David D. Levine is a lifelong SF reader whose midlife crisis was to take a sabbatical from his high-tech job to attend Clarion West in 2000. It seems to have worked. He made his first professional sale in 2001, won the Writers of the Future Contest in 2002, was nominated for the John W. Campbell award in 2003, was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Campbell again in 2004, and won a Hugo in 2006 (Best Short Story, for "Tk'Tk'Tk"). His "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" was nominated for a Nebula Award in 2008, and a collection of his short stories, Space Magic, is available from Wheatland Press (http://www.wheatlandpress.com). He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kate Yule, with whom he edits the fanzine Bento, and their website is at http://www.BentoPress.com.
Julian's mother reached out and tucked a stray lock of his black hair behind his ear, but as soon as she turned away he shook it back down. He was thirteen, not a little kid any more, and if he wanted to wear his hair free and easy he would. "Of course it isn't fair, honey," she said, taking down a bottle of henbane from the kitchen shelf and whisking nonexistent dust off of it with a bright pink feather duster.
"But it's just a simple little divination spell!" He'd found Astarte's Pool in his grimoire that morning and had already memorized the incantation. It looked like a piece of cake, and he couldn't see any reason why it should be forbidden to males.
Julian's mother's own brassy hair was never out of place. That solid helmet of hair never even budged. She frowned, resting the feather duster on one earthtone-polyester-clad hip. "Now, honey, you know better than that. The Twofold Deity has two aspects for a reason. Boys and girls each have their own parts to play."
She didn't seem to have noticed the hair hanging in his eyes. He was half relieved at missing the usual lecture about looking like a hippie, and half annoyed she couldn't even spare him that much attention. "But how come it's the girls who get all the really interesting spells?"
"I'll answer that if you tell me why a woman earns fifty-nine cents for the same work a man does for a dollar."
"Look, just let me try it. I swear I won't tell anyone in the coven. You know you can trust me—I've never told a soul at school about the Craft, not like that blabby Dan Corry."
She finished her dusting and hung the duster in the pantry. The Lakeshore Bank calendar on the pantry door read SEPTEMBER 1974, with a picture of bright abstract autumn leaves, and the word MABON was written on Sunday the 22nd. She tapped the date with one long pink-lacquered fingernail. "We can talk later. Right now I need you to practice your incantations. You have a very important support role to play in tonight's sabbat."
"Support," he muttered, turning away.
"I heard that," she snapped. A chill touch on his shoulder, and suddenly he was facing her again, across the immaculate sunset-and-harvest-gold expanse of the kitchen linoleum. Just another example of the kinds of spells reserved for women. But her anger was quickly replaced with a sympathetic expression. "Oh, honey, I know how you feel. But everyone has their job to do in balancing the universe between light and dark. The God is consort to the Goddess, born of her at the new year, mating with her in the spring, and dying in the fall. Only the Goddess is eternal."
And then she smiled, and Julian knew what was coming next. "You'll understand when you're older."
Julian rolled his eyes.
"Now run along," Julian's mother said cheerily, and waggled her shiny pink fingernails. "No mistakes tonight!"
"Yeah, whatever."
This time she let him go.
After two hours of studying, sprawled across his Partridge Family comforter with his nose in a grimoire, Julian was able to convince his mother he had his little incantation down pat and she released him for the afternoon. He immediately hopped on his bike and headed for the mall.
Justin lived in Lakeshore, a pathetic little suburb so bogus that the nearest mall was in the adjacent suburb of Alewife Bay. The mall was usually outside his range, a good forty-five minutes away by bike, but after this morning's argument he really needed something sweet to drown his sorrows, and the frozen yogurt shop at Alewife Bay Mall fixed a mean banana split.
It really wasn't fair, Justin reflected as he pedaled, dry leaves crunching under the wheels of his five-speed Huffy. Outside of the Craft, the policemen and doctors and bankers were almost all men. But within it . . . oh, every coven was theoretically co-led by a priestess and a priest, representing both aspects of the divine, but it was the priestess who made all the decisions. And all the really cool spells, like levitation, invisibility, and divination, were Goddess spells. The God spells were all about healing, or providing energy for another spell, or just general feel-good mush. But whenever Julian asked to learn any of the spells that were actually good for anything . . . well, it was as bad as the time he'd asked for an Easy-Bake Oven for Yule.
