Fatal Circle

Taking my own advice, I turned my i

Around us, wind howled like a wolf. The sea salt marking the circle’s barrier was lifted into the air like dust particles, thrown into the fray to whirl and dance. I was the only one of the three of us facing the table now, and I saw the candle flames flickering, but not as harried by the rushing air as I would have expected. In fact, the flames sank low to the wicks and sporadically flashed high. Within the salt-strewn air at the circle’s edge, flashes of light erupted, coinciding with the candle bursts. Water rose up from the seashell, somehow expanding to become much more than a few drops. An umbrella of water formed over our heads, more water than the seashell actually held. Each flash of light created a ripple on the water’s surface.

Menessos was rapt, resolute. Seven’s words, “Love him as he loves you,” flickered through my mind, but I cast them out and checked on Joh

The power was present, but it was holding back. The chant had gone on too long for nothing to be happening. It had built, and was building no more.

Was one of them resisting? Was Joh

That intangible hand reached through me, then, and turned my switch all the way to alpha.

I stood on the shore beside the willow tree, toes sinking into muck. Regardless of my state in the circle outside this meditation, I’d been delivered here naked.

Amenemhab was nowhere to be seen. Out of nowhere, the buckskin mustang raced by the tree at a full gallop and splashed into the lake, ruining the tranquil surface with splashes and ripples.

Oh no you don’t. My need was such that She must not get away. But the horse kept going.

I rushed into the water. The cold fluid tugged at my ankles, jerked at my knees, and my vivid memory of my last visit made me hesitate. A deeper emotional world.

She was swimming toward the white spearhead-shaped rock.

If I wanted this soul-sharing to work, I was going to have to earn it or prove it or something.

“Fine.”

Stomping forward, I leaped in and swam. I tried not to think about how far it was, how deep the lake might be, and what else might be in the water. Just keep swimming. I twisted into a backstroke. What a beautiful sky, like a web of stars over my head.

I was finding a sense of calm when the fin arose in the water beside me, just gliding smoothly alongside. If it had been a sharklike fin, I probably would have panicked. But this was spiky, like the dorsal on a walleye or a bass. Only this was a couple hundred times bigger.

Panic was trying to set in anyway.

The fin angled sharply away and headed out and around the lake. I flipped over to watch it go, just to assure myself that the lake creature wasn’t going after the horse, and that it was far, far away. My efforts to get to shore redoubled.

Across from me, on the narrow shore, the horse climbed from the water and shook Herself, then turned to me. She flicked Her tail and cantered around to the farside of the rock island.

Soon, my kicking feet brushed the pebbly offshore mix and I swam a few more strokes, then stood.

Muck between my toes wasn’t any more preferable on this side of the shore than on the other. I wrung out my hair and hurried along the shore the way the horse had gone. At the far end the stone jutted out into the sea. Hoof marks in the sand and pebbles became human footprints and entered a crevice in the stone. A doorway.

I approached the crevice and entered a cavern through it. Dim i

The crevice I had entered abruptly disappeared. Darkness surrounded me. It would not have been the way out anyway, it was the way deeper in. Deep enough to see my soul.

For a long minute, I stood, paralyzed. I hadn’t checked to see if there were damp footprints leading to any of the tu

The dark closed in on me, suffocating me like obscurity and insignificance.

Cleansing breath in, doubt out.

Which way felt right?

Joh

My breath caught. At the Witches’ Ball, before I told the lucusi I was the Lustrata, I had a vision of Hecate. She had said, “You will find Me in the darkness. In your darkness. I am there. When you are ready to see your own soul . . . I’ll be waiting.”

As my fingers scrubbed along the chilled, damp wall, my toes slid cautiously forward. My progress was slow, but certain. A dozen paces in, my heart leaped as I felt no floor before me. Crouching to inspect, I felt nothing.

My first thought was to go back. But I knew that I could not choose between Menessos and Joh

The mantle!

Calling my armor, calling on the light, that gentle gleam brightened the area around me. Little by little, a vast cavern appeared, a place giants—Titans—had carved into the foundation of the earth. I stood atop a grand stairway, each step five-feet high and thirty feet wide. Pillars stood like skyscrapers across the endless hall before me.

Crouching on the edge, I leaped down, step after step, and counted thirteen in all.

I lingered on the last. Stalactites dotted the ceiling between the enormous pillars, and their companion stalagmites disrupted the floor below. I searched to define a path. Feeling rather like a mouse in the Titan’s house, and wary that there might be a giant cat waiting to pounce, I peered into the distance before easing down.

My feet did not scrape over more stone, but struck wood.

I dropped to the ground. Here, at the foot of the giant stone stairway, was a wide arched door that looked like a cartoon mouse might live behind it—if the mouse were tall as a human. Have to be careful what you’re thinking in here.

The vast hall was an expanse of rock except for a single human-sized door. That made for an easy decision of what to do next.

I pushed the knobless door and it gave with a groan. As I passed through, I emerged into the night. This wasn’t the lake area. I stood on solid, dry earth topped with fall’s dry grass brittle under my feet. The door was attached to a giant—no, I’ll use that word sparingly now—a mature elm tree. It stretched up like a black silhouette, leaves u

As I brought my focus down from the limbs, I checked the sky for a clue to my location. The night was moonless. None of the constellations were ones I could name. The sky didn’t help me at all.

Then the aroma of raisin and currant cakes filled my nostrils. A dirt road stretched before me. I stepped onto the path. Perhaps a dozen yards ahead, two more roads joined it. One on either side. In the center where the three roads intersected, stood an old woman robed in black, face hidden in the depths of a hood. She grasped the handles protruding from the curved shaft of a scythe. The blade’s tip rested on the dirt. Hecate of the Crossroads.