The Witch

For a moment she thought, "So this is how I die," and she waited for the fire to consume her. But it didn't happen: In a few moments, the flame burned itself out and left Grace untouched, although her nightclothes had burnt up, leaving her exposed and naked.

No, she realized suddenly, she wasn't untouched: Looking at her hands, she was amazed to see them smooth and graceful, no longer gnarled and spotted, as she'd grown used to.

Touching her face, she found the smooth, unblemished complexion of a 20-year-old, without the sags and wrinkles that had greeted her in the mirror only this morning. Her body was smooth, sinuous, and lithe, and when she twirled around she found she could move any way she liked without pain.

"It's incredible," she said. "I'm...I'm me again!"

And she threw her arms around the goat's neck, kissed his shiny horns, and whispered her thank yous into his huge shaggy ears.

"This is just the beginning," he said. "Climb onto my back, and I will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone."

Pulling herself up by handfuls of his black fur, Grace nestled on the huge creature's back, and then suddenly it felt like they were flying. Her long hair trailed behind her as they vaulted across the night sky together, and when she dared to laugh the wind blew her voice this way and that.

It made her think of the Peter Pan stories of her childhood, of flying away from parents and home and off into some fairy tale. Those stories had seemed different to her once she became a parent herself...but that was all in the past now. Now she was her old, real self again, and the true joy came back to her.

For a while they flew on, and she gave no thought to where or why, caring only that it felt good and that it was happening. Finally after some time, she did lean down to speak into the goat's ear and be heard over the night wind. "Where are we going?" she said.

"Look down," came the answer.

Grace's crown shone brighter, until it illuminated everything below them, like a tiny sun. She gasped when she recognized it: The trees, the field, the river--and yes, there was the red bank, just as she remembered it when she was a girl. All of the deep and old and secret forest was here, every wayward haunt she'd gone to for mischief in her black and secret days of youth.

"But none of this is here anymore," she said. "It was all cleared away years ago--bulldozed and built on. None of this should be real."

"In my kingdom, everything is eternal," he said. "Didn't I tell you: Whoever believes in me will never die? And this place is just as much a part of you as your body. For a little while, the world sees it no more--but then you saw me, and because I live, it lives too."

They touched down as gently as a feather. Climbing down so that her bare feet touched the clover, Grace was at first alarmed to find so many other people here. But then she recognized one of them:

"Aunt Jenneh?"

Yes, it was her--not as she'd appeared in those last years, cursed by dementia and pox, but looking as she must have when she was Grace's age--or that is to say, the age that Grace suddenly was again.

Smiling, her aunt embraced her. "It's so good you're here," she said. "I always knew you'd be back."

"I didn't," Grace said.

Linking arm and arm, she led Grace again to the sabbat, where the fires were already burning and where everything was decorated with lilies and blackthorns and rowans and nightshade, and the women sat weaving crowns out of flowers that they put on one another's heads, and making garlands that they draped over tree boughs or laid along the ground, creating a long path on the forest floor.

When Grace asked what was going on, Aunt Jenneh told her, "A wedding." When she asked whose, the other woman surprised her by saying, "Yours, of course!"

Startled, the only thing Grace could think to say was, "I was married once already..."

"But you knew that didn't count," Aunt Jenneh said.

There in the crowd was Grandmother--not as Grace had known her, but a smiling and beatific young woman. Grace's mother was there too--of course she'd never have been caught dead in a place like this, always too jealous of her reputation as an upstanding church woman. But here she was anyway, laying flowers at Grace's feet, just like all the others.

Many, many women she'd known in the past were here, and when she felt something warm press against her feet she looked down and was amazed to discover a familiar old gray cat sat there, looking up at her with expectant yellow eyes.

"Graemalkin!" she said, picking the old cat up. "You too?"

"Everyone is here," Aunt Jenneh said. "There's room for all of us in this place, just like we were promised. But today isn't about us: This is all about you. I always knew you were special, Grace."

And she put a flower wreath in Grace's hands. So did the nearest woman, and the one after that, and the one after that, until she had so many she couldn't hope to carry them all, and she left a trail of lost blossoms all the way up to the spot consecrated as altar, a tall, flat standing stone surrounded by the oldest trees, a place that had been ancient and sacred before the first stone was laid for the foundation of the earliest church.

There, HE was waiting for her. Not as a black goat anymore, but a beautiful man, just as she'd seen him the first time: The long path of flowery garlands formed an aisle leading up to the sacred stone, and to him standing there with it, while smiling and tearful women looked on from every side.

Unexpectedly, the cat leapt from her arms, scampered down the aisle, clamored onto the altar stone, and, facing the congregation, spoke in a loud, clear voice:

"Grace Sower, approach, and meet your bridegroom."

