by Coralie Moss
Belle glanced at the clay pots and nodded. “Good. Glad to see you got your soil. All you need is a sweater to keep the chill away and something on your feet.”
“Let me go say goodbye.”
“I’ll wait in the car with Kazimir.”
Grabbing a market basket from the jumble, I added the two pots of soil and left it on the stairs while I went into the house to hug everyone one more time. I slipped my arms into a sweater and my feet into my faithful work boots and declared myself ready.
Tanner picked up the basket and followed me to the car.
“Can you pop the trunk?” he asked Belle, and when he and I were protected from view by the raised hood, he lowered the basket and wedged it in place. With one hand gripping the edge of the hood, Tanner cleared his throat, tugged at the back of his pants, and presented me with a pair of delicate sandals fashioned from long strip of ruby red leather. “This is one occasion where something a little more festive would be appropriate.”
Clutching my fancy new footwear in one hand, I threw my arm around Tanner’s neck. He slid his free hand to the small of my back.
“Calliope,” he whispered. I heard a question in his voice and answered it by planting a kiss on the center of his mouth.
“I have to go.” The gossamer-like layers of my dress created a slippery surface between us, clinging to me in places where my skin was sheened with a fine sweat. He slid his hand higher, cupping the back of my ribs. I swayed in place, the little beads along the hem of my dress tickling my ankles and the backs of my calves.
“Calli, time to go-o!” The car jostled side to side as Belle buckled herself in and Kaz departed.
I could have stayed suspended in the moment, in the circle of Tanner’s arm, for much, much longer. He kissed my forehead, lowered me until my feet met the ground, and stepped away from the car.
I toed off my boots and handed them to him. “Wish me luck.”
Chapter 20
Belle was surprisingly quiet the entire ride, only speaking to ask me a general question or to check that her driving wasn’t too slow or too fast or too anything. I explored my new gauntlets, pressing the pliable leather against my skin and tracing the lines of the repeated designs.
The sky darkened into ever deeper shades of blue. We turned off the main road connecting the upper and lower sections of the island and drove into an unkempt grove of stone fruit trees, past an abandoned house and barn and other decaying outbuildings. A pond grown over with lily pads and purple marsh flowers offered lambent bits of color.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before,” I said, half to myself, wondering how that could be and hoping I would have an escort on my way out. When Belle pulled up to a squarish plot where the lines in the grass had been flattened by car tires and parked, I was sure this was my first visit to this property.
I collected my basket from the trunk, admired my prettily laced sandals, and followed Belle to a hidden path that guided us through a narrow section of forest before opening to yet another orchard.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“They’re finishing setting up,” Belle said, “and they’re just about ready for you.”
A path made by dozens of feet wound its way across the un-mowed field toward a stand of the largest apple trees I had ever seen. As Belle made her way to the one in the center, I could see the area around the trunk of the ancient one had been cared for during the dry season. The grass was green and soft underfoot. Handfuls of wildflowers bloomed in a wide radius to the outermost drip line of the tree’s hooked and twisted branches, with the weight of the ripened fruit drawing the boughs close to the ground. Fallen apples, split and overly ripe, added a heavy sweetness to the air.
I waited outside the periphery of the ritual circle, my gaze resting on the rose-colored flesh of the apples. I hungered to taste the fruit, to take its magic into my body and let the sweetness feed an unnameable emptiness I had recently begun to resent.
Other women emerged from the gloaming, creating an open circle to my left and right. The occasional bat swooped between bodies and laden branches, chasing insects and weaving a lacy net of dark, delicate threads over the ritual space.
The women to either side of me turned in unison. One kneeled to loosen the lacing on my sandals. The other reached under my dress.
I nodded my understanding, and my permission, and stepped out of my sandals and underwear. I had my period, which was the instigating reason for this ritual, and I was being asked to trust there was a reason for every element of the ceremony and that the women knew what they were doing.
