by Justin Kairo
This time I handed them to Lanny. She took them in her hands and put them up to her face. She put my underpants over her mouth and she kissed them. She did not kiss them with passion. She kissed them because it was part of the ritual. She kissed them because this kind of kiss belonged in this church. This church that we were both in together. This church that we were building and consecrating. Alone. But not alone at all.
She lay down my underpants on top of my other clothes. Outside the circle. I walked over to her. I entered the circle. I stepped inside and the cloth around us on the floor that made the circle was a ring that bound us together. Like a piece of rope tied tight and firm around our bodies so we were strongly together. Like a rope or a ring. A wedding ring. Inside the circle and we were together and we would always be together.
“It is time,” she said.
“I know it is time.”
“Not one leg of one spider will ever crawl against the pure blackness of now. Not one tongue of one horned toad will ever break the silence and defile the now. Not one drop of alien blood will ever stain the now.”
“It is time,” I said. “Now it is time. It has always been time.”
She took the black-hilted knife in her hands, in both her hands, and she put the knife over my lips. I kissed the knife and then I kissed her fingers.
She took the blade of the knife and laid it flat against my chest. I covered her fingers with my hand and I held the knife there against my chest.
She put her hands between my legs. She touched me between my legs where I was still too young for hair but with an important part of my body locked in her fingers, she took the knife and touched me there. Gently. She did not cut but she touched me between the legs with the black-hilted knife she held in her fingers.
She took the knife and laid it against her own chest. Against her own mouth. Against the hair between her legs. Then she took the knife and put it inside my palm. She put the blade of the knife inside my palm and squeezed my fingers tightly around it until my hand became warm with the hot red liquid that was covering the blade and warming my hand.
Then she opened my hand and put the blade inside her own fingers and squeezed tight until her hand was red. Then she dropped the knife and clasped my warm, red hand in hers and locked the fingers tightly together until my blood was hers and her blood was mine and it was all the same and it is always all the same.
She lay down flat on her back. She spread her legs apart and did not say a word, but I knew the moment had come for me to lie down on top of her. We were inside the circle and she was on her back and I crawled over and moved across her flesh like a dolphin searching for a reef.
I put myself inside her body and she moved and I moved. We were joined together and became part of each other as we melted into a single person and would never again be anything else. The spurts and floods and liquid were not the color of blood but the color of love.
She pulled herself up and I was outside but with her I would never be an outsider again. We sat inside the circle and faced each other. I think we laughed but I am certain there were no tears, although that does not matter because it is all the same. It is all always the same.
I had no idea how or where time disappeared, but an instant of truth lasted forever. I never belonged anywhere more than that day and those moments.
“There is no truth except silence,” she said.
“That is the truth.”
“There is no answer except questioning.”
“And no question except now.”
We laughed or maybe we were crying and the tears and the blood and her lips all tasted like the single beat of a jungle drum.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked. “Have you discovered who I am?”
“I think so. I am not sure, but I think so.”
“Then who am I? Tell me who I am if you think you know.”
“I cannot find the word right now. Not yet. But I think I will locate the syllables soon. Discover what I am searching for.”
“Do you know who you are yet? Can you tell me?”
“Not yet. But first I will know who you are, and after that I suspect I will discover who I am. Even though we are both the same. I know that we are both the same.”
Her mouth was wrinkled lips and her eyes were intense in a way I had never seen before. An intensity I had never known. A face I had never seen before and yet a face I had always seen.
I looked at her eyes and mouth and wild hair, grey straw and crazy. I studied what I saw and realized I would soon know who she was. But not until my eyes were shut. I closed my lids and the shaking started all over again and I screamed and the sound came to me with a sharp blade and she screamed too because she knew the word was coming to me and soon I would know and then everything would end and begin again.
“Lanny,” I said softly. Examining the sound. Listening to the familiar word and hunting for the unfamiliar.
“Lanny,” I said. A little louder, I think.
“Lanny,” I repeated again.
Three times. Three times and then three times three. It was soft or loud, one of them, but I don’t know which one and it doesn’t matter. Lanny. Lanny. Lanny.
The shaking came again. It was my voice that was shaking and my arms too.
“Lanny,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “I hear you. I know that you are talking to me.”
The room turned black. The walls of the room became black and then the floor and the ceiling. I could smell the faint sweet citrus aroma of an orange far away, and drifting nearer was a piping flute trying to burst out of its dimensions.
A wind blowing through the room caught my hair and spread it across my forehead. A wild wind but there was no air and I could not breathe.
And then I screamed. Louder than any scream I had ever heard before. Louder than the wind.
“Lanny,” I screamed. “It’s not Lanny at all. It’s not Lanny at all. Not at all. It’s . . . ”
I felt the room getting smaller until the blackness covered me and became a velvet coverlet.