He still didn't understand why that was such a big deal.
Julian's spirits lifted a little as he rolled up to the mall entrance, because he saw his friend Liz's bike lying next to the bike rack. There was no mistaking The Monster—it used to be pink, but she'd spray-painted it black and put a sticker of big pointy teeth on the handlebars. Julian's own bike was yellow, decorated with blue and white Crazy Daisy stickers.
Julian had first met Colleen Elizabeth O'Malley—she hated her first name—about five years ago, right here at the mall. She lived nearby, and on that day she'd been one of a group of kids from Alewife Bay Grade School who'd ambushed him outside the entrance and begun tickling him unmercifully.
Julian hated being tickled. When he was tickled, he started hiccupping, and then he couldn't breathe, and then he threw up. He'd been humiliated by tickling hundreds of times in his grade school and middle school career.
But unlike anyone else, when Julian gasped out "Stop that!" . . . Liz had stopped, and she'd made the other kids stop too. And she'd never tickled him again.
They'd become fast friends that day. It was a weird friendship; Liz was a twelve-year-old tomboy, a wiry freckled redhead whose cat's-eye glasses were always getting broken in some sporting event or other, while Julian was a pale skinny wimp whose favorite sport was Skittle Golf. When they'd played together as kids, Julian was the one who got out the toy pots and pans while Liz wanted to play kickball. But they kept hanging out together, kindred spirits in some indefinable way.
Julian locked his bike to the rack next to The Monster, making sure the combination was properly scrambled, and went inside.
The mall had changed a lot since the last time he'd been there. It used to be a standard strip mall, one line of stores facing a parking lot, but in the last year they'd decided to enlarge and enclose it, building a second row of stores and putting a roof across the space between them. Some of the new stores were already open, huge expanses of glass reflecting the older stores opposite, old-fashioned display windows and storm doors braced for a winter that would never return. Other new stores were incomplete, with exposed metal beams and work lights hanging from yellow electrical cords.
He found Liz in the frozen yogurt shop, licking at a chocolate soft-serve yogurt cone. He said "Hey," then went up to the counter and ordered a large banana split with chopped walnuts, strawberry topping, and extra hot fudge.
"Why so glum, chum?" Liz said as he returned with his big styrofoam boat full of gooey goodness.
Julian sighed. One of the most stringent rules of the Craft was that its existence must never be revealed to lay people under any circumstances. There were very good reasons for this, but it made it kind of hard to talk with people about what was going on in his life. "It's my mom. I've got a . . . a project I want to do, and she won't let me."
Liz winked, crunching on her flat-bottomed cake cone. "So do it, and don't tell her."
"She'd find out for sure." Magic—at least any magic worth doing—left an imprint on the universe, and to a priestess as powerful as Julian's mother that print was as blatant as a road sign. "And then I'd really catch hell."
"Huh." She opened her mouth wide and popped the last inch of cone into it, chomping it with gusto, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "What is this big secret project, anyway?"
Julian shook his head. "It's personal." That was his first line of defense, and with Liz it was usually enough.
The yogurt shop was getting crowded, so they walked to the middle of the mall. A big old department store had been torn down here to make way for a new central court, a broad open corridor running east-west across the north-south line of the original strip mall. In the center a fountain was under construction, half-tiled in bronze and gold with a collection of lead pipes sticking up in the middle.
They talked for a while about the new Saturday morning shows, and whether Land of the Lost was a ripoff of Valley of the Dinosaurs or vice versa, while Julian scooped up his yogurt with a long white plastic spoon. But as he ate, looking up at the central court's broad expanse of exposed beams and fiberglass skylights, Julian began to become aware of a peculiar, cold feeling in his gut. And it wasn't the yogurt.
Julian didn't have the Sight, and all the spells for divination were Goddess spells, but he knew the forces of darkness when he felt them.
Every coven's primary job was to help maintain the balance of light and dark in the world. Light was order, and required work—human beings, channeling the energies of the Goddess and the God, to align things that had gotten out of order and put problems right. Darkness was chaos, and the forces of darkness were always pushing things awry and out of kilter.
