Kiss the Witch

by Dana E. Donovan

  I stood. Ursula responded by splaying her arms, presenting the classic frisk stance Lilith assumed earlier. And just as she had done with Lilith, I began her whole-body splash by spreading my oiled thumbs along her forehead, across her cheeks, chin, and down her nose.

  I do not remember dressing her neck and shoulders. But I remember she did not flinch when my hands cascaded down her breasts, my fingers rippling over her nipples. I feathered my touch along her sides and returned to her breasts for more thorough coverage. And there I lingered, perhaps too long. I pressed my hands against her and moved them in slow swirling motions counter to each other, lifting, squeezing in synch to the rhythm of her shallow breathing. She rocked her head back gently. I gathered her nipples between my oily index fingers and thumbs pinched them. She held her breath and gasped when they slipped from my grasp. I looked at her face, searched her ebony eyes in primal curiosity. They never blinked. Behind me, Lilith cleared her throat. I recoiled sharply and my hands fell away as if by some invisible force. Still, Ursula’s gaze remained unchanged, fixed on a forward light as distant as a star.

  I knelt before her and began on her legs. I slid my hands up the inside of her thighs, my thumbs brushing her lightly on a place I did not mean to touch. She smiled faintly.

  Embarrassed? Maybe, but not as much as me.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “That was an accident.”

  She replied, “Aye, methinks you missed it.”

  “What?”

  Lilith said, “You have to anoint her entire body, Tony. You cannot skip anything. It’s the trust factor, remember?”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Of course.”

  I looked up at Ursula. “It’s okay?”

  She adjusted her stance wider. “I know thee well and trust thee, Master Tony.”

  I re-oiled my hands, palmed her gently and worked my fingers through her felted patch. It did not take long, and perhaps no one should have been surprised, but something natural began to stir both inside and outside me. I finished her legs, and when she turned to let me do her back, I stood.

  That is when Lilith noticed it.

  “What are you doing, Tony?”

  I was not there yet, but my frightened turtle was definitely losing his shyness. “Lilith,” I said. “I’m sorry, but what do you expect?”

  “I expect you to stop it.”

  “You want him to stop?” said Ursula, looking back over her shoulder.

  “No, honey, you just turn around and let him finish what he’s doing.

  By then, I had gotten a handle on my involuntary reflexes, mostly by thinking of the hell Lilith might put me through if I did not.

  Having dodged that bullet, I proceeded to apply the final touch (so to speak) to Ursula’s anointment ritual. I tipped the bottle into my hand, allowing the overflow to spill out and roll down her back. The beads skittered down her spine in nervous procession, riding the swell below the small of her back and disappearing single file between her cheeks. I saw her butt muscles tighten at that, and the thought of doing it again caused me to hesitate.

  Lilith said, “We’re running out of candlelight, Tony.”

  I knew we were not. “Are we?”

  “If you don’t move it along.”

  “Yes, of course.” I set the bottle down, rubbed my palms together and proceeded in brisk fashion to complete Ursula’s session. A few broad sweeps down her back, over her buttocks and across her shoulders, and I was done.

  “There,” I said. “Finished.”

  Ursula turned around, picked up the oil, spilled it into her hand and said, “`Tis your turn now, Master Tony.”

  “My turn?”

  I know I sounded surprised, but I was not. I think I was hoping Lilith would hear the panic in my voice and volunteer to do me. When it became apparent that would not happen, I simply shrugged, crossed my arms at my chest, spread my stance and said, “All right then. Have at it.”

  I do not know if I knew exactly what I was getting into. For that matter, I don’t think Lilith knew either. Again, nature being what it is, no one should have been surprised at what happened next.

  It turns out, Ursula’s approach to oiling down a man’s body is far less seductive than oiling down a woman’s. Of course, maybe that is just my take on it. That and the fact that the cleansing ritual is not supposed to be seductive. Nevertheless, lack of seduction does not mean lack of arousal.

