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By Dusk
The old-fashioned vaudeville house mostly hosted concerts beneath its arched walls and curved, baroque ceiling. Tonight, Temple, the quarterly pop-up club, had packed the place to the balconies with every Burner, raver, neo-hippie, and polyamorous love-bomber within driving, cycling, or bus range.
Lights flashed, strobing from blue, to orange, to white. The DJ, like some sort of God up on the stage, orchestrated it all.
It was everything that Moss’s spirit desired. He needed this more than anything else right now. A moment of joy. A chance to feel free.
The Electronic Dance Music pulsed through Moss’s body, lighting him up inside. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he loved better than this. To be surrounded by a crush of other humans, all moving, flowing, sinuous, and staccato. One being, made of light and sweat and joy.
With a roar, the crowd raised their arms, and shook their hands in the air. The beat shifted, the bass kicked in, and like one dynamic creature, the whole crowd began to bounce. Moss’s smile was so huge, it felt like his face would split in two.
Lifting his arms, he slid his fingers through the air, feeling the spirits. The hundred-year-old spirit that lived in the building. The spirit of the sound system and the lights. The spirit of the music itself. And the spirit of each person as they danced around him.
Moss bounced, and, waving his hands, conjured up a spirit of his own. A spirit of magic and love. His calves bunched and tightened as he vaulted himself up from the long, wooden planks of the floor, bouncing with the rhythm of every single body that touched his. Yes, this was his religion. Yes, as much as he adored the magic of his coven, and the sacred beauty of the great outdoors ––the rivers and mountains and trees–– this was Moss’s church. It was here that he prayed.
A nerdy, activist Japanese-American kid from Beaverton, he’d become an EDM fan the first time his parents took him to the Portland Pride parade. He’d never gotten around to asking whether his parents were just trying to share their culturally-liberal stance with their only son, or whether they’d somehow picked up that his crushes included a girl in his class and Tobey McGuire in his tight Spiderman suit.
The sight of men kissing men, women kissing women, and folks of indeterminate genders frolicking around in outfits that would make any cosplayer proud had made his head swirl. But the biggest, soul shaking thing about that day in June? That was the music.
It boomed from party floats festooned with ribbons, balloons, and streamers, covered with happy people gyrating in the sun. In the decade since, it didn’t matter what the dance music called itself –– EDM, House, even Industrial— or what variations came and went on the charts, Moss sought it out.
So here he was at Temple. The place of worship. The place of delight. The place where Moss, packed in with a thousand other people, could worship as he willed.
Moss needed church. It had been a hell of a year, and frankly, the last giant piece of magic his coven had done had taken it out of everyone. Oh, it was well worth it ––they’d pretty much destroyed the whole infrastructure of Immigration and Customs–– but the coven needed a break. That was at the beginning of August, and since then, except for one meeting to debrief, Arrow and Crescent coven hadn't even met. Not even for the full moon. And here it was, late September, coming up on the autumn equinox, and Moss couldn't help but wonder what was next.
Something tickled at the edges of his awareness, breaking through the pulsating sense of well-being and joy.
He recognized it immediately. It was the troubled spirit he’d picked up on lately. The kami was somewhere in Portland, and it was a big one. Not one of the smaller, more ordinary spirits that inhabited everything, this consciousness felt big. Moss had been too exhausted and overwhelmed lately, so he hadn't figured it out yet, but it felt like the kami was part of some large system important to Portland itself. Natural or human made, he couldn’t tell.
He lost the beat and stumbled into the man next to him, a white dude in dreadlocks wrapped with day-glo yarn. The man gave his arms a friendly, steadying squeeze.
“You good, gorgeous?” The man flashed him a huge grin, white teeth glowing green beneath the black lights.
“Yeah!” Moss shouted back. “I'm great. Thanks.”
Or he would be, as soon as he got back to simply being where he was, and dancing, not worrying about the past, or what might be coming.
He let the spirit of the music move the sense of trouble from his head, and opened his own spirit outward, reveling in the flow of the music and the crowd, filling with the sweet tang of marijuana smoke, patchouli, amber resin, gin, and spilled beer. This mélange was undercut with traces from people vaping near the door, and Moss loved it all.
If he was a different person, he would be dissolving acid on his tongue, or dropping MDMA. But the magic of the music and the energy of the crowd were ecstasy enough. He had learned that long ago. Oh, Moss wasn't against some Tanqueray and chronic, and would be getting another drink or a puff soon, but for joyous, soul expanding communion? His preferred drugs were still music, dancing, sex, or magic.
