By Dusk

by T Thorn Coyle

  Bianca, her screen read.

  “Shit. It’s my mother. Must be an emergency. Excuse me?”

  Laura waved a hand as if to say “of course,” and went back to sipping at her wine.

  “Hey Bianca.” Shaggy picked up her own wine and took another drink. It was a good one, she finally noticed. Laura had picked out a smooth, rich, fruity vintage that was just the right amount of dry without the tongue-curling tannins Shaggy hated in a wine.

  “Just hanging out with a friend. Doing some sewing. Talking. What’s up?”

  Shaggy tapped a nail against her glass, listening.

  “No. I can’t just come home next week. I have classes, and an order for a big show in early December that I need to plan for…and I’m busy with other stuff, too.”

  Bianca snorted in her ear, which just pissed Shaggy off. Her mother never believed Shaggy when she said she was busy. Shaggy knew she wasn’t saving lives or something, but neither was Bianca. Just because her mother made more money didn’t mean…

  “Yes, the other stuff is important, Bianca. I don’t know why you need me to impress the newspapers anyway. Aren’t you enough? No, Mom. Damn it, Mom! No.”

  Shaggy’s fingers curled around the bowl of the wine glass. She wanted nothing more than to hurl it across the room, to hear the shattering of glass and watch the spray of red on the white walls.

  “I can’t come, Mom. There’s something I really need to deal with… What? Yes, it is important. I’m pregnant.”

  “Whoa,” Laura said, setting her glass down and leaning forward, her smooth, unlined face all of a sudden creased with concern.

  Shaggy hadn’t planned on saying that to Bianca. Hadn’t planned on telling her anything, in fact. But the words were out there now, and Shaggy couldn’t take them back. Dammit. What the hell was she going to do now?

  You’ll have an abortion, of course. Bianca’s words echoed in her ear.

  “What did you say to me?” She barely recognized her voice. Barely recognized herself. Her fights with her mother were always a dance of passive aggression, never, ever direct confrontation. At least not on Shaggy’s part.

  Her mother’s voice murmured in her ear, repeating the deadly words.

  “What? Do you think I can’t take care of a kid? No. You don’t, do you? ‘You can’t even take care of your own life, Shaggy.’” Her voice was harsh, pinched, mimicking and mocking. “That’s what you would say, isn’t it? That’s what you think, isn’t it? As though I didn’t take care of myself and Dad all those years while you. Just. Fucked. Off.”

  Her mother spoke calmly in her ear. Shaggy barely heard the words.

  “No. You don’t get a say. Not now. And if you try to shut my trust down, I will fight you. Make no mistake. That money was Daddy’s, too. And I deserve it for taking care of him when you wouldn’t. No. No. Goodbye, Bianca. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Shaggy mashed her thumb against her phone as hard as she could, cutting off the call, then threw the phone back down on the table. She scrubbed her hands across her face, then sat there, elbows on the table, head in hands, trying to catch her breath. Somewhere in the background, over the sound of her own beating heart, she heard Laura moving. Felt the woman standing next to her. Heard the sound of wine being poured. Then Laura sat next to her at the table, one hand on Shaggy’s back.

  “Here. Just take a sip. Then why don’t we go sit on the couch, and you can tell me exactly what that bitch said.”

  Shaggy gave a small laugh and uncurled herself. She took the glass of wine from Laura’s hands and drank.

  “She just assumed I would have an abortion. Without even asking what I wanted, or what happened, or who the guy was, or if I was happy.”

  “Is she always that way?”

  Shaggy rose and padded to the sofa. She plopped down on one end, and Laura folded herself onto the other. Both of them tucked their feet up.

  Taking another drink of wine, Shaggy bought some time to think.

  “You know, she wasn’t always. When I was little, she was more…present, I guess. But then my dad started to go downhill and she retreated. Became more brittle. I think that was her way of coping, but I was still so young, you know?”

  “It sounds shitty,” Laura said. “Hard.”