  She started by drawing the circle on my stomach, as I expected she would. When she reached the kissing part, however, all bets were off. The first and second kiss, the ones on the east and south points of the circle, stirred an undeniable tingle inside of me. The third, fourth and fifth brought movement to places that Lilith did not approved.

  It was the kiss in the center of the witch’s eye that got Ursula’s attention. When she leaned in, she brushed against me where before she had not, noticing my reach had gradually extended.

  I saw her glance down at it with a puzzled look. Perhaps questioning her previous assessment and the comment she made when I first came out of the bathroom.

  Having drawn the circle and called for the mothers of the coven to grant us the rite, she stood. When she did, I placed my arms out to my side, now feeling more vulnerable and exposed than ever.

  She oiled her hands up generously, and when she stepped in close to reach my forehead, our bodied touched, or more specifically, a certain part of my body touched her somewhere around her mid-section. She leaned in to me anyway, pretending not to notice. My heart began racing again. My senses tingled everywhere her hot, oily skin touched mine. She ran her fingers over my face, her hands down my neck, across my chest and down my stomach.

  I do not believe she knew what she was doing to me, the impulses I had, the nerves she struck. To her, it was all mechanical, all part of the coven ceremony.

  She gathered more oil and reached between my legs with both hands. I pulled back in kneejerk reaction, even gasped as though I had been holding my breath a very long time.

  Perhaps I was.

  Ursula seemed equally startled. She let go and backed away a measured step. “Forgive me, Master Tony. I hurt thee?”

  “No, Ursula,” I said. “You didn’t hurt me. It was just a reflex.”

  “Then I shall handle thee with more tender,” she said, cradling my package and massaging the oil in softly with her fingers.

  “That won’t be….” necessary, I started to say. But already I was filling her hands with more than she could handle.

  She looked down, and a stark wonder molded her face. Clearly, she had ventured into unchartered waters. I thought she might stop, but with wild curiosity in her eyes, she continued. And the more she caressed me, the more aroused I became. Soon she was making long, hard strokes and I had no more resistance to offer–perhaps by design, I grant you, but I felt powerless nonetheless. I looked beyond the candle’s reach for Lilith. She could not see what was going on, as Ursula had her back turned completely to her, blocking her view. I suspect, however, she was getting suspicious at how long the anointment ritual was taking to advance.

  “Ahm, Lilith,” I said, reluctantly, but I said it. “You might want to come over here?”

  She stepped from the shadows, and her eyes grew as wide as spoons. Ursula looked up at her and smiled, her hand in a frozen grasp of my 21st digit.

  Lilith asked, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said.

  “Not you. Her. Ursula, what are you doing? You’re not milking a cow you know?”

  “Aye, `tis amazing,” she said, her excitement filled with wide-eyed innocence. “Sister, look what I found. `Tis the work of the coven, I am sure. The more I stroke, the more there is to stroke. `Tis magick, is it not?”

  Lilith reached down and removed Ursula’s hands from her point of fascination. “No, Urs. It is not majick. And trust me, that’s all the more you’re going to get.”

  Ursula looked up at me, at i
t and at me again. “I do not understand. You can do that without magick?”

  Lilith said, “That’s the trouble with men. They can do that without a brain. Now, give me the oil. I think you two have built up enough trust for one evening.”

  “But sister. Can all men do that?”

  “Of course. Didn’t you know?”

  “Nay, I did not.”

  “No one ever talked to you about the birds and the bees?”

  “I know of birds, aye, and of bees.”

  “I mean sex.”

  She seemed to blush at that. “Oh, pray thee, no. It is not proper to discuss such things before marriage.”

  “Ursula, we talk about sex all the time. Do you mean to tell me you have no idea what we’re talking about when we have our girl talks?”

  She blinked back bashfully. “`Tis you talking most times.”

  Lilith wrinkled her face. “Yeah, you do kind of nod a lot during those conversations. We’ll have to have a real girl-to-girl after we finish here.”

  “Aye, that would be good. Oh, do you think my Dominic can do what Master Tony can do?”

