A Man on an Island Ch. 06

He watched as she poured the contents of the mead bottle into an ancient-looking pot and, consulting an old school notebook, she added the fruit and some spices to the mead, saying quiet words to herself in Gaelic. She pushed a metal pan toward him and asked him to set it on the flat top of the stove. "Put two or three glowing coals in a heap in the middle of this, please. No more than that, and they have to be hot ones from the bottom or we'll smoke the place out."

He stared as she handed him a spotless old black iron poker, "This goes into the hottest part of the fire in the stove. This is a very old family tradition."

Cale took it and placed it in the center of the flames before he looked at Sylvia a little nervously, "Is this some arcane ceremony which involves branding the boyfriend or anything like that?"

She tilted her head with a mischievous and coy little smile, turning her face just a bit in a melodramatic way, "Why? Would you want something like that?"

"Uh, ... " he looked as though he was considering it for a moment, " ... ah, no."

Sylvia laughed as she rolled her eyes, "I'm preparing mulled mead, you twit. Sorry if I had you worried for a minute there."

"Oh thank God," he sighed in an overdone expression of relief.

She knelt on the floor looking so mysteriously beautiful to him as she set the pot onto the holder that she'd placed over the pan and then she sat back and asked him to sit behind her and hold her while the mead warmed. When he had his arms around her, she sighed as she looked at the tree in happiness.

The room was dark, except for the light from the stove door, and the way that it lit her face made him feel the way that he had long ago, happy and knowing his luck to be in the heart of a girl like her. He leaned around the side of her head as she pressed it back against him and he kissed her as she turned to receive it from him.

But that was when he saw it.

Cale stared a little as he looked into her eyes. They were shining in her happiness and that made it easy to see that the tree was sparkling a little in the almost blackness where it stood. He looked at the tree and he could just make out its dark shape, but when he looked at the reflection of her eyes again, he saw that it was dimly lit by a few tiny, tiny pinpoints of light.

"What am I seeing?" he asked and she shrugged, "Your happy recycled girlfriend?"

He looked at her eyes again and the pinpoints of lights were gone as she reached up to pull his head to hers and she kissed him slowly for a minute before she looked at the poker in the fire. "I think it's time," she smiled.

He let her go to get up and she pulled the poker out of the flames with an oven mitt on one hand as she produced a wet dish cloth and quickly wiped the ashes off with a lot of hissing steam. He watched as she considered it carefully, "It has to be hot, but not too hot."

With an unintelligible phrase, Sylvia plunged the poker into the mead and stirred it before she let it rest against the side and with a ladle, she poured them their mead. "Here's to us," she nodded as she raised her cup and he echoed it.

"So," she smiled at him over the rim of her cup, "Are you ready for the big secret?"

Cale nodded and she laughed softly, "I'm in love with you all over again. But," she sighed heavily for a moment, "I suppose that you need to be told all about what you'll get if we decide this.

I'm a woman. That's about it Cale, other than I'm driven by my heart, pushed by it pretty much like any other woman is. The only difference is that sometimes, I push back with hope that I focus with some old words to guide my thoughts.

I could blather on about the nearness of magic and how it can be bent a little to suit one's needs if they know how, or I could prattle and rant about how at certain times of the year, like Samhain or Belthane the otherworld is often only the thickness of a hair away from this one, but I don't think that matters anyway. I don't fry up frogs and eat the toes off a newt or something stupid like that. I have some old books, but what's in them are not spells, they're mostly ways to channel hope and little else.

It's all about quiet hope in here," she pointed to her chest, "the same as anybody else. If you think that you want a slightly nutty old farm girl to keep you warm at night, well then I want you next to me from now on. That's all that I'm saying. That's all that there is to me."

"That's the girl that I want," he smiled, "I didn't think you were some enchantress -- I mean besides the way that you can make me stop in my tracks when I see you sometimes and most of those times, you don't even know that I'm there.

I am a little curious about the floor here, though," he pointed, "As I remember it, there was a circle here before, and we usually ended up lying on it when we fooled around every time. I never knew what it was for and it was only a line then. When I bought the place from your family, I found it like this, a groove carved into the wood as though it was done with one of those wood burning things or a big soldering iron from the 1930s."

