Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

by Jonathan Strahan

  Which was pretty rich coming from a guy wearing fangs, but right then she was enjoying feeling conspiratorial.

  Inside the barn was exactly how Ellery dreamed it would be. There were makeshift tables covered in batik and velvet cloths and piled with cheese, grapes, oranges, olives, bread, traditional Sabbat oatcakes, and a few supermarket rotisserie chickens. There were cartons of cider, bottles of beer, and a lot of homemade mead. The food was delicious. Ellery stuffed herself.

  Everyone was friendly—and fascinating. There was a white-haired crone wearing a silver circlet with a crescent moon on it, a younger man with a long waxed mustache and a brown leather vest, a girl in a belly-dancing costume covered with wide golden beads. There were lots of other people, too, young and old, most of them in the standard pagan uniform of black t-shirt, black jeans, boots, and pewter figural jewelry.

  Ellery couldn’t stop staring. She had a million questions threatening to come blurting out of her mouth. How had they first discovered magic? How did they know they had power? What spells had they done? Had they seen something that was undeniably proof that there were gods and goddesses and nature spirits? Was it all real?

  Ellery wanted it to be real. She wanted to know it was real more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.

  She was here as a member of her coven, as a practitioner—she couldn’t ask if it was real. That would be like saying she didn’t believe. And that wasn’t true. Not exactly. But there was a difference between believing and knowing. Ellery believed. But she wanted to know.

  “The ceremony will be at midnight,” the white-haired woman said. “If anyone needs to meditate, now would be a good time.”

  Ellery went to find Dawn. She was near the bathroom, looking oddly subdued.

  “We should finish pitching our tent,” she said. “Before it gets too late.”

  Dawn nodded. “Yeah, before everyone gets drunk.” There was a catch in her voice.

  Ellery looked at her, not sure if she’d heard right. Normally Dawn seemed to float along on her own private happy cloud. They walked across the grass in silence.

  “Sorry,” Dawn said finally, picking up one of the spines of the tent and threading it through the cloth. “I had a bad Ostara here—no, that’s not right, I thought I had had a great Ostara. But now … I guess I didn’t.”

  “What happened?”

  Dawn smiled at Ellery a little sadly. “I made out with two friends of mine—Chloe and Bill. It was really beautiful and innocent, you know? They invited me back to their tent and we told each other that we respected each other as people and would never let jealousy hurt any of our relationships. But I just saw Chloe on the way to the bathroom and she said that she and Bill broke up. Because of that. Because of me. Now I feel awful and I don’t know if I can—” She broke off and started jamming the other spine into the tent cloth.

  “I’m sorry,” Ellery said. She didn’t feel adequate to the task of saying the right thing. She had only made out with three boys. One had even been her boyfriend for a while, but he’d broken up with her because she made a comment about how he always got food stuck in his braces. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Yeah,” Dawn said, in that sad way that means the opposite.

  They put up the tent, while Dawn told Ellery about the other people at the gathering. There was Tom, who was very handsome, with a string of beautiful girlfriends, but who made out exclusively with boys when he was drunk. There was a woman about Ellery’s mom’s age, Regina, who was dating Peter, who was her daughter’s age. In fact, they’d met through the daughter, Tanya, who was also at the Sabbat. Then there were Rosie and her two boyfriends, Brandon and Arthur. Ellery tried to remember all the names, but after a while they just rolled over her—stories about people she didn’t know and might not ever know. She felt as much of an outsider as ever.

  She leaned down to unzip her duffel and realized she’d forgotten to bring a couple of really important things. Like a sleeping bag. Or a pillow. Or even a blanket. She was going to freeze. And the worst part was that Dawn was going to think she was a kid after all. An irresponsible kid.

  “You okay?” Dawn was looking at her.

  “Yeah. I was listening. Are they the people you kissed?” Ellery asked.

  Dawn laughed for the first time as she unrolled her sleeping bag. “No, that was Chloe and Bill. Sorry. I guess I’m just blathering on and on. You must be bored to death.”