“Not Lanny at all. It’s Linny. It’s Linny. It’s Linny . . . ”
I put my hands flat against the black floor of the room to keep from blowing away.
“It’s Merlinny. It’s . . . ” And the word came out hot and granite and I shrieked it out until finally the wind stopped. “It’s Merlin!”
And the answer came back to me from her lips. “Yes, that is so.” And the voice that came from her mouth was so deep and tender and dark and low that I recognized at once that it was her voice as I had never heard it before. And my voice too because we are the same. We are all always the same.
Chapter 8
Growing up meant moments alone with Lanny. Evenings alone. Sitting together inside the cloth circle in her bedroom and sometimes wearing clothes but most of the time we did not.
We sat inside the circle and there were special invocations that I learned from Lanny and knowledge that came to me without being told.
The runic symbols and reading the future and kneeling down together naked and on our knees and the brass bowls of water. The chants and potions that went to our lips especially on nights of the full moon. Potions of wild thyme and rosemary and Haitian vetiver, and the chants had the taste of spices too, of nutmeg and cinnamon and cardamom, as we knelt together, naked and intense, joined together in blood.
The Book of Shadows. The book with the instructions and the magic rites. The book with pages for me to learn. To memorize. To get to know by heart and understand.
Things she taught me and things I knew. She taught me how to understand the special signals that came to me alone. Close my eyes and see the ace of spades. So clearly the card could burn itself into the back of my forehead and remain imbedded there. I could see the card but she could help me understand its meaning. Understand that tonight the ace of spades might mean death. Tomorrow illness. And seven days from now nothing more than a warning of illness. A chance t
o prevent what is not wanted.
The visions were my own but she helped me interpret. As we kneeled together with clasped hands, naked, alone and always together.
Exciting moments because they were private and would never be shared with anyone else. Beyond the comprehension of all the other people we knew.
Kneeling so close together that our naked legs touched as we chanted with clasped hands. Separately and always together. We spoke and our chests touched. My young, flat chest against her wrinkled breasts.
Evenings when she touched me between the legs and I became hard and erect. I turned into a man with Lanny lying on her back. I looked at her old and wrinkled face and entered her passage and we satisfied ourselves and each other.
Sometimes I kissed her on the mouth, and her face and body changed slowly until she turned into a young and beautiful woman. The most ravishing woman I have ever seen. I didn’t love her more this way but differently.
Each kiss from me made her more athletic and, without our realizing what was happening, I somehow ended up on my back and she mounted me. She lifted herself off the floor with arms that looked as delicate as any I have ever seen on a woman but with the strength of the most powerful weight lifter. Then she lowered herself slowly so her hole surrounded my stiff pole.
She lifted herself up and down and brought a wild frenzy to our lovemaking that made us scream together, unable to stop, desiring more and more from each other and yet there was never too much and never not enough. Hole and Pole. Lanny up and down and I would raise and lower my hips with her, working and playing together to a single beat. We had an in-and-out and an up-and-down that we never wanted to end and it never did. Until we both seemed to realize at the same time that we were lying on our sides in each other’s arms with the humping replaced by kisses that were more erotic than our movement.
I looked forward to these evenings with Lanny. Each one was longer than a week and shorter than a day. Special and secret moments together that I could not reveal to anyone else. Moments alone when I counted hours and minutes until we would be together with the black-hilted knife and the brass bowls and a private world of sex and love so intense that nobody else would ever be able to comprehend what we were like together.
Even though I half suspected that someday I would be able to share these moments with others, for now it was our own special and private world. Always just the two of us, lying together, praying, saying the special chants and fucking. Knowing our lives were not like the lives of other people.
Just the two of us until the time came for us to be apart and find new lives for ourselves. I didn’t know it was coming, but one day I realized we were going to stop having our special covens together. The moment had come for us to be apart, even though we would never be separated no matter what happened in the outside world.
The time came for her to go, and then she was gone. I woke up and I did not have to discover what had happened. I just knew Lanny was no longer there and it was time for me to find my own way.
I understood it would be wrong to miss her. I was certain I would see her again though I had no idea how or where. And it didn’t matter. This was different than it was when my mother left. This time I was not going to feel alone. I thought.
I didn’t asked my parents where Lanny was because it didn’t matter. And I realized they would not know the truth anyway.
This was a test. Lanny’s leaving meant it was time for me to move ahead to the next step. Study more. Expand my knowledge of the craft without her guidance. A challenge but one I did not meet.
Chapter 9
The circles and the pentacles and the athames were as much a part of my life as sports were in the lives of other children. In the beginning, I made the circle and uttered the incantations and went through the rituals by myself, just as Lanny had done before the night I walked into her room. I went to my witches tools the way other people go to their hobbies. Stamp collecting or woodworking. For a while, I drew comfort from the craft, but soon I was aware all the time that I was by myself.