I relaxed as best I could. Women in other places, other times and other cultures had let their blood feed the ground. I could do the same for one night. I’d already fed my heart to the sky during the first ritual.
The familiar witch in charge of smudging approached, her string-wound bundle of sage and sweetgrass glowing at the tip. L’Runa blew a gentle, steady breath across the top of the smudge and began to cleanse the air around me as well as the layers of my ceremonial garb. A gentle nudge indicated when I should lift the innermost layer of the dress, step my feet apart, and accept the sacred smoke across my feet and up my legs.
Crickets’ voices faded with the light. Barred owls again added their calls to the aural opening. Hoots filled the air, adding their feathery brown threads to the lace overlay and connecting the taller trees at the far-off periphery with those in the ritual space.
I tried to stay aware of everything happening around me but found it impossible. The original thirteen women with roles at my first ritual had tripled, with the additional women taking up scattered positions in the field. The sensation of being in the middle of a field, at night, amongst mostly strangers was intense. Sacred. Eerie.
Unexpectedly heart-filling.
All this was being done to help me.
I remembered the party thrown in our honor when Doug and I shared news of our engagement, followed by a wedding shower, the wedding, and baby showers for each of the boys.
But this ritual…
This felt different. Very different. Rituals were meant to mark special moments along the path of life. This one felt like an entire stage or platform was being built while I stood barefoot in the cooling grass, cleansed by smoke and waiting for the next set of instructions.
The bellow of a conch shell shocked me into the moment. I’d missed the calling in of the cardinal directions and quickly raised my arms to the sky when the sun was invoked and dropped to my knees when it was time to honor and welcome Gaia, Mother Earth.
This honoring I knew. Toes curled under, knees touching cool grass and quiet earth, palms down and fingers spread, I opened a connection to the land through my limbs and waited for the pulse of response.
It came, that slow, liquid beat I’d felt the day I stepped onto the Pearmains’ property and touched Clifford and Abigail. Even in the thrall of a powerful spell, their land pulsed through them. And later, when I’d been in the orchard with Tanner and heard the bee-like humming in the ground. The land spoke to me then, and it spoke to me now. I was here to listen, and never again would I shy from my duties to care for the one that gave life and accepted death and had forever been my ally.
Startled, thinking my name had been called, I raised my gaze and looked into the distance, beyond the costumed bodies of a field full of women. I went farther still, picked out a set of eyes glowing gold as they caught the last sparks of the setting sun. The visage of a bear, hunkered in the grass, its fur disguised by tall strands of wheat, shimmered next to a set of wolfish eyes.
“Calli. You can get up now,” the woman to my left said.
The bear disappeared; the other animal blinked its eyes and disappeared. Strong, slender hands cupped under my arms and lifted. I brushed my palms together and stood, once again present to the moment. The women at the outermost reaches of the field began to walk toward me, slow and deliberate, their voices vibrating with the repeated phrases of a chant. I coul
d not hear the separate syllables, but I felt them in my bones. One day—soon—I would learn the words.
Once again, I was the only one dressed in red. This time, everyone else wore black, and at a signal from Rose, they donned the masks hanging from their necks, small masks to the front and larger versions facing away from the backs of their heads. A few of the women crouched and stood, emerging with drums of assorted sizes in their hands. They added muffled percussive beats to the chanting, creating a low, thrumming, undercurrent of sound.
Rose stepped closer, took my hand, and led me forward into the start of a dance. The spiral revealed itself after a few turns around the tree in ever-widening circles. Joining my voice and my feet with the rhythm set by the drums, I left my head-centered space and connected further with everything around me. As the spiral turned back in on itself and drew me closer and closer to the massive apple tree at the center of the field, my blood answered the call and wet my inner thighs.
More hands than I could count passed me down the line and guided me to face the great tree and the maw that split its trunk. The opening looked less like a mouth and more like a heart ripped open from the inside.
