By Moon

by T Thorn Coyle

  He picked up the phone. First thing, he was calling his distributors to see if they could cancel the big orders.

  And after that? He was calling Legis. He needed information, and he needed it now.

  And Frater Louis and Legis were the only ones he could think of who would know what the fuck the fish-goat was talking about.

  And after that?

  He might just call Selene.

  11

  Selene

  Selene felt like hell again.

  It was too damn hot. There had been cool summer days in Portland, Selene knew there had. But it had been so many years, it felt hard to remember. And the way heat worked in Portland meant that the coven had picked the hottest Goddess-damned time of day to meet.

  Five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Hah hah, get it? Sun-day? Selene groused to themself, scurrying up the walkway that led to the back of Raquel’s old four-square Craftsman house.

  Selene had even trotted out their long, black linen shorts and a loose white shirt with a T-shirt beneath it to soak up the sweat. They barely wore any makeup, because sweating under a full face was just disgusting. A little waterproof mascara, tinted sunscreen, and lipstick would have to do.

  Luckily, coven was family. Besides, Selene had so much going on they could barely breathe, let alone put together a proper summer outfit. Tabitha was in the hospital and Selene couldn’t help but feel it was at least partially their fault.

  “Whoa!” Cassiel’s voice greeted Selene as they stepped through the gate into Raquel’s backyard. “You know it’s hot when Selene isn’t wearing boots!”

  Selene looked down at their black Chuck Taylors and wiggled their toes.

  “I’d like to see you wearing leather in this heat,” they complained.

  Cassiel laughed. She actually wore a sundress, which was not her usual attire, either. It was an emerald green that blended with the lush green in Raquel’s garden, and set off the red curls that flowed loose down her back.

  The rest of the coven was already gathered in chairs set under the big maple that shaded most of the yard. Selene held Cassie back.

  “Joshua just called me.”

  Cassie fought a grin. “And?”

  “He asked me out. To dinner.”

  Cassiel smacked Selene’s arm. “That’s great! He’s totally your type!”

  Selene looked at Cassie as if she’d grown two heads.

  “What? He is. He’s Goth. He’s smart. He’s a great dresser. And I bet he’s a great kisser, too. He’s got those ruby-red lips…”

  “Stop it!” Selene said, smacking Cassie back. Then everything else came crashing back in. “That isn’t all…. Tabitha got rushed to the hospital last night.”

  “What? Oh no! Don’t tell me, though. The coven needs to know.”

  Selene struggled to walk forward, toward the people they loved best in this world. The people who knew them and loved them back. It was too much. The grief. The confusion. The fear. And this time, the feelings were all inside Selene.

  Plus, there was that feeling that somehow Selene was responsible which was completely irrational. Even Selene knew that. But that didn’t mean the feeling went away.

  And Cassiel still hadn’t figured out what was tracking Selene, either. So they didn’t know if the overdoses were connected to it.

  But it sure felt as if they were.

  Brenda stepped forward, dark hair up today, a long white tunic floating around her slim frame. She folded Selene into a hug. Raquel followed soon after, red loose trousers skirting her lush hips. She hugged Selene, too. Selene inhaled the goodness of these women who had given them so much. As soon as they let Selene go, it felt as if a cloud moved in front of the sun.

  The other coven members rose as if to offer hugs, but Selene held up their hands, warding them off. Too much attention at once.

  “Hi everybody,” Selene said. “Happy Solstice. Life sucks.”

  “Well, life doesn’t suck,” Raquel replied. “But that makes me think we need to do our Solstice ritual before getting down to discussion. I don’t know about the rest of you, but a little celebration of the light seems in order.”

  Selene’s shoulders slumped. They should have known that, no matter what was going on, Arrow and Crescent would celebrate the fire feast together.

  “Come on,” Brenda said, putting one arm around Selene’s back. “We didn’t plan anything long or elaborate. Just a quick meditation. It’ll be fine.”

