Bell, book, and murder

by Edghill, Rosemary

  "I've got some stuff to do," I said, "and they're supposed to get my prints. When shall I come back?"

  He looked at his watch. "If you could report back here at 11:30, ma'am, that would be very helpful. And if you see" —he consulted his notes —"Mrs. Wagner, could you let her know we'll need her records?"

  I nodded. There was no sense in embarking upon long explanations of why he wasn't going to get them, and fortunately I knew who he was talking about. Maidjene was Mrs. Wagner, at least until the divorce was final, but as for getting the attendance records for the festival, I could foresee a pointless tussle and the invocation of the ACLU. I wondered what I could do to head it off. Belle would be the person to ask, and she should be getting here sometime today. Lady Bellflower of the Wicca comes from a long line of union organizers and civil protesters and would be a better judge of our rights under the law than some coven lawyer who'd gotten his ideas about our legal rights from old Perry Mason reruns.

  I bid the police presence a fond farewell as Deputy Twochuck was explaining to someone, probably for what he felt was the ten

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  millionth time, that he needed her real name, the one on her driver's license.

  "That is my real name," Sparkle Starbuck said with ill-concealed triumph. "Here's my driver's license. See?"

  I left before somebody asked me to take sides, and headed out the other door.

  The HallowFest banner was hung over the door to the Registration cabin. It was after nine, and arrivals were starting to pick up. The space in the L-shape between the bam and the line of cabins looked like a cross between a kicked anthill and a madhouse: business as usual. There were some kids about toddler size running around underfoot while their parents checked in and unloaded. We call them our hereditaries, but I wonder myself if people who have had Craift handed to them without struggle will value it enough to cleave to it through all the betrayals and petty annoyances it contains. What view will they have of the Community, growing up in the middle of it? Will they see us too clearly— or not clearly enough?

  Baiiley was handling registration from a table underneath the banner. The murder was Topic A; I caught scraps of several conversations, some of which I fervently hoped the deputies would never hear.

  "Do you know where Maidjene is?" he demanded when he saw me. 'They want the registration lists and stuff, but I can't find them."

  'They" being the Gotham County Sheriffs Department, and Bailey's excuse might or might not be the truth; Bailey is smarter than he looks. He's part Miwok Indian and resembles a shy hedgehog—a short one, which is apparently gods' curse on men, but Bailey doesn't act as if it bothers him too much.

  "She was up at the meadow when I left, so she ought to be heading this way," I said, hoping I was telling the truth.

  "I wish she'd get here!" Bailey wailed.

  "Look, why don't you just give everybody badges now and sort out the registration later?" I Sciid. He looked more grateful than the suggestion deserved, and I wondered what he knew that I didn't.

  "Okay!" Beiiley said, raising his voice and trying to sound authoritative. "Will everybody who doesn't have their badges please take them — and put them on? Everybody has to wear their HallowFest badge —"

  I waved vaguely and headed for my cabin, feeling like a salmon

  swimming upstream. It was hard going. There were cars and vans and trucks pulled up haphazardly, blocking each other in, and people off-loading and generally catching up with one another since last year. An aura of high holiday seemed to suffuse everything and nobody much seemed to care about the inconvenience of it all.

  Except me. I felt like the memento mori at an Elizabethan feast, certain that at any moment someone would notice I didn't belong here. It was a disturbing feeling, like waking up in the Twilight Zone. If I didn't belong here, where did I belong?

  I was standing there feeling lost when a blue and white rental van pulled up, edging slowly through the crowd. I recognized the driver—and, by extension, most of the passengers.

  Changing Coven had arrived at HallowFest. I abandoned my search for my own nametag and worked my way around to the passenger side. Belle slithered out the door just about the time I arrived.

  Lady Bellflower of Changing Coven—to give her her full liturgical title —is short, round, blonde, motherly, professional, and (among other things) a very public Witch with a weekly radio show on WBAI. She's the woman who brought me in to the Craft and has run a Gardnerian-trad coven in New York City for the better part of fifteen years. She's been my closest friend for most of that time.

