Kiss The Witch Part 32

"All right then," she said to everyone, though she continued looking at me. "We have a wedding to do. What say we all get to it?"

"Wait," said Carlos. He stepped up onto the porch. The five of us were now crowded onto the tiny slab. "I have something I want to give the happy couple." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope. "Here." He gave it to Dominic. "It's for both of you."

"A wedding card. Thank you, Carlos."

"Go on. Open it."

Spinelli opened the envelope, but instead of a card, it yielded a photograph. He turned it over and studied it briefly before handing it to Ursula. "Look," he said. "It's a picture of this house."

I looked at Carlos. His grin looked suspiciously stupid. "Wait a minute. Let me see that." I s.n.a.t.c.hed the photo from Ursula's hand. "No. It is not this house. Look. The landscape is all wrong."

Spinelli s.n.a.t.c.hed the photo back. "Yeah, and the walkway is different. Other than that, it's the same."

Lilith was next. She plucked the photo from Spinelli's grasp. "This isn't anything like my house. The color is all wrong."

I grabbed it back. "It is not. The color is right. It's the lighting that's off."

"Wait," said Carlos. He swiped the picture from me and gave it to Ursula. "It's not this house. It's Ursula's house. It's Dominic and Ursula's wedding present."

Dominic said, "I don't understand."

"It's simple." Carlos stepped off the porch and cast his hand in a broad sweep across the front of the house. "Remember last year when Lilith first showed us this house?"

We all answered yes.

"Dominic, you said to Ursula, maybe you two could own a house as charming as this someday. Well, this is it. I called a contractor, had him take a look at this place and then asked him to duplicate it as best he could." His brows gathered tightly. "It's not quite finished, though. Seems he's having a hard time staying on the job. I don't think he's a well man."

Lilith said, "So that's why this guy kept coming around taking pictures. I thought he was a peeping Tom." Her eyes fell away, as a decidedly unflattering cringe tugged at her face.

Carlos asked, "Lilith, did you do something to my contractor?"

"No," she said, and added, "Nothing much."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, I didn't know."

"Oh, dear G.o.d. What did you do?"

She shrugged off her unease with a dismissive wave. "Nothing serious. Tell your contractor you suspect his rash will clear up soon. Say it's environmental."

"Wait. Forget the rash." I stepped off the porch and took the photo from Carlos. "Are you telling me you built a house for these two?"

He smiled. "Yup."

"A house like this one?"

"Yes."

"A house?"

"Yes. I can afford it. I have money you know."

I laughed. "No. Most times I would not know that. I can hardly get you to buy breakfast at the Perc, and here you build them a house."

"Well I think it's super," said Lilith. She stepped off the porch and gave Carlos a hug and a kiss.

"Aye. 'Tis a wonderful thing you do, Master Carlos," said Ursula, who also offered up a huge hug and a kiss.

We turned to Dominic, expecting a similar show of grat.i.tude. "Dominic?" I stepped back to offer a clear path through. "Don't you have something to say to Carlos?"

"Yes," he answered, in a sharper tone than the occasion called for. "I do have something to say."

"Dominic."

"No, Tony. He's going to hear this. You are all going to hear this." He s.n.a.t.c.hed the photo from my hands and pressed it to Carlos' chest. "I don't need your house. I can provide for my new wife. I don't need anyone's help."

"Dominic," I said, "no one is saying you need help. This is your best friend offering you a wedding gift from the bottom of his heart."

"It's a house, Tony. He's giving me a house."

"No. He's giving you and Ursula a house. Don't you think she has some say in whether you should accept it?"

He looked at Ursula, her lips drawn tight, her porcelain eyes wide and unblinking. "Ursula. I don't want you thinking me any less a man for not providing you with everything you need."

She came to him, took his hand and pressed it to her chest. "My love. Thou hast given me all I need already."

"But I can give you so much more with time."

"Time is my gift to thee. 'Tis thy love I need and naught more do I ask."

"So you don't want the house?"

She kissed him softly before whispering something in his ear that made him smile. "Okay," he said. He turned to Carlos and offered his hand. The two shook. "Carlos. I don't know what to say."

Lilith piped up. "Say thank you."

"Thank you."

"Great." She clapped her hands and snapped her fingers in the air. "Let's marry somebody. Shall we?"

"Let's go," I said.