"It's a circle," she shrugged, "I guess that some would call it a magic circle or a circle of protection. If you need the history lesson, that year when we waited for you to come here to work for Dad, my Mom and Gramma took me aside and told me that this was the place to begin with you because it was quiet and we wouldn't be disturbed here. There's a lot of love in this old place, and that made it the perfect spot for us.

I always loved the way that we'd just pull each other down in the long grass or lie naked by the stream, but this was the starting place for all of what we had. My Gramma never thought that I'd do much more than use it to begin as she taught me to do, but I came here about once a week -- even in the winter if I could get here on my horse through the snow.

That was my mistake," she smiled, "it was something that I wasn't supposed to do more than once or twice. But I knew that I'd love you the way that I did, so I came back over and over to do it again, saying the hope that was in my heart.

After we had to split up, I still came back. I've been coming back all these years. I loved my husband, even when he showed me that he was an asshole at worst and nothing like Cale Taylor at best, but I came here to think and to remember you and what we had and try to send you some of my warm thoughts to keep you safe as I hoped." She looked down at the old planks for a moment.

"I guess I just wore it in pretty deep over all of that time."

He looked at the groove again. The old wood appeared to be burned black along that one line. The outer edge was more or less a straight line from the level of the floor to the bottom of the groove and inch or so below. But the inner edge wasn't an edge at all. It was a slope from the floor to the bottom of the groove and Cale was trying to think of how this had been done.

"How?"

She smiled, "I can show you how, and if I can get my courage up a little, I can even show you everything that I did then. But I need to know something in exchange.

I'd never show much of anything to an outsider. It's just not ever done. Things like that are easily misunderstood and though there are no trials anymore and a lot of people try to practise this, no true wise one shows these things to anyone, really."

She smiled, "I came here alone all of those times but there were a couple of times that I wasn't alone here. I'd see Cu Sith now and then watching me from the woods across the stream, but he never came inside where I was, and he never did more than watch a little. I like it think that it was to keep me safe and undisturbed and by the way, he didn't look like Rufus there, though I think that I can see a lot of Cu Sith in Rufus.

So I think that I'd like to know what it is that you want, Cale. Is it me? If you tell me that you want me, then I'll be happier than a witch in a broom factory, as the joke goes. I want you Cale. I want you back."

She stepped forward and put her arms around his waist, "There was a feeling that I had when we were together even if we weren't in the same place. It'll sound a little silly, I'm sure, but back then, I felt as though you were somebody -- obviously, and that I was somebody's woman. It wasn't the sort of foolishness that a girl carries in her heart, it was the truth and it was how I felt at the same time."

She looked at his shirt, "If we lived in a simpler time, there would have been no university for me to go to. We could have just lived our lives. But that's not how it was for us. Since I've had that feeling last, a lot of our lives have gone by. I've been someone's girlfriend, someone's lover, and for a long time now, I've been Paul's wife until a few days ago."

Cale watched as her eyes lifted to look at him. "But none of that was the same thing as what I'd already had when I had you. I want that back now. We have a chance. I want to feel like Cale's woman again. So if that's the kind of feeling that you want to have again, then tell me, and I'll show you everything. Do you want your woman back?"

Cale put his arms around her and he kissed her softly for a moment. "In the way that we measure time," he said, "you and I were a couple of kids who helped each other grow up over the course of a few months. But it never felt that way to me. In a lot of ways it felt like a lifetime and only an instant. I wanted to go on working for your father if it would mean having you when the summer was over and just going on."

He smiled a little sadly, "But of course that wasn't possible for us. We're here now, Sheelah; right back where we began. I've been accused of being a lot of things -- including stupid, and there have been times when I might have agreed. But I have you right here against me with the chance you spoke of.

Well I want to take that chance with you. I was only curious about how you wore a groove into this floor. I'd like to know how, but that's not the most important thing to me. You are.

So yes," he smiled, "I do want my woman back."

