Linda Robertson - Arcane Circle

Eris whimpered pitifully.

When the claws embedded in her left arm, a strangled scream percolated up her throat as if she were trying with all her might to keep it down. At the sound, the claws jerked, tearing the flesh until rivulets of her blood ran down her forearm.

Beneath us, Johnny stirred, moaned.

“Forgive me,” she whispered.

I stared at her. Her eyes were clenched shut, a rictus of pain marring her features. She was asking this of Johnny. But I couldn’t ignore the echo in my memory of Amenemhab saying, Sometimes only forgiveness will do.

Her words repeated, becoming a miserable, begging chant.

A dark figure stepped from the vortex swirling the circle’s edge, and the aroma of raisin and currant cakes filled the circle. A cloaked figure with a sickle. That scent. I recognized Her wrinkled hands on the staff.

Hecate.

Her face was shrouded, hidden. She made no move but to bear witness.

“Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me,” Eris continued.

I waited.

“Forgive me, forgive me.”

And waited.

Forgive her, Red.

Johnny’s voice!

Yes. Me. Forgive her already, he said.

Me? I thought back.

I already did. If we’re still here …

But this isn’t about me! I swallowed. Hard. I looked from Hecate to my mother and back again. It can’t be. I have no bearing on the breaking of this spell. I wasn’t there when it was created.

“Once, he sacrificed for her. Now she will sacrifice for him,” the hooded figure said, walking the circle counter-clockwise, crossing behind my mother and continuing around to stop behind me. “But you are here now, with me in the place of Time Eternal,” Hecate spoke in her ancient but ageless voice, “in contact with the witch and the one who bears the spell. You have spoken the words. You have participated. And to achieve this purpose, you, too, must sacrifice something.”

I understood.

In my hour of need, I’d asked Johnny to give a piece of his soul to me and another to Menessos. It was the last thing he wanted to do. But he had bravely given. For me. Now I was being asked to relinquish a piece of myself for him, a piece just as important because it had shaped and molded me. It made me who I am.

But now that you know that, do you still need to cling to it? Johnny asked.

It was more complicated than he knew. He was aware that she had rejected me, abandoning me with Nana. But he didn’t know that she had gone on and, apparently, borne a child she then kept and cared for.

“How could you leave me and start your life over as if I’d never existed?”

My mother’s visage of pain faded somewhat and her eyes opened. Mouth gaping, she stared at me, then beyond me to the goddess with the sickle at my back.

“Did you hate me? Were you running from me ?”

Eris made no effort to answer. The dragon jerked its claws again, making the tears in her flesh a little longer. She screamed.

“How could you go on and never come back for me?” My tears dripped from my chin onto our hands.

“I made a terrible mistake, Persephone.” Tears streaked her cheeks, too. “I wanted someone to make me feel important.”

“Didn’t I make you feel important? All I wanted to do was make you happy!”

“The responsibility was overwhelming. I wanted … I wanted to matter to an adult. Being an unwed mother meant I had baggage. Persephone,” she sobbed, “that was so wrong, I know that now, but I didn’t then. That’s how I felt then. When Larry found out I was pregnant he threatened to leave. Until he found out it was a boy. His son. He stayed because it was a son.”

“Why didn’t you come for me if you had a perfect family going on?”

“Perfect? Perfect? We traveled like gypsies. You had stability with Nana. You had clothes and a bed and food. We had a horse trailer. We slept in the hay. I wanted you to have better than that.”

Looking at our hands, at the blood and tears and the darkening flesh of her right hand, I thought, Excuses.

“I left Lance, too.”

At that, I focused on her sharply.

“When Larry got sent up, I had nothing—not even the hay to sleep in, and I had a child to feed. I left him with that woman I told you about, who had taught me to tattoo. I checked into that hotel with everything I owned in a backpack … and some downers. I intended to kill myself, Persephone. I got drunk, thinking I’d go back to the room, take the pills, pass out, and never wake up.”

I was horrified.

“That was when he showed up. The man who offered me enough money to buy a new life for me and Lance. I’d never had a shot at independence before. I took it, and damn it, Persephone, I don’t regret it. I grieve over what I did to the boy … this man. My only chance was in his loss. I’ve learned so much since then, about life, about myself. I’ll give him back everything if I can. I owe him that and more. I’m doing this for him, because he deserves it, but I’m doing it for me, too. My conscience will finally be clear. And since you want me to do this, I’m doing it for you as well. I pray to the Lord and Lady that you will give me a chance to show you … to show you how sorry I am.”

Sorry. She said she was sorry.

Hecate gripped my shoulder firmly, anchoring me.

Here it was again. A choice. Do the right thing for the right reason. But what was the right reason? Justice? Family? It was just like the situation with Beverley. Both were noble causes worth fighting for. Both hinged on me. What did I want? I could have justice for my past. Or I could have a family to lean on in the future. A family that might let me down. It was a risk.

Good fighters know when to stop fighting, Johnny said.

I took as deep a breath as my lungs would allow.

I forgive you, Mother.”

Anger, resentment, pain, and anguish hardened on my skin like a thin film. I expelled the rest of my breath away, and all of that film cracked, flaked off, and fluttered away from me. I was free of all of it.

Sometimes only forgiveness will do.

The dragon released Eris, flipped and uncoiled its body, sinking back into Johnny’s flesh as it had been. Hecate’s touch faded away from me. She strolled back into the vortex, disappearing and taking the darkness of the circle, the wind, and howling dogs with Her.

Johnny stirred again. I lifted my hands; without pressure on Eris’s hands, both dropped to her sides—the right hand completely dark. The hematite tumbled to the floor.

I took up the athame and gestured the tip at the circle edge. “I cut now a door.” To my mother I said, “Go.”

Zhan took my mother out through the space.

While I completed the ritual, thanking the deities, releasing the watchtowers, and taking up the circle, the paramedics put Eris on a gurney and strapped her down, then left.

Johnny sat up and seized me in an embrace. “I am so proud of you.”

I squeezed him tight. “How do you feel?”

“Tingly. Weird.” Then he stiffened, staring at the mangled carcass on the floor. “Who was it?”

I pointed to the rings.

Between the police taking statements and the arrival of Arcane Ink Emporium’s other employees—one of whom showed up for the evening shift and called the rest when he learned what had happened—the next few hours weren’t boring.

Nana made a call to Celia, who was delighted to have Beverley for another night.

I’d wanted to ask Johnny about the spell, about how he felt, but the wæres and Omori had commandeered him, citing that their world was about to be rocked in an unprecedented way. Johnny had simply said, “Yup. Rock is what I do.”