Darkness wasn't evil, as such. Order without chaos was stagnation; a certain amount of darkness was necessary in the world. But like a rising flood or a raging forest fire, the uncontrolled forces of darkness could be mindlessly destructive.
And they were threatening to burst out here.
"What's wrong?" Liz said.
"Nothing. I'm just not hungry any more."
Liz gave him a look. "Julian, you're a thirteen-year-old boy. If you're not hungry, something's wrong."
Julian dropped the uneaten half of his yogurt in a trash can. He wandered around the mall, all his perceptions fully extended, but he couldn't find a specific nexus for the disquieting feeling of darkness. Although it was strongest near the center court, the whole mall seemed saturated with it.
Liz stayed with him as he prowled around. "Are you looking for the draft?"
"Huh?"
"There's cold air coming from somewhere." She rubbed her shoulders, though the air didn't seem particularly cold to Julian.
"Uh, yeah."
Julian searched as hard as he could. If he could find the cursed object or locus of summoning that was the source of the energy, it could be removed or disenchanted . . . but the energy was just everywhere.
"This is as hard as science class," Liz said, looking up at the ceiling. "If only we had some kind of draft-o-meter."
That gave Julian an idea. "Maybe we can make one."
"How?"
"I did a . . . a science project, in school. I just need a cup, and some water." Liz was terrible at science. She'd never know the difference between a science project and a magic spell.
They scrounged up a plastic cup from a trash can in the center court and filled it with water from the drinking fountain. Julian held it between his hands and muttered under his breath.
Astarte's Pool. He wasn't supposed to use it—it was a Goddess spell—but if he could figure out what was going on here maybe his mother would forgive him.
"What's that you're saying?"
"I'm . . . I'm trying to remember the scientific formula."
"Better you than me."
As Julian murmured the words of the spell, the surface of the water began to shimmer. His heart raced; it was working!
And then a recorded trumpet call blared through the mall, shattering Julian's concentration and destroying the spell. Infuriated, Julian looked around for the source of the sound.
It was a giant wrapped package mounted above the door at the far end of the center court. As Julian watched, the ten-foot box's sides and lid swung back, revealing a toy European village populated by dozens of painted wooden people and animals. They danced and bobbed about to a recorded tune, something upbeat and music-boxy, which ended with a little wooden boy in lederhosen coming out on a platform with a mallet and striking a large gong six times. The little wooden mallet didn't actually touch the gong, but each near-strike was accompanied by a loud recorded bong.
As the box closed itself up, the wooden people and buildings folding themselves back inside, Julian realized it was a clock, and it had just struck six. Six o'clock, and he had to be back home in time for dinner before the Mabon sabbat, which would begin promptly at sunset—6:50 PM. And home was forty-five minutes away.
"Oh, man," he said. "Sorry, I gotta run."
Julian's parents were already in their long black sabbat robes when he arrived at 6:40. He'd dropped his bike unceremoniously on the porch, too tired even to work the garage door opener after his frantic race home.
"There you are," his father said, fingering his gray-flecked black goatee as he often did when he was nervous or upset. He was proud of that goatee, although even Julian's mother said privately that it looked like the wrong end of the goat. "We were very concerned."
But Julian's mother wasn't concerned . . . she was furious. She held him by the shoulders at arms' length, and he felt the cold searching pressure of the Sight.
"This isn't right," she said, tilting her head, eyes narrowed. "Astarte's Pool . . . with an unconsecrated vessel . . . in front of a layman?" Her fingers tightened painfully on his shoulders.
"Mom, I had to . . ."
She let go of his shoulders and turned away, pacing the creamy shag carpet of the living room. "After all we've taught you . . ."
"But Mom, listen, there's, there's some kind of big dark-energy thing at the mall . . ."
She turned back to him, the spark of anger snapping in her eyes. "Don't try to lie your way out of this one, mister!"
Julian turned to his father for support, but his face was equally hard. "I am very, very disappointed in you."
"You are so grounded, young man," his mother said. "No sabbat tonight for you!"
No sabbat? On top of everything else, this was too much. Julian felt the hot sting of tears in the corners of his eyes, but he refused to cry. "But what about my part of the ceremony? All those incantations I had to memorize? I thought you said it was important."
