From the Leaf Lore
by M. M. De Voe
Three hours before midnight on the night of Alban Arthuran, a long stream of red taillights wound through the coastal hills of Massachusetts. This was just last year, though time can be measured in many ways. Some people believe it happened only yesterday, regardless of today. Others, who lead much stranger lives, believe it is an event still to come. Suffice to say, the event occurred – or will – and as such, it must be entered in the Leaf Lore.
So speaks Pembroke Llewellyn, keeper of the Lore.
Not far from Salem, in the midst of this glinting chain of illuminated rubies sat a couple who considered themselves middle-aged, though the woman had just turned forty-one, and the man was only four years older. The husband, Hollis, who was driving, was a lumpish man but a good father whose remaining crown of hair stiffly refused to turn from shoe-polish brown to distinguished gray. He stared blankly at the oncoming road, which blurred into yellow stripes and white spots in the darkness. Occasionally, he sniffed loudly and rubbed his red Brussels sprout of a nose to try to keep himself awake, or sucked air into the gap between his front teeth, intentionally wheezing. He said nothing to his wife, Margaret, who had abandoned her own attempts at civil conversation while still on the Turnpike. Neither the man nor the woman had ever heard of Druids. Neither the woman nor the man had any idea that of their union, Mother Betsey would be born. Margaret and Hollis were ordinary people in an ordinary car going for an ordinary drive in Massachusetts.
Margaret stared at her hands under the wan light of the dashboard, trying to ignore her husband’s breathy noises. Oncoming headlights flooded the Lexus with a flash of white, and she wondered when she had gotten so old. Her palms were rough and callused, crisscrossed with lines, and when she turned her hands over, her wedding ring looked tight and out-of-place. The skin on her knuckles was loose, and she imagined that if she could just lift it all away, underneath there would be a new skin, and she could pretend to be young again. Maybe paint her nails the glossy candy-apple red she’d once loved. She turned to relate this thought to Hollis before remembering that she and her spouse weren’t speaking; hadn’t spoken for the past four hours. At her sharp hiss, Hollis turned away from the road, and asked her what she had been going to say. And try as she might, Margaret could not remember what their argument had been about.
The stars above glittered with the light of distance.
Three days prior to the travelers’ journey, the Eldest Ovate had thrown the Ogham, and reading the order of the trees as inscribed upon the runes, had gleaned that the soul of the savior was imminently due to return. Many times this soul had walked upon the earth, sometimes in a male body, sometimes female, each time bringing great change to the beliefs of the living. The Eldest consulted no one before emailing the news to her closest friend, the High Priestess of a nearby Wiccan coven. This may seem surprising as Druids and Witches rarely mingle, but we live in a time of miracles. In this instance, the Eldest Ovate and the High Priestess had attended high school together in Longmeadow, and were very respectful of each other’s position. The High Priestess was intrigued by the prophecy her old friend had seen and used her Craft to corroborate her friend’s prediction. The email she sent to the Eldest is preserved in the Lore. It reads:
TO: Martha Llewellyn <eldest@salemgrove.etree.org>
FROM: Sarah Millhaus <highprstess4@salem.usawicca.org>
SUBJECT: Prophesy
Hey Marty! You nailed it – look at what I came up with: “Under the sign of the yellow star, a dispirited Daughter of the Soil and a slumberous Son will rekindle a lost passion, and from this Blessed Union the Mabon shall be born. The Daughter must be brought to Joy upon that night, or the unborn will perish in the bilious fluid of her womb.” Talk about corroboration! Hey, and if you want an assist with the whole Joy thing, call my cell and I’ll ping the coven. Blessed Be.
Her friend the Eldest Ovate accepted the favor and requested a complicated spell that would bring a likely couple to Salem, where the Order of the Leaf might teach the woman to access the Awen and feel the total inspiration that is our birthright.
The Sun is our master and from him our Power descends.
