It is the cusp of a year: one is ending, the other is just on the horizon, turning peach-pink in the early light. Soon, it will rise blue and bright and axes of the world will lock in place, for a single moment, before continuing their weighty rotation. A new year. Another start. So we assemble. From the twelve covens, the High Witches, the Aunts, lead their Prodigies to the House of the Gods, the sacro-summit, the central mountain range, gilded with marble and carvings and gold.
Gods don’t care much for art, in the grand scheme of things, when all is said and done. It’s more for the human heart than the eternal’s, something created in their image, something to rival their power. Something that says, Look, we can endure too. And witches are material creatures. They love nothing they can’t make a charm out of. So here is the jagged crown of cliffs in the waning, fading light before dusk: the high and dark points of stone teeth and scales; the gold that the first witches poured from the summit, that runs, brilliant and bright, along winding rocky paths on the mountain’s northern side, its front; the pale blue veil over granite faces, twelve identical, ambiguous girls, lining the pathway to the cavern entrance, their eyes twelve different sets of jewels. They stare at each other, six neat rows, according to The Shift, reflecting each other’s shine. January faces August, February faces October, March’s gemmed eyes are fixed upon May; you know this order already. We all do. We feel it in our blood, and we hate it, and it is the will of the gods, so sometimes, we hate them too.
Some covens more than others.
The High Witches and their Prodigies stand at the foot of their coven’s pillar. The Prodigy stands in the shadow of all the girls that have come before her. She is them, as she is the stone carving the now comprises her sky. The High Witch once her too. Give or take for exceptions.
Final words vary between High Witch and Prodigy. Each coven has a different process, a different legend, and a different god. Some are kinder than others. Some girls will not be coming back. This is the burden of magic. January clasps her prodigy’s cold hands. Aunt May holds her prodigy’s faces, parts the hair and kisses her forehead. March is doing a final drill of tactics, things her prodigy ought to know. November is kneeling, assuring hers that there is nothing to fear. Only September, with her long neck and ancient face, is laughing.
We begin the year with sacrifice. We begin the year with longing. We begin the year with darkness, because from darkness, there is light.
It’s time to enter the cave.
''[[I'm ready.|Diantha]]''
''[[I'd rather watch, thanks.|November]]''
Your name is November. Aunt November, when one is feeling polite, though you don’t care much for titles. Your name wasn’t always November, but it is now and it has been for enough years now that it has all the weight a name ought to have. You are forty years old now. People have called you Aunt November for ten.
You are the High Witch of the November Coven. Tradition is what dictates you essential enough to your coven to share its name. November witches order themselves in accordance to passion and so you are the High Witch because you care the most, in your own way. Of course, the competition is not so stiff, the number of Gifted Witches being, at all times, no more than fifteen.
November’s gift is lightning. That is the element that chains you to the Goddess, whom most call The Lightkeeper. (You do not call her that.) All members of the coven are witches, and all witches are able to do the simple stuff – charms and hexes and telekinesis – the essentials that allow a witch to be a witch. The Gifts are different. Some extra power, some other special ability. God-given, but not quite right. The covens dispute the reason, but all agree there was a Shift. At some point, powers were reversed. Some cunning, heavenly trickster, some spat between the goddesses, some curse. It doesn’t matter, only that things are wrong now and have been for centuries now, since before any of them can remember, though the memory persists in the magic.
The movements one uses to conjure lightning are loose, flowing. They fill you. You must drown yourself in the sensation in order to summon a storm, throw a bolt. The September Coven is your opposite. They control tides and waves and rains, but their rituals are quick and pointed, barbed as a hunter’s knife or a predator’s teeth. They should be your moves. Their god should be your god. She used to be.
At some point, there was a switch. The magic was flipped and now, instead of entering the mountain to encounter the Goddess, the prodigies encounter a goddess that every inch of their body stirs against. For them, lightning doesn’t feel right. It feels like a curse. This is why there are only fifteen of them in the coven. Using a goddess’ gift gives them power. Jealous and embittered, witches have not been inclined to give their overlords that sort of energy. But connections must be maintained and rituals must abided. After all, being cursed is better than being forsaken. So ten girls are trained at a time and, every year, one is brought to the caverns and meets The Lightkeeper. And because The Lightkeeper is more benevolent than her peers, most November prodigies return.