  Selene let themself be steered to a folding chair between Tobias and Moss. They nodded at the rest of the coven members. Alejandro. Lucy. Tempest.

  Raquel continued speaking. “As you know, things got a little hectic around Beltane, what with dealing with white supremacists, and all.”

  There were a couple of dry chuckles at that, though they didn’t have much humor in them.

  “And everyone’s been too busy recovering from that to want to plan. So Brenda and I decided to keep it simple. We skipped the full moon this month, it being jammed up against today, but we still wanted to do something to honor the fullness of the month and the year. Brenda?”

  Brenda stood and joined Raquel. Selene could see the ways in which they truly were sisters. Two different body types, one taller and more slender, one lush and round. One with pale peach skin, one with dark brown. One a parent, the other not. One a lesbian, the other a cis hetero woman.

  But the energy that moved between them rippled, almost palpable. It felt to Selene the way a windy day at the ocean felt, when the breeze kicked up and carried bright sprays of water high into the air.

  That was the energy that fueled this coven. Air and water facing one another. Brenda and Raquel.

  “We call to the sun,” Brenda said.

  “We call to the moon,” Raquel replied.

  “We call to the fullness of the year, to the power of earth and sky,” they said together.

  “Feel life, thrumming all around you,” Raquel’s voice took prominence. “Breathe it in. Bless it and be blessed.”

  Selene closed their eyes. They allowed themself to relax and sink into the cadence of Raquel’s voice. Selene felt themself opening to the words, to the heat, to the scent of flowers, the calling of finch and crow, to the distant music from another backyard gathering, a few blocks away. To the way the chair dug into their thigh, and the maple towered overhead.

  Life. Selene breathed it in, feeling the sticky heat of it. Okay. You can do this, Selene.

  Brenda’s voice took up the thread. “We call upon the brightness of the day. We call upon the sun at its zenith! Fill us with your light and power. Feed us well, so we may feed each other.”

  “Give us life!” Raquel said, voice raised to the sky.

  “Give us life!” the coven shouted in reply.

  The small hairs all over Selene’s body rose and crackled. It wasn’t just the energy the coven raised around them. It was as though something—or someone—tugged at the edges of their aura. Again. Trying to break in. Trying to take them away from themselves, away from all that felt solid and real.

  Selene tugged back, resisting. The pull was strong, threatening to drag them out and under, like a sneaker wave tugging them out to sea.

  A drumbeat started. Was it real? Selene didn’t want to open their eyes to see.

  “We are one with the brightness of the sun! We are the champions of life and day! Rising from the depths of fertile darkness, blessed by the rains of winter, blessed by the sweet light of the moon. We rise into life!” Was that Raquel speaking? Brenda? Someone else?

  Selene couldn’t tell anymore.

  The drum grew louder. Too loud.

  “We rise with the power of life! We rise with the power of life!”

  Selene felt Tobias and Moss stand. Heard the coven dancing around her. Dancing to the beating of the drum.

  Frozen in place, stuck in their chair, long hair sticking to their cheeks, Selene began to weep. They weren’t even certain the tears were theirs. But who else’s would the
y be?

  Tabitha? Selene asked in their mind. There was no answer. The coven danced and chanted around garden, voices raised toward the sun in its full power.

  “Opening to life! Opening to light! Opening to life! Opening to light!” The chanting and drumming went on and on.

  All Selene wanted was the comfort of darkness, the pale light of the moon. And for whatever was attached to them to go away.

  They tried to feel the grass beneath their Chuck Taylors. They tried to breathe, but the heat made that difficult. They tried to remember their magic.

  They tried to remember that they were a witch. And a strong witch. A witch that had gone into battle more than once, and won at least temporary victories.

  “My name is Selene,” they began to whisper. “I hold the power of the moon.”

  Their own whispered voice was a comfort in the midst of the coven, dancing for the sun. But Selene only half believed themself.