It was the first time in history (before or after) that Witches and Druids had worked this closely together. Thus: Forget Not the Wicca. Though their number will dwindle as Mother Betsey leads the world to a greater awareness of the true power of the Sun, do not mock them. The seed sprouts and the seed dies. The seed will grow again. Our sisters have done a great boon for us. And Sarah Millhaus is a really nice lady. She teaches third grade, and the kids just love her.
The spell was cast two days before Alban Arthuran, which the Wicca call winter solstice, and the next morning, in their six-room apartment in Boston, Hollis Affelbaum suggested to his wife a daytrip to reacquaint them as lovers. Margaret, though she cringed at his words, began to pack. The Affelbaums set themselves about trying to mend a relationship which had never been about love, but had been a civil arrangement for the sake of the children and Bostonian society as a whole. Suitcase in the trunk, they had then voluntarily shut themselves into the solitary confinement cell embraced by all of 21st Century America: the family car.
In the darkness, Margaret wondered if a trial separation or even a divorce would have been such an ugly thing. A day of driving through the gorgeous coastal land where they had honeymooned twenty-one years before had rekindled exactly nothing. Just before noon, she had (out of nowhere) suggested they spend a lazy afternoon at “their” bed-and-breakfast, but Hollis had seen no point in it. They’d not stopped bickering since. When the Sun crested its highest, they stopped at the marina for an impromptu lobster, but even the pleasure of the seaside meal did not allow the couple to come to terms. And the garlic butter gave Hollis gas.
The Eldest was watching, perspiration salting her upper lip.
An emergency interfaith meeting was called, and the Wicca were commissioned to cast another spell. I, Pembroke Llewellyn, had to run to the ATM for two hundred dollars, as the local Wicca don’t take credit cards. The High Priestess, her energy still low from the previous night’s ritual, directed our Ovate to an acolyte who had mastered the simple confusion-spell we required.
And loyalty won in the end. Despite the danger to her health, the High Priestess agreed to link with the acolyte and several others to increase the potency of the spell. In gratitude, our Eldest summoned the Grove’s Healer, and left the High Priestess in his competent care. Then the Eldest returned to her observations, walking with the shadows to glean what she could of the fate of the couple.
***
The trip back to Boston should have taken them only an hour, but once Hollis left the highway to avoid traffic, he had gotten completely turned around. He drove the tortuous darkness until they were both fighting sleep. In the back of his mind, Hollis hoped Margaret would consider his advice, find a hobby, a new interest, show a glimpse of the passion he had fallen for twenty-five years ago when she first bared her freckled-shoulders on the campus of his recently co-ed Harvard. He was half-inclined to hold her hostage out in these winding back roads until she became less inexorably sour. He said none of these things, however, and more than once he caught himself drifting across the solid yellow lines. His wife was nattering on about hotels and their imminent need for one. Hollis found himself objecting. He asked if Margaret would mind if he rolled down the windows to keep himself awake. She granted her permission, although Hollis knew that cold drafts annoyed her and she would quite possibly ask him to roll them up again within twenty minutes. They suffered for each other, but only for show.
The Grove assembled and formed a circle. We left our cell phones with our coats and winter clothes, and donned the brown robes of our order, calling upon the power of the Sun to keep us warm.
I lit the first torch, in the North. I used a lighter shaped like a tree.
***
The crisp December air held promise of snow. It slapped across Hollis’ well-padded frame, and he drove faster, hoping the speed would wake him. Beside him, Margaret grumbled about the cold, muttered about his navigational skills.
The car whizzed by a sign for Salem, when without any forethought, and much to his surprise, Hollis found himself promising to stop at the first hotel they saw. Margaret smiled her first smile of the trip. As if summoned, a Holiday Inn came into sight.
“How quaint,” she said, breaking their vow of silence. “It’s one of the old-fashioned ones.” Indeed, the logo on the sign was not the trademarked cursive letters with the hovering orange flower, but rather, the chaotically flashing green and yellow neon from another decade, the old clumsy signature placard, taller than the motel itself, with its wraparound yellow arrow, and the word Inn sandwiched between two white asterisks, as if the nomenclature itself was important (or boldface!). Yellow letters instructed them to “Relax!” and poking up from this glowing mass of welcome, on its very own lightning rod was a gaudy white three-dimensional star, whose three rows of shrinking light bulbs blinked in descending size order, as if the antiquated thing was proud of the brash Christian symbolism it evoked, aggressively glittering above an inn that always had room.
