The demon ignored him, walking past him slowly, examining with great interest the young girl on the altar. With her small hand she pressed the roses further into the girl’s skin. The girl moaned.
‘Soon you will be dead like me, like little Rachel,’ she said. ‘Like me you will be cold and alone, with only the night to guide you. I will send you a star to be a friend.’
‘Don’t touch her!’ Sati said, and went to move toward the demon child, but Charmonzhla raised a hand. The angels in the chapel froze. The temperature became cold, then icy.
‘Are you strong enough?’ he asked. ‘Can your wings carry the burning? The knowledge of the deaths that you will cause if you set the Phooka loose in Eronth? Will that little virgin satisfy him before she dies? I can taste her death now. She is near the border, very near. Will you be able to hold the Phooka? He is burning ice, he is acid rain, he is a forgotten dream. Will the Azephim remember?’
‘Remember the star!’ Rachel hissed to Ishran, who ignored her.
‘How could you even ask?’ Ishran asked Charmonzhla, bewildered. ‘You and I have hunted before! I will hold the Phooka if he destroys every Azephim in the Wastelands. My wings can withstand the burning of every miserable Eronthite in the land. What is there to remember? We need blood to survive!’
Charmonzhla held out his arms to the demon child, who leapt into them. Despite his diminutive build he managed to hold her with supernatural strength. She tucked her face into his neck.
‘You will have your blood,’ Charmonzhla promised. ‘He is stirring now, he can smell the blood of the virgin.’ The wings of the angels fluttered. ‘But the Crone Khartyn is working her magic to call to the Phooka.’
‘The old hen has no sacrifice, no virgin to offer him!’ Ishran gloated.
Rachel giggled. ‘But her teeth are on your throat, Ghormho. She may be a hen, but the hen has the Phooka in her eyes, in her mind. She is not like you, poor lost Ishran. She remembers the dream.’
She raised her head, and her eyes glowed yellow. ‘The White Goddess is moving across the land, and Rachel’s feet are cold.’ Charmonzhla bent his head to kiss her, then the two of them faded away.
Sati began to pace. ‘Does that child see what we have overlooked? By the claws of Alecom, is Khartyn trying to interfere with the rite?’ She began to pull at her hair.
‘The demon sees nothing!’ Ishran shouted. ‘She’s just some piece of trash that Charmonzhla interferes with! One of his old kills, no doubt, hanging around him!’
Sati’s eyes were wild. ‘I could not bear it if the Crone interferes again!’ she cried.
The girl on the altar moaned, and the angels turned toward her. For a second they studied her. Her fear was pulsing in their bodies. The candles in the chapel flickered and flamed.
Ishran moved toward Sati and began to lick her breasts. He pushed her onto the table, his kylon responding to the panic in the sacrifice.
‘The old bitch won’t interfere!’ he hissed. ‘We have the virgin, she only has Emma and that Faiaite whore!’ The thought of Emma and Rosedark began to excite him and he spread Sati’s legs wide, beginning to thrust inside her.
‘I will fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before!’ he bragged. Sati moaned, her hair covering the sacrifice’s stomach. Ishran began to move faster, imagining Emma and Rosedark with him, begging him to mount them, wet and eager for him to take them and kylon-thrust them to death.
The remaining angels, taking their cue, started to mate anally with each other. Inside the chapel the moans and snarls of the angels began to build. Even the idiot organ player stopped his recital to take his turn with Sati. The moans of pleasure rose into screams of orgasm, and somewhere out in the deepest recesses of the Wastelands the Phooka began to rise.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
. . . The spring, the summer,
The chiding autumn, angry winter change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world
By their increase now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension,
We are their parents and original.
— ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, William Shakespeare
‘Hail Great Hecate, Goddess of the Moon! To you all roads must lead us, oh Great Hecate! Let us hear the voice! Oh Great Hecate, comforter, consoler, giver of peace and rest. Let our dear ones who have gone before us return this night to make merry with us. May we meet and know and remember and love them again. Oh Great Hecate, let us hear the voice! Lighter of darkness, give us a sign!’