You went and, and you returned, about twenty-three years now.
You do not resent your goddess.
You do not fear your goddess, either.
(You do not long for the water.)
(But you’re different. You changed, twenty-three odd years ago.)
And so, you kneel. You place a hand on Madeleine’s shoulders and look into her wide eyes. She’s nineteen, which makes her younger than many of the other girls here, but not by much. She’s nervous though, biting her lip and twisting her fingers into knots.
“Relax. You’ll be fine. I trained you. I know you can do this.”
“I don’t know – I. I – I think maybe this is a mistake. I shouldn’t. We should’ve let Agatha – I –“
“It’s fine. You volunteered, remember? You wanted this. That will mean volumes. It means you know, somewhere, that you’re ready. You’ll be great, kid. Don’t stress. Stay loose, so you can be loose. Otherwise, you won’t find your spark. Don’t give me that look. You’re going to be just fine, okay? Look at me, Madeleine. I wouldn’t lie to you. You’re going to be just fine. She’s – The Goddess – ''[[she’s kind...|N1]]''”
Your name is Diantha, prodigy of the April Coven, The Seer's chosen, and you have always been ready.
You look around. Most have finished. They stand, their faces now as neutral as stone (a High Witch is professional, with only a few exceptions). December and January and watching you, waiting. March, the old general, makes eye contact and then looks to the sky. A judgement. A silent, //Hurry Up//.
You look back at Madeleine’s nervous face and smile and take her hand, press it to your breastbone (does she feel it?). Then you begin the procession. Prodigies wear identical dresses: black, without a waist, falling to their knees, sleeves ending just past the elbows, high collars. Some prodigies have adornments, jewels or tokens or other trinkets that signify good luck or reassure against fear. Madeleine wear nothing. High Witches, too, wear black, but each Witch’s garb varies. There are patterns, of course, tends between like-compass points, but their position and age grants them liberties the girls are not allowed.
And anyway, they are not the sacrifice. Not anymore.
You walk Madeleine to the cavern entrance. December and January, their prodigies in hand, follow.
“You’re going to be great. She’ll –“ You hesitate for a moment, almost say something you don’t mean. Soemthing you don’t actually hope to be true. “She’ll be kind.”
And then you let go.
“Follow the topaz path,” you remind her, quickly, before assembling at the mouth of the cave. The same, amber stone glimmers on a ring on your right hand. The first witches – or perhaps the goddesses themselves – chiseled out twelve altar rooms, each marked by different jewels. You do not watch Madeleine recede into the dark. December and January beckon, and you take their hands gently, before [[vanishing into the air|N2]].
She’ll be fine.
The mist clears, and you stand at the summit, which is not cold, despite the height, or dark, but a bowl of light, all the colours of sky. The ground is even and the area sparse. At the centre, the very centre, the centre of the entire world, if stories are to believed (you have met a goddess, and so you, at least, are willing to give stories the benefit of the doubt), is the council table, carved from the mountain’s dark rock. A simple ring, with identically tall chairs and before each, a pool of water encased in coloured glass. December takes her seat before the turquoise pool, her mouth thin. These Annual Rites are a solemn occasion for the December Coven. Few come back. Their stories tell, like many of the stories affixed to the greediest of gods do, that prodigies ascend, that to spill red at the altar of The Lifebleeder is transcendence, that she gathers you in her jaws and turns you into the stuff dreams are made of. A privilege. A nymph’s existence, the life of a demi-god.
It might be true.
But Aunt December doesn’t know and so Aunt December can’t be soothed. It must be challenging, to prize objective knowledge so highly while being so dedicated to the truth. The December Coven is filled with illusionists and they find themselves increasingly reliant on their magic, and so their goddess is increasingly powerful. It means more choices in prodigies, you suppose, but it also means Aunt December, who has glass before her eyes and severe-looking eyes and, for formal occasions such as these, tends to put her hair up in an immaculate bun, while being the foremost scholar of her coven, has also never met her goddess – and probably never will. And those few that do return, seemingly at random and at whim, are changed. (Though this might be true for everyone.) They cannot remember their time in the chamber, that there was ever a chamber at all. And so the divine remain mystery that you are sure confounds and frustrates her.
