Yes. It felt good. Right.
“So mote it be,” Raquel said.
“So mote it be.”
Brenda wanted the balance of love, joy, and power, with all her might. She wanted the other pleasures spring brought, as well. Like the possibility of growth…and love. She turned to the gorgeous woman beside her then, and smiled.
“To spring,” Brenda said, clinking her teacup to Caroline’s.
“To spring,” Caroline replied. And then, other people be damned, they gave each other the longest, sweetest kiss ever. It tasted of mint, chocolate, and hibiscus, and felt like a blessing.
Like just the right, new, thing.
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By Sea
She looked ahead on the sun-washed shoreline and saw Zion’s dark shape, playing chicken with the waves. He knew better than to turn his back on the ocean. Raquel had taught him that early on. The waves on the Oregon coast could reach up and snatch a person before they even knew what happened. Tourists got dragged out to sea at least once a summer.
You’d never see a local standing on a log, just as you’d never see a local turn her back on the sea.
It was good to see Zion having fun, laughing, and running back and forth, filled with the energy of a thirteen-year-old boy. Lately, the smile that usually graced his face had become as rare as sun during the Oregon winter. But he still wouldn’t tell her what was wrong.
“It’s nothing, Mom,” he kept insisting. Well, it was something, that was for sure. And it felt like more than just adolescent blues.
The sand was cool, and crunched under the balls of her feet as Raquel walked, sneakers in hand. She skirted the massive, uprooted trees that dotted the coastline like the corpses of fallen giants. They looked like the bones of some mythical creatures, who lived in a land far away. A land that time forgot.
Her dreadlocks tied back, she turned her face to the sun, and inhaled the brackish scent of salt water and washed-up seaweed. It soothed her heart and soul. The winter had been hard. She was so ready for Beltane and the warmer months.
Raquel hadn’t been to the coast in entirely too long. But for a single parent running her own business, days off were in short supply. It didn’t matter how busy her life was, though, she always reached the point where she just had to get close to the ocean. She needed her dose of salt water, sea air, and the screech of seagulls flying over the cliffs.
So today, she’d left her coven sister Cassiel in charge of the café, packed Zion into her beetle-green electric Fiat, and made the two-hour drive to Lincoln City.
Just up ahead was a five-foot-tall pyramid of driftwood. People loved to make sculptures of the sea detritus, and the park service always came along and knocked them back down again. The never ending cycling of nature, art, and government rules.
They’d been coming to this beach since Zion was five, after his dad died and Raquel needed to do things that got her away. Zion still loved the kites that flew in bright array when the wind was right. They’d already walked by the kites. Raquel could hear them flapping in the wind behind her. She inhaled, as deeply as she could, and held the breath in her lungs. Then she slowly exhaled. Goddess, her soul needed this. She watched the waves rolling in as she walked, tumbling and crashing into nothingness, until there was just a slender wash of water, snaking up onto the shore.
“Sorry I’ve turned my back on you lately, Mama.” Raquel said. “You are my heart, my soul. And I know it’s been too long.”
Yemọja. She of the oceans and the rivers. Siren of the sea. Protector of children and women. Raquel had been dedicated to Yemọja since long before she became a witch. She just hadn’t known the Power’s name back then.
Raquel had always been a creature of the sea. She even collected mermaids as a child, loving the strangeness of a being that was half human, half massive fish.
Raised a nominal Christian, it was only once she started studying magic—and she and Brenda had formed Arrow and Crescent Coven together—that she began to understand that the ocean had a Goddess. Was a Goddess. Or really, what some African peoples called an òrìṣà, a Power. And that Power had a name.
Raquel had worshiped Yemọja ever since.
Zion looked happy. Maybe she just needed to get him out of the city more often. Away from what troubled him. Of course, not every place in Oregon felt safe for a Black mother and her child. Her own mama had taught her that.
“But you can’t let that stop you, girl,” she murmured to the wind.
White-and-gray gulls swooped down in front of her, and began picking at the shoreline, looking for small crabs. A group of plovers ran towards the water, and then raced back. It was amazing how they moved in concert like that, almost as if they were one being. Kind of like bees, she supposed. She wondered how much individual plover consciousness there was.
Look at you, musing on the deep mysteries of bird brains, she chided herself.
Zion shrieked, and her head snapped towards him again, just in time to see the small wave that had hit him begin to recede. His pants were drenched. Well, she planned for that, hadn’t she? Making him put extra pants and socks, and a T-shirt even, into his backpack, currently locked in the trunk of the car. You never knew what was going to happen on the coast.
The sun highlighted his limbs, and the shape of his beautiful head. When Zion was young, a local painter had done a portrait of him as a tarot card—The Sun. In the painting, his arms upraised, huge grin on his face, his whole body was outlined by bright golden rays. Just like today. Her sunny boy, he warmed her heart.
Raquel took in another breath and paused on the sand for a moment, turning to face her beloved ocean full-on. The sun was just at her left side, still high, but beginning to wester. She dug her feet into the sand, and dropped her shoes. She raised her own arms to the sky.
