I sit on the floor across from the altar, legs crossed, arms folded, back against the wall, and try not to see Dragon.
When I wake, the sun is streaming through the door, landing on the pictures of Granddaddy and the girls. The mirror is still face-down, anything that Dragon and her cronies might do is reflected to The Morrigan. I have my former coven leader trapped there, yet I still feel her pinging at my shields like pebbles thrown against the window.
I want to call Donna, but it’s too early. Donna and the Elders need to know what happened last night, and I need their help. I can still feel Dragon striking at the wards around the house. What if she gets through again? I can handle it if she sends a dragon after me. At least I think I can.
But what if she messes with my girls? They’ll have to get up again and go to school. What if she harangues them there and gives them waking nightmares in the middle of class? Sonnet seems to be fine, given that there’s absolutely no connection between Dragon and her. Sonnet seems to sense something going on outside the house, but it’s much like feeling a storm rock the shingles when you never get wet. Rhiannon, on the other hand, is still whimpering in her sleep.
I wake both girls anyway and send them on to school. No choice. I’d be remiss as a mother otherwise and, no doubt, I’d hear about it in court. I’d love to have them home with me today, safe and sound, but I have to put a bubble of protection around them and send them out into the world and ask the Dark Mother to keep a watch over my babies while I can’t.
As soon as the girls have left for school, I know I need to shoot a quick email to Belinda, telling her what’s happened. She needs to know. There could be repercussions for her as well, especially if Dragon thinks that I’ve left Dragon Hart to follow Belinda’s footsteps. Yet, when I sit in front of the blank computer screen in my home office, I have no idea what to say. I’ve always been told that you don’t talk about Dragon Hart business to anyone who isn’t part of the group.
But Belinda was a part of the group. She was the one who introduced me to Dragon Hart.
Oddly enough, I have a message from Belinda waiting for me to read it.
I smile. I’ve kept her up to date on my divorce and the prognostications of the future man in my life who will share my grand mission with me. She’d thought that maybe I’d find The Treat within Dragon Hart or at least through the group, though she’d had no psychic insight that he’d be a member of Dragon Hart. Just that I’d meet him around the time of the Grand Coven gathering.
That’s all I type before I hit SEND.
She’s online, and a message comes back immediately.
Belinda and I rarely talk by phone because of our schedules. My phone is dead, and my charger is still in my suitcase. Texting is too much typing for me on a tiny screen anyway, so I spend the next two hours composing my email to her, telling her about the past couple of years within the group. I tell Belinda how I saw Dragon’s abusiveness. I tell her all about the cult checklist. I tell her about the visitations from the astral dragon and how it tried to eat Rhiannon in her dreams. I tell Belinda everything I can jam into the email and then quickly hit SEND as the old landline phone starts to ring.
It’s Donna. I know it is, even before I look at the number with her avatar beside it.
Hmmm, that’s different. I’m definitely more tuned in since my Elevation.
“Hello, you new Third Degree, you!” Donna chirps before I can press the handset to my ear. Her perkiness fades as I tell her the events of the evening. “I’ll call you right back,” she says without explanation.
I sit and wait for almost an hour, occasionally rising to water a plant or dust a table. I keep my cords wrapped tightly around me. I am not like other mortals….
When Donna calls back, there’s a cacophony of other voices and noises in the background. “Hey, I brought reinforcements,” Donna informs me. “Sorry about the delay. We had to conference you in.”
“Hey, darling!”
“Hey, sweetness!”
“Hi, Raven!”
I recognize several voices among the other Elders. Barbara, Mariah, DeeDee, Jenna, Beverly.
“How are you feeling?” Barbara asks. I can’t miss the motherly affection in her voice.
“Frankly,” I say, “I’m pissed—”
“No. No, no, no. That’s not good. If you’re angry, that’s exactly what she wants. She prefers abject terror, but anger will feed her, too. She wants to get strong emotion out of you.”
Obviously, Donna has filled the other Elders in on everything.
“Well, she’s doing it. Of course, she’s getting strong emotion out of me—she’s messing with my kids.”
“You can’t do that, Raven. You can’t let her get that kind of reaction from you. She feeds off of it. She feeds off of fear and anger. You show either, and you’re giving her your strength.”
“I refuse to be afraid of Dragon, even if, down deep, maybe I am a bit. I want to think that she can’t hurt me, but the things I’ve seen? Maybe she can. She can certainly scare my children.”
Barbara clears her throat. “It’s best if you just laugh at her.”