  Both gazed down at my ridged form with silly grins. Lilith shook her head and made a tic sound through her teeth. “I don’t know, Urs. I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high.” Then she backhanded me on the flat of my stomach. “And you. Put that thing down. You look like you’re carrying a spear.”

  “Put it down?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  It was not hard, pardon the pun, to put it down after that. I never felt as awkward in front of Ursula as I did then. I only hoped Dominic would never know what happened there.

  Lilith finished dressing me in oil herself, determining Ursula and I had established sufficient trust to precede with the ceremony. Frankly, I think she simply did not want Ursula touching me for fear of risking another spontaneous show of gratification on my part. She was probably right in that assumption.

  Having completed the cleansing ritual, we (and by we, I mean Lilith and Ursula mostly) moved on to the most important part of the ceremony. The casting of the circle.

  I thought I knew what to expect here. After all, I participated in Lilith’s Rite of Passage ceremony, the ceremony that literally brought the house down. It is true. After returning us to our physical prime, or perhaps during it, it is hard to say, as we were in the eye of a tornado at the time, the house simply blew away. Gone. Vanished. When it was over, I found myself standing on an empty slab, holding Lilith in my arms and wondering why I was not dead.

  Still, as amazing as that ceremony was, the casting of the circle for the Rite of Passage called for far less preparation than the one for the witches’ coven.

  It began with Ursula taking one end of a length of cord measuring four and a half feet and pinning it to the floor in the center of the room. With the other end held taunt, Lilith chalked off a line of brick dust to form a perfect nine-foot circle. All the while, she and Ursula chanted whispers in ancient rhymes. The words I did not recognize.

  With that done, the two moved on to candle assignments. Ursula facilitated the placement of the four primary candles: yellow, red, blue and green, representing air, fire, water and earth, the prime essentials in necromantic rituals. She placed the yellow one on the east side of the circle, and positioned the others on the remaining compass points following clockwise. Her chant, again in ancient rhyme, mimicked the mantra recited during the drawing of the circle.

  As she did that, Lilith gathered the remaining candles, a dozen or so, as near I guessed, all of them white and in glass jars. She arranged them on the coffee table, stacking them in pyramid fashion in front of a black mirror to create an altar of sorts. She then reached up on the bookcase for the dagger I had seen earlier that morning, the thing she called an athame. Lilith pointed it at Ursula and asked her to get the elements from the kitchen. Then she pointed it at me.

  “You.” She gestured with a stab at the circle. “Get in here.”

  I did, and when Ursula returned with a bowl and a dish, Lilith cautioned us against stepping out of it.

  “Once cast,” she warned, “We cannot break the circle. Doing so will upset the balance of energy and thwart our efforts to form a new coven.”

  “Forever?” I asked.

  “No, not forever. For tonight. If anything interrupts the ceremony we will have to try it again when the moon is right.”

  I know most men might think that would be okay by them. Playing slip-n-slide on the curves of a beautiful woman like Ursula is a once in a lifetime opportunity, if not once in many lifetimes. What guy would not welcome the chance to do it all again some other night? My problem was that I still had to look Dominic in the eye the next day. That was bad enough. Looking him in the eye and knowing I would be oiling up his fiancée’s nookie-nook again was more than I could bear.

  “All right then,” I said. “Let’s get on with it.”

  We positioned ourselves in front of the makeshift altar, me in the middle, Ursula to my right, Lilith to my left. Ursula set the bowl and dish on the coffee table. The bowl I could see held water, the dish salt. Lilith placed the athame across the top of the water bowl and whispered, “Mothers of the Coven, cleans thy waters, make it pure, allow by thrice thy ranks to soar.”

  “By thrice thy ranks to soar,” said Ursula.

  Lilith nudged me with her elbow. “Oh, right,” I said. “By thrice thy ranks to soar.”

  She places the athame across the dish. This time I was ready for her. “Mothers of the coven, cast thy salt and make it pure, allow by thrice thy ranks to soar.”