  “Nothing about tonight is boring,” Ellery said, and meant it.

  “Ladies! Stop your dawdling and endless primping!” Alastair’s voice floated in from outside the tent. “Opening ceremony’s starting.”

  Dawn rolled her eyes, brushed off her skirt, and swung her hair back from her face. Ellery scrambled for her robe.

  They rushed across the tiki-torch-lit meadow to a grove circled in stones. Most everyone was already there, forming a second circle within. Alastair gave Ellery a smirk and waggled his eyebrows.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Look who’s conducting the ceremony,” he said. “Wonder if he still wants to put his maypole in her cauldron.”

  “Shut up,” Ellery told him under her breath, but she guessed what he meant.

  The white-haired lady with the circlet was standing at the center of the circle, beside Bob. Given Alastair’s snickering, she must be Dragonsong. There was a huge stone near them, draped with a white cloth and serving as an altar. It was amazing—like something out of a movie. The few torches burning at the edges of what Ellery could see made everyone look sinister and beautiful in their glow. She felt as though she was outside time, as though they were no longer in the world of van rides and fast food and homework.

  Four people Ellery didn’t know called the corners, hailing each in turn.

  The white-haired woman invoked the goddess, lighting a fat white candle that flickered ominously in the breeze. “Threefold Goddess, Spring Maiden, Lady of Light, come to this Beltane ritual! Roll on our grass and bless our cup!”

  Bob lit a second candle. Even though Ellery had seen him be the high priest many times, this time felt different. His deep voice boomed. “Horned God, Sun King, Lord of Light, come to this Beltane ritual! Roll on our grass and bless our wand!”

  “Spirits of the trees, of the land, of the rocks, rise up and dance with us,” the priestess said. “This Sabbat celebrates life—celebrates the approach of summer and the sweet ripeness of lust, fertility, and love. Let us welcome Beltane into our hearts and welcome the spirits to our table.”

  The priestess—Dragonsong—took a pitcher from the altar and poured a thin stream of golden fluid into a goblet. Then she poured a little onto the dirt.

  “This liquid is the blessing of the goddess. Drink deeply and thirst no more.”

  “So mote it be,” Ellery chorused with the others.

  The priestess put the goblet into the hand of the girl who had hailed the guardians of the watchtowers of the east. She took a sip and passed it widdershins.

  The priest lifted a plate of what looked like small pancakes. “This food is the blessing of the god. Eat and be hungry no more.”

  “So mote it be,” they said, all together.

  Bob crumbled one of the pancakes in his hand and let the pieces fall into the dirt. Then the plate was passed to the person who had called the guardians of the west.

  The drink, when it came to Ellery, turned out to be apple juice. And the cakes were basically the same oatcakes she’d eaten inside, only colder and harder. But both, in her mouth, seemed changed from their original state. The wind rose, blowing her hair around her face. The feeling that she was doing something true and real washed over her with a quiet certainty she had never felt before.

  “Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again.” At the priestess’s words, everyone relaxed into laughter and hugs.

  The man with the waxed mustache drank the rest of the contents of the goblet. A boy grabbed one of the torches and people started to follow him into the wo
od.

  Ellery couldn’t stop smiling.

  Someone lit a bonfire and someone else had blankets to sit on. A few witches said their good-nights and headed back toward the tents. Cheryl signaled for Ellery to come over and share her spot, near several older ladies. The high priestess was one of them.

  “So this is your new initiate,” the white-haired woman said.

  The heady smell of marijuana smoke floated through the grove.

  “Ellery,” Ellery said, glancing toward a group of young witches passing a joint around the way they’d passed the apple juice. Alastair was with them, laughing.

  “I’m Dragonsong,” the woman said. “This is my farm.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Ellery told her, entirely sincerely. The woman didn’t look like a seductress. She looked like someone’s grandmother.

  Cheryl touched Ellery’s hair. “And we’re taking good care of her.”

  “What did you think of the ceremony?” another of the women inquired.

  “Beautiful,” Ellery said again, before she realized that saying the same word over and over made her seem a little dazed.

