It's still crazy, he thought, and then followed the women into the family room. A gaggle of children were playing with party hats, throwing confetti at each other and mummy-wrapping some small victim from among their fellows with paper streamers and toilet paper. The victim didn't seem to be throwing a fit so John assumed the air supply was secure -- for the time being.
A few parents were huddled in corners, trying to make the best of bug juice and kid-friendly snacks. A red-bearded, slightly beer-bellied fellow with a tangle of thick blonde hair rose from a padded chair in the corner and approached John. His weather-worn tunic of orange with brown trim looked as if it had been fitted to a younger and thinner version. The sleeves stopped at the middle of the forearm, and the v-neck had a leather thong tie, which dangled loose. His baggy pants looked like sweats, but they were clearly homemade. Odd leather sandals -- just a thick sole with straps that wrapped around his feet and partway up his calf -- completed the outfit and made him every bit the Celtic villager from a National Geographic magazine. Aside from the fillings in his teeth.
Everyone else in the room was dressed normally.
The man seemed to size John up as he crossed the family room, but he extended a large hand with a friendly smile, almost as if he expected to see him.
"Sean Kerrigan," the Celt said.
"John Matthews. Pleased to meet you."
"Merry meet," Sean said. "Did you find the altar?"
John's confused expression spoke volumes to Sean's keen eye.
"Oh. Sorry. Since you came with Jillian I just assumed. Can I get you a beer?" John nodded and they slipped onto the porch to retrieve two bottles from a small cooler. Another Celtic warrior arrived a few minutes later and John learned that the two of them were part of the entertainment for the birthday party. Sean -- who went by the name Aethelred -- and Andrew -- a.k.a. Wolfgang -- staged a rather impressive mock battle for the children on the flood-lit patio.
Wolfgang sported a full suit of chain armor, complete with coif, gloves and metal-plated leather greaves. He wielded a two-handed sword and kept a tremendously large battle axe on a clip at his belt. Sean opted for mobility in this fight, wearing only an iron and leather cap and carrying a small wooden shield, painted with various insignia and runes that John couldn't read. He plied his war hammer like a Viking, and John often flinched as blows were exchanged.
They simulated several bouts of personal combat, arousing the attention of the neighbors, who relished the action from across the fence. For the children, especially the boys, this was far better than any pony ride or pin-the-tail game. And when pouring sweat and repeated blows prevented Sean from keeping his helmet on straight, the combat was over and the children got to take turns shooting at him with padded arrows.
After each child had a chance to take several shots, Anne rescued Sean's aching shield arm by producing a cake and ice cream for the children. John, Andrew and Sean had another beer instead, and John questioned them closely on their armor, tactics and weapons.
"Oh, don't be afraid of this," Sean said, and quickly whacked John on the head with his hammer. The molded foam yielded against his skull, giving him a solid jolt, but no pain.
Jillian caught John's eye and smiled.
CHAPTER FIVE
The distinctive chime of a Google instant message interrupted John's final review of a rather boring commercial floor plan. He turned off his light table and swiveled his 17-inch flat panel computer monitor into view.
It was from a user he didn't recognize, and while it called him by name, that was no great trick, since his username was "JohnMath." Assuming the message was some instant message version of spam he was about to add the address to his filter list, but something suddenly clicked.
Aethlrd: John?
Oh yeah? The Celt.
His spoken reply was instantly translated into text and sent.
"Text mode. Is this the mad Celt? Send."
JohnMath: Is this the mad Celt?
Aethlrd: LOL. Yeah. Sean (Aethelred), the axe murderer from the party on Friday.
So maybe I'm going to have to fight after all, he thought, wondering why Sean would be contacting him.
He continued before John had a chance to reply.
Aethlrd: I know you're busy. Can I buy you a beer after work today?
John shook his head and sighed. This is not good, he thought, anticipating a "you're not good enough for her" talk. But he didn't want to jump to conclusions.
JohnMath: What's up?
Aethlrd: I wanted to talk with you about the craft. I know you're not a Wiccan, and I thought you might like to know what you're getting into.
Getting into? Who says I'm getting into anything?
His mother's voice suddenly sounded the tactical alert claxon in his brain. John would show up at a bar somewhere, in the dark, while Sean and three of his buddies would be waiting in the parking lot with weapons. Real ones this time. But John trusted his instincts. Sean didn't seem like that kind of guy. Besides, he wouldn't mind a primer on Wicca.
JohnMath: Do you know the Green Turtle on Rt. 1? How about 6:30?
Aethlrd: Sounds perfect. See you then.
John logged out of chat and stared into space for a moment before getting back to work on his floor plan. On his lunch break he did a little more internet research on Wicca.