“You must enter Her, Calliope.” Whispered words coming from no one place, no one woman. Maybe the words were in the air or in the ground or dropped from the branches like over-ripe fruit. “Enter the tree.”
Bark, loamy and musky on my nose and sharp on my cheek, drew close to my face. A hand on my head reminded me to duck. I gathered the skirt of my dress, pressed my elbows against my sides, and entered. Dropping the layers of silk and cotton, I stood, extended one arm, and the other until my fingertips made contact with the interior surface. The wood was worn smooth. I turned slowly, unable to see anything, and let my eyelids close and my other senses take over.
I smelled honey. My back made contact with heartwood. The wood was surprisingly warm, inviting me to lean in and feel it supporting the entire length of my body, the backs of my shoulders, buttocks, thighs, and calves. Pressing my palms against the inner surface of the tree, I walked my fingers up. At shoulder height, branches split away from the center, offering a set of living wood sleeves. I slipped my arms up and in, dressing myself in the tree, a little girl playing with an ancestor’s old gown.
A wider stance was needed for the bottom half of my body to feel balanced, sturdy, and steady. I stepped my feet apart, giving blood space to flow from my womb and onto the ground. Bees buzzed from far up the inner tree and honey dripped onto my head.
The tree began to fit itself to me like a custom-made dress, molding to every curve and bend in my body from wrists to ankles. I had room to breathe—or maybe the tree breathed me—and outside, the drumming and chanting had begun to echo the rhythm of a human heartbeat. The longer the women played, the more I dissolved into the tree until I moved beyond the inner surface, beyond the outer bark, projected into the field and the surrounding forests and coastline until I wasn’t one body—I was a million bodies with a million umbilical connections.
And a little too late for me to do a damn thing about it, an ancient presence slipped inside the tree with me and whispered the word, mine, mine, over and over again until my blood fed the earth, my breath fed the sky, and my brain synapses sparked in time with the twinkling stars.
I giggled and cried until I burst apart.
* * *
Sounds of suction breaking drew me back into my tree-bound body. The release of wood wrapping flesh began around my ankles and travelled upward until only my wrists and fingers were encased. I took in a deep breath, felt no restriction in my chest, and took in more breaths. I pressed down with my toes, rocked my weight back onto my heels, revelled in the strength of my legs.
“Ready,” I exhaled, and the pressure around my leather-wrapped wrists loosened until my arms were free. I lowered them slowly, patted my face and chest, smoothed the front and sides of my dress. My hands stuck to the fabric in places; I was sticky all over—and under—and the bottom of the red dress glowed rose and yellow with bright morning sun. My toenails winked under streaks of blood and dirt, and I waited.
Silence. I bent my knees enough I could slip out the gap in the tree’s trunk and lean against the bark.
The pots of soil I’d carried from my garden were empty and neatly queued at the base of the tree. I dropped to my knees and read a note instructing me to refill the little pots with soil from where I had been standing. I scooped up the damp dirt with the trowel provided and filled each pot to the rim.
Done. What was next?
Squatting, I surveyed what was directly within my field of vision. I couldn’t see much past my extended arms and the lowest branches, other than the tops of tents scattered throughout the grassy field.
Crawling forward, gathering the layers of my dress to my waist, I grew ever more aware I was covered in blood and dirt and honey, bits of crushed fruit, sticks and leaves. I stopped. The ground lurched into a spiraling movement, and I fell over, onto my side, and watched a line of black-winged birds circling above the wide reach of the mother tree’s branches.
Blood. And honey. I wanted blood, and I wanted honey. I wanted to pierce my skin and lick my self-inflicted wounds, fly in the company of bees and drown in flower cups of fresh nectar. I wanted to eat dirt and tickle beetle bellies and rush up the oak trees like squirrels after branches full of ripened nuts.
