by Amber Benson
“Excuse me if I don’t hug you or shake your hand,” Daniela continued, coming up to join them, her large expressive eyes thoughtful as she took in Lyse’s disheveled appearance. “I have a little condition that precludes me getting too close to anyone.”
“Uhm, sure,” Lyse said, nodding. “And thank you for your help out there.”
“Of course.”
She shot Lyse a lazy, snaggle-toothed grin. One Lyse recognized. She was well aware of the hungry look a person got in their eyes when they were attracted to you. In fact, she’d experienced it earlier in the afternoon with the guy at the coffee bar—Weir—who’d looked at Lyse in much the same way Daniela was looking at her now.
“Arrabelle,” the last woman said, stomping over to Lyse, hand extended.
An Amazon in jean coveralls, Arrabelle was a statuesque woman with smooth dark skin and a fierce expression in her dark eyes. She almost crushed Lyse’s hand when she shook it.
“It’s getting close,” Arrabelle said, releasing Lyse’s hand. “I think we should begin.
Eleanora nodded to the others.
“And so shall it be.”
All around her, the women began to undress.
“Uhm, what’re you doing?” Lyse whispered to Eleanora, an embarrassed smile plastered on her face.
Eleanora had already dropped her poncho and slipped off her shoes.
“It’s part of the ritual,” she said, starting to take off her shirt. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of here. You’re with your sisters-to-be.”
“You want me to take off my clothes in front of a bunch of strangers?” Lyse said, incredulous. “I hope there’s nothing about the word no that you don’t understand, because no.”
“Is it too cold for you?” Dev asked, folding her clothes into a neat pile and setting them on the grass just outside the ash circle. “Sometimes I leave my socks on and that helps my feet stay warm.”
“It’s not because I’m cold,” Lyse said, turning to her great-aunt. “Although it is frickin’ cold out here, Eleanora. Do you want to get sick?”
Eleanora shrugged, her breasts pale and flaccid in the moonlight now that her shirt and bra were off.
“I already told you that nothing in these woods is gonna get me before the cancer does.”
Lyse threw up her hands.
“Fine. Get pneumonia. I’m not taking care of your ass when you do.”
From across the circle, Daniela, who was buck naked except for the gloves on her hands (and totally shaved everywhere, Lyse couldn’t help noticing) called out, “I’ll take care of your glorious ass, Eleanora,” and everyone giggled. Except for Lyse. Who didn’t think stepping into an all-nude version of The Twilight Zone was very funny at all.
“Well, I’m not doing it,” Lyse said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I mean, I’ll do your ritual, but I’m keeping my clothes on.”
“Stop being a pussy,” Eleanora said, naked as the day she was born, “and take off your clothes.”
She was starting to feel like the odd man out—even Lizbeth had removed her clothes and was setting them on the grass next to Dev’s pile.
“Oh, Jesus, fine,” Lyse said, exasperated, and started tugging off her shoes.
She took off the shawl, then pulled her shirt over her head, releasing all of her trapped body heat in one move.
“Shit, it’s cold,” she said, shivering.
“Socks are okay,” Dev said, smiling, “and they help.”
Even in the moonlight, Lyse could see the stretch marks tracing along the line of Dev’s hips and breasts, and the cesarean scar that ran along the curve of her belly. Her body may not have been supermodel fit, but it was as beautiful and inviting as any Lyse had ever seen.
“Socks,” Lyse said, shrugging out of her pants and folding them with her shirt and the shawl. “I’ll give it a try.”
She took a deep breath and reached up to unhook her bra. Her breasts were fine, but nothing to write home about compared to Dev and Arrabelle. She dropped the bra on top of her pile of clothes and shucked off her underwear. As Dev suggested, she left her socks on.
“I bet Daniela ten bucks you wouldn’t do it,” Arrabelle said to Lyse, hands on her hips. “Guess I was wrong.”