Julian's mother shook her head. "We'll get Dan Corry to do it."
"But Corry stutters!"
His father was impassive. "If you keep your nose clean, we might consider letting you assist at Samhain. Not before."
"And until then," his mother continued, "no television, and come straight home after school."
Six weeks of house arrest. But Julian knew that any protest at this point would only make it worse. "Yes, ma'am," he said, hanging his head. All he wanted to do now was go to his room and fall over.
His mother stared, blinking, her expression a mixture of anger and sadness. Then she shook herself and gathered up her coat and purse. "Your dinner's on the stove. Don't forget to clean up."
"Take this opportunity to study the Principle of Consequences and think on what you've done," his father said. "We'll see you in the morning." Then he closed the door—gently, but with finality. They'd be back some time after midnight.
Julian reheated his Hamburger Helper Cheesy Enchilada and took it to the TV room to eat while he watched the second half of The Million Dollar Duck on Disney. Part 1 had been last week, and he'd been disappointed that he would have to miss part 2 on account of the sabbat, so at least some good would come of this. But as he reached for the switch, he remembered that he was grounded, with no television.
"Damn," he said to the silent house.
He ate his dinner without tasting it—which was probably a good thing—washed the pan, and put his dishes in the dishwasher.
His father had said to study the Principle of Consequences. He already knew that basic principle by heart, but he went to his locked bookshelf and took down the grimoire anyway. Not like he had anything better to do. But as he read over the familiar words, the old black-letter script and musty paper as comforting in their arcane way as Dick and Jane, his mind drifted.
What was it, exactly, that he'd felt at the mall? Why should such a powerful dark force be hanging out at such an ordinary place? It made as much sense as The Fonz suddenly appearing on Little House on the Prairie.
He flipped through the grimoire in search of answers, and soon found a section about places that concentrated energy, both dark and light. That seemed promising, but it was all rivers and mineral deposits and other natural features . . . nothing that could explain why a shopping mall should suddenly become a focus of magical energy.
And then he turned a page, and saw an entire two-page spread of symbols of power. There was the pentacle, of course, and the ankh, and the eight-pointed Maltese cross . . . and the gammadia, or voided cross. A cross with the centers taken out, like four letter L's back-to-back.
Exactly the new layout of the mall: four L-shapes of stores, converging on the central court.
He read further, cross-referencing. A gammadia could be used to capture and concentrate energy of any kind. But this one, having been constructed by lay people without any specific magical purpose in mind, attracted chaotic dark energy by default. Being so large, the amount of energy involved would be enormous.
And tonight was Mabon, the autumnal equinox, one of the eight days of the year on which the membrane between this world and the other was at its thinnest . . .
Julian's hands had gone all cold. He rubbed them under his arms, trembling.
Tonight at midnight, an unknown but vast amount of unfocused dark energy would be released into the world at Alewife Bay Mall. The consequences could be devastating, in the physical world as well as the spiritual.
And Julian was the only person who knew about it.
His first impulse was to tell his parents. But there were no phones in Rockwood Park, where the sabbat was being held. All the other members of the coven would be there as well. He could bike there . . . but the magical circle would be closed by now. Even if he could attract the attention of someone inside, they would be extremely unwilling to open it, since that would mean starting the whole ritual over from the beginning. And what if he was wrong? He'd be grounded for the rest of his life.
Julian rocked back and forth on the couch in front of the TV's dark eye. There was only one thing to do.
He would have to seal the gammadia himself.
He knew the exact incantation to use. Dispelling energy wasn't that hard, especially energy with no specific purpose to it. It was so easy, even a male could do it. All he needed was candles, some salt, a little garlic, and some . . .
Wine.
Damn.
He went to the closet anyway. But, of course, his parents had taken the equipment trunk with them to the sabbat. And apart from ritual purposes, they were teetotalers . . . there wasn't another bottle of wine in the house.
Where could a thirteen-year-old boy get a bottle of wine at nine thirty on a Sunday night?
He sat, drumming his fingers on the couch arm, thinking hard. And then he remembered something Liz had said . . .
It took him three tries to dial her number correctly.
"Hello?"
The receiver's hard plastic creaked in his grip. "Hello, Mrs. O'Malley, my name's Julian Greene . . ."
