By Dusk

by T Thorn Coyle

  Standing on the mats, looking up at the twenty-foot ceiling, Shaggy was torn between the taste of freedom she got from the aerial work, and the fear that she would fall and snap a bone. Climbing the silks was always a risk, and that was part of what she liked about it.

  And what sort of risks are you going to take with your life now? What are you going to choose?

  She whisked the thought away, and focused on her breathing and the feel of fabric sliding through her palms. Phoebe stepped forward to anchor the silks as Shaggy climbed, winding her hands and feet in the silks, and jerking her way up and up, bit by bit. Her ascent wasn’t very smooth yet, but her arms and shoulders had gotten a lot stronger since she’d started practicing again.

  She’d begun studying the year before, down in San Francisco, and fallen in love. One of the first things she did when she moved to Portland was find this school, tucked behind a teal door on one of the side streets just off Hawthorne.

  Fifteen feet from the floor now, Shaggy felt the moment Phoebe let go. The tension in the silks was up to her now. It was her job to keep things stable, and the only way to do that was to move her body into shapes she was barely beginning to understand.

  Wrap the silks around each foot. Spread the arms. Bend to the left.

  Form a triangle with the pelvis and legs. Bend to the right.

  Climb your legs up the silks. Get ready. Let your hands go. Bend outward, reaching for the far wall, then soften. Allow your torso to reach toward the floor, until you are dangling upside down. Until you completely trust your own strength, and the strength of the fabric.

  She could hear Phoebe’s voice, calling out instruction from the silks just next to her, but she couldn’t quite process the words. All the information was in her body. Her arms and legs, her torso and head, her pelvis and spine…they all knew just what to do.

  Her body knew what her mind didn’t seem to.

  Dangling upside down, held suspended in the air, Shaggy began to cry. Not silent, pretty, tears slowly flowing from her eyes, but huge, silk-rocking sobs.

  “Shaggy! Are you okay?” Phoebe’s voice finally penetrated, but Shaggy didn’t care.

  Sobbing, snorting back tears and snot, she swung and rocked, and wound herself more tightly in the silks. She climbed upright again, and started the sequence over. Triangle. Reach. Bend. Flow.

  This. This feeling was what she wanted. This thing she still couldn’t name. She felt it in her muscles and her bones. She wanted this. This. This.

  She wanted now. Every moment.

  All of a sudden, Shaggy understood. There was no hiding. No running. There was simply being.

  “Shaggy! Are. You. Okay. Do I need to get you down?”

  Shaggy turned, finally, and saw Phoebe’s worried face, five feet away, reaching out one arm.

  She snorted back more tears, then laughed.

  “Actually, I’m fine. Better than I have been in a long time.”

  Shaggy steadied her breathing once again, wiped her face on her shoulder, and started the routine again.

  She still didn’t know what she was going to do, but she knew she actually would be fine.

  At least for now.

  15

  Moss

  Sunlight filtered through white sheers, warming up the old hardwood floors of Moss’s bedroom. The big house was relatively quiet. Everyone else had already gone off to work, except for Maggie. She would be off to school soon though; he could hear her rattling around in the kitchen, the sounds of making coffee. She must have burned her toast again, because the charred scent had traveled upstairs through his door.

  Moss’s room was small, but comfortable. The space was just large enough for a double bed, a salvaged chest of drawers, and one small, comfy barrel chair that he’d picked up on the street. His favorite green comforter was pulled sloppily up over the bed, half over the pillows. Moss liked to keep his space neat, but he was also too lazy to make his bed properly, hence the comforter. It covered all manner of sins, including the fact that his sheets should have been thrown in the wash two days before.

  He sat on the edge of the bed now, staring at his chest of drawers. It was a beautiful old walnut piece, one of those six-drawer jobs, but he wasn’t actually staring at the dresser itself. His eyes were fixed on the space on top of it. His altar. A thin layer of dust covered the statues, brass candlesticks, and ritual objects. The thing really needed dusting, and rearranging, too.

