Death Before Facebook

What’s an inverted pentagram, for openers?”
    Suby drew a star and turned it upside down, so that two of its arms pointed upward. “There. It’s supposed to be a Satanic symbol—I’ve never seen one except on, like, album covers. Death-rock kind of stuff.” She turned it back around. “Not to be confused with this one, which means the four elements and spirit. Or… lots of things, I guess. That’s just how I think of it.”
    The coffee had dripped through its filter. She turned back and poured Skip a cup.
    “So tell me about the Cauldron of Cerridwen.”
    “I guess I have to, huh?” She seemed to have calmed down.
    “It’s probably a good idea.”
    “The only thing is, I don’t know where to start. Let’s see. Well, we’re a group that has a name that I’m not going to tell you yet, because it’s kind of inflammatory. What do you know about neopaganism?”
    Skip shrugged. “I’ve never even heard the word before.” (Before talking to Ramon, anyway.)
    “Well, it’s a kind of made-up religion based on—um… what? All the religions that ever were, practically. Unlike Satanism, by the way, which is an offshoot of Christianity. We don’t even recognize Satan, who is a Christian concept and nothing to do with us.”
    “Wait a minute—this thing is based on all religions except Christianity?”
    She flushed. “Well, there are pagans who are also Christians. I just don’t happen to be one of them.”
    “And Kit?”
    “I have no idea. The great thing about it is there aren’t any rules or any dogma. You can believe anything you want and nobody’ll care.”
    “Except about Satan.”
    She flushed again.
    “I take it back. There’s a code of ethics. Black magic is precluded.”
    “Whoa! I’m in way over my head.”
    “Most of the ancient religions did go in for magic. Think about Native American shamanism, or voodoo. We think they were on to something. But we don’t use what we do for evil. As I understand it, Satan’s evil by definition.”
    “You call yourselves witches then.”
    “That’s right. How’d you know that?’
    “Tell me more.”
    “Okay, the word I was avoiding is ‘coven.’ It’s a group of witches who work together. Ours is all women, but we aren’t Dianic.”
    “What?”
    “Sorry. That’s a technical term for witches who only call the goddess, and that’s not us. See, we reject the idea of a male god. That is, only one god who happens to be male. Most ancient cultures had a goddess before they had a god—the god is her consort, but also her son and her lover, depending on what time of year it is.” Seeing Skip’s confused look, she said, “Most of the beliefs come from agricultural cultures. The goddess represented the Earth itself and the god represented the grain. He dies, so he has to be born again. That’s why he’s her son.”
    “Let me get this straight. She mates with him, he dies, and then she gives birth to him again.”
    Suby shrugged. “They don’t call these things mysteries for nothing.”
    Skip was thinking that this pat little lecture explained a few things, but Suby was making it sound a lot more cheerful than she had found it.
    “Come on, Suby. Why would you need human bones for the sort of thing you’re talking about?”
    “Human bones? What on Earth are you talking about?”
    “A skull on your altar.”
    Her cheeks flamed again. “You’ve been spying on us.”
    Skip shrugged.
    “Oh, God, we were doing that crone ritual. Oh, Jesus, this is starting to make sense. We even made jokes about it—if someone saw this, wouldn’t they freak out, ha, ha, ha. And it
would
be a cop.”
    “Why don’t we go back in the living room? I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be here a while.”
    “You want some toast? I’m starving.” Now that she knew what Skip knew, Suby was friendly as her own little black cat—which Skip now thought of as her familiar.
    Carrying their coffee and Suby’s toast, they went back in and settled on the shabby sofa. Suby put a hand to her head. “God. How can I explain this?” Finally, she pointed outside, at the gray sky. “This is the crone’s time of year. Wmter. The maiden is spring, and the mother is summer.”
    “That works metaphorically.”
    “Ah. That’s a word I should have used myself. You’ve got to think of this stuff as metaphor. We’re a very dramatic coven—we’ve got the right clothes for everything, and these real formal, real dramatic rituals with a lot of memorization