As the chant echoed around me I glanced at Khartyn and Rosedark, who were nearly unrecognisable under the black chiffon veils and heavy gowns that clothed us. For this ritual Khartyn had ordered us to wear black, as it represented death on this Salhmain night, rather than the white gowns that we had worn for the Cone of Power ritual.
The room was permeated with the fragrance of myrrh and frankincense. Around the kitchen area of the cottage empty chairs were carefully positioned, with bowls of apples and nuts placed on them.
‘For the dead to sit and eat from,’ Rosedark had explained casually when she had laid out the food.
‘Hail, Great Hecate!’
Black beeswax candles were strategically placed around a large pentacle the Crone had chalked on the floor that fully enclosed us. As we chanted I could feel the energy we were manifesting in the cottage begin to spiral. My breathing became slower and more measured.
‘Salhmain. The mystical moment in time that belongs to neither past nor present. The Dreamers dream a moment that does not belong in any world. Mother Winter, the White Goddess, approaches, her long, white, icy fingers ready to caress her land. Salhmain! The Turn of the Wheel when the veil between worlds is transparently thin. A time when it becomes possible for all Crossas to slip between worlds. A night of great mischief and primordial chaos.’
As we chanted I reflected on Khartyn’s words earlier in the day. I could sense a psychic tension and weariness emanating from the Crone. When I enquired anxiously about her health she tried to distract me by asking me to describe the Halloween practices on Earth that were celebrated at this time. When I persisted in my questioning she admitted that at Salhmain she was always distracted by the possibility of the Phooka rising.
The Phooka, as Persephone had already explained briefly to me when I was underground, was a much stronger version of the Phooka that I vaguely remembered from childhood books on mythology. On Earth the Phooka was a mischievous hobgoblin who loved to torment man and beast, a troublesome but hardly malignant spirit. In Eronth, however, Phooka is the collective dark shadow side of the Faiaites. He had formed over many centuries and spent the year hibernating in an underground cave somewhere in the Wastelands, guarded by the Dreamers.
But on Salhmain, when he felt the first embrace of the White-Haired One stroke the land, he would awake from his slumber. Every Salhmain the Dreamers would permit the Phooka to walk the land. Unlike his hobgoblin counterpart on Earth, Eronth’s Phooka would kill everything he came across. All the inhabitants of Eronth, from the youngest mermaid (who was millions of Earth years old) to Mary, High Priestess of Eronth, would take refuge in their protective homes on the terrible occasion.
‘Even the Solumbi fear Phooka,’ Khartyn told me. ‘Even they cower and hide when he walks.’
‘Well, if this thing walks every Salhmain and everybody knows to stay indoors, then why are you so concerned? There’s never been any trouble before, has there?’ I asked the question although I suspected I knew the answer.
‘Because for the first time this Salhmain that I am aware the Azephim are attempting to lure the Phooka into their castle. From what I can make out from my scrying, they are holding some ritual which involves a lot of sexual energy. They are also offering a human sacrifice to the Phooka.’
I froze. The memory of a screaming body twisting in flames, a wreath of flowers around his head.
I am a
stag of seven times.
‘Are you serious? Can’t we do something? We just can’t let it happen, can we?’ There was a silence. Khartyn refused to meet my eyes; she was fussing over the way that Rosedark’s robe was hanging.
‘Khartyn? There must be something we can do, surely? Unless you’re joking with me of course.’ Please tell me that you are joking. There has been too much blood spilt.
‘Emma! Calm down! You saw for yourself the journey that we had to traverse over the Wastelands! Do you think you could attempt that journey impulsively? With no preparation? Nay, only a fool would attempt it! Let alone on Salhmain night!’
‘Well, can’t you just transmute yourselves into birds and fly there?’ I begged, close to tears.
Khartyn snorted contemptuously. ‘Good idea. We’ll fly through the window when we get there and peck the Phooka to death! Emma, you have no conception of the power of the Phooka! There is a lot of light among the folk of Faia, and where there is a lot of light the shadow cast is always longer and darker. Phooka’s being — his soul, if you like — is very dark indeed. We can’t just fly in as birds and expect to challenge the entire Azephim army and bring a human Crossa back.’
