Little Gods by Holly Black

WHEN ELLERY WAS little, her grandmother would take her to church on Sundays. Even though Ellery’s parents had long ago given up on religion, her grandmother said that was no excuse for raising their child to be a little heathen. It had probably been easier to give in than to argue. Ellery hadn’t minded going anyway, even though the sermons could get boring. She liked the songs and the hats; she liked the talk of water turning to wine and fishes turning into more fishes. Most of all she liked to listen to a bunch of grown-ups talk about eternal souls as though souls were real things that people could have and not pretend magic stuff, like rainbow-colored unicorns or webs that shot from your wrists.
Ellery would look at the statues of saints and angels and imagine that they had souls. She imagined so hard that she could almost see them coming to life and stepping down from their pedestals. They would join in one of the songs, their voices soaring higher than human voices could. They would wade into the pews, and their eyes would be golden and their smiles would curl up at the corners. Their wings would spread so wide that everything would be shadowed in a canopy of feathers.
Sometimes it seemed so real that she was tensed for it to happen. But it never did.
Ellery looked out the window at the empty street. Then she kicked her duffel bag closer to her with the side of one sandaled foot, so that she could run her hand over the army green fabric and reassure herself that everything she needed was inside. Robes. Athame. Clean underwear. Body wash that doubled as shampoo. A couple of t-shirts and a cotton dress. Her Book of Shadows and a couple of gel pens.
“They’re late,” Mom said. “Don’t you think you should call and make sure nothing happened?”
“Bob operates on Pagan Standard Time,” Ellery said, telling a joke she’d heard many times at the Unitarian church where her coven met. No one arrived when they were supposed to, and then once they got there, everyone took another ten minutes to bring in cookies or make coffee in the church coffeepot. Then there would be gossip, and before you knew it, an hour had gone by, and then another. Finally, two hours after schedule, they would start to perform the ceremony.
But once they did, they were witches. Real witches.
Mom didn’t laugh. The joke probably didn’t even make sense to her.
Ellery sighed. Everyone else in her coven was older than she was, so they could be late if they wanted. All their time was their own. They didn’t have to deal with parents asking a million questions about the farm they were headed out to, about the girl Ellery was going to be sharing a tent with, and about whether Ellery was sure she wasn’t going to accidentally join a cult.
“I’m not saying Wicca is a cult,” her father had informed her as he pushed around his lima beans the night before. “I’m just saying that there are people in every religion eager to take advantage of the disenfranchised and discontented.”
Ellery had groaned. “Bob and Cheryl aren’t disenfranchised. She’s a lawyer and he fixes computers.”
“I didn’t mean them,” her father had said. “I meant strangers.”
“They’re all people the rest of the coven knows,” Ellery had told him. “No strangers.”
“Are there going to be any other kids?” her mother had asked. “Anyone your age?”
Ellery had shrugged, trying to hide her nervous eagerness that she was going to be spending a weekend in a magical place, with magical people. “I think so.”
Mom and Dad had shared a look. They prided themselves on being liberal parents, identifying with the free-range-kids movement. They allowed Ellery to read whatever books she wanted, to pick the movies she saw based on her own tastes. They trusted her. Or at least they said they trusted her, but she could tell that the only reason they didn’t forbid her to go to Beltane at Greenstone Farm was that it would make them look like total hypocrites.
Ellery was tired of being a kid. Underneath her skin, a lot of the time, she felt ancient and mysterious and terrible—but on the outside she was only sixteen. Even at coven meetings, it was hard for her to prove her inner maturity. The other members talked about movies they’d seen and books they’d read, some of which she’d never even heard about. And they talked about people from festivals and workshops and Sabbats—people Ellery had never met. Silver Raven makes the best mead. Andrew gave such a great talk about chakras. Lorelei is getting so much better with the harp—and wasn’t it a beautiful instrument, carved for her by one of her sweeties, using wood from a tree that’d been struck by lightning?
But this weekend would change all that. Ellery would get to know the same people; the next time they told stories, she’d have been there for the origins of them; she’d be able to laugh at the same jokes.