She looked up at him and her eyes were shining again, "Then you have me and I have you and it is important how it was done and I'll show you why." She hugged him tightly and kissed him before she let go to turn away and step to the wall. After looking a moment, she pulled the hem of her dress up a bit and held it there by tucking it under her belt. Cale watched as she found little recesses in the wood that he hadn't thought of and she climbed up the wall for a few feet to place her hand onto the hidden ledge on top of it.

A moment later, Sylvia pulled a cloth bag to her which had lain unseen there for years. It was made of heavy canvas and it had a sling which she slipped her arm through before she climbed back down. She laid the bag down and shrugged, "My toys, some of them, anyway. I haven't been here to do this since you came to live here, and I was obviously not going to try to retrieve them after you moved in.

Could you get us a couple of blankets and fold them up? I'd like them in the middle of the circle for later. Then I think that we'll need to get our clothes off, if you want to begin tonight."

While Cale set about doing as she'd asked, Sylvia began to undress. After setting the blankets down, he looked at her and saw that she was winding the belt back onto her waist and it puzzled him.

"There are many ways to follow the old paths, "she said, "Good ways, bad ways, and other ways. A lot of this shares some commonality with the um, neopagan practices of Wicca. Well it ought to, they are a lot alike." She indicated the belt and said, "My cingulum. I used this to measure out the circle the first time, since it's nine feet long exactly -- three times three. For most things, I'd use it for the circumference, but for this one, I used it for the diameter since I knew that I'd need the room."

With the girdle re-tied, she removed a thin rod of black wood from the bag, slightly tapered and as straight as an arrow, and with a flourish, it became twice as long as it was when she'd pulled it out the second before. Cale blinked, but said nothing. From the floor, it would have come to the top of her shoulder now. "What would I be without a wand?" she smiled.

She removed two blades -- one looked a little like a sword with a black grip, and the other carried a whitish haft and had a curved blade like a portion of a ring maybe six inches in diameter. This was the one that she held on to as she stood up.

"Now sit on the folded blankets, if you could and hold your knees to your chest. I need a bit of room since I'll be walking around you."

Cale was fascinated now and he hugged his knees as she stepped to stand in the circle, choosing her place with great care. "You can't say anything now, alright?"

He nodded and she began to walk around him, staying inside the whole time. Cale listened as she began a chant using words that he didn't understand at all. It was very even and steady and it was spoken in time with her steps. She held the knife in her left hand and the wand in her right. He said nothing, but he counted her laps. When she reached the ninth time around, Sylvia flicked the wand so that her index finger was at a point about one-third from the end nearest her body. That end lay along the underside of her arm, the tip at about her elbow, and the other tip of the wand was placed into the groove.

Sylvia walked on, still chanting to herself as she dragged the tip along the groove and Cale saw how it was that the inner side of it had been beveled. He said nothing, but he still kept the count in his mind and when she reached a total of eighteen, she kept right on walking, but he stared as he saw the groove begin to smoke a little where the tip of the wand passed.

There was no flame, and the smoke faded from sight just after the tip had passed it by. When she'd gone twenty-seven laps, she stopped and looked at him.

"Do not leave the circle," she said quietly, "but stand up and spread the blankets. It's alright if a corner falls outside the circle. This isn't any nasty ritual or anything. This is just a girl and a boy together who have a hope for themselves, just as we used to be. When you have them laid out, then kneel down someplace near the middle."

When that was done, Sylvia knelt behind him and set her things down before she hung her arms over his shoulders and hugged him with her head next to his. "A person like me lives a little closer to the otherworld than most people, that's all. That's really the only thing that's different. Here with me, I'm trying to get you to see what I see. Look at the tree."

Cale stared. The tiny points of light were back. It was subtle if anything, but to his eyes, there were little bright dots here and there in the boughs. They didn't light anything but themselves for the most part, but the tree looked amazing to him. "What are they?" he asked.

"Little things," she whispered, "They came with my family from Europe and they stayed here. I don't know if it's the right thing to call them, but I've always thought of them as pixies. If you touch the tree at all, they'll go out. Haven't you ever seen them here? Not all together like this, but haven't you ever seen a little pinprick of dim light in a dark corner for a moment?"

