The Bowl of Night
ഀഀ![[cover]](covers/bon.jpg)
ഀഀThe Bowl of Night
ഀby Rosemary Edghill
ഀTor Books (October 1996)
ഀISBN:
I circled around the cabins, and then around the lake. I had no particular destination in mind; eventually I might go up to the bonfire. There'd be people there; someone always kept firewatch until the embers were cold. But I wasn't really looking for people.
ഀഀI thought. Until I heard the voices.
ഀഀI was across the near side of the meadow that surrounds the lake; off into an area that's slowly being taken over by second- growth timber. People camp there some years, but the prime camping area is around the lake, and this year everyone had been accommodated there.
ഀഀ"Life is pain."
ഀഀI could make out what they were saying about the same time I saw the light -- closer than was really prudent, but rocks and straggling bushes had concealed the area. Which was one of the reasons they'd chosen it, of course.
ഀഀ"Pain is truth."
ഀഀIt was a tiny fire; mostly charcoal on a bed of sand in something that looked like an institutional-size wok. Something that would leave no trace in the morning's light. There were candles in hurricane lamps at three points, putting the wok-fire in the center of a triangle.
ഀഀ"Truth is life."
ഀഀXharina was standing in the ritual space, across from one of her coveners, wearing a black corset that offered up her bare breasts like cupcakes, and a long skirt that looked like it was made of animal tails. Her tattoos gave her arms a mottled motile surface as though they were wreathed in snakes. She was holding a knife in her hand.
ഀഀIt wasn't one of Ironshadow's polite carriage-trade athames with the maidenly double-sided six inch blade. Xharina was holding a point-heavy single-edge Bowie knife with an eleven-inch blade. It flashed like a mirror in the firelight, and leather tails were braided over the hilt, ending in a tassel as long as hilt and blade together. She held the flat of the blade to the flames for a moment.
ഀഀOne of her coveners -- Arioch, I think, though I wasn't sure -- was standing opposite her. He was bare to the waist, wearing jeans that were black or leather or both.
ഀഀXharina cut him.
ഀഀShe started just above the nipple and cut careful diagonal marks into his pectoral muscle -- they'd look like the marks of the Sioux Sun Dance when they healed. She pulled the blade along slowly, painstakingly, like a child trying her best to color inside the lines, and I could hear Arioch first catch his breath, then breathe slowly and raggedly, as if what he were feeling was not pain. She cut six lines, evenly spaced, working from bottom to top so that the surface she was working on was always dry.
ഀഀ"I am the shadow where three roads meet; I am the durable fire. I am the night howling dog; the mortal wound of love; the madness of fear; and the exercise of power. I am mastery and desire, and all roads lead to me. I am the sword in the hand; I am the scars on the soul. I am the whip that drives you; I am the flesh beneath the lash. I am the shadow where three roads meet--"
ഀഀAgainst the sound of Xharina's voice the others murmured an antiphon, too low for me to hear. Arioch's head was thrown back, in a gesture I'd have difficulty not recognizing as ecstacy, but other than that he had not moved.
ഀഀI should not be here. I'd stumbled into a mystery of which I was not initiate; the worship of a more primordial Mother than the aspect my tradition's rituals courted. The power raised here was rawly seductive; gooseflesh hackled on my skin and I felt as if someone had opened the door of a blast furnace in my face. Xharina dabbled her fingers in the blood and wrote the sign of the horns on Arioch's forehead with it. He knelt, and she stepped around the fire to approach him. I used the cover of their movement to get away, hoping they hadn't seen me.
ഀഀI was more intent on distance than destination; the next thing I knew I was down by Mrs. Cooper's house, along the road that led to the outside world. My heart was pounding as if I'd run to get here; I was flushed and shaking, and once again, like an unwanted guest, I could feel the projected outrage of the outsider inside my skin.
ഀഀBut what Xharina and her people were doing was not wrong by any standard -- Goddess knew it was consensual. I'd seen Arioch with Xharina before; nothing in the way he acted indicated that he was someone trapped in a ritual relationship that had gone wrong in any of the many ways those intimate relationships can. Arioch had been happy where he was yesterday, and would still be happy tomorrow morning.
ഀഀI believed it; I had felt no threat when I'd accidently stumbled into their ritual. But the outsider in my skin wasn't convinced. People don't cut people, people don't hit people because they love them.
ഀഀYes they do, I told the inside Outsider. Yes, there was blood, and yes, Xharina had cut him -- but it had been done with love; and was not, when all was said and done, so much more abhorrent than the accepted practices of more established faiths. Xharina's coven's was a shamanic tradition -- nothing more.
ഀഀBut it was so far from the self-perceived norm of NeoPaganism that I began to understand why Xharina's people were so skittish about networking with the rest of us. The greatest taboo in the Gardnerian-derived traditions is to allow blood to touch the ritual blade -- Craft tradition holds that such a blade must be destroyed at once, and a new one consecrated. But Xharina's coveners must blood their blades regularly, if what I'd inadvertently witnessed tonight was any indication.