Meeting his eyes, Grace felt her heart flutter and almost burst. Unconsciously, she let all the flowers fall from her hands. The space between them seemed to vanish as she all but floated down the aisle.

They stood facing each other, both of her hands in both of his. In the golden light of the bonfires, the dark skin on his cheeks and forehead seemed to glow.

"Welcome to the communion of your kind," the cat said. "The deep mystery of sin has penetrated every bosom, and all those who thought themselves holier than you have been cast out. All things that can be desired our wicked arts have made manifest, and you stand here, depending on each other's hearts, undeceived in the true nature of mankind. In this, indulgence will be all your happiness.

"Welcome," said the cat.

"Welcome," said the groom.

"Welcome," said the women of the sabbat. Grace's spirit welled up inside of her.

Finding her voice again, Grace replied, "There's no need for vows."

"Indeed," said the groom. "In this moment we belong only to ourselves."

"Then bestow yourselves on whomever you would choose, however you would choose it; this is and ever shall be your prerogative," the cat said.

Before the words were even spoken Grace threw herself into his arms, and the force of it was so much that it actually knocked the shining crown from off her head. Not that it mattered: In that kiss was all the light of a million years' worth of days.

There, on a bed of flower blossoms, in front of everybody, they had their wedding night. His lips tasted sweet and full, and wherever his bare skin touched hers (she looked shockingly pale and fair next to his dark complexion) tiny frissons of excitement blossomed.

Lying back, Grace sank into the bed of flowers, letting it surround her and swallow her up on every side. He laid on top of her, the weight of his body surprisingly light--almost delicate--when bearing down on her. The other women were all watching, but Grace didn't feel embarrassed; why shouldn't they watch? What could be more natural?

Whispering to her between kisses, he warned that it might hurt--that it would be like her first time again. She responded by reaching down to grab him and all but forcing him inside of her; there was a moment of tension and resistance, just as he'd said--but it gave way in a second, and almost immediately after that she was shivering with the delicious feeling of having him at last deep inside of her.

The night seemed to close around them, like a curtain drawing tight around the world. While his hips rolled and his fingers combed through her hair, Grace stretched out fully and languidly on the forest floor. While he lost himself inside of her, she grasped handfuls of flower petals, crushing them and letting them slip through her fingers; she imagined she would hold and crush the entire world the same way if she could, if only it would mean that this moment never had to end.

But then she thought, why should it end? Why shouldn't things stay like this forever? What else was there beyond this moment? And didn't they have the power, here together? He'd said so himself. Throwing her arms around his neck, she pulled him in tight against her body, rocking her hips and twining her legs around him like a creeping vine. She couldn't believe how hard he felt all of a sudden--not just the hard member he plunged inside of her, but his entire body, so yielding moments ago, now was rigid as tightly drawn steel.

Struggling, Grace tried to open herself up even more. She could barely catch her breath, each deep, hard pant cut off by more exertion almost as soon as it was out of her mouth. She devoured him with kisses, and her arms wrapped tight around the bent bow of his body, trying to hold him in as long and as deep as she could. The whole universe was wetness and heat and the warring sensations of his hard body above and the soft ground below; Grace was caught between two extremes, and neither had anywhere to go except to clash over the prize of her body.

When he came, it didn't feel like a climax or any kind of ending. Rather, it gave her the feeling of a key finally being fitted into a lock, and the door opening to unexpected possibilities beyond. The feeling formed a warm, burning kernel inside of her. She thought for a second it might even overwhelm her entirely...but if anything when the time came she felt even stronger.

She bled too, as she had her first time, but it didn't bother her. He said that every spot of ground where it fell would be sacred, and the spot here in their bower where they'd first embraced would be overgrown with new life, created by the joining of their bodies in the most sacred way.

It would be a paradise of delights, one they'd created not over some days but across many lifetimes, of which they now had more than they could ever have imagined alone.

"Oh yes," she said--both because she knew it was true and because of the ripples of pleasure washing over her. Together, they would conceive the world, just as they were always meant to do.

***

Noticing her door standing open the next morning, some of Grace's neighbors peeked in to check on her. They found her in her bed, a very old woman who had gone to sleep one last time and never woken up.

A handful of them stood at the bedside and murmured to each other while they waited for someone to come and take her away. "She looks so peaceful," they said, and noted poignantly the burnt-out candles on her nightstand, and the still-open Bible lying nearby.

"It's so sad," one of them said. "But she lived a long time."

"And it looks like she went painlessly," another added. "I hope for the same thing when it's my time."

Everyone nodded, and agreed that it was for the best.

"After all," they said, "she's with god now."