  “It was. It really was. Sometimes I want to just get a job and say screw her money, but then I think I deserve it for…well, you heard.”

  “So, does this mean you want to keep the baby now? If that’s the case, I should dump the rest of this very good wine down the sink.”

  Shaggy shook her head. “I don’t think so. I really can’t imagine having a kid. She just pissed me off so much. As if she even has a say. She doesn’t.”

  Shaggy looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows, at the night. At the lights of the bridge and the cars crossing, east to west and back again, red lights. White lights. People. Everyone living their own lives, with their own hopes and fears.

  “I still have no idea what the right decision is, or if there is even a right decision, you know? All I know is that I want the decision to be mine.”

  13

  Moss

  Moss arrived at the Inner Eye, heart racing, feeling as if he’d just run a marathon or been out in the streets facing cops all day. Brenda took one look, told him to make himself a cup of tea, and sent him to the little nook in the back end of the shop where she and a rotating group of psychics did readings for customers.

  That’s where he was now, sipping at one of Brenda’s homemade rose petal and spearmint teas. Brenda had suggested chamomile, but despite its purported calming properties, he didn’t like the taste of it. Just the act of inhaling the scent of this blend was enough to start calming him down. Or maybe it was the atmosphere in the shop.

  The Inner Eye was a metaphysical shop of long standing, and Brenda and Tempest worked hard to keep the space energetically clean and clear. The reading nook was so psychically clean the air felt almost crisp inside the tiny space. The small alcove got cleared after each reading. He could smell the mingled scents of Florida Water spray, rosemary and mugwort smudge, and benzoin incense. Brenda had a variety of readers from different traditions, and they all used something different.

  From the safety of the alcove, Moss’s eyes scanned the bookshelves and the comfortable chairs where one customer sat leafing through a small stack of books on Jewish mysticism. Beyond that were display cases filled with statuary, crystals, stones, and magical tools. More shelves behind the front counter held jars filled with all sorts of supplies.

  Moss felt his spirit relax, responding to the spirit of the store. It was a happy, well-fed spirit, and did a great job of protecting the space. No wonder he had run here. It wasn’t just that he wanted Brenda’s input, he realized; he needed to be around a kami that didn’t feel disturbed.

  In this space, his own troubled agitation was still present, but had its edges smoothed. He was still aware of the pain carried by the Willamette, and Shaggy’s confusion—he still couldn’t believe she’d run away like that—but they no longer pressed on him so hard. The sense of suffocation and panic had eased.

  “Thank the Gods and Goddesses,” he muttered, before blowing across the surface of his mug of tea and taking a long drink of the honey-sweetened brew. Unlike other members of Arrow and Crescent Coven, Moss wasn’t dedicated to any particular deity, though he offered respect to them all. He wasn’t sure yet if it was his mostly agnostic Buddhist upbringing, or the fact that he just hadn’t yet met a deity who personally spoke to him, but he was fine with things the way they were. The kami kept him busy enough as it was. The forces of nature were vital and present in Portland, and the longer he worked with them and gave them offerings, the more alive the relationship became. Add in the kami of all the small things, plus taking care of his ancestors, and Moss wasn’t sure where he’d find the time to establish a relationship with anything else.

  Well, except maybe for Shaggy, if she decided she could actually talk to him about what w
as going on.

  Speaking of relationships, he thought, here came his teacher. As she made her way through the aisles of her domain, he smiled. With glossy brown hair piled high on her head in an artful mess of loose curls, a flowing tunic the color of salmon, the silver bangles, drop earrings, and a giant moonstone at her breastbone, she looked like some sort of New Age royalty.

  Moss supposed that she was, in a way. Her customers treated her with respect and reverence, and she’d been able to keep this shop not only open, but thriving, even as the street around her grew more expensive every year. No easy feat. The fact that she was a witch—and a lesbian—could have hurt her business, but instead, it only added to her mystique, lending her the power of people’s imagination. Over the last couple of years of studying with Brenda and Raquel, Moss had come to learn that imagination was a potent thing.