January is youngest of the High Witches. Thirty-two on the verge of thirty-three. This is her first year. But she’s calmer, flushed with excitement. She sits on December’s left, you take the right.
The three of you comprise the North Witches. And, as a cohort, you are always first. Your entrance is what breaks the silence, resists the clocks. You pride simplicity and practically. Not like the -
''[[Well, speak of the devil.|N3]]''
In come the Eastern witches, in a blurry of colour and smoke and glimmer, putting on a show when no show is required. Frost Witches, you Notherners call them, because unlike the other compass-points, their ceremonial garb is bejewelled. Aunt February’s amethyst tiara, Aunt April’s diamond choker, just visible under her black good, and, in the center, March, with brilliant blue gems stitched up across her high collar, spilling across her wrists.
(March is never Aunt March. She is too strict, too cutting, too infuriatingly imperious to match such a warm title. If one says, The High Witch, you know they mean March. General March, Advisor March, Lady March, in theory, though you very much doubt anyone calls her that.)
They are all beautiful though, regardless of their ostentation. February’s a portrait, her hair slicked back. April, in flowing robes, her face done up, slashes of white and sapphire over her eyelids, her mouth; she has a long face and simple, black hair, but is known, even within the busy, clockwork and extravagant Eastern cities as being a beauty. You suppose it’s nice she noticed for something, especially at her age (April is fifty, if you remember correctly, a few years shy of March), especially when the witch in question has not spoken in at least thirty-five years. But March, March who always finds a way to be in the spotlight, to judge and judge from her cold eyes. Even March is beautiful, though perhaps in the same way a snake is beautiful. Wild, white hair, cut messily above her shoulders, pointed lips, and the scar that runs, diagonal across her face so that everything on her right, the observer’s left, runs a little higher. The scar starts higher, her smile – if she ever smiles – rises just a bit higher, is cut off on her left. You asked about it when you first entered the Council and instead of giving you a look (as she has come to give you often, as she gives most people), she laughed.
“My goddess tried to split my face in two. It was thoroughly endearing.”
March hates the gods, but when you narrowly escaped from their hands, maybe you would too. Her story is famous, even in other covens. Most prodigies aspire to March’s status, especially if they've been trained to vanquish rather than converse or submit to the altar top. A spear of ice through the Cavalier’s eye. March blinded a goddess. You can hardly stand her, but she’s not one to be trifled with either.
And, to her credit, she appears to care. None of her prodigies are under twenty-five. She prefers them to be thirty. March was eighteen was she was submitted before the Cavalier. She seems to think, survivor or not, that it was too.
You watch April’s hand skim March’s, for a brief moment, before the Eastern Witches make their way, in unison, to their seats. March likes April, which you would call an anomaly. Or maybe it’s stranger that April appears to like much. Their covens are close, but that doesn’t explain much. Neither talks much. One doesn’t talk at all. Perhaps that’s why they get along.
Next the Southern Witches, the Flower Witches, named for their customary adornments and their commitment to fragrance and kind looks. You meet May’s eyes as she appears at the mountain-top and she smiles at you. It hasn’t been long, but it’s still been too long. On either side, Aunt June and Aunt July mirror each other, a practice that comes naturally to them because they are identical in face, in height, in everything but their powers and their gloves. June wears white and July wears black. Healing and poison, health and sickness; you wouldn’t trust them, even if your life depended on it.
They didn’t always have the same face. One of those strange consequences of facing the gods. But they were contemporaries, send into the caverns in the same year, like she and May were. That bonds you, in some ways.
Finally the Western Witches, the autumn crones, as they are known now, because they are all well past seventy and enter in a flurry of hot air, familiars crawling across their shoulders, cackling to each other as they complete the council.
The sun is lowering in the sky. The night is about to begin. ''[[Here we go again|N4]]''.
From your seat at the table, you have a clearest look at March (//wonderful//), Aunt April, and Aunt May. Everyone is settling in before their pools of water. In yours, under an amber pane of glass, you can see Madeleine in the chamber doorway, fidgeting. You feel something tighten in your chest. You feel a bit of jealousy too, but you try to put that to the side.
