Waking the Moon

Streamers of mist rushed past me into the room. I began shivering uncontrollably, and scarcely felt it when Balthazar put one hand upon my shoulder and with the other pointed at the doorway.

“Behold the world She would give you!—”

All was darkness: total, engulfing darkness, so empty and vast even the memory of dawn was swallowed by it. But what was most horrible about the abyss was that I knew it. Knew its enveloping airless heat and flow; knew the all-encompassing void in which I floated like a lightless star, the pulsing mass of black matter that surrounded me, swallowed me, imprisoned me within its maw. I tasted rather than smelled a hot rich odor, the stench of blood and excrement and earth. The stink of the grave but also that of the incunabulum; of the gutter, the birthing room, the byre…

The beginning place.

“It is Othiym,” Balthazar’s voice echoed through my thoughts. “She who is the mouth of the world…

“…She who is the word unspoken. Othiym Lunarsa.”

His words fell away. Then,

“Look now.” Balthazar’s breath was warm in my ear. “Can you see them?”

In the wasteland a flare appeared, crimson and faintly blue.

“There,” murmured Balthazar.

Another flame; then another, and another, and another, until everywhere I looked I saw small bursts of gold and yellow and scarlet, numerous small bonfires spread across the darkness.

“Watch,” said Balthazar Warnick. “Now they will make the night their own.”

Shadows appeared before the flames. Without a sound they began to crouch and leap around the bonfires in a sort of grotesque hobbling dance, until each small circle of flame had its lumbering cavalcade. The bonfires blazed up suddenly. I glimpsed flame-gilded antlers and hairy pelts, a leather priapus and cloven hooves, a pinioned mask formed of a screech owl’s fell. The pungent incense was overwhelmed by an earthier stink. Trampled mud; singed hair; the putrescent reek of an ill-cured hide. And sweat, real sweat, with no sweet undertones of soap or perfume, and the hot ripe smell of women, like brine and yeast and blood.

“Ahhh…”

A whine escaped me and I bit down, hard, to keep my teeth from chattering. The splayed black bodies and antlered heads, the shrieking ragged voices that rang out like birds of prey—they were all somehow both more and less than human. Like that awful ancient figure painted upon the wall of a cavern in the Pyrenees—antlered but with a lion’s paws, wolf’s tail and cat’s genitals and human feet, and terrible staring owlish eyes. Le Sorcier: The Sorceror.

“Animals,” whispered Balthazar, his disgust tinged with fear. “Always, they would be nothing more than animals…”

I recalled Angelica’s words—

The Benandanti aren’t into saving the shamans. They are the shamans.

But then why was he afraid? I hugged my arms to my chest and forced myself to gaze more closely into that empty darkness.

And I saw what Balthazar saw.

The figures leaping and shambling around the blaze were women. All of them—shadows crowned with horns and leaves, feathered dwarfs and limping cranes—all, all were women. Dark gold—skinned women tall as men, long-necked and proud; women small and somber as badgers, beating the earth with blackened hands; girls no higher than my thighs, who tripped in and out amongst the others and shrieked like hunting kestrels. And mothers with nurslings, and grey-faced women who must be carried, and cold-eyed laughing girls who bore antlered crowns and flaming brands, goading the pelted shadows that humped along before them.

“Beasts,” whispered Balthazar with loathing. “Nothing but beasts.”

I knew then what he feared.

Women’s magic.

That’s where the real power lies, Angelica had said.

And it was true. Because I sensed the power of blood and milk, of flesh and sinew drawn together in the potent darkness. Of spittle rounding out a lump of clay, shaping it into the squatting figure of a Mother vast enough to embrace us all; of colored powder and kohl and rouge, shaping a mask to entice and enthrall; of a lone stern figure stooped over a fiery alembic, drawing forth a glowing wire like an arrow to spear the night.

And Angelica herself, her lap full of timeworn folios and crackling tomes; Angelica in bed beside me, her breath warm upon my neck; Angelica rising slowly from black water, her breasts silvered with light, her green eyes glowing and her hair streaming behind her: Angelica in all I could imagine.

From the night country rose a wind, warm and redolent of spices. Coriander and sandalwood and galingale, and sweet as their fragrance a childish voice, chanting.

I am eldest daughter of Kronos.
I am wife and sister of Osiris.
I am she who findeth fruit for men.
I am mother of Horus.
I am she that riseth in the Dog Star.
I am she that is called Goddess by women.

Bone upon bone and the thumping of cloven staves, fingers tapping upon a hollow skull and a sudden chorus of keening voices—

Othiym haiyo!
You who rule the gates of Hell in the earth’s black heart,
golden Praxidike, first blossom of Deo,
Mother of Furies, Queen of the netherworld—
Othiym haiyo! Othiym Lunarsa!

“You see how they are,” Balthazar murmured. “Rooting in the dirt, smearing their faces with soot and filth. And there is worse than that—”

A scream ripped the night. The fires flickered out. All was utter darkness, save only this—

Upon the rim of the world a sliver of moon perched, a tiny crescent like the memory of magic. After a moment it faded. From the abyss a wind rose, cold and insistent.

“So it will always be,” whispered Balthazar as he pulled me from the edge of the portal. “She forgets that chaos begets only chaos, and cannot prevail.”

I clasped my arms to my breast, shuddering. “No.”

“No?” Balthazar’s tone was unforgiving as the wind. “Are you a fool like Mr. Crawford, then?”

“N-not of-fool—” I said through chattering teeth. With a grunt I pulled away. Two quick steps and I stood within the portal.

Dimly I was aware of the room, a shadowy place where outlines of walls, furnishings, windows hung ghostly in the darkness. But the real world lay before me—eternal and empty and torn by wind.

“Listen to me, Katherine!” shouted Balthazar. “Oliver is weak! He believes that we have no power left—that our time has ended—and so he sought to align himself with our Enemy. He thought She had changed, he thought She would not destroy him; but he is wrong! We are the only ones who can save him! You know that—”

I hesitated, thinking of Angelica wielding the lunula as a weapon, of Balthazar rushing to Oliver’s side in the