  Brenda was right, he needed to get back to basics. The less time a witch spent practicing their basic skills, the weaker their will became. And without a strong will? A witch’s magic was nothing.

  Will was harnessed intention. Whether a person wanted to hone the mind, calibrate the emotions, or train the body, developing will was required. And that was just the basic level of will. There was another thing that some magic workers called “True Will,” and ever since Brenda had mentioned the destiny word, the magical concept had been ticking at the back of his brain.

  Was activism his destiny? Was magic? Was being a parent?

  What in the world was his True Will? And exactly how was he supposed to figure that out?

  He was avoiding again, he realized. Rather than addressing the work at hand, his mind had drifted to a bigger picture he just couldn’t see. Not right now. The larger philosophical and magical theories were just another way to avoid the fact that his altar was covered in the dust of neglect, and being busy wasn’t a reason. It was just an excuse.

  Moss needed to get his practice back on track. Without it, he would grow weaker and less focused. And the kami would stop talking to him altogether, their voices obscured by his own concerns. He knew that last one from long experience. The messages from the spirits and beings came through stronger the more centered and clear he was inside himself.

  He needed a strong will for his activism work too. Throwing yourself in front of cops on a regular basis? That required a person to either be an adrenaline junkie, or have some great training for their fight or flight mechanism.

  “Stop stalling,” he said to the empty room. He stood and took two steps toward the chest of drawers. A beeswax candle waited in a brass candlestick, matches beside it. He definitely needed to clean the altar, but practice came first. Moss inhaled deeply, closing his eyes for a moment. He let his awareness trace the edges of his physical body, all the way down to his feet, then up his back and to the crown of his head. He wiggled his bare toes on the wood floor and flexed his fingers. Only then did he strike a match, inhaling the sulfur scent of it, and lit the taper. Waving the match out, he dropped it in a brass incense dish and picked up a short stick of cedar incense. He lit the tip, traced a pentacle shape over his altar, and placed the incense into the brass holder.

  Drawing his hands up toward his face, he bowed, then poured water from his steel thermos into a pale green ceramic tea bowl that had once belonged to his grandmother. The bowl connected him to his ancestors, and, as a witch, also to all of the powers of water.

  Moss flexed his bare feet on the floor again, straightened his spine, and inhaled deeply. Then he clapped his hands three times, the sharp sound shattering the air.

  “Great river, come to me. Flow through me. Be with me. Show me the ways of water, of sinking and swimming, of movement and reflection. Allow me to feel your depths, and revel in the power and lightness of your waves. May I be one with the creatures of the river. May I be one with your banks, and your sinuous curves. Great river, teach me how to honor you. Show me your way.”

  He bowed once more, then grabbed a meditation cushion and sank down to the floor in front of the window next to his dresser altar, bathing in the mid-morning light.

  Slowing his breathing down, he allowed his attention to drop into his belly like a stone falling into a deep pool. He softened the focus of his eyes, and felt his shoulders drop and sink into place.

  Moss breathed, smelling the sweet, clean musk of the cedar, and the rich honey notes of melting beeswax.

  Images dar
ted through his mind like schools of fish. Shaggy’s face, lit by sunshine. The strobe lights of the dance club. The river. Images of himself, arms in long tubes, locked down to his comrades. Police in riot gear. Shaggy again, eyebrows creased with worry. Cormorants skimming over the water.

  He inhaled again, more slowly and deeply, trying not to clutch at the thoughts.

  Trying to flow like the river itself.

  ::Stop trying.::

  The message came as more of a sense inside of himself than a voice in his ears. Moss’s psychic skill was clairsentience, the knowing of things through the body. Brenda said that was why he was so good at tuning into the spirits of place—his body felt the connection with the spirits that dwelled in all things.

  Are you the river?

  ::Does it matter?::

  Moss returned to his breath, and imagined the edges of his body opening and relaxing. Allowing his attention to move outward, he imagined his etheric body and his aura also softening.