  I looked at my watch. "You're late," I said. Not. It was all often A.M.—they must have left New York around dawn.

  Belle shrugged and smiled. "So sue us," she said.

  The others got out of the van. Sundance had been driving, of course, and Glitter, Beaner, The Cat, Dorje, and Actaeon — HaillowFest veterans all—began unloading what was —as I knew from previous years —a pretty thoroughly stuffed vehicle.

  'Topper and Coral should be here soon—they were coming up in their own car with the kids. Sallix had to work, and it's Ronin's weekend with the boys."

  "Bummer." Ronin wouldn't dare jeopardize his visitation rights by bringing Ronnie and Seth to something like this. I caught Dorje's eye and waved. He waved back.

  "So, how's it going this year so far? I heard Summerisle was running it, but now that Maidjene and Larry are splitting—"

  "Summerisle's still running it, but there's been some differently-nice stuff coming down this weekend," I told Belle. It didn't take me long to fill her in on how I'd spent my morning.

  "Is the Sheriffs Department being reasonable?" Belle asked. I

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  told her about Sergeant Pascoe and Detective Wajme, and how they both seemed to be sane lawdogs with previous HallowFest experience.

  "And they say we can have the Bardic Circle back by tonight so long as we keep out of the way now," I finished, "but they're asking everybody to make statements. I'm supposed to go do that as soon as I'm done setting up The Snake's table." I hesitated. "The Sheriffs Department wants to know the names and addresses of everyone attending HallowFest this year, and I don't think Maid-jene's real happy about that."

  'Turning over her records? She shouldn't have to. I'll talk to her," Belle said firmly. "And you keep out of things," she added.

  "Me?" I said, surprised. "I haven't done anything." And I didn't want to, either.

  "Well, don't," Belle said. 'This is no time to be playing 'Lone Ranger of the Wicca.' The police can find out 'whodunit' without your help."

  "I wasn't going to help," I said, nettled. "But—" It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Belle about the candles and oil, but something similar to prudence held me back.

  "But nothing," Belle said firmly. "You aren't involved this time: you never knew Reverend Harm; there's no doubt that the murder's being properly investigated by the proper authorities. There's nothing for you to do."

  It was a sentiment with which I wanted desperately to agree, but when I tried to something kept me silent.

  "1 don't want to borrow trouble," I finally managed. Belle beamed.

  "Where are you staying?" she asked.

  I pointed to the cabin, hoping she wouldn't ask the obvious next question. And she didn't, bless the Lady, so I didn't have to tell her that I was sharing the cabin with Julian.

  "You'd better go ahead and get set up," she said. "I'll catch you later."

  We went off in opposite directions. On the way back to the cabin I saw Hallie of Keystone Coven (they're in Pennsylvania, naturally) with an armful of the tie-dyed ritual robes she was bringing for sale. I knew Hallie slightly—she'd been in Changing when I first joined —but she took Third and went off to found her own coven out west almost immediately. 1 stopped her and we chatted — the usual conversation of acquaintances meeting after long absence. Keystone Coven had already generated daughter and grand-

 
daughter covens, and I felt a guilty sense of promises unkept, as if I were being pushed to accept a responsibility I wasn't ready for. I pushed it aside, concentrating on immediate business —setting up the Snake's table.

  Julian wasn't at the cabin, and his absence was almost as much of a relief as Jesus Jackson's body actually being present up there in the pine forest had been. What was in the cabin was the long table and all the boxes he and I had schlepped in from the van last night. Even though Merchanting wouldn't open until noon, there was no reason not to get set up before my date with Deputy Twochuck.

  Renny Twochuck. And people ask why 1 prefer to be called Bast.

  I found my badge and pinned it to my sweatshirt, then went into the tiny bathroom and yanked on the light. 1 turned both taps on full; eventually they'd run clear. Meanwhile I stared at my reflection in the blotched and unsilvering mirror, wondering how 1 appeared to the Gotham County Sheriffs Department.

