Initiate

by Bill Bennett

  Luna laughed. ‘Are you ready to start?’

  Lily took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Luna set up her phone and a couple of portable speakers in the rocks around the altar. She opened up her music library and strange electronic harmonics started to fill the chamber. To Lily it sounded like stars dropping from the sky. It began to seep into her subconscious.

  Luna asked her to kneel in front of the altar, head bowed, while she used the broomstick to ritually clean the site, then she took the chalice and sprinkled water onto the ground to purify the area.

  She then lit four candles at each corner of the altar, and with head bowed she said a quiet prayer to the Goddess Artemis. Then she took a large pinch of sea salt from the silver dish and sprinkled it into the remaining water in the chalice. She picked up the double-bladed knife, an athame, and dipped it into the water. Then she turned to Lily, and with her eyes slightly closed, she began to incant a series of archaic invocations.

  Luna used the athame to call upon the four Lords of the Watchtowers of Earth, Water, Air and Fire, corresponding to the four candles laid out on the altar, summoning them to guard the circle and to bear witness to the sacred rites about to be performed. Then she put the blade of the knife on each of Lily’s breasts, then onto her stomach, then onto the space between her eyes – her third eye.

  She chanted some more words in a language that felt as old as the rocks around them. The words were like a devious smoke getting into Lily’s eyes, between her lips, into her nostrils, insinuating themselves into her thinking, making her drowsy and disconnected. She began to slip into a trance, as if she was falling down a rabbit hole, trying to grab hold of the sides as she fell further and further into a soft velvet darkness.

  She was aware of certain things, fading in and out of her dream state as she tumbled down the hole. She was conscious of Luna using a length of red cord to measure her from head to foot, hips across, heart across, elbow to wrist. She was aware of her taking the knife, the athame, to cut snippets from her hair and fingernails and toenails.

  At some stage, Luna put a red silk blindfold over her eyes and tied her up with several lengths of the red cord in a particular way, which seemed ceremonial. Later with the blindfold off, Luna daubed aromatic oils on Lily’s temples, and the inside of her wrists and forehead and third eye.

  She heard more strange words, an ancient spell, then she felt herself separating out of her body and rising up high into the domed chamber. She looked down on herself and Luna, there by the altar.

  Then she was rising higher and moving over to the waterfall, following the cascading stream out through the crack in the roof, out into the sunlight. She continued to rise, and soon she was looking down on the Chalk Mountains. Then higher still, and Luna’s cottage was merely a speck tucked among wild rocks way below.

  As she rose into clouds, at first white and diaphanous but then dark and threatening, full of thunder and flashes of lightning, she became aware that she’d shifted into another realm, outside of what she knew.

  As she moved through the roiling darkness of the storm clouds, she could hear her mother calling out to her urgently, fearfully. Lily burst out of the clouds and then she was skimming above a gloomy wood, travelling at an extraordinary speed, searching for her mother, following her plaintive cries for help. The cries were weak but getting louder, the pain in her mother’s voice stabbing at Lily’s heart.

  She whisked past an occasional farmhouse with a desultory tendril of smoke rising from a crooked chimney. Up ahead she saw a mountain shrouded in mist. It was a black mountain, and as she got closer she saw that it wasn’t a mountain at all but a gigantic mound of black rock with its top sheared off.

  Nearby was an abandoned mine. Lily could see that the entrance to the main shaft had been boarded up with two large doors nailed over with planking, and this was where her mother’s voice was coming from – from behind the doors, down in the dark depths of that mine shaft.

  Lily flew down and tried to get through the doors but she was suddenly hit hard by a foul energy coming up forcefully from the darkness below. It smacked her viciously, and Lily knew it wanted to suck out her soul and blow it into the fires of hell.

  That’s when she heard the bleating.

  BAAAA, BAAAA.

  The sound of a lamb.

  Standing beside the boarded-up entrance to the mine was a lamb, looking up at her with a ferocity that was stagger­ing. Its eyes were two fiery pits of flame, and when it opened its mouth, a yellow-coated pink tongue lolled out between corn-cob stubs of greenish teeth. The creature radiated a demonic malevolence.