“Maybe I should take my stuff to the porch,” Ellery said. She just wanted to do something. She felt restless, itchy with the urge to be in motion, to already be gone from the house and on her way to adventure. Her mother’s worrying just made everything worse.
What if they’ve forgotten me? What if they don’t want me to come and they forget me accidentally on purpose? What if they decide not to go? What if the date was changed at the last minute and no one bothered to call?
The dates couldn’t be changed, Ellery reminded herself sternly. The Sabbat was tonight. Tonight.
“They’re here, sweetheart,” Mom said. She didn’t sound happy, but Ellery didn’t care. She looked out the window at the white van idling at the end of her lawn, just to be sure that it really was them. Then she sprang into motion, jumping up with a yelp of joy, throwing her duffel bag over her shoulder, and reaching for her purse.
Her mother grabbed for the duffel, too. “Do you want me to carry anything?”
“Nope. I’m good!” Ellery said it fast, a blur of movement, kissing her mother on the cheek and heading for the door. “Bye!”
As Ellery crossed the lawn, she saw Dawn get out from the open van door, wearing a dress made from patchwork pieces of velvet. Her hair fell down her back in bright blond ribbons, with a couple of small braids bound with fringed leather pieces and a macaw feather.
“Merry meet!” Dawn yelled, and threw her arms around Ellery.
Dawn was twenty and attended community college, studying anthropology. She worked at a bird store part-time and seemed happier than anyone else Ellery knew. Sometimes Ellery wondered if that was because Dawn was also prettier than anyone else Ellery knew. She had bottle-green eyes, enviably long eyelashes, and a tiny mouth.
Dawn hopped into the van and helped Ellery heave her duffel into an unoccupied space. Alastair was already in the back. He was about Dawn’s age and Scottish, with a hot accent. He was always dressed in a long leather trench coat—even in summer—and wore fake fangs constantly. Mostly he made snarky jokes, but from the way he looked at Dawn, Ellery could tell that he was thinking about her in the most nonsarcastic way.
Jennifer Shadowdancer was there, too, way in the back, playing with her phone. She was a dental assistant, just out of school. She had a huge collection of Barbies that she’d shown the rest of the coven when they came over for a full-moon ritual. She wore a lot of t-shirts with cats or dolphins on them. Alastair called her Stepford Pagan under his breath when she was out of earshot. It made Ellery laugh when he did that, even though she was pretty sure he had an equally cruel name for her.
Bob and Cheryl—the priest and priestess of the coven—were sitting in the front seat. Cheryl grinned at Ellery while Bob mumbled hello. Bob was a huge older guy with a big laugh and a bigger red beard. Right then he was wearing a green poet shirt with a piece of antler on a cord around his neck.
The inside of the car smelled like cheese curls and feet. On the dashboard, underneath the GPS, was a Hot Wheels version of the same van they were in, but this one had googly eyes pasted over the headlights and multicolored gems stuck over the wheel hubs. A heavy-looking bag swung from the rearview mirror.
“I’m so glad you could come,” Cheryl said, pushing her glasses high on her nose. “But are you sure that you’re ready for Beltane?”
“Totally sure.” Ellery had never gone on a trip like this—and she had no idea what to expect. But she knew what she wanted. Magic.
Alastair piped up from the backseat. “Afraid her tender eyes will alight on that which will scar her forever? A thing so horrifying that it’s practically indescribable? People have been struck blind. That’s right, I speak of Bob … skyclad.”
“You can walk, you know. I leave you here and it’s only three hundred miles to the farm,” Bob said. Ellery thought he was kidding, but she couldn’t be totally sure.
“What’s that?” She leaned halfway into the front seat and pointed to the dash, hoping to change the subject.
“Salt.” He touched the bag. “Purifies. Keeps away the evil spirits that might want us to break down or get a flat tire.”
“I mean the toy van,” Ellery said.
“Oh, Blanche. That’s what I call her. She’s the spirit of the vehicle you’re in right now—a genius loci. And she’s all decked out to please Hermes, the god of the roads. There’s your little gods and your big gods, and a wise man pays tribute to both. Like, before I go on any big trip, I always burn a little bit of incense for Blanche.”