"Oh, of course, Julian, I remember you. Would you like to speak with Colleen?"
Colleen? Oh, right. "Uh, yes, please."
A long moment later, Liz came on the line. "Hey, Liz, it's Julian."
"Heya. Whazzup?"
He wanted to lean in close, cup his hand around the phone, and whisper. But he reminded himself he was alone in the house. "Listen . . . remember I told you about that project I wanted to work on?"
"Yeah . . ."
"I need a favor. A really, really big favor. It's . . . it's going to be really difficult for you to do, and you can't tell anyone about it. Especially your parents. Understand?"
"Ohh-kay . . ."
"Okay. Here's what I need you to do. This is going to sound really strange, but you know you can trust me, right?"
"Right."
"I need a bottle of wine."
"Julian!" Her tone was astonished.
"Not to drink!" He covered the receiver with his hand for a moment, thinking fast. "It's for a science project. Extra credit. Due Monday. But my parents wouldn't approve. They don't drink." That last part was true, anyway. "You told me once that your brother has some wine hidden in his old treehouse. Can you get me one bottle? Tonight?"
"I think so."
"Meet me at Alewife Bay Mall. By the south entrance. At . . ." He glanced at the clock. "Ten thirty?"
"Okay!" He could practically hear her grin. Liz was always up for anything weird or risky.
"You're a great friend. See you there."
Despite the cool of the late September evening, Julian was sweating heavily when he pedaled up to the mall entrance. Exhaustion from the many miles he'd traveled today, concern about the ritual he was about to do, worry that maybe Liz hadn't been able to get the wine or get out of the house so late at night, and fear from the traffic he'd faced with no headlight all combined into a cold, angular lump in his stomach.
"Psst!"
Julian started, then spotted the source of the sound. It was Liz, lurking in the bushes behind the bike rack. He hustled over there, stashed his bike next to The Monster.
"You're late."
"Sorry," he whispered. It had taken a lot longer than he'd figured. He was still worn out from this afternoon's frantic ride. "Did you get the wine?"
"Yep." She pulled a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill from her backpack. It wasn't exactly sacramental, but it would do.
"Thanks. I owe you one."
He stood there, holding the bottle, waiting for her to leave. Maybe he shouldn't have had her meet him right here at the mall.
She wasn't leaving.
"Well, I guess I'll be heading home now," he said. He'd have to double back after she'd left.
"I'll ride with you as far as Clear Spring Boulevard."
He couldn't ride that far, double back, and still finish the ritual by midnight. "No, that's okay. I'll be fine."
"Look, what's with you? And what kind of middle school science project needs a bottle of Boone's Farm?"
"It's . . . it's personal."
She just gave him a look.
He glanced at his watch. Already past eleven. Maybe he could scare her off with a form of the truth. "Okay. Look, I didn't want to tell you this, but . . . but . . . dark, evil forces are gathering in there. Very dark. Very evil. I have to go in and perform a ritual. To contain them. By midnight. Or else all hell's going to break loose."
"Really? Cool!" In the cold mercury vapor of the parking lot lights, her eyes shone with enthusiasm.
This was so not going the way he'd hoped.
He looked at his watch again. "Oh, hell. Come with me."
Locks were simple, unintelligent things. "Wow," Liz said. "How'd you do that?"
"I'll explain later." He had no such intention, of course. "Now keep quiet . . . there might be a night watchman."
The mall seemed huge in the darkness, with the pale light of a waxing crescent moon shining through the skylights and a few lamps here and there casting strange, hard-edged shadows. They crept past orange plastic cones and silent, dusty-smelling concrete mixers to the half-finished fountain at the center of the central court. They met nobody, but the chill of seething, chaotic dark forces was much stronger than it had been that afternoon.
Quickly, but as carefully as he could, Julian traced out a circle for the ritual, dabbing each of the four cardinal points with wine. Liz watched, fascinated, as he invoked the God in each direction. "It's very important that you not leave the circle now," he whispered, "until I say it's okay. Understand?"
Liz nodded, but said nothing.