Most will not look away from their pools. March always watches intently, and never flinches. April does not watch so religiously, but then, when you are gifted with prophecy, maybe it’s a bit redundant. May never wants to watch, but sometimes she does. May is High Witch not because she wants to, and not because she trains the prodigies (as High Witches usually do, as one expects you to do; May refuses, always), but because May is the only May Witch – perhaps ever – to survive Retribution. Their goddess is the cruellest or perhaps the most loving. Who knows which? May never wants to watch either, but sometimes, it can’t be helped.
She’s looking at you now, though.
May’s face has always been warm and kind, a softness in her smile. Her hair is faded, and tied in a low bun, wreathed with delicate flowers. You know she hates being here, being part of any of this, but she comes anyway. She’s hopeful. She’s always been hopeful.
//Come over//, she says in the tilt of her head, the way she raises her brows.
''[[You go to her.|N5A]]''
''[[You smile, but shake your head, and watch the amber water instead.|N5B]]''
You stand up, and walk around the table, passing behind the crones instead of risking an encounter with March.
You lean on the back of May's chair and she reaches behind her to take your hand for a moment, a passing greeting. She smells like lilies.
"How are you?" She asks, looking up.
“I’m okay.”
Her hand hesitates, then makes a decision, clasps around yours.
“You didn’t visit this year.”
“No,” you avoid her eyes for a moment, look into the emerald pool before her. It shows you nothing. “No, I didn’t. I’m… sorry.”
“If you’re sorry, you would come.” May’s smile falters. She lets go of your hand you feel the chill absence leaves. She doesn’t sound angry or accusatory, just disappointed and that does make you sorry. “I ask you every year.”
When she sees you aren’t going to speak, she continues in her gentle voice, “How many years has it been now?”
“Since we’ve known each other? Twenty-three. Since I’ve been on council with you? This is the tenth.”
May was forced into being High Witch the moment she turned twenty. She’s been May longer than you’ve been November. She’s been May for a lifetime. She’s been May longer than her prodigies have seen the sun. You did go to her, then, the first year after her very first Annual. You tried to make her laugh and she tried to laugh for you.
“Aunt June and Aunt July and I are beginning to think you just don’t like how we smell, the way you put me off like this, decades at a time.”
“No. No it’s not that – It’s – It’s something else.”
“The same something or a different something?” In your mouth, this would be flippant, teasing. In hers, it’s serious, it radiates concern. You don’t know if you love or hate the way she means everything she says.
“The same something. Maybe. I… I never know. I wish I did.”
“I wish you’d come.”
You want to say, //It’s not you//, but instead you say, with a coward’s half-hearted laugh, “You smell great though. Promise.”
You don’t need to look down the table to know March is shooting you a look.
May smiles. A different smile.
“I wish I had words for it – It’s just –“
“Oi! Auntie November!”
All heads look up. You look at Aunt October. The other High Witches look at you. Wonderful. October’s pushing grey hair out of her orange eyes, peering over into your pool. (How does she see when you never can? You’ll have to beg the hag for some of her secrets, but later.)
“Don’t look now – or hey, maybe do look now! – but I think you’ve got a runner.”
''[[//Wonderful.//|N6A]]''
You smile back, but shake your head. Not now. Not yet. There’s a whole night to get through. Maybe later. Besides, you’d rather watch the water. You want to see the exact moment //she// appears. You always miss it.
Madeleine’s still in the doorway, like she can’t make up her mind. You’ve seen this much decision in the House of the Gods. You never felt that. Only the pull, only the sundering bolt that pulled you forward. Magnetism. Static. It shocked; you drowned in it.
On your side, December resting her head in her hands. She leans towards you.
“What’s the point?”
“Of sacrifice? The perks of martyrdom, I imagine. Or the knowledge that, because of you, your goddess won’t rain down damnation on your people. Take your pick.”
“Not //that//. It’s just, //Lifebleeder//, how does your glass work?”
“It just… shows things? Here’s the chamber. Here’s Madeleine. There’s Lady Lightkeeper, whenever she decides to appear.”
“How fortunate. Mine is a whole mess of delusions and illusions. As if we don’t have enough of those. I don’t think I’m ever going to figure it out.”
