Ritual Magic

ELEVEN

SHE was chopping carrots when the mouse ran across the counter.

She was dreaming. She knew that, but it didn’t make what she did less important. There were so many carrots, a huge mound of them, and she had to get them all chopped. She’d come here to complete a task, but this wasn’t a safe place. She wanted to get the carrots chopped quickly so she could leave.

But then a dirty little field mouse, all quick dun-colored nastiness, ran right over that mound of carrots. She exclaimed and swatted at it. Then another one ran right in front of her, and another was on the floor at her feet, and another . . . where were they all coming from? So many mice . . . She started counting.

She’d gotten to twenty-one when she heard him calling.

It was the call of the wind, alone on the heights. The cry of a mother grieving her lost child. His voice was the sound of tears turned to ice and unable to fall, sorrow frozen in crystal drops. It was beautiful beyond words and terrible beyond hope.

Her hands shook. Her vision blurred. A mouse ran over her foot.

She cried out in anger and swiped at the mouse with her knife. The mouse raced away untouched. She stabbed her own foot. Blood welled up along with pain.

She dropped the knife and yanked her foot off the floor, frightened. It would be bad to get blood on the floor, very bad. This was a dangerous place to spill blood. If her blood touched this floor, something terrible would happen.

He called again.

She’d heard him before. She knew that suddenly—not a memory, but a bright, clear knowing. At other times, in other places, he’d called and she’d tried to find him, but she always failed. She hadn’t been able to reach him from where she was.

Tonight, she could. She was in a different place tonight.

Her heart began pounding. That was why she’d come here. Not for the carrots. Why had she thought they mattered? She had to find him and free him from the crystalline trap of his loneliness.

She turned and there was the door, right where she knew it would be, though this wasn’t her kitchen. But the door was where it should be, and he was outside, somewhere out there in the darkness. She walked to the door and opened it, leaving bloody footprints behind.

The black dome of the sky held neither moon nor stars, yet she had no trouble seeing the ground, pebbled and bare, and the trees she must go to. A tiny, shrill voice at the back of her mind gibbered warnings. There should be a moon . . . but the ground itself held a glow, as if it had soaked up enough moonlight over the eons that it was willing to share some of that radiance with her.

Eons . . . yes. This was an old place. A very old place. And he was calling. She walked into the dark forest.

The trees of this forest were black, truly black, not simply hidden by night, and very tall. She knew that, though she could only see them lower down, where the ground gave light. Over her head black trees merged with the sightless dark of the sky. At another time, she would have feared those trees and what they meant. She felt no fear now. Only urgency.

He was calling. He was calling her. It was her name she heard in this windless place, her name carried by echoes and darkness and the hoarded light of the moon. Her heart lifted in joy and terror.

And then, between one step and the next, he was there.

Her heart skittered. Her breath caught and held. The beauty of him wrapped around her and made breath unimportant. He stood ten feet away, pale god of the dark forest, garbed in his own glowing skin over muscles taut with life’s heat. His hair was tousled and friendly, hair one might touch, or at least dream of touching. And he saw her and smiled.

His smile lit his face with whimsy and mischief, and his eyes were the dark of the sky overhead, his full lips curved up—oh, full, yes, ripe and full his mouth was. Full of wicked suggestions. She fell to her knees, smitten by awe and the rush of desire.

He walked up to her, and his penis was full and engorged, saluting her merrily as he crouched on one knee. “You came,” he said softly, and his voice echoed inside her as he reached for her hand.

Why had she thought it her foot she’d hurt? It was her hand that bled, throbbing along with the heat in her loins. She tried to pull it back, embarrassed by the untidy blood welling up.

“No,” he told her. “No shame, nothing held back.” He kissed her hand gently and pulled her to him, whispering, “You can share anything . . . everything . . . with me.”