  Single white Witch. Thirtysomething, five-seven in socks. Figure not too bad, but better out of a parka, sweatshirt, and baggy jeans. Black hair, shoulder length, two months overdue for a cut. Blue eyes. Three holes in one ear, two in the other, all full of earrings. No visible tattoos. No makeup.

  Nothing here to inspire a lot of confidence in the police mind, but on the other hand, I didn't look like a crazed killer.

  1 hoped.

  What had put that hole in Jackson Harm?

  Nobody here had any answers.

  I dumped the parka and decided to change the ratty sweatshirt for a slightly more respectable sweater and a silk turtleneck (it has holes in both elbows, but it still looks fine under a pullover). When I pulled the sweatshirt off over my head 1 could smell bergamot, chypre, and cloves. Julian.

  What had he meant? What had I done?

  And what were the consequences?

  I'm old enough that my first worry was that I might be pregnant—a worry that lasted exactly long enough for me to realize that 1 shouldn't worry about pregnancy as much as I should worry about infection. I thought I'd rather die than grill Julian on his sexual history until it occurred to me that the stakes were precisely that high —and that it was already too late to be safe.

  The nineties are such a lovely decade.

  There was nothing I could do about either possibility—pregnant

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  or infected — right now except curse my stupidity and pray for luck—neither of which is ever as useful as a little forethought. Being in denial, however, works nearly as well. For a while.

  I got to work, wishing I could have moved this stuff only once. The table was the worst; it was big and heavy, and awkward even folded, but I had help before I was even out the door with it—one of the Raven Kindred folks. Between me and Lew, we got the table through the crowd, into the bam, and up the stairs that led to the second floor.

  As you may have gathered, the Paradise Lake bam is not exactly a bam, at least not SLnymore. It was remodeled many years ago, and now has two floors, for one thing (only the ground floor is heated), and a kitchenette, for another. It also contains two dorm rooms, each of which can bunk thirty or so, and four other rooms, which are set up with bunk beds to accommodate various numbers of people. The rooms were starting to fill with members of my tribe, my nation, my extended family: Pagans.

  "Thanks, Lew," I said, when we'd got the table upstairs. The upstairs was freezing cold; the sunlight that made everything outside warm wouldn't make a dent in this cold air mass for some hours. If ever.

  "Any time," Lew said. He was wearing a Thor's hammer on a thong around his neck. "You need any more help?"

  "It's just boxes. You and Janna better grab some bunks before they're all gone."

  "See you tonight then," Lew said. He waved and went off.

  I picked out a nice comer space under the joists and near the door, with a window at my back. No one else was setting up yet, but it was just as well I hadn't counted on being able to bring the van up this morning. I went back for the first of the boxes. Soon enough I wasn't cold at all.

  On one of my last trips back to the cabin—Julian was still nowhere to be seen and that was fine with me —a battered station wagon with Jersey plates pulled up outside of Registration, and a JUin-gon got out.

  I'm a classicist myself, but this was a movies-and-new-series Klingon with the ridged forehead — latex, I was relieved to note. He was wearing what might very well have been a genuine Klingon Army uniform, for all I knew: he was the size of a refrigerator and I counted at least five knives before he made it to Registration.

  "Klash!" Maidjene shrilled in a register only bats and dogs could hear as she ran out to meet him. Klash shouted something back; it sounded like a jammed gearbox.

  1 looked back at the station wagon. Five more people got out. They were all wearing fringed sashes. Some of them were wearing latex. One of the women—a little smaller than Maidjene, but not much—was wearing a leather corselet with brass cups about the size of baby moon hubcaps for the '57 Chevy of your choice. She bared her teeth at me and growled.

  "Bast, I want you to meet Klash. Klash is the Orm of Coven Koloth. The HP?" Maidjene added, in case I didn't quite get it. She looked frayed but indomitably cheerful. I guessed she'd got back from dealing with Our Friends the Police; I didn't see Bailey.