Ellery nodded.
Bob smiled. “Bonus that it covers up some of Alastair’s stink.”
Alastair made a rude noise. Jennifer shushed him.
“And I always leave out a bowl of milk for the spirits so they’ll look after my house,” Bob went on. “The local stray cats probably like it, too, but I don’t think that’s so bad. And when I get to a hotel room, I light a candle for the spirits that live there. There’s spirits in everything.”
When Ellery first got into Wicca, she’d discovered the Buckland and Cunningham books. She’d pored over basic dedication and initiation rituals. She’d made an altar in her room with a pewter goblet from a yard sale, two white candles from her mother’s candle drawer, some incense, and a piece of quartz. She’d tried to meditate and concentrate and focus. It had reminded her of being in church with her grandmother, of holding her breath, waiting for something to happen. Except this time it had.
There were spells. Spells to open her third eye and to take away her jealousy for girls at school whose clothes always looked perfectly pressed, spells to help her find her cell phone, and spells to bring new friends into her life.
Three days after she cast the one about friends, she saw a sign hanging in the window of the New Age bookshop. A coven was looking for new members. They met on Wednesdays at the Unitarian church across town.
Magic.
The first time she’d gone, Ellery had felt skin-itchingly awkward. Everyone seemed to already know everyone else, except for her and Alastair. Alastair had just sulked near the coffeepot, so it wasn’t as if he made her feel any better. And when Bob finally called the coven to order and got her to introduce herself, he didn’t seem to know what to do with an underage member. Ellery wasn’t sure they wanted her to stay, but she stayed anyway.
She stayed because sometimes, when they called the corners, she felt as though some power vast enough to ruffle the leaves of all the trees in a forest had for a moment paused to take notice of her. She stayed because on the walk home from Kingston High School she could look at the surface of the stream that ran behind it and remember a story that Jennifer told about seeing an actual water spirit leaping into the air off the coast of Block Island. She stayed because she didn’t know what she was doing and they all acted like they did.
“Can we listen to something else? My ears are bleeding,” Alastair whined as Bob pulled onto the highway. He wasn’t a fan of world music, certainly not the kind currently blasting from the stereo—harp music accompanied by someone singing about faeries dancing.
“It’s getting us in the mood to worship the goddess,” Jennifer Shadowdancer said, using her most lecture-y voice. “Beltane is the very middle of spring and sacred to the fey.”
Ellery decided it must be Jennifer’s iPod they were listening to.
They argued some more as Ellery looked out the window and let her eyes unfocus, so it was all a blur of bright green grass and new leaves. Spring made the air sweet. She let happiness wash over her. She was going to Beltane! She, plain old regular Ellery, who once won the spelling bee by knowing the word taupe. Who still mailed long letters in purple ink to her best friend, Claire, even though Claire had moved away a year ago and didn’t always write back. Whose favorite food was tacos. She was going to Beltane, and she was going to transform into the person she’d always thought she could be. She would come home changed.
They drove for half an hour with Dawn and Cheryl debating which version of the Doctor from Doctor Who was the best, before Bob pulled the van into a rest stop.
Ellery climbed out, stretching her arms over her head and yawning. She wanted to ask if they were almost there, but it seemed like something a little kid would ask and she wanted to seem grown-up, so she didn’t say anything.
The parking lot was washed in a sea of pink dogwood blossoms.
“It’s springtime, motherfuckers,” Alastair said, and everyone but Jennifer laughed. She made a face.
As everyone got in line to buy burgers at McDonald’s or pizza at Sbarro, Ellery realized she only had twenty-three dollars for the whole weekend and probably couldn’t afford to eat. Cheryl had told her there would be food at Greenstone Farm, which she was counting on. But given how overpriced everything was, if she ate now and then had to pay for dinner later, she would be broke. A rest-stop apple cost two bucks. Ellery bought a single cup of coffee, added three creamers, and drank it slowly. She’d read in some teen magazine that coffee would kill hunger—it was on a list of dieting tricks—but she didn’t think it was working. She just felt hungry and jumpy.
Then they climbed back into the van.