  “Better?” Brenda asked him, as she settled into the chair across from the small table.

  Moss nodded.

  “Ready to talk about it?”

  He exhaled, then took another sip of tea. Brenda simply sat, graceful fingers laced together on the table, completely still, as if she didn’t have a shop to run, employees to take care of, and a thousand other things to do. Moss wished he had an ounce of her ability to pay attention like that. Brenda would tell him to get back to his candle-gazing practice and develop his own power, rather than wishing he had hers.

  “There’s this woman…” He bit his lip. How to begin this? “And then there’s the river…”

  His right foot started bouncing under the table and his hands gripped the mug of tea.

  “Shhhh,” Brenda said, then reached out and made a tugging and flicking motion with her fingers near the top of his head, clearing away the thoughts that crowded, one after another, into his head. “Slow down.”

  He focused on slowly exhaling, then pausing, then slowly inhaling. Just the way Brenda had taught him.

  “Open up your feet,” she said. “And when you’re ready, start with the woman.”

  Come on, Moss, this is basic, he thought with some disgust as he allowed his mentor to lead him through the exercises that should have been second nature by now. He felt his agitation recede. His shoulders dropped and he straightened his spine, sitting taller in his chair.

  “There’s this woman. Shaggy. We met at that festival I went to in August. Bliss. It was just supposed to be a fun hookup, you know? And now she’s here. And she’s pregnant. And she ran away after she told me today. And I don’t know what to do.”

  He drank more tea and stared down at the table. He felt Brenda waiting for him to say more. He felt her willing him to look up. To face her. To face whatever this situation was. Damn it. He didn’t want to.

  If you didn’t want to, you wouldn’t have come here, his inner voice said.

  Fuck you, he replied.

  “What do you want?” Brenda asked. “Do you want a baby? Do you want to be with this woman?”

  He looked at his mentor. He reached for the deep calm at her center, and the calmness of the Inner Eye. Then he tried to find his own center. It was there, but felt so small today.

  “I want to do what’s right, but its hard to know what that is, you know? And that’s part of where the Willamette comes in. It’s still being poisoned. We have to fight that again. How do I bring a baby into a world like this? But that feels like a cop-out, too. Do I tell Shaggy I’ll get a real job? Something that actually pays? Give up the activism? What?”

  He searched Brenda’s face. Her eyes were so compassionate, but still, she just waited. Reflecting him back at himself. Waiting for him to figure himself out.

  “But if I give up the activism, what kind of world does that leave for a kid?”

  “And Shaggy? How do you feel about her? And what does she want?”

  “I…” How did he feel about her? What was the truth? He dropped his attention into his core, trying to sense what was there, beneath the roiling swirl of emotion and thought. There it was, faint. A glimmer. Something real. “I’m really drawn to her. She’s…special. But I don’t think she knows that yet. She sells herself short. And it’s funny, she’s super rich or something. Like, if it weren’t for EDM, we never would have met. So, on one hand, maybe she doesn’t even need me. On the other hand, I want to do the responsible thing.”

  “And you think that means giving up activism and settling down into some sort of corporate job?”

  “Well, not corporate maybe. But I could learn a trade or something. Maybe.”

  “I’m not saying that’s a bad idea, Moss, but being a responsible adult doesn’t mean giving up who you are. It means becoming more of who you are. When we are centered in ourselves, we understand our place in the community, and in the cosmos, and we can do our duty.”

  “Do our duty? That doesn’t sound like fun.”

  “Call it something else then. Call it your True Will, like the Thelemites do. Or enacting your destiny.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “Look at it this way…part of why the world is such a mess is that we, as a group and as individuals, are out of alignment. Out of true. Our souls are fractured, and this fractures our friend and family relationships, our communities, and the whole society.”

  Moss nodded. He felt the truth of Brenda’s words inside his bones.

  “So what do I do?” he asked her.

  “Well, we should really do a course of shadow work, but that’s going to need to wait. I want you to start practicing soul alignment, every single day. Throughout the day, in fact.”