Not the modern business class signature efficiency suites, but the ancient green and yellow neon of the bygone era. Comfort and Joy. Thousands of little lights, sparkling, flashing. Happiness settled over the leather interior of the car like a chenille blanket placed by a favorite aunt. Hollis and Margaret were oddly buoyant as they exchanged the car keys for a room key at the front desk. A valet whisked their Lexus out of sight and a young bellhop with a rarely washed uniform spirited their luggage to room 121.
The room was on the ground floor, but faced a large open field and promised quiet rest. Both man and woman were exhausted and hungry.
The Eldest watched. The Grove stood in a circle and waited. One brown robed figure leaned to another and they exchanged names. The girl was new and the boy was eager to hook up. Their Blackberrys were with their regular clothes; they promised to beam each other their business cards later. Someone shushed them, and they stood quickly upright.
I lit the second torch in the East.
***
Margaret tested the firmness of the bed by bouncing on it the way she had done as a child. She giggled when her stomach began to rumble. Hollis relaxed upon hearing his wife giggle, a sound he’d been craving since their second child was born with the shriveled hand. Room service was rung, and although the kitchen was closed, Hollis managed to convince the night chef to create a pair of Greek salads and send up the very last bottle of wine. Margaret listened to Hollis cajole the chef and she recalled how enamored she’d been of her husband’s charismatic side, a side he’d been exhibiting exclusively at his weekend golf tournaments ever since she’d (falsely, it turned out) accused him of an affair with his glossy young secretary. Hard to bridge old wounds. A deep enough scar can kill even the oldest tree.
The assembled stood in a silent circle. The wind whipped at our robes.
I lit the third torch, in the South.
The couple ate the salads and drank the wine, reminiscing about old times when they’d both been happy. Hollis recited a poem he’d learned for their second anniversary. Margaret shook her shoulders at him, as she had from backstage at a conference where he was a too-nervous keynote speaker. Remembering old happiness allowed them to revive it, and with the red wine boosting previously dormant hormones, Margaret and Hollis fell to kissing like teenagers, tearing at each other’s clothes giddy as newlyweds.
But a chill December wind caught the flame in the South and extinguished it as smoothly as a call girl might snuff a candle.
The couple passed out on opposite sides of the king-sized bed, their union unconsummated, still wearing their shoes.
I looked over at the Eldest, swooning where she stood and relit the South torch. The Ovate caught her breath, swayed. It is difficult for us to hold power in the dark, with only the pale reflection of the Source of Life traveling the sky. Night is when the Wicca thrive, night is when the shadows live. They say that a shadow cannot be made without Light, so even the darkness is a gift of the Sun. This may be. In any case, we were given another chance. Three of the Grove supported the Eldest, rubbed her wrists with leaves still green from the summer sun. Someone handed her a bottle of Evian, and that seemed to revive her substantially. When she was back in her place, I lit the final torch, in the West. The circle was complete.
We sang to the glory of the sun, soon to return. The Eldest Ovate exhausted though she was, welcomed the Assembly. The Grove chanted our reply. Above us, the moon traveled its well-worn path around the world. In that part of the country, it had not yet reached its apex. There was still time. After quick consultation, a messenger was sent. She flew across the moonlit grass, a spark of life shooting like an endless breath across the glittering blades.
Despite the thin sheets, sticky with the scent of PineSol, Margaret slept more soundly than she had in months. Outside, our source of power was behind the earth, illuminating the Wiccan Moon to its full radiance, eclipsing the stars with reflected light. As the sky was cloudless, the face of the earth was outlined as if painted with a thin coat of white fire. Where there were lakes, the moon swam in them. Where there were forests, the moon seemed to be tangled in the branches of the tallest trees. Where there were mountains, it looked as if the moon could be approached and touched.
The message was intoned.
