be not afraid 01
You’re walking on the side of the street. Autumn has burned the leaves yellow. With a gust they shiver and fall, lazy arcs seesawing down to the ground.
The woman across the street brushes a leaf from her hair in irritation. So does a man standing at a bus shelter.
Danger.
You side-step a leaf that would have touched you. It lands limply on the ground, teased this way and that by the breeze. No leaves have fallen that have not struck people.
Someone is looking for someone, and is using the leaves to do it. There’s only one witch out there you know might be looking for someone. You crammed one of her daughters up your arse, and when you digested the other you squeezed her sobbing spirit into a pit deep inside you.
You scan the sky for more leaves.
There. Another leaf has detached from a chestnut and the wind is carrying it towards you. You otch your hand inside your sleeve and pluck it from the air, not letting it touch your skin. It twirls innocuously when you spin it between your fingers.
Imagine that you had not noticed such a subtle attack. She would have known where you lived. It is too dangerous to allow her to live.
Time to reunite her with her daughter…
You burst through my front door, frowning and on a mission. I lean through the kitchen door to see what the matter is. As ever, I brighten hugely when I see you.
“Oh good! I thought someone was breaking down the—”
“I need to work. That witch cunt needs sorting out.”
I seem taken aback by your anger, but roll with it. “Okay. Um, do you want dinner first? I hand-stretched the pizza bases. They’re ready to go; fifteen minutes and they’re yours.”
You hesitate on the first stair. “How many—”
“Four. One deep pan, just trying something. Stuffed crust. You got… Grilled chicken and roast peppers; quatro formaggi; a thing I made up with nduja because who doesn’t like unpronounceable sausage; and meat feast, because sheer excess is what I want to feed you.”
Your mouth is watering. As you stand torn your tummy lets out an impatient grumble that sounds like it starts the level of your kidneys and works its way to. And I’m standing there looking so proud. But you don’t know what this bitch might be capable of. Another predatory witch is not someone you want to be surprised by.
“Fine,” you say, and swallow a mouthful of saliva. “But I need to work. Feed me while I meditate. I can at least be stuffed when I wake back up.”
I raise my eyebrows—perhaps about to ask if it’s dangerous—but clearly decide you know what you can do. Instead I walk towards you, wiping my hands on the cloth over my shoulder, then kiss you by way of acknowledgement.
“Fifteen minutes, then bring pizza upstairs?”
You nod, then ascend to the workspace you built in my spare time.
The Lesser Banishing is almost complete when you hear my footsteps creak outside your door. I clearly am waiting. You let me wait, finishing the ritual. Peace and resolution wash over you, and hunger follows.
The scent of pizza is not helping that.
“Come,” you say. A moment to picture your mouth, your throat, your stomach. They will work in your absence. The food I am bringing, whose savory scent is flooding your mouth, will be consumed, and the pleasure delayed, till you return from your sojourn.
The door opens. You close your eyes. Leaving your body behind you step outside of the circle.
The leaves are like burning pieces of paper.. When they touch a person, that person is ringed in a fiery aura; then the flash is gone.
You walk amongst the papers.
She just be somewhere, their mistress, you know. Probably not far away. They clearly all lived relatively near the park.
You stroke your astral belly. Today you are thin. Past meals, enough spirits devoured, drowned and absorbed to give you rolls upon rolls of aetheric fat, respond to your whim and pack themselves densely around your natural form. Daughter Jules does not respond, and so you carry her as a little pot belly.
Perhaps you can sip from her the knowledge you you need. You are about to begin the ritual when a familiar bright, clean sensation washes over you. Someone nearby is performing their own Lesser Banishing.
You turn to regard a tall but dilapidated building, the physical substance sketched out in charcoal. Its once-elegant wooden front is cracked and a pane of glass is missing, replaced with MDF. While three people cluster downstairs in the kitchen-diner, upstairs and in the midst of a clearing circle sits a single bright spirit.
You are curious. There is a neglected Jewish mezuzah scroll affixed to the front door frame, painted over and likely unknown to the inhabitants, but still effective at repelling intruders. However, the magician upstairs is actively inviting entities into the house. As an act of will you break gravity’s residual hold on you and float to outside the caster’s window.
Too young to be the mother, you think. Perhaps twenty. She’s pictures herself with flowing golden locks, though the charcoal-sketch reality underlying that projection shows dirty-blonde hair frizzing dangerously to about the height of her round glasses. If you were to consume her flesh she would be a snack at best: she is a sparrow, with a sparrow’s light build and hollow bones. But spiritually… she’s an occultist. You’ve always had a soft spot for other occultists.
With her little ritual knife she is calling out the points of the compass and naming entities. An exhausted soul trapped in your fat screams and fades as it yields the potency for you to adopt the guise of an angel. The first act you undertake as a member of the heavenly host is to fart out the gently disintegrating remains of the dead soul, for it to blow away on the breeze.
The baby occultist points to the North and you step through her window.
You see shock on her face. The other stations are occupied by the faintest after-echoes of heavenly puissance. And now she is faced with an invocation so potent she could almost reach out and touch you. In flesh and spirit she raises a hand to shield her eyes from the glow behind your head, which catches liquid highlights on your flowing black hair, and on the great wings which brush opposing walls of her bedroom.
“Be not afraid,” you intone, voice terrible and eyes burning into hers.
She staggers back and steps outside her chalk circle.
You smile.