After a couple of hours, despite the caffeine, Ellery fell asleep listening to a ballad about a witch who lived by a winding mere and rose from a lake half woman and half jet-black mare. Ellery woke when her head knocked against the glass window. They must have hit a pothole.
It was dark outside.
Dawn and Cheryl were asleep in the seats behind her. Alastair was playing on his DS, its glow giving an eerie cast to his face, and Jennifer was knitting in the dark, her needles shining as they clacked together as if she were a fairy-tale witch. The kind who made houses out of candy. The kind who ate you up.
The van pulled onto a dirt road with forest on either side.
“Are we there?” Ellery whispered, leaning forward.
“Yep,” Bob said in a low voice. “This is it. Greenstone Farm.” He pointed vaguely out into the night. “The place is owned by Thomas Holden, who used to be a big-shot music executive. But after he hooked up with Dragonsong, he let us throw Sabbat parties. Apparently a local coven even comes here for the Esbats.”
“Who’s Dragonsong?” Ellery asked him. Her stomach growled.
He gave her a crooked smile. “My ex. A real piece of work, but she’s got something.” He laughed. “Pheromones. Love spells. I don’t know. Men fall head over heels in love with her. Give her whatever she wants.”
Ellery had no idea what to say to that, but before she figured it out, they came to a stretch of dirt with a lot of other cars parked there. Everyone started waking up and rummaging around for their stuff. A bonfire burned off in the distance, and she could hear some off-key singing.
“I have to pee so bad,” said Dawn, jumping out.
Yawning, Ellery and the rest of them got out more slowly and started unloading the tents and other stuff. There were already a dozen or more tents—a few medieval-looking, most nylon—erected outside an old red barn, light glowing from its windows. The other covens were obviously ahead of them. Ellery’s stomach growled.
“We can come back and finish unpacking later,” Cheryl said, checking her watch. “Let’s go inside and say hello.”
“You go ahead,” Bob told her, struggling with pushing a spike into the dirt. “Take the kids.”
Ellery wanted to go inside so badly that she didn’t even mind that he’d called her a kid. She grinned over at Alastair and he smiled back, leaning close enough to whisper to her in accented tones, “You won’t believe some of the characters you’re about to meet.”
Which was pretty rich coming from a guy wearing fangs, but right then she was enjoying feeling conspiratorial.
Inside the barn was exactly how Ellery dreamed it would be. There were makeshift tables covered in batik and velvet cloths and piled with cheese, grapes, oranges, olives, bread, traditional Sabbat oatcakes, and a few supermarket rotisserie chickens. There were cartons of cider, bottles of beer, and a lot of homemade mead. The food was delicious. Ellery stuffed herself.
Everyone was friendly—and fascinating. There was a white-haired crone wearing a silver circlet with a crescent moon on it, a younger man with a long waxed mustache and a brown leather vest, a girl in a belly-dancing costume covered with wide golden beads. There were lots of other people, too, young and old, most of them in the standard pagan uniform of black t-shirt, black jeans, boots, and pewter figural jewelry.
Ellery couldn’t stop staring. She had a million questions threatening to come blurting out of her mouth. How had they first discovered magic? How did they know they had power? What spells had they done? Had they seen something that was undeniably proof that there were gods and goddesses and nature spirits? Was it all real?
Ellery wanted it to be real. She wanted to know it was real more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
She was here as a member of her coven, as a practitioner—she couldn’t ask if it was real. That would be like saying she didn’t believe. And that wasn’t true. Not exactly. But there was a difference between believing and knowing. Ellery believed. But she wanted to know.
“The ceremony will be at midnight,” the white-haired woman said. “If anyone needs to meditate, now would be a good time.”
Ellery went to find Dawn. She was near the bathroom, looking oddly subdued.
“We should finish pitching our tent,” she said. “Before it gets too late.”
Dawn nodded. “Yeah, before everyone gets drunk.” There was a catch in her voice.
Ellery looked at her, not sure if she’d heard right. Normally Dawn seemed to float along on her own private happy cloud. They walked across the grass in silence.
“Sorry,” Dawn said finally, picking up one of the spines of the tent and threading it through the cloth. “I had a bad Ostara here—no, that’s not right, I thought I had had a great Ostara. But now … I guess I didn’t.”
