“Yes.”
“I’m Busy B. C’mon, we’re making dinner and getting dressed. Oh! And I brought a two-person tent so if you’d like to share, I have room.”
I was fine with sleeping in the same tent as any of the other witches. Except maybe for Rose. Her imperial air would guarantee I got no sleep.
“So, do you know all the women here?” I asked, twisting the cap off the input valve of my self-inflating camping pad.
“Yes and no. I know all of them cozily and a few of them more intimately, seeing as how we’re in the cluster of covens that include the smaller Gulf Islands but not Vancouver Island. Including every witch at every meeting would be too much. Most of the women who’re here are the more senior ones from their covens.” Busy tapped my shoulder and crawled closer before she sat and tucked her voluminous skirt around her tiny feet. “It’s a big deal,” she whispered, leaning in, “this thing they’re doing for you. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a ritual where we have to take the initiate through so many stages all in one night.”
“Should I be scared?” I asked, mostly joking.
Busy’s honey-colored softness gave way to a hardened amber appraisal. “A little.” She gave a curt nod and continued, “Once we start, we can’t stop for anything. I’ve heard of women fainting. Never heard of anyone actually dying…”
I choked on my water and spit a mouthful across the top of my sleeping bag, “Dying?”
“I’m kidding, Calliope,” she giggled, slapping my knee and softening. “I’m kidding.”
The clang of a wooden spoon hitting the bottom of a pot saved me from hearing any more details, truthful or teasing, and brought both of us out of the tent and onto the pathway connecting the campers. Curious faces greeted me when I ducked under low-hanging branches and into a double-sized site, with two fire pits, two picnic tables, and eleven women. Thirteen, once Busy and I made our way through the branches and stood side-by-side.
“Hi.” I waved at the cluster of witches. Most of them looked to be in their late thirties and up, with no one younger than twenty-five. They were witches, though, so I could have been off by a few years. Or decades.
“This is Calliope Jones, everyone,” said Rose, pointing at me with a chef’s knife. “Let’s fill our plates. Then we’ll introduce ourselves after we’ve all had a bit to eat.” She turned to me. “We have our given names, and we have our self-chosen ritual names. And for the purposes of ceremonies such as the one we are creating tonight, we give ourselves the option of adopting a name that is personally symbolic, thereby amplifying our identity—or the role we are playing within the sacred circle.” She lowered her voice for my ears only and emphasized her words with tight flourishes of the knife. “This Ritual of Initiation is not held often. Rarely have I ever come across a witch so ill-trained, yet so obviously in touch with at least a modicum of her powers.”
I gulped down my nervousness. Rose had given me a backhanded compliment—I thought—by acknowledging the truth I was both a neophyte and a potential diamond in the rough.
“Busy, would you please start us off?” Rose asked.
Busy nodded, handed her plate to the witch to her right, and stood. “My name is Busy B. I am here to represent the Daughter in the form of Astrea, virgin goddess of innocence and purity.”
She sat, reclaimed her meal, and smiled at the young woman with the freckled, fine-boned visage to her left.
“My name is Cordelia. I am here to represent the Maiden in the form of Artemis.”
The next woman to stand, another of the younger ones, had a mischievous glint in her eyes as she welcomed me. “I am here to represent the Blood Sister. My name is Sapphos Star.”
The witches continued, and though I tried to remember everyone’s given name and Goddess aspect, I couldn’t, except for those I’d already met: Belle the herbalogist and, of course, Rose. When she stood, the women in the circle quieted their chirping.
“My name is Rose de Benauge. I invoke the name of Kalima, and I represent the Dark Mother.” When she finished, she silently acknowledged every woman in the circle before she turned her attention fully to me. “And you, Calliope Jones, are here as Priestess.”
After introductions were finished and dinner plates and bowls were emptied, Rose stood, rising to her full five-feet-four-inches, and spoke. “If your role is to set up for tonight’s ritual, you are exempt from clean up. Plan to meet me at the trailhead in ten minutes. Everyone else, pay attention. Those of you on kitchen detail can put all foodstuffs—and I mean all—into the trunk of Belle’s car. Make certain there is nothing left out that would interest bears. Once we’re good to go here,” she added, gesturing to the tables, “and while we still have some light, gather your ritual objects, change into your dresses, and I shall see you at the trees.”
The other women shooed me away from the eating area with the excuse that, as the star of the night, my time would be better spent in preparing myself. Power emanated from every one of them. Even Busy and Belle, who I’d met earlier, had taken on a kind of gravitas the closer my watch ticked to the start of the ritual.
Back at the shared tent, I brushed off my trepidation and shook out the knee-length red dress I’d brought per Rose’s instruction. Next, I washed my feet at the water pump and slipped a fresh pair of lightweight wool socks over clean toes before re-donning my boots. All I had to add was the length of ribbon, my athame and my wand, and the poncho my aunt had assembled from black-and-white squares crocheted by my mother. At least, that was the story my aunt offered. I had