  It bleated again.

  BAAAA, BAAAA.

  It was a sound of such resonating evil that Lily woke with a start, her heart racing, her eyes dilating with terror.

  Luna stared at her intently, as if she’d been a witness to all that she’d just experienced.

  ‘What did you see, Lily? Please tell me.’

  Lily shook her head, still reeling from shock and confusion. ‘I don’t really remember. All I remember was . . . my mother . . .’

  She began to cry.

  Her crying echoed in that huge sacred chamber. Luna held her until the sobbing stopped. She stood gently on the tops of Lily’s bare feet and kissed her third eye. ‘You did well, my child,’ she said gently. ‘Do you now know where she is?’

  Lily looked up at Luna and nodded her head. ‘Sort of. I think. I’m not sure.’

  Luna smiled. ‘That’s a good place to start.’

  She then turned back to the chamber, and with a strong raised voice she called out, ‘Hear ye, mighty harmonics of the air and wind, sun and moon, hear ye Goddess Artemis, High Goddess, protector and warrior, Daughter of Dawn, Mother of Starlight, Goddess of the Wild Lands. The initiate before you has now been consecrated Hidden Child of the Dawn, White Witch of the Light. Teach her the Magics of Beneficence, give her the courage of the First Sword of the Purple Flame, guard her from the cold shadow of the Dark Master and His Dedicants of Chaos.’

  Luna turned back to the altar, picked up the wand, brought it over and solemnly offered it to Lily.

  ‘This is now yours,’ she said.

  Lily slowly took the wand. She felt its nobility in her hand, felt its history in her heart. Her whole body trembled, as if she’d been filled with a white effervescent light that fizzed in every cell of her being.

  Luna looked at her and smiled.

  ‘Welcome, witch.’

  She paused, then with a wily smile, she asked, ‘Now, do you want to see what’s inside the suitcase?’

  The Fallen Priest stared up the mine shaft at the entrance, boarded up yet seeping light around the edges. Who was that? What spirit? What energy? The girl’s? Surely not. Surely she didn’t have the skill or power to find her mother here. She was too young. She wasn’t even a witch. It wasn’t possible. But some entity, some frequency of consciousness, had found them, and this was worrying.

  Worrying too was the intransigence of the woman.

  He’d tried everything.

  After taking her down into the decaying dripping mine shaft, he’d laid her on a rusted coal trolley, bound her hands and feet, then he’d administered Satan’s Sweat once again like he’d done at the rubber dump. Usually disengaging a soul from a hierarchy connection was not hard. The easiest way was through what he called ‘magnetism’ – he offered the soul something more enticing and it came over of its own volition. Power, sex, ego, wealth, even health and wellbeing could be used as inducements. It depended on the integrity of the soul.

  Some souls were young. Barely evolved. They migrated over at the first opportunity when offered sweetmeats. Others were more highly evolved – they were the old souls. They were many lifetimes old, and could see through his tricks and glitter. Even so, eventually they could be bought or persuaded or simply worn down, and the Fallen Priest was an expert at closing the deal.

  But this woman had a soul that was beyond anything h
e had yet encountered. It was older than he could believe, and impervious to all his goading and bullying and temptations. Her soul simply could not be bought by whatever means. And it couldn’t be intimidated either.

  Souls were neither masculine nor feminine, but often souls that found their way into male bodies could be more easily tempted or terrified into coming over to the dark. The tangible world of desire and gratification was often more important to them than the world outside of their immediate understanding.

  Souls in female bodies were usually more difficult, because they were less easily swayed or seduced. And they didn’t always respond to bullying or intimidation. Souls in women were a constant challenge because they were brave and stubborn, and that’s what made them so fascinating to the Fallen Priest.

  But Angela Maguire was something beyond all that. Her soul was a huge, round buzzing ball of light that deflected his every attempt at corrupting its core. It was protected by dense layers of radiance, like hard white nacre around a precious pearl – obviously built up over hundreds of years through prayer and meditation. All his advanced spellcraft and wiles were to no avail against this impenetrable shell.

  Perhaps it was time to call on help from below. From the Palace of Fires.