Nothing better in the world.
The DJ segued into Moss’s current musical favorite, Kygo. The bouncy Tropical House mix was all quick piano, electronic backbeat, and over it all, soaring, R&B tinged vocals. Moss threw back his head and laughed.
On he danced, twirling and bouncing, bumping shoulders, tasting the sweat that rolled past his lips. If he could kiss the entire universe, he would.
It was good to be alive.
Thirty minutes later, Moss was soaked in sweat, feeling cleansed, and vibrating with the power of the crowd. He also desperately needed some water and a little breathing room. He angled his shoulders, dancing his small frame through the crush, toward the long bar lit up with blue and white lights.
And then he saw her. His manic pixie dream girl, with her pale, elfin face, lightly muscled shoulders, and sharp collarbones that peaked out from a bright silk halter top. His two-night stand from the massive Bliss Festival up in British Columbia just four weeks before.
He'd volunteered for the big camping festival to get out of town, away from the political aftermath that still rocked the city after the coven and their friends had taken down the ICE building and freed the asylum seekers into the loving, capable hands of a whole network of immigrant’s rights groups.
Oh, it had been a righteous action, but Moss needed some frivolity after that. His work as both an activist and a witch got too heavy sometimes.
And at Bliss, he'd found her. In between his work shifts, they'd danced for hours, bumping against each other over and over, finally, they ended up making out while several thousand people danced around them. Moss would never forget that night. The massive energy of the crowd. The way the music felt like sex. The way her lips tasted, like pot and cherry candy.
Finally, she had dragged him back to her fancy glamping tent, lit with glow sticks and solar lanterns. Back to her bed, piled high with fake fur blankets and tapestry pillows.
Who had a tent like that? A bed like that? Moss was lucky to have his one person —two in a pinch— crawl-in-on-your-belly tent that he took on bicycle trips and backpacking.
But yeah, at a festival where Moss had to work in exchange for the price of a ticket he couldn't afford, who had a fancy tent like that?
A rich girl, that's who.
A tiny woman with strawberry blonde hair in a pixie cut, tiny, luscious breasts, and lips he wished he could kiss again.
Her name was Shaggy. And she shouldn’t even be here.
Acknowledgments
I give thanks to the cafés of my new hometown, Portland, Oregon. All you baristas are fine human beings.
Thanks also to Leslie Claire Walker, my intrepid first reader, to Dayle Dermatis, editor extraordinaire, to Lou Harper for my covers, and to my writing buddies for getting me out of the ho
use.
Speaking of house…thanks as always to Robert and Jonathan.
Thanks to Steve Smith, Michael W. Lucas, and Jack Johnson (no relation to the character Jack!) for computer geek help.
Big, grateful shout out to the members of the Sorcery Collective for spreading the word!
And last…
Thanks to all the activists and witches working your magic in the world. This series is for you.
About the Author
T. Thorn Coyle has been arrested at least four times. Buy them a cup of tea or a good whisky and they’ll tell you about it.
Author of the The Witches of Portland, the alt-history urban fantasy series The Panther Chronicles, the novel Like Water, and two story collections, her multiple non-fiction books include Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives, and Evolutionary Witchcraft.
Thorn's work appears in many anthologies, magazines, and collections. They have taught magical practice in nine countries, on four continents, and in twenty-five states.
An interloper to the Pacific Northwest U.S., Thorn stalks city streets, writes in cafes, loves live music, and talks to crows, squirrels, and trees.
Connect with Thorn:
www.thorncoyle.com
Also by T. Thorn Coyle
Fiction Series
The Panther Chronicles
To Raise a Clenched Fist to the Sky
To Wrest Our Bodies From the Fire
To Drown This Fury in the Sea
To Stand With Power on This Ground
The Witches of Portland, a 9 Book Series
By Earth
By Flame
By Wind
By Sea
By Moon
By Sun
By Dusk
By Dark
By Witch’s Mark
Single Novels and Story Collections
Like Water
Alighting on His Shoulders
Break Apart the Stone
Anthologies
Fantasy in the City
Haunted
Witches Brew
The Faerie Summer
Stars in the Darkness
Fiction River: Justice
Fiction River: Feel the Fear
Non-Fiction
Evolutionary Witchcraft
Kissing the Limitless
Make Magic of Your Life
Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives
Crafting a Daily Practice
By Sun Page 17