“Hey, when in Rome, right?” Lyse said, wishing she could stand there as confidently as Arrabelle. The woman seemed completely at home without any clothes on, her sleek swimmer’s body trim and muscular, and devoid of fat.
Only Lizbeth seemed as awkward about her nudity as Lyse felt. The younger girl was sitting on the grass, knees curled up to her chest, long hair draped around her shoulders. When she caught Lyse looking in her direction, she grinned widely and shrugged.
“The cardinal candles have been lit,” Eleanora said, gathering the other women to her with her words. “We cast out anything unwanted from the circle.”
“We cast out anything unwanted from the circle,” the others intoned.
“And we draw together our power here in this protected circle . . .”
“And we draw together our power here in this protected circle . . .”
“. . . with the promise it shall only be used in good works,” Eleanora finished.
“. . . with the promise it shall only be used in good works,” they all repeated.
The four candles—the cardinal candles, Lyse thought, filing it away in her memory for later—guttered as a blast of icy wind crossed the clearing.
“Light the remaining candles, Arrabelle,” Eleanora said.
Arrabelle knelt down in front of a small stone altar resting in the grass. Lyse would have tripped over the thing before she saw it hidden there. With a long wooden match, Arrabelle lit five more candles and passed them out to the others.
Only Lyse was without a candle when she was through.
“We welcome you into the realm of the sisters, may my blood be her blood,” Eleanora intoned—and that was when Lyse saw the knife and chalice in her great-aunt’s hand.
She almost reached out and knocked the knife away, instinct telling her that any ritual involving something so sharp and frightening could not be good. But before she could say a word, Eleanora had sliced open the tip of her own left index finger, releasing some of the blood into the chalice. She passed the knife and chalice to Arrabelle, who sliced open her index finger and intoned: “May my blood be her blood.”
Lyse relaxed—let these ladies donate a few drops of blood to the chalice. So long as this was all the knife was being used for, she wasn’t too worried.
Daniela was next.
“May my blood be her blood,” she said, and then a few drops from her index finger went into the chalice.
And so it went for both Dev and Lizbeth—only when it was Lizbeth’s turn, the girl closed her eyes and mouthed the words. Finally, the chalice and knife made their way to Lyse. She took them from Lizbeth, the stone chalice cold in her hands. The knife was light as a feather, its black handle warm to the touch.
“So I just . . . do it?” Lyse asked.
She didn’t know what to believe anymore. Part of her thought Eleanora and her “blood sisters” were crazy. Everyone knew there was no such thing as magic. That people couldn’t see and talk to ghosts . . . but then there was the dream. The clearing she’d never been to but had dreamed about night after night for years. This was the stuff that was hard to just explain away. It felt wrong to discount all the strangeness she’d felt growing up in Eleanora’s house. To not listen to the voice inside her head. The one telling her to take a leap of faith and see where it all led.
“Yes,” Eleanora said, and nodded. “You just do it.”
“Here goes nothing,” Lyse said, and pressed the tip of the blade into the fleshy pad of her finger. “May my blood be your blood.”
She didn’t know what possessed her to change the wording, but somehow it
felt right.
Eleanora took the chalice from Lyse’s hands.
“The sacred potion, please,” Eleanora said—then she waited as Arrabelle retrieved a plastic thermos from behind the stone altar.
Arrabelle uncapped it and poured its contents into the chalice. There was a hiss and then a finger of steam rose up from within the curve of the stone.
“It’s ready,” Arrabelle said. Eleanora took a small sip from the chalice and passed it to Arrabelle. Arrabelle did the same and passed it to Dev.
It made its way around the circle, and finally Lyse was forced to take the proffered chalice from Lizbeth’s outstretched hands. She stared down at the liquid contents, pretty sure she was gonna have to take more than the small sip the others had taken.
“All of it?” Lyse asked.
“All of it,” Eleanora replied.
Lyse took a deep breath, plugged her nose with the fingers of her right hand, and gulped the nasty-tasting brew down in one swallow.