We followed Lilith through the house and out the back door. Only a few steps beyond the clothesline begin a wooded tract stretching fifty acres or more, ten of which Lilith owns. In the year since moving in, I have come to know the property well. Though not part.i.tioned by fences or the like, numbered surveyor stakes planted on the corners and at points along the sides demarcate the boundaries. I know this because frequent squabbles with Lilith have afforded me countless opportunities for long walks through the woods.

We came to a clearing on the northwest point of Lilith's parcel where hers intersects three others, forming a four-corner scenario. It is there she had prepared ahead for the wedding ceremony. On the ground, extending out from the four corners lay a ring of stones in a circle some twenty feet across. Four white candles burned in mason jars along the edge at the compa.s.s points. Within the circle, more candles burned red, brown, yellow and green. In the center, surrounding the surveyor's marker designating the four corners, stood an altar of sorts, consisting of two wooden crates, one stacked atop the other. On that was the athamethe one used previously in the coven ceremony. A silver chalice, an empty nip bottle (corked), a thin piece of rope, a gardener's hand spade and the black mirror also lay atop the crates. Leaning against the crates, a willow branch the length of a broomstick. A narrow carpet of cut flowers in a kaleidoscope of colors led from there back to the eastern edge of the circle.

Lilith halted us outside the perimeter, instructing us to take up positions along the stones. She entered the circle from the east, the direction of the sunrise, indicating its significance reflected the constant give and take in a relations.h.i.+p. Naturally, I wondered whose relations.h.i.+p she was referring to. I suspected she read my thoughts then, because when I turned away, a pebble struck me on the head. It came from within the circle. I looked up at her and she was smiling.

"Greetings and merry meet," she said, her hands spread wide in a gesture of welcome. "Behold ye friends of the coven." She picked up the athame and pointed it at the altar. "We a.s.semble here, at these four points, a terrestrial crossroads symbolizing the paths that intersect and now forever join this couple, Master Dominic and Lady Ursula, in love's eternal embrace.

"Let us now cast the circle and call the spirits of the Greater Coven." Lilith trained the athame skyward and waved it in a circular motion above her head, coaxing a yellow phosphorus vapor to illuminate in a spiraling cloud. She walked the circle clockwise with the cloud in tow, and in a monotone voice, recited these words.

"Spirits of the east, guardians of our souls, protect us from false friend and foe. Watch over us who gather here, that we may live and breathe your air."

"That we may live and breathe your air," said Ursula. She looked at us. The impatience in her expression registered immediately. Carlos, Spinelli and I stiffened up and responded in unison.

"That we may live and breathe your air."

She smiled at that, and our attention returned to Lilith. After completing the full walk along the stones, she dispelled the vortex with a flick of the athame. It whirled overhead for an instant before gathering into a compact funnel and shooting off into the eastern sky. Lilith watched it disappear entirely before tucking the athame under her belt.

She picked up the willow branch from beside the altar and lit the tip of it on the candle burning at the southern end of the circle. With the burning branch at arm's length, her hands slightly above her shoulders, she began walking.

"Spirits of the south, guardians of our souls, protect us from false friend and foe. Feed thy flames and take them higher. Warm us with thy breath of fire."

Ursula. "Warm us with thy breath of fire."

Us boys. "Warm us with thy breath of fire."

With those words, the willow branch exploded, showering Lilith in a hail of sparks and leaving her holding only a handful of ash and scorched bark. She sprinkled the ashes over the southern candle, clapped her hands clean, wiped them on her pants and returned to the altar.

She retrieved the silver chalice next, took it to the western edge of the circle and tipped some of its contents out over the candle there. A dusting of cyan glitter fell like snowflakes upon the flame. It danced in spastic snaps of blue-green light, turned into a mist and evaporated like nymphs on the wind.

"Spirits of the west, guardians of our souls," she began, and walked as she dipped her fingers into the chalice and flicked the glitter about. "Protect us from false friend and foe. Grant us thee your sons and daughters, that which thrives on your pure waters."

"That which thrives on your pure waters."

"That which thrives on your pure waters."

Lilith's last obligation lay to the spirits of the north. She scooped up a handful of dirt at the candle there, again walking clockwise, sprinkling the dirt at her feet.

"Spirits of the north, guardians of our souls, protect us from false friend and foe. Secure the earth within this round that we may meet on hallowed ground."

"That we may meet on hallowed ground."