  They sat down on the sand beside the suitcase, Lily still holding her wand. She didn’t want to ever let go of it. It felt good. It felt right. It felt like it had been hers for centuries, and would be for centuries to come.

  ‘Can I borrow your wand, witch?’ Luna asked.

  It surprised Lily, being called a witch. And it delighted her too. She felt proud being an initiated white witch and now a part of Cygnet. She handed over the wand.

  Luna closed her eyes and furrowed her brow in concentration. She invoked a quiet spell and gently touched one of the locks on the suitcase with the end of the wand. There was no flash of green light, no jumping sparks, the crystal at the end of the wand didn’t throb red – the lock just simply sprung open. Then Luna did the same with the other lock.

  Lily was stunned. This was the suitcase that a SWAT team had failed to open, yet Luna had simply used a few words of spellcraft and the touch of an old piece of bone. It was true magic. Amazing.

  ‘Okay,’ Luna said, ‘are you ready for this?’

  Lily could barely contain her excitement. Her mom had said the case contained her birthright, her ancestry and her destiny. What could it possibly be?

  She looked up at Luna and nodded. The wise old witch slowly pulled back the lid of the suitcase to reveal . . .

  A book.

  A huge and ancient book.

  It filled the entire case, and seemed to radiate with a glow that came from within. Its leather cover was cracked with age, the uneven edges of the pages were gold. On the front was a faded embossed silver symbol of a young swan. In the dancing light of the cave, the massive tome had a strange and powerful aura, as if it contained the secrets and mysteries of a thousand years.

  ‘It’s the Book of Light,’ Luna said, reverently. She laid a white cloth down on the sand beside the case. ‘Help me, please.’

  They both reached in and lifted the book out of the suitcase and placed it gently onto the cloth. Lily stared at it. It emanated a palpable energy that pulsated out like waves of heat from a slow-burning log.

  ‘Black witches have their Book of Shadows,’ Luna said, ‘which is their bible, if you will. It contains their core beliefs, their rituals, their magic practices and their philosophies. We white witches have this – the Book of Light. Jennett Maguire, your forebear, Lily, began it in 1721. The book has been handed down from generation to generation ever since, following the matrilineal line from mother to eldest daughter. Your mother took possession of it after her mother died. Now, it’s yours until we get your mom back.’

  So this is what mom carried around all those years, Lily thought. Hauling it in and out of cars, up and down motel stairs. And in such a crappy-looking suitcase. Who would have guessed?

  ‘So the night my mom disappeared,’ Lily asked, ‘that’s why she went back to get it?’

  Luna nodded. ‘She didn’t want the black witches to find it, because if they cracked the lock-spell, then they’d know all our secret spells and defences, and they’d wipe us out for good.’

  ‘And I guess they never thought to look in an old case. They just left it there.’

  ‘We were very lucky.’

  Lily carefully opened the thick leather cover. Inside on the faceplate, on what looked like a page of thin translucent skin, was a beautiful picture of a baby swan on a lake, exquisitely handpainted in faded colours and embellished in gold. Underneath in old print was the word: CYGNET.

  Lily gently turned the next page. Written in large silver lettering were the words: THE BOOK OF LIGHT.

  Luna was as fascinated as Lily. ‘I’ve heard of this book – every white witch has heard of it – but I’ve never actually seen it myself. This is what our philosophy, our beliefs and teachings, are all based upon.’

  The gilt-edged pages were roughly cut and made from the finest parchment. The first entry was in faded scratchy handwriting, as if written with a sharpened feather dipped in ink. The words were in a language Lily could not understand. However, she could make out the name at the top of the page – Jennett Maguire. In the spidery text were strange symbols and drawings – diagrams for various rituals, and hand-drawn pictures of knives and weapons and cups and chalices – all in a miniscule and scrawled hand.

  Lily felt a sudden overwhelming sense of wonder, sitting there in that huge domed cave, looking at the writings of a family ancestor from more than three hundred years ago. Yet within Lily there was also a sense of duty. She now understood what her mom had written in her letter – You have a magnificent purpose that awaits you, Lily. You have the highest calling imaginable. Her highest calling imaginable was to carry on Jennett Maguire’s work.