  Nonetheless, eyes still screwed tightly shut, they pushed up from their chair. Raised their arms under the shaded canopy of the maple tree. Selene cast their awareness outward, past whatever interference was messing with their auric field. Past the hum and shiver of the summer day. Searching. Searching.

  Seeking out the moon. And there she was. Just past full.

  Selene breathed clear again. Their skin cooled by a few degrees. A slight breeze kicked up, rustling leaves and hair and grasses.

  The drumming stopped.

  They heard the coven panting softly around them. A chuckle. A gasp.

  “We say Hail to the sun!” Raquel shouted.

  “Hail!” the coven shouted in reply.

  “We say Hail to life!” Brenda shouted.

  “Hail!”

  “And we give thanks,” Selene murmured.

  “We give thanks,” Moss murmured back, giving Selene’s arm a gentle squeeze. A sign of connection, then gone.

  Selene opened their eyes and looked around to see the coven smiling at one another. Smiling at Selene. Eyes filled with love.

  “I really need your help,” Selene said.

  “Well then,” Raquel said, “we’re going to get some lemonade and the lemon poppy scones Tempest baked, then we’re going to have a meeting, and see what we can do.”

  12

  Joshua

  The temple was an unassuming storefront on a busy southeast Portland street in the midst of a rapid transition from a light industrial working-class neighborhood into something it hadn’t quite decided on.

  If Joshua hadn’t known what he was looking at, he likely wouldn’t have thought much of the burgundy curtains behind the large windows that should have been displaying the nice interior of some shop. Instead, in front of the curtains hung a burgundy banner, with the white outline of a vesica piscis. The center of a cosmic Venn diagram. Emblazoned in the center of the shape, surrounded by white rays of light, was a triangle with an eye in the center, a white dove flying downward beneath it, and a flaming chalice anchoring it all.

  White letters above and below the symbols read, “Light Eternal Lodge, Ordo Templi Orientis.” The Thelemic Temple, they often called themselves, thelema being an ancient Greek word that represented the marriage of love and a person’s will. A rejection of staid Victorian Christian morality, the contemporary OTO had more members than had ever joined in its supposed heyday, when the white, middle-class artists, poets, and actors had formed two magical lodges: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and slightly later, the OTO.

  And not long after, Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente had founded what would become modern Wicca. They took the older forms of witchcraft, pagan worship, herbalism and the like, and blended them with some of the ceremonialist rites, making a witchcraft for a new age.

  Joshua mused on this, sweating on the busy street, waiting for someone to answer the bell. He found the history interesting and wondered if knowing too much about how the sausage had been made influenced his lack of willingness to join with any single group so far.

  The fact that he now questioned his former decision didn’t mean he was going to join anything wholeheartedly, though. Despite being a believer, Joshua remained skeptical that there was any one true path for him.

  He had never realized before how that made him feel a little lonely.

  The door opened onto a diminutive Latinx man with salt-and-pepper hair. Dressed all in black, Frater Louis had made two concessions to the heat. His black shirt was a loose, short sleeved guayabera, its neat pin-tuck pleats running down the front of the shirt on either side of the buttons. And on his feet were black leather sandals.

  Joshua, wearing black linen trousers and a white linen shirt, had to admire a man who didn’t wear shorts no matter the season.

  “Frater Louis! Thank you so much for meeting with me.”

  “Blessings of the invincible sun! What say we get you into some shade.”

  Behind the glass and curtains, the space felt blessedly cool. The walls were lined with bookcases. A large round study table sat off to the side. Between a pocket kitchen and a door that read WC in black letters were two stacks of chairs.

  Joshua knew the actual temple was behind a set of double doors. This was just their study room, as well as a meeting and classroom space.

  His tall, redhaired brute of a friend rose from behind the table.

  “Legis! Hey brother, good to see you.”

  The two men hugged as Frater Louis got cold sparkling water from the mini fridge and ferried it to the table along with glasses filled with ice.

  Joshua could have kissed the man. He mopped at his face with a rapidly wilting handkerchief and sat down, accepting the water with a smile of gratitude.