“What happened?”
Dawn smiled at Ellery a little sadly. “I made out with two friends of mine—Chloe and Bill. It was really beautiful and innocent, you know? They invited me back to their tent and we told each other that we respected each other as people and would never let jealousy hurt any of our relationships. But I just saw Chloe on the way to the bathroom and she said that she and Bill broke up. Because of that. Because of me. Now I feel awful and I don’t know if I can—” She broke off and started jamming the other spine into the tent cloth.
“I’m sorry,” Ellery said. She didn’t feel adequate to the task of saying the right thing. She had only made out with three boys. One had even been her boyfriend for a while, but he’d broken up with her because she made a comment about how he always got food stuck in his braces. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah,” Dawn said, in that sad way that means the opposite.
They put up the tent, while Dawn told Ellery about the other people at the gathering. There was Tom, who was very handsome, with a string of beautiful girlfriends, but who made out exclusively with boys when he was drunk. There was a woman about Ellery’s mom’s age, Regina, who was dating Peter, who was her daughter’s age. In fact, they’d met through the daughter, Tanya, who was also at the Sabbat. Then there were Rosie and her two boyfriends, Brandon and Arthur. Ellery tried to remember all the names, but after a while they just rolled over her—stories about people she didn’t know and might not ever know. She felt as much of an outsider as ever.
She leaned down to unzip her duffel and realized she’d forgotten to bring a couple of really important things. Like a sleeping bag. Or a pillow. Or even a blanket. She was going to freeze. And the worst part was that Dawn was going to think she was a kid after all. An irresponsible kid.
“You okay?” Dawn was looking at her.
“Yeah. I was listening. Are they the people you kissed?” Ellery asked.
Dawn laughed for the first time as she unrolled her sleeping bag. “No, that was Chloe and Bill. Sorry. I guess I’m just blathering on and on. You must be bored to death.”
“Nothing about tonight is boring,” Ellery said, and meant it.
“Ladies! Stop your dawdling and endless primping!” Alastair’s voice floated in from outside the tent. “Opening ceremony’s starting.”
Dawn rolled her eyes, brushed off her skirt, and swung her hair back from her face. Ellery scrambled for her robe.
They rushed across the tiki-torch-lit meadow to a grove circled in stones. Most everyone was already there, forming a second circle within. Alastair gave Ellery a smirk and waggled his eyebrows.
“What?” she whispered.
“Look who’s conducting the ceremony,” he said. “Wonder if he still wants to put his maypole in her cauldron.”
“Shut up,” Ellery told him under her breath, but she guessed what he meant.
The white-haired lady with the circlet was standing at the center of the circle, beside Bob. Given Alastair’s snickering, she must be Dragonsong. There was a huge stone near them, draped with a white cloth and serving as an altar. It was amazing—like something out of a movie. The few torches burning at the edges of what Ellery could see made everyone look sinister and beautiful in their glow. She felt as though she was outside time, as though they were no longer in the world of van rides and fast food and homework.
Four people Ellery didn’t know called the corners, hailing each in turn.
The white-haired woman invoked the goddess, lighting a fat white candle that flickered ominously in the breeze. “Threefold Goddess, Spring Maiden, Lady of Light, come to this Beltane ritual! Roll on our grass and bless our cup!”
Bob lit a second candle. Even though Ellery had seen him be the high priest many times, this time felt different. His deep voice boomed. “Horned God, Sun King, Lord of Light, come to this Beltane ritual! Roll on our grass and bless our wand!”
“Spirits of the trees, of the land, of the rocks, rise up and dance with us,” the priestess said. “This Sabbat celebrates life—celebrates the approach of summer and the sweet ripeness of lust, fertility, and love. Let us welcome Beltane into our hearts and welcome the spirits to our table.”
The priestess—Dragonsong—took a pitcher from the altar and poured a thin stream of golden fluid into a goblet. Then she poured a little onto the dirt.
“This liquid is the blessing of the goddess. Drink deeply and thirst no more.”
“So mote it be,” Ellery chorused with the others.