  “And you think that’s going to help?” Moss felt skeptical again. As though Brenda had turned into some white-lighter who thought humans could just pray their problems away.

  “I know it will. Look, Moss, part of changing culture is changing ourselves. It’s a long-term task, and trust me, I know how thankless that can feel, but we have to do it.”

  “Go live on a mountain?”

  “No!” He’d never seen Brenda angry like this. “That is not what I’m saying at all. Stop acting like a wounded child and listen.”

  She paused and looked up. Tempest was waving her over to the counter where a customer needed some help.

  “Excuse me,” she said, rising from her chair. She stood there for a moment, piercing him with those blue eyes. “I’ve got to take care of this, but we have a lot more to talk about. For now, I’ll just say that you have to stop looking at the world as black and white. It isn’t, and if you would listen to the kami you work with, you would know that. Align your soul, Moss. You won’t get any clarity otherwise.”

  Brenda strode off with a swirl of her tunic and a clash of silver bangles, leaving him to himself, and his thoughts, and the fact that Shaggy might not want any of this. She might not want him at all.

  “Shit.” And he hadn’t even gotten to talking about the possible egregore. Would soul alignment help with that? Moss grabbed his messenger bag. He was sick of himself. Might as well go home. It was his week to clean the bathrooms anyway.

  14

  Shaggy

  The large, high-ceilinged black box of a room was a riot of activity, and smelled faintly of sweat, antiseptic, and chalk. Music blasted from the speakers while instructions and encouragement were shouted over the beat.

  Shaggy had found a relatively quiet corner mat to stretch out on, eyes trained across the room where a man and a woman practiced on a trapeze, swinging out and back in tandem, flipping their bodies upside down, waiting for the big swing in which the smaller person would set themself free, fly through the air, and grasp their partner’s forearms. It took Shaggy’s breath away.

  She heard a shout of laughter and the smack of hands on a mat from the opposite side of the room, where a tumbling class was in progress.

  The teacher was a short, lightly muscled, trans woman named Monica. Apparently, she’d been a gymnast in middle and high school, had a sports scholarship to Portland University, and been slated for Olympic tryouts when she f
inally was able to come out as a woman. It was too complicated to go through hormones and switch teams at that point, she had told Shaggy over drinks one night, so Monica had dropped out. Gotten a job in a café. Worked for a while. Become the person she was always meant to be. Now she taught tumbling and coached gymnastics.

  She said she was happy.

  Despite having spent time down in the Bay around circus types, Shaggy was still in awe of these people. People like Monica—so sure of themselves, despite whatever bullshit life had thrown their way—made her examine her own self. Who was she supposed to be? Was she the responsible child, the caretaker who had to become an adult too quickly? Was she the free spirit, the trust fund kid, living off her mother’s largesse and partying all the time? Was she a student, a designer, a budding aerialist…?

  Or was she supposed to be a parent?

  She had no idea. But for the first time in her life Shaggy really wanted an answer to that question.

  “All warmed up? Ready to go?” Phoebe’s voice came from her left, startling Shaggy. She hadn’t even heard her trainer approach and looked up at the solid strength that was Phoebe, aerialist extraordinaire. Dark brown hair caught up in a loose bun at the base of her neck, thick roll of pale flesh sandwiched in between her purple bra tank and geometric patterned leggings, Phoebe was much curvier than Monica. Beneath the soft-looking flesh, Shaggy knew, were muscles hard as rocks. The woman was a tank.

  Shaggy stood, stretched her arms over her head, and then swung them from side to side.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she replied.

  She and Phoebe walked to another section of blue mats where long, pale swathes of silk dangled from the ceiling and puddled onto the floor. Shaggy stepped toward one of the silks, flexed her hands and feet, and then wound her hands in the fabric, reveling in the feel of it against her skin. She inhaled deeply, exhaling through her mouth, trying to calm the butterflies that had started up in her belly as soon as she began walking towards the aerial equipment. The butterflies were a combination of nervousness, fear, and excitement.