Margaret was having a dream which was making her smile in her sleep; in her dream, she had successfully courted a seven million dollar check for the museum, was accepting an honorable title from her children, a plastic surgeon and a famous painter (the disabled child’s fame was her favorite part of the dream), and someone was knocking on the door. Knocking. Knocking. Margaret woke up startled and disoriented, but soon the piney smell of the bedspread reminded her that she was in a cheap hotel not terribly far from her home and that the man in the bed beside her was only Hollis. Her bunched-up nylons had cut the circulation from her left leg, which tingled and pinched. The knocking which had awakened her paused, and then continued. She threw on her skirt, buttoned her blouse. The knock was decidedly human, and was coming from the window, not the door. Thump-thumpy-thump-thump. Pause. Thump-thump. Over and over.
Margaret twisted around until she could see Hollis’ lumpy body in the dark.
“Hollis,” she whispered.
He did not respond.
“Hollis, get up. Someone’s knocking on the window.”
Hollis had passed out face up on the bed, reminding Margaret of a hibernating bear. His baggy stomach rose and fell steadily, his legs were spread wide to no good effect, and his right foot dragged the dingy carpet. Although his mouth hung open, Hollis’ breath whistled through his nose. His eyelids twitched and then his left hand jerked as if someone had slapped it.
The knocking continued.
Margaret shook her husband by the shoulder. He was still wearing his jacket, but his pants were down around his knees. She vaguely remembered removing his tie to kiss the loose folds of his neck. She hated that tie with its loud pattern of yellow golf balls. It trailed across the carpet like a spent balloon, reminding her of their earlier cheerfulness.
“Wake up, you old jackass!”
Hollis stopped snoring, but did not wake. This did not particularly alarm his wife. Red wine always rendered Hollis insentient. Margaret shook her husband so that she could later truthfully say that she’d tried to wake him and failed.
Across the wide field, the Eldest Ovate blessed the children of the assembled, called for prayers and petitions. Some wanted to get their kids into Montessori schools with long waitlists. Some wanted healing for their parents with Parkinson’s or liver cancer. Others merely prayed for serenity and an upturn in the economy. There was a lot of political grandstanding, as there always is. Further thanks were given for the aid of the Wicca, and blessings and a cheese pizza were sent to the Ovate Healer in vigil over the High Priestess (who had not returned to consciousness since the Linking). A chant was raised to Margaret, to help her trust the messenger.
She was Called.
***
Feeling self-conscious, Margaret slipped out of her navy Ann Taylor pumps and picked up a shoe for defense. It was either that or the curling iron, and the curling iron had a long annoying cord. Not a good weapon at all, she decided.
She inched her way to the window. The cheap carpet felt like sandpaper through her nylons. She was afraid she might be in shock. It was as if someone else were controlling her mind.
Thump-thumpy-thump-thump.
It was too ridiculous to fear – this shave and a haircut rhythm. Probably some local kid trying to spook her. She was oddly at ease when she pushed open a crack in the blinds.
A blue eye stared right back into her own.
That did it.
Margaret leaped onto the bed and took Hollis firmly by the lapels of his jacket.
“Hollis, Hollis, get up. Get up!”
His head lolled as if he were the Raggedy Ann she’d nearly decapitated once on a playground trying to prove a point to another mom. A small thread of saliva spun its way down to Margaret’s wrist from her husband’s lips. She wiped it away as if it were a spiderweb. Hollis mumbled something that sounded like “fix it yourself.”
Margaret snatched up the phone to call security. There was no answer. She dialed the front desk; no one picked up. Panicked, she called Room Service, and the phone just rang. Ten, twenty times.
She placed the receiver in its cradle.
Thump-Thump.
Margaret circled the room in her stockinged feet, picking things up and putting them back into place. She plugged in the curling iron and set it to hot, just in case, and feeling more and more ridiculous, returned to the window, her mouth scratchy with the taste of spent wine. Know your enemy, she thought, heart racing. Just a child playing a prank. The window was barred. She felt safe. Sort of. She took a deep breath and prepared herself for the blue-eyed gaze that she now knew would be waiting. She opened the blinds and the messenger waved.