Lilith pulled the athame from her beltline and pointed it at the candle burning on the eastern edge. She motioned a jabbing stab and an electric blue bolt shot from the athame, arcing to the candle and shattering the gla.s.s jar. The candlewick sputtered in a pool of molten wax, coughed up a yellow-white flame and then roared to life in an orange-red burst towering over our heads. Still pointing the athame, she walked the circle, dragging the flames over the rocks until the entire ring was ablaze in a wall of fire six-feet high.

"Behold," said Lilith. "The witches' circle." She came to the edge, peering through the flames, seemingly unfazed by the heat that had driven the rest of us back. "Well? You coming in?"

I shook my head. "It's too hot."

"Is it?" She frowned.

"Yes."

"All right then. Stay back."

Sure, I thought, like I was getting any closer. Already I could feel the heat singeing the hairs on my arms. With the athame in hand, Lilith punched a hole in the fire and ripped a doorway in it as easily as if slicing a curtain of rice paper. Amazingly, the door stayed open long enough for us to enter.

Carlos went first. Ursula followed and then Spinelli and me. I barely got through the door myself when it closed again on my heel. I suspected Lilith had something to do with that, as I caught her smirking when it happened.

We migrated to the center of the circle and a.s.sumed positions at the altar. The heat there seemed negligible, as if insulated somehow from the fire. Lilith began by asking if anyone present saw reason why the couple should not wed. I thought of my own selfish reasons why not, but held my tongue just the same.

"Good," she said. "I will summon the rest of the coven." She waved the athame over the black mirror three times and tapped the gla.s.s once. "Spirits of the coven, hear what I say. We call thee forth to bear witness today. 'Tis Ursula of New Castle back from the dead, and her boyfriend Spinelli who come here to wed."

"What's that?"

She looked at me cross. "What's what?"

"That rhyme. Is that your spell?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Really? You're going with that?"

"What's wrong with it?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. A bit contrived, isn't it?"

"You got something better?"

"No. I just thought for a wedding you would have written something more elaborate."

"Tony. The elders don't grade on poetic finesse. Rhyming is a tradition, not a prerequisite."

"All right. Just saying. Carry on."

She pursued her lips and crinkled her nose at me. I think she knew I was right and didn't want to admit it. The look on Carlos, Dominic and Ursula's face told me I was not the only one thinking it. Lilith turned to the black mirror again, and though she now had her back mostly toward me, I could see the muscles on the side of her jaw pulling up a great big smile.

She tapped the mirror three times with the athame. The first two times I heard the tic of the blade on the gla.s.s. The third time I did not. The blade pa.s.sed through the mirror and come out again, leaving a distinct ripple distorting the gla.s.s. As the ripples faded to a smooth black surface, I could see the reflection of a thousand faces staring back at us.

"Welcome ye spirits of the coven." said Lilith. "Merry meet and happy ties. With thy blessings, we shall begin."

"Blessed be to thee," returned the voices within.

Dominic and Carlos could hardly contain themselves. I saw them looking at each other, their eyes blinking back their disbelief. I thought maybe now they might understand me when I tell them of the wild and crazy things I put up with living with a witch. For surely, I knew Dominic would now understand.

Lilith turned to the couple. "Dominic and Ursula. Do you come here of your own free will before these witnesses, to join hands, to enter into a marriage of souls, to promise and dedicate yourselves to one another forever and always?"

"I do," said Dominic.

Ursula responded. "Aye."

"Dominic. Please face Ursula. Place your left hand in her left. Your right in her right. By doing so, you each must cross your arms forming a figure eight. This symbolizes infinity, a returning path of energy from one soul to the other."

Dominic and Ursula joined hands as Lilith asked. His visibly shaking. Hers but a hint of trembling. I saw how they looked at each other, how their eyes locked. They knew we were there, yet I doubted they could see us. I watched Ursula's lips thin to tiny white lines, her chin wrinkling in silent quiver. Dominic swallowed, but whatever it was would not go down. I imagined it was his heart.

"Marriage is a scared thing," Lilith continued. "Even among Pagans and especially among witches. We swear in the name of all we believe our love to each other. Does it mean less if our G.o.d is not a deity of the mortal establishment? That we don't hold a single supernatural being as the personification of a force controlling some or all aspects of life as we know it? No. It does not. We don't need to pledge fidelity before a deity in order to know in our hearts what is right. To know it is wrong to hurt the ones we love."