Dr. Furiano told me later, working for her as a summer intern) came out bearing a silver tray of tiny butter cookies shaped like horns. I asked her if her next book was going to be an extension of her earlier work, or if she had done away with men altogether.
“Not yet! You see, I still find uses for them—” She laughed, and her grad student grinned. “No, truly, I have many men in my life, I always have. My father raised me after my mother died when I was an infant, and he was probably the greatest single influence on me. I absolutely do not have a vendetta against men.
“My new book—my new book is called Waking the Moon and will be published this summer. I always try to have my publication dates coincide with one of the Goddess’s ancient holidays—though this one will be out before Lammas, which is a celebration of the harvest that used to end with the sacrifice of beautiful young men to the great Goddess. When people think of human sacrifices, they think of the Carthaginians tossing children into the flames, or beautiful virgin women tied to the stake. But actually the first and greatest sacrifices in human history were nearly always of men, in an effort to appease the Goddess. So it is easy to understand how men might have gotten a little concerned, and ended up seizing control of things out of desperation —”
And, this reporter thought, you can see why Dr. Furiano’s own work is met with controversy wherever she goes.
“But, of course, we really can’t really do that anymore, I mean at least not legally, and so…”
There was more of this sort of talk; then,
Dr. Furiano leaned closer to me. Through the window behind her, I could just glimpse the crescent moon gleaming above the Hollywood Hills.
“You know,” she said, “all I’ve really done is follow in the footsteps of those who went before me. The great female archaeologists of our time, June Harrington and Magda Kurtz and Marijta Gimbutas, women who discovered so much about the Goddess cultures of ancient Europe, and who inspired people like me to go searching for more answers.
“I found my answers in the ruins of ancient temples in Estavia and Crete and Turkey. I found them in what I discovered there about the goddess Othiym, and now I want to share my knowledge with women everywhere.”
She pointed to the window behind her. “Waking the Moon isn’t just about personal empowerment. It’s really about something much, much bigger, about all of us—women and men—reaching outside of ourselves and using that chthonic aspect of our own natures to change the world. To take a world and a race on the brink of self-destruction and shake it back to life again. I truly believe that very drastic measures will be needed to change things, if we are to survive. There is a quote from Robert Graves which I find quite interesting, considering he wrote it nearly fifty years ago, in The White Goddess—
The longer Her hour is postponed, and therefore the more exhausted by man’s irreligious improvidence the natural resources of the soil and sea become, the less merciful will Her five-fold mask be, and the narrower the scope of action that She grants to whichever demigod She chooses to take as Her temporary consort in godhead. Let us placate Her in advance by assuming the cannibalistic worst…
Dr. Furiano’s hand remained poised in the air. Beyond it the moon rose slowly above the hillsides.
“But I think change is coming,” she said softly. “I think it is coming very, very soon. And I very much want to be a part of it.”
I put the fax paper down on my desk, smoothed it with my hand.
Othiym. Waking the Moon.
It was all crazy, of course, but exactly what I would have expected from Angelica. The part about saving the world made it sound like maybe she’d tripped off the line somewhere, but the rest seemed pretty much in character with the girl I’d known nineteen years before. And at least she’d given credit to June Harrington and Marija Gimbutas and…
At the thought of Magda Kurtz I shivered, reached instinctively for the cardigan I kept hanging on the back of my chair all winter. But it was July now. The sweater was stuffed in a drawer at home, and I doubt if it would have offered much comfort anyhow.
“Katherine?”
I started, turned, and saw Laurie Driscoll, our department secretary “Another fax for you.” She handed me a piece of paper. “And Alice said to tell you that your intern will be here tomorrow morning—I guess a whole batch of them arrived this morning, they’ve got orientation and then some kind of lunch at the Castle. So finally we’ll have some help getting that new stuff organized.”
“About time.” I took the fax, glanced down, and recognized Baby Joe’s signature. After she left, I read Baby Joe’s addendum.
Sweeney—
This just in, I thought you should see it. Also, I talked to Annie Harmon and she said she’d call you.
I’ll be in touch.
B. Joe It was a copy of a brief article from that morning’s New York Times.
FLAGSTAFF, AZ July 2 Police stated that yesterday morning the skeletal remains of Cloud Benson, professional bodyguard to noted feminist archaeologist and author Angelica Furiano, were discovered on the grounds of Furiano’s home in Sedona.
In what appears to have been a grisly freak accident, Benson’s corpse was completely devoured by wild animals—probably some type of fire ant, says County Medical Examiner Warren Schaner—so that only her skeleton and remnants of clothing remained. Benson, 19, had been a member of Dr. Furiano’s entourage since the fall of 1993. She was last seen alive the previous evening, when her colleagues Kendra Wilson and Martin Eisling left her in the cottage they shared on Furiano’s 200-acre ranch. Furiano speculates that Benson, who liked to run every evening along the ridge that marks her property line, may have tripped and injured herself, and so fallen prey to some kind of predator. Sunday Jimenez, Furiano’s housekeeper, reported seeing a puma on the property some months earlier.
Flagstaff Police Chief Robert Morales has voiced concern that whatever attacked Benson may also be responsible for a string of unsolved disappearances in the Southwest. Since last October, seventeen young men between the ages of 15 and 27 have been reported missing in Arizona alone. Several of the men were known to be prostitutes and runaways, and authorities are concerned that the numbers may actually be higher.
“It’s a definite longshot that killer ants could be responsible for these disappearances, but we’re not ruling out any possibilities,” Chief Morales said.
I stared at the paper, unsure whether to laugh or not. At first I thought it was another one of Baby Joe’s practical jokes—killer ants?
Then I remembered the things I had glimpsed behind the door in Garvey Hall so long ago.
I had spent the last nineteen years trying to forget what I had seen in my few months at the Divine; trying to forget Oliver. Because Oliver was dead, and Magda Kurtz, and now Hasel Bright…
But I was alive, and so were Baby Joe and Annie and Angelica. Even if part of the unspoken deal I had made with Luciano di Rienzi and the Benandanti was to cut myself off from my friends, it had been almost enough, during all those years, to know my friends were out there still. To know that they were thriving, even if I was not. Even if my head and heart had remained under some kind of house arrest ever since.