Barbara’s been gone from the Grand Coven longer than any of the other Elders. She hadn’t wanted to leave. She’d been forced out early by Dragon for challenging Dragon in a personal confrontation that had little or nothing to do with the Grand Coven. Mariah had told me it was because of the way Belinda had left Dragon Hart and how coldly Dragon had treated Belinda because Belinda had felt pulled in a different direction by the Old Gods. Dragon had said Belinda was a liar for not telling her the real reason she was leaving—to create a network of healing centers across the Northeast. Belinda has said she didn’t know at the time what the Old Gods has planned for her so she couldn’t tell Dragon all the details. I know from the snippets Tyler sent me that Dragon had been reluctant to let Lady Zephyr go but had stopped fighting it because she was afraid of Zephyr’s impending affiliation with the take-no-bullshit Priesthood of Daegan. Zephyr’s new High Priestess of a forgotten deity had threatened to obliterate Dragon at the slightest hint of retaliation. Belinda had no such protection.
“She doesn’t have the power to hurt you,” Barbara says, “unless you give her the power. There’s nothing she can do to you.” The other Elders echo their agreement.
We talk for another hour until it’s time for the Elders to leave for their different jobs. I’ve already told my boss that I won’t be at work today and that I need an extra day to recuperate from my spiritual retreat and that I need to make arrangements with my physical therapist regarding my knee pain. It’s a good thing I’m staying home today and steering clear of my colleagues. They’d probably think I look pretty silly wearing a suit with my priestess cords braided and swinging from my waist. Eventually, I’ll have to take them off and hang them up, but I’m not ready to yet.
I’m not like other mortals….
I pace around the house. I’m restless, nervous. I haven’t slept well. I’m focusing all my energy on the shields around the house and around the girls. I’m tired, so tired. Half-way out to the mailbox, the recharged phone I left on the coffee table rings. It stops after a few chimes, then the landline rings. I grab the mail and run back inside, thinking it’s Donna again.
“What’s wrong?” Jan asks before I can even say hello.
“Oh… I’m sorry. I forgot to let you know I was back.”
“I knew you were back. I could feel it. Now, Doodle Bug, I want to know what’s wrong. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I know I don’t appreciate this dragon lady of yours showing up in my house in the middle of the night.”
“She what?”
Jan isn’t mad at me even though she sounds like it. I know Jan well enough to know that she’s her own version of the warring Mother Goddess. Jan’s old enough to be motherly toward me, and her claws are out when she’s protecting her young. Right now, she’s thinking of me as her young.
“That bitch showed up in my dreams last night,” Jan says. “Only, I wasn’t dreaming. I was wide awake.”
“She came to you as a… as a… dragon?”
“A what? No. As a woman. Younger than I thought, though. Early twenties. Long blonde hair.”
“That’s not Dragon.” Then I remember. At a workshop at the Grand Coven meeting last year where I’d received my Second Degree Elevation, Dragon had talked about using different astral forms, both as an animal and as a woman. One of her favorites was a young Valkyrie with long blonde hair.
“I don’t know what she looks like, Lauren, but I know what she looked like last night when she walked into my bedroom out of thin air, and that was definitely your dragon lady.”
“What happened?” I’m almost afraid to ask.
I flip through the mail in my hands, mostly bills. I open a few, particularly the ones marked PAST DUE. My bills are always paid on time. There’s a bill for lawn service, one that Quent always pays himself because he personally knows the company’s owner. I’ve given him the check to hand-deliver so he can do his glad-handing in person… except that the past four months of lawn care haven’t been paid for. Quent insisted on using this particular company, even though they’re horribly expensive, rather than buying a mower and doing it himself. They were a good customer of the bank where he works as a senior loan officer, and he approved several of their loans—a fact I’m probably not supposed to know. Quent said it was important to make a good impression on them so he’d hired them for the exceptionally small job of taking care of the landscaping around our home. I wonder, looking at a past due bill of nearly one thousand dollars, what kind of impression has he made now?
“This dragon lady,” Jan continues. “She showed up in my room while Hubby was sleeping next to me. I was meditating in my bed. I wasn’t asleep. You know how I get when I’m contemplating a new painting.”
I nod into the phone, even though she doesn’t see me. Jan doesn’t live by the clock but by the paintbrush and by inspiration. She paints some on one canvas and then sleeps for however long she needs to before she wakes up to paint some on another canvas. So being awake at crazy hours is nothing unusual to her.
“What time was this?” I ask.
“Three thirty-three. Magic number, huh?” Magic without the k, in Jan’s case. “Anyway, she showed up in my bedroom. Lauren, sweetie? That bitch threatened me.”