ഀഀThe next time I woke up it was to the sound of slamming doors. I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty; and I had the feeling I'd been supposed to open the Snake's table about half an hour ago.
ഀഀI jammed on my boots and opened the back door of the van. The day was bright; at least we'd been blessed with good weather this weekend.
ഀഀXharina was leaving.
ഀഀBoth back doors and the side were open on the black van with the flaming guitar painted on the side, and boxes and guitars were being loaded with a speed and skill that suggested this activity was one Hoodoo Lunchbox performed frequently.
ഀഀI didn't see Arioch anywhere. The events of the previous night came back to me suddenly, vivid with the immediacy of memory, and I found myself flushing.
ഀഀXharina turned and saw me. After that, I couldn't just walk away pretending I hadn't seen her and them without seeming highly suspicious. Besides, it was partly at my insistence that they'd come to HallowFest at all, and I owed them common courtesy at least as much as I wanted to cover my tracks.
ഀഀI went over. "You're leaving early," I said.
ഀഀThis morning Xharina was wearing riding breeches -- the old kind that are tight to the knee and have the lagniappe of fabric at the thighs -- with her paddock boots and a sleeveless black silk camp shirt. Her tats burned jelly-jar bright in the sunlight. I still wondered how Xharina, being Xharina, managed to walk in footgear with heels that low.
ഀഀ"This isn't exactly the kind of place we belong," Xharina said tactfully. "So we thought we'd cut our losses."
ഀഀSo to speak.
ഀഀArioch appeared, leaning out of the van to take something from one of the others. He was wearing a t-shirt under his vest this morning, and I was almost sure I could spot the bulk of a thick gauze dressing under the tee. He saw me and grinned.
ഀഀI felt myself lose it completely; a blind deafman would know that I knew what he'd been doing last night. Fortunately Arioch wasn't paying attention.
ഀഀBut Xharina was.
ഀഀShe turned her back on the others and took a step away. I followed her.
ഀഀ"We were doing some ritual out in the woods last night," she said when I reached her. I found myself unable to meet her eyes, a sensation I analyzed for its strangeness even while it unnerved me. I took a deep breath and held it, forcing my diaphragm muscles to relax. I didn't think I was ashamed of either of us, and I certainly had no desire for anyone to carve me with a Bowie.
ഀഀ"I couldn't sleep. I was out walking last night," I said.
ഀഀ"And what did you think?" Xharina said. Her voice wasn't neutral now. It was angry.
ഀഀ"I think what I saw wasn't any of my business," I said honestly.
ഀഀ"Sure it wasn't," Xharina said bitterly. "But that isn't going to stop you from phoning all your friends and telling them all about it. Why not? -- it isn't as though we're really Pagans or anything."
ഀഀI thought of telling her I didn't have any friends, but Xharina didn't need stand-up comedy right now. "It was a ritual. What I saw I didn't have any business seeing," I repeated. "I'm not going to tell anybody."
ഀഀ"And I suppose we'll just take your word for that?" Xharina said.
ഀഀ"What choice have you got?" I said, starting to get angry myself. "I've told you twice it was an accident -- do you think I went out looking for you?"
ഀഀ"Maybe." Xharina looked me up and down in a way that was meant to be insolent and succeeded pretty well. "Maybe you were looking for -- what we have."
ഀഀThere was no use denying I knew what that was, and knee-jerk denials are not my specialty anyway. With toxic fairmindedness, I remembered waking up out of a sound sleep and going looking for . . . what? Them? I shook my head. Even if Xharina were right -- and she might be -- I could see no happiness for myself down that particular path, and given a choice I wouldn't walk it. There are degrees of separation from the mainstream; I could see Xharina's from where I was, but I that didn't mean I wanted to go there.
ഀഀ"Maybe," I said, reluctantly. "But I didn't mean to crash your ritual. I'm sorry."
ഀഀ"Okay." The word came on a sigh, an indication of how wired Xharina was. There was a pause. "Nobody else noticed," she said. "I knew there was someone but I didn't know who, and I thought . . ."
ഀഀThat it was Jackson Harm's killer trolling for new victims? Or something darker?
ഀഀ"Cheer up," I said glibly, "I'll keep my mouth shut and they'll make stuff up about you anyway."
ഀഀThat made her grin. Xharina wasn't averse to bad press and living the legend -- except, I realized, when there was truth to the rumors.
ഀഀ"I'd say you should come party with us sometime," she said, "But I don't do women. I know some people, though."
ഀഀI wasn't sure whether the offer was serious or whether she was still trying to jerk my chain, and on this particular morning I wasn't even sure which I wanted it to be.
ഀഀ"I'll keep that in mind," I said, settling for neutral politeness. "You folks have a safe trip home."
ഀഀ"See you at the Snake," Xharina said, and strode back to her coven.
ഀഀI took the long way up to the barn, rearranging the inside of my head into something that wouldn't get into my way, trying to push the brilliant flash of the blade in Xharina's hands back somewhere into unconsulted memory-space.
ഀഀAnd doing that made me forget about most of what else had happened last night, too.
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