  The women laughed.

  Dragonsong leaned in. “I can tell by your aura—very bright, very clear, lots of turquoise and purple energy—that you’re very spiritually advanced. You’ve had many lives. You’re destined to be a very important priestess someday.”

  Ellery smiled, but something about the words she’d longed to hear didn’t feel right. The woman seemed bored, like she’d told a hundred girls the same thing and they’d all been just as flattered. It reminded her of her grandmother’s friends coming over to her after church, pinching her cheeks, and telling her how pretty she was going to be when she grew up.

  “Come dance!” Ellery looked up to see Dawn spinning around the fire along with the girl in the belly-dancing outfit and a cute shirtless boy with bare feet and loose pants. They were whirling happily. The boy took a long pull from a green bottle and hopped, laughing.

  A boy came up out of the shadow, holding a milk crate full of bottles. Dawn stumbled, nearly falling into the fire.

  Half rising, Ellery asked Cheryl, “Who is that?”

  “He’s our resident brewmaster, Bill.”

  He was cute, his brown hair flopping over one eye and the muscles in his arms evident. Chloe and Bill, Dawn had said. It must be him.

  Ellery jumped up, dancing her way to Dawn to see if she was okay, just as people crowded around Bill to sample whatever he had in the bottles.

  “Stay,” Dawn said, dragging Ellery closer to the fire and pulling her into the whirling dance. Spinning made Ellery dizzy and the heat of the flames made her skin feel like it was glowing. A few more of the older witches started back to the tents.

  A girl took off her top and jumped up to dance, too. She looked like a wood nymph, but it still shocked Ellery.

  “She’s naked,” Ellery gasped, and Dawn slowed down enough to laugh.

  “Skyclad,” Dawn said, and paused in the dance enough to pull her own top off, so she was stripped down to her bra and skirt. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s natural.”

  The girl in the belly-dancing outfit took off her spangled top and threw it at a laughing boy. Ellery had seen girls half naked before, changing for gym class. But here it was hard not to look and hard not to feel weird about looking.

  After the magnificence of the ceremony, all of this seemed so … like a house party. Like no one really cared about the circle—that was just the prelude to a night of getting drunk and hooking up. Like maybe they hadn’t felt what she’d felt. Like what she’d felt hadn’t been real.

  She could just picture Alastair sneering from the shadows, nursing his beer. Or her parents shaking their heads at the sad people in the woods who pretended they had magic powers, who pretended that the indifferent universe stopped to listen to them.

  She thought of herself in the church with her grandmother, waiting for the statues to move.

  Ellery reeled away from the fire, the mood broken. She felt too warm and thirsty, but all she could find were random half-full bottles, most of them marked as wine or mead. Finally she saw a water bottle abandoned on a batik blanket. She unscrewed the cap and took a sip. It turned out not to be filled with water at all. Strong alcohol filled her mouth and seared all the way down her throat. She started coughing and couldn’t seem to stop.

  “Are you okay?” a boy said, slapping her between the shoulder blades.

  “Water,” she gasped.

  He scrambled around a bit and came up with a plastic jug of apple juice. She took a swig and finally was able to breathe again.

  “I’m Aspen,” he said.

  “Ellery,” she told him, finally seeing him for the first time. By the flickering light of the fire, she couldn’t quite tell the color of his eyes. Sometimes they seemed gold and other times they were the color of water. He had a kind face, though. Handsome, too, with short dark hair and a soft, full mouth.

  She didn’t remember him from the circle or from the kitchen. Maybe he’d gotten to the farm even later than her coven had. She was sure she would have noticed him—he was wearing an open greenish shirt with a necklace of filigreed silver leaves around his throat. He was very noticeable.

  “Is this your first time at the farm?” he asked, taking a sip from the bottle of booze and making a face after he swallowed.

  “I think that’s basically moonshine,” Ellery said. “It’s probably going to eat through the plastic. Or your stomach.”

  “A poor offering,” he told her, but took another sip anyway. His voice was light and made her think of rustling leaves.