“She what? She doesn’t even know you. She’s never met you. She knows about you… because Donna had to give her your address so my Third Degree exam could be mailed to your house instead of risking sending it to my house where Quent might have gotten hold of it. She knows I have a friend or a… oh. You know, I think Jeri, one of the new Elders-to-be, thinks I have a sister named Jan. I shared a photo of you and me with Jeri, like, once when I first met her, and I never got it back.”
Now I understand why so many members of Dragon Hart refuse to let their photos be published on social media or their pictures be taken at rituals. Too likely that their likenesses will end up as ingredients in a spell used against them.
“Yeah,” Jan says abut Jeri. “That’s it. I feel it. That’s right.”
I smile. Ah, yes, an empath and a psychic for a best friend. There’s nothing I can hide from Jan and little that others can hide from her, either.
“Anyway, Sweet Pea, I told that bitch to get out of my bedroom and get out of it right then and not to ever come back on my property and that she has absolutely no authority over me or mine.”
“And what happened?”
“Hubby woke up, but then he went back to sleep because I told him he was dreaming. Your dragon lady got this rancid look on her face and left. Just faded away and then she was gone. But I’m still pissed. I’ve been up all night pissed about this and all morning, too. I debated over whether I should call and tell you. I tried to call earlier, but your phone kept dumping me into voice mail.”
“I’m really glad you called, Jan. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier to fill you in, but things didn’t go so well last night with Quent.” I take a few minutes to explain.
“You need to be extra careful of him,” she warns. I know she has her psychic hat on at the moment. “He is up to something, and no matter how sweet he might be here and there, it’s all a façade.”
“I know, Jan. I do. I’m not getting back together with him. Don’t worry.”
“Well, good, because I’m worried about what he might talk you into. I know it’s very seductive that you have this hope that he really will change. But you know that silver-tongued devil is not going to.”
“I know, Jan.”
“No matter how much you might want him to.”
“I know.”
She seems to be worrying more than usual.
I flip through the rest of the day’s mail and stop at an envelope from the mortgage company. I rip it open and pull out the contents.
“You okay?” Jan asks. I’ve been silent for a few seconds.
“Yeah. It’s just—” My eyes are stinging. I wipe away a single tear. “I just got the paperwork on our mortgage where we paid it off right before I filed for divorce.”
Quent had alleged I’d waited until the house was paid for before I divorced him. One had nothing to do with the other, yet the house has always been special to me. It represents both the good and the bad, my hopes and dreams. It’s a bigger house than I ever wanted, far showier, but Quent had wanted it, then had insisted on the brown carpets, blank white walls, and nothing that seemed vaguely related to my personality inside it, including me. Over the years, I’ve made it mine, but every time I talked about my dream of staying home with the girls, he told me we couldn’t afford it because we lived in this nice house. I would have been happy in our little dollhouse on the other side of town, but finally, with some good investments, we’d been able to pay off the house. He’d promised that once we paid it off, I could stay home with the girls and write my heart out. That never happened.
“You okay, Honey Bear?”
I sniff. “Fine.”
“Okay, so you’ll have to buy out his half of the house, however much that is, and of course with the current market like it is, that’s going to be twice what you paid for it, but I think you’re going to get to keep the house. I know to you this feels like the Tower Card in the Tarot deck, but it’s going to be good, Munchkin. You just need to get your self-confidence back. You’re going to be able to afford so much more than you ever thought you could.”
“I-I don’t know about that. I guess I’m just going to have to wait and see.”
“And I hope, too,” she says, “that you are thanking your lucky stars that you did not refinance that house like he wanted you to.”
It’s not just my lucky stars I have to thank, but Jan, too. Before she became a famous artist, she’d been a real estate lawyer. When Quent came home with unexpected roses and a sudden financial plan for our future and my intuition had screamed that something was wrong, Jan was the one I’d gone to for advice.
The value of the house had gone up—way up—and suddenly our home had quadrupled in value. He’d wanted to refinance the house, even though we’d owed only a few thousand on it at that time. He’d suggested we refinance the full value at an adjustable rate that would only go up. When I questioned him, he’d turned livid.
No matter what numbers he presented to me, none of it made sense. He couldn’t make it make sense. He’d said it would save money in the long run, but I couldn’t understand how taking out a loan at a higher rate than we already had and for the full value of the house could be better than paying off the last few thousand dollars and being done with a house payment forever. Tax-wise, we needed the deduction, but psychologically, it felt good not to owe anything.