He took out a mortar—a small, heavy brass bowl—from his backpack and splashed some more wine in it. The cheap strawberry stuff smelled like fermented candy. He added salt, then used the matching brass pestle to crush in a couple cloves of garlic. The resulting paste smelled vile, but it was just the thing for grounding and dispelling the forces of chaos. He dabbed a little on his eyelids, ears, nose, and—yuck—lips, then did the same to Liz. "For your protection," he told her.
She giggled. "Like that paper strip on the toilet?"
"I mean it. Stay in the center of the circle and don't move."
Now came the tricky part. Chanting quietly, he lit five candles and set them at the corners of a pentagram within the circle. Next, he began tracing out the lines of the pentagram with the wine-and-garlic paste. The spacing had to be precise, and the lines straight. His tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as he crept about on hands and knees, laying down tiny dabs of the stinky stuff with the tip of a sharp knife.
And then a recorded trumpet blared. Julian's entire body jerked, and he barely kept from spilling the mortar's contents all over himself.
He looked up at the source of the noise, and saw that the giant package at the far end of the center court was opening.
Did the stupid thing run twenty-four hours a day?
No, wait, even worse. He looked at his watch, and confirmed what the mall's clock was telling him with its cheesy music-box fanfare: it was just two minutes to midnight. And he still had almost two full sides of the pentagram to trace out.
"Liz, I need your help." Wooden villagers and animals danced around as the feeling of dark energy grew stronger and stronger. "Take this knife and lay down a line of this stuff from here to there. Hurry. But be as precise as you can." He scooped out half the remaining glop into his left palm, then started tracing out the other line with his fingernail.
On and on the mechanical performance went, the cheery music blaring and echoing through the empty space. The little wooden boy in lederhosen moved toward the gong. Julian's gut clenched, and not just from fear—the chaos was building. "Hurry!" he whispered, but Liz was making better progress with the knife than he was with his fingers. He concentrated on his half of the work.
Three feet to go when the first bong sounded. He was nearly out of the paste. He spread it thinner. Bong. Bong. Bong. Two feet to go, dab after dab after dab. Couldn't put too much space between dabs. Bong. Bong. Bong. Was that six bongs, or seven?
"Done!" said Liz. Bong.
"Great!" Bong.
"But I'm out of stuff." Bong.
Bong.
"Me too."
Six inches of dry floor lay beyond the end of his line.
Bong.
The darkness came flooding through the gap in the pentagram like water from a fire hose, chilling Julian and driving the breath from his lungs. He was forced physically back, toward the center of the charmed circle, watching helplessly as potted palms swayed and stretched their spindly limbs toward the moonlight and exposed rebar twisted itself into strange shapes. The little wooden boy tugged at his own feet, trying to free them from the platform to which they were attached.
Darkness was taking over the mall.
"I'm sorry," Julian said.
And then he felt Liz's hand on his own. She was pushing it forward.
He looked back at her, wondering what she was doing.
She seemed deep in shadow, though there was nothing to throw such a shadow. It was as though a large dark man were crouching protectively above her, a man with a strange huge angular head.
She pushed again against his hand. The left one. The one that still had garlic-and-wine paste worked into its creases.
At last he understood. He threw all his strength into crawling forward, shoving his left hand into the gap. He could never have done it alone, but the addition of Liz's strength made it possible.
He smeared his palm across the gap in the pentagram.
And it all stopped.
As the last bong echoed away and the box began to fold itself up, the chill feeling of darkness and chaos drained out of the mall like water from a tub. The wooden boy grew still, the swaying palms sank back into their pots, and the rebar stopped moving. It was still twisted, but not-moving was a definite improvement.
Julian lay gasping on the hard tile of the half-finished fountain.
After a while, he sat up. Liz was sitting on the fountain's edge, just watching him.
"How . . ." he began, but had to swallow several times to clear the dryness from his throat. "How did you know to do that?"
"There was a . . . guy." She seemed kind of stunned. "With these . . ." she gestured vaguely above her head. "Whatchamacallums. Antlers. He told me what to do."
"You saw the Horned God? He spoke to you?"
"Um, I think you're the one who should be answering that."
Julian stood up. His legs could, perhaps, hold him. Riding home was another question, but he'd face that in a little bit. "Have I ever introduced you to my parents?"
"No . . ."
"I think I'm going to have to correct that right away."
They limped together toward the mall entrance and their bicycles, supporting each other as they went.