My giggles grew into a full-bellied laugh. The birds and branches were joined by a ring of masked faces peering at me. More faces gathered, until the skin tones and hair textures and wildly painted features blended together in one eternally recognizable face, and I passed out again, because if Gaia wanted to claim me for Herself, I was ready to go.
* * *
Voices. All of them feminine. Hands explored my face, fingers tried to open my eyes, and all I could do was grin, turn my face to the loamy soil, and seek sleep.
A deeper voice, urgent and bossy—definitely bossy—joined in. A strong, thick arm insinuated itself behind my knees, and another arm supported the back of my shoulders, while softer, smaller hands cupped my hips and the back of my head.
Golden. The sun kissed my eyelids. I smiled at the gift. My body met the cool surface of a car’s interior, and my heart reached for the door, pressed at it, willing it to stay open so I could escape the machine-made confine and make my way back to the Earth.
The door won. Grass then macadam, unfurled under the tires. I rocked with the rhythm of the road, left my resistance someplace I might never remember, and drifted to sleep again.
* * *
Water. Warm water, softened with soap and scented with strawberries.
Support. My shoulders once again cradled by an arm thicker and stronger than my own. I opened my eyes slowly. A pulse on a throat. The curve of an unshaved jaw. Hair, wet at the tips, grazing a muscular neck and shoulders.
My bath. Tanner’s gaze on my knees where they broke through the bubbles coating the surface of the bathwater.
“Why are you here?” I asked, my voice scratchy.
His head turned in slow motion, and his eyes sparked bronze, as though the irises were newly forged and piercingly hot. “Rose called me.”
“Oh.” I closed my eyes, let my knees drop together and my head loll toward Tanner’s shoulder. My bones were missing. He was shirtless. I was defenseless. I took a long inhale through my nose and found his musky scent underneath the light-hearted soap. “Did I do okay?”
“I’d say you passed. You more than passed, which is why Rose asked me to come and get you. She thought if I brought you home, you would find yourself faster.”
“Was I lost?” I sounded drunk. I felt drunk.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t know. But you’re here now, and that’s a good thing.” Tanner pressed his lips to my forehead, extracted his arm from behind my shoulders, and placed a folded towel over the edge of the bathtub.
I rested my head against the thick terrycloth and sighed a breathy, “Thank you.”
I had to think about that before I flipped to my side, seal-like, and nodded. I didn’t want to let go of his eyes, his beautiful, gem-like eyes, a mother lode of crystal in a lightless cave. “Yeah. But if I’m not out soon, check on me.”
“I’ll do that.” He reached for the tall glass on the counter beside the sink and handed it to me. “Drink. It’s water with electrolytes. And if you feel dizzy when you get out, yell. I’ll wait for you in your room.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s almost dinner.”
Mmm, did Mama make honeycakes?
I sighed, slid under the surface, one hand gripping the curved edge of the tub so I wouldn’t go all the way under and swim down the drain and follow the call to the sea. Eyes closed, I ran my free hand over my skin, felt for my hair. Tanner must have washed away the dirt and blood I vaguely remembered coating me when I crawled out from inside the apple tree.
I emerged from the bath, steadying myself on the rounded sides of the old standalone tub while I bent forward and squeezed the excess water out of my hair. Fresh towels were stacked on the toilet seat. I unfolded the top one and wrapped it around my head. Standing tall in my terrycloth turban, I patted dry. My skin was too tender to rub or scruff. A jar of wild rosehip oil sat near the glass of water. I sniffed the oil’s familiar healing notes and poured a generous portion into my cupped palm before drizzling it up and down my limbs and around my breasts. I followed that with rubbing the oil over my joints and into the folds of my labia.
Pulling my hand away from between my legs, I noticed no blood. And after I toweled my hair and went to detangle sections with my wood-toothed brush, the stroke kept going, two or more inches longer than usual. I separated out a hank of hair and pulled it away to examine the color under the light above the mirror.
Chestnut brown. Thick. Luxurious.
I tugged. Not a wig.