The priestess put the goblet into the hand of the girl who had hailed the guardians of the watchtowers of the east. She took a sip and passed it widdershins.
The priest lifted a plate of what looked like small pancakes. “This food is the blessing of the god. Eat and be hungry no more.”
“So mote it be,” they said, all together.
Bob crumbled one of the pancakes in his hand and let the pieces fall into the dirt. Then the plate was passed to the person who had called the guardians of the west.
The drink, when it came to Ellery, turned out to be apple juice. And the cakes were basically the same oatcakes she’d eaten inside, only colder and harder. But both, in her mouth, seemed changed from their original state. The wind rose, blowing her hair around her face. The feeling that she was doing something true and real washed over her with a quiet certainty she had never felt before.
“Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again.” At the priestess’s words, everyone relaxed into laughter and hugs.
The man with the waxed mustache drank the rest of the contents of the goblet. A boy grabbed one of the torches and people started to follow him into the wood.
Ellery couldn’t stop smiling.
Someone lit a bonfire and someone else had blankets to sit on. A few witches said their good-nights and headed back toward the tents. Cheryl signaled for Ellery to come over and share her spot, near several older ladies. The high priestess was one of them.
“So this is your new initiate,” the white-haired woman said.
The heady smell of marijuana smoke floated through the grove.
“Ellery,” Ellery said, glancing toward a group of young witches passing a joint around the way they’d passed the apple juice. Alastair was with them, laughing.
“I’m Dragonsong,” the woman said. “This is my farm.”
“It’s beautiful,” Ellery told her, entirely sincerely. The woman didn’t look like a seductress. She looked like someone’s grandmother.
Cheryl touched Ellery’s hair. “And we’re taking good care of her.”
“What did you think of the ceremony?” another of the women inquired.
“Beautiful,” Ellery said again, before she realized that saying the same word over and over made her seem a little dazed.
The women laughed.
Dragonsong leaned in. “I can tell by your aura—very bright, very clear, lots of turquoise and purple energy—that you’re very spiritually advanced. You’ve had many lives. You’re destined to be a very important priestess someday.”
Ellery smiled, but something about the words she’d longed to hear didn’t feel right. The woman seemed bored, like she’d told a hundred girls the same thing and they’d all been just as flattered. It reminded her of her grandmother’s friends coming over to her after church, pinching her cheeks, and telling her how pretty she was going to be when she grew up.
“Come dance!” Ellery looked up to see Dawn spinning around the fire along with the girl in the belly-dancing outfit and a cute shirtless boy with bare feet and loose pants. They were whirling happily. The boy took a long pull from a green bottle and hopped, laughing.
A boy came up out of the shadow, holding a milk crate full of bottles. Dawn stumbled, nearly falling into the fire.
Half rising, Ellery asked Cheryl, “Who is that?”
“He’s our resident brewmaster, Bill.”
He was cute, his brown hair flopping over one eye and the muscles in his arms evident. Chloe and Bill, Dawn had said. It must be him.
Ellery jumped up, dancing her way to Dawn to see if she was okay, just as people crowded around Bill to sample whatever he had in the bottles.
“Stay,” Dawn said, dragging Ellery closer to the fire and pulling her into the whirling dance. Spinning made Ellery dizzy and the heat of the flames made her skin feel like it was glowing. A few more of the older witches started back to the tents.
A girl took off her top and jumped up to dance, too. She looked like a wood nymph, but it still shocked Ellery.
“She’s naked,” Ellery gasped, and Dawn slowed down enough to laugh.
“Skyclad,” Dawn said, and paused in the dance enough to pull her own top off, so she was stripped down to her bra and skirt. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s natural.”
The girl in the belly-dancing outfit took off her spangled top and threw it at a laughing boy. Ellery had seen girls half naked before, changing for gym class. But here it was hard not to look and hard not to feel weird about looking.
After the magnificence of the ceremony, all of this seemed so … like a house party. Like no one really cared about the circle—that was just the prelude to a night of getting drunk and hooking up. Like maybe they hadn’t felt what she’d felt. Like what she’d felt hadn’t been real.