  "Tlingan ko dajattle a?"* Klash said.

  "Hi," I said. I resisted the impulse to see if my ears had suddenly stopped working.

  'This is their first HallowFest," Maidjene said. I looked around. 1 was surrounded by Klingons. "I know them from Jersey."

  "Can we, like, register now?" said one of the Klingons. Klash said something to him in what was, probably, Klingonese. Finally, the penny dropped.

  "Klingon Wicca?" I said in disbelief. Maidjene winced.

  "Some people call it that," Klash agreed, fortunately in English this time. He smiled. "Want to join the Imperial Race?"

  "I have to finish setting up my table," I said, at the same time Maidjene said:

  "I thought you could maybe show Klash and the guys around." And keep them out of trouble, her tone implied. Like any good hostess, Maidjene wanted everyone to have fun at her party.

  Klash ripped off another sentence in Klingonese and made a sweeping gesture. Two of the Klingons shrugged.

  "Ron says, we can help you with that if you want," one of them said.

  "Sure," 1 said. It was as good a way to introduce them to HallowFest as any. "Come on."

  The two Klingons followed me back to the cabin.

  The NeoPagan Community was self-created to display an infinite tolerance for anything its members might do. As wiser heads than

  *"Do you speak Klingon?"

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  mine have pointed out, a community with no standards is no community, but, like science-fiction fandom and the bumblebee, the Community has survived infinite careful explanations of how it cannot possibly continue to work.

  It is possible, however, that POingon Wicca may be the bone of contention that breaks the camel's back.

  While there are (my sources tell me) as many different approaches to it as to any other trad, and Khngon Wicca is only as accurate a label as, say, Norse Wicca is for Odinism, most Pagans understand Klingon Wicca to be a tradition of roughly Wiccan form and intention which takes its archetypes, mythos, and images from "Next Generation Star Trek Klingons —and, since there isn't all that much information available from the TV, they patch it together from a little Bushido here, a little Chivalry there until they've created a ritual and an identity.

  What they've also created is a chasm between themselves and the majority of NeoPagans. Whatever else we say about ourselves, the one thing we all seem to agree on is that we are reclaiming: either the gods of our ancestors or the truth eternal; the path to perfect knowledge or the safety of the Earth. It is hard to maintain this belief when we see the same careful work and reconstruction put into something derived from a television show: How can we be
serious if they are not? And how can they be serious?

  They're not Pagans, say the Pagans, they Ye fans.

  We're not fans, say the Klingons, we believe.

  Where should the line be drawn?

  Should the line be drawn?

  And if here, then where else as well?

  They guys' names were K-Rex and T'Davoth, I discovered shortly after they'd followed me off. They seemed more normal away from Klash ("His name's really Ron, but he doesn't like us to call him that," K-Rex explained), and willing to talk. It was a familiar story: they'd come to Paganism (however defined), as so many people do these days, after being exposed to it through SF. I wondered if they'd remain Klingons, or if the Imperial Race would become, in the end, merely another point of entry into our world.

  With their help —"Strong backs, weak minds," T'Davoth boasted —I had the last of the boxes up to the second floor in two more trips. The cabin looked barren without them; all that was left was the mattress, my duffel bag, and Julian's things.

  I told K-Rex and T'Davoth something about HallowFest, including the fact that the Sheriffs Department had found a body up on the hill this morning and wanted people to stay out of the area for a while.

  "Cool," K-Rex said, which might mean almost anything.

  I wanted to warn them that we didn't go in much for costumes, but that wouldn't have been entirely true. And ritual robes aind Klingon battle-dress probably looked pretty much alike to outsiders, which seemed, at the time, to be a profound insight into the nature of reality. So what I did say was that I'd catch up with them after lunch to see if they had any more questions.

  "Cool," said K-Rex again. T'Davoth nodded.

  I didn't laugh at them. I didn't ask them their "real" names. Perhaps the actual example the Community tries to set isn't even tolerance so much as it is the freedom of allowing each person to define himself without discussion.