I sat at the wooden table, annoying one of the many house cats, who spat at me as it jumped from the cushion. I picked up the daily newspaper from New Baffin. The entire front page was devoted to covering the festivities for Salhmain along with warnings for the New Baffinites to remain indoors on the night that the dead walked. My head was beginning to throb again. I couldn’t bear the thought that somewhere out there the Azephim had one of my own race in their power, and we were apparently going to do nothing to save them.
Rosedark and Khartyn were ignoring me, beginning to carry the smoking censers throughout the house.
I tried again. ‘Khartyn, surely you’re not thinking of letting this person die?’ I said. ‘Old Mother, there must be something that we can do. I can’t just sit here and have some bizarre afternoon tea with a bunch of invisible dead people!’
‘Who said they would be invisible?’ Khartyn asked. ‘Besides, even if we could get to the human girl her mind would probably have long since gone. The Azephim have a demonic countenance without their Glamour. Few Crossas can behold the sight without their mind snapping. The most we could hope is that she dies of shock before the ritual.’
There was a short pause, and as I watched I could almost detect a sudden idea creep across Khartyn’s ancient visage. ‘Or,’ she added, ‘we could attempt to lure the Phooka here.’
‘Old Mother, no!’ Rosedark gasped, fear crackling in her voice. ‘What would we do with him if he came? He would kill us all! Don’t listen to Emma! She’s just upset because she doesn’t fully understand our ways!’ She shot me a look that was almost dislike.
‘Nay, Rosedark! We obviously wouldn’t invite him in!’ Khartyn cackled a mirthless laugh. ‘Nay, I’m hoping that if we can summon Hecate she might agree to divert Phooka. Let him stalk the underground and follow Hecate as she does her rounds tonight. All we have to do is keep him from the Azephim until the sun rises. Obviously we cannot tackle Phooka, but Hecate might.’
‘Oh, yes, and she might not,’ Rosedark pointed out. ‘Hecate may not answer our summons. Salhmain is one of her biggest nights of the year and she is already furious at you for bringing me back from the dead. Why would she do us any favours?’
‘Well, if either of you can come up with a better plan,’ Khartyn shrugged.
When neither of us spoke, although I could sense that Rosedark’s idea was for us to lie low, locked indoors and do nothing, Khartyn nodded.
‘I thought not! Well, my brave daughters, let us prepare for the ritual!’
The elaborate preparation for Salhmain lulled me into a soporific state. The lengthy aromatic bath in the Dome’s tiny but satisfyingly deep bathtub, surrounded by its mural of dolphins, the aura cleansing with censers of sage and sandalwood, the elaborately detailed tattoos that Rosedark painstakingly engraved with her magic inks . . . all conspired to send me into a relaxed drowsiness.
The three of us were a formidable sight in black. As we prepared for the ritual Khartyn and Rosedark were unusually reticent. I decided they must be feeling anxious, and in Rosedark’s case afraid of the Phooka.
A small part of me, most probably the Bluite part, felt weary and drained with all the mystery and rituals. I was longing to sit down with a coffee and have a lengthy conversation about the Stag Man and the child I was carrying. But Khartyn and Rosedark as usual appeared to have no interest at all in anything that occurred outside of the now.
However, my mind ached with a thousand questions. Where would the child be delivered? Would it be a normal child? I suppose by normal I meant Bluite. Would it look like a goddess, or a stag? Would it be delivered inside the comfort of a placenta or by the shell of a black egg? Would the Stag Man attend the birth? My heart leapt in anticipation at the thought.
The child I was carrying, the Chosen One, had obviously been destined for an extraordinary mission in Eronth. Had Khartyn and Rosedark known of this from the start? Did they in fact lure me to Eronth with the deliberate intent of impregnating me to the Stag Man? Just who exactly was this enigmatic Stag Man, anyway? I had obviously formed some powerful connection to him, but there were so many unanswered questions that I found it increasingly difficult to focus on the upcoming ritual.