  She turned the next page.

  A different name was up top, written in ink that was faded and brown. The page was filled with more drawings – designs of robes and sashes, a step-by-step layout of a ritual ceremony, sketches of wands of various types, delicate line drawings of odd-shaped leaves and flowers, and rows of tiny primitive symbols that seemed to be meaningful, if only one knew how to unlock the codes.

  On the next page was another name written in a new hand, but this time Lily understood the language. It was English. From the handwritten cursive she was able to decipher a lot of what was written – details of ceremonies and rituals celebrating the movements of the seasons, initiation rites, and charts showing the various hierarchical structures within Cygnet.

  As well though, there were spells she could read and understand – protection spells to guard a cottage or a flock of sheep against a warlock’s curse, bountiful spells to make crops grow fast and abundantly, sanity spells to cure madness. There were other spells too – attack spells – like the stunning spell, to stun an opponent, and a quicken spell to make a witch move fast and with agility. They were simple words, yet they seemed to have potency and power.

  Lily flipped through the pages, enthralled, taking it all in with her photo brain. She marvelled at the copperplate drawings of weapons or vestments, and every now and then she was startled by a vivid depiction of a demon, usually sketched with the horns of an animal and the tongue of a snake.

  She kept turning the pages, carefully.

  As the book progressed, the languages sometimes changed; there were passages in French or German, oc­cas­ion­al­ly Spanish. The texts were always carefully entered, as though the writer knew it would have to be legible in several hundred years’ time. It gave the book a majesty, a grandeur, and as Lily turned each page she became more aware of the magnitude of her heritage. But she also knew that this sacred book was not hers, not yet. It was her mother’s. And her job was to safeguard it until she returned.

  She turned another page and then she stopped.

  Her heart stopped.

  Because on a facing page
was a pen and ink sketch of her nightmare. The beast with two heads. Just like in her dreams, the creature had the head of a goat, with long twirled horns, and the head of a boar, with thick sharp tusks. The goat looked feminine and the boar masculine. Its hands were claws and its feet were cloven hooves. It had black leathery wings like a bat, and in the sketch it squatted on top of a small globe of the earth as though it ruled and dominated the world. Lily shut the book hard, her heart racing, her hands trembling.

  ‘The Two Evil,’ Luna said quietly. ‘The masculine and the feminine of Satan. That’s what Jennett Maguire made her pact with, and that’s what now wants your mother’s soul in recompense. And yours too, Lily.’

  ‘It’s . . . disgusting. Unbelievable to think that something like that exists.’

  ‘Oh, it exists all right. It’s what you’ll soon have to battle.’ Luna got to her feet. ‘So now let’s head back, because there’s spellcraft you need to know. And I also want to show you how to use that wand. Beginners level,’ she smiled, ‘but still, it will be a useful tool for you.’

  Lily stood too, but as she went to pick up the book, something caught her eye in the bottom of the empty Samsonite.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked. She reached in and pulled out a small leather pouch. The leather was worn with age, its tie-string a frayed gold threaded cord.

  Luna stepped up, curious. ‘I don’t know. What’s inside?’

  Lily carefully opened the pouch and pulled out a pendant on a gold chain. It was heart-shaped, made of resin banded with scratched gold, and within the resin was a tiny white feather.

  Luna stifled a gasp. ‘It’s the Cygnet charm,’ she said, staring in disbelief. ‘I thought it was lost centuries ago.’

  Lily held it up. It swung on its gold chain, the resin reflecting the sun in amber crinkles of light.

  ‘It was Jennett Maguire’s,’ Luna explained, unable to keep her eyes off it. ‘There’s a myth associated with this charm. They say a beautiful white swan lived on a pond on the Maguire family farm. The bird had magical powers, and when Jennett revoked her soul contract with Satan, she used the swan to help ward off the beast. It could mesmerise with its call, and even the Dark Master was susceptible to the beauty of its song. Whenever the beast got close to Jennett, the swan would both warn her with its call, but also stupefy the Dark Master into a state of senselessness.