“Yemọja! Mother, ocean, water of my heart, of my spit, of my blood. Renew me, let me grow again. Watch over and protect my son, Zion. Whatever troubles his heart, let him know that his mother loves him…and guide me, please. Show me the best way to comfort him, and help him on his path. Yemọja, please bless our family. Give us the strength we need, and give me a sign that I’m on the right track. Blessed be. Ashé.”
The light breeze ruffled the edges of her dreadlocks. Raquel needed renewal. Badly. She needed to not always work so hard. And lately? Maybe this was what people called a crisis of faith. She felt at odds with herself. With the coven. And with her own power.
She felt the salt of tears, pricking at the back of her eyes. She blinked them back and took in a shuddering breath. Goddess, so much emotion all of a sudden!
“Mama? Please. Ease this aching in my heart.”
A lot of things made her heart ache these days. Another boy had been killed by police, and she was raising a Black son. The climate was still changing, the earth suffering. Some days, it felt as if the whole world were on fire. She needed the cooling waters to bathe her soul.
But that wasn’t all.
“And Mama? If it’s not too much to ask, maybe even send me someone to love, who will love me back.”
There. She’d said the words out loud.
It had been so long since someone had held Raquel at night. So long since she had someone other than her coven and her friends to make her laugh.
Too long since someone had looked at her, just as a woman. Not a parent. Not a priestess. Not their boss. Maybe that was why she felt at odds with her power. She was sick of holding it all the time.
She just needed a damn break.
And the coven had been so serious these days. Their magic had taken a turn in the last year. It was a good thing, but damn, a woma
n could use some ease and celebration, you know?
And with the trouble Zion was in, whatever it was…? Laughter had been in short supply all around.
Raquel sighed, and pressed her fingers into the corners of her eyes. She wanted love and everything that came with it. She just didn’t see how it was going to happen. When did she ever have time to meet someone? And she sure didn’t have the energy to waste on those dating apps. She’d heard they were mostly for sex these days, anyway. Not that she had anything against sex, but she did okay for that on her own. She wanted sex. But she wanted it mixed in with the possibility of love.
“Zion!” she called across the sand.
His head whipped around, and he grinned, a broad smile filled with white teeth. He ran toward her, feet churning the sand as he went, streaks of it sticking to his wet jeans. Raquel couldn’t help but smile.
“Where are your shoes?”
He pointed toward one of the big logs behind her.
“Up there. But Mama, look what I found!”
He held out his hands. In one small palm was a sand dollar, perfect and whole, untouched by the beaks of the seagulls and the ravages of being bashed against the shore. And in the other palm was a beautiful, soft-edged piece of turquoise. Sea glass.
“Oh baby, those are beautiful.”
“Hold out your hand,” he said.
She did, and he dropped the sea glass into her palm.
“That’s for you.”
“Thank you baby, I love it.” She folded her son into her arms, just for a moment, looking at the ocean over his head. He smelled of the sea, and the sweat of a boy.
As always these days, Zion pulled away first. She wondered how quickly the day was coming that he wouldn’t let her hug him in public at all. Soon, she bet.
“You hungry?”
“Yes!”
It was so good to see him happy.
“Let’s go get some food, then. Get your shoes on.”
As Zion raced to get his sneakers, Raquel turned toward the ocean once again. She held up the sea glass toward the ocean. It glowed in the light of the sun. Luminous.
She hoped this token from the ocean was a sign that good things were coming.
Acknowledgments
I give thanks to the cafés of my new hometown, Portland, Oregon. All you baristas are fine human beings.
Thanks also to Leslie Claire Walker, my intrepid first reader, to Dayle Dermatis, editor extraordinaire, to Lou Harper for my covers, and to my writing buddies for getting me out of the house.
Speaking of house…thanks as always to Robert and Jonathan.
Big, grateful shout out to the members of the Sorcery Collective for spreading the word!
And last…
Thanks to all the activists and witches working your magic in the world. This series is for you.
About the Author
T. Thorn Coyle has been arrested at least four times. Buy her a cup of tea or a good whisky and she'll tell you about it.
Author of the The Witches of Portland, the alt-history urban fantasy series The Panther Chronicles, the novel Like Water, and two story collections, her multiple non-fiction books include Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives, and Evolutionary Witchcraft.
Thorn's work appears in many anthologies, magazines, and collections. She has taught magical practice in nine countries, on four continents, and in twenty-five states.
An interloper to the Pacific Northwest U.S., Thorn stalks city streets, writes in cafes, loves live music, and talks to crows, squirrels, and trees.
Connect with Thorn:
www.thorncoyle.com
Also by T. Thorn Coyle
Fiction Series
The Panther Chronicles
To Raise a Clenched Fist to the Sky
To Wrest Our Bodies From the Fire
To Drown This Fury in the Sea
To Stand With Power on This Ground
The Witches of Portland, a 9 Book Series
By Earth
By Flame
By Wind
By Sea
By Moon…
Single Novels and Story Collections
Like Water
Alighting on His Shoulders
Break Apart the Stone
Anthologies
Fantasy in the City
Haunted
Witches Brew
The Faerie Summer
Stars in the Darkness
Fiction River: Justice
Fiction River: Feel the Fear
Non-Fiction
Evolutionary Witchcraft
Kissing the Limitless
Make Magic of Your Life
Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives
Crafting a Daily Practice
By Wind Page 20