  “By thrice thy ranks to soar,” said Ursula.

  “By thrice thy ranks to soar,” I said.

  Lilith took the athame, walked to the east edge of the circle, pointed it at the yellow candle and shot it. Seriously. I mean, I know you cannot shoot something with a dagger, not usually. But Lilith did. She pointed her athame at the candle, took aim down the length of her arm and unleashed a bolt of blue lightning that zapped the shit out of it. The resulting discharge obliterated the candle and set one quarter of the circle, from east to south, on fire.

  She blasted the red candle next, with similar results, setting half the circle on fire from east to west. Though the flames were small, barely three inches high, they were intensely hot, heating the brick dust to a molten mass in seconds.

  Ursula and I stepped aside and allowed Lilith access to the last two candles. Once she zapped those, the shallow ring of fire encircled us completely. Why it did not burn a hole in the floor and drop us into the basement, I could only wonder. But with Lilith, I have come to trust her more than I trust my own eyes. For all I knew, we were in the basement, maybe already dead. I remember thinking that would not be all bad. As I gazed dreamlike into the flames twitching nervously at my feet, I considered the possibility. There were worse things I could think of than spending an eternity with two naked women and an endless bottle of olive oil.

  I might have carried that happy thought further had I not faded back from the heat of the flames and backed up into the business end of Lilith’s athame. The point jabbed me in the left cheek and sent me lunging forward into Ursula’s arms. I grabbed her around the waist to keep from knocking her over, but my forward momentum pushed her back to the edge of the circle. She was leaning backwards, her body half in the circle and half out. Lilith shouted something at us, but I could not hear her. All I could think of was keeping Ursula inside the circle. When the flames began nipping at her heels, Ursula let out a yelp and drove toward me hard enough to knock me down. I landed on my back, my arms still around her waist, her body flat against mine.

  I felt relieved and embarrassed at the same time. And when I saw Lilith standing over us, hands on hips, foot tapping, I felt afraid as well. I looked up at her and stifled a guilty grin. “Lilith. It’s not what you think. It’s funny really.”

  “Is it? You and Ursula lying naked on the floor together? That’s funny?”

  “No, that pa
rt isn’t funny. What I mean is….”

  “Just get up, Tony, and stop taking advantage of Ursula’s naïveté.”

  I looked at Ursula. She smiled back at me the way Lilith does when she knows something I do not. I suddenly got the feeling the joke was on me and that the whole coven thing was a setup. Maybe in some weird witchy tradition Lilith was throwing Ursula a bachelorette party and I was the entertainment.

  I looked up at Lilith again. Her face had grown several shades redder in the moments it took me to think about it. Another look into Ursula’s eyes and I realized that she had not a clue. Every second I wasted only made matters worse.

  “Okay.” I released my finger-lock hold around Ursula’s waist and pushed her gently off me. “Back to work now.”

  I saw Lilith’s eyes checking out my mid section after Ursula dismounted to make sure I had not picked up my spear again. Fortunately, I had not.

  We returned to the altar in the formation I mentioned earlier, Ursula to my right, Lilith to my left. Ursula picked up the salt dish and poured it into the water. She then picked the bowl up and handed it to Lilith.

  Lilith dipped the athame into the water and flicked it at the fire bordering the east. She began walking the perimeter of the circle, flicking water from the athame onto the fire and throughout the circle as she progressed clockwise. Her mantra, as before, in whispered rhymes, the likes of which I could not understand.

  That done, she returned the bowl to the altar and set it on the empty salt dish. Ursula placed the black mirror against the bowl, leaning it back in a way that she might see her face in it if she stooped slightly.

  Lilith waved the athame over the mirror three times. “Hear ye spirits through this glass,” she said, her words decidedly louder and more pronounced than before. “Turn to night and let us pass.” She pressed the tip of the athame to the face of the mirror.

  “Let us pass,” said Ursula, and after she elbowed me lightly, I echoed her words.