The Eldest Ovate smiled. The Grove exploded in cheers. Someone started up “Who Let the Dogs Out,” and it was all chaos from there.
***
Standing before the window in the neon light of the motel sign was the sweetest, most angelic girl Margaret had ever seen. Although it was the 21st of December, the girl wore no coat, but instead was dressed in coveralls and a long-sleeved thermal shirt, like a farmer child. She was only about fifteen and the nest of mouse-brown hair on her bare head bounced as if it had just been washed. Her lips looked puffy and moist in the strange combined light of the moon and motel sign; her mouth turned upwards at the corners as if the girl had never learned to frown. Each time Margaret looked at her face, the child waved her hand in joyful greeting. Despite her fear, Margaret eventually smiled in reply. The girl had a pimple on her chin. Margaret was unable to be afraid of a girl with a pimple.
Margaret tried to shoo her away through the window. The girl waved again, still smiling; the brown curls of hair giving her a youthful energy that Margaret suddenly craved. The teen beckoned, and Margaret turned to her husband. He snored.
Adventure requires boldness.
She looked back at the visitor who again gestured: “come out.” There was nothing threatening about the child, but she was beginning to glance about as if she were late or perhaps worried about something. The girl wore white tennis shoes, the kind one might have bought in a Woolworth’s before the drugstore vanished from the face of the earth, and her toes had worn through the canvas. Margaret sighed: the girl’s toes were painted licked candied-apple red. Her red.
Margaret left a note for Hollis, saying she’d gone to tell the concierge that the phones were down. Then she pocketed the room key and opened the door.
***
“Hello Margaret, I’m Elizabeth. Betsey, for short,” the child announced instantly, and she grabbed hold of Margaret’s wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong for such a thin young woman.
“Do I know you?” Margaret responded, dumbfounded. The moon was high, but all Margaret could see was the vast empty field behind the motel; no landmarks, no vehicles, nothing that indicated whence Betsey had appeared. For her part, Margaret was not dressed for a December night, yet she felt cozy, as if she’d been wrapped in old furs. Even her bare feet were warm. She wriggled her toes, feeling the hard pavement of the parking lot catch the nylons. The runs tickled as they laddered up her legs. She giggled.
“Ours,” the Grove thought as one.
The white crowns of Queen Anne’s lace made long shadows in the moonlit field, and on the distant horizon, Margaret could make out several dark shapes moving in erratic patterns around what seemed to be a large fire. But Betsey did not let go of Margaret’s wrist, and Margaret found herself walking slowly away from the peripatetic figures and towards the edge of a dark grove of trees. A fine thing, or the Wiccans might have used her energy to fuel their Solstice sacrifice, and then where would we be?
“Will you dance with me tonight?” Betsey asked.
“I have not danced since my own wedding reception, and that was long ago...” her voice trailed off. Margaret hadn’t seen her undress, but the flash of white among the tree trunks ahead of her was a naked wraithlike girl scampering about in the winter-dead grass laughing and whistling a tune that reminded Margaret of a commercial she used to like for a coffee she never drank. Margaret’s fingers wrapped around the fabric of her blouse and even as she clutched the buttons tightly closed, her stout woolen traveling skirt, the blouse, her support bra, her ruined pantyhose—even the leopard print panties she had inexplicably dug out of the back of her bottom dresser drawer for the trip – all melted away as if they were lemon sherbet left in the sun. She looked down at herself. Sagging breasts. Stomach pitted as a golf ball, the bellybutton a spelunker’s dream-crevasse. Her thighs were rough and jiggly. Her pubic hair too long, too straight, too coarse, too gray. Her toes were gnarled as baobabs and her feet were mapped with several mountain ranges of blue veins.
She sat down in the dirt and started to cry.
Her thighs spread like vast white sausages on either side of her. She could not look at herself.
“You. Are. Beautiful,” Betsey’s voice shimmered from the darkness between trees. “Nature’s activities can be seen upon your skin.”