* * *
After lunch John was reviewing some notes on his smart phone and noticed Jillian's name showing up in his chat window. A devilish thought struck him. Deciding to act before his conscience could get the better of him, he logged out, then tried to login as Sean. Guessing Sean's password was easier than he thought. The fourth guess paid off -- "thegoddess" -- and now all the world saw him as Aethlrd, and he saw that Jillian was still online.
Aethlrd: Hi. It was nice to meet John the other night.
John's heart began to race with his conscience close on its heels and screaming bloody murder. He was just about to sign off when the computer chimed a response.
Jcollins: He's the one. Kinda surprised me. Are you still okay with this?
As part of his brain raced to figure out what that meant, another started screaming, "Log off now ...."
He signed off quickly and felt something entirely new -- a fervent wish that he was a church lady who believed in prayer -- or that he had a time machine and could erase the last 14 seconds of history.
He rebooted his computer walked down to the kitchen for another cup of coffee, then thought better of it and took a walk around the block.
* * *
"Ah, I had you pegged as a lager man," Sean said as they ordered their first round that evening: Sean a stout, John a black and tan.
"I've never had a beer I didn't like, but a dark beer seems more appropriate when you're talking to a wild Irish Viking with a black foam axe."
Sean laughed, but insisted he was only a very little bit Viking. John felt relieved at Sean's friendliness. It had been a struggle to face the man whose account he had hacked just that afternoon.
After several minutes of small-talk, and a mutual decision to go ahead and order dinner, Sean got down to business.
"So you don't believe in the Goddess, do you?"
"Or the God," John replied with a serious expression. "I don't disbelieve. I just don't believe, if you catch my meaning."
Sean nodded and raised his eyebrow in a "to each his own" gesture. "Everyone takes their own path, but I've never been more at peace than I've been since I embraced the old religion."
"I'm glad for you, Sean, but the fact that you have a feeling of peace doesn't mean that any of it is true."
Sean nodded and thanked the waitress for a fresh basket of tortilla chips. He piled one with hot salsa and devoured it in one bite. John opted for the pretzel sticks and goldfish.
"Normally I wouldn't care."
He paused to scoop another pile of salsa while John wondered what excuse he would give for breaking his habit and caring this particular time.
"Wiccans aren't evangelistic," S
ean continued, "and your religion -- or non-religion -- is up to you. But I know Jillian. She's serious about the craft, and if you're going to hang out with her, you ought to know what it's about."
What's in it for you? John wondered. Wouldn't it be better for you if Jillian and I broke up? And thinking that he laughed at himself, realizing that at this point there wasn't much of anything to break up.
"Anyway, I figured you might be the skeptical sort, so I spent some time this afternoon wondering what might persuade a man like you. You don't seem like the 'it's true for me' type. You're the 'it's really true, or never mind' type. Am I right?"
John took another pull on his beer, then nodded and grabbed a pretzel stick. The old "it's true for me" line had always seemed stupid to him. It was an admission that your philosophy had no relationship to reality, like folk who act as if Star Trek is real, knowing full well that it's just a TV show.
"Well, I think the old religion is real. We're animals, John. We like to think we're half dust and half angel, but we're just animals that think. We sleep at night and kill our food and have instincts and drives and all that stuff. But thinking has fouled it all up."
Ah, here it comes. The appeal to irrationality, John thought. Sure, Wicca offends your brain, but your brain is over-rated.
"I think that's what makes life seem so distant and out of place at times -- like we're strangers in our own lives. Something's missing. We've lost touch with who we really are.
"Here's what I mean." Sean leaned back, took a deep breath and looked around, as if gathering inspiration from the crowd in the restaurant. "Have you ever been outside on a crisp Fall evening and felt a kind of strange hunger, like there's something you want to do -- something that you ought to do -- but you don't know what it is?"
John nodded, remembering similar feelings on Spring mornings, and how a warm breeze might evoke those kinds of thoughts.
"I figure that if we were dogs, we'd just do it. Whatever that something is, we'd just run off and do it, because there wouldn't be any thinking to get in the way. Other animals have a straight line from feeling to doing. Like fish. A salmon gets an urge to swim so he swims. He doesn't stop to think, 'Hmm, what is this urge I'm feeling. Maybe I'll swim.' Dogs feel like they have to hunt, so they hunt. But we've got something between the feeling and the doing." He tapped his head. "We've still got the dog's desires, but our instincts have atrophied because we've been thinking instead. The dog's feelings go straight into actions, but we think first, and I figure that's what that frustration is all about –- when we can't identify what our desires are calling us to do.
"That's my theory, anyway, and I think that's where religion comes in. And I don't mean priests and churches and all that, although I don't want to be too critical. They've got some good stuff mixed in with all the other mess. But what we really need is a fairly simple code that bridges that gap between feeling and doing -- a meeting place for desire and understanding -- for will and want.