  Be like water. He smiled, then returned once again to his breath.

  The images floating by changed. Herons. Bitterns. Egrets. Osprey. Chinook. Trout. Sturgeon. Crappie. Bass. Feathers and scales, flying and swimming.

  His breathing deepened, and so did his consciousness. The river flowed on.

  Cottonwood. Willow. Maple. Hemlock. Ash. Lichen and moss.

  And deeper still. Pain. Suffocation. Copper. Acid. Ammonia. The stink and sting of chemicals not native to the water itself. The struggle of the animals and fish.

  No matter how fast the river ran, it could not clean itself. And something was making sure of that.

  ::Help me, and I shall teach you all the ways of water.::

  Moss floated, skin stinging. Lungs on fire, he began to swim.

  Show me.

  The river led him to a space beneath the gothic towers of St. John’s Bridge. Deeper and deeper he swam, until he was almost at the riverbed, down in the mucky sludge beneath the piers.

  And there it was. The source of the disease. The cancer infecting the river. The taste of oil-slicked rainfall. The stink of car exhaust and coal. The waste of ten thousand container ships. The bite of ammonia.

  Blood from the core of the earth, pumped up from its heart to be consumed, and then discarded, burned, and dumped as if it were not precious.

  ::Out of place.::

  I know.

  Moss’s consciousness opened to the river, and to the toxic sting of benzo(a)pyrene, ammonia, and other chemicals on his skin. He felt the suffocation of the plant life, and the heaviness slicking feathers and choking scales.

  It was simply out of place, having been stolen with no way to put it back. Someone had taken the out-of-placeness and manipulated it into something more. Something trying to burrow deeper. Make a home where no home should be.

  But how do we put this to rights? he thought.

  ::Bring back the flow.::

  Moss swam upward then, so slowly, level by level, layer by layer, he rose up toward the river’s surface, and to waking consciousness. His eyes blinked at the morning sun. The scents of cedar and beeswax replaced the stink of chemicals and oil.

  He still had no idea what the river meant, but he could feel the sense of it in his soul. He had to become like water. He had to flow like the river.

  That truth would set him free.

  16

  Shaggy

  The doctor’s office was about as cozy as you would expect. Shaggy sat in a crinkly paper robe on the crinkly paper examining table cover swinging her legs, and waiting. You always had to wait for doctors, even if they were just nurse practitioners and not really doctors at all.

  Her stomach was filled with butterflies again, and not the good kind, the kind that made her feel half-queasy even though all she’d had for breakfast was a piece of peanut butter toast and a cup of milky tea.

  And the need to run was back, along with the image of Moss’s face when she had left the café. That was a shitty thing to do, and she knew it, but she couldn’t have done anything else. Maybe she’d text him. Apologize. Ask to see him again.

  Did she want to see him again? The question made her stomach lurch. She swallowed, hard. She was not going to puke again. She was tired of puking, and was growing tired of the indecision, too. Not that her bouts of self-loathing were helping anything.

  Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Cheerful posters detailed human anatomy. Equally cheery racks of pamphlets detailed sexually transmitted illnesses and how to beat urinary tract infections. There was the standard tiny hand-washing sink. A computer with a rolling stool sat in front of it. Shaggy should have kept her phone with her. Distracted herself by scrolling social media, or playing one of her dumb, pattern-matching games. But as soon as she got up from the paper covered exam table to fish it out of her purse, the nurse practitioner would walk in, she knew it.

  But she couldn’t sit here with her thoughts anymore, either. Shaggy sighed, and scooted forward enough to get her dangling feet to the cold, tiled floor. Sure enough, that instant, the tap came at the door, followed by the sound of the knob turning.

  “Sarah Richter?”

  “That’s me,” Shaggy replied.