“So don’t,” you say, and December rolls her eyes. “What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is knowledge, November. The big deal is unwraveling divinity. The big deal is figuring out why they’re goddesses in the first place! The big deal is –“
“Oi, Auntie Novem,” Aunt October’s leering over your other shoulder.
“What?”
“You’re up a lady and down a lady.”
She’s looking into your glass. How does she manage to see anything? Hags. They know too much for their own good. Maybe December should be consulting October instead of you. Clearly the crone has answers.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you goddess showed up and your prodigy fled the coop.”
''[[“//No.//”|N6B]]''
“Oh yes,” October grins and leans back with a wicked sort of cackle. “Up and down, indeed.”
You rush back to your seat – and May follows.
“Well, no one saw that coming,” you hear March say, sprinting behind her chair. The General doesn’t look up though. You’re not worth it.
“Of course not,” May says behind you. “That’s the nature of surprise.”
“And yet only two of us here are surprised.”
March looks up for May. The natural tension between opposites knots its way across the room. March would make time for May even if she didn’t want to. That’s how it is, when the gift that should be yours is in someone else’s gut, pumping someone else’s blood. You’ve seen the way March and May look at each other, with alternations of contempt and longing. (More notable because most of May’s looks are looks of longing, and most of March’s contempt. Not with each other, though.) March’s mouth twitches. April’s hand moves. She goes back to looking down.
October’s not wrong. The doorway’s been vacated and the room is empty too. Just darkness. Just echo.
Someone has to be there.
You take a step back, take a second step and then you’re caught.
May’s got her hand around your wrist.
“Don’t do it.”
You blink.
“Don’t go.”
''[[I have to.|N7A]]''
''[[I want to.|N7B]]''
You look down into the water and blinding light stares back.
She’s here.
She’s back.
And Madeleine’s gone. There’s no black star of her body floating in the brilliant, luminous flood.
It’s just the goddess.
Someone has to be there.
Someone has to be there.
You take a step back, take a second step and then you’re caught.
May’s got her hand around your wrist.
“Don’t do it.”
You blink.
“Don’t go.”
''[[I have to.|N7A]]''
''[[I want to.|N7B]]''
“It something I have to do,” you say and you say it firmly, to make it true. “Why else are we here?”
May doesn’t let go.
You grin and she looks more doubtful than before. “I’ll be careful.”
“Mean that,” Her voice is a whisper. “Promise me.”
But you won’t, because your promises mean nothing to her now, just like your apologies. You’ll have to prove it some other way. And she knows this, too, because she lets go and all you have left in your cold wrist.
A simple cloud of smoke and you’re standing in the darkness, guided only by twelve sets of jeweled eyes, blank faces. How many girls have stood under them? You stop asking questions before you ask yourself too many.
You enter the cave.
It’s cold and it’s quiet. It sounds empty, but the cavern walls pulse with the weight of twelve or so gods, the strain of twelve divine interactions and all the vastness they entail. You think, now, it almost seems impossible that one mountain can contain it all, that twelve women can preside over it and not feel a thing.
You don’t remember the way. You thought you would. You were sure you would, but you don’t. It’s been ages, and so the dark rock hears your murmured incantation, feels, inside it, the way you gently twist the topaz ring. The hallway lights up. The topaz flakes in the cavern, the jewels set into stone burst into light.
You walk.
You walk the orange path deep into the mountain, winding past ancient carvings (the stories of old gods, of the goddesses then and now) and the occasional sealed door. Wedged between the bloodstone gates, the lofty red-specked frame where the Cavalier has descended, something reflects warmth back at you. You touch it – cold – and then pry it carefully from where it was forgotten. The knife levitates before your face. You study your black eyes, the crow’s feet, the places you’ve aged. Just for a moment. Just for a second.
You think about all the time you’ve lost.
You take it.
Another corridor. The ceiling slopes. It’s colder, but not by much. You’ve slipped the knife under your sleeve, where it sleeps silver dreams. You wonder if March gave it to her prodigy. Or if it was their own design. A girl’s choice or a woman’s? Your chest constricts, heavier now, close now. Maybe there isn’t much of a difference.
The Lightkeeper’s room is empty, no blood in it, and so the door hasn’t yet sealed, so the steady flashes of illumination leak out. You turn your face to it, stand before it, and can’t see a thing. But you know. You feel it. You’ve always felt it, but never like this. Never so much. Not for so long.