He’d reminded me he was the financial expert in the family and that he knew about these things, and I didn’t. When I mentioned it to Jan, her face turned purple. As a real estate lawyer, she’d seen this ruse several times. The husband would convince his wife to refinance the house for the full amount, he’d take the equity out of the house and hide it in the Caymans, then he’d divorce her and leave her with the house note—for the full amount of the house—and say he’d lost the equity while gambling in Biloxi so there was no record of its disappearance. It’s clear now that the man I considered my partner in life had planned to do the same to me.
“Munchkin, hang on…. I’ve got a call coming through from my publicist and I’m going to have to take it, but you listen, Doll Face: don’t you let that dragon lady make your life miserable. She shows up at your house again? You tell her to get out of there and that she has no authority over you.”
I smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
Maybe if I combine Jan’s advice and the advice from Barbara, Donna, and the other Elders, I won’t have to concentrate so hard on keeping my shields up and strong. Maybe if I simply tell Dragon to get the hell out of my house and laugh at her at the same time, then she’ll run and cower like the little dragon she is.
I smile again. I’m feeling better, much better. I can fight her. I can fight this. The only thing is, I resent that I even have to think about fighting her in this… this witch war that’s started. I shouldn’t have to think about these things at all. I should instead luxuriate in the glow of my new Third Degree. That and the fact that my ex has moved out, and I’ve been reborn, and I’m starting over, and I’m doing okay, and my powers are growing stronger. Not to mention the prospect of some guy known as The Treat on his way into my life soon.
This should be one of the happiest times in my life, at least for the next thirty days or however long you’re allowed to feel the glow of your Third Degree. The last thing I should have to contend with now is a witch war with a control freak, egomaniac, verbal abuser.
I ignore the rest of the mail I retrieved while on the phone with Jan. It’s mostly bills, anyway.
I return to the computer to see if Belinda has responded, but first, I log into the email group I share with Butterfly and so many other members of Dragon Hart. It’s not an official email list. Dragon doesn’t permit official lists or social media channels. She doesn’t permit unofficial ones either, but as long as we don’t discuss our lessons or Dragon Hart business and keep our messages strictly social, the email group is permitted. In hindsight, I see that it’s a control issue.
I wait for the page of new messages to appear. Twenty messages scroll down the screen, each declaring “I’m home” or “Congratulations on your Third Degree.” None of them are directed at me. But then, people are still trickling home from their days-long drives.
Quickly, I type in a message saying hello, and that I arrived home safely despite the hurricanes, and congratulations. I refresh the screen, and my message pops up immediately. I wait for a response but not one comes. Butterfly and a name I don’t recognize continue to post messages, but neither answers me.
A message from Tyler pops up next, so I quickly send a message back to say I’m glad he arrived home safely. I ask how Leo’s doing. My message doesn’t go through. Instead, the screen suddenly changes. I blink at the words.
I don’t understand. I resend the message and get the same response. I send it a third time.
Deciding to try again later, I switch to a filter where I can see the names of the members, but I’m not permitted to look. I’m denied access. I don’t understand. No one’s answering me, and I’m suddenly not a member of the social email loop any longer.
Confused, I shift screens to check email. Belinda has responded, but in an email not nearly so long as mine. She tells me finally the whole story of what happened in the last few months she was part of Dragon Hart.
She writes about the hurt of having the Dragon Hart Grand Coven shun her when she left and how she’d tried so hard and so many times to explain to Dragon that she felt compelled to start her own Grand Coven, particularly a sister coven. That it was the call of the Old Gods and not her own preference. She didn’t know why but she knew she had to, and she could not argue with the Old Gods. Dragon had told Belinda she agreed: Belinda couldn’t argue with the Old Gods, but she couldn’t stay a part of Dragon Hart, and she’d better be damned sure she knew if it was the Old Gods luring her away or ego.
Belinda had been “damned sure.” Within days, the mission the Old Gods had for her became crystal clear, and she understood finally why she’d had to branch out on her own, completely divorced from her previous coven. Dragon had once had a similar mission, but she’d failed. Of course, she took it personally that Belinda was trying to steal the Gods’ plans for a nationwide network of healing centers! Belinda had taken her mission in a different direction, but it didn’t matter. Dragon saw everyone who left her as a thief of the sacred as though we’d not only stolen time and energy from her, but her place in the universe as well.
After her departure, Belinda, too, had had visitations from the metallic dragon. So had her children. Every one of them who’d met Dragon. She’d erected shields, bouncing back the energy through the use of mirrors exactly as Dragon had taught.
I start to email back and tell her what Jan had said about telling the blonde Valkyrie to get the hell out of her bedroom. I could tell her what the Elders said about laughing, show her pity or amusement and watch the dragon turn its tail and run. Not that they claimed any personal experience with it, but that’s what they’ve advised. Then I read the last line of Belinda’s email.
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