It was strange that in the beginning, when I missed Lanny the most, I was not sorry she had left. I loved her in a way I can’t quite love anyone else, but I didn’t want her to return. I was sure, just as she was, that the time had come for her to leave. It was time for me to move forward and I knew I might not be able to do that if she were around to guide me.
But without Lanny I was lonely, and I looked everywhere for company. I walked down the street trying to spot other witches and warlocks but not succeeding—I was in my early teens by now and had not yet harnessed my powers. Today when I am in the same room with a witch, I know in a fraction of a second. l look a man in the face and when our eyes meet I can tell at once if he is like me.
After a while, I stopped hunting for a kindred soul. I spent less time inside the circle and eventually stopped thinking about the craft. I had finally found out who I really was, and I was trying to forget.
But denying the truth was easier for me than ignoring my powers. I see things. I see them in advance. Before they occur. I know what is going to happen ahead of time, and even today that sometimes frightens me, though not as much.
When I was in my early teens, I was not sure how I was like other people and how I wasn’t. I couldn’t understand the ways I was unique. I was confused. All part of growing up. I knew I was different and I didn’t want to be. I longed to be like everyone else. That was not easy.
I still had a great deal to learn.
Chapter 10
My first lesson came during a high school basketball game. I was already over six feet tall and I liked playing basketball. I was good at it. I was one of the best players on the high school basketball team and that helped me to be accepted. To be one of the boys. To seem like everyone else around me. I enjoyed basketball but I made an important mistake during a crucial game of the season.
It was late in the game and our team was ahead by many points. There was a time out. I stood in the middle of the court and closed my eyes for a moment. Then I saw the final score and knew we were going to lose by one point. I knew how the game was going to end even though right now we were far ahead. I turned to the captain of our team who was a friend of mine and told him we were going to lose the game by one point. I told him I was upset.
He did not answer. He ignored me and acted as if he had not heard what I said. When the time out was over, we went back to the game. We continued to play and the game ended just the way I had foreseen. Our big lead was whittled away and our team stayed ahead until the final minute but then, just at the last second, the other team scored a basket. The game was over and we lost by a single point.
Everyone was upset about losing the game. It was the big game of the season and we had lost. Nobody spoke much in the locker room. It was depressing and no one wanted to talk. I got dressed, left the locker room and the gym, and I began walking home by myself. On the way home I saw six of my teammates waiting in a doorway. I started to greet them but we had lost the game and it was not a time for a cheerful greeting. I wondered what they were doing standing together in the doorway, but I knew they were there to see me.
“Okay,” one of them said. It was a warning. His words told of something that was about to happen.
“You threw the game.”
“It’s because of you that we lost the game.”
And I was silent because I knew suddenly that it was useless to explain my power to see. I could not make them understand that I didn’t MAKE our team lose by one point but I had merely seen what was going to happen. Seen the ending before the game was over but that they would be unable to believe.
I started to run but it was too late and their fists came crashing into my stomach and across my face. I tried to fight back but there were six of them and one of me and it was useless. I was outnumbered. My stomach twisted from their blows and blood trickled down the side of my mouth. When they left I thought I had just enough energy in me to make it back to my house. But I
was wrong. I woke up in the hospital. My mother was standing over me.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t remember anything.”
That was not true. I remembered every punch and kick and the expression on every face. Anger and contempt and hatred.
“You almost died,” my mother said. “You came very close. You’re going to be in the hospital for a few weeks. You’re very lucky you’re alive.”
I knew that luck had nothing to do with it. “Yes,” I said. “Lucky.”
I also knew I was not going to spend much time in the hospital.
Days later when the doctors discharged me, they said they had never seen such a miraculous recovery. Nothing like that ever before.
“I was lucky,” I said.
Chapter 11
Stupid is what I was.
It was obvious I had to keep my mouth shut and not tell anyone what I knew was going to happen in the future. I should have learned my lesson but I didn’t. I kept making the same mistake over and over again.
I told a classmate he was going to break his leg that week. He laughed and thought I was joking and he didn’t take me seriously but of course it was true. It happened the way I knew it would and before the week was out he had broken his leg. He was angry with me.
Everyone at school was angry with me. As if I had caused it to happen. They didn’t know about witchcraft and there was no reason for them to believe it was anything but a coincidence. But of course it was not. I knew that and somehow they did too.
Before I finally learned what not to do, I told a girl in my class that her mother was going to get very sick. I told a friend he would fail math. I told another friend he would get a new bicycle from his parents. And everything turned out the way I predicted.
After that, I kept what I knew to myself. But it was too little too late. None of my classmates trusted me. They sensed I was different and felt they were better off having nothing to do with me. And maybe they were right.