[[You walk into the light.|N8]]
“It’s something I want to do,” you say and you mean it, but you try to ignore how stunned May looks in response. You don’t have to think about it. There’s a glow in your chest and the magnetism, the twenty-three year old ache. It’s something May never had, never understood, and you never questioned.
(Part of you liked it, prided yourself on it. No one else has this. You held the hands of ten prodigies now. None of them, surely, none of them have this.)
A simple cloud of smoke and you’re standing in the darkness, guided only by twelve sets of jeweled eyes, blank faces.
You enter the cave.
It’s cold and it’s quiet. It sounds empty, but the cavern walls pulse with the weight of twelve or so gods, the strain of twelve divine interactions and all the vastness they entail. You think, now, it almost seems impossible that one mountain can contain it all, that twelve women can preside over it and not feel a thing.
You don’t remember the way. You thought you would. You were sure you would, but you don’t. It’s been ages, and so the dark rock hears your murmured incantation, feels, inside it, the way you gently twist the topaz ring. The hallway lights up. The topaz flakes in the cavern, the jewels set into stone burst into light.
You walk.
You walk the orange path deep into the mountain, winding past ancient carvings (the stories of old gods, of the goddesses then and now) and the occasional sealed door. Wedged between the bloodstone gates, the lofty red-specked frame where the Cavalier has descended, something reflects warmth back at you. You touch it – cold – and then pry it carefully from where it was forgotten. The knife levitates before your face. You study your black eyes, the crow’s feet, the places you’ve aged. Just for a moment. Just for a second.
You take it.
Another corridor. The ceiling slopes. It’s colder, but not by much. You’ve slipped the knife under your sleeve, where it sleeps silver dreams. You wonder if March gave it to her prodigy. Or if it was their own design. A girl’s choice or a woman’s? Your chest constricts, heavier now, close now. Maybe there isn’t much of a difference.
The Lightkeeper’s room is empty, no blood in it, and so the door hasn’t yet sealed, so the steady flashes of illumination leak out. You turn your face to it, stand before it, and can’t see a thing. But you know. You feel it. You’ve always felt it, but never like this. Never so much. Not for so long.
''[[You walk into the light.|N8]]''
//What does light taste like?//
The beginning. All beginnings. The first beginning. Roots in earth and buds on the trees. And the time before trees. And sky. And sun. And all the things before it.
//What does it feel like?//
Heavy. The distance from the surface to the bottom of the once. The weight of every condensed column of air, the breaths between particles, the searing white-lightning flash of connection.
//What does it sound like?//
Her voice in your ear, and then pouring downward. The hum in your chest. The beat of your heart, electric. The nerves of your body, plucked raw.
//What does it feel like?// Drowning. //What does it feel like?// Drowning. //What does it feel like?//
Drowning.
''[[Open your eyes.|N9]]''
The goddess appears in light, and then in darkness. She the flash and then the thunderclap. She has translucent skin and shifting form, storm clouds gathering and blowing across the cave ceiling. You can see hurricane inside of her. You can see the empty eyes and the mouth of tiny, sharp teeth. She is horned and the horns are static and energy. Her palms shock.
She is beautiful, still.
She does not move to come closer, she moves you, she moves the room, she feels it and draws you closer and that is how you end up a breath away, your face in her tempest hands.
“Miss November,” she speaks, but she does not //say//, not like you say. She speaks and you feel her voice smile in your chest. It stops you. It moves you. It traps you. You have no gravity in her presence; you are hers.
(And every magic muscle in your body says //no//, but sticky feeling, just below the breast-bone, it never falters.)
“You remember me,” you try, and you hope it’s a joke. (You haven’t had too much luck with them today, have you?)
“I am you,” says the thunder in your blood, says the tide washing over your heart.
You’re staring into your empty eyes. (How is it that you see so much in them?)
''[[I missed you.|N10A]]''
''[[You’re not me.|N10B]]''
“I missed you,” and it comes from your blood, rather than your mouth, it comes from every inch of your body, it comes in a head, tilted into the palms of her hands, sinking into her skin.
You missed her.
You missed her for twenty-three years.