  The nurse practitioner came over and shook her hand. She barely looked older than Shaggy, and wore cute, pink-framed glasses perched on a pert nose. Her blond hair was slicked back in a utilitarian bun, but those glasses said it all, as did the pink lipstick on the woman’s smiling lips. Nurse Practitioner Swenson was one fun chick.

  “Before I start the exam, do you have any questions?”

  Shaggy shifted on the crinkly paper.

  “How far along can you be before the pills won’t work?”

  The woman paused, then went to the sink to wash her hands. “Did you do a home test, or come in for testing?”

  “Home test.”

  After a thorough scrubbing, NP Swenson pumped out two paper towels from the wall machine using her elbow. Drying her hands, she turned. “Well, we should do an exam to make sure, but how long has it been since your last period?”

  “Around seven weeks,” Shaggy replied. She’d been thankful for that, she remembered. Her period was never reliable, and she’d been happy to not be heading to the festival with cramps. Her doctor in California had bugged her to go back on the pill to help with her symptoms, but the pills made Shaggy feel bloated and lethargic, and she hated feeling that way. And since she didn’t need them for birth control—or so she thought—a random period and bad cramps every two to three months seemed like a small price to pay.

  “You’re in luck. Mifepristone and misoprostol work up until twelve weeks, although many people find a D&C a lot less taxing on the body. But I see here on your chart you’ve had irregular periods and suffer from endometriosis.” The space between NP Swenson’s eyebrows creased. “What made you think you were pregnant?”

  Hoo boy. How was Shaggy going to explain this? She shifted on the exam table, the paper crinkling beneath her. Her feet were cold, her palms were sweating, and she really wished she’d kept her socks on. She wanted out. Out of the antiseptic smell, away from the crinkling paper and the cold, and out from under this woman’s stare.

  “I just had a sense…” she started, then stopped again, unsure how to proceed. “Over the years, I’ve gotten pretty used to things feeling weird down there. I know it’s too soon…but something just seemed off. And then a few days ago, I started to feel nauseated. Even the smell of coffee made me queasy. So I got a home test.”

  What Shaggy couldn’t tell NP Swenson was that she’d always gotten weird intuitive hits, and even messages sometimes. It was part of why she knew she had to take care of her father. She knew she’d never be able to live with herself if she hadn’t. He needed her help to set some things in order in his soul before he died. Shaggy never talked to anyone about that stuff. Bianca rolled her eyes at the merest hint of “woo” as she called it, so Shaggy had learned to keep things to herself.

  “And you’re sure you don’t w
ant to keep it? You do know that with your condition…”

  “I know. And no. I haven’t one-hundred percent decided yet. But I wanted to see what my options were.”

  “Sounds good. Let’s get started with this exam then.”

  NP Swenson pulled the metal stirrups out from the bottom of the table, and Shaggy scooted herself into position, bracing for the cold metal of the speculum.

  Whether she would let this embryo grow into something more, she still didn’t know, but it was a relief to have a choice.

  17

  Moss

  He sat in another classic old Portland building with a high, vaulted ceiling, but this time, instead of dancing in a moving throng, Moss was wedged into an uncomfortable wooden chair, sitting next to the few coven members who had managed to make the meeting, plus a bunch of other activists he’d worked with off and on for years.

  They were all people he would trust with his life, which was a good thing. He didn’t want to go into an action like this without that basic sense of trust.

  The room smelled of sweat, spearmint gum, and the papery scent of the ghosts of a thousand union members, pressed into the walls.

  A union hall in Southeast Portland might have seemed like a strange place to be meeting, but it had hosted a whole array of radical meetings in its day. Moss and the coven took up half a row of chairs on the floor. Members of the Clean Rivers Coalition had called the meeting after some strategic phone calls from Moss and Terra had alerted them to the news of a possible new polluter in their midst. An environmental science student had tested the waters and sure enough, along with the usual levels of mercury and PCBs—polychlorinated biphenyls—that made it unsafe to eat fish from the rivers, there were increased ammonia, benzo(a)pyrene and Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) levels in the water.