‘Oh…yes, I’m familiar with her.’ Faye was noncommittal.
‘Really?’ Sylvia looked Faye up and down critically. ‘Welcome, then. We’ll be starting in a moment; it might not be exactly what you’re used to, but the main elements will besimilar, I’m sure.’ Her tone was brisk again; if Faye had thought that all powerful women had Grandmother’s warmth, then she was evidently wrong.
She felt a tremor of nerves in her stomach, partly pleasurable; she could already feel the weft of the magic of nature under her feet.
‘This is Penny.’ Sylvia beckoned to the red-haired woman who was talking to Gabriel. ‘She’s my second-in-command; High Priestess in training, if you will. Penny, this is Faye.’
Penny shook Faye’s hand.
‘Merry meet,’ she murmured, and Faye repeated the greeting.
‘Do you need any help setting up?’ she asked, but Penny demurred.
‘Minimal setup; otherwise, we’d be lugging tons of stuff up the hill. We’ll get going in a minute.’ She nodded and turned away to finish her preparations.
Ruby squeezed Faye’s hand as they walked back to join the circle.
‘Good going. I think she liked you,’ Ruby whispered.
‘Liked me? What would she have been like if she hated me?’ Faye hissed back.
‘She’s kind of a badass, but she’s just being…you know. Protective,’ Ruby replied under her breath. ‘She’s got our backs. I like that.’
Faye didn’t reply. She respected Sylvia, but she didn’t like power games, and that’s what it had felt like talking to her. Sylvia might be the leader of the group, but she wasn’t responsible for protecting Ruby, Gabriel and the rest from their own experiences. To see herself as a mother of grown adults seemed like a strange kind of ego trip.
The rest of the circle had begun singing softly. Faye put her misgivings about Sylvia to one side; she was here to celebrateMabon, that was all. She joined her voice to the group’s and felt the energy around her: from the circle, from the trees around her, interspersed with the special energy of the autumn equinox. It had a feeling all of its own; the perfect balance between light and dark, when the days and nights were of equal length and in perfect equilibrium – dark and light, masculine and feminine. But, Faye remembered, the equinox was the cusp of a transition: from now on, the year began to wane. From this moment, darkness began to defeat the light.
Faye shivered in anticipation of the coming darkness, even though she knew there was nothing to be afraid of. Dark was natural; dark was night and death and sleep.
She caught the simple melody of the song and raised her voice as the bright moonlight filtered through the canopy of branches above. Yet, as she sang, feeling the magic of the group start to coalesce and bind like a circlet of light in the darkening forest, she felt a stir of unease, as if something lurked at the edge of the circle, wanting to be let in.
7
Excerpt from Grainne Morgan’s diary
Autumn equinox, harvest festival, 22 September 1588
The harvest festival sees the village piling up their vegetables and breads for a feast. This year the harvest has been good, and I thanked the fae accordingly with offerings of the best cream, cabbage, wild flowers and oat cakes out on the faerie road.
My daughter danced with the village children in the village square. She has been practising for months. I saw her father look on kindly; he suspects that she is his, but I have never told him. It is irrelevant.
Marian’s waist grows thicker, and she has been frequently absent from coven meetings. I fear the worst: that she is being taken gradually into the fae kingdom and,come Midwinter, she will be gone. I have summoned Gwyn Beatha and asked for a parley.
They stood in a circle an arm’s length from each other, able to touch hands when they needed to. Faye stood between Gabriel and Ruby and watched as Penny called in the elements, just as Faye had done so many times in her herb garden or on Black Sands Beach. Just as many times, she’d stood on the worn hearthstones inside Mistress of Magic, in front of the fireplace where generations of Morgan women had opened their arms to the moon and asked for its blessing.
They had sung the simple song about the growing and the cutting of the grain over and over until Sylvia had beckoned them to stand in the circle, drawing it outside them with wand, lit censer, cup and by sprinkling earth around them to create a protected space.
‘I call to the watchtowers of the spirits of the north, of earth, be with us in our rite!’ Sylvia’s voice rang out clear and confident in the night. Her face was lit by candlelight as she moved from one quarter of the circle to the next, calling in the elements as power to the circle. As she did so, Faye felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, and a chill went up her spine. She felt the raw elemental energy coming: earth from the north, air from the east, fire from the south and water from the west; their power rushing in to the circle and melding, merging into something new. The circle held their energies; the men and women around the edge were part of the circle. Everything of them was part of the circle, and the circle was part of them. Even though that elemental energy was the energy of faerie, there was no gettingaway from it, and Faye would never want to. The energies of nature were one thing – dangerous faerie kings and queens were quite another.
Faye half closed her eyes, watching the energies shift and dance in the circle. She could see the air sprites, the sylphs, dancing like dust motes in the shafts of moonlight that sliced into the clearing. She watched the fire elementals, writhing like snakes, salamanders, changeable as their native element; and the earth energy, slower and fuller and richer, like stones building into cairns, combining to spiral up in the space between them all.
Her heart beat faster for a moment as she felt the energy of water rush into the circle, recognising its familiar lull. Did Finn Beatha and Levantiana know she was here? She hoped not.
Sylvia stood with her arms outstretched and called out loudly.
‘Blessed Morgan Le Fay, goddess of magic, witch, independent woman, be with us at this time when light and dark are in perfect balance; bless us with your wisdom this equinox! Enchantress, we implore thee, lend us your power to see clearly in the coming dark! Keeper of wisdom, teacher of the crescent moon, healer of the sick! Goddess of magic, we beckon you, protect the balance within us, protect us in the darkness and open its mysteries to us. We implore you, grant us your sight this Mabon night.’
The circle joined hands as Sylvia continued to call out raptly to Morgan and started to pace. Faye was still surprised that Ruby’s London coven honoured Morgana Le Fae, a faerie queen.