“I was with you,” she says, and you feel it illuminate the marrow. “I was always with you.”
Because she put herself there. Because you lay on the altar top and she descended upon you, smelling of dark, underground water and the highest, burning arcs of the sky. And she touched you with soft, translucent hands and she kissed you with a mouth full of sparkling, sharp teeth. And she said //only you// and it’s only ever been you. When she held you, held all your girlish limbs together, she made the cave walls disappear; she made you disappear from here, from all the things it entailed, and there was her. And there was only her.
And then a new year came and the hours were done and she knew and you knew you would not be back, but she held you still. She ripped a piece of herself from her own throat. She put lightning inside of your chest, just below the breast-bone. She put herself there.
She never left.
And nothing else ever compared.
(You have gone years, dedicated to her shadow. You are her High Witch and you are her passion and when you move, she moves inside you too. Only you. Only the two of you.)
Her eyes are empty, her eyes are holes in the universe where there are no stars, they are vast and swallowing and infinite.
You see yourself in them.
“Not enough,” you say.
She smiles.
The room glows, but it’s not her. Light is pouring out of chest, illuminating from under your skin, soaking your bones.
“So have more,” the Lightkeeper replies in a voice that speaks from everywhere, but mostly from your heart. “So don’t leave this time.”
She says, “You don’t have to leave.”
She says, ''[[“You are my only one.”|STORM WIFE]]''
“You’re not me.”
She’s not you. She’s not with you. She hasn’t been with you for twenty-three years, not since lay yourself down on her jewelled altar, seventeen years old, and waited. And she did come to you. She came in light and bluster and she came and you saw right through her pellucid grey face and the stratus and nimbus of her hair. She let you see straight into her brain, the way she can see straight into yours and she touched your face, she reached inside of you and touched the arcs of your ribs and your weathervane spine, spun it all in circles, round and round and round.
“Aren’t I?”
She tilts her head and the earth beneath your feet shifts too, which is also her. It’s not earth. You’re floating in her, lost in her. And it’s just like before, so you know how to hold your breath now, you know how not to get dizzy. (You know it will stop. You know – and this last thought comes clear to you now, freshly excavated from the tree-rings lopped round your bones – that it will leave.)
(Again.)
“Didn’t I put myself in you?”
And once she had touched your ribs, and one she had pressed her airy mouth to yours, she left her voice in your air, she took some of the lightning from your throat and said it was yours now, said it was you. She left in shimmering, simmering, just below the sternum. She left is twisting, murmuring for years. She said it was a gift. She said //not one else//. She said //only you//.
And that’s what happened.
You were only you.
Because she was gone. Because when she done, the cavern opened and the new year begun and at first your body sung, but then it didn’t. Then it was nothing, just this voice in your chest you couldn’t talk about, couldn’t articulate to anyone, because no one would understand (that no one would want to understand, that everyone would want to hack out and leave bleeding, that sometimes you did too). This thing that prevented you from moving. This thing that bound you to her service, that lit up all your veins and made you want to teach and train and bring girl after girl to her door. That made you wary. That made you watch paranoid, waiting, to see if it was really //only you//.
“Didn’t I love you?”
She didn’t love you,
She ate you whole.
Her face so close to yours, she’s got you by the jaw, cradling, cooing, and isn’t it nice, and doesn’t it glow. There’s a light in your chest and sears at the heart.
“//Don’t I love you?//”
Maybe she does. But it wasn’t enough.
Maybe she did, but it wasn’t good.
''[[You just want to be free.|NCUT]]''
You draw the knife.
You cut her throat.
Her entire body rages and howls and thunders. Noise leaks first, and then she bleeds light. She bleeds light everywhere. Thick, blinding beams from the divine arteries of her celestial neck. Then gold, hot and molten and dripping across the altar top. You hold her by the hair. Her eyes go wide and wide and wide until they’re windows, until they’re eating up every last wisp of her hair, her beautiful transparent face, until her body falls to the ground in rays.
The light eats her up.
You drown in it.
A moment passes. A brilliant, blinding pulse. Then darkness. Then shape. Then beginning.
Then you.
Your hands are silver and they burn. You can’t let go of the knife. You can’t let go of her hair, her skull, but there’s nothing there anymore. Just a puddle of gold and your hand, washed it in, and your finger curled around something empty. And you can’t let go.