"I think I have," he whispered, "but whenever I really try to see what it is, they're not there and I wonder if I'm seeing things."

"Well you are," she smiled, "they're kind of like house faeries. We say that it brings luck to have them in your home. This is about as much as you'll ever see of them. Look at Rufus now and see Cu Sith in him."

She was right. Rufus was asleep on the couch -- since no one had told him not to be there. But Cale saw another animal there in him. As he looked, Rufus woke and raised his head, and in that head, Cale saw another, much wilder-looking face for the moment that Rufus looked and then he put his head down and groaned, after heaving a loud sigh.

"He's not Cu Sith," she said, "But I think that Rufus might have been sired by him. He's a huge, but I'm sure that he's a regular dog, though I can see that he has some of the things that the Black Dogs have always had in them."

"What happens if I step out of the circle?" he asked.

Sylvia shrugged, "Nothing. But you lose the sight of what you see now the instant that you place any part of your body outside the circle. The tree will be dark to your eyes and Rufus will look as he always does. We'll do this again at other times when there will be more for you to see. Just enjoy this with me now," she said as she snaked her head around to kiss him.

"So that's what you did when you came here all those times, watch the little lights? I know I'm over-simplifying on purpose, "he said.

She smirked, knowing that he was looking for a polite way to ask. "No," she said, "I came here and renewed the circle so that I could express my dreams and hopes in privacy and safety while I sought to make it real.

And of course, "she smiled at the floor boards suddenly rather shyly but wanting to be honest with him at the same time, "I frigged myself like crazy every time."

He stared at her with a crooked little smile, "All year 'round? Even in the winter?"

She nodded, "Maybe it shows my want, but yeah, even in winter." She shivered at the memory as she moved his hand to her breast, "Ice cold fingers down the front of an old snowmobile suit. How serious is that?"

--------------------

They were on their sides, Cale lying behind Sylvia with his arm around her. "So that's pretty much it," she said, "though I can make up a pretty good ointment out of pig's fat and a few herbs." She felt him hardening against her backside and she chuckled a little as she pressed back against him.

"Ooh," she smiled back at him, "that feels nice. Did I say a word that does something for you? Please tell me that you don't have a fetish for pig's fat. I suppose that I could live with that, but it would be pretty smelly."

"I don't have any fetishes," he said, "other than the one that I've always had for a girl that I knew who loved to walk in a meadow in the summer. She's the one who first enchanted me. I remember a few days when I'd actually get your father to run out of things for me to do. At the time, I took that to be a huge accomplishment and I was proud of myself for it."

He smirked, "It only came to my mind a few years later that there could never possibly be times like that -- when everything is done for the moment on a farm like that. I realized then that your father was cutting me a break so I could see you. He'd motion toward the hills where you liked to walk in a vague sort of way and mumble something about having seen you go that way a little earlier. "You can take the small tractor if you like," he'd say to me, "Go and take her a can of soda."

She looked at him and he could see that she was remembering, "But you never came on the tractor," she said. "That sounds strange. Dad was always so tight with the fuel."

"I know," Cale smiled, "his reasoning was that if I took the tractor, then I'd be back a little sooner. But I didn't think that you'd like to have me hunt you with a tractor, banging and clanging over the hills like that and I was also a little afraid that I might break something and he'd kill me then because he needed the small tractor more than the big one. Besides, I might have been just a city kid working on a farm for the summer, but I knew that no girl wants to see anybody coming for her on a tractor -- not when there are horses on that farm. So I'd ask if it was ok to take the big draft mare.

He thought it was 'high-larious' as he used to say sometimes, and he told me that she'd only kill me and mash me into the ground with her hooves to prove that she could, but he had to give me the point when I rode past after getting her to take the bridle. He said that only his father had ever been able to ride her. She loved to be hitched up in a team with her sister and if your old Da gave them the word, they'd rip out a mountain for him, but I think that she liked it when we'd go to look for you. She never wandered far when we were in that little place where we'd go.