‘For Goddess’s sake!’ Khartyn, exasperated, finally snapped as she ground blackthorn and fuga daemonum with her mortar and pestle. ‘If you don’t start to focus on this ritual and we don’t manage to divert Phooka you won’t have to worry about your child and the Stag Man! You’ll return to the underground and be playing cards with Persephone sooner than you expect!’
Rosedark shot me a disapproving glance as I choked back the battery of questions that was plaguing me. I had had no intention of infuriating the Crone. I was slightly hurt by Rosedark’s chillier attitude toward me, but I could guess what was happening when I saw the protective manner in which she sat or stood in front of Khartyn, as if trying to shield me from the Crone. She was jealous.
*
The day passed slowly, but with each step of preparation I could tangibly taste the tension mounting. It hung on the air like sweat. It was an oppressive, stifling net which managed to dampen even the brilliance that normally radiated from the triple moons.
‘Are they building the fires in Faia tonight?’ Khartyn enquired of her apprentice as she hung garlands strewn with wolf hair and mojo bags filled with protective herbs at the doors and entrances of the cottage.
‘I think so, Mother,’ Rosedark replied, refusing to look at me as she spoke. Listening, I felt nauseated remembering the experience of witnessing the dummy-man on the fire. I opened my mouth to ask a question about the night fires and then thought better of it. It was highly unlikely I would receive a straight answer. The remainder of the day passed productively placing protective magical talismans over and around the garden. Even the exuberant nature devas and garden Faeries appeared subdued. I sniffed the air, which by now was thick with fear and tension, feeling myself finally caught up in the terrified net of anticipation that had spread like a virus through Eronth.
*
The White-Haired Goddess smelt the fear. She fell over the land, loved and embraced the earth. Small, icy fingers of frost with loving white gloves, she brought elegance to soil and tree. Snowflakes were born from her great stomach, and they too enveloped Eronth. Dogs and ilkamas tethered safely inside with protective amulets fastened to their holdings began to shiver as the white snow fell, bringing an unearthly silence. Small thatched wooden cottages stood waiting, appearing vulnerable in the blue of the night. Air elementals worked frantically, attempting to clear the fear and tension in the air. Deep inside the underground, Hades felt the icy breath of the elementals and the tread of the White-Haired Goddess and he closed his eyes in relief.
If the White Goddess had begun her silent approach over the earth then Persepho
ne would soon return home. He sniffed the air warily, alert for the Phooka and his smouldering yellow-gold eyes narrowed to slits. He hoped that fool angel knew what he was doing by invoking Phooka. Hades was still looking forward to consummating his desire with Ishran’s dark and sexy Queen. He mused on events of the last moon quarter. He was aware that he was the object of displeasure among the goddesses for distorting the natural seasons by restraining Persephone underground. He began to fret momentarily that his misdeeds would be held accountable to the Dreamers. He had broken Eronth law by bringing many illegal Bluites underground in the hope one would survive and become a pet for Persephone.
However, it was not in Hades’ nature to be absorbed in worry for long, and the thoughts that disturbed him were soon interrupted by a pleasurable fantasy of a woman with Sati’s body and the innocence of Persephone. The sexual thought form began to materialise and his breathing quickened. It’s really quite stupid to do this, he thought, approaching the naked and voluptuous thought pattern who was already opening her legs, eager to please him as she lay on the dark soil. From his numerous past experiences he knew the thought form could never take the place of the real women he hungered for. The thought form smiled lasciviously, holding out her arms to him. Perhaps this one will be different, he wondered distractedly, as she took his swelling member into her mouth.
Snowing rose petals, it was snowing rose petals.
*
Inside the Chapel of the Damned the ritualistic orgy was nearing completion. The Bluite prisoner lay in a state of deep shock. In another world now lost to the teenager, her parents were also in a state of shock. Police were investigating suspects, and her friends were frantic in their grief. Local newshounds were already beginning to sniff and bray among her schoolfellows. Relatives and friends sat with photos of her, tears falling and praying to a God they normally refused to commune with. The two worlds were thus linked by shock, but the girl was unaware of the thread.
Snowing rose petals in her mouth, filling her brain with scent.
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