She could just picture Alastair sneering from the shadows, nursing his beer. Or her parents shaking their heads at the sad people in the woods who pretended they had magic powers, who pretended that the indifferent universe stopped to listen to them.
She thought of herself in the church with her grandmother, waiting for the statues to move.
Ellery reeled away from the fire, the mood broken. She felt too warm and thirsty, but all she could find were random half-full bottles, most of them marked as wine or mead. Finally she saw a water bottle abandoned on a batik blanket. She unscrewed the cap and took a sip. It turned out not to be filled with water at all. Strong alcohol filled her mouth and seared all the way down her throat. She started coughing and couldn’t seem to stop.
“Are you okay?” a boy said, slapping her between the shoulder blades.
“Water,” she gasped.
He scrambled around a bit and came up with a plastic jug of apple juice. She took a swig and finally was able to breathe again.
“I’m Aspen,” he said.
“Ellery,” she told him, finally seeing him for the first time. By the flickering light of the fire, she couldn’t quite tell the color of his eyes. Sometimes they seemed gold and other times they were the color of water. He had a kind face, though. Handsome, too, with short dark hair and a soft, full mouth.
She didn’t remember him from the circle or from the kitchen. Maybe he’d gotten to the farm even later than her coven had. She was sure she would have noticed him—he was wearing an open greenish shirt with a necklace of filigreed silver leaves around his throat. He was very noticeable.
“Is this your first time at the farm?” he asked, taking a sip from the bottle of booze and making a face after he swallowed.
“I think that’s basically moonshine,” Ellery said. “It’s probably going to eat through the plastic. Or your stomach.”
“A poor offering,” he told her, but took another sip anyway. His voice was light and made her think of rustling leaves.
“But yeah, it’s my first Beltane here,” she said. “My first anything here. I’m part of Bob and Cheryl’s coven. A new initiate.”
“And how are you finding it?”
She looked around and sighed. “I don’t know. It’s not what I thought it would be.”
“Beltane is the celebration of passion.” He glanced over at the people dancing around the fire. “Of yearning and desire. If you want something enough, tonight you might be able to have it.”
He probably thought that she was upset that there were naked people. She started to stand.
The boy was still staring at the fire, his expression abstracted. “There are special Beltane rituals—”
“I just bet there are,” she said. “Smooth, cute witch boy.”
He had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Come on, that’s not what I meant. Sit back down. I mean rituals—like, well, like you’re supposed to wash your face with morning dew for luck, health, and beauty. And if you jump the Beltane fire you can make a wish.”
“None of that’s real,” Ellery said. She took the bottle of moonshine out of his hands and took a drink. It burned down her throat, but this time she expected it and didn’t choke. “But it is the holiday of intoxication, so I am observing that.”
“What would you wish for?”
“I guess for there to be wishes,” Ellery said, tilting her head up so that she could look at the stars instead of at his face. It felt shameful to confess. She felt tears prick the back of her eyes. She blinked twice and hoped he wouldn’t notice. “I wish something was listening.”
“I’m listening,” Aspen said, his beautiful mouth curving into a smile.
She laughed. The liquor was finally hitting her blood, making her feel warm and liquid. “Other than you.”
He took off his necklace. The leaves clinked together lightly. “Since you wouldn’t wish for anything I can give you, how about you hold on to this for a while?”
“That’s yours,” Ellery said. “I can’t—”
“Let me make my own offering,” he said, clasping it around her throat. The silver leaves felt cool against her skin. “You can give it back to me someday.”
She half turned to tell Aspen how nice he was being, even though she suspected that he wasn’t being nice so much as hitting on her, when Alastair staggered up to her, one arm around a blond-haired boy.
“You’ve been over here talking to yourself,” he said drunkenly. “Cheryl’s worried. She thinks that you’ve been exposed to impure things and are hiding to protect the tattered remains of your innocence.”
“I’m not alone,” she said, whirling. But there was no brown-haired witch boy sitting next to her on the blanket. Aspen was gone.
Gone like he was never a boy at all.
She reached up to touch the necklace and felt cool metal. Maybe it was made from moonlight and smoke and would blow away in a moment, but right then it seemed solid under her fingers.
