see, I lost someone dear to me recently. He’s a witch, like me. Like you all. I thought…I thought he might be here.” I stood on tiptoes, pushing against empty air. “Tony? Tony Marcella?”
The old witch folded her hands below her breasts with interlocking fingers. “Lilith of New Castle. You cannot see him.”
“Why not?”
She shook her head solemnly. “The one you call Tony is not among us.”
“ Sure he is. He has to be. He died over a week ago. Surely he—”
“No!” She spread her arms as if to encompass the entire realm of emptiness. “We are all witches, once of blood and bone. Our lineage knows only the natural born. `Tis true, there be it once a witch named Tony of New Castle. Yet he be not a kin through blood, this witch, but of grant through rite of passage. Ours is a lineage unbroken. His spirit soul shall dwell among his kind not ours, I am sorry to say.”
“Wha…what are you telling me? When I die, I won’t be with him for all eternity?”
She nodded. “Rest thy body where thee wilt, Lilith of New Castle, for thy soul belongs with us.”
“No. No! ” I shook my head. “I won’t come here. Not if he’s not here. I won’t. I just won’t! With all due respect, you all can all just kiss my witchy ass.”
The old woman scowled at me. “`Tis the way of the witch. Thou art a sister among sisters. Thy fate is chosen.”
“Yeah? We’ll see about that. We’ll just see.”
I crossed my arms to my chest and flung them open as wide as I could. In an instant, I was off again, hurling through a black vortex as violent as any a witch’s ladder could muster.
M y body tumbled head-over-heels, spinning, rocking and rolling. My head ached. My chest grew tight, as if the air in my lungs was expanding and I was shrinking. My bones felt like kindling. My skin burned. I kept wondering when it would stop, but it didn’t. It just went on and on.
T he mothers were punishing me. I knew it. Instead of calling me back to their folds so that I may know their displeasure, they instead exacted discipline to teach me a lesson.
I screamed a line of bloody obscenities, or at least I tried, but the rush of wind, deafening to my ears, drowned out any sound that I could make.
And so I tumbled, blindly, wickedly, passing in and out of consciousness and believing I might never know anything else.
Then, as abruptly as it began, it stopped. I remember spilling out of the black mirror and onto my living room floor. I rolled to a stop against an ottoman by Tony’s old chair.
I shook my head and looked around. The lights were off. The house was dark. The candles I used for consecrating the circle had long since burned down and out. I pinched the wick on one. It was cold to the touch.
I stood and staggered to the window, dizzy and weak. Night had fallen. The moon was high. The mothers had kept me tumbling in that infernal vortex all freakin` day.
“How dare they!” I screamed, and kicked the pyramid of spent candles across the room. Shattered pieces of glass peppered holes in the wall like shotgun shrapnel.
“Those arrogant bitches!”
I waved my hand to turn on the living room light. Sparks leapt from my fingertips in a static blue arc and scorched the bookcase nearby.
Yes, I thought. That felt good . I spun up a zip ball and finished the job, splintering the bookcase into a thousand pieces.
“Take that, assholes! ”
I kicked the TV over and busted the screen. Next went the china cabinet, dishes and all. I proceeded in a wild fit, angry as a hornet, flipping furniture and trashing anything I could break, burn, or blow up.
It was a classic case of anger displacement. I knew that, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter that I was pissed off at the mothers for telling me the truth. Pissed off at Tony for dying on me. Pissed at Ursula because she still had Dominic. Pissed at Dominic because he wasn’t dead. Pissed at the world because the world couldn’t share in my misery.
None of that