The drink made Lyse feel funny. Her eyes began to focus in on strange things. Like the fact that Daniela was totally naked except for a pair of turquoise leather gloves. Lyse began to wonder if Daniela was germophobic, or maybe it was just an odd psychological quirk.
Actually, there was something kind of weird about each of the women here tonight: Arrabelle and her museum house, the mute Lizbeth, Daniela’s gloves . . . only Devandra seemed normal—but who knew what weird stuff she had back at her house.
It was interesting that Eleanora had befriended such a disparate group of women. When Lyse was a teenager, she remembered Eleanora having friends, most of them her great-aunt’s age or older. Eleanora had kept Lyse separate from them, but Lyse had been aware of their existence. Now she wondered, what had happened to those other ladies? Had they died, or retired, or moved away to other climes? And if so, why had Eleanora replaced them with these other, younger women?
It was very, very straaaaaaaaaaaannnnngggeeee.
The word elongated in her head, and it was such an odd sound that she began to laugh.
“Lyse?”
She heard her name and looked up to find all the eyes in the circle—and some that weren’t in the circle—fixed on her. She must have really been out of it because she hadn’t noticed the thread of the conversation being pulled in her direction.
“Uh-huh?” she said, but the word came out as gibberish.
She reached up and touched her ears—nothing wrong there—then her face. Her fingers slid across her cheeks, chin, mouth, and nose. Her skin felt tight in places, loose in others, like she was pushing her fingers into a marshmallow.
“Are you all right?” Eleanora asked, but her words sounded as if they were being filtered through the ocean.
Lyse opened her mouth, but the world began to seesaw back and forth, and she had to close her eyes to keep the vertigo at bay.
“Lyse?” Arrabelle was at her side, lifting her eyelids, checking her pupils to see if they were dilated.
Arrabelle’s face began to blur and twist, all her features swimming together into a dark blob. Lyse felt light as air, and before she knew it, she was floating away. She held out her hands, hoping someone would catch her before she disappeared, but she was moving too quickly, floating higher and higher above the clearing as the others gathered around her, watching as Arrabelle eased Lyse’s naked body onto the grass.
Coherent thought left her as her brain winked off like a television screen, the picture irising in until it was only a tiny black dot.
Then that was gone, too.
Lyse
Lyse opened her eyes, the absolute darkness gradually receding from view until she could make out the tenor of her new surroundings. Above her, the honeyed glow of the full moon held the night at bay, and she was able to look around, surprised to find she was standing in the middle of a newly shorn wheat field. She raised her hands, and the feeling of dissociation from her body was gone—
“This way,” a voice said from behind her, its cadence warm and feminine, and she was dragged out of her thoughts.
The idea that this place was real became unimpeachable when she felt a hand on her back, fingers pressing against bare flesh, and she looked down to find she was still naked, though the body she saw didn’t belong to her. The breasts were too large, the waist and hips too small, and there was a dark mound of curling pubic hair where her own body had been waxed into a thin strip. The air, fragrant with wood smoke, was pleasantly warm, and so despite her nudity, she didn’t feel cold.
Fingers were at her waist again, gently urging her forward, and she turned to find a handsome woman in a flowing purple robe standing behind her. The woman wore her hair pulled back away from her face, a garland of intricately woven lavender and heather encircling her head like a crown, and though her long hair was still thick and blond, her face was crosshatched with delicate lines.
Youth was no longer hers.
“It’s time,” the woman said, and smiled warmly.
Lyse felt her feet begin to move of their own volition, heard the crunch of freshly scythed wheat stalks as she trod upon them.
The old woman chose not to accompany Lyse as she crossed the field, but she didn’t feel alone—nor was she scared. Instead, her body was filled with a sense of anticipation, her breasts softly bouncing as she walked, the nipples hard with excitement. The body she inhabited was looking forward to the experience that lay ahead.