"I'm not saying 'don't think, believe.' That's stupid. Of course we should think, but we shouldn't think like a machine on the one hand, or like a dog on the other. We should think like a human. We don't let passion rule us, but we don't ignore it either. It's part of us, and we need to learn to think passionately. That's what Wicca does for me. Some religions fear the body and others fear the mind. Wicca doesn't fear either one. It embraces the body and the mind, and fuses them together. I used to feel those animal urges and I didn't know what they meant. I didn't know how to deal with them. Now I do. Now I can name them, and I can put them in their place, and recognize their season. Wicca puts all these things in context."
Sean paused and took a long sip of his stout, leaving a creamy line of foam on his mustache for a moment before licking it away.
"John, there's so much I'd like to say. I could go on all night about this stuff, but my throat's getting dry and you've been patient, so I'm going to nurse this fine Irish stout and let you tell me what you're thinking."
John spent another minute on the pretzels, trying to digest Sean's monologue, which took him completely by surprise. He'd expected something about Jillian, and when it came to religion he expected the old "faith is more important than reason" thing. After all, religious people don't actually think, do they?
He rebuked the thought even as he silently laughed at it.
John liked to think that his materialistic agnosticism was subject to rebuttal -- that he would listen honestly to arguments for spiritual realities. But he didn't want to be credulous, or fall for something that he'd laugh at in the morning.
The waitress interrupted his minute of reflection with two cheese-steak sandwiches, an enormous mound of fries, and two more beers. John asked for an extra glass of water, and they started settling in to the job at hand. John spoke haltingly, between bites, and Sean listened eagerly.
"To tell you the truth, I've always assumed that all this pagan stuff was either a half-hearted excuse for partying or a self-help antidote to childhood religious trauma. With a lot of superstitious stuff thrown in for good measure."
Sean laughed and nodded his agreement. "It can be," he said. "Or hatred for priests, or just a desire to be weird. You meet all kinds."
"I'd never really considered things the way you put it," John continued, "and I think you make an interesting case. I'm going to have to think about that some more. But I've been thinking like a skeptic for most of my life, and here's how Skeptical John responds to your brief for paganism.
"Let's say I admit your anthropology -- that the human mind has inherited some animal instincts, like you say, but this weird thing called 'thought' has clouded it all over, and we're not directly aware of our 'urges,' as you put it. So thinking interrupts the animal's pattern of feel-then-do.
"So if individuals have these buried urges, maybe a group of individuals can work them out and express those things in their customs, so the customs become a cultural expression of those unconscious desires. The group might be able to understand and manage those urges better than the individual can. So we start calling those customs 'religion.' Then we're surprised by how well they accommodate our animal urges.
"It's all 'real' enough, in a way, but there's nothing supernatural about it. It's just a collective expression of the individual's demons."
Sean nodded his head thoughtfully while dipping a fry in a pool of ketchup.
"I wouldn't deny much of what you just said," John continued. "I'm going to think about it. But my secular approach can explain things just as well, and it doesn't require goddesses and all that stuff."
Sean looked up suddenly and smiled like a man who recognized his opponent's strategy and knew his counter-move, but understood that the real battle was still ahead, and anyone's for the taking.
"And that's the rub," Sean said. "If there are two possible explanations, and one involves spirits and 'all that stuff,' but the other is nice and comfortable and doesn't disturb your materialist view of the world, then you'll take the latter every time. It kinda reminds me," he began, but the thought amused him and he laughed for a moment. "It reminds me of people who say that faith is for the weak-minded. It is for some. I'll admit that. But hiding behind science is just as cowardly. The weak religious person is afraid to face life on his own, without God. The weak scientist is afraid that he might be accountable to God, or might have to admit that the universe is too big and complex for his little ideas.
"I'm not calling you a coward," Sean clarified. "Not yet, anyway. I'm just priming you for my challenge."
And with that he reached into a back pocket and pulled out a deck of cards. Not tarot cards, John noticed. Ordinary playing cards.
So is the goddess going to help him fleece me at poker? John wondered.
"Here's a relatively normal deck of cards," Sean began with a glint in his eye. "It's almost a regular rummy deck, but I've made some substitutions and marked a couple of the cards. You might guess what they represent, but I figure two guys doing card tricks with the e
ight of clubs is less conspicuous than if I were to lay a proper deck on the table. But it's really a tarot deck, only the pictures aren't as interesting."
He winked and smiled a conspirator's smile, then set the deck in the middle of the table.
"You can look them over if you like."
John took the slightly large deck and glanced through. Most of the cards were just as you'd expect, but some had small notations in a bold, cursive script that he could barely make out. He cut the deck a few times and casually shuffled the contents, just to foil any kind of set-up. Sean didn't seem to mind.
"Here's the challenge," Sean said. "I'll do a reading, right here, and tell you something about your life. Maybe something about how you met Jillian, since you never told me that tale."
The Witch's Promise Page 4