  “But yeah, it’s my first Beltane here,” she said. “My first anything here. I’m part of Bob and Cheryl’s coven. A new initiate.”

  “And how are you finding it?”

  She looked around and sighed. “I don’t know. It’s not what I thought it would be.”

  “Beltane is the celebration of passion.” He glanced over at the people dancing around the fire. “Of yearning and desire. If you want something enough, tonight you might be able to have it.”

  He probably thought that she was upset that there were naked people. She started to stand.

  The boy was still staring at the fire, his expression abstracted. “There are special Beltane rituals—”

  “I just bet there are,” she said. “Smooth, cute witch boy.”

  He had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Come on, that’s not what I meant. Sit back down. I mean rituals—like, well, like you’re supposed to wash your face with morning dew for luck, health, and beauty. And if you jump the Beltane fire you can make a wish.”

  “None of that’s real,” Ellery said. She took the bottle of moonshine out of his hands and took a drink. It burned down her throat, but this time she expected it and didn’t choke. “But it is the holiday of intoxication, so I am observing that.”

  “What would you wish for?”

  “I guess for there to be wishes,” Ellery said, tilting her head up so that she could look at the stars instead of at his face. It felt shameful to confess. She felt tears prick the back of her eyes. She blinked twice and hoped he wouldn’t notice. “I wish something was listening.”

  “I’m listening,” Aspen said, his beautiful mouth curving into a smile.

  She laughed. The liquor was finally hitting her blood, making her feel warm and liquid. “Other than you.”

  He took off his necklace. The leaves clinked together lightly. “Since you wouldn’t wish for anything I can give you, how about you hold on to this for a while?”

  “That’s yours,” Ellery said. “I can’t—”

  “Let me make my own offering,” he said, clasping it around her throat. The silver leaves felt cool against her skin. “You can give it back to me someday.”

  She half turned to tell Aspen how nice he was being, even though she suspected that he wasn’t being nice so much as hitting on her, when Alastair staggered up to her, one arm around a blo
nd-haired boy.

  “You’ve been over here talking to yourself,” he said drunkenly. “Cheryl’s worried. She thinks that you’ve been exposed to impure things and are hiding to protect the tattered remains of your innocence.”

  “I’m not alone,” she said, whirling. But there was no brown-haired witch boy sitting next to her on the blanket. Aspen was gone.

  Gone like he was never a boy at all.

  She reached up to touch the necklace and felt cool metal. Maybe it was made from moonlight and smoke and would blow away in a moment, but right then it seemed solid under her fingers.

  Ellery traced the shape of the individual leaves with awe.

  “Well, you’re not alone now,” Alastair said. “Will you accompany us for a walk, far away from this debauchery? We will escort you, like filthy-minded knights-errant.”

  Ellery stood up. “I found some very bad booze.” She glanced toward the shadowed trees.

  “Perfect,” the blond boy said. “It can escort you, too. I’m Tom, by the way.” He touched his fingers to his brow in a motion that was half salute and half bow. She remembered him from Dawn’s stories. He was the one who liked boys when he was drunk.

  “Oh! Are you sure you don’t want to be by yourselves?” Ellery blurted out. As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. As far as she knew, Alastair liked girls—she’d thought he liked Dawn—and maybe Tom didn’t want to admit he liked boys, and maybe they were just hanging on one another because they were too drunk to stay upright otherwise.

  Tom laughed, though.

  “We are all complicated creatures,” Alastair said, pulling her to her feet. He was smiling, too. “With complicated desires.”

  She wanted to tell them about the boy and the necklace, but she also wanted it to be her secret. They might not believe her. And if they didn’t, she might start doubting it as well.

  But maybe Alastair was right. Maybe everything was complicated. Maybe it was okay to sometimes believe and sometimes not be sure. Maybe spirits really were everywhere, little gods who’d stop to talk you out of sulks and come to Beltane celebrations, or maybe there were just boys who gave you their necklaces because you looked like you really needed something and that’s what they had to give.