At the edge of the field, where the human-cultivated wheat crop ended, there stood a raised wooden platform shrouded in fog. She approached cautiously, stepping up onto it, her bare feet pressing against the smoothness of the wooden boards, excitement rippling through her flesh like tiny shock waves. She stood there for a moment, uncertain as to what was supposed to happen next, but then the fog lifted like a velvet curtain parting, and she saw that the platform was actually the beginning of a long boardwalk—one that switched back through a shallow marshland swarming with cattails and bulrushes before disappearing into darkness.
She took a tentative step, and as if her footfall had conjured them, two floating orbs sparked to life farther down the path. Like streetlights on a bridge, they illuminated just the next section of walkway, so she wouldn’t miss a step. She moved quickly, wanting to discover the light’s source, but her curiosity only grew when she found no magic at work: just two flickering tallow candles, each one placed upon a tall metal spike set into the marshy water on either side of the boardwalk.
More candles winked to life ahead of her, and she wondered if someone was using the cover of darkness to obscure their movements, to stop her from discovering their identity as they lit the candles. Continuing down the boardwalk, she heard the crack of wooden boards shifting under her weight, and more lights flared into being, the candles guiding her way.
She walked for a long time—until the excitement finally gave way to exhaustion—and then she abruptly ran out of walkway. To her surprise, she found a wooden sailboat waiting for her at the end of the boardwalk, its mainsail tied in place as it bobbed up and down like a cork on the surface of the water.
The ship was made of golden timber, its rigging shimmering in the moonlight, and at first it appeared to be unoccupied—but then a man emerged from belowdecks, coming to stand on the bow, his head and shoulders hidden within the long shadows cast by the tall wooden mast. Even in the darkness, she felt his eyes on her, devouring her breasts and belly as his gaze raked across her naked body.
The man on the boat knelt, turning away so she couldn’t see what he was doing, and when he stood again, he was holding a hurricane lamp in his hand, the smoky, glass-shrouded light bestowing angles and planes to a face previously obscured by shadow.
She gasped, not because she was frightened, but because the man was not fully a man. He was a giant stag—or, at least, the mask he wore made him look like one. Curving, majestic antlers sprung from the side
s of his head like small trees, bulging brown eyes as clear as glass stared back at her; only the lower half of his face was visible below the mask, framing a full, sensuous mouth and a strong, square jaw.
She began to tremble as her body instinctively reacted to what it knew was coming: This man/beast was about to mount her like an animal.
She took a step back, and the man sensed the time was ripe to pluck her. He jumped from the ship, shortening the distance between them in a few strides, and then he was holding her, trapping her body within the confines of his solid, muscular arms. He crushed her nakedness against him, and she could feel the hardness of his manhood pressing into her belly through the thin cotton of his pants. He found her lips with his own—and she thought he was going to crush them, too—but instead he brushed his mouth across hers in a gentle caress.
Trailing soft kisses down to the hollow of her throat, he followed the curve of her collarbone in one direction, then the other, tongue flicking snakelike across her skin as he tasted her. He reached down with both hands and cupped her ass, squeezing it as he pulled her up onto her tippy-toes, positioning her pubic bone in line with his cock. He moaned as he squeezed her against him, and she jumped up, her legs sliding around his waist as the tip of him pulsed against her through his pants, his erection rock hard.
She yielded to him, her body relaxing as she opened her mouth, letting him slip his warm tongue inside. He tasted sweet and salty, and she loved it. Her own tongue began to chase his, and as she ground herself against him, he moaned against her mouth. She could feel the wetness between her legs soaking the cotton of his pants, and she wanted him inside her, fucking her.
He swung her around, her body cradled against him, and she nuzzled her face into the warmth of his neck, smelling the cinnamon spice of his bare skin as he carried her over the threshold of his ship and belowdecks.
The ship’s galley was neat as a pin, but he carried her right past it and into his bedroom. Gently, he placed her down on the bed, then stepped back so he could admire his prize. The room was small and unadorned, but the glow of a dozen flickering candles bathed the room in golden light.