“The hell I am. I’ve had this body my entire life, whatever-your-name-is, Betsey, and it is spent. Over. I wasted it. When I was your age I spent hours in front of mirrors, admiring nature’s activities, as you call it, dreaming of what I’d do when I had a woman’s body. I used to try to guess where the curves would be. Where the wrinkles would appear, how the hair would look. A woman’s body. Well, here it is. Ugly and fat and fat and ugly.
“But where did the girl-body go? That’s what I want to know. I can no more see that adolescent firmness now than I could predict the furors of old age when I was a teenager.”
“Can a tree remember its growth from an acorn?” Betsey replied, appearing at her side, a wood-nymph, a dream, impossibly young and lithe, perfect in her lack of age, perfect in her lack of fear.
Margaret shook her head, angry. It wasn’t an acorn she wanted. It was the sapling, whipping in the wind.
“Then dance!” Music rose around them as if from the trees.
At first her feet would not move. She had rooted in the soil, those great thighs of hers sending out shoots into the dirt seeking nourishment. But as the voices rose around her, Margaret rose. Her knees creaked a little, her back resisted, but soon she was upright. The winter weather did not touch her. Ten minutes later, she was dancing: breathless and panting. God only knew how far away her clothes had gotten. She was in the middle of an unknown forest in the middle of December, heedless of the pine needles, the sharp sticks, the stones, not to mention the broken glass, the aluminum cans, the newspapers, the rotting banana peels, and the rest of the debris that humanity peppers over its planet. She danced. She rolled her head from side to side, kicked up her knees like a chorus girl. She threw her arms over her head and shook her shoulders so that her breasts flopped from one side to the other like old shoes tied together by a ratty lace. She never wondered if what she was experiencing was real or a hallucination, if it were dangerous or meant she had gone off her rocker. She simply hopped and jumped and thrust her chest and elbows out until her eyes leaked. She slapped her thighs and her flabby old ass, and she nodded her head until her hair came loose from its tightly pinned bun and whipped her in the eyes. Then she laughed. There was music in her head: a happy, Celtic sort of music composed mainly of voices. Distant voices making music like flame. She opened her mouth to sing along and found that she knew all the words, that they were words that her mother had sung to her and her mother before that. In the crib. During storms. Whenever she needed strength and hope. Wordless words made of sunlight and falling petals. Words made of singing and joy and trees and roots and earthy shrieks of delight.
She touched the Awen.
Briefly she felt the icy grass sting the bottoms of her feet, the December wind graze her face and breasts and back with its nails. She looked around clear-eyed, and terrified, and cold – and was returned to her bed.
She would never remember how.
And in that bed, she pressed her cold feet to Hollis’ legs and his shriek reminded her of something fierce and fun, but she ignored that feathery memory for she found her husband’s body warm and fully willing. Afterwards, they clung to each other like drowning newlyweds and Margaret murmured that she’d had the strangest dream in which she thought she’d danced naked. Her husband fought to suppress a rising belch and failed. The stink of half-digested salad dressing, salami, and old, sour wine flooded their cheap hotel room.
She caught his eye and they both burst out laughing. It was so human: to make love, to belch, to laugh. So infinitely human.
That huge belly laugh reached his toes and hers – and unbeknownst to them – to those third, as yet undeveloped sets of cells that soon would grow to be the toes of the Mabon: who in her time will lead us as our Mother Betsey, Keeper of the Way. Wait and see. Druids may seem quaint and weird to you, but ten, twenty years from now, you too may be leaving your PDA in a pile with your day clothes, and donning a coarse brown robe, waiting to touch the Awen that is your birthright and your joy. For at the very moment that Hollis and Margaret joined in laughter in that ratty Holiday Inn on Route 22 in Salem, the Eldest Ovate knew that the prophecies were fulfilled.
And even though it was very early in the morning, the Eldest Ovate asked me to text-message our Healer and ask after Sarah Millhaus’ progress. He replied (with a J) that by noon, the Wiccan would be hale as a lumberjack, so we all agreed to meet for lunch at that darling little seafood place that just opened up on Route 1A, for, as you well know, the High Priestess is an absolute fiend for steamers.
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