You breathe in.
You breathe out.
''[[The whole room smells of rain.|NRAIN]]''
You stumble out of the cavern. Your fingertips fizzle. You smell wet, you feel wet, but your skin is bone dry. You can’t feel your legs, you can’t feel the way you move, you can’t tell you’re moving at all –
You’re caught by a bed of lilies. Petals moving across you face, stroking your hair, lips to your forehead, and then hands holding you close. You smell her first and then, as she turns over your arms, watches the way the gold blood rusts along your fingertips, you know her.
“I don’t know – I’m sorry – I –“
What do you tell her?
“It’s okay, Eralyn.” You jerk and surprise yourself. You thought you’d forgotten that name. You name. “It’s okay.”
May is smiling. She’s always so warm. She’s always so pretty. She’s got you by the shoulders and holds you while you shake. She pries the knife from your hands, not because you’re fighting her, but because you don’t know how to move them. Not anymore. Not yet.
''[[“You did the right thing.”|NMAY]]''
May tells you things, while she holds you on the cavern floor and you feel, even this deep underground, the light begin to rise over the mountainside. She tells you simple things first, meaningless meaningful things. How she stubbed her toe last week, the new tea leaves she keeps by her cottage window, the shape of the sun in the morning on her side of the hill. She tells you all things she’s wanted to tell you for twenty-three years, all the things she would’ve told you, if you had been there.
You’re here now. Your eyes can barely see and your body shakes and your hands are plastered in a goddess’ blood, but you’re here. Finally, you’re here.
“We’re taught to fight them, May witches, unlike you. We’re taught to fight her and we never win, because we can’t ever win. I don’t know what yours is like, but ours is something else. Maybe she’s the worst. Maybe ours and March’s are the worst. They’re the greediest anyway. I didn’t fight her. I should’ve, but I didn’t. I wanted to live. You were going to live. I wanted to go back home and I wanted to see my parents and I wanted to see you too. I wanted a future.
“So I didn’t fight. I bartered. They only want your magic. They want to be near it again, to be near themselves, I think. Or they want to use it. They want to eat it. They want to love it. She thought she loved me, she did. She really did. But she was a goddess and I was a girl and she was cruel and I was young. She didn’t love me. She couldn’t, even if she wanted to.
“I think she did want to.
“So I said take my magic. Take it, instead of me. She didn’t understand at first, because to them – to all of us, I think – it’s not that different. I thought it might be. She drained me of all my fire and all the hard parts of me that wanted to be ice and I became the only person in this world with magic. Nothing. Not even the simplest charm.
“But I was happy, for a while. I am, for the most part. I had survived. I had lived. And I could grow flowers in the garden and I could have a garden and I could see my parents cry when I came home, because I came home. They cried because they were happy too. Few of us in the May Coven, the ones with gifts, get to be happy. Not these girls they make me march here. Twenty years. Twenty girls. All gone. It’s such a waste. I don’t care if they’re gods. It’s such a waste. They shouldn’t need to run on us.
“I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you everything. I knew you’d understand, in some way. I knew you had been touched too, though in a different way. I listened to stories about you from home. All these years and all the ways you rearranged the sky. I had hoped you were happy.
''[[“It changes you. This whole ritual. No one comes out the same.”|GODSLAYER]]''
You spend a long time in the dark.
May tells you stories and touches your face and then she just touches your face and then you touch hers, and the Lightkeeper’s blood doesn’t burn or make her flinch or turn away. She leans her forehead against hers. She smiles. And, on a knife lodged gently into a stone floor, you see yourself smile back.
“You realize, you’re going to be March’s favourite person now,” May whispers, near you ear and you both laugh because there’s nothing else to be done.
You kiss her anyway.
''END: GODSLAYER.''
You embrace the goddess first by her lips. Next, your hands, sinking into her chest. And then her hands around you. And then her hands inside you. And then oneness. And then light.
So much light.
Stories will be altered; legends will be told. You will hear them, and you will not hear them. You will believe them, and you will be beyond them.
You see farther now.
For you, she has made another sky – and there are no words to describe how brightly it shines.
''END: THE STORM'S WIFE.''