A small squeak left my lips, and my hands flew to cover my most important parts. I spun back to see Carol behind me, looking pleased with herself.
Then, all my friends dropped their robes too, along with the other witches. And, yeah, we were all standing around naked. This wasn’t even like when I had to get naked in the locker room in high school. As embarrassed as I had been then, my boobs weren’t pancakes back then, my butt round and low, and my belly covered in stretch marks. Now, I had something to be self-conscious about.
“There ya’ go,” Carol finally said with laughter in her voice. “The first time is the hardest.”
Someone began singing, an old song, acapella, as the women from the coven began to dance. And it was strange. Suddenly, I realized that no one was staring at me. No one was whispering behind their hands about old pancake boobs. They were just… dancing. Dancing as if no one was watching. Dancing, their arms waving above their bodies, and their hips swinging like there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong about dancing naked in the woods.
I had the strangest moment when all of this felt normal.
It was official. I’m losing my mind.
“Come on,” Deva whispered as she took my hand. “Just focus on the magic and the stars. You’ll forget you’re naked soon.”
I tried to do as she said and to my utter shock, she was right. As easy as it had been to see the other women looking so free, it quickly became easy for me too. Soon I was humming along, the tune quickly becoming a part of me, pounding through my blood and heart as my magic pulsed out of me and joined the collective magic of the group.
Because that was exactly what was happening now. Our magic was dancing together. Each of us radiated a different color, a light that was more subtle than the light from the flames, but the colors lifted above our heads, moving above us like smoke with a mind of its own. The colors began to swirl together, joining, and the cloud group bigger. My own color, to my surprise, was a lovely purple, like lavender. And as I stared at it, spinning around, my heart swelled. Lavender. It was a good color. A color I was proud of.
Carol’s magic seemed to be a subtle mix of colors, unlike most of the other women. Her colors reminded me of her knitting projects. Even the thought made me smile. Beth’s was a bright pink, no surprise there. It reminded me of her personality. She’d always had the best smile. The biggest personality. She was bright pink, inside, and out. Deva’s, on the other hand, was a soft blue. No less beautiful than the pink, but it captured her in a way that made tears gather in my eyes.
There were so many colors. So much magic gathered together. It made me feel this deep sense that every person in the world had a color, like their aura, or their soul, and that every color was beautiful in its own way.
My gaze met with Beth’s, and there were tears in her eyes. I wondered, since she wasn’t allowed to join the coven, if she was just overwhelmed by emotions too. Or if it was because she was afraid of what she might learn tonight.
Unable to help myself, I went and snagged her hands. We spun together like children, and she smiled, even as her tears finally escaped and rolled down her cheeks. I felt myself crying too, but it was like my soul was just that happy.
The clearing began to feel heavy. Like a roof filling with steam. I glanced up at the cloud above us, and it almost blocked out the sky. Only the moon still peeked through the rainbow of dancing colors. I held my breath, feeling like we were on the edge of something powerful.
Suddenly, a harsh voice filled the clearing. We stopped dancing and whirled around to find Hildy standing with her arms spread in the air.
My heart raced. A coldness I didn’t understand rolled down my spine, and I felt the mood of the women around me change. The colors above us exploded out, and cold wind rushed toward us, nearly putting out the bonfire. A few tiny flames and embers remained, but otherwise, we were swallowed in darkness.
Everyone seemed to be holding their breaths.
Hildy walked over the hot coals and came to stand in the middle of them, not even wincing. Her gaze was focused above her, at the moon, and her arms remained spread wide. Her body jerked a couple of times, and then she crumbled to her knees, and the remaining flames were quenched, as embers rose up around the witch. “The missing man has returned,” Hildy said, her voice guttural and hard to understand. “He’s no longer human.”
Beth gasped, and my chest felt tight. I stepped back and put my arm around her shoulders, not even caring that we were both naked. The missing man wasn’t human? That couldn’t be good.
Hildy continued as all the embers fell and disappeared, “The only way to stop him is to find the person who did the first spell. He or she must undo it, or Beth will never be free.”
“Who did the spell?” Deva called, sounding upset.
With her eyes closed, Hildy looked at Deva. Creepy. “They are not of our coven. They are rogue.”
A rogue witch? Was that common? Was that something my friends would know how to handle?
Hildy fell on her side, and a couple witches rushed forward and drew her from the ash. They wrapped her in a robe, and then everyone began to dress. A somberness had fallen over us all. Apparently, as amazing as it was to connect my magic with other women, the truth has a way of destroying that feeling of happiness inside of me.
My friends and I grabbed our robes and covered up. I could barely