  “So, Legis tells me you had a vision while working with the Thoth Tarot?”

  Joshua set down the water, but kept his right hand gripped around it, still trying to get cool.

  “Yes. I pulled out some cards I was working with to try and get more information last night. During the full moon. The three cards were the Lovers, the Devil, and the Moon. They all seem to have something to do with me, of course, but I kept getting the sense that they were pointing to some larger issue, too.”

  Frater Louis nodded, taking small sips from his glass.

  “Just tell him, Joshua,” Legis said. “I already gave him some of the context. He needs to hear the vision.”

  Joshua crossed and uncrossed his legs, then inhaled.

  “Okay. A goat appeared. I swear it was in the room. It formed itself right between my living room chairs. But it wasn’t the Devil goat itself. It was Capricorn.”

  “The goat with the tail of a giant fish,” Frater Louis said. “Cardinal Earth. It’s interesting to me that the three cards were mutable water, mutable air, and cardinal earth. But please, go on.”

  Louis gestured, and Joshua’s eyes darted back and forth in their sockets, searching his brain for the thread.

  “It wasn’t lost on me that the cardinal force was the one to make an appearance,” Joshua said. “But anyway, the fish-goat appeared. Stared right at me. It had a message. ‘Danger. The only sin is restriction. Protect those who do not know.’”

  Joshua paused for another drink of water. “It freaked me out a little, to be honest. And while I can probably figure out the ‘danger and protection’ parts of the message, that central Crowley quote baffles me.”

  Frater Louis smiled, then looked up at an angle, toward the bookcases on the wall behind Joshua. He cleared his throat and began a recitation.

  “Sin is defined as Restriction: that is; the setting of limits, or the desire to set limits, to any thing that is, seeing that as above set forth the true Nature of all things is to fulfill themselves in all Ways. Yet though all things be thus lawful in themselves, it is often Restriction to act, and Freedom to refrain. For that Freedom is worth the other, and each case must be judged by its own Nature.”

  Joshua recognized the quote, though there was no way he could have recited even one sentence of it from memory li
ke that.

  “So what does it mean?” Joshua asked. “Part of my confusion is what it means for me. I keep getting messages that I need to step up my magical game again. I’ve let things slide. But that requires discipline. Will. I don’t get how that doesn’t mean restriction.”

  Legis spoke. “‘It is often Restriction to act, and Freedom to refrain.’ That’s the key right there. When the magician knows her will, she knows when action or refraining from action are called for.”

  “And that’s different from restriction, how?” Joshua was starting to sweat again, despite the cool water and the air flowing through the floor vents nearby.

  Frater Louis leaned toward him. “When a magician knows her will, everything she does is in the flow. Let’s call on a different system. The Tao. Wu wei. You’re familiar?”

  Joshua mopped his brow again. “Yes, of course. Non-action. Not planning. Going with the flow.”

  “That’s only the top layer of the concept. Going with the flow in this case doesn’t mean bumping along with whatever happens to you in life. It means getting so clear inside yourself you tap the greater flow, and therefore, action or inaction, you aren’t pushing the wheel. You are one with the wheel.” Frater Louis paused, tilted his head and smiled. “You see?”

  Joshua’s brain raced to make the connections Frater Louis was trying to map out. He could just barely feel them, as if the concepts were just outside his field of vision, or comprehension.

  He shook his head.

  “Most people fight their lives, instead of living them. Or they get crushed by them,” Legis said. “I think that’s your connection between the ‘protect the unknowing’ message and ‘the only sin is restriction’ message.”

  Legis leveled his gaze at Joshua, eyes intent. Joshua felt everything inside himself snap to attention, waiting for the words.

  “Capricorn came to give you not only a warning, but a smackdown. You’ve been acting like a person with no knowledge, when as a matter of fact, you are a fucking magician.” Legis smacked his hand on the table. The sweating glasses jumped on their coasters.