Ellery traced the shape of the individual leaves with awe.
“Well, you’re not alone now,” Alastair said. “Will you accompany us for a walk, far away from this debauchery? We will escort you, like filthy-minded knights-errant.”
Ellery stood up. “I found some very bad booze.” She glanced toward the shadowed trees.
“Perfect,” the blond boy said. “It can escort you, too. I’m Tom, by the way.” He touched his fingers to his brow in a motion that was half salute and half bow. She remembered him from Dawn’s stories. He was the one who liked boys when he was drunk.
“Oh! Are you sure you don’t want to be by yourselves?” Ellery blurted out. As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. As far as she knew, Alastair liked girls—she’d thought he liked Dawn—and maybe Tom didn’t want to admit he liked boys, and maybe they were just hanging on one another because they were too drunk to stay upright otherwise.
Tom laughed, though.
“We are all complicated creatures,” Alastair said, pulling her to her feet. He was smiling, too. “With complicated desires.”
She wanted to tell them about the boy and the necklace, but she also wanted it to be her secret. They might not believe her. And if they didn’t, she might start doubting it as well.
But maybe Alastair was right. Maybe everything was complicated. Maybe it was okay to sometimes believe and sometimes not be sure. Maybe spirits really were everywhere, little gods who’d stop to talk you out of sulks and come to Beltane celebrations, or maybe there were just boys who gave you their necklaces because you looked like you really needed something and that’s what they had to give.
Ellery took both their hands and swung them as they walked. Both boys lurched a little and leaned heavily, drunkenly, against her. “I want to tell you about something—something happened. A mystery.”
“The answer is the viscount in the library with the candlestick,” Alastair drawled. “It’s always the viscount.”
“Are you ever serious?” she asked him. “I don’t think there is an answer. All I wanted was an answer, but what I have is a mystery.”
He stopped, blinking down at her. Tom stopped, too, and staggered back to lean against a tree, seemingly surprised to find they had halted.
“I guess I’m—I don’t know,” Alastair said. “Was there ever anything you cared about so much that all you could do was make fun of it?”
“No,” Ellery said.
Alastair sighed. “I guess it doesn’t make much sense. But I am … I am serious.”
“I want to go up to the altar. I want to leave something there.” Ellery didn’t know what she’d offer. Maybe she’d make a chain of daisies like she’d done when she was a little girl. Or maybe she’d leave the liquor. Aspen had seemed to like it.
“We’ll go with you,” Tom said, pushing away from the tree and offering his arm gallantly, if unsteadily.
“It might be boring,” Ellery warned him.
“You know,” Tom said, “one reason for all the rituals we do—the offerings and the ceremonies—is that it’s supposed to help us find our divine selves. The part of us that’s god and goddess. The magic that’s in us.” It was drunken philosophy, but he seemed utterly sincere.
“So we become little gods,” Ellery said, thinking of Aspen and his necklace, thinking of statues and the tiny toy car glued to Bob’s dashboard.
“We’re witches, after all,” Alastair said, in a hushed way that seemed strangely sincere. Maybe he was acting like that because she’d said that he was never serious, but he meant it, she could tell. “Our gods aren’t supposed to be distant. Let’s go say hello, one divine being to another.”
And so they went to the altar and picked enough dandelions to make a bouquet. They poured out a little of the liquor and drank the rest. They sat in the grass and looked up at the stars, waiting for the sun to rise.
Waiting to wash their faces in morning dew and grow luckier and more beautiful. Waiting for the spirits of the woods to find their gift. And as they sat there, Tom told them how he was trying to sort out whether it was okay to like boys when he was pretty sure he liked girls, too. Alastair told them about moving from Scotland and how much he missed his friends back home. After a while, Dawn found them and stretched out in the grass, complaining that they were having fun without her. And Ellery told them about the necklace and the boy in the woods and they all screamed with joy at the story, whether or not they believed it.
Ellery had wanted so many things from Beltane, but this was better than all of them. It felt like casting a spell, like opening up her heart and letting the universe flood in, like